Gary Trudeau, Republican Shill

[james_davis_nicoll]

No, really. Look at the original trio of characters.

Mike Doonesbury is a Republican, happily married to a much younger woman whose family was murdered by Communists in the 1970s. His previous wife was an insane artist and although I don't think they ever _said_ she was a Democractic Party
voter, I think she was still around when Mike came out of the closet and reacted badly.

BD, of course, is a Republican who volunteered for military duty in combat zones three times.

Mark the former Communist Activist is in a dead end job. In contrast, his lover, a Republican, is wealthy and successful.

I can go on. Compare and contrast Lacey Davenport (R) to the man she defeated back in the 1970s (Ventura, I think (D)). What's her name, the woman who left her husband to look for personal growth and self-realization? She ended up working for _Lacey_. Not a Democrat, a Republican.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

You mean Mark the former communist activist.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do. Let me go fix that.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I've thought Doonesbury has lost its center a long time ago, for exactly the reasons you mention.

But Mark wasn't, as far as I know, ever a communist. He was generically left-wing like ka lot of other people.

He's also the only person in the strip I care about seeing anymore: everybody else seems pretty shallow these days.

And you hardly ever see Mark anymore -- usually just on mail-reading days.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

mark actually started the commune, so I think there was something there to the communism thing.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

"Starting a commune" is not the same as "being a communist." Really.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

oddly enough, I understand that. It was just the most obvious example I could think of, since my books are in storage and I didn't feel like playing 'hunt the citation' on google; the reference I wanted to find was in the broadway play, and for the life of me I can't find it online (with good reason. It was a pretty sucky play). But he mentioned being a communist radical during the scene when he starts begging his listeners to call and demand he be allowed to stay on the air, if I recall. It might, of course, just been what scanned.