Doonesbury: CHEAT!

Cafe Society
61

Sure he can, but that factor alone will always be a weakness in his arguments. Creating a sock puppet that doesn’t have that weakness isn’t much of a remedy. In fact, it’s a bit of a cheat. He’s taking his argument and presenting it as the voice of war veterans, when it’s really just his.

I am, but not a famous one. I drew editorial cartoons for a string of suburban DC newspapers in the 80s and 90s. I don’t hold myself out as a great cartoonist, but I am somebody who takes the medium pretty seriously.

When Trudeau’s bringing his A game, he’s among the finest satirists alive; On a good week, he’ll hang powerful men with their own words or witty approximations thereof, which is a satirist’s tool. I don’t think the past week constitutes his A game and as a loyal fan, I feel quite cheated.

But don’t take my word for it. My character who I just invented, “Dr. Frank: Tenured Professor of Literature, Ethics and Journalism [TM],” agrees with everything I’ve said here. In this forum, that’s apparently good enough. Supporting quotes available upon request, when I find the time to write them.

62

Either you’re really bad at satire, or you’re totally missing what folks are saying. Nobody is saying that we, real people, are persuaded by the credentials of a pretend person. No, we’re saying that BD, another pretend person, is persuaded by the credentials of a pretend person. (And a happy typo leads to a portmanteau: pretentials).

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I’m just good enough at satire to know that the intended audience is always the reader. No exceptions.

64

Um, no.

Arguments should stand on their merits or lack of them. The merits of an argument do not change because the speaker is a veteran or a radical, a child or a professor, someone you admire or someone you detest. The fact that you are more open or closed to the merits of an argument based on factors other than the argument itself speaks more to weakness in you, not in argument itself.

Ironically it is a weakness that both you and the fictional character BD share; a trait that Trudeau was to some extent satirizing in the strip you object to. Perhaps it was a whoosh.

65

An argument sure should stand on its own, and could have. Trudeau unnecessarily peppered it the way he did. That, and not the substance of the argument, is what I find problematic.

You’re being cheated, and making excuses for the man who’s cheating you. You’re like the sailors on the train with John Cusack in The Grifters. I don’t know how to put this more plainly. Trudeau created the profession of “Investigative Cartoonist.” He created the rules and standards and is just now skirting them. Past accomplishments are not a mitigating circumstance. This storyline is a half-assed effort by someone we should be accustomed to a lot more from.

I’m sorry no one else is mad about it, but I certainly am.

66

Well the moderator didn’t take the hint and move the discussion to the Great Debates, so I’ll start listing reasons reasons VOW is wrong. The trouble is that it lacks historical perspective and a moral idiocy and an inability to distinguish between between bad or misguided people and actual evil.

Actually the closest analogy to the 2nd Iraqi War was the Philippine–American War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War
It was a quick successful war against the Spanish that became a quagmire that lasted from 1899 to 1913.

In the first instance the domestic opposition to the Iraqi war was practically non-existent compared to the Vietnam war. During the sixties and seventies we were dealing with riots that had to put down by National Guard troops. We ended up unseating a sitting president and does anyone remember Chicago 68? What we have with Iraq is a bunch of people bitching that it is taking too long and costing too much, which happens on any long war. Bush got reelected in 2004 and 2008 was because of the economy, not the war. President Obama withdrew on a schedule that the Bush administration had already agreed to.

Frankly I think the comments about corruption are rather unfair to the South Vietnamese government. Iraq is run by a bunch of Kleptocrats. There was certainly corruption in South Vietnam, but not much worse than Chicago during that time period. They actually managed to repel one serious invasion from North Vietnam and only fell to the second because Congress refused to supply the military aid and air support that the promised.

I’d also like to point out the Vietcong pretty much ceased to exist after the Tet Offensive in 69. After that was just a straight invasion by North Vietnam of the South and we were fighting NV regulars.

Every war that is fought overseas is on unfamiliar terrain. There were similar complaints about the Philippines. Iraq is actually pretty good terrain for armored warfare. Your statement is facile and meaningless.

I would also like to see a list of American wars where the leadership was going around say, “We are getting our butts kicked.”. Did Madison say that after the British burned Washington? Did Lincoln say that after First Manassas. another F&M statement.

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Funny you should mention that. I am, as I write this, on vacation in Manila. I spent a good chunk of this past Wednesday in a museum exhibit detailing this war that my high school and college history classes totally glossed over.

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Joel, at the surface level** VOW **provided, the wars are comparable.

VOW, your initial claim that these were the ‘same war’ isn’t really supported in the details, as Joel points out.

Both of these wars were dumb ideas, with a desultory similarity, but distinctly different, dumb ideas.

69

I actually got the John Sayles movie “Amigo” on my Netflix queue. The American actions in the Philippine-American war were a lot rawer than Iraq. Say what you want about hypocrisy, but you don’t to be dealing with people who aren’t even pretending to be the good guys.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1562847/

70

Wait - what we have there in the strip, AFAICT, is a plotline in which BD is to be confronted with a fellow conservative officer who turned against the war. Why should Trudeau not use a fictional character for that purpose?

Trudeau is NOT saying to US, here, look, the conservative veterans have turned agaisnt the war. He’s saying what I’d expect him to be saying, that in his opinion the conservative veterans *should *have turned against the war. His intended audience is expected to be aware this is all a fictional scenario.

71

It’s a cartoon strip!

I grew up with Doonesbury. I found him when I was in High School, and I eagerly looked forward to the paper each morning in college, because Doonesbury would be waiting for me.

We’re talking early Seventies here.

I saw the males moping around campus when the student deferment was abolished, and the guys would congregate in groups and wave lists of birthdates.

I didn’t participate in any of the protests, but some of my dormies did.

I married a miitary man and moved overseas with him. And Doonesbury was in “Stars and Stripes.”

Trudeau took a very critical look at Vietnam. Yet he showed the personal side of the war when BD befriended the Vietcong soldier, “Phred.”

I’ve enjoyed so many of the sacred cows that Trudeau has roasted and toasted over the years, they are far too numerous to list here. Trudeau did flash a bit of literary license when he had BD strap on another Army helmet and ship out to Iraq. But it was pertinent, and he availed himself of an opportunity to keep the sacred cow barbecuing for a bit longer.

BD’s injury and loss of his perpetual helmet was significant. He became a much more complex character, and his pro-war stance that dated from his Vietnam service softened. His experience as a veteran battling the VA, and becoming an advocate for other wounded vets was very humanizing.

When I read Doonesbury, I can imagine the echoes of the Vietnam war, the protests, the draft, the conflicting messages, even my own changing feelings about our involvement there. Iraq IS different from Vietnam, in so many ways. Forty years makes a big difference.

But like Vietnam, the Iraqi war is being fought with a TV camera, too. And the very INVOLVEMENT of the US in the Iraqi war was built on LIES told to the world by our government.

All you do is start with the lies. And then, if you’ve been around as long as I have, you can mentally line up the two wars, and it’s almost like an echo.

Vietnam ended on a most-sour note. Yet our government touted to the American people, “Peace with honor.” The United States was TIRED of that war. When it ended, most people just wanted it OVER. We looked back over the mistakes and thought, “The peace was by no means honorable. But maybe we learned something.”

Fast forward to Iraq. Listen to those echoes.

We didn’t learn a damned thing.
~VOW

72

Can you explain what this means? On it’s own, it’s kind of incoherent, but as a response to the post you quoted, it’s an utter non-sequitor.

More generally, can you explain why this character is more objectionable than every other character in the entire history of this comic? They all exist for the same purpose: to give a voice to a particular idea in contemporary society and politics that Trudeau wants to explore. If he wants to talk about, say, marijuana laws, he has Zonker. Trudeau is not a burned-out pothead. Is Zonker a cheat? If he wants to talk about gay issues, he has Mark Slackmeyer. Trudeau is not gay. Is Mark a cheat? If he wants to do comics about the tech bubble, he has Mike Doonesbury. Trudeau has never operated a tech company. Is Mike Doonesbury a cheat? Now, Trudeau wants to examine the phenomenon of conservatives changing their opinions about the war, so he creates this college professor (does he have a name yet?). Why is that a cheat all of a sudden? Moreover, why is he a cheat, when there are two other recurring veteran characters in the same room as him, both of whom serve as mouthpieces for various views on the war, who apparently don’t share in your criticism? Why isn’t B.D. as much of a cheat as the professor?

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Not without repeating myself, which I’m trying to avoid doing; I felt Left Hand of Dorkness’s argument boiled down to “These imaginary characters are talking to each other, not the readership,” a strange non-sequitur in its own right. Trudeau’s clear authorial intent is to persuade the reader, and any other interpretation is kind of nonsensical.

Doonesbury has always operated on at least two levels: The comedic interaction between the characters, and the political commentary from Trudeau to the readers. Sure, he uses the characters to make this commentary, but it’s always been clear when it’s Trudeau talking and when it’s the character. With the Professor, this line is blurred; he’s making authorial commentary, but it’s heavy-handed.

Let’s look at the Dec. 20 strip, panel 1:

(Bolding mine) He’s drawing here on the fictional character’s moral authority to make the statements he’s about to make, because it will make the argument more palatable. Trudeau famously is not a conservative and did not serve, but he’s borrowing these traits from his character. Now from panels 2 and three:

Did you catch the transition? This is now Trudeau speaking in his own voice, but trying to have it both ways. When he speaks as Zonker or BD or Mark or Andy, he has them say things that aren’t necessarily his own views; they are organically the views of his fictional characters. That division is suddenly missing, in these two panels. We’re inclined to let him do it because we largely agree with his sentiments.

He’s bolstering views and words that are nakedly his own with appropriated moral authority that nakedly is not his own. I can’t make that bother you if it doesn’t, but it bothers me a lot.

Imagine a comic strip written by Newt Gingrich, one where he had a black pre-teen saying things like “I wish they’d let me work as a janitor at my school. It would foster a work ethic in me that this scourge of a welfare state is currently stifling.” The outrage on these boards would be deafening. But Trudeau gets a free skate.

74

I hear both of the character quotes as realistically coming from an intellectually honest conservative who is disgusted by what the neocon wing has wrought and who correctly wants to hold those who have done so responsible, to some extent to drum them out as “true conservatives”. Trudeau’s point is that such is what intellectually honest conservatives should be saying right now. And some do. That believability (at least to some sizable portion of the readership) is what makes the character work.

If I read it the way you do then I would not think of it as “a cheat” but as a fail: the character changing voice would make the character not believable without the compensation of making the character’s disconnect funny.

The imagined Newt Gingrich created Black pre-teen character would not create any more “outrage” than Gingrich’s stating such himself did, but it would fail: a Black pre-teen stating that is just not believable … although it is funny for its absurdity. I guess it works as satire of Gingrich’s position, as it illustrates how weak the argument is. But it fails to make the argument any more potent by having it mouthed by a “sympathetic” fictional device.

Perhaps for you an intellectually honest conservative is either not believable, or the concept that one would reach that conclusion is not … either way, it does not work for you. I get that.

75

Lacey Davenport was an intellectually honest conservative, as was Mark’s (ex?) husband. Neither was a cut-out used solely to make Trudeau’s advocacy palatable. For a strip so laden with believable characters, it’s notable that the Professor doesn’t have a name yet.

76

Is there some reason that we should give the opinion of a person who was a political cartoonist in local papers back in the 90s more credence that we give to Trudeau?

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Probably not, Frank. I’d love to read Uwe Boll’s critique of a Peter Jackson movie, but I might be alone in that particular regard. A lesser practitioner of a medium has some familiarity with its mechanics and creative considerations, and while it doesn’t make his opinion definitive, it does make it worth considering. All artists have an exalted position over all critics, but critics have their place.

I’d kind of like it if GBT turned out to be an SDMB poster who logged on to correct me here.

78

I don’t think that’s really important. Krokodil’s argument can stand or fall on it’s merits. I think it falls, but not because of his record as a politcal cartoonist.

79

Certainly, it might make his opinion worth considering, if he were not arguing that putting words in the mouths of characters requires belief in those words.

There’s a reason that Doonesbury has been around for more than 40 years.

80

Apparently Trudeau thinks the same thing.

This does capture the issue between you and, apparently, the rest of us: you do not find the character and the character’s classroom lectures believable and the rest of us do. We see him being used to make a point about how the neocon policies under Bush failed by conservative metrics, to satirize the tendency to automatically dismiss a concept unless it comes from an unexpected (until it is thought about for a second) source, to poke fun at the nature of college education, and to provide a catalyst for a main character (BD) to question what he thinks. The character may end up as a one off for that purpose or be more fully fleshed out or have other walk on parts … but as is he works for me.