Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 01, 2014

…or an American/Canadian football player worrying about brain damage caused by concussions.

He’s not endorsing it … he’s mocking it.

now let the concept be extended to real sports and their dangers and you can see how silly they are to pursue, knowing they greatly risk brain injuries people still see them as a means of becoming one percenters, which several thousand do, only to suffer for decades afterward, remembering how great they were — or trying to remember.

Just as Mr. Butts is not an endorsement of smoking, and Zonker’s current enterprise is not an endorsement of pot smoking, and Walden going private is not an endorsement of privatized colleges.Besides, this is 34 years ago, when tanning was popular.

I often wonder about the people who don’t seem to get “humor” commenting on a comic strip..Hey, that’s funny!

He is also cleverly pointing out the delusion that high-risk always gets high rewards.

Later in the history of the strip, he has Zonker explicitly recant on the subject of suntanning, and issue a warning.

And yet 30+ years on you are still reading his strips – and still apparently unable to recognize humor and JT mocking “extreme athletes”.

True! And you have to wonder where the tanning craze originated. 150 years ago pale skin was a desired condition in the USA as it indicated you didn’t have to go out in the sun — you had slaves to do that for you.