Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 18, 2011

Let’s admit it, crowd, the kid does have writing talent. Maybe he should write comic books or picture novels.

Maybe he should move out of his parents’ basement.

Anybody care to hazard a guess as to what Sorkh Razil the Red Rascal (and perhaps GT’s secret personal avatar) will be down with this time? Where will the Duke-Overkill-CIA-Dark-Ops cabal conspire to insert him?

• Will it be Libya? • Iraq? • Afghan the Graveyard of Empires? • Taiwan (after Communist China invades the island and re-grabs its ancient claim)? • Will it be inside the Arctic circle to fight Russia there for the oil under the ocean floor? • How about Mexico, to distinguish between the UNWANTED drug/terrorist importation part of our business there and the WANTED illegal quasi-slave-labor procurement part. Jeff, this time suited up as Zarro perhaps, fighting only the drug/terrorist importation part .

Heh heh — maybe Jeff could take the bosomy acquitted-killer Casey Anthony along with him like 007 James Bond took his busty babes along with him. Whatta way for the always-rebuffed-Jeff to get dates! Rocket assisted as well ? Hmmm.

Tiger Woods, eat your heart out.

Stay tuned.

Are you kidding, Jack? Trudeau’s being as fascist as you will ever see him in this arc. Be all that Trudeau will ever let you be, Red Rascal…

Terrorists who are also practical businessmen? Now, those we can deal with.

You’re right about mistaking BD for Duke. I must have AADD. But you’re not right about the Palin doll demonstrating that he’s a tea-partier. Remember, it’s a talking doll — and every time it speaks it skewers the tea-party-GOPer-neocon (TPGN) conservatives with irony. BD isn’t aware of that on some level? Don’t short-sell the newer, kinder, gentler, more liberal BD. He used to be a racist, now he treats a black man like a blood relative. He doesn’t spank Sam, violating the TPGN credo “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. It’s true that he hasn’t spoken out on for issues such as abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, etc., but he hasn’t spoken out against them either. Therefore, I’m not asserting that he’s an outed lefty, but to be a liberal doesn’t have to mean being an front-line activist. Look up the dictionary meaning of “liberal” and you’ll find that the origin (etymology) of the word is the Latin liberalis meaning “suitable for a free-man, generous” — the very picture of the newer, kinder, gentler B.D.

I’ll have to admit that my memory is a bit foggy on all of the specifics, but it seems BD was a racist back in his college days. Remember that the racists lined up on the “Reagan Repblican” side (even though I don’t think RR was himself racist). But Reaganism was undeniably a shield behind which closet racists could hide. Remember that during those days of the civil rights movement, that the college kids pretty much lined up on one side or the other, and Trudeau utilized BD as repping the “conservative” side, which was a “big tent” under which true racists could repair.

Right, Whitecamry. When BD teamed up with Phred he began the transition from ultraconservative to “kinder, gentler” conservative.

I think that before the Civil Rights movement (CRM), we were basically a nation of racists. I’m 71 years old, and I was raised to be a racist. In college and university during the CRM I began to change my ways. I think a majority of the WASPS (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) did, at least those of university age and younger. I was like BD as repped by Trudeau in Doonesbury of that era. That’s the reason I think BD, just like me, started to move away from the racist mindset. And that’s why I say that “guilt by association” simply doesn’t apply.

Being conservative doesn’t mean one has to be mean and uncaring. A few conservatives with power have made it their policy and extended the policy to their party, but that’s a power policy, not a people policy. The majority of people I know, conservative or liberal or “I just want to eat my sandwich”, are really nice people and don’t care about your politics unless they’re made to. In a forum like this, people are made to and it’s easy to generalize the reactions here to the rest of the world when it isn’t the case.

“Being conservative doesn’t mean one has to be mean and uncaring.” Neither does being a liberal.

Both terms have been misconstrued, misapplied, and misused beyond all recognition. FUBAR, you might say (watch the great movie “Saving Private Ryan” for the truest meaning of that term). Still, of the two terms, I’d have to say that at this point in time in America (certainly not in all our past history), “liberal” has been the more FUBARed. By far. Especially by tea-partiers, who I think are right now earning the deserved disrespect of “the great middle” of American political strength. For an example, notice the recall movement in Wisconsin.

It is part of Trudeau’s creative genius that over the past two score years he has had his character BD tracking that history — a bit behind, to be sure, but faithful nonetheless.

Whenever you say "Dylan.’He thinks you’re talkin’ about Dylan Thomas Whoever he isThe man ain’t got no culture.

Paul Simon says, “Hi,” Dylan

Didn’t he write “Under the Yum Yum Tree”? ;-)

To the Rascal: Reality hath landed on thy doorstoop, young varlet. Big Mac beckons. Life crashes forward into minimum wage oblivion."

You seem to be a decent sort, beggar, and so I don’t consider you to be hostile.

Yes, I do have an attention problem (having been diagnosed with AADD), but, that said, I never thought of you as categorizing BD as a tea-partier. I don’t think he’s a conservative any more, though, at least not as compared to his past. But that’s just my opinion, of course. To my knowledge, Trudeau has never disclosed why he (or Boopsie) purchased the talking Palin doll for Sam. Perhaps the “talking” (revelatory) part of the doll resides only in Sam’s imagination. It really doesn’t matter, does it? The doll is what it is, and it does expose, as I think Trudeau intends, reality. There is an old saying: Art doesn’t just let us see the truth; it forces us to see the truth.

What matters in the case of Doonesbury is the slow movement of BD away from hyperconservativism toward a more moderate (read “liberal”) point of view.

In this sense he’s found redemption, though, again in my opinion, he still has a long way to go. As do I.

Mark Sheldon Slackmeyer … starts out as a radical at Walden College, and leads several peace rallies (in his first appearance, he referred to himself as “‘Megaphone’ Mark Slackmeyer”).

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Slackmeyer> Slate Cast Bio’s

DylanThomas3.14159,If he was born in 1914 and died at 33, it would have been in 1947; not 1953. It was 1953, see:

this link

Way to kick backside, Baslim!

I need also to restate my assertion that BD WAS a racist back in the 60s in the same sense that I was a racist. I think the majority of WASPS in the whole country was racist. That was the reason for the Civil Rights movement! That was the point of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s famous “I have a dream” speech on the Capitol Mall. Face it, folks, we WERE racist. Now we’ve moved on. And BD has moved on as well. That’s not to say that there’s still not a lot of racism around. But the prevalence of interracial marriage producing children of “mixed” blood has been, I think, THE BIGGEST reason for the change. And I applaud it and the brave folks, black and white, who dared to marry, to have children, to vote and to assert other rights, such as the location of their housing. Sorry, that’s just what I think. Boot me in the backside as you will.

“[God] hath made of one blood [ or one man] all nations of men [or people] for to dwell on all the face of the earth ….” Acts 17:26 KJV.

I’d love to see some of you self-called conservatives out there dispute THAT one, if you will!

@jack75287 I’d suggest you unsubscribe from this strip and ask Mallard Filmore for a realistic liberal character.

…Or even McFriendly’s?