Blowback
Blowback
A clean, well-lit place to vent
Please feel free to contribute to this frequently-updated forum, which posts selected commentary on our favorite comic strip. If you'd like your critique to be posted, please note that civility, if not approbation, counts. Click here to submit a comment.
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B.D.
"We could have won, you know, if we'd really wanted to." Makes me wonder if B.D. will say that to an Afghani one day.
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SIX WEEKS
I am retiring in six weeks and really loved Sunday's strip. Based on Bernie's response to Mike, I am definitely ready to retire.
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REMEMBER
Asimov thought of it first. Remember the Encyclopedists.
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US
It's true that Mike was not like that back in Walden: none of us was like that "back in Walden." We have become Comfortably Numb.
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TIME TO RETIRE
I knew it was time to retire after working at home for a year and dreading the rigor of working in the office. I think I'm a bit older than Mike but I'm not sure because I was in college when the strip first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
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TITLE CHARACTER
Re Today's strip: Great punch line. Having had a mostly-academic career, "monetize" isn't in my speaking vocabulary, but after my official retirement I'm still mostly doing what I've always done, so I guess I'm not ready to retire either. It's too bad that the strip's title character ended up being the one preoccupied with money; he wasn't like that back in Walden. But I sympathize with him about everything hurting!
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FRONT LINES
Weaponizing the truth, Mel's not one jot partisan; she's on the front lines to defend us against domestic enemies. Huzzah!
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MEL
Aw, c'mon! Mel's smarter than that.
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EMBARRASSING DOCUMENTS
In the 50-years-ago-today Flashback strip Trudeau sticks it to F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover with that reference to their "top secret F.B.I. file room." Just months earlier, on March 8, 1971, the F.B.I. office in a Philly suburb was burgled by the unknown Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., which made off with a treasure trove of embarrassing documents detailing the F.B.I.’s illegal activities. Journalist Betty Medsger broke the story days later in The Washington Post and her 2014 book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I. tells the story, as does the 2014 documentary 1971.
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2016
Just noticed the first panel in the strip from 5 years ago today, about 2016 post-election shock. Shadowy figures in the background seem to be saluting with a single arm outstretched as if to be saying, "Heil Hitler" and the red, white and blue balloons all seem to be somewhat deflated, or am I reading too much into it?...
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DOWNSIZING TRAUMA
How could you move to another subject without resolving the Kim-Mike downsizing trauma?
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ROLAND
Oh Roland, welcome back. You have been missed.
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REAL CALLING
Re today's Flashback strip from '01, when Boopsie is applying to appear on "Survivor": perhaps the czar of "The Apprentice" missed his real calling.
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THE BRIGHT SIDE
On the bright side, at least that thing must have had a low carbon footprint!
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MAMA
Prescience rears its head once more. Make America Mighty Again!
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EATING CROW
Let's hope the select committee on the 1/6 siege can start to turn the tide against the real steal (of our democracy). Otherwise -- as today's strip vividly augurs -- we may look forward to generations of Americans eating crow. On Independence Day, one weeps for the land we may lose.
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ALWAYS GLAD TO SEE THEM
On today's Doonesbury Flashbacks page, we are treated to four strips featuring Davenports, beginning with the poignant moment of Dick's death when the birds came. Over the years, the Davenports have been perhaps my favorite characters. They were the last good Republicans -- G. H. W. Bush and Barbara may have been the real world equivalents. Always glad to see them.
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Q
Just as I suspected, Garry (under the guise of Phred) is Q, and has been posting cryptic, subliminal messages since at least 1996!
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RE-ENACTMENT
While researching a book, the late Pulitzer laureate Tony Horwitz (a DC native) did some re-enactment himself. Unfortunately, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998) has proven more prescient than he might have thought. So now the Lost Causers' casus belli is that Trump won because he says so. Trouble is, if they fight on flaccidly opposed, they may yet prevail. Pity.
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MEL
Harassed by an open carrier in a recent Flashback, Leo finds his voice to point out how wounded vets fought for freedoms that include such bravado. Let's hope Mel finds hers, to get through to some hard brass skulls that washing one's hands of internecine assault does our nation no favors. In the wake of 1/6, with Chief Deputy Whip Dan Kildee (among others, no doubt) reeling from "Post-Trump Stress Disorder," one holds one's breath for Mel. Again. All the more, come to think of it, since our ex-Commander-in-Chief admits (on tape) to habitual sexual assault -- and has been credibly charged with rape.