Ace -

This shows you all you need to know about Trudeau:

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20050227

I can only describe this as a staggering self-parody, or utter blindness to current events. Trudeau has clearly stopped caring whether the commentary has any bearing on reality. The crazy thing is, I bet that he is completely blind to how silly the strip looks.

- B

Not to mention the Apprentice reference which must have been at least a year old. Best case scenario is he couldn't think of anything that day and recylced an idea he had previously discarded. (And that's not a very good scenario.)

That's by whoever writes the www.udolpho.com blog, not me.

Yeah, if you're of a certain political mindset it's more comforting than anything else. Really, and does anyone find Lake Wobegon funny? I hear the audience laugh and I wonder 'what the hell?' I mean, I can tell by his voice he's hitting a punch line, then the tittering starts, but I'm all w/t/f? Did they edit the funny? Was it just too damn funny to play over the air, people listening while driving and all? Are they ever going to release those bits? I'd love to hear 'em.

Seriously, anyone who laughs at Trudeau or Keillor is doing the 'ooh, he's said something I agree with!' laugh. Sad stuff. These people make middle aged white folks look like complete repressed retards, every lazy comedian's 'white people' routine suddenly come true. If that's what middle age is going to change me into, I choose death. I know my family will understand.

Trudeau doesn't/didn't used to draw the cartoons. It is (or least was) a guy named Carlton (don't remember the first name.) I went to Catholic high school in KC. I know this for a fact because my religion teacher in high school, Mrs. Carlton, was the wife of the actual artist. He'd talk to Trudea on the phone, then draw the cartoons and send them to Trudeau to look at and they'd go from there.

She'd tell us about going to New York and hanging out with Gary Trudeau and his wife, Jane Pauley. This was 20 years ago, don't know if Carlton still does it for him now or who draws it.

Evan,

You're scrupulous to avoid the suggestion that you wrote it.

But I think most people get that when I say "Even sends," I mean Evan sends the link. Maybe I should have said "Evan tips," which is my normal way of saying it.

If you want me to change it to make it clearer, I will.

One of the many joys that makes living where the convenience store is a nine mile drive worthwhile is that I can go weeks at a time without ever thinking of Gary Trudeau.
Y'all should try it. During the time saved by not thinking of Trudeau I managed to load fifty old time Black Powder cartridges for my Single Action Army Revover, fill the bird feeders and daydream about the Dusty Girl as well as cook a venison roast in honor of the day after Eat an Animal for PETA Day.
That's just in one day.
I'm pretty sure that not thinking about Trudeau is the Eighth Habit of Highly Effective People. Ehh, maybe the Twelfth, just think of all the thinking I could get done without that Dusty Girl.

In 1984,Trudeau wrote a play, called "Rap Master Ronnie", a satirical revue about the Reagan Administration that opened off-Broadway at the Village Gate. I saw it in Boston. At one point, a befuddled Reagan, played by an actor who looked like him, stood off to one side of the stage, a half-smile on his unknowing face, while other actors offered sneering, mocking comments about his lack of intelligence, his incompetence. He could not quite hear them, he told Nancy - also on stage and called, of course, Mommie - because of a hearing impairment.

Funny stuff, for sure. Making fun of someone for having a hearing impairment.

Trudeau, even then, had it all figured out.

I pegged the lameness of Doonesbury a while ago.
It's detailed on my political comics page:
http://www.urbin.net/EWW/goodreading/COMICS/poly_comics.html

I've also got links to a couple of articles that also peg Trudeau as becoming increasingly worse.

"Trudeau's main strength is that he appeals to newspaper staffs and in particular to the editorial page. " Like so many other press boomers, Donnesbury "made his bones" on the back of Richard Nixon, and has not changed since. Except for this rare and inexplicable bit of truth:

Kid to Treaudeu: Daddy, if you're a Republican does that mean I am too?

Treaudeu: No, not at all sweeheart ... like me you may start out a Democrat, full of hope and idealism, but then the realities of life beat it out of you until you transition into a Republican.

Kid to Treaudeu: Is it painful?

Treaudeu: Very.

If anyone can explain this, please do. Great Post ACE!

That was an odd period of the strip - basically the "Mike Doonesbury becomes a dot-com exec" era. Mike apparently becomes a Republican then, and the strip doesn't condemn him for it or portray him as stupidly wrongheaded. Made me wonder whether Trudeau was going through some sort of "rethinking things" phase himself. If so, it obviously passed....