My issue with Doonesbury is the fact that he can’t resist using his medium as a bully pulpit. Instead of trying to simply amuse, which is the basic purpose of a comic, Trudeau attempts to “educate”. Of course, those of us who don’t worship at the liberal altar simply roll our eyes and skip the comic. Trudeau ends up preaching to the choir.
I’ve always thought there must be a couple atheists in the choir. They’re just there because they like to sing, and don’t have much to do on Sunday mornings.
So preaching to the choir wouldn’t be completely pointless.
Except that for the eight years W. J. Clinton was in office, the strips weren’t preaching to liberals; they were instead lampooning the president’s scandals and other characteristics.
Trudeau is a liberal, but that doesn’t mean the strip is devoutly liberal. He does shoot at all kinds.
That’s true Dantheman…because Clinton’s behavior begged for it. Had Clinton had any personal morals and not opened himself up to such mockery, who knows what would have happened? Perhaps Trudeau would have mocked the presidents critics more than he did. Because he can’t resist being a one-note political cartoon, his strip is on the editorial page in many newspapers. I simply ignore his strip most of the time because I don’t enjoy the cramps that come with the involuntary eye rolling that occurs when I read it.
How is he one note if he bashes both Democratic and Republican presidents? What exactly is that one note he’s sounding?
The note is his liberal politics. I don’t claim to read every strip…far from it. But in the strips I have read the pro-liberal, anti-conservative message is quite clear. Yes, he was bashing Clinton. But again, Clinton’s personal behavior called for it. As for the scandals, he was also bashing those behind the investigations. Trudeau made clear long ago that he will use his strip to air his liberal views. I disagree with most of those views. Therefore he does not amuse me and tends to irritate. Therefore, I ignore him.
I miss the holy trinity of Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbs and the Far Side.
When he was bashing Clinton, I don’t think liberal values were being espoused. That’s the point. You can certainly take the view that he puts forth his own liberal opinions under the cover of a comic strip, but he takes aim at all politicians.
What he does is this: He will go after politicians of any stripe and attack their personalities and character, but when he wishes to take on a particular issue, it will usually have a more liberal stance. There’s a dichotomy at work there.
The only real “agenda” that Trudeau has- and plays to excess at times- that really irks me, is the whole Mr. Jay/Mr. Butts thing.
Trudeau us firmly on the “smoking is evil, horrible and vile” bandwagon- no, I’m not a smoker, I happen to agree with him, actually- but that pot (and whatever else Zonk and Duke could lay their nostrils on) is a-okay.
One mans evil weed is anothers’ pharmacological gift, I guess.
And I’m sure the hypocracy of burning a legal leaf that should be banned, versus burning an illegal leaf that should be legalized, is entirely lost on him.
Well, that’s a whole 'nother debate, isn’t it? Some feel that the illegal leaf is a heck of a lot less dangerous than the legal one, and that perhaps their positions should be reversed. But that’s exactly the agenda I was thinking of, Doc Nickel; that there is a liberal viewpoint.
Trudeau portrayed Clinton as a waffle.
Therefore, when he picked on Clinton, he was not always making hay out of Clinton’s moral lapses.
He stuck Clinton for his many political lapses as well.
The point he was trying to make was that they are not equally dangerous; tobacco is a proven carcinogen that has killed thousands (millions?), whereas maybe nobody has died from smoking pot.
I’m not going support or argue his point; I just want to demonstrate it’s not hypocritical. It may be wrong, and I don’t know (or care) enough about it argue either way.
No. It’s actually a libertarian viewpoint. The part about marijuana being legalized, that is. It’s only a liberal viewpoint if one’s conservative sensibilities are informed more by the Falwell/Robertson branch of conservatism than the Goldwater/Rand branch.
Hm. So all those hippies who want to legalize pot are libertarians? Good to know; I wonder if some of them would be surprised to learn that?
Hmmm…I withdraw that comment, because I miscast my argument. Legalization of drugs in general is a libertarian viewpoint. Legalization of marijuana does tend to widen the pool with liberals.
That makes more sense. I shouldn’t have assumed you meant just marijuana, anyway. It’s just that marijuana is the drug most people mention for legalization, and for some people legalizing marijana = legalizing drugs.
Just to note a few of the liberal politicians/icons that Trudeau has made fun of in the past…or, the It’s Isn’t JUST Clinton list:
*Al Gore (as a candidate in the '88 primaries): appeared in the strip as a spoiled Prince Albert
*Jane Fonda (“Male doctors hid the truth from me”)
*Sandinista sympathizers (“Fleeing Nicaragua? Most of my funding comes from left-wing sources; Nicaragua is supposed to be free now”)
*Teddy Kennedy (“A verb, Senator, we need a verb!”)
Those come from memory alone. I don’t follow the strip real closely, and I expect there are others. Seems like there’ve been a few lately making fun of the rather pathetic political awareness level of fans of Governor Dean (anyone else whose first formative political experience was Watergate have a hard time not calling the man “John”?), who at last report was a Democrat.
Except perhaps for Fonda, none of these rises to the level of Trudeau’s disaste for Dan Quayle, shall we say, or Ronald Reagan back in the day. But he can, and does, aim his klieg lights at Democrats and liberals from time to time; it’s not accurate to say he’s a Garry One-note.