What Does It Take for Mainstream Media to Pretend to Care About Cartoons?

Oprah. The answer is Oprah. And politics. And clickbait.

John Maher
The Dot and Line
2 min readJan 9, 2018

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Hey. Hey. HEY. Have you heard? Have you HEARD? HAVE YOU HEARD??

Heard what, you ask? Well, just ask CNN. Or the Washington Post. Or a number of other outlets at that.

Without entering the “you would have thought we would have learned something about rallying behind celebrities with no political experience as presidential candidates by now” fray, now seems like a great time to point out that we live in a world where nobody in journalism cares about animation unless it makes for a traffic-driving headline.

Anyway, that Oprah prediction comes from the near-perfect television episode “Return of the King,” from The Boondocks’ first season. It raised all kinds of hell when it first aired, because Aaron McGruder likes to tell hard truths. It also won a 2006 Peabody award. You should watch it—it’s on Hulu.

Thanks for reading The Dot and Line, where we talk about animation of all kinds. Don’t forget to👏 for this article and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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John Maher
The Dot and Line

Senior news editor at Publishers Weekly. Founding editor at the Dot and Line. Work in Vulture, Polygon, the Lost Angeles Times, and more.