‘Mother Goose Grimm’ vs
“Mother Goose and Grimm” cartoonist MIKE PETERS is used to getting sued over his political cartoons. What he never anticipated was facing international legal action cheap canada goose uk over buy canada goose jacket cheap a comic strip.
Now, though, he could be in legal hot water over a cartoon that invoked the character Juan Valdez and provoked the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, which represents more than a half million growers.
Beginning Dec. 29, Peters ran a weeklong series whose comic premise played off the fact that the creator of the Pringles can, who died in 2008, canada goose coats on sale had some of his ashes buried in his canada goose invention. (The Washington Post blog Comic Riffs wrote about this series Dec. 29.) On Jan. 2, “Mother Goose and Grimm” referencing violence in Colombia had a character say: “Y’know, there’s a big crime syndicate in Colombia. So when they say there’s a little bit of Juan Valdez in every can, maybe they’re not kidding.”
The cartoon spoofed the federation’s marketing character. Now, according to the Associated Press, the Colombian federation says it will sue Peters “for damage and harm, detriment to intellectual property and defamation.” The federation, founded in 1927, will file the suit Friday for at least $20 million and buy canada goose jacket will demand a retraction from any newspaper that ran the cartoon, according to the federation’s Web site and AP. (The strip ran in The Washington Post.)Peters, who is also a canada goose clearance Pulitzer winning political cartoonist, invoked a number of commercially popular product characters Canada Goose Jackets in the weeklong series, including Colonel Sanders, Betty Crocker and Dr. Pepper. According Canada Goose sale to Peters’s syndicate, King Features, the strip appears in canada goose clearance sale about 800 newspapers.
On Wednesday, Comic Riffs spoke with Mike Peters about the series of cartoons and the reportedly imminent legal action:
MICHAEL CAVNA: So, were you completely surprised by this news?
MIKE PETERS: It’s crazy. I was totally blindsided by this, I LOVE their coffee. I buy canada goose uk shop Colombian. I learned about the Pringles guy and thought: “What a great little [premise for] a series.”. I thought, “I need to figure out how to keep it going for a week.” So I started thinking of all the different products and their characters and [Juan Valdez] was one of them. i never thought that that was canadian goose jacket going to be the thing that got me in trouble. If anyone was going to call, it was going to be the Pringles [family] or something. I tried to do it with some sort of taste.
MC: So how did you get uk canada goose outlet word that there was controversy around the strip?
MP: It was from the e canada goose black friday sale mails that I got from readers. I haven’t got any letters or e mails [from the Colombia Coffee Growers]. It was just readers and so, that’s all I know. People then started calling me up and saying to me: “You ought to be sued.” I never knew Juan Valdez was like George Washington in Colombia. I still haven’t heard anything from anybody I called my syndicate and said: “Heads up Canada Goose Outlet about this.”
MC: So do you understand why the Colombian Canada Goose Online Coffee Growers might be offended?
MP: What the cartoon said was that there is an underground [syndicate] in Colombia. So I am totally amazed at this. I’m an editorial cartoonist. I expect bad things from my editorial cartoons, Canada Goose Parka not from my comic strip.
MC: Some years ago, you canada goose coats drew some heat from a “Mother Goose and Grimm” that was a pun off of the term “penis envy,” right?
MP: Yes. The caption was “Peanuts Envy” with Charlie Brown. I just got some bad letters. Mainly, I was just didn’t want to get letters from Charles Schulz and get him mad at me.
MC: So do you get used to drawing fire and controversy?
MP: You’re always going to offend someone. If I draw a smiley face, I’m going to offend somebody. And God love the people down there in Colombia. I was not trying to do anything bad about them. uk canada goose I was just making a joke about product characters. I canada goose uk outlet immediately sent out an e mail to reply to readers who were upset. I got around 50 e mails from readers who were upset. Some were in Spanish. Immediately we sent https://www.officialcanadagoosesoutlet.ca out a [statement].
MC: Have you ever been sued canada goose store before for drawing a commercial character?
MP: A long time ago, I canada goose uk black friday got sued for using Reddy Kilowatt, the character that was representing the electric company with a [stick figure] lightning cheap Canada Goose body and arms and legs. And they canada goose factory sale sued me because I was [painting] him as a bad person. Whenever electric bills were up, I and a couple of other editorial cartoonists used that as a symbol for the electric company. It was for the [Dayton] Daily News, and it went to the Supreme Court. This was 30 years ago. The court came out and said this was satire. They said that [in the cartoons], the symbol was not selling a product, so [we won].
As an American who lives in Colombia, I can see both sides of this issue. I realize it canada goose uk seems ridiculous to get upset, and maybe with a slogan like that they did have it coming. However, I MET Juan Valdez and a bunch of people from the Coffee Federation yesterday, and I can see why theyre upset. Colombia has enough difficulty changing its public Canada Goose Coats On Sale image (the country itself has already changed Medellin has a lower homicide rate than DC.) without the constant snide jokes. The coffee Canada Goose online industry in Colombia has done a lot to salvage this country from drug trafficking and violence, so they dont like to see their industry defamed.