# Doonesbury: CHEAT! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 22, 2011, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070 "2011-12-22T13:52:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/1 "2011-12-22T13:52:51Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/2 "2011-12-22T14:11:48Z")
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](http://woundedtimes.blogspot.com/2010/06/doonesbury-cartoonist-garry-trudeau-and.html) reports on him attending an event at an institute named for his great-grandfather: > [@](#): > > Nearly 140 years ago, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau came to the Adirondacks expecting to die from tuberculosis. But not only did he cure; he cured countless others with his pioneering research, treatment and the sanitarium he established. This center for healing quickly exploded into a village, with Trudeau as its first mayor. > > On Tuesday, Trudeau’s great-grandson, Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, made a rare public appearance in the community where he was raised to build support for a project that organizers say could once again make the village a center for healing. > > Patriot Hills at Saranac Lake, a proposed respite and reintegration center for active-duty soldiers, veterans and their families, held its first major local event, a half-day forum at the Trudeau Institute titled “Soldier Resiliency: A Fresh Approach.” The program, which included two U.S. Army generals, experts in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder and other speakers, focused on the stresses faced by soldiers returning home from war, two unique treatment methods that could help them, and the Patriot Hills model. From the [Vietnam Veterans of America](http://vva.org/blog/?p=633): > [@](#): > > Trudeau in 1975 became the first comic strip artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, and has been inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. VVA presented him the President’s Award for Excellence in the Arts at the National Leadership Conference in Tucson in 2006. > > “We’re honoring Garry Trudeau for being one of the most important creative voices of the Vietnam War generation,” VVA President John Rowan noted at the time. “An important part of that includes his accurate, compassionate, yet humorous, portrayal over all these years of B.D., the strip’s Vietnam veteran character. It’s been a good thing for Vietnam veterans and for Americans in general to follow B.D. and the other Doonesbury characters of our generation from their adolescent days to today.” ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/3 "2011-12-22T14:31:53Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/4 "2011-12-22T14:35:05Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/5 "2011-12-22T15:08:50Z")
I thought he was cheating by having BD in a college class. What is he, like 60? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/6 "2011-12-22T15:09:00Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/7 "2011-12-22T15:25:41Z")
Anyone have a link to the offending strip? ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/8 "2011-12-22T15:29:50Z")
I think [this is the first strip](http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/12/19) in the series… Thanks, OP! ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/9 "2011-12-22T15:45:17Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > I thought he was cheating by having BD in a college class. What is he, like 60? 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. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/10 "2011-12-22T15:47:01Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > I thought he was cheating by having BD in a college class. What is he, like 60? Not to mention he cheated by putting that old man in combat. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/11 "2011-12-22T17:36:25Z")
**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? ---
**Author:** ![VOW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vow/32/3043_2.png) [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/12 "2011-12-22T18:21:43Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/13 "2011-12-22T18:27:08Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/14 "2011-12-22T18:27:18Z")
> [@Baal\_Houtham](#): > > **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? [Here](http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/10/31) 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. ---
**Author:** ![VOW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vow/32/3043_2.png) [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/15 "2011-12-22T18:32:31Z")
To Brian Ekers: Iraq is just Vietnam with sand instead of jungle. I think it’s the same damned war! ~VOW ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/16 "2011-12-22T19:21:48Z")
The strip (and Trudeau) has advocated pretty fiercely for veterans and servicepeople at the expense of bureaucracy for many years now. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/17 "2011-12-22T19:43:13Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > [Here](http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/10/31) is the strip from October 31, which started the story of the class that Ray is attending. 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. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/18 "2011-12-22T19:53:49Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#): > > 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. 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.** ---
**Author:** ![VOW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vow/32/3043_2.png) [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/19 "2011-12-22T20:20:22Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070/20 "2011-12-22T22:49:09Z")
You know who else never served in the military? Tom Clancy. I look forward to your continuing outrage over the “cheat” of Jack Ryan. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doonesbury-cheat/607070.md?page=2)