# How is Doonesbury liberal? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-strips\ **Created:** [January 7, 2024, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716 "2024-01-07T01:01:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2024, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/61 "2024-01-08T21:14:42Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > How many mainstream outlets did “Dykes to Watch Out For” have? The first time I saw this strip was in the Los Angeles Times. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2024, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/62 "2024-01-08T21:20:01Z")
Hmm, are the dailies on hiatus now? I just went back a few pages, Saturday 1-6-23 had BD still in his football helmet, but 1-7 had him helmetless with his grey sideburns. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2024, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/63 "2024-01-08T21:28:38Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > Yes, there was opposition to the Vietnam War, but the strip never directly dealt with the consequences of war. We don’t see POWs, deaths, war atrocities, starvation, etc. [Phred and the air pirates](https://readingdoonesbury.com/2018/10/10/doonesbury-goes-to-war-part-iv-phred-b-d-and-the-heartless-air-pirates/) would like to speak to you. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2024, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/64 "2024-01-08T22:24:03Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Hmm, are the dailies on hiatus now? I just went back a few pages, Saturday 1-6-23 had BD still in his football helmet, but 1-7 had him helmetless with his grey sideburns. 1/6 was a Saturday. 1/7 was a Sunday. The strips on Monday through Saturday are all reprints from some time back but continuously so. (My calculation once was that they are from about 23 years ago.) The strips on Sunday are all new ones about the present. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2024, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/65 "2024-01-08T22:28:42Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > B.D. is an ignorant right wing anticommunist meathead jock No, he isn’t. He’s moderately conservative. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on him: > **[B. D. (Doonesbury)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._D._(Doonesbury))** > > B.D. is a fictional character in Garry Trudeau's popular comic strip Doonesbury. In the comic strip, nobody is certain what "B.D." is short for (he gives his last name as "D"), but he was based on Brian Dowling, quarterback at Yale University, where Trudeau attended college. In the 1983 stage adaptation of the strip, Doonesbury: A Musical Comedy, his full name was revealed to be Brian John Dowling (that of his real life namesake). > B.D. was first introduced on September 30, 1968, in Trudeau's str... ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2024, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/66 "2024-01-09T02:06:49Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > Simply saying that gutting environmental regulations is going to hurt the planet isn’t a “liberal perspective”, it’s the _default_. Bit of a pile on here, but - you are completely and utterly wrong 🙂. There is a reason a lot of leftists despise liberals (loosely defined). [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/3cdqQ2BdgOA/maxresdefault.jpg "Love Me, I'm a Liberal") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdqQ2BdgOA) ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2024, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/67 "2024-01-09T02:40:57Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Hmm, are the dailies on hiatus now? Permanent hiatus. Trudeau stopped doing new daily (Monday-Saturday) strips in 2014; only Sundays have featured new strips since then. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2024, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/68 "2024-01-09T03:36:06Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > > [@DKW](#): > > > > Simply saying that gutting environmental regulations is going to hurt the planet isn’t a “liberal perspective”, it’s the _default_. ⁢ > > Bit of a pile on here, but - you are completely and utterly wrong 🙂. There is a reason a lot of leftists despise liberals (loosely defined). I haven’t seen anyone talk about leftists here. It just seems to me that DKW has mixed up liberals and progressives. But neither one are leftists. I wonder if that flag avatar has anything to do with it. Maybe for him, liberal is actually center left rather than center right. ---
**Author:** ![DKW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dkw/32/3118_2.png) [@DKW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DKW)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2024, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/69 "2024-01-09T05:18:11Z")
All right. One at a time… Little Nemo - Honey always struck me as someone born in a very bad spot who always did what it took to not get killed or deported and got enamored with someone who could get away with defying the man. Phred always tries to do what’s best for his country. Neither ever struck me as particularly liberal, just practical. Wendell Wagner - Yes, I’m aware of the sequence of the big life events. (I’m only up to '85 so far, but I did catch all the weddings and births…some wild stuff! 😁) The point is, Mike _did_ come out of the tunnel, when for his _entire_ college existence he was pegged as a total dork who’d amount to nothing. “You can accomplish anything with enough hard work” is about as conservative as an ideal gets. I do feel a bit sad at how much J.J.'s been foundering lately, even if it’s a realistic depiction of where extremely volatile creative types often end up. Exapno Mapcase - Re. Trump, it’s seems that that he’s just _so_ extreme that he completely demolished Trudeau’s framework for “extraordinarily harmful president” (George W Bush, and before him Ronald Reagan) and no matter how hard he sprints he can barely keep up. It doesn’t help that Trump, for some truly reality-warping reason, is currently the GOP presidential front-runner. I’m not complaining. (Why does someone always think I’m complaining?) Loach - Well…yeah. 🤷‍♂️ Words mean things. I certainly agree with everyone who says that Doonesbury is intensely political and is a lot more likely to lean left than to the right (although it definitely looks centrist a plurality of the time…maybe when I get to the Dubya years), but that’s different from it being an **the most liberal comic ever**. And for the record, I do consider Dykes To Watch Out For an overwhelmingly liberal comic, even compared to most gay and lesbian comics. (I make no claims about its mainstream appeal, but I can’t recommend it enough. ❤) As for ages, this has never bothered me. There’s always been plenty of leeway with this; just look at how long it took Sam to start college. (The most ageless wonder is Zonker, with Boopsie a close second.) Fantastic discussion! 👍👏 Wow, I can’t remember a time I asked something in Cafe Society and it got _completely_ nailed. Glad to see that some of you are still reading this, too! ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2024, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/70 "2024-01-09T06:18:19Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > “You can accomplish anything with enough hard work” is about as conservative as an ideal gets. No, it isn’t, and that doesn’t fit Mike anyway. Mike, unlike Trudeau himself, didn’t attend a top private school as a child. Mike grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. He was smart enough to get into Walden (which was a top college during the early years of the strip). After that, his career went up and down. He was lucky enough that it ended with him in a good position. He was lucky enough that he ended up married to a really nice woman, not the weird woman he married first. He was lucky enough that he had a daughter who was really smarter than him. Mike ended in a good circumstances as much due to luck as to his hard work. _Doonesbury_ isn’t the most liberal comic ever. It may be the only mostly liberal comic that’s well known. At its height, it ran in 1,440 newspapers. There are certainly more liberal comics, but they don’t run in as many newspapers. In general, they don’t run in newspapers at all. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/71 "2024-01-10T03:20:10Z")
> [@DKW](#): > > that’s different from it being an **the most liberal comic ever**. No one in this thread has asserted that _Doonesbury_ is “the most liberal comic ever.” For one example, there’s [Pogo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)#Satire_and_politics) which took on both Joe McCarthy and Lyndon Johnson, and portrayed Spiro Agnew as a hyena… The famous line, “We have met the enemy and he is us” was a comment on the destruction of the environment. [Jules Feiffer’s satire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Feiffer) had too many targets to be called strictly political, but his weekly strip churned out enough cartoons on [Richard Nixon](https://i0.wp.com/www.printmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2a34d8_1b357719a85143e1a6b6c0023a391bc0mv2.jpg?fit=1350%2C869&quality=89&ssl=1) literally to fill a [book](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Feiffer_on_Nixon/a4J4AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=jules%20feiffer%20nixon). . ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/72 "2024-01-10T19:25:26Z")
Feiffer’s cartoons ran in the _Village Voice_, as alternative a newspaper as there was in the late 50s and early 60s. Similarly, the virtually forgotten comic [Barnaby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnaby_(comics)), a stunningly literate and political strip, originated in the staunched liberal newspaper _PM_. I don’t know how widely distributed it was, but it can be seen as a direct predecessor to _Pogo_. On the conservative side, _L’il Abner_ was far more popular and praised for decades before _Doonesbury_. Al Capp was right of Goldwater and as far as I know never got politically right-wing strips banned or moved, although he ran in thousands of mainstream papers. Capp particularly hated the countercounter, letting it show in strips that attacked Joan Baez as [Joanie Phoney](https://fakebands.com/wiki/index.php?title=Joanie_Phoanie). > Parody of folksinger Joan Baez from Al Capp’s _L’il Abner_ comic strip, introduced in late 1966. It turned into an incident when Baez called him out on it, and Capp denied it. > > Phoanie loves them dirty Reds, the Viet Cong, and badmouthing capitalism while playing for $10,000 a show. She adopts Abner and Daisy Mae’s son Honest Abe, and hires Abner and Daisy Mae as servants to take care of him. But when he and his folks proudly sing “My Country Tis of Thee,” she un-adopts Abe, and kicks them all out. Dylan was Rotten Rodney and The Beatles were The Beasties. Admittedly, Capp did incorporate other singers satirically, but not with the same sheer loathing. If @DKW is only up to 1985, then forty more years of liberalism looms. Just wait until Mr. Butts appears. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/73 "2024-01-10T21:07:00Z")
The interesting thing was that Al Capp was a liberal from when the strip began in 1934 till 1964. It was only then that he suddenly began embracing various conservative positions. This actually wasn’t that uncommon. There were a lot of Americans who were strongly liberal because of the Depression, happily showing that they embraced New Deal policies to turn around the financial problems of that time. Then in the mid-60s they decided they didn’t like hippies. He actually kept some of his beliefs in the older liberal policies while hating the new policies of the hippies. He frequently parodied the new liberal policies of the 60s up through the ending of the strip in 1977, two years before his death. Incidentally, he wasn’t the most wonderful person in the world: > **[Children of the Cornpone](https://www.bookforum.com/print/1905/al-capp-and-the-backlash-politics-of-the-funny-pages-10810)** > > Al capp and the backlash politics of the funny pages. – Ben Schwartz ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/74 "2024-01-10T21:40:24Z")
edit: Wait – I reread your post – if you’re only up to '85, these are probably spoilers! Putting them under a spoiler cut. > [@DKW](#): > > The point is, Mike _did_ come out of the tunnel, when for his _entire_ college existence he was pegged as a total dork who’d amount to nothing. “You can accomplish anything with enough hard work” is about as conservative as an ideal gets. > **Mike coming out of the tunnel... but this is probably late 90's/early 00's?** > > But Mike came out of the tunnel not by hard work, but because after he’d been in a slump for ages after JJ left, his college roommate (Bernie, I think?) who had made bank in tech hired him to do a glitzy and well-paid tech management job (which is also where he met the awesome Kim) in what was a completely nepotism-based hire. (When this all comes out and Mike is feeling guilty about it, Bernie says something like, “You were clearly the best ex-college roommate for the job!”) It’s not even close to a conservative ideal here – Trudeau is clearly poking fun at the idea that “hard work” is the only driver that gets the successful where they are, as the conservative ideal might have it. …I may have spent way too much time with these strips at a formative age; I know way too much about these character’s lives. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/75 "2024-01-10T21:48:06Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > No one in this thread has asserted that _Doonesbury_ is “the most liberal comic ever.” For one example, there’s [Pogo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)#Satire_and_politics) which took on both Joe McCarthy and Lyndon Johnson, and portrayed Spiro Agnew as a hyena… The famous line, “We have met the enemy and he is us” was a comment on the destruction of the environment. Pogo was very liberal- for it’s time. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/76 "2024-01-10T21:56:48Z")
As alluded to in a [somewhat infamous 2017 installment](https://gocomics.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c5f3053ef0224df2e366c200b-pi) of “Tom the Dancing Bug.” ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/77 "2024-01-10T22:10:42Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Feiffer’s cartoons ran in the _Village Voice_, as alternative a newspaper as there was in the late 50s and early 60s. Feiffer’s strip was nationally syndicated from 1959 to 1997. I read it in the _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_, although ISTR it was on the op-ed page. **Pogo** always ran in the comics section. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/78 "2024-01-10T22:52:19Z")
I knew that it went beyond the bounds of New York liberals at some point but I didn’t realize it was so early. Walt Kelly’s line "We have met the enemy and he is us” technically didn’t come from the Pogo strip. He invented it for the poster for the first Earth Day in 1970. It was used in the strip in 1971, spoken by Pogo, though. Sorry, I couldn’t find a colored print that would copy over. [![](https://www.portablepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Pogo-1970EarthDayPosterBrown.jpg) ](https://www.portablepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Pogo-1970EarthDayPosterBrown.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2024, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/79 "2024-01-10T23:00:01Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > As alluded to in a [somewhat infamous 2017 installment](https://gocomics.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c5f3053ef0224df2e366c200b-pi) of “Tom the Dancing Bug.” TtDB has also done Doonesbury. [![](https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1236cbCOMIC-doonesbury-charlie-hebdo.jpg?fit=970%2C1277&ssl=1) ](https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1236cbCOMIC-doonesbury-charlie-hebdo.jpg?fit=970%2C1277&ssl=1) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2024, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716/80 "2024-01-11T04:02:53Z")
I like _Tom the Dancing Bug_ as well as Tom Tomorrow’s _This Modern World_. Both of them appear in _Funny Times_,\* a monthly humor newspaper, which I’ve subscribed to for decades. It also happens to be where _Dykes to Watch Out For_ was first published. I don’t think of either Tom as being liberal. They might have been once but they’ve been progressive/radical/far-left for a long time, certainly all the Trump era. Wikipedia tells me that TtDB started in _New York Perspectives_, a free weekly, and TMW in an anarchist magazine. Some mainstream outlets have picked them up but they’re never going to be _Garfield_. The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards has given TtDB Best Cartoon five times. Trudeau sometimes lashes out at Trump just as viciously as either but doesn’t make the current political scene the centerpiece of every strip. He pushes the line that a massively popular mainstream artist can’t cross, but alternative strips have a huge advantage that allows them to sail blithely over any lines. /\* Funny Times was started by two hippies, but outlasted them and is now run by their kids. It surrounds brief humor pieces with dozens of cartoons. If hippies were constitutionally leftist, then so is the slant of the paper. You won’t find any conservative material in an issue. But the far-left stuff is buried in myriad inane cartoon jokes and humor by people my age regretting that they are now my age. I wouldn’t spend even a second not considering it liberal, though, exactly how I view _Doonesbury_. I just would be stunned anyone looked at it differently. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-doonesbury-liberal/995716.md?page=5)