Does Doonesbury's Trudeau hate bloggers?

Fellow bloggers, check this out. Apparently some people have gotten the mistaken impression that Garry Trudeau, author of the comic strip Doonesbury, hates bloggers. Nothing could be further from the truth, says one of GBT's top aides:

Regular readers know that for several years GBT has repeatedly addressed blogging from a variety of angles, often sympathetically. In fact, no fewer than five Doonesbury characters are currently bloggers themselves, and some of them were online long before blogs became ubiquitous.

For example, this pre-blog-era series follows Mike's first on-line sojourn in 1993. His much more savvy daughter Alex followed with her own web site in 1996, later developed it into a profitable "video blog" web-cam site, and in 2003, turned to blogging for Dean.

Then there's Zipper, who from his dorm room at Walden College runs a modestly trafficked blog devoted to a niche audience. His inspiration? The legendarily uninhibited blogger Jenny McTaggart, Girl Pirate (nom d'offline: Elmont). Meanwhile, B.D.'s recovery after losing a leg in Iraq was aided and abetted by a CaringBridge blog, ably handled by Boopsie, who dispensed updates to loved ones and conveyed their good wishes to her husband. And more recently, Ray Hightower, B.D.'s comrade in arms, has been painstakingly blogging his detailed way through his tour of duty in Iraq.

It's a common error to assume that Doonesbury's characters each express the precise views of their creator, who would have to be highly schizophrenic to embrace them all. In this particular instance, it's worth noting that Mark Slackmeyer, who trash-talks blogging, is himself a political screedist who has spent the last 30 years passionately expounding his point of view to an almost nonexistent audience. There's a reason why he might feel threatened by a blogosphere that gets far more attention than he.

Technorati Tags : Doonesbury, blogging

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