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OPINION (Cont.) |
The Prater's Creek Gazette 15th Issue Fall 2007 Page #4 |
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Doug Marlette
Marlette was the brother-in-law of The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show’s bass player, Dalvin. The first time Grandpa went over to Dalvin's house to teach him some of their songs he saw a big storyboard drawing of Marlette's "Kudzu" comic strip. "Wow!" Grandpa said, "I love 'Kudzu', where'd you get that at?!" ? Dalvin then told him that he was related to the cartoonist. I really enjoyed the comic strip "Kudzu", with it's skewering of Jim Bakker and Jesse Helms. It was carried by over 200 newspapers. The Greenville News stopped carrying the daily strip during the late 80's. I guess it rubbed some folks the wrong way.He not only rubbed some Southern Baptists the wrong way, he also received close to five thousand death threats from irate Muslims in 2002. He drew a cartoon with Mohammed driving a Ryder Rental truck. The cartoon was captioned :"What Would Mohammed Drive?" Muslims all over the world were outraged because you are not suppose to draw or paint portraits of Mohammed. Marlette noted his cartoon is a takeoff on the recent controversy among some Protestants over the morality of driving gas-guzzling SUVs – "What Would Jesus drive?" In the last few years he had became a novelist. An autographed copy of his first novel, "The Bridge" sits on the shelf above me as I type this. At the time of the Pulitzer, Marlette said his biting approach could be traced in part to "a grandmother bayoneted by a guardsman during a mill strike in the Carolinas. There are some rebellious genes floating around in me." That incident plays a big part of "The Bridge". Last summer, The Drovers played on the porch of some house up near Charlotte, NC at a morning get together. They had played the night before, and Grandpa was feeling rough without enough sleep and the temperature soaring into the high 90's. But he played as good as he ever had he said, “because Doug Marlette was sitting there on that porch listening to us. I wanted to impress him with my songs.” Marlette had just given the eulogy at his father's funeral last Friday. Anybody with a keen sense of humor is going to miss him. He is survived by his wife Melinda, and their son, Jackson.The White Man Takes Down Another Black Hero: or Brother Can You Spar A Canine? Well, us white people couldn't stand that Michael Vick, another African-American hero, was prospering. What was it that did us in? Plunking down $300+ so that Santa would bring our sons an official Michael Vick Falcons jersey? So we got him to bankroll a dog-fighting operation and we also got him to drown and electrocute a few pit bulls. Shame on us! Grandpa, of The Drovers Old Time Medicine Show, wanted to add this: His Irish Setter, Neil (named after Neil Young) was stolen twenty some odd years ago, right after his fiancée left him. That dog was the only thing that kept him going day to day. He later found out that Neil had been stolen to be used as a sparring partner for pit bull fighting, which inspired the early Drovers' song "Had a Bad Day Today and Tomorrow Ain't Gonna Be No Better" Don't Blame It All On China The American consumer demands that goods be cheap, so, on down the line from the despots at Wal-Mart, through the companies such as Mattel, down to the quality control officer at the factory in China: we're all to blame. |
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Putilitzer
Prize winning editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette died Tuesday afternoon, at
the age of 57, when the vehicle, in which he was a passenger, slid off of a rain soaked road in Oxford, MS. He was down there to help a high school put
on a musical based of his comic strip "Kudzu". The comic strip turned
musical had played off-Broadway a few years ago.