DOONESBURY AND BLOGGING: Well, this is going to be a fun week; Garry Trudeau has discovered blogs. Here's today's Doonesbury strip -- check it out for yourself.

As a life-long Doonesbury reader, I've notice that Trudeau's satire tends to come in two forms -- the gentle but effective dig, or the over-the-top, didactic rant. Unfortunately, as he's matured, I've noticed more of the latter and less of the former (I'm not the only one; Jacob Levy points me to this excellent Reason analysis of Trudeau). Too soon to tell where he's going with this week's strips, but as for the implication that bloggers don't know what the hell they're talking about, Trudeau's living in a glass house. To quote from the introduction of one of his large-scale collections, People's Doonesbury:

"Question: You are rumored to go to some lengths when you are preparing a sequence in the strip. How much research do you really do?

Trudeau: As little as I can possibly get away with. It is for this quality above all others, I think, that I am so admired by undergraduates; I know just enough to create the impression that I know a lot."

Developing....

[Are you really a fair arbiter of satire, given your political leanings?--ed. When it comes to satire, and comic strips in particular, I don't care where the satirist is on the political spectrum, so long as they're funny. I think the funniest comic strip today is Aaron McGruder's Boondocks, which is hysterical two-thirds of the time and leftist junk the other third of the time. Garry Trudeau is funny about 50% of the time at this point. I've never laughed at a Ted Rall cartoon. And can anyone explain Zippy the Pinhead to me?]

UPDATE: In the spirit of bloggers correcting their mistakes, I should point out that this is not the first time Trudeau has mentioned blogging in a strip. Here's the first mention, way back in.... early September (link via NetHistory)