In your Jan. 4 editorial, you apologize for printing a comic strip that promoted violence. You should have looked more carefully at the comics you published that day; without exception, all were either objectionable or insensitive.

Three advocate cruelty to animals: Snoopy is made to serve as rabbit ears for Charlie Brown's TV; Garfield is allowed to eat fudge; and Mark Trail forcibly separates Lucky the beaver from his mate.

Family values are ridiculed: Liz's sister humiliates her in front of an ex-beau; the Hi and Lois children assume married people fight all the time; Arlo avoids discussing problems with his wife; Jeremy in Zits deliberately torments his father; and Mom in Family Circus pays such scant attention to her little boy that he chews on her shoes.

Fat people are ridiculed in Dilbert and Beetle Baily; the torture of Iraqi war prisoners is trivialized in Doonesbury; though people around the world are starving, Dagwood's mailman pours his cocoa into his boots; and an online dater in Close to Home shows an unhealthy interest in men's underwear while at the same time she scorns her date for being short.

Certainly you owe your readers an apology for not practicing the "careful review" you promise in your editorial and allowing these comics to be published.

The fact is, you will have to eliminate comic strips completely from your newspaper if you seriously want to avoid accusations of advocating destructive behavior and promoting offensiveness and insensitivity. Oh, and making people laugh.

David Mills

Waterville