> It was surprising to see a controversial issue placed on the front page instead of the forum or the site journal. Although plenty of highly divisive discussions have been done on those two sections, no other instances of using the front page that way come to mind. Was this a first? Basically, I was a little concerned that it might push some folk away.

That's the problem with doing anything political at an entertainment site these days. There's been some talk in some online cartoonist circles about the benefit of doing political cartoons or inserting politicalized items into one's comic strip. Adding politically-biased content to any form of entertainment is certain to alienate some of the readership. A creator would have to weigh the cost in loss of readership from offended parties to the overall product he or she creates. (Assuming, of course, that a creator or entertainment provider even cares about readership levels.)

That a political message would appear on a website in the days before a national election shouldn't turn most of the site visitors away, especially when the facts mentioned in a personal online message can be verified or refuted by a bi-partisan site like factcheck.org. The thing that may turn away readers from a site is if a formerly-neutral source of entertainment suddenly became overtly one-sided. For instance, if in the months before the election I switched PE(aott)'s focus to a Bush-bashing, Kerry-loving politically charged comic strip from whatever the heck it is now, I would not be surprised to see at least two hundred people stop reading the strip. But if I threw in a quick strip promoting Kerry or bashing Bush, I'd be surprised if there was a noticable drop in readership.

In Sam's case, once the elections are over (and all the court cases have been settled), he'd just have to remove his message and it's gone to the Wayback Machine. In my case, if I wanted to I could remove that one pro-Kerry comic strip from the archives. But if I changed my political preferences once I've switched to the political strip, I'd have months of comics I'd have to remove.

-FP