I confess: I&rsquo;m a coward when it comes to writing about the lineup of comic strips that run in The Kansas City Star. </p><p>It&rsquo;s really not that I&rsquo;m afraid to wade into topics that get readers worked up (and trust me, the funnies do). I simply know there&rsquo;s no chance I can represent the unfathomably wide variety of opinions fairly.</p><p>Last Tuesday, I wrote a story in the FYI section about the history of comics in The Star, along with a mini poll asking readers to pick their least favorites from 10 current strips that editors are considering for deletion. Thousands have submitted their ballots online and through the mail, and the survey continues through June 30.</p><p>Ah, that survey. It&rsquo;s been the source of much ire at my lines. A typical complaint: </p><p><em>Why can&rsquo;t we vote on all of the comics and not just the ten that someone at your paper doesn&rsquo;t like? &ldquo;Zippy the Pinhead&rdquo; is absolutely terrible; it surely would lose by a landslide. &hellip; &ldquo;Get Fuzzy&rdquo; is bad as is the new comic &ldquo;Cul de Sac.&rdquo; It isn&rsquo;t funny.</em></p><p>Now, I would never try to rebut an assertion like this. After all, this reader is perfectly entitled to her opinion about what is and isn&rsquo;t funny. But I can also say with extreme certainty that many others disagree strongly about the humor level in the strips this reader singles out. </p><p>I&rsquo;ve found that generalizing about demographics is useless. Some older readers claim none of their age group enjoys &ldquo;Get Fuzzy,&rdquo; &ldquo;Cul de Sac,&rdquo; &ldquo;Pearls Before Swine&rdquo; or &ldquo;Lio.&rdquo; So what about a caller last Thursday who told me he&rsquo;s 85, and &ldquo;Lio&rdquo; and &ldquo;Fuzzy&rdquo; remind him of the comics he grew up on? </p><p>One reader said Wednesday that she and every other baby-boomer love &ldquo;Curtis,&rdquo; while an e-mailer the next day identifying herself as 62 cited it among the strips that &ldquo;don&rsquo;t do a thing for me.&rdquo;</p><p>Another frequent target, &ldquo;Zippy,&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t to everyone&rsquo;s taste &mdash; but I&rsquo;ve certainly never known fans who were more fervent in their love for a strip, and I&rsquo;ve heard several panicked pleas from people who are afraid their pinhead might be on the chopping block this go &rsquo;round.</p><p>Numbers don&rsquo;t tell a very accurate story in matters of subjectivity. First and foremost, voters in a poll like this are what market researchers call &ldquo;self selected,&rdquo; instead of chosen randomly from the paper&rsquo;s entire readership. </p><p>While The Star asked people to vote only once and limited online voting to one ballot per IP address, there are lots of ways people can get around the system. I remember a similar poll years ago that generated one &ldquo;winner&rdquo; that seemed the obvious result of ballot-box stuffing.</p><p>Everything in a newspaper is edited, not voted on. For better or for worse (no pun intended), newspapers try to appeal to a variety of tastes, not just the most common.</p><p> A comics page consisting of the 33 most popular strips might make many happy, but it would surely alienate tons of others with senses of humor that lie outside the mainstream. The funny pages need a mix of comic voices.