Today's "Doonesbury" in the funny papers wasn't so funny. The two characters in this installment of the 'toon are
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List Of "Doonesbury Characters
Toggle (real name Leo DeLuca) - a veteran of the Iraq war. Toggle, a young heavy metal fan, was wounded in an ambush while serving as Ray Hightower's driver, and has returned home with aphasia and a loss of sight in one eye. B.D., his former commanding officer, often checks in to see how he is doing. While recovering from his injuries, Toggle met Alex Doonesbury through B.D. and has become her boyfriend. He has considered attending Walden under the new GI Bill but came away unimpressed. Toggle/Leo attends a juco, instead.
Alex Doonesbury - early twenty-something daughter of Mike and J.J. who lived with her father and Kim, but is now a grad student at MIT. A techie, Alex bonded with Kim over the computer and holds several patents. More or less a liberal foil for her more moderate father. She was introduced to Toggle by B.D., and the two are now living together in the DeLuca trailer.
So, an MIT grad student is dating a disabled vet who attends a local juco. On top of that, the vet lives in a trailer with his mom (Mrs. DeLuca) who discovered that Alex and Leo were sleeping together. Of course, Mrs. DeLuca discovered this development when she returned to the trailer the morning after her own interlude with an unnamed married man. Not even Fiorello LaGuardia — who read the funny papers to kids during a 1945 newspaper strike over radio station WNYC — could do justice with this drama. However, the most poignant moment in today's episode has MIT-Alex comparing her schoolwork with juco-Leo. Alex is studying "bioinformatics" (the application of statistics and computer science to the field of molecular biology) and Leo is enrolled in what the juco-crowd calls "Developmental Studies" and he's learning to spell. Can you spell "doomed relationship"? If this is a (fair & balanced) tragedy in a trailer, so be it.
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"Doonesbury" — 11/14/10
By Garry Trudeau
[Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau is a cartoonist, best known for the "Doonesbury" comic strip. He graduated from Yale University and was a member of Scroll and Key. Trudeau majored in art design. He earning his M.F.A. in graphic design from the Yale School of Art. His cartooning for the Yale Daily News evolved into "Doonesbury." The comic strip just celebrated its 40th anniversary.]
Copyright © 2010 Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive Co.
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Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
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