Recent Comments:
Survivor Spotlight: Tom Batiuk, Creator of Funky Winkerbean
The Cancer Blog
Aug 11th 2007 1:54AM Tom Batiuk---As the mother of a stage four breast cancer daughter who is herself a mother of three young children I wonder if you have any idea of the damage you are doing to our family? Those children are age 8, 10 and 12. Every morning they read your work and get the meassage that their mother will die. How dare you inflict such pain on my grandchildren, my daughter and on my family? Short of stopping the paper there is no way to remove your sad mesage from their inquiring minds. You have an obligation to fix this mess that you have created. So you had cancer, does that give you the right to make up a story about a young mother trying to live with this disease? How can you possibly know how it feels to be in such a position? You are not young, you are not a mother of young children and you are not dying from the disease. In fact --you are a man who seems to be without any idea of the pain you are inflicting. I have written to both papers my family reads and I have protested your work to the Breast Cancer Support groups as well as to the American Cancer Society. I have asked family and friends to do the same. Don't we have enough sorrow in our lives already without your adding to it? Please change your ending of this story. You do not have the right to put this horror in a family paper and it is not funny--therefore it does not belong in the funny papers. Write a book for adults if you wish to opine. We will stop our newspapers if they continue to publish your work.I think you are on an ego trip and feeling that you are doing something good. Well it is not good and you need to fix it. Consider your public and remember, children are reading your work. Young mothers with breast cancer are reading your work.You are hurting people who already have more hurt in their lives than you can possibly imagine. As a mother and a grandmother I beg you to stop hurting and begin to give some hope to those who must face each day with the knowledge that hope is all they really have. Think about it.
