Tasteless Veteran's Day Garfield Cartoon Haunts Jim Davis

Jim Davis has been forced to offer up an apology for an outrageous and tasteless Garfield cartoon that ran on Veteran's Day that seemed to refer to it as "National Stupid Day". Davis claimed the cartoon was written a year ago, and for some odd reason was badly timed to run on Veteran's Day. However, the cartoon was marked with a date tag that suggested that it was actually written to run on Veteran's Day, calling into question the version of the story that Davis claims.

Davis claims that his brother is a Vietnam veteran, and his son has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the outrageous Garfield cartoon is going to haunt Davis for years, and forever change his public image. Was Davis trying to make some antiwar political point? Regardless, the Garfield character is probably permanently tarnished by the ongoing controversy. Where are editors to allow such a strip to run on Veteran's Day?

Several years ago, Conan O'Brien had to offer up an apology after he ran a comedy bit comparing Veteran's Day to Christmas, where a Veteran's Day chair was decorated with lunch meat. It was a harmless and stupid comedy bit. But, it offended some vets.