This Cartoon Was Deleted from a PBS Special About the Artist, Art Spiegelman

The New York Times reported that a cartoon about Trump by Art Spiegelmaan was removed by the executive producer of the PBS show “American Masters.”

Trump has proposed defunding both PBS and NPR.

The Times wrote:

The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.

The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.

Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels.

Stephen Segaller, the vice president of programming for WNET, confirmed in an interview that the station had informed the filmmakers that it needed to make the change. Segaller said WNET felt the scatological imagery in the comic, which Spiegelman drew shortly after the 2016 election — it portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump’s head — was a “breach of taste” that might prove unpalatable to some of the hundreds of stations that air the series. 

Note that the four panels are divided by a swastika.

Art Spiegelman drew a graphic novel called Maus, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The book is about his parents’ experiences during the Holocaust.

Maus has been banned by many libraries.