i’ve walked a weird line of appreciating doonesbury while still declaring my loyal love for all things hunter thompson, but this strip irritated me too, matt. i don’t pretend that my own blog is anything other than a diary of group inebriation and tireless diatribes promoting all things florida gators, but as a READER of better blogs, i was taken aback. so for today, i hop on thompson’s side (aka, the involuntary real-life uncle duke) and call trudeau a “pigfucker”. [harsh, but gonzo is gonzo.]

I was somewhat annoyed by this strip as well but we can’t really evaluate Mr. Trudeau as we don’t know what blogs he reads, if any at all. The fact is the signal to noise ratio in the blogosphere when taken as a whole is fairly low and so far corporate media depictions of blogging haven’t been subtle enough to draw distinctions between the good and the bad out there.

I actually thought today’s strip was the strangest I’d read in a while. So heavy-handed and lacking in subtlety.

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2005/db050707.gif

I don’t read much Doonesbury, but I didn’t necessarily think it was a straight-up excoriation of bloggers. Maybe if I read him more I would, but the person making the comments was someone from a main-stream medium. Who,after castigating bloggers, asks a completely nonsensical question, clearly not even paying attention to the cogent statements the blogger is making. I took it more of a jab at the main-stream media’s dismissive attitude towards bloggers than Trudea’s own.

Eric, I’d like to hope that you’re right. This whole strip seems so strangely un-Trudeau that I was hoping it was just a really long buildup to a witty appreciation of blogging. But it’s not looking that way…..

I have to admit, that I am on Eric’s side with this one..I don’t read Trudeau’s strip much, but the interpretation I got was that the interviewer was missing the point of blogging..I could see how it can be taken the other way, though. It is a strange one. I wish I knew more about the characters in the strip, specifically the background of the interviewer. I might change my mind if I knew how this character was casted.

I’m still not sure what I think about this, and I’m strongly inclined to give Trudeau the benefit of the doubt after all the good work he’s done and still does, but I have to admit that the tone and intent of this particular strip are kind of hard to discern.

So excuse me if I rationalize for a moment with the following reading: I think it might be possible to say that Trudeau is having Mark Slackmeyer now show himself to be a part of the reactionary establishment after years in the radical vanguard, a trajectory that isn’t at all uncommon, right? He’s been working for NPR and such, always the good liberal, but as time goes on, perhaps, he loses some of his edge and can’t keep up with the way things are going, and this is one sign of that. He still has good politics, for the most part, but this new-fangled blogging is slightly beyond him, not to mention that it might pose something of a threat to the radicalism that he’s always assumed for himself, and to the comfortable liberalism of the NPR set. It’s probably a weird position for him to be in, and he reacts like a lot of people do when they don’t feel secure anymore.

Or I could be full of it and Trudeau could have cashed in every single one of his coolness chips in one fell swoop.

Anyway, there’s a mini-thread about this whole thing here:

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010931.php

I’m most inclined to agree with Rod on this. I think both interviewer and interviewee are the focus of a little ribbing here, and I think it hurts because there’s a little truth on both sides. There are bloggers who live up to the stereotypes here, just as there are MSM “personalities who live up to the ignorance this one shows. I think it’s sort of clever, actually.

The discussion about liberals growing up and finding themselves in the establishment is likely a rich one.

JLo and Rod, where do you see any ribbing of the interviewer? I can’t locate any sense of irony about his position in the strip.

I wondered, after I read it, whether the best response was to laugh it off, as Agitprop did, or to respond seriously. I felt, in the end, that the smug tone of the interviewer — and what I see as the strip’s confirmation of the judgment of the MSM — deserved a serious response.

As I see it, the message of the strip is encapsulated in the interviewer’s derisive comments about bloggers. While I did wonder, after I read it, whether it was fair to identify Trudeau’s views with those of his characters, I felt that the strip was unequivocal enough to warrant such an interpretation.

And I guess that what bothers me is that the strip is a lazy confirmation of a stereotype. Yes, there is “a little truth to it,” just as there is a little truth to many stereotypes out there. I guess that I didn’t expect intellectual laziness from Trudeau, and I think that that’s what this strip shows.

I guess I think I disagree slightly Matt. Mark’s a character, and he’s showing himself to be (or perhaps better, Trudeau is showing him to be)somewhat reactionary with respect to a fairly soft target, i.e. the stereotype of the guy who lives in his parents’ basement and is online all the time. If you think this is Trudeau speaking, and without any irony whatsoever, then fair enough. But I think Trudeau is having a particular character with a particular history, speak in a certain way, and that character seems kind of out of touch, which would be the part where the interviewer maybe is getting ribbed by his creator, Trudeau. It wasn’t perhaps his most successful piece of humor, but I can kind of see what he’s up to, I think.

Of course, Trudeau may think exactly like Mark with regard to blogs, in which case, Boo Hiss, but I’d like to think he’s wilier than that.

oh, and Eric, the implication of the “nonsensical” question is that bloggers are so poor and semi-employed that they can only afford to buy cat food to feed themselves. Of course, the suggestion that a blogger in that situation would have a highly organized list of the best and worst tasting cat foods is pretty funny.

Rod, I guess we’re getting down to the question of intentionality, which is always tricky. But whether Mark’s views represent Trudeau’s views matters less to me than whether or not Mark’s views are satirized in the strip. If that had been the case, I would not have been bothered by a little good-natured ribbing of blog vanity. But I can’t for the life of me see that anywhere in the strip itself.

Instead, I think that what’s happening is that people who disagree with Mark’s views are reading satire into the strip where it doesn’t exist (and if it does, please show me where it is). Maybe — maybe — if this strip is continued, and the blogger turns the tables on Mark, I’ll see your point, but I just don’t see it right now.

I’m still an unabashed Doonesbury fan after all these years. I was bothered by the cartoon only because it seemed to have a meanness that Trudeau couldn’t even muster towards Nixon. But I think that was a failure on Trudeau’s part to carry off something.

If he’d had Rick Redfern interviewing the blogger, then there’d have been no question that the blogger was the target (By the way I think he’s clearly meant to be a Right Wing blogger. Look at his nom d’ web.), and if he’d had Roland Hedley interviewing him then the media would have been clearly the target.

But he had Mark Slackmeyer do it, and Mark is the one main character whose life and obsessions have been most like the kind of blogger he’s attacking. I think Trudeau was attempting someting almost novelistic in this strip.

Just a few weeks ago he had Ray blogging from Iraq and in that case blogging itself was portrayed as a neat thing. Trudeau’s website also featured a kind of early blog so I don’t think he was expressing his own ideas about blogging. I’m also pretty sure Trudeau is an internet addict—remember Mike’s web addiction? That was a case where the author was his own target. Doonesbury is Trudeau’s alter-ego,after all.

So Trudeau probably reads Kos and the TPM Cafe and probably a bunch of the A listers, none of whom, even their Right Wing counterparts, match that character in the strip.

But I should write and ask him. I’ll bet he’d answer, if he hasn’t already over on his site.

Just looking at the strip at face value, I do get the impression that Trudeau is taking a jab at the blogging community. But knowing his past work as I do (I’ve been a faithful Doonesbury reader for about a decade), I’m willing to cut the guy some slack.

Perhaps he was taking a swipe at how what was once an avant-garde type of media is now so mainstream that any knucklehead can do it (just take a look at my site for proof of that). Perhaps he was taking a swing at those who act is if they are legitimate journalists when, in fact, they are nothing more than hacks in need of attention. Or perhaps he was even mocking the entire process of blogging as it appears.

I know this is a lot of excuse-making, but unless someone sends him an e-mail or accosts him in the street to get the answer, we’ll never know what the hell his point was. Perhaps next Sunday’s strip will have an answer (since he tends to run one story during the week, and another on Sundays).

Thanks, everyone, for chiming in. Here’s where things stand, as I see them:

1. Rod, Lance, and Mark, all longtime fans of Doonesbury, think that the strip is meant to satrize right-wing bloggers;

2. This contention is backed up by Mark Slackmeyer’s backstory, by the bloggers name, and by the outrage that right-wing bloggers have expressed about the strip.

3. All of us, I think, agree that even if the strip is mean to satirize right-wing bloggers in particular, it can easily be read as a sleight against all bloggers in general.

To some degree, numbers one and two appease me, but there are two things that still rankle:

1. It’s a Sunday strip, which (I would think) is aimed at a broader audience than the daily version. If that’s true, then the fact that the strip can be misread so easily is problematic, as its readers are more likely to be ignorant of the character backstories that make the satirical point of the strip;

2. Even though I’m always happy to see right-wing bloggers skewered for their idiotic ranting and raving, I’d like to see them attacked for their points of view, not for the medium they use to express their views (at least in this case). As Lance points out, there is a meanness in this strip that, I would suggest, presents a form of cultural elitism about blogging that is pretty distasteful to me.

So, even if the target of Trudeau’s satire does turn out to have been right-wing bloggers, I’m still not happy with it. But I’m less unhappy than I was, and apologize to Doonesbury and its fans for trying to rake Trudeau’s good name over the coals.

Posts like this make me grateful that this site attacts such great readers and commenters, who, I hope, will never hesitate to call me on my errors.

And Lance, please do let us know what you find out if you end up emailing Trudeau.

Actually, I didn’t see it so much as a swipe at the right as much as a swipe at everyone who blogs. More specifically, those who think that blogging somehow validates his or her existence, makes them a “journalist,” or places them on the cutting edge.

Blogging is a great way to communicate, and everyone does it for different reasons. But there are some that think that they’re somehow better just because they have one, or think that people give a rats ass about what they had for lunch (just visit a few of the horrendous MSN Spaces or Blogspot folks for proof).

“Journalists” are barely journalists anymore, so perhaps some bloggers are more true to the form than others.

And my grandmother could start a blog about those damned kids with their loud car stereos, so it’s no longer on the cutting edge.

Now, does all of this factor in to what GT was wanting to do with this particular strip? I still don’t know, but would also enjoy reading any response Lance gets from the source of all of our inquiry.

For what it’s worth, let me add one more response to your consideration: mine for 4 July 2005, Doonesbury on blogging.

Since comments are closed on your post, Thom, let me say here that you put together a fantastic argument in that piece.

The longer I blog, the more convinced I become of this point of yours:

It’s the thinly disguised elitism behind Trudeau’s panel that disturbs me the most.

I think the people railing at this Doonesbury comic on blogging are probably taking it too seriously. Trudeau’s going for a laugh, unless we’ve all determined that this particular character really speaks for Trudeau. This is the kind of stuff a typical rabble-rousing radio commentator would say.