- Can a mere cartoon strip change the world? Doonesbury
creator Garry Trudeau is putting his money where his characters' mouths
are and may well find out.
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- Garry Trudeau has been one of the most influential and
persistent voices of liberal America since he started drawing his Doonesbury
cartoon strip in 1970. And yet, before the last US presidential election,
he was backing George Bush.
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- The reason was simple. Like all satirists, he said, he
was hoping for a Bush victory because "Gore's a moving target; Bush
is a stable, hard target, like Quayle".
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- And now he is stepping up from the drawing board to take
the challenge more directly to the president. He is offering a $10,000
reward to anyone who will verify Mr Bush's account of his military service
in Alabama in the early 70s.
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- The war records of Mr Bush and the likely Democratic
candidate Senator John Kerry are expected to be a key issue in November's
presidential election.
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- Senator Kerry won medals for bravery in combat in Vietnam,
but returned home to be an anti-war campaigner. Mr Bush was a pilot in
the Texas National Guard, a volunteer reserve force which at the time was
seen by many as a way of avoiding going to war.
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- Accusations have been made that Mr Bush used family connections
to join the National Guard and that he spent the last two of his five years'
service working on the political campaign of one of his father's friends
in Alabama instead of military duties. His opponents have demanded evidence
that he took part in training in those two years.
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- The White House has vigorously denied that the president
avoided his duty, even going as far as publishing his dental and medical
records from the time to demonstrate that nothing out of the ordinary happened.
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- Military service
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- But in the Doonesbury strips published this week in thousands
of newspapers across the US and many in other countries, Garry Trudeau
has made his attempt to flush out anyone who can verify Mr Bush's record.
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- In Monday's strip Mr Bush was seen asking aides why no
evidence can be found of his military service. "This is ridiculous,"
he says. "800 guardsmen and nobody else saw me? What's it take to
find one reliable witness?"
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- The next frame has the strip's main character, Mike Doonesbury,
standing beside a notice board offering: "Become a witness! WIN $10,000!"
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- On Trudeau's website, he specifies that the reward is
for anyone who "personally witnessed George W Bush reporting for drills
at the Dannelly Air National Guard Base between the months of May and November
of 1972".
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- Trudeau told the BBC that he was making the pledge "for
the usual reason - to keep busy".
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- "This sort of thing is actually my job," he
says. "I just stand out on a corner with my little pea-shooter, scanning
the passing parade."
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- In offering the reward, however, Trudeau appears to be
getting more involved in the story than is usual for a cartoonist. In fact
Dr Nick Hiley, of the University of Kent's Centre for the Study of Cartoons
and Caricature, says the cartoonist's offer is, as far as he knows, unprecedented.
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- Independence
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- "I can't think of a parallel for it. In some ways
it's a very strange thing to do, because it suggests that the cartoonist
can't do what he wants through his cartooning but has got to do it another
way."
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- It is only possible for a Trudeau to have such editorial
independence because of the way US cartoonists syndicate their work to
newspapers, Dr Hiley says. Outside the US, cartoonists usually work directly
for a newspaper which sets its own agenda.
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- In any case, though, Trudeau thinks it unlikely that
anyone will come forward to claim the prize, which he says would actually
be donated to a charity which supports US servicemen and women overseas.
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- "I would think it highly unlikely that a witness
would present himself at this late date - the Bushies have been looking
for him for three election cycles, so he probably doesn't exist.
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- "However, if the prize does jog someone's memory,
I'll surrender the money with little regret. Thanks to Bush's tax cuts
for people who don't need them, I'm flush and looking for a way to give
back."
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- If the president takes his father's line on Trudeau,
he probably won't be too worried. The first President Bush said the cartoonist
was "a little elitist who is spoiled, derisive, ugly and nasty".
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- © BBC MMIV
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- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3514867.stm
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