I Go Pogo!

I loved "Pogo" at first sight back in the early '50s. Walt Kelly was a genius. Today, I read "Doonesbury" without fail. Garry Trudeau is a genius, too. Give 'em hell, Garry, gove 'em hell! If this is (fair & balanced) art to power, so be it.







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[x Austin Fishwrap]
"Doonesbury" still feisty after 35 years
By David Twiddy
Associated Press

Monday, November 14, 2005
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Not long after the dust settled from the Iraqi explosion that took "Doonesbury" comic strip character B.D.'s left leg last year, the Pentagon was on the phone.

A frequent target of "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, the Defense Department offered the satirist extensive access to soldiers wounded while fighting in Iraq and the doctors and caregivers trying to put their bodies — and psyches — back together.

"There are so many ways to get it wrong," Trudeau said of portraying the soldiers' struggles accurately during a recent meeting of the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors. "They figured, correctly, I could use all the help I could get."

It also spoke to the fact that "Doonesbury," an often funny, sometimes frustrating, and frequently controversial comic strip born in syndication 35 years ago, is still considered weighty enough to get the government's attention.

Over the years, the strip — born out of a cartoon that Yale graduate Trudeau, 57, wrote for the college paper — has used humor and biting commentary to address a broad sweep of society, such as race relations, AIDS, same-sex marriage and stem cells.

His huge cast of characters has aged along the way: Mike Doonesbury, the strip's lead character, has gone from idealistic college student to befuddled dad of a college-age daughter; Zonker Harris, the former professional tanner, is now a nanny; Uncle Duke, the Hunter S. Thompson-esque mercenary, ran for the presidency in 2000 and, until recently, was serving as mayor of the fictional Iraqi city of Al-Amok.

But Trudeau has always come back to raw politics, taking a page from Walt Kelly's "Pogo," which pioneered the use of poking fun at politicians on the funny pages. Most recently, he has relentlessly hammered the war and President Bush, who's depicted as an asterisk wearing an increasingly battered Roman helmet.

"Well, it's a humor strip, so my first responsibility has always been to entertain the reader," Trudeau said in response to e-mailed questions from The Associated Press. "But if, in addition, I can help move readers to thought and judgment about issues that concern me, so much the better."

Many times, those efforts have gotten him in trouble with newspaper editors who have pulled or edited his strips because of salty language, uncomfortable images or controversial subjects.

His strips also have attracted the ire of his subjects, who claim he's unfair and trying to score political points for liberals.

Trudeau, who describes his politics as "stone dull moderate," said he's supported Republicans in the past but has felt compelled to go after "mindless ideologues like the ones who've had a stranglehold on power the past five years."

Some observers say the war has given "Doonesbury" a new energy, one they say was largely absent during the 1990s, when American politics and culture didn't deliver the high-stakes issues that experts say satire needs to thrive.

"I think 'Doonesbury' was really of the Vietnam generation and became a voice of the Vietnam generation, and what's interesting to me is that decades later (Trudeau) tapped into that exact same thing with the Iraq war," said Matt Davies, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist for The Journal News in Westchester, N.Y. "Because of his reputation and perhaps his infamy, he rose to the challenge with the Iraq war and was back throwing barbs on the comics page. He's still got it. He's still an angry young man."

Of course, "Doonesbury" is no longer the oddity it once was. In the 1970s, the idea of using humor to skewer the political and social issues of the day was still rare in popular culture.

Now, "Doonesbury" has been joined by politically minded strips ranging from the racially charged "Boondocks" to conservative-leaning "Mallard Fillmore" and "Prickly City." Internet blogs broadcast a range of perspectives, and TV viewers can tune in nightly to Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

While circulation of the strip has increased in recent years to 1,500 newspapers worldwide and Trudeau has won a Pulitzer and been a finalist for two more, is "Doonesbury" still relevant?

"That's for the readers to adjudge, but I will say that in general public commentators have nowhere near the clout that we enjoyed 35 years ago, the age of four TV channels and no Internet," Trudeau said.

Others say Trudeau is too modest.

Christopher Lamb, an associate professor of communication at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, dedicated a chapter to "Doonesbury" in his book Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Political Cartoons.

"Satire is ephemeral. It doesn't last. For Trudeau to do it for so long is just incredible," Lamb said. "He may be competing with satirists like Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken. He rides the cultural, political and social waves. He's a heck of an observer."

Reason magazine Managing Editor Jesse Walker, on the other hand, said the strip has occasional breakthroughs, but has become more Democratic polemic than satire, and Trudeau's best work is decades behind him.

"Ultimately what happened to Trudeau was he got older, no longer had his finger on the pulse and started writing as an outsider," Walker said.

Walker did say Trudeau's legacy is the stamp he has left on political cartoonists of today.

One of those is Scott Stantis, a Birmingham, Ala.-based cartoonist who writes "Prickly City" for 75 papers. Stantis disagrees with Trudeau's politics, but he said he learned character development by studying "Doonesbury" and thinks his latest war-related work has been "genius."

Copyright © 2005 Cox Newspapers LLP

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An Idea Whose Time Has Come

¡Basta ya! John McCain, ironically from Barry Goldwater's state, should go to the White House and tell Dub that it's over. No more U.S. blood should be shed in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the meantime, Dub hustles off to Mongolia. As Harry S Truman said, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." If this is (fair & balanced) truth to power, so be it.

[x HNN]
Congress Should Censure President Bush
By Martin Halpern

President Bush used the occasion of Veteran’s Day to attack critics of the Iraq war as unpatriotic. In the face of the overwhelming evidence that the war was started on false premises, the president has the audacity to state that anyone who raises questions about the origins of the war are hurting our soldiers and giving aid and comfort to our enemies. The president makes no sense and has no shame.

Bush makes no sense because he pulled a bait and switch and asks us not to notice. He asked Congress for a blank check to use force if necessary against the government of Saddam Hussein because they supposedly had weapons of mass destruction which they might use against us. Since this was false, we had no reason to attack Iraq. Indeed, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has pointed out that the war was illegal.

The original bait was false, but the switch is equally outrageous. What is the mission now? Hussein is in jail so we are no longer there to fight him. Bush is acting like a drunk who stumbles into the wrong house in the subdivision and then pulls out his gun and starts shooting when the homeowners start bickering among themselves about the best way try to drive him out. Why not just leave and let everyone live a little longer?

Of course, Bush is not himself bearing arms. It is our young men and women who are doing so. It is Bush who has cavalierly sent our volunteer soldiers, overwhelmingly working class, into harm’s way on false pretenses and keeps them there without justification. He demands the rest of us cheer on this misuse of our own sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends and neighbors. But the truly moral thing to do is to stand up and speak truth to power, insist that our young not be sacrificed to an ignoble cause in which torture becomes as routine as drinking a few beers on Saturday night.

Bush calls out Senator John Kerry by name because he was one of those who voted to give him a blank check and now criticizes the war. But John Kerry is following the fine example of Senator J. William Fulbright, who shepherded the Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress and then led in criticizing the Vietnam War and the false pretenses that President Lyndon Johnson used to escalate it.

The Vietnam analogy is apt because in both this war and the war of the last generation the country initially gave strong support and then came to see it was misled and wanted an end to the conflicts. The Vietnam war analogy is apt in another way: it provides a window on the character of George Bush.

What did you do in the Vietnam War, Mr. Bush? Was Mr. Bush asked that question in the presidential debates? It was an appropriate question to ask in 2004 because Bush was sending young people into harm’s way. He had the chance to serve for a cause he believed in during a time when we had a draft, but he avoided service. Despite his affectation of a down home demeanor, Bush exhibits the sick arrogance of the bad rich boy who never did a lick of work but feels entitled to look down on working people as dumb oxen.

The popularity of the film Good Night and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow’s challenge to Senator Joseph McCarthy should remind us of the importance of speaking truth to power. McCarthy had intimidated most politicians and millions of Americans but Murrow called him out. The Senate eventually censured McCarthy.

George Bush has no shame. As an arrogant party boy in his youth, he maneuvered his way out of serving in a war that he thought was a good cause so that working class youths could fight and die in his stead. As president he sent working class youth off to fight and die for a false cause, getting rid of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and continues to keep them in harm’s way with no end in sight for a purpose that’s supposedly about creating a democratic government but is really about opening up the Iraqi economy, particularly oil, to exploitation by a few big corporations.

While speaking falsely about creating democracy in Iraq, Bush shamelessly seeks to undermine democracy at home by branding his critics as virtual traitors.

It is time to follow the example of Joseph Welch and ask George Bush, “Have you no shame?” It is time for the Senate and the House of Representatives to follow the example of the Senate against McCarthy and to censure George Bush for lying to the Congress and the American people to launch a war on false pretenses, for continuing a war on false premises, and for undermining the rule of law and democracy at home by authorizing torture and seeking to silence his critics.

It is time to follow the example of Edward R. Murrow, who declared in his broadcast critique of McCarthy, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. . . .” At stake are the well-being of our soldiers in Iraq, the moral character of our nation in the eyes of the world, and the democratic system at home. We have only our fear to lose. It’s time to act.

Martin Halpern is Professor of History at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, AR.

Copyright © 2005 History News Network

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