Trudeau Discusses Career As Satirist

Garry B. Trudeau, the satirist who created the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoon Doonesbury, lightheartedly defended his craft before an audience at the Law School last night.

Trudeau peppered his hour of comedy with bits of serious commentary on political issues.

"To date, nearly five million people have been arrested for drug-related offenses," he said at one point. "Much of America has to lie a lot [to] deny youthful indiscretion."

On his generation of political candidates, Trudeau said there was only one legitimate question voters had to know: "Who is your favorite Beatle?"

He said he asked this question of a number of politicians.

He said former Mass. governor and presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis told Trudeau "Paul. I like his wife."

Bob Dole, Trudeau said, answered, "Ringo, he's the only one I can remember."

Of President Clinton, Trudeau said, "It's fair to assume that [he] was a Paul-Person...and that he would've lied about it."

But Trudeau said he has no personal malice for the figures he mocks.

"With me it's never personal...it's my job," he said. "I've been whacking public figures [since] back when Mr. Quayle was still whacking golf balls through law school."

Doonesbury oozes progressivism, Trudeau said.

He described himself as "the last angry moderate, which is a liberal with children."

He got his start as a professional cartoonist long before he became a "liberal with children," in his junior year at Yale.

"The miracle of serendipity is wasted on youth," he said.

He said he received his first job solely because of his "generational identity," which consisted, he said, of "routine encounters with politics, rock and roll, sex, and drugs."

But Trudeau's unusual opinions worried his first employers.

Trudeau says his agent consoled him.

"Sooner or later these guys die," he recalls being told.

When Doonesbury received the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, Trudeau said he knew his cartoon "had apparently acquired manners and was fit to sit at the table."

But, he said he was almost bothered by the cartoon's acceptance into the social mainstream.

"Satire is an un-gentlemanly art," he said. "Satire picks a one-sided fight."

"This savage, unrequited sport is protected by the constitution," he said, adding, "its unfairness makes it a good form of social control."

He cautioned against politicians who react strongly to his cartoons, or who threaten him.

"It seems to me that a comic strip is not one of those things you want to seem too concerned about," Trudeau said.

While other cartoons are content to dabble in the real world, Doonesbury plunges in full-force, satirizing politicians by name.

Former President George Bush was portrayed as a bubble, in reference to the lack of vision the Republican allegedly possessed. His son, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, is an empty six-gallon cowboy hat.

Newt Gingrich, the often ostentatious former Speaker of the House, is portrayed as a ticking bomb. And Trudeau draws President Clinton as a waffle.

"Such satire implies that there are moral choices in life," he said. "The human condition is all-inclusive," he added. "We're all in the same leaky boat together. That is why Doonesbury is populated by proxies...of my own kingdom of confusion."

Trudeau also discussed the future of cartoon strips.

"The comics page is a kind of public utility," he said. "Like the phone company, it can be depended on 365 days a year. Also like the phone company, it doesn't get any respect."

He predicted that "animation will gradually replace static images altogether."

To prove this point, he showed a five-minute demo video of how Doonesbury might look in the future, with Doonesbury's very own presidential candidate, the clueless Duke, performing a "Larry King Live" interview.

Despite this new technology, Trudeau assured the audience, "The fundamentals of comics will stay the same."

"Everyone has time for the comics," he said.