Jeff Stahler is a syndicated cartoonist. His daily one-panel, Moderately Confused, appears in newspapers across the country, including the Dispatch. (A couple years ago, Stahler was also the Dispatch's editorial cartoonist, until he was replaced by a conservative cartoonist more to the Wolf's tastes.)
What I found to be innocently amusing many local Catholics found outrageously offensive. They wrote letters to the editor, claiming Stahler was disrespectful, sacrilegious, was attacking their church and mocking its rituals. They called for the Dispatch to stop publishing the heretical Moderately Confused. "This is no laughing matter," one woman harrumphed. Yeah, where's Torquemada when you need him?
Stahler and the Dispatch parted on bad terms, and the paper's editorial board seems delighted now to print letters from his detractors. But these upright Christian critics have got it all wrong, and are missing the point of the cartoon.
Humor is often found in the surprise, the unexpected, the familiar scene with something out of place. In the cartoon, there's nothing unusual about a priest or minister conducting communion, nothing odd or funny about him saying, "Body of Christ."
What is unexpected and funny is the woman asking, "Is it locally made?" That's where the humor is! Stahler's not going after religion, he's poking fun at Portlandia-style foodies, the sort of question-askers who want to know the free-range chicken's name and family history before they eat it. So isn't it funny then to put that kind of person in a church inquiring as to the origin of her communion wafer? Yes, it is.
(FYI -- All communion wafers are manufactured in a single small plant in Bugscuffle, Tennesse, and are made from a delicious mixture of fish food, styrofoam and library paste.)
But all that the humorless religious right-tards can see is a priest in the funny pages, so they go predictably apeshit. Buster has a respectful suggestion for these folks: Pull the Holy Roman rod out of your ass and lighten up!
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