Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 01, 2009

Why would we want to attack you?

And it was another 44 years before women officially had laws giving them their civil rights. It also took a long time before they were enforced.

Careful. Iranians are NOT Arabs.

Iranians are not Arabs. They are mostly Persians. Iran has other ethnicities as well, such as Kurds and Armenians.

“Yeah attack me!”

I would attack you for your overly defensive attitude, not for bringing up women’s suffrage. Do you have some kinda persecution complex? Jeez, chill!

Is this a joke about Boopsie and Sam getting things wrong or has Garry Trudeau made a mistake?

Maybe GT writes these just for us.

Repeal the 19th amendment. Barefoot and pregnant

Unless you’re a Palestinian living under Israeli military occupation in lands stolen in 1967. Women in the US on average make less than men doing the same job. Don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house.

Stabbed with a watermelon core sounds like fun.

@fbjsr– equal unless you are Arab-Israeli or Palestinian, you mean. I don’t think this is equal treatment: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/17/israel

fbjsr wrote: “But yet we give billions to people who treat women like property and attack Israel at every oppratunity. The next post will probably be from some great liberal mind who will say we have got to respect their culture ”

We give billions to them because that is the only way that the right wing can keep making trillions off of an obsolete oil based economy rather than the much cheaper alternatives such as geothermal and ocean current technology.

Liberals don’t say we have to respect Bronze Age theocracies like the Muslim or the Christian. Liberals understand there are effective ways to change them (murdering their children is not one of those ways).

if the neighbors woud quit shooting at them, the Israelis would stop taking areas over from which to be shot at. Gaza is a perfect example.

I noticed the Arab versus Persian gaff immediately, and don’t understand how an observant person like GT missed that. Dear Mr. T, please do something to correct this and help your readers keep the issues straight. Thx.

I also don’t get why this thread has stuck on the plight of Arab women, when the strip was about (or at least implied) Iranian women. Has anyone noticed the irony of Neda’s portrait showing her with her head uncovered? Anyone noticed that the press has nearly forgotten these millions of protesting women since MJ and FF passed on?

It may not have been a gaffe–see second panel where Boopsie states that “it sends empowering message to gals all over Muddle East” (though to Boopsie’s discredit, she forgot that most Muddle East governments are tyrannies of either degenerate-absolute-monarch, or dictatorship types–and that they can, and do, censor images along lines of Soviets).

On “Palestinians”, a little piece of history. Their self-appointed “leader” in 1930’s, Haj-amin Husseini (who specifically appointed bald, ugly kaffiyehed Egyptian Arafat as his successor) was known for his active collaboration with Hitler against British (who had rewarded him with a position of authority in the first place for purported “help” against the disintegrating Ottoman Empire). In other words, they are as much “refugees” as pre-WW2 Sudeten or Silesian Germans.

(for habitualforeigner, the word you were looking for was “gaffe”, which means an error not “gaff” which is a type of crowbar).

Palistinians enjoy a very progressive society. It’s my understanding that female suicide bombers are paid just as much as the males. It’s unfortunate for them that the bombings are all scheduled for Tuesdays and payday is Friday…

Do comments sometimes get removed? ‘Cause I feel like I’m missing something here.

Yes, notinksanymore, comments do occasionally get removed–for example, by users who double-post (I’ve done that a few times).

We’ve got a 19th amendment, but still no Equal Rights Amendment in the USA. Soon, I hope!

While I agree that the Iran/Arab thing looks like a gaffe, it’s not necessarily one. To say women in most Arab countries would be unable to protest the way they are in Iran or that Arab women may be inspired by said protests is still correct. Boopsie is not not actually stating that Iranians are Arabs.

However, I agree that it’s, at best, semantically confusing. Or, as someone else noted, Trudeau may just be being realistic with Boopsie’s fund of knowledge.

seed_drill stated “Boopsie is not not actually stating that Iranians are Arabs….as someone else noted, Trudeau may just be being realistic with Boopsie’s fund of knowledge”.

No contradiction in both being true.

Nobody seems to be commenting on the running subtext of the last few strips… look at Sam’s last line in this strip and also yesterday’s. She’s coming to believe that she’s stupid and ignorant and that her position is hopeless and she’ll never amount to anything. And with BD, Boopsie and Zonker as her adult role models, that low self-esteem may be well founded! Boopsie, at least, is making some progress in consciousness raising… and to a lesser extent, so is BD.

who is mj?

Michael Jackson

In Garry Trudeau’s own words “… I knew that Iran is not an Arab country, so cannot pin it on Boopsie. Choosing the word “Arab” instead of “Muslim” was pure sloppiness, and I apologize to all who have taken offense”.

However, the Iraqi govt (that US helped set up) has 25% women in its legislative branch – hmmmmm last time I checked, US had 16%.