Garry Trudeau

The most powerful voice for truth and justice in American journalism is the junkyard dog of editorial cartooning -- and the creator of "Doonesbury."

By David Rubien

Nov 2, 1999 | Much has been made of Ronald Reagan biographer Edmund Morris' invention of himself as a fictional character in order to plumb the cryptic psyche of our cherished former president, but consider this: In 1987, Garry Trudeau, creator of "Doonesbury," beat Morris to the punch, only inversely. Battered by the realization that after eight bizarro years Reagan was basically beyond satire, Trudeau couldn't let go of him. So in one of "Doonesbury's" more perverse tropes, he created a Reagan alter ego called Ron Headrest, who existed in electronic form only and mischievously popped up at will on people's TV screens.

Based on the computer-generated, stuttering '80s TV character "Max Headroom," Headrest was a shtick-figure Reagan with an unleashed id who could smear the 1988 presidential candidates at will ("So is P-P-Paul Laxalt mobbed up?") and finally declared himself one. "If elected president I promise to lie, lie!" cracked a leering Headrest from the tube. "I'll s-s-set up illegal covert operations and lie about them to Congress and the American p-p-people! If detected I promise to falsify documents, shred evidence and preserve plausible de-de-deniability! Then I'll take the Fifth! But with moist eyes! And selflessly ...!"

It was a bit of hysteria on Trudeau's part, and not the first time he seemed to be playing Ahab to Reagan's White Whale. On the eve of the Carter-Reagan election in 1980, Trudeau did a series of strips in which his blowhard TV correspondent Roland Hedley Jr. took a tour of Reagan's brain, pointing out the frayed synapses and dead neurons. It was not subtle. It was as if Trudeau, just days before the election, was using his daily comic strip as a megaphone to yell, "Reagan's a moron! Don't vote for him!" Now, while Trudeau may have been technically correct, you can't really blame the various newspaper editors who refused to run the strips. On the scores of occasions editors have killed Trudeau's strips over "Doonesbury's" 29 years, this was probably the only time the news hacks had even a shred of justification.

But Trudeau has never had an entirely comfortable relationship with the editors who buy his strip. In fact, "Doonesbury" is one of the most controversial comic strips of all time. And it's also one of the greatest, for many of the same reasons. He drives editors crazy, but there's not really a whole lot they can do about it because they know Trudeau is smarter than they are. He can express ideas more clearly, succinctly and wittily than they can, and he does it through a secret weapon -- a combination of images and words that we somewhat mundanely call the comic strip. The great cartoon artist Art Spiegelman may call comics "the hunchbacked, half-witted bastard dwarf stepchild of the graphic arts," but don't tell that to Trudeau. Out of about 250 comic strips circulated in English-language newspapers throughout the world, "Doonesbury" is in the top 10, carried in 1,400 papers. That "Garfield," "Cathy" and "Hagar the Horrible" are carried in even more papers says little beyond elucidating the sorry state of the millennial newspaper comics page. The fact is, Trudeau has won over his millions of readers through the power of his words and ideas, without having to resort to endlessly repeating overweight gags or the foibles of neurotic cat owners.

Ah, you may ask, but isn't that what the comics page is for? Cute drawings, gags and whimsy? Does the bleary-eyed reader, recently roused from sleep with coffee cup in hand, really need to see the president portrayed as a waffle? Or a menacing, cigarette-wielding guy in sunglasses brandishing a gun and popping pills? Or two men getting married? The numbers powerfully answer yes, but that hasn't halted debate over whether "Doonesbury" belongs on the comics page. In fact, several papers run the strip on the editorial page, and may well be justified in doing so. Trudeau, mindful that many of his strips constitute editorializing, has said he doesn't care where newspapers stick "Doonesbury." In 1975 he won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning -- the first time the award went to a comic strip artist -- and he was a finalist for another one in 1989. But the subversive thing about Trudeau is that he gets his message across to all those comics page readers who couldn't care less about the editorial page.

Wiley Miller, who draws a semi-political comic strip called "Non Sequitur," calls Trudeau "far and away the most influential editorial cartoonist in the last 25 years." That's a bold statement to make in a journalism world populated by opinion page artists like Tom Toles, Pat Oliphant and Herblock. But while acknowledging their genius, Miller says, "They're not influential."

Next Page: Michael Doonesbury, a nebbish who could never get a girl

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