EDITORIAL - We are aghast to report that last Sunday's edition of the venerable comic strip "Beetle Bailey" in newspapers across America invented an appalling new dictionary entry for the word "depravity."The strip--a fitting word--contained a panel that unabashedly flaunted the stark, flesh-tone image of an unclad Private Bailey. This decadence was disguised as the supposedly humorous depiction of the well-known soldier slipping in the shower. The Army hat adorning Beetle only served to crank up the kinkiness factor.
We have long celebrated "Beetle Bailey's" creator, Mort Walker, not only as a comic genius on a par with Mark Twain and S.J. Perelman but also as a patriot and, therefore, presumably a good Protestant and Republican. We are, therefore, crestfallen to find him wallowing in the same cesspool as Larry Flynt.
With no offense to our gay readers, this strip's sexual orientation has always been consonant with the American majority's, given General Halftrack's unrestrained lechery directed toward Miss Buxley. For millions of us, the General's heterosexual hijinks -- albeit degrading to women -- only underscored that the antics of the Camp Swampy gang were wholly suitable for a family audience.
All that changed when Mr. Walker constructed a de facto shrine to an au naturel Beetle -- and there wasn't a female in sight.
Perhaps this sort of thing plays well at the Warhol but it doesn't go over in the back of the Assembly Church where, because of Mr. Walker, the stacks of newspapers being hawked after Sunday services have become near-occasions of sin.
My Sunday newspaper is delivered in a green plastic wrapper. With people like Mort "Caligula" Walker contributing to it, we are afraid they'll have the change the wrapper's color to brown.
