Featuring one of my all time favorite cartoon characters, the dancing air man, this toon was rejected from the Rejection Collection. Despite the editor being fully in favor of running it, the publishers thought it was too risky to put out there, even under the headline of “this was rejected for being too risky.”

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Take a moment to analyze it, and this cartoon is a joke pointing out racism in policing (police are so racist that they see even the most innocuous thing imaginable, a Dancing Air Man, as something they should point their guns at because of the color of its tube). But these days even a joke pointing out racism is seen as too close to racism to be permissible.

Or perhaps this one was seen as unpublishable because police racism has been added to the long, growing list of things we cannot make a joke about at all. Whatever the reasoning for not publishing it, there’s a possibility that someone won’t get it an will misclassify it as racist (rather than something calling out the racist), and that is a chance that is too much to take in a world where one tweet is more powerful than the truth.