Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 16, 2010

Does anyone else find a residual, if inadvertent racism in GT’s using a black officer to register shock at the Iraqis’ third-world culture?

Just a thought. I know GT is not a racist. But all racism is based on stereotyping—-as are cartoons, for that matter—-and here GT uses one stereotype to mock another.

palin drome, you seem to have gotten things backward, although that may be a side effect of your pseudonym. The race of the US soldier is immaterial. What’s important is that the Iraqi soldiers have “gone biblical” on the equipment that they’re taking over. “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks” seems to be taking effect here. They are converting military equipment into civilian use.

hawgowar,

I wasn’t asking “anyone else” to pronounce GT a racist on the basis of this potentially insulting strip. I was posing the (maybe oversubtle) question of whether the tricks used in cartoon stereotyping, such as Ray’s blackface, can be mishandled so as to give offense.

GT seems to be aware of the problem. Has he ever portrayed President Obama full-on, rather than as a voice coming from the White House or from beyond the panel’s frame?

Political cartoonists have been able to create, with no hint of racism, a stereotypically black Obama with big ears. I just can’t recall anything like this from Doonesbury since Obama has been in office.

Ps. Pointing out that implied biblical allusion was really clever, Sheik. And you’re right that my own persona may have got things backwards.

palin drome, if you’ll look back at GT’s comic strip over the years you’ll see that he ALWAYS portrays the president as a voice coming from the White House, or a voice from beyond the panel. This is not something new he invented for Obama.

I’m trying to think if he ever caricatures real people - most of the faces are his own stock of characters. In the recent BP thread, I think you just got the back of Haywards head.

Maybe Trudeau just isn’t a caricaturist.

He caricatures some people, like Donald Trump. The only times that he’s portrayed the president as something other than a voice coming from the White House was with GHWBush (blank space), Clinton (waffle), and GWBush (blank space with cowboy hat or Roman centurion helmet). There have been other icons (David Duke, floating swastika; Newt Gingrich, floating bomb; Mike Huffington, empty suit).

Calling it Ray’s “blackface” says more about your racism than Trudeau’s, palin drome. He’s using Ray because Ray is the only semi-regular character in Iraq.

Perhaps Palin Drome can start out by explaining just what makes Ray a “stereotype.” That he’s black?

The implication that a black soldier is a stereotype by definition is pretty bleeep comical.

Don’t forget the feather for one we were rather glad to forget; cutie Dan Quayle! (Mama always told me to watch out for ‘rosy cheeks with naught behind it’; a prime example there!)

One small kvetch…what is Ray doing wandering around outside without his hat on? I was Air Force, and even in that lax military organization going outside without your hat would get you reamed out. I understand the loosened regs in a war zone, but the Iraqi officer is wearing his.

I always thought the GHWB was a point of light, Remember his 1000 points of light campaign? and JR sort of inherited with the addition of the hat with became more scuffed up as time went on.

Long time ago I remember a Vonnegut novel that was banned from my school that told of a prisoner being executed for picking up a piece of pottery in a town bombed to ruble by us saving the world. Our politicians are trying to make the world safe for the S&P and our allies should not cut into Halliburton’s (sp?) profits.

Is the cartoon racist? In the 60’s what race would have been shown running down the street with the TV? Have US troops raped, pillaged and plundered.? Hopefully not on the 6 O’clock news..

Racist? Wow. It’s amazing how easily some folks can toss that word around when you disagree with someone who isn’t quite as astute as you are. What a joke. If you had a brain, you’d be ashamed of your words. I know I’m embarrassed for you.

If, and this is a big if, IF you had talent you could have written and drawn your fantastic opinion into a strip that stayed around for over 30 years too. Oh that’s right, you have no talent.

Wake up call for hawgowar!

Lew, the Vonnegut book it which you refer is Slaughterhouse-Five and that sub-plot is about the death of Edgar Derby for taking a teapot that was undamaged during the bombing of Dresden in WWII.

Technically, BD is also a caricature. The inspiration was Brian Dowling, Yale quarterback when GT went there and was cartoonist for the student paper. Dowling’s hardly a household name and the character has grown way past those roots. And, yes, GT has not drawn caricatures of any President, but he has yet to depict him as a symbol (waffle, centurian helmet, etc.)

Nice to see that I was right as to the Sarge being Ray. Poor sap, what a long deployment. He doesn’t even come back home (except in a fantasy sequence).

No, palin drome, I don’t find racism or stereotype in the portrayal of Ray. He’s an existing, recurring character. As one of the others said, the character is based in Iraq.

GT has never directly portrayed Presidents. Presidents and other major public figures are usually off-panel or cariactured.

One direct portrayal he did way back in the early days Henry Kissinger. He and Mark went to lunch at McDonald’s, I think.

This is not all that far-fetched. It is common here for the “locals” (I shall call them that to placate those who would cry racism if I were more specific) to pull down power and phone lines for the copper to sell. I might add that these same “locals” have a great deal more income than I do. A few months ago an entire section of the country was without landline phones and Internet for a couple of days when a gang of these “locals” tried to steal a few lengths of the main trunk fiberoptic cable. That was rather amusing. Not much copper there, and I don’t think there’s any market for broken fiberoptic cable.

Don’t any of you watch or read the news? This kind of thing has happened often during the war. It may be old news, but it really happens. And their leaders just shrug.

palin drome: Nope, no racism at all that I can see. It would be racist if it were black soldiers doing the looting. Keep on trollin’, though.

hawgowar, I don’t think that GT is a concious racist (that word is thrown around far too easily), but I do take your point in that if this scene occured in Africa and GT portrayted the native fighters stealing latrines to build fried chicken and watermellon stands, the perspective on such stereotyping might be looked upon in a different light.

palin, I wouldn’t expect GT to depict Obama as other cartoonists do, but the fact that he’s the only president that hasn’t earned a sarcastic icon is just one more example of how “untouchable” Obama is to him. GT still has that tingle running down his leg, and so has never satirized Obama.

Regarding the unauthorized appropriation of materiel and resources: don’t departing armies often destroy equipment rather than haul it home?

Back in the ’80s GT did a full-on caricature of Reagan as “Ron Headrest,” a Max Headroom-style media character coming out of a TV screen.

http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1987/07/30/

But, but , but; that’s going to be a real crappy kebob stand…………..

methinks hawgowar protests a bit too much – this person’s (and i’m using the term person very loosely) moronic rant says much more about this person than GT

One addition on the icons: GWB was denoted by an asterisk (signifying, I assume, the peculiar nature of his “election” in Y2K), which grew the Roman helmet after the Iraq war started. The helmet then slowly lost its crest as the war dragged on and on without any resolution; it was pretty much gone by the last GWB strips.

I believe hawg has been calling GT a racist for a while, if memory serves. This just seems another excuse. I recall when he’d have been a racist for NOT using a black soldier, so times change but the rant remains the same. Hawg likely sees racists in the bushes at night, too.

This is their culture. There will be a military coup some time after we’ve left and another strong man will pop in to stop the looting and the insanity by giving the power to the military. And he’ll be okay as long as he insures the flow of oil. And really opens up Babylon. And our dead kids will amount to a hill of patriots tossed aside as cannon fodder. But , hey, there were WMDs, at least in a lot of folks Foxed out minds, And SH supported the Al. And fairy dust makes you fly and the moon is made of green cheese and…

freeholder,

Your lively but slightly exaggerated jeremiad is not as sobering as justice22’s, which I quote (without his permission) from yesterday:

“There will be wars and more wars in Iraq until someone who kills more than the others becomes dominant in the government. This will be the NEW Democracy of Iraq.”

Lately, the US military in Iraq has been selling off equipment as surplus.

It’s a good deal for the Iraqis.

But in case you hadn’t noticed, both Iraq and Afghanistan are hopelessly corrupt, but then so is the US.

Replying to yesterday’s later remarks:

Yes, Nemesys, we could write “welfare recipients” or we could write “the disadvantaged”. It is true that large corporate crime happens in shinier, prettier places, but it’s robbery & violence (see Blackwater) just the same.

Your argument against Russell’s numbers does not make sense. Presidents receive hundreds of death threats, President Obama more than most. The situations are not analogous.

Drome, I see no failure to communicate, except in your notion that I think that the occupation of Iraq “can be disregarded”. I said no such thing nor do I think any such thing. We should still attend daily to Bush-Dick’s two stupid foreign occupations, cleaning up Bush-Dick’s messes & ending the occupations as quickly as possible. In addition, we should try Bush-Dick for his crimes during his presidency.

You, Drome, agree that Bush-Dick’s invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake. I disagree with your stated cause, which you do not claim particularly & never substantiate. Indeed, Bush-Dick ignored warnings about the attacks by al-Qaeda, because he was already intent on invading Iraq. An invasion of Iraq was part of the foundation for Republican cronies making Bush-Dick our president.

Thanks, R.S. Russell, for the numbers. You see how useful they are by the incoherence of Lewreader’s attack.

Freeholder, the character’s name is Tevye.

Drome, the idiocy with B.P. was that its work continued without regulation or examination, and it did not require safety wells drilled simultaneously. When evaluating risk, one must also weigh the size of the disaster.

In re today’s cartoon:

Drome, I do not see any racism in this cartoon. Please explain. As to caricatures, G.B. Trudeau seldom draws real people, but besides the ones mentioned above, Trudeau drew Nixon & Kissinger a few times in the early years. Now, he prefers icons for presidents, and he has used the strip to admit his difficulty in the right one for Obama. Bush-Dick was easy: As son of the man who had put his manhood in a blind trust & was out of the loop, he should be equally invisible, excepting that the Supreme Court gave his first term to him, so he was an asterisk until January 2005. Once he began foreign invasions, he wore an increasingly frayed Roman Centurions helmet over his invisibility.

Lew, your remark today made little sense. Thanks for the reference to SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, though.

Nemesys, why would Africans want fried chicken stands? By the way, Trudeau has satirized Obama frequently, but he has not yet developed an icon for him.

Well, good day, all. I shall get on the road to drive to Nashville to teach this weekend. Today is July 16th: 69 years ago, Joe DiMaggio got the last hit on his incredible streak. Sixty-five years ago, the Manhattan Project detonated an atomic bomb near Alamogordo, N.M. today is the 54th birthday of Tony Kushner, who wrote ANGELS IN AMERICA.

SuperGriz,

Were it not that discussing corruption in the U.S. would take us too far off topic, I’d like to focus on the newly-passed financial reform bill. As I see it, Obama has caved into the “oligarch” economists, who believe our democracy can tolerate feudal overlords (the bankers). He ought to have heeded the “monarch” economists like Krugman, who believe our democracy cannot thrive until the president controls the overlords.

Maybe it’s just as difficult to herd fat cats (GT likes to show them as pigs) as it is to lead the ordinary kind.

Thank You palin drome. It IS sad but I believe true.

U.S. equipment has been on the Black Market for years in Iraq. This was/is true in other parts of the world also such as Korea. If you are short something don’t go to quartermaster, go to the village where the stolen and bartered equipment is much cheaper.

I don’t think Doonesbury was around for the LBJ era. He came in during the Nixon administration. Of course, I don’t think Trudeau is a racist. Amazing what some people can come up with. I don’t remember seeing any of the presidents portrayed full on either.

Thanks to the forum for the information about GT’s several icons for presidents.

I stopped following the strip regularly thirty years ago and only resumed last year. Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon were sometimes portrayed as a bombshell by other cartoonists, but never, as I recall, by Trudeau whose strip, if it’s in its 39th year, must have started in 1972. On the other hand, if Obama is GT’s eighth president, Nixon can only have drawn the cartoonist’s satirical attention for less than two years.

Reagan would therefore be the first president who remained in office long enough for GT to create a familiar icon for him. I remember the Ron Headrest panels from 23 years ago. I can’t imagine GT making Obama into something like this: http://www.maxheadroom.com/mh_parodies.html

My hypothetical question—-whether cartoon stereotyping (such as the use of blackface) can become racial stereotyping—-has also been answered, mainly by the forum’s ignoring it as a pointless question.

But our discussion did establish the interesting fact that the liberal GT is firmly conservative when it comes to our solidly American tradition of respect for the office of POTUS—-no matter who holds the office.

I wish all our discussion of Obama (or Bush) were guided by GT’s example. You can make fun of Clinton as a waffle, for instance, without shouting at us your bitterness or contempt.

Another GT example would be Obama nicking himself in the bathroom while under siege from his family (or party; take note, stebon/nobets). Also GT’s recent, damning suggestion that Obama has turned the Oval Office, that center of command, into a library. Will GT come up with some kind of professorial icon for BO? Historically, professors haven’t made successful leaders, and the world is still waiting for Plato’s ideal ruler—-the Philosopher-King.

Ps. Thanks for replying below, poohbear. It’s reassuring to find that my trolling has been taken seriously; that makes me less of a troll.

SuperGriz (below): your cats must have more wit than those oligarchic bankers.

palin drome,

I can herd cats. Been doing it for years.

palin drome:

I think your first post posed a legitimate concern. It is very likely that some folks might seen implied racism in today’s strip.

The best of intentions can not avoid being misunderstood. I don’t think GT lacked care in creating this strip even though it has the potential for misunderstanding.

Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” has been both lauded as a passionate attack on racism (and slavery) and equally pilloried as the epitome of racism.

People see what they see and the intentions of artists cannot foresee all interpretations.

It is perfectly apt to pose questions such as yours.

Only a non thinking, tiny little mind would call this strip racist

Perhaps, hancel, but only a tiny little mind would automatically exclude the possibility without reasoned consideration. Today’s dialogue on the topic was a good example of that..

i’ve been reading gt for years, including all his reincarnations, and i don’t ever recall his stooping to racisim.

he writes about politics as he sees it and is, as far as i am concerned, right on.

Note to Palin: Jeremiah was right, so thanks for the compliment.

Knew i should have looked up the spelling, Brian. Glad you could still tell who I was talking about. I would care if I weren’t just fiddling around here. :-)

A kebob stand? Sheesh.

BRIAN It has always amazed me that a man of your intelligence and clairvoyance cannot understand my simple words but can know for certain the motivations of President Bush. I just pointed out a parallel to a book more than half a century old and compared it to the strip today. You, on the other hand chose to tell us what Bush was thinking. How do you know this. Did a liberal god give you this knowledge?

You then reach further back and claim the Supreme Court gave away the presidency. Which justice are you accusing? Are you saying the most trusted men in the country are crooks? Are you saying that three recounts were not enough. Are you saying we should have allowed the Democrats to gerrymander the result you wanted? What if it had gone the other way in a fourth vote.Bush 3, Gore1. Best of seven?

Keep holding on to your “no WMD” defence. The Kurds and Iranians were killed with chicken soup, not WMD. Forgot to read the NYT that day? Even that rag had pictures of crying widows and orphans. Maybe they didn’t have any left after killing their own citizens and their neighbors

Unfortunately I don’t have all the information you do. I found it wonderful that the Secret Service not only told you the exact number of threats the Prez has received, but also the numbers his predecessors had. Lord you are an important man.

I keep seeing the Vietnam war in the present GT strip. We sent 300,000 weapons there to fight the Vietcong. And who ended up with most of the weapons? You guessed it. What we think we are doing as foreigners in other countries is often not at all what the locals think.

If we’re going to vote, I vote for Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” as ‘a passionate attack on racism (and slavery)’. Or, if it came to that, anything else he wrote. Anyone who can’t see that must have no sense of humour. I can’t think of any other explanation. Oh, maybe no intelligence? no subtlety?

FOLKS -

you can “google” almost anything upon which people comment here.

if you think that what they’re saying is incorrect - google it and then state your rebuttal.

it’s so embarrassing to call people liars if what they’re saying is correct…

@Bargrove; whenever I would read about the present-day wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, etc., I would think to myself, “Didn’t they ever learn anything from the war in Vietnam?” Finally realized, NO! That’s the whole point! Every generation has to learn things for itself, all over again! If it takes anything at all from what the previous generation learned, we are lucky!

Would you call Trudeau racist if the American character were white?

Personally, I think Obama is a wonderful person and a wonderful president. (As a Canadian, I take no responsibility for my opinions - I don’t get the chance to vote on them or to try to convince anyone to agree with me - but boy do I enjoy expressing them, and I think they are worth reading.)

He seems to be such a sensible person! When BP said they had capped the well, the news commentary quoted Obama as saying, more or less, “People want to say now that it’s over. Well, it’s not over.”

As they say, common sense is not that common!

Man, I bet Crook could give a bitchin’ Academy Award speech.

Need mo Azns. So far Trudeau has as many Asian characters (Kim/Phred) as Gay (Mark/Chase) Jewish (Bernie/Sid) and homeless (Whatshername/Uncle Stupid Head) Still no Hispanics though. Trudeau ought to be able to develop a progressive illegal immigrant. They could be the “Joaquin Robinson” of Doonesburry.

I still say Obama’s icon should be an oak tree … cuz we need the shade.