Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 08, 2011

What is this supposed to be? You still use a retainer?

Pay in advance!

His fee…

No, his retainer. That’s just to get the process rolling, there’s more money coming later.

GT probably drew this strip right after the revolt in Tunisia. He couldn’t foresee the cataclysm in Egypt—two weeks in Tahrir Square that the U.S. govt. has had to watch from the sidelines, or at best on Al Jazeera.

The strip is inept to imply that what we’re seeing is just another crisis for Arab dictators. Even to fantasize that shady Western “contractors” like D & E will profit as usual from these unique events is to betray a measure of political senility. It’s like claiming expertise in foreign affairs because your state borders on Russia, or like Jeff Redfern fancying he understands Pashtun because he has an alter ego named Sorkh Razil.

At least Obama’s National Security Council is further along the curve than Trudeau. Its spokesman, Tommy Vietor, recognizes that “the facts on the ground are changing every day. When you have a situation like this, all you can do is articulate your core principles, like universal rights for all people, and free and fair elections.”

Who cares about the politics? There’s a National Treasury to rescue from the hands of the revolutionaries! For a percentage.

Drome, Doonesbury merely shows that Duke & Earl are talented at getting nervous leaders to pony up for their so-called “expertise”. It doesn’t meant that Earl & Duke know anything of use. Your comparisons to Sarah Palin & Jeff Redfern make no sense.

In other matters, Representative Ben Quayle said this about Ronald Reagan:

“When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House. I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America – each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.”

Is Quayle even stupider than his father? Is that possible?

I saw his campaign ads. It’s possible.

Jelly beans are poison to your teeth, but are much better than drones, Echelon, AbuGrahib and all the assorted bombings of wedding parties we have seen in the past years… Ben Quayle, in his childish style, was right: USA was a reference point for civiisation. USED to be.

Must even this little page become a platform for re-fighting past battles and for Rs and Ds to be blaming each other? Why don’t we limit it to showing how clever we are about the strip!

Duke is so proud.

And that retainer needs to be non-consecutive $100 bills, please. No checks.

Must even this little page become a platform for re-fighting past battles and for Rs and Ds to be blaming each other? Why don’t we limit it to showing how clever we are about the strip!

Must even this little page become a platform for re-fighting past battles and for Rs and Ds to blame each other? Why don’t we limit it to showing each other how cleaver we are about the strip?

What if the $50 million Redfern lost end up in Duke’s firm? By the way, whom is JR’s mother?

Drome, how do we even know this strip is about an Arab leader? The client is only addressed as “Majesty” and I have seen that used in the past for the leader of Bezerkistan (I don’t know if I have the spelling correct or not) and that country would be more part of Asia Minor rather than the middle east. And as Brian correctly states, the whole point is to show that these charlatans are more than happy to squeeze what they can out of these nervous dictators.

And yes, I would say Duke is looking very proud in the last panel.

GT intends his strip to reflect political reality. BrianCrook, who prefers the jelly beans of his fantasized past to the messy actuality of revolution, has nothing to say about GT’s strip or about the unique situation in Egypt.

palin drome, there’s no credible need to expose your palincentric psychosis in almost every single post. Save it for the rare situations where it actually makes sense to bring up.

I agree with Brian that this strip is specifically about the middle men, but GT has done that schtick before. I think it will evolve to touch on current events. However, gocomics probably placed Doonesbury in the “Comics” section rather than the “Editorial Cartoons” section because they know that GT has a huge lag time getting to press compared to other editorial cartoons, so it’ll be difficult to keep from becoming outdated with fast-moving events. Keeping it nonspecific and generic is GT’s best bet.

Drome, who frequently says intelligent things, too often kvetches that Doonesbury isn’t what he/she would like it to be.

Drome, make the cartoon that you want, and publish it here or elsewhere. Send us a link, and many would be glad to read it.

To complain that Doonesbury doesn’t cover precisely what you want is akin (mutatis mutandis) to complaining that Hamlet doesn’t say enough about Danish politics.

Kudos to Earl for keeping cool and articulating core values…

When people anywhere figure out that thay have the power to rise up, people in power everywhere get nervious, & people like Duke & Earl will figure out a way to skim a little off the top.

Wow! That quote from Quayle sure brings back memories! It’s comforting to know that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Sarah Palin has nothing on the Quayles!

Earlk’s mother was a Vegas stripper. He found Duke after his mother died.

I used to wear a retainer way back in junior high school…….

I think the point of them collecting the retainer upfront is because they don’t know (or particularly care) whether fearless leader will still be around later to pay up.

@BrianCrook

I’m sure you agree that this strip was drawn as a comment on the Arab revolution, not just to exploit some “generic” (Nemesys’s word) coup. Shakespeare was less politically astute than GT. Parts of Hamlet that he’d written before 1603 had to be cut when James came to the throne with his queen, Anne of Denmark (e.g., the “Dram of eale” speech and other choice remarks such as “Denmark’s a prison”).

My “kvetch” is that GT, with history unfolding before our eyes, is no more perceptive than the Tea Partiers, who use side-issues like corruption and big government to distract themselves from radical change.

For that matter, trying to explain a revolution as generic is pretty absurd—an advanced symptom of Palinosis.

So palin, considering the “Majesty” reference in panel 1, are you suggesting that GT is anticipating a revolution against the Saudi Arabian royal family? I doubt it, but for your sake we can pretend that he is.

Besiders, to Duke and Son, every revolution IS generic, once they get their retainer. Their one-size-fits-all “proven protocol” mentioned in panel 3 is a clear reference to the generic aspect of their trade.

Not all of us can be as clairvoyantly perceptive as you are, but sometimes she is right.

I agree with Drome that this week’s strips refer to the uprisings in Tunisia & Egypt, but they seem to be using the strip’s own petty dictator of Berzerkistan, who can represent, somewhat obliquely, leaders in Tunisia, in Egypt or elsewhere.

I repeat my point to Drome, however, that he/she continues to complain about Doonesbury not saying what he/she would say, and, instead of the affected complaining, Drome should create his own cartoon. I would be glad to read it.

Where, Drome, did you get this information about Shakespeare’s self-censoring of Hamlet?

Tyrants need to do a better job of looking over their shoulder.

@BrianCrook (if you’re still tuned in),

The printer of the 1603/4 Quarto Hamlet omitted Hamlet’s remarks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about Denmark in 2.2. Editors (e.g. Jenkins in the New Arden, Edwards in the New Cambridge) have plausibly argued that this was done in deference to the new queen and that the King’s Men—as Shakespeare’s company proudly styled themselves on His Majesty’s accession (that’s right, Nemesys: the title wasn’t invented just for Arab tyrants)—followed suit and dropped the offensive lines in performance.

It doesn’t take much clairvoyance on the part of GT or myself so see what lies ahead for the Arab despots. Saleh in Yemen, Abdullah in Jordan are scrambling madly to avert the inevitable, and the House of Saud can’t be far behind. A revolution is a specific historic event and history cannot be made generic, except in bad novels, Jungian psychology, and comic strips less attuned to reality than Doonesbury is.

Referring to the passages in Hamlet (II.ii) that are in the folio but not in the second quarto, Harold Jenkins writes:

“Why these passages were dropped in printing one can only guess… The new Queen [James’s Queen Anne] herself was of the country that Hamlet called a prison. But in view of the Second Quarto passage about the drunkenness of Danes (I.iv.8-22) censorship is not an obvious explanation. And with the possibilities of confusion in the copy, one cannot after all be quite sure that the omissions were designed.” (Hamlet, Arden ed., p. 45)

It really does not matter much, Drome, but please get your facts right. Now, please stop griping that Garry Trudeau will not write Doonesbury to please you, and create a strip that does. Thanks.

@Palin Drome

Yes, I think the government needs to keep repeating their core values over and over, especially since they’be been violating them for 30 years by supporting a US sympathetic dictator in Egypt. Maybe if they say if often enough, a few really dumb Egyptians will begin to believe it.

Maybe we better start repeating those “core values” over and over to the Saudis as well.