Doonesbury is one of only four or five strips I read with any regularity anymore. I have plenty of respect for Trudeau and generally agree with his take on most topics. This week, he cheated like a frat boy playing poker.
He has issues with the war? Fine. Many of us do. How many of us put our words into the mouth of a morally unimpeachable veteran without having served in the military ourselves?
This leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
It’s called “fiction.” Writers don’t need to have done everything their characters have.
In real life, Trudeau seems to get along just fine with veterans. The Wounded Times reports on him attending an event at an institute named for his great-grandfather:
From the Vietnam Veterans of America:
Surprisingly enough, Trudeau is also not a genius co-ed, nor a bubble-headed actress, nor a burned-out stoner, nor a thinly-veiled expy of Hunter S. Thompson.
And Trudeau is quite respectful of veterans. He’s the only comic artist I know of who’s done a casualty list every Memorial Day since the Iraq War began.
So he’s not allowed to voice a character if he hasn’t personally had that character’s experience? Going by that rule, the majority of fiction just went out the window.
Writers, actors, and singers often express material that doesn’t directly reflect their lives. They draw on general life experience and things shared with them by other people they’ve known. If they’re interpretation doesn’t ring true, they tend not to be successful.
If you don’t like what a writer has to say, that’s perfectly fine. To insist that one’s perspective only has value when it’s informed by direct personal experience, however, is setting the bar unrealistically – and I would say ridiculously – high.
I thought he was cheating by having BD in a college class. What is he, like 60?
I’ve had aliens make comments, even though I’m from Earth. I often write stories with female protagonists (often with them speaking the in first person). They stories succeed or fail on how well I do it, not that if I’m the character involved.
Norman Spinrad once wrote a terrific story called “Journals of the Plague Years” from the point of view of a devout fundamentalist – a not mocking him in the slightest.
What matters is whether the character works, not if the author stood in the character’s shoes. There a concept known as “imagination” that is part of the world of fiction, and authors are able to imagine how others think and feel.
Anyone have a link to the offending strip?
I think this is the first strip in the series…
Thanks, OP!
I think he’s just hanging out with a veteran friend taking the class who is likely to go nuts with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
Not to mention he cheated by putting that old man in combat.
Bridget Burke, thanks for the link. Like the OP I have a lot of respect for Trudeau, however I haven’t followed the strip in a long time. Can anyone offer any information on the self-described “conservative” college instructor in the sequence?
I have loved Doonesbury since the strip first appeared, a hundred years ago.
I haven’t kept up with it, unfortunately. Using the link by Bridget Burke, I got a brief snapshot of the situation under discussion.
It sure tasted of classic Doonesbury! Trudeau is in top form!
~VOW
I just disagree with describing the Iraq war as “the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history.” I daresay Vietnam is still way ahead.
Here is the strip from October 31, which started the story of the class that Ray is attending. It doesn’t give a whole lot of detail about the professor, beyond the fact that he was an officer and is a veteran.
To Brian Ekers:
Iraq is just Vietnam with sand instead of jungle. I think it’s the same damned war!
~VOW
The strip (and Trudeau) has advocated pretty fiercely for veterans and servicepeople at the expense of bureaucracy for many years now.
Merci beaucoup, Mr. Finn. I think the OP has a reasonable point: that a liberal has to very careful putting words in the mouths of conservative character. However, the actual strip didn’t bother me much. It seemed like a position that a conservative veteran might actual hold. Not every conservative vet, but enough to let the strip work.
No no no, you don’t get it. It’s just when it’s soldiers, because until you put your life on the line, you’re in no position to pretend to know what’s best for soldiers, or what they want . . .
. . . unless you’re for war, and/or for the Republicans. Then it’s totally fine.
not implying the OP is necessarily a Republican; I have no idea about his/her political position.
Trudeau has put the spotlight on MANY hot topics in the past: homelessness, mental illness, Alzheimer’s, homosexuality, women’s lib, Chinese politics, etc etc etc.
Why are veterans the untouchables? He’s targeted the abysmal treatment of wounded veterans, and the failure to accommodate their re-entry into civilian society. The growth of BD into a mulitdimensional character has been one of Gary Trudeau’s true achievements over the years.
~VOW
You know who else never served in the military?
Tom Clancy.
I look forward to your continuing outrage over the “cheat” of Jack Ryan.