Doonesbury Comic Strip

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, California's top crime fighter, took on a slippery new villain Tuesday--Zonker, the fictional hippie of "Doonesbury" fame. Lungren, who insists that he enjoys a good laugh as much as the next guy, attacked Zonker and his creator, Garry Trudeau, for contributing to a "permissive attitude" toward drug use with this week's cartoons. "I appreciate political satire," Lungren said at a Capitol news conference, "but I think I know when a line has been crossed.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, California's top crime fighter, took on a slippery new villain Tuesday--Zonker, the fictional hippie of Doonesbury fame. Lungren, who insists that he enjoys a good laugh as much as the next guy, attacked Zonker and his creator, Garry Trudeau, for contributing to a "permissive attitude" toward drug use with this week's cartoons. "I appreciate political satire," Lungren said at a Capitol news conference, "but I think I know when a line has been crossed.

When a politician attacks a cartoon strip or a sitcom character, can he ever really win? If he's snickered at, can he be taken seriously? Who will get the last laugh--Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren or hippie Zonker Harris? Again, last week, we saw a serious politician assailing a humorous character of fiction. California's top law enforcement official called a news conference to berate "Doonesbury's" Zonker for "advancing the wink-and-nod attitude toward drug use."

Not long after the dust settled from the Iraqi explosion that took "Doonesbury" comic strip character B.D.'s left leg last year, the Pentagon was on the phone. The frequent target of "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau, the Defense Department offered the satirist extensive access to soldiers wounded while fighting in Iraq and the doctors and caregivers trying to put their bodies -- and psyches -- back together.

The Doonesbury comic strip took an alarming turn Monday, when it seemed that the character B.D., a former football star now serving in Iraq, might be dead or seriously wounded. Tuesday's strip showed he's alive, and today's reveals his injury -- as well as the first look ever at perennially helmet-wearing B.D.'s hair.

Cartoonist Garry B. Trudeau on Memorial Day will devote his comic strip "Doonesbury" to listing U.S. military personnel who have been killed during the war in Iraq. More than 700 names will appear in tiny type over six panels in the Sunday strip. A note beneath the final panel will say, "List as of April 23, 2004...."

"Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau has apologized--sort of--for a Sunday strip that cited what has turned out to be an Internet hoax that said George W. Bush had the lowest IQ of any president in the last 50 years. "Trudeau takes full responsibility, acknowledging the use of fictional material from an outside source instead of simply making it up as he usually does," the "Doonesbury" Web site says. "The creator deeply apologizes . . . "

Tonight at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo., Uncle Duke from the "Doonesbury" comic strip will toss his ratty baseball hat in the ring for the presidency in a multimedia presentation involving state-of-the-art computer animation. Loren Tom, who played Honey Huan in the New York production of the "Doonesbury" musical, will reprise her role as Duke's long-suffering "Gal Friday." She'll appear at the St. Regis Hotel, offering an audiovisual tour of the Duke 2000 Web site (http://www.