Cement Shoes

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The Crimson decided two days ago t stop running Berke Breathed's comic strip Bloom County. The decision was triggered by the cartoon scheduled to run in Monday's paper which we felt made an offensive reference to homosexuals.

The decision to discontinue the cartoon is not a protest of this single strip. Rather than installment confirmed general reservations we have had for some time about the cartoon.

Satire is on course welcome in the pages of any newspaper, and The Crimson has run satirical material before--most notably Doonesbury, which took a leave of absence two months ago. But we feel that when satire touches on sensitive subjects, such as minorities commonly victims of prejudice, it must be done tastefully. If it falls flat, it is not innocuous--it becomes offensive. We felt that Bloom County has too often missed the mark in attempting such parodies. We were concerned about having to monitor the cartoon daily and t decide which days it should or should not run.

Our decision not to carry Bloom County does not suppress the cartoon from this community, nor dies It keep the particular views it expresses out of The Crimson. We simply believe that Bloom County should not be the one cartoon that regularly runs in our pages.

We will be running another cartoon s soon as possible.