It's a very good bet that anyone who says, "I'm no prude, but ..." probably is a prude.

So, I'm not going to say, "I'm no prude, but ..."

Still, in these Madonna-kissing-Britney-and-everybody-else times, perhaps being a prude isn't such a bad thing, particularly when it comes to what kids can read in a newspaper.

Included in last weekend's editions of The Daily Star's color comics was a "Doonesbury Flashback," a repeat of a strip from last year.

It ran instead of a current offering by cartoonist Garry Trudeau in which three of his characters — the Rev. Sloan, Boopsie and Zonker — discuss actual recent research indicating that men who masturbate frequently are less likely to develop prostate cancer.

I have to admit, the cartoon was pretty funny. The question was, did it belong on our comics pages?

Fortunately, Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes "Doonesbury" to 1,400 U.S. daily and Sunday newspapers, let its clients, including The Daily Star, know about the strip's content a few weeks in advance.

It didn't take Publisher Dan Swift and me very long to decide not to run it. We agreed immediately that it did not belong in one of the few places in the newspaper where small children are likely to see it.

Maybe it's unrealistic in this video age, but I like to think that there are 6-year-olds out there who learn to read by looking at "the funny papers."

Neither Dan nor I wanted our newspaper to be the reason some child asks: "Mommy, what's this word? M-A-S-T-U-R ..."

Apparently, most newspapers agreed. Estimates are about 80 percent of Trudeau's clients refused to run the controversial strip.

To his credit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist understood the concerns of the editors and publishers.

"It's not censorship, as so many would have it — it's editing — and the steward of a newspaper has the responsibility to decide every day what content to publish for his community," Trudeau wrote in an e-mail to The Sacramento Bee.

Well said, and as stewards of this community's newspaper, Dan Swift and I looked forward to today's "Doonesbury" offering content with the decision we made about last week's.

As for using the M-word in the fifth paragraph of this column, I'm a little uncomfortable, but I figure few, if any, 6-year-olds are learning to read by scanning my humble offerings.

Of course, I could be wrong.

But I doubt it.

While we're on the subject, let's explore the use of profanity in this newspaper.

Mostly, I'm against it.

Of course, one person's profanity can be merely colorful language to another person. Reasonable people can honestly disagree about what is obscene or profane and what isn't.

Reasonable or not, in our newsroom, I am the arbiter.

I figure that if Clark Gable could say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" to Vivien Leigh way back in 1939's "Gone With The Wind" without audiences fainting, then "damn' is probably OK.

The same with "hell." After all, preachers use the word all the time in their Sunday sermons.

But get beyond hell and damn, and there has to be a compelling reason for profanity to get into this newspaper, and if there is a compelling reason, it has to be in a direct quote.

And, it has to be approved by the managing editor or editor before it appears in The Daily Star. For approval to be granted, it has to be absolutely vital to the meaning and clarity of the story.

Unless the word "sucks" pertains to the removal of snake venom or a cold drink from a glass, you're not going to see it in these columns. I don't care if "that sucks" is OK with David Letterman and Bart Simpson, it's a vulgarity, and it's not OK with me.

I realize with that word and some others that I'm fighting a losing battle with society's increasingly tolerant mores, but fight it I shall.

Sometimes, graphic descriptions are unavoidable for responsible journalists. A recent rape and beating trial in Cooperstown was one of those times.

Testimony in open court described sexual acts in unmistakably clear language. We printed it just as it was presented, not shying away from legitimate words describing the human anatomy.

We did it after careful consideration and weighed the benefits of mature honesty and accuracy against the chance of offending the sensibilities of some of our readers.

The difference between that coverage and the "Doonesbury" decision? The news story didn't have cartoons and didn't run on the same colorful page as "Peanuts."

We'll continue to make our decisions as responsibly as possible, knowing how very important it is that we present a newspaper each day that you can trust ... and that you can entrust to your children.

Questions from readers are more than welcome. E-mail Sam Pollak at spollak@thedailystar.com or write to him at P.O. Box 250. Oneonta, NY 13820.