Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 05, 2010

Next, Roland visits Camp Douglas Prison.

..and do not forget the San Patricios!

Instead of “Hard to say,” the correct response by Vern should have been, “Yep, all that and much more.”

And for those of you who would point to the horrors of Camp Sumter (the official name of the Confederate POW camp, located near Andersonville, Sumter County, Georgia), I would remind you to also consider Camp Number 3, (the official name of the Federal POW camp, located near Elmira. Chemung County, New York) where fully 1/3 of the 12,000 Confederate prisoners held died of disease, malnutrition, and exposure resulting from conditions both negligently and purposeful inflicted upon them by Federal authorities. Elmira was the most notorious, but the other Federal POW camps (particularly Camp Douglas, near Chicago) were not much better, with prisoner death tolls appalling by any measure and, arguably, with less reason than at Camp Sumter.

… and this war has been over for nearly 150. keep stoking the fires, folks.

The Yankee’s weren’t all peaches and cream either. My ancestors were farming in Virginia back then and Yankee soldiers would regularly come raid the farm and steal the family heirlooms.

Hardly a civil war, was it?

Trudeau’s a bigot. An anti-southern, anti-military, anti-Red-State bigot. What else do you call someone who makes sweeping generalizations about people?

I’d call such people political cartoonists, at least in polite company.

It’s just like asking someone, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

GT said after Obama’s election: “Fortunately, political commentary is only a small part of what I do. Mostly I tell stories. I have over thirty characters, most of whom live at a remove from politics. I won’t be closing up shop in January.”

Really? One wouldn’t be able to tell that from your strips though.

hizzonner said: “Trudeau’s a bigot. An anti-southern, anti-military, anti-Red-State bigot. What else do you call someone who makes sweeping generalizations about people?”

‘Round here, we usually refer to such people with names like “Beck,” “Hannity,” “Limbaugh,” “Coulter,” etc…

This cartoon is not a generalazation is talking about one group of Southerners who cant catch a hint!! I know people like that and I know the complete opposite.

These days, GT only does political commentary on people he doesn’t like. He used to be able to see absurdity everywhere, but now he’s much more politically selective. When the looniest things happen on the isle left of center, Garry votes “present” by telling interesting but totally irrelevant stories about Alex, Toggle, etc.

Hizzoner, the truth hurts huh.

wow, they sure came out of the woodwork on this one….. now, flip the light switch and watch them scuttle back to their nests

That “lupus of news” remark on Monday shows Garry Trudeau’s amazing turnaround time. Jon Stewart said that only two weeks ago. What other comic works on such a short deadline?

Susan, I am afraid that Roland will be interviewing someone else tomorrow.

Al, I have not researched the American P.O.W. camps, but I am sure that there were abuses on both sides. Let’s face it: The t-shirt vendor would have given a pat response: “We’re celebrating our heritage & states’ rights”. That’s what all old confederates (read: traitors) parrot about the Civil War: “Heritage. States’ rights. Heritage. States’ rights”.

Hizz, please cite one of Trudeau’s “sweeping generalizations”. What, precisely, did he write, and when did he publish it?

Aw, so the poor wittle Southerners feel stung.

Tell you what, folks: however much the North had its own excesses during the Civil War, we don’t keep on CELEBRATING it.

Your side does.

So as long as that happens, kwitcherbitchin’ about taking some heat in return.

The War Between the States wasn’t any more brutal on both sides than the Revolutionary War. It seems the closer you are, such as neighbors and friends, the more brutal you become when they take the opposing side.

sadly GT depiction of these whackjobs is accuate. I think the civil war re-enctor hits a little close to hiome for Hizzoner

PeoplesMush, I LOVE your picture! I wish that the Patriots still had that logo on their helmets. It was so beautifully anachronistic.

Fbjsr, interesting statements. What are your sources?

In my adopted city, we have Belle Isle, site of one camp. No one ever writes about it and there aren’t even any signigicant markers there. All it is now is a bike/walking path.

If you get a slanted bigot on one side, or several, and just listen to them only, you will likely navigate crooked, but if you get several on both sides, they will show you every facet of it. They will scrape up anything there is to exhibit. This is how we run a court of law for instance. Between the two sides you can judge the right course.

Trudeau has gone over the edge. He is no longer funny. This is not a Comic strip, but a political attack piece.

A friend of mine’s father was a POW at Elmira, and it wasn’t much better than Andersonville.

She died a few years ago in her late 90s, and I would imagine she had to have been one of the last living children of a Confederate soldier.

I think most folks are missing out on the most delicious bits of irony in this strip:

Roland managed to find the one person in a Civil War re-enactment who’s just as much of an iconoclast as himself - unless, of course, you actually believe there were T-shirt vendors wandering around the great battles of the Civil War.

He may be sporting suspenders and a beard instead of tattoos and a nose ring, but this T-shirt vendor is as clueless as any teenager working a theme park gift shop - he knows nothing about the subject at hand, other than what’s printed on his merchandise.

3.So, of course, given #1 and #2, it”s practically ordained Roland Hedley will choose THIS person as a representative subject matter expert. Go Faux!

WOW! Are you Yankees speaking about the War of Northern Agression? I am a damned Yankee in his mid eithties who volunteered in WW2 soon as I was 17. I have lived in the South two separate times and found most of the people a lot frienlier than most of you that try to degrade their culture and history with your comments. I suppose most of you failed American History and actually believe that Lincoln freed the slaves? The Emancipation Proclamation only proclaimed to free the slaves of the Confederate States over which he had NO control. The Emancipation didn’t bother to free the slaves in the four Northern states that still had them over which he DID have control. His only goal was to preserve the Union as he stated on several occasions. End of rant.

@NashvilleMac:

I must be really dumb - because even after your explanation, I fail to see the irony. If there is a message here (and I say this with a very lound and strong if), which is not political, it is probably that re-enactors are projecting their present-day attitude on the historical alter-egos.

But aren’t we all guilty of that? Including GT? His strips are a reflection of him - not necessarily the society at large.

Now that can be irony.

I don’t think the re-enactments are really about the history. The players just like the uniforms and the game. And they get away from the wife and chores at home.

Nashville, I think GT’s point is that all the folks at this event are at the same level as this “man on the street”.

For all the “Faux” News comments, isn’t it interesting that GT has the usually clueless Roland all of a sudden displaying very relevant knowledge about American history and asking the good ol’ boys some very pointed questions? He’s suddenly sounding like a real journalist.

Hey, hope your heads above water. I had a Nashville convention just cancel because there’s 3 feet of water in the downtown hotels.

hizzonner said, about 6 hours ago - Trudeau’s a bigot. An anti-southern, anti-military, anti-Red-State bigot. What else do you call someone who makes sweeping generalizations about people?

HIZZONNER

I have the misfortune of living in one of those cess-pool red states and can state with over 30 years of experience that the folks I have to share my world with are world-class experts at making sweeping generalizations about everything not in agreement with them.

A few weeks ago we ran a disaster recovery test in New York state a number of miles north and west of NYC. One of the attendees, a native of and never been out of North Carolina, remarked how much like home the place and the people were. She opined that all along she thought New Yorkers were all like the ones she saw thirty years ago on a class trip to Times Square. Her view of EVERYONE north of Richmond, Virginia was that they were all just like those people she saw on 42nd street.

She still unfailingly reminds me of my lack of moral values because I am not “from around here.” Come to think of it, I am rather immoral. I think people are the same everywhere and that is a generalization that actually is true. HIZZONER proves it.

Thanks, Joe, Jr., but your historical rant is not completely accurate. Yes, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all the slaves, but it was the first document in the nation’s history that freed ANY slaves, AND it led directly to the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. Abraham Lincoln had resolved to end slavery despite its constitutional acceptance. He had always been against slavery, but, by the time of his election, he saw that slavery must end. He was the first U.S. president to see this while in office and move the nation in that direction.

As for the Civil War, the seceding states certainly wanted to maintain slavery, and any support for the Confederacy tries to gloss over that ugly fact.

NashvilleMac, that is an interesting read of the strip. Did you survive the flood with loved ones & loved things in tact?

NashvilleMac’s explanation makes sense to me - IT’s about Marketing & Tourist’s $$$ rather than Historical Accuracy.

Vern is obviously not from Georgia (where Camp Sumter aka Andersonville is).

I agree with Shelby Foote … “ANY understanding of the American character in the 20th century must be firmly based on an understanding of the Civil War.”

Whether we debate it or recreate it (in costume) – it’s all good.

Nor should we forget the War Criminals, w t sherman, who never lost a battle against women, children & elderly men and a. lincoln who authorized sherman’s antics.

seed_drill, I was trying to do the math on your friend’s father, and even if she died 10 years ago (you said “a few”), and even if her father was 15 at the end of the war, he would have had to be about 60 when she was born. Is that the deal?

Now, I see we are fighting the War Between the States all over again. I don’t believe it ever ended, to be honest. I have lived in the Midwest, South and Northeast. I still have friends in all those places and know that there are wonderful people and jerks in all of them. But I’ll tell you, every summer I bring a group of New York kids down to Appalachia to take part in a Christian work camp – they are the token Yankee group. And from the very first year, the folks down there have expressed amazement at how polite, helpful, cheerful and hard-working these kids are. And all the kids love each other and look forward to getting together each summer.

Which is a long-winded way of saying those who still want to secede have my pity. There are good folks north and south - and stupid folks. I think Vern is hilarious because he represents unexamined conviction, and that’s the most pathetically funny thing there is.

Cdward, I enjoyed your comment–and the math doesn’t rule out Seed-drill’s friend’s father. Some of the vets had young second wives.

BrianCrook and cdward

My friend’s father was actually on his third marriage, having outlived his first two wives. His third wife was my great-grandmother’s first cousin, which made her my first cousin three times removed. He was in his sixties when she was born and she was 97 or 98 when she died.

She lived across the street from my grandmother and taught for decades at the same school my grandmother taught at, which is why she was more like an aunt than just a casual acquaintance.