Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 06, 2011

Shell shock for Sorkh Razil …

The Red Rascal should team up with Dick Tracy…(panels 6 & 7)

Good idea, Mr. Bribery. Dr. Mordred can establish a reputation as a serial killer who preys on unwanted comic characters. Anyone want to give him a list of strips to hit?

Kudos, Rayannina, for using the term “Shell Shock” and not “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

When your alter ego isn’t getting it done, and your fantasy life is in the toilet, you are either drinking way too much, or not nearly enough.

mrbribery, I hate you now. You tempted me to look at Dick Tracy and now my mind is scarred with its image. I feel like asking Red Rascal to move over. You are a horrible, horrible person.

Name a horse Petraeus and you won’t be getting anywhere on it. ;-7

Another of my childhood hero myths exposed. But wait, I can still believe in the tooth fairy.

It’s just a bad dream.

Perhaps a sidekick is needed to snap him out of it…

The Blue Bandit? Maroon Mischievous? Pink Patsy?

Clark: Nice fantasy. Wish it were true. Alas, the performance of the current “blue rascal” administration suggests that red and blue are just different shades of the same color (purple?)…

Coyoty: Be of good cheer: “Dick Tracy” gets new–and very competent–artist and writer on March 15. We are counting down the days.

Clark, don’t forget….. blue or red…. they are all still Rascals!!! It doesn’t matter.

Clark Kent — have you had your morning kryptonite? This is the kind of fever dream you get when you see life through a black-and-white filter of superheroes and supervillains, rather than limited, flawed human beings who muddle through one day at at time.

In your dream it’s easy to forget the uncomfortable truth. Nearly all of those human beings are doing what they do because they believe it’s the right thing to do at the moment, for whatever reasons seem good to them, however violently they might disagree about what the right thing is. Pure evil, doing harm for the pure delight of doing harm, is (happily) as rare as is (sadly) pure virtue.

Because we’re all flawed creatures, when we criticize each other it should be with humility and compassion, not with vilification. Are we not all in the same leaky boat?

Clark - You’re beginning to sound a lot like Al Gore! Will we be seeing you on the lecture circuit soon? A new book coming out? Possible title: “How we can save the world by not passing gas”.

Should have let him die in the first place.

Puke Green Jerk:

Lives out a life of PERFECT uselessness, jabbering utter nonsense to totally indifferent idiots.

If the Blue Rascal gets us into Egypt, would we soon be dealing with De Nile? Will China allow us spend the money to be involved in Worldly Affairs?

It is not my way, what else you got!

Yup. GT is first and foremost, an AUTHOR.

Charachters do take on a life and purpose not originally scheduled and sometimes downright uncontrolable… untill you kill ‘em off.

Which, of course, is one of the great pleasures of writing.*

Red Rascal hiding from random violence is like Sarah Palin isolating herself and her followers from the Egyptian revolt. Addressing the Reagan centennial yesterday, she spoke of “a fear in the air” that could be dispelled by kicking out Obama—instead of Mubarak, whom she never mentioned. And she called President Reagan heroic not for helping bring freedom to an Evil Empire but for resisting “big government.”

When SP “espouses” (her word) the Tea Party’s parochial vision of an America too isolated to notice global change much less comprehend it, her shrunken view of the world can be dangerous. Foreigners seeing this isolationism based on fear think SP speaks for the Republican Party. Here’s what an Egyptian told Nicholas Kristoff:

“I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: ‘Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.’”

pouncingtiger said, about 13 hours ago Kudos, Rayannina, for using the term “Shell Shock” and not “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

Or: “whining bunch of babies who never really had it bad like back in Nijmegen or the Ardennes or the Canal or the Chosen or the Somme or you name it because it was worse than anything you pantywaists have ever even dreamed of.”

Yeah, we get it, flouncingkittycat, yawl a bunch of seriously tough guys. I remember you from 5th Marines, 9th Marines, 7th Marines, Con Thien, Hue, 881 North, Buzzard, the Arizona, Goi Noi.

Oh! Wait a minute! That was a bunch of things that caused in its multivariant form, PTSD and you are much too tough a guy to have such a silly, pantywaist kind of problem.

IN GT’s book, 40 Years of Doonesbury,he discusses JJ’s character with a certain regret. JJ is Jeff’s half-sister, the daughter Joanie abandoned when she ran away from her husband to what she thought would be a better life.

Having been abandoned by her mother, JJ is somewhat inevitable, and GT said over the years she couldn’t be any other way. She’s insanely self-centered and lives in a fantasy land–much to the detriment of her interactions with Mike (her ex) and Alex) her own abandoned daughter. Her life-long love Zeke is something of a sociopath.

Readers have wondered in this column how a sober person like Joanie could have had two such unlikeable children as JJ and Jeff (especially two decades apart and with different husbands). “It’s just a comic strip” but GT has created characters as complex as any in a Tolstoy novel. JJ and Jeff have each gone off on wild and irrational paths that we can’t chart and GT admits he can’t either.

And as long as a Tolstoy novel, dig. ;-) Philosophically, not a good comparison, but length- and depth-wise, by far correct.

Jay Seculow of the neo-con ACLJ recently reamed Chris Matthews for comparing the Muslim Brotherhood with the Tea Party , calling them both parties ” who let you know when your expiration date is up.” Jay said you shouldn’t compare them since it was markedly unfair. then not five minutes later, proceeded to compare Obama with the Nazis for suggesting we were not a Christian nation anymore. I suspect the neo-cons just hate it when the libs use their own tactics against them. As GT does here with his RR character showing a basically neo-con myth run out of steam.

Boy, p drome don’t cut the Wasilla Wombat no slack, when it comes to her world view.

RR’s dream of bringing vigilante justice to Afghanistan has certainly run out of steam, freeholder.

I’m struck by Jeff’s whining escapism that’s so like SP and the Tea Party who, threatened by incomprehensible change, retreat to their fossilized cave of America-as-it-never-was (except in Westerns).

Ps. Thanks for the graphic, FriscoLou. Now we need another of SP detecting “a fear in the air.” Maybe a shot of her addressing her agitated followers?

Now you all KNOW that was no random shot from the valley floor!!

Lewreader, Ah the Tooth Fairy, better known as Newton Snookers, on Armed Forces Radio.

that would be a good idea