'Doonesbury' Artist Trudeau Skewers Bush

[Rose Siding]

NEW YORK -- Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who has skewered politicians for decades in his comic strip "Doonesbury," tells Rolling Stone magazine he remembers Yale classmate George W. Bush as "just another sarcastic preppy who gave people nicknames and arranged for keg deliveries."

Trudeau attended Yale University with Bush in the late 1960s and served with him on a dormitory social committee.

"Even then he had clearly awesome social skills," Trudeau said. "He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable ... He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation."

Trudeau said he penned his very first cartoon to illustrate an article in the Yale Daily News on Bush and allegations that his fraternity, DKE, had hazed incoming pledges by branding them with an iron.

The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times "it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn't hurt any more than a cigarette burn."

"It does put one in mind of what his views on torture might be today," Trudeau said.


a little more really good stuff..........

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-bush-trudeau,0,7576253.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Cha]

1. This is too Cool for School! I love that Garry Trudeau had

an inside peek at bush's sociopathy at Yale..early on.

[Cha]

4. OMG! Early tortures...after the frogs!

"The article in the campus paper prompted The New York Times to interview Bush, who was a senior that year. Trudeau recalled that Bush told the Times "it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn't hurt any more than a cigarette burn."

"It does put one in mind of what his views on torture might be today," Trudeau said.

Having mocked presidents of both parties in the "Doonesbury" strip since 1971, Trudeau said Bush has been, "tragically, the best target" he's worked with yet.

"Bush has created more harm to this country's standing and security than any president in history," Trudeau said. "What a shame the world has to suffer the consequences of Dubya not getting enough approval from Dad."

.

[peacetalksforall]

12. In one of the bio's of the Bush boys - one of the brothers said

that G would shoot at his brothers in the hallways with a bb gun. Maybe all kids did that - until they were caught.

[NMDemDist2]

2. wow

the "torture" dig was very good

wonder if the 1st cartoon is printed with the article

[havocmom]

3. Has anybody claimed the $10,000 Trudeau offered to whoever could

show proof that bush* served his NG time in AL?

No? LOL Didn't think so.

Mr. Trudeau, you are an inspiration to us all!

[pfitz59]

14. Bush*'s NG pay stubs were 'inadvertantly' destroyed.

Read it in an article the other day. Too bad the microfiche's are gone. Shucks! BFEE records have a habit of 'disappearing'.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

17. Some one pointed out earlier on this board.....

...that there should be Social Security records of his pay.

[KansDem]

5. Wouldn't you love to get that Yale article with Trudeau's first cartoon?

And it was about Bush!!!

Hahahahaha!!! :D

[Shadder]

6. Working on it right now

My Sister-In-Law works at Yale

[LincolnMcGrath]

8. Cool Beans

[indigobusiness]

7. It's sure to be resurrected

now.

[Elidor]

9. Can't wait to see it

[seventhson]

10. Yale Really Sucks

when it can produce such genius and still graduate drooling imbeciles from right wing hell with the same degree

shame on them (Harvard too)

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

19. It's called being a legacy admittance.

Ivy League schools give admission preferences to the children of alumni. It assures the alumni will donate money to the schools.

[seventhson]

22. That is why Yale really sucks

people get in not based on merit or accomplishments or even potential: they get in because they are rich and part of the ivy league elites.

It puts the lie to the myth that Yale is a "better" svhool".

In my opinion it is far worse because of this than your average community college where the students work harder and are more deserving of credentials.

Bush was a social promotion and look what it did for the world.

Yale sucks/Harvard does the same (and both with theirt legacy spook "fraternities" which breed fascism like botulismc rats.

[Placebo]

24. "Are Your Parents Famous?"

They actually ask you that on the application! WTF?!?!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

45. I agree

Bush is a God damn hypocrite to preach against affirmative action when he was a legacy admission to Yale which is itself a form of affirmative action.

[TaleWgnDg]

26. . . . about GWBush and "legacy admissions"

Remember that it was GWBush who stood before America and stated he was AGAINST Affirmative Action? Remember? However, if one rummages around in his bag of worms . . . you'll find "legacy admissions" for (1) Andover Academy, (2) Yale University, and (3) Harvard Business School.

What is "legacy admissions?" Why it's PRIVATIZED "Affirmative Action" for kids whose parents or other family members have attended the same schools. Interesting? Indeed. Think about it.

No surprise. Merely more hypocrisy from GeorgeW.

Does private "Affirmative Action" have quotas? :evilgrin:

[classof56]

36. I'm guessin' not--as long as the money's there!

BTW--welcome to DU. Glad to have you aboard!

Bush Must Go!

[mallard]

30. As a '79 graduate living on about ....

...$5,000 a year, mostly in Asia for the past 25 years...

... who will admit to even abetting in a sham Bones 'tap' on Tap Night 1978 - taking a blindfolded fool through a fake ritual in which he believed he was being initiated into Skull & Bones...

... having attended Timothy Dwight College - the "closest to Paris" - who still deeply admires the embodiment of liberal academic ideal known as Kingman Brewster with religious conviction...

I JUST WANT TO ADD: THAT'S RIGHT, seventhson!

[seventhson]

39. I come from a YALE "family"

I am even related to Brewster (distantly), and I know whereof I speak.

The problem with fascist elites (and not all Yale alumni/ae are fascist elites - elites, yes/fascists not necessarily - is that because of the inherited nature of privilege and wealth they believe that with no merit whatsoever they are entitled to prestige and obeisance.

Because Yale, Harvard, Princeton (and others) inculcate their graduates with a sense that they are better than everyone else due to the fact that they have a "better" education and cultural experience
(Boola-Boola and Harvard, Harvard, Rah Rah Rah - which was creatively tapped into by Harvard Grad Putzi Hanfstaengl for the Nazi PR chant/salute: "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" for his boy Adolph and all that rot) - it makes no difference if the graduates are deviant parasites on society like Shrub and Ashcroft or whether they are creative geniuses like Trudeau - they all get the alleged benefit of the Yale brand name.

Idiots like Shrub and some of the fascists like those from Yale who backed Hitler and were prosecuted under the Trading with the Enemies Act in 1842 (Prescott Bush, Roland Harriman, etc.) USE this elitist network to maintain and further this power.

The masses lie in awe of these schools when in fact they are mostly breeding grounds for parasitism.

Obviously you are an exception. Trudeau is too. Thanks for that.

[ewagner]

11. Do you think

Dubya will be asked to "elaborate" on his fraternity hazing techniques by the mainstream news?

Let's see....that relates to:

Values
Character
Personal Responsibility

(feel free to add your own here)

[Catshrink]

13. Heck, you know he won't remember....

and I wonder if that Trudeau cartoon from the YDN will mysteriously turn up missing.

[pfitz59]

15. BFEE records have ALL been purged.

Try and find the SEC filings on "Zapata Oil"! Good luck!

[Rose Siding]

16. Here's the Rolling Stone article

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story?id=6298171

Doonesbury Goes to War

Garry Trudeau talks about Iraq, the coming election and his old classmate George W. Bush

snip>
... Howard Dean was in my class. My feeling is, there should have been a cap this year on Yale graduates running for president . Howard Dean I knew quite well from boyhood. We'd gone to a summer camp together. When Howard became governor, he told some reporter that he'd gotten his sense of humor from me. I wrote him and said, "That's utter bullshit. When you knew me as a teenager, I didn't have a sense of humor. Life was much too grim."

I think Howard did an astonishing thing with his campaign. When people look back at 2004, it'll be obvious just how much he turned an election that Bush could have walked away with into a real competition. He forced everybody to take on the war issue. And his fine, righteous anger got the base motivated, in a way that might not otherwise have happened.

Did you know Bush as a student?

We both served on the Armour Council, which was the social committee for our residential college. Nobody in my freshman dorm knew what the council was. But I apparently had shown some leadership qualities in the first three or four days of school, so I was elected unanimously. George Bush was chairman. Our duties consisted of ordering beer kegs and choosing from among the most popular bands to be at our mixers. He certainly knew his stuff -- he was on top of it .

Even then he had clearly awesome social skills. Legend has it that he knew the names of all forty-five of his fellow pledges when he rushed Deke. He later became rush chairman of Deke -- I do believe he has the soul of a rush chairman. He has that ability to connect with people. Not in the empathetic way that Clinton was so good at, but in the way of making people feel comfortable.

He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable. He was very good at all the tools for survival that people developed in prep school -- sarcasm, and the giving of nicknames. He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation.

[onehandle]

18. Excerpts from Rolling Stone article:

Doonesbury Goes to War

In 1971, a year after he graduated from Yale, Garry Trudeau went on the game show To Tell the Truth. He had just launched a crudely drawn comic strip called "Doonesbury," but nobody knew who he was: Only one celebrity panelist correctly guessed his identity. "I don't remember which one picked me," Trudeau says with a laugh. "Orson Bean?"

If Trudeau repeated his appearance today, even hard-core media junkies would still have trouble identifying him. His work appears in 700 newspapers worldwide, he was nominated for an Academy Award for a "Doonesbury" special, he is the only artist ever to receive a Pulitzer Prize for a comic strip, and he is married to Jane Pauley. But Trudeau gives so few interviews -- he's appeared on TV only once in the past three decades -- that he has earned a reputation as the J.D. Salinger of cartooning. The low profile is mainly an act of self-preservation: His daily strip generates so much controversy that putting out fires could consume all his time. "I didn't need to do it," he says with a shrug, "so why not save myself the aggravation?"

Breaking his long silence, Trudeau sat down with Rolling Stone in the modest studio in Manhattan where he creates "Doonesbury." Despite the flecks of gray in his hair, at fifty-six he has the easygoing, curious manner of a grad student still fascinated by the world around him. It's no exaggeration to say that Trudeau revolutionized the funny pages, creating a space where reactionaries and radicals alike squabble over the issues of the day. His style is part Charles Schulz, part Charles Dickens. Over the years his characters have grappled with everything from AIDS and abortion to Alzheimer's. But with the election of George W. Bush, who attended Yale with Trudeau back in the Sixties, "Doonesbury" has taken on an urgency and relevance reminiscent of its early, gleeful assaults on Nixon. Trudeau offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could verify that Bush fulfilled his duties in the Air National Guard, and he brought home the reality of the war by having his character B.D. lose a leg while fighting in Iraq. For the first time, Trudeau also drew B.D. without the helmet he has worn since the days when he enlisted in Vietnam to get out of writing a college term paper.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story?id=6298171

[sandnsea]

20. aaah, now I see, frat boy pranks

It all makes sense now. The bastard.

[dArKeR]

21. ‘Doonesbury’ creator recalls classmate Bush - MSWHORE

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5439743

[Whoa_Nelly]

23. The "who would you vote for today?" poll on this article page

Bush 40%
Kerry 57%
Nader 3%

Go there and vote! lol

[crossroads]

25. Those lil old torture pranks put a whole new slant to his idea of...

what constitutes compassion, eh?
:eyes:

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. Why did this not stop him getting elected in 2000?

"Bush told the Times "it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn't hurt any more than a cigarette burn.""

I'm astounded. It's just mentioned in passing, as though it's nothing new. The current President of the United States had freely admitted to torturing people, as a 20 year old (or so), and this wasn't brought up in the last election?

This isn't the 'blowing up frogs' story - which I assume was when he was an undeveloped kid. This is a supposed adult, sadistically inflicting pain just because he can. This man needs therapy. Seriously.

How did he know it didn't hurt more than a cigarette burn? He's had them both done to him? Or he's stood by, or even done it himself, and watched the pain on someone's face, or the writhing of their body, while it's done?

God this is depressing. How was this man ever elected to anything? I wouldn't trust him to be a dog-catcher - he'd torture the poor mutts.

I've just sent a message to Tony Blair, forwarding the coat hanger story. I presume he won't see it himself, but at least it will put one more bit of doubt in some underling's mind about the monster Blair has allied himself with.

[Stephanie]

28. It WAS brought up in 2000, and we had the cartoon too.

I remember it very well. I must have first seen it on the discussion boards at Salon, or else at Buzzflash or someplace like that. We had the blowing up frogs, shooting at his brothers, branding the frat boys, skipping out of the guard. We knew then that he was a psychopath. But nobody else cared.

[Bridget Burke]

29. The New Yorker printed the cartoon.

All of this stuff was known. But the news media found other things to talk about. Gore was dull, you know, and he told all those lies. About inventing the internet...

Grrrr.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. Wow. It never made it across the Atlantic

I heard about how he enthusiastically had people executed in Texas, and he always came across as an uncaring selfish brat, but I don't think I ever heard anything like this (I've only seen the frog stories on DU, too). I really think this might give Blair pause for thought, if he got to hear about it. I'm just wondering how to guarantee getting the message to him.

[Stephanie]

34. The frog story was from a NY Times bio

All of this was out there. But nobody knew about it. How is this possible?

[Stephanie]

33. I've been looking for the cartoon. Only found this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,3905294-103632,00.html

Friday September 24, 1999

<snip>

It has been claimed for some months that when he was a Yale undergraduate in the 60s, Mr Bush joined, and later became president of, the college fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon, whose initiation rites involved branding each newly enrolled member on the backside with a red-hot branding iron.

On Tuesday Doonesbury interrupted its normal cartoon format with a photograph, taken circa 67, of a flesh burn in the shape of the Greek letter Delta on an unidentified undergraduate Yale buttock. The photo, which shows the DKE brand, was taken by Martin Oppenheimer, now a Washington investment manager, who snapped it when he was working for the Yale Daily News and Mr Bush was president of the "Deke" fraternity.

"This week's strip isn't anything more than sustained silliness," Mr Trudeau, himself a Yale graduate, told the Washington Post diary yesterday. His strip, he said, merely offered "a perspective on George's youthful sadism".

The Bush press office is taking the exposure in good part. "I cannot confirm or deny that George W Bush was chairman of the Deke house who blackballed Garry Trudeau," a spokeswoman told the Post. Mr Bush, meanwhile, is saying nothing on the issue. <more>

[FighttheFuture]

40. Sighh,,, he was not elected, he was $elected!

[belle]

44. As far as that goes, cigarette burns hurt quite enough...

I mean, I certainly wouldn't vote for someone who thought it was O.K. to put out their cigarettes on people...

[midnight armadillo]

32. Like mother like son

"He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable ... He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation."<\i>

Now, isn't this exactly how Babs is always described?? Apparently the apple doesn't fall far from the tree indeed...

[sniffa]

35. woah! bush taLked about that abortion

"it was just a coat hanger, and ... it didn't hurt any more than a cigarette burn."

how heartLess.

[missile_bender]

37. ?it didn't hurt any more than a cigarette burn.? How does he know?

Does W have a DKE brand? SHOW US THE BRAND. Demand it be shown under a Freedom of Information Act Request.

And all of the Republicans who support torture should volunteer for branding, too.

[rocktivity]

38. "He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable"

Trudeau said..."He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation."

Why I'm glad I saw F9/11 a second time: There's a little scene where Bush is on a hunting trip. He fires his rifles, wheels around sharply, and snaps, "Did anybody say, 'Good shot'?" Immediately the air is filled with compliments--"DAMN good shot!" I found it even more distrubing than his "They call you the elite--I call you my base" scene, though he should lose the election on that remark alone!

:headbang:
rocknation

[mark11727]

42. "DAMN good shot!"

I just remembered an incident from a very long time ago... The boss of the crappy factory I was working in had bought a new (luxury car), and drove lazy eights around the parking lot as we all stood outside and watched.

Applause was not mandatory, but appreciated.

I'm in a real bad mood today.

[fishnfla]

41. I made my first nomination on this one

cool story, thanks for the catch and the link

Edit: D'OH I am such a loser!, its already up there <kicking self>

[Generator]

43. It must warm the cockels of the Shrub lovers out there to know

their "Prez" is a sadistic, smarmy frat boy at heart. What a guy!