Posted 7:20 AM by Scoobie Davis

Exclusive: Was NewsMax's "Hollywood Hero" Patricia Heaton Responsible for the Removal of Billboards in Los Angeles? I'm Reporting; You Decide
I was reading the teaser for the article in the Scaife-funded rag NewsMax (published by Christopher Ruddy) on Hollywood's heroes (in the opinion of NewsMax, one is a Hollywood hero if one is in the entertainment industry but supported Bush in the election). It mentioned Patricia Heaton as "a crusader for family values"; I never heard of her so I looked her up on IMDb and found that she plays the mother on TV's Everybody Loves Raymond.

That jogged something from my memory from last month's LA Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention which I attended. Appearing at the convention were Matthew Silverstein and Dave Jeser, the writers/creators of the naughty comedy Central "cartoon reality show" Drawn Together (which I recommended last month). Before I go on about Heaton, let me tell you about the series and the convention. Drawn Together takes comic book and animation characters from different genres and put them together in a Big Brother-style home. It's raw but funny as shit.

Anyhow, the creators spoke about how they had to deal with the network censors (Standards and Practices) about some of the dialogue. In fact, they had a contest in which people from the audience guessed whether certain lines of dialogue were censored or not. I won a phat DT poster (which I later had them sign) because I correctly guessed that Standards and Practices censored the following dialogue from the Captain Hero character: "I'd nail any one of these broads like the Son of God to the cross!"

Here's the juicy part. During their talk, the creators said that they were forced to take down their Drawn Together billboards from the LA area (Note: I saw the billboards which featured the characters outside and showed the charcters Foxxy Love and Princess Clara making out in the pool--it was similar to the graphic on the web page). They said they were removed because of the complaints of a TV mom whose name they refused to reveal. However, after they mentioned this, someone from the audience shouted, "Was it Everybody Loves Raymond?" That got me to think: if there would be any TV mom out there who would censor a billboard with some cartoon girl/girl action, it would have to be someone who was honored by NewsMax.
I'm going out on a limb and say that Heaton was the complainer. I'll retract this if I'm wrong. Who else could it be?

For fans of Drawn Together, some muy excellente news: Drawn Together was renewed for next season.

UPDATE: Patricia Heaton is missing a belly button.