Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 03, 2010

Can anyone trust their recollection of “The Day”?

He was captain of the football team. ya know, an uber-jock.

As the saying goes “If you remember the ‘60’s, you weren’t really there.”

“The Man” is in the mind of the beholder. How odd “The Man” is Liberal in the minds of TEA Baggers - Ironic or Moronic?

After Eric Massa’s story, I don’t call them Tea Baggers anymore. Now I refer to them as Snorkelers.

I think B.D. was just representative of “The Man” – sort of like a young Republican.

I missed a lot of the 60s because of spending 8 years in southeast & northeast Asia. The seventies rocked though.

..now,G.T. is the man…

What I find really interesting is that in this day of black and white political thinking (the “you are either with us or against us” thinking), BD and Zonker remain friends!

I think there might actually be a lesson in that for many of us.

You da man, Zonker, You da man!!! OOPS!

We has met the man he is us.

B(rian) D(owling), the All-American quarterback, graduated from Yale in 1969, a year before Trudeau. GT depicted B.D. for a Yale comic strip that became the prototype for Doonesbury. Older readers will remember B.D. with his football helmet–and often with his can of beer–trying to take charge of every situation.

As usual, GT’s satire on childish rebellion against authority (Zonker, Teapartiers) contains a strong dash of self-mockery–mixed, in today’s strip, with nostalgia for the days when GT (Zonker, here) envied B.D.

Readers who bristle at GT’s liberal elitism are missing his genuinely liberal self-criticism.

Teapartiers could use some of this self-criticism themselves; but if any of them figured out that “the Man” (like the Wizard of Oz) is just an imaginary “leader” for everbody to resent, they’d quickly be booted from the party.

When Faux News presents Rush and Glenn mouthing off–unlike that wimp Obama, who can think on his feet while using a teleprompter to keep his remarks on task–they make any self-criticism sound elitist.

Thinking before you speak is un-American: it challenges your listeners’ attention-span and implies that you lack conviction. Macho guys like John Wayne and the younger B.D. wouldn’t know what a teleprompter is for, because they never had to speak a whole paragraph. And Sarah Palin doesn’t even try.

A most excellent post pd;

Commissars and pin-striped bosses role the dice Any way they fall guess who gets to pay the price Money green or proletarian gray Selling guns instead of food today

So the kids they dance, and shake their bones And the politician’s throwing stones Singing ashes to ashes all fall down Ashes to ashes all fall down

Throwing Stones - Grateful Dead

Sometimes instead of “The Man” - it was All The President’s Men

“You were so handsome then” Boy, what an insulting thing to say!

@RF:

Back in days when “none but the brave deserve[d] the fair,” B.D.’s wife used to be a cute chick. Now Boopsie’s just an aging housewife reminiscing over their lost youth. Recalling his good looks helps restore hers.

More self-mockery by GT of himself and his older readers.

HEY, l identify with some of this stuff, so be careful what you say. Older readers indeed.

Sorry, MH. I’m old enough to have been one of GT’s instructors–or one of yours

Thanks palin drome. I’ve been reading Doonesbury since the first generation was attending Walden (remember the conversations in BD’s football huddle)? Although I’m a bit more generous to the teaparty people, I think your post about GT’s work is very insightful.

If BD wasn’t “The Man” back in the day, I’d say he certainly represented “The Man.” Going by my memory, I think the first crack’s in BD’s armor happened after college, back in Nam when he was captured by Fred the VC, and they started a dialogue. In my opinion, the character’s been evolving wonderfully ever since.

So when Zonker says to BD “You! You were The Man!” I’m in full agreement.

@Chrisnp:

You know Doonesbury far better than I do, Chris. But I do remember a story Yalies used to tell about Brian Dowling, who was the stereotypical “dumb jock.”

On the first day of class when B.D. arrived, the other students all cheered and applauded–not for B.D. the heroic “leader” and quarterback, but because they knew that if B.D. was taking the class, it must be a “gut” (1960s slang for a course with skimpy reading assignments).

I taught some of those Yale students forty years ago and they were pretty laid-back politically. I wonder if Trudeau finds any of them joining the Teapartiers (Zonker’s a college dropout, isn’t he?)

Wasn’t B.D. ROTC too? Any way, The Tea-baggers would never have protested. They never served in the military or Peace Corps or any social cause. And heaven forbid they actually had to work for a living.

Bitter against the wealthy am I? Yea, some of them.

Ah ..Zonker you are the man, you keep us that grew up in parallel with Doonesbury, grounded in the “day”. BD never got it, and his like is everywhere today.

Remember, B.D. was also a Highway Patrolman for a while - that would definitely make him “The Man” to Zonk…

rickmdm, I think the great thing is that the characters DID grow up parallel with us, and with the apparent exception of Zonker, matured with us too.

I think BD “gets it” more now than he used to, or at least he has more depth. Of course he has to remain the conservative foil for the strip, so I doubt we’ll see him renouncing his support for Sara Palin any time soon.

B.D. “got it” when he lost his leg in Iraq.

“…handsome THEN?” Not a well thought out comment, if one’s concerned with being thoughtful .

He was a Reserve officer in 3 wars. He da’ Man.

..in my opinion,B.D. is a modern day hero.I have always liked him.

…I think the downfall of the tea baggers is that they just don’t get sarcasim..they take everything so literally

@3hourtour:

I’ve always liked B.D. too. He’s proved himself more than a dumb jock.

But are we ready for GT to bring him out defending the Teaparty next week (maybe)?

Woah there, Joe. Don’t paint with such a wide brush.

I’m a Tea Party\Bagger enthusiast and I spent part of the Sixties in the Army and Asia. Most of it very unpleasantly.

I put my a$$ on the line for freedom of speech, the right to assembly, to carry arms - the whole ball of wax.

I don’t begrudge the Tea folks their right to get together any more than I do those people of the left or middle.

There is still room for every one in this country’s political dialogue, I hope.

if there isn’t room for that Ron then your country will have lost it’s way (and probably it’s existence along with it). there has always seemed to be dissent of some sort in the USA, and that’s a good thing for a country to have - as long as it’s a healthy disagreement and not like the Communist witch hunts of the early post WWII era.

BD, Duke, de all good.

I don’t see anything insulting with Boopsie’s comment. Just getting taken up in how smitten she was with him back then.

She still is, I imagine, but the relationship has of course matured and evolved in the last (HOLY CRAP!) 40 years or so. He’s still the hunk, but the attraction is tempered with a LOTTA maturity and familiarity.

SuperGriz said, 2 days ago “He was captain of the football team. ya know, an uber-jock.”

And Zonk was on the team, too. If my fog-shrouded mind remember rightly he was a receiver. He certainly had more starts on his helmet than anyone else.