Tooning Out

THERE WAS AN OLD MAN who carried a gigantic globe around Harvard Square on his shoulders a few years ago. No one was exactly sure why he did this. It had something to do with the imminent destruction of humanity and our responsibility to care for the earth. All of this talk about nuclear disaster had apparently scared the gentleman into such a rage that he decided to bear singlehandedly the full burden, so to speak, of our survival.

And all over the country, other citizens, driven by deep-seated fear of the Reagan Administration and the damage it had wrought on America and the world, have shown similar reactions. Anyone who has passed by the White House in the past three years has undoubtedly witnessed a vigil of some sort on Pennsylvania Ave--one of those ragged collections of souls mourning the slaughter of their fellow men in some far-flung corner of the world. A man in Alabama made headlines last spring when he tried to set himself on fire to protest unemployment in America. Others have been more concerted in their protest, organizing massive marches on New York or Washington, circulating petitions, writing to Congressmen, trying, somehow, to express their fear, their anger.

The fact is, it's hard to know just what to do when you call yourself a liberal and are living in the United States in the 1980s, witnessing years of havoc being wreaked on your ideals by a wave of politicians called the New Right. Every week, Mark Alan Stamaty provides those of the old left with a refuge in the only thing they have left to do: laugh.

Stamaty is the creator of "Washingtoon," a cartoon featured in each issue of The Village Voice, and reprinted weekly in The Washington Post. Congdon & Weed has published the serialized strip in a book, giving readers a prolonged look at Stamaty's notable knack for capturing in detail the mood and idiosyncrasies of our nation's capital during Reagan's tenure. As a chronicle of the reign of the New Right, the book is as depressing as it is funny.

"As a young child," writes Stamaty of his hapless antihero, Congressman Bob Forehead, "young Bobby had one ambition; to host a TV quiz show." Instead, the wayward actor--who bears a less-than-coincidental resemblance to Rep. Jack Kemp (R.N.Y.)--becomes the political pawn of Gerard V. Oxboggle, president of Glominoid Corporation. And as a conservative representative. Forehead is the tool of every right-wing cause, from maniacal weapons manufacturers to preachy Southern Senator Clancy Fumes (a.k.a. Jesse Helms). Fumes lives in righteous fear of "secular humanist liberals" and plots to replace the Supreme Court with a panel of the four TV evangelists with the top Neilsen ratings.

But what is really funny here is that "Washingtoon," as any good satire, is so true to life. Like an audience watching a very good impersonator, we see the antics of everyday Washington, and the Administration's social Darwinism emerges: Defense Department officials order a new bomb that "will kill only those people who do not carry a credit card"; the President announces a policy called "The New Deferralism": "that we, at the federal level, defer all responsibility for social problems for a period of eight years"; and Reagan justifies high interest rates, explaining: "We just recently received word of a man who got a loan to buy a new automobile many years ago when interest rates were low. Well, that man used that automobile as a getaway car in several armed robberies. But I'm happy to say that our current high interest rates make automobiles unaffordable to a man in his income bracket."

Stamaty's imitation of the kind of logic being tossed around Washington by right-wing bureaucrats for three years is hilarious in its proximity to reality. It's hard to tell how much talent a humorist has, though, when he chooses such an easy target. Stamaty gets his best lines without much more than quoting Presidential statements; in an address to the House. Forehead says, "The only way to get rid of our deficit is to cut taxes. Only when government has no money will it stop spending."

Garry Trudeau raised quite a furor a year ago when he announced that he would take a leave of absence from his daily comic strip "Doonesbury." In explaining his sabbatical, Trudeau mentioned something about his characters, children of the '60s, needing to grow up and move on. "Doonesbury," created in the paradigm of the radical '60s, just wasn't funny under the Reagan Administration.

Trudeau was right, of course, and though "Washingtoon" will probably never make it to Broadway's floorboards, the strip is one of the few that ably captures the irony of a liberal perspective on Washington in the '80s. One effort that comes close is James T. Pendergast's "Mrs. Gipper," which began appearing on the letters page of Rolling Stone last year, and portrays the adventures of the First Lady, surrounded by a full entourage as she galavants through the capital city, stopping off to order fast food and advise husband Ronnie on the issues of the day. Few other cartoonists have come close to turning the absurdity of Reagan Washington into something to laugh at without then crying.

"Cynicism," wrote H.G. Wells, "is humour in ill-health." By this scale, "Washingtoon"'s humor is on the brink of terminal cancer. Like his colleagues at The Voice and every other American of liberal bent, Stamaty demonstrates that survival that which has become vital in America in the '80s; cynicism.

It is the attitude spawned and fed by the kind of thinking. Stamaty satirizes in "Washingtoon" when a Pentagon official testifying at a committee hearing says: "At present, Soviet defense spending causes 85 percent more damage to the Soviet economy than U.S. defense spending does to the U.S. economy. The gap is unacceptable, it must be closed."

THOSE WHO hold fast to their ideals, who cannot but take themselves seriously, react to conservative Washington by kicking and screaming--by marching and writing and knocking their heads against walls. But the New Right has done its greatest damage in the rest of liberal America. It has stomped all over ideals and beliefs turning an army of believers into a generation of cynics. And while there are those who still carry globes and organize proves the vast majority wants only to laugh. A little humor never hurt anyone.