Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for February 14, 2011

First Mubarak, then Bmz, who’s next? Berlusconi?

On this day I offer my condolences to the departed, and to those who will follow:

“[Thou art] already dead. stabbed with a white wench’s black eye, run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of [thy] heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt shaft.”

-Taken from: Shakespearean Insults

Suspend the constitution! No, wait, there isn’t one.

I’m sending my son Earl over to personally handle the situation.

To answer FriscoLou’s question, there are already protests going on in Algeria and Yemen. Let the dominoes keep falling!

@barticle35, Dubya suspended America’s constitution for eight years.

pouncingtiger: Unfortunately, its still in that state.

Too bad GT set this up a couple of weeks ago. His arc has been overtaken by events. Duke sounds just like General Suleiman, and Earl echoes Hillary Clinton and ambassador Wisner.

(In case you don’t remember Suleiman, he was Mubarak’s vice-president for about ten days until the army displaced him last Thursday.)

If one of her political advisers can show Sarah Palin where Egypt is (right there next to Africa!), maybe she’ll share her thoughts (?) on the revolution.

Ps. @ FriscoLou

I like your Shakespearean valentine for Berlusconi. Here’s another—adapted (I’ve changed Shakespeare’s “Argus”) to fit Bill Clinton’s indiscretion of thirteen years ago):

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all; And among three to love the worst of all, A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed Though Al Gore were her eunuch and her guard.

At least we didn’t have to throw a trillion dollars down a hole this time.

Nasser, Sadat, an Murbarak, all good army officers. Wonder what Vegas is giving democracy for odds. I don’t bet on new African democracy myself but if you like long shots,——

If you don’t have a cabinet, try hiding in a cupboard.

The real fun is going to start if or when this wave of protest reaches Saudi Arabia.

@FriscoLou: Actually it was Zine El Abidine Ben Ali first (don’t forget Tunisia).

The mob must have figured out about Trff’s double.

palin, Sarah has chimed in on Egypt several times on Facebook. You need to “Friend” her to get the latest updates. Her comments are very current, unlike GT’s.

Of course, President Obama knows where Egypt is…. he could see it from his backyard in Kenya since the day he was born…

(Sorry, couldn’t resist)

Kenya is in Hawaii? Whoa. That will be news to most native Hawaiians, including President Obama, who lived there since, oh, well, the day he was born until he was six.

By the way Nemesys, John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate (remember him?,) was definitely born on foreign soil in 1936 – specifically a Panamanian hospital unquestionably outside of the Canal Zone and American jurisdiction. This circumstance put McCain’s own qualifications for President into uncertainty. However, you are going to have extreme difficulty convincing most this fact bothered you in the slightest.

Sarah Palin is telling her closed circle of Facebook “friends” that Kenya borders on Egypt? Fascinating (yawn!), and very much in character for someone who thinks Africa is a state. She must be confusing Egypt with Sudan. Can you see Africa too from Kenya?

Who cares where McCain was born? He’s white!

Al, you’re right… McCain’s citizenry didn’t bother me in the slightest. Nor does Obama’s.

How can anyone read Doonesbury and not have a sense of humor?

I agree, Nemesys.

It’s time for Duke to have that final heart attack, and I’d love to see the president-for-life get run out of town.

Comic strips and westerns just run tyrants out of town. Revolutions put them on trial and execute them. We haven’t heard the last of Mubarak and his 32 years of corruption.

Doonesbury’s political clowning is fine for the breakfast table, but when it comes to history, revolutionaries show a far keener sense of humor. Hegel calls history a slaughterbench, and Marx quipped that “history repeats itself—first as tragedy and then as farce.”

Drome, the American revolution didn’t execute George III. The Czech revolution didn’t execute the former president. The South African revolution didn’t execute Botha. The Egyptian revolution didn’t execute King Faisal. Many revolutions simply exile their leaders.

Marx & Engels’s remark was hardly a quip, but it is pithy.

In any case, I’d love to see a true democracy in Egypt. I’d also love to see Israel remove themselves from Palestine; stop the shelling, slaughter, & de facto imprisonment of the Gaza Palestinians; and relinquish Jerusalem to the U.N., as was mandated in the original plan of 1948.

1948? Was the year the British handed all the defensive positions to the Arabs when they snuck out? What are spoils of war? Gaza, spoil of 67 war, same as Sinai and West bank. BRIAN, you mean you think a country that’s attacked should give back all the attackers lost? What a novel idea?

@BrianCrook

In your list of desiderata, you shift the topic from revolution to justice, which is subjective where historical politics is not. For example, you’re fond of saying that Bush and Cheney should be brought to justice. But history pays no heed to what should be, and it would take no less than a revolution by the electorate—and not just a change of administration—to bring B-D (a coy echo of Doonesbury’s Brian Dowling?) to trial.

My point is that when you talk of justice, you’re taking your eye off the ball and forgetting that the real political action is historical. That’s why revolutions are never generic and never follow the same pattern; only tyrants do that.