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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NEWS
I hate to break it Rick, but "Boehner Seeks Rules Change" would have bombed back in the days of print, too. First rule of headline writing: What's the news? "Boehner Seeks Rules Change" isn't news. "Boehner: Limit Back-Benchers' Power" is inside baseball, but that'd be news. Or if you're at the NY Post: "Boehner To Back-Benchers: Drop Dead."
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PLANE STRIP
I've been a reader since the early 80s, thanks to the Guardian. I showed the "How did you know it was an American plane?" strip to my daughter (born '84). Her response? "That could be a drone today." The more things change...
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WHAT?
What?! Facts at a Congressional hearing? And the questioner accepts them? I mean, I know it's a fantasy cartoon, but you wouldn't be able to get away with that today.
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ENVY OR PITY
I'm not sure whether to envy or pity those readers who have one favorite strip! How can they choose? I mean: "You got in!" "Big Mac!" "Don't you think they probably have drugstores in California?" "I'm my parents!" -
HOW SHE KNOWS
Looks like we're approaching my all-time favorite daily strip. where a Congressman/Senator asks this little old Cambodian peasant woman how she knows it was an American plane. He says there are big planes, little planes, etc. whereupon she replies with the make, model number, and name of the plane!
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TAKE ME BACK
I certainly hope we are going to see Zonker doing his Jacques Cousteau homage in Walden Puddle. These flashbacks take me back to when I discovered Doonesbury in the International Herald Tribune when working for Honeywell in Paris during the late '70s.
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LONGTIME READER
As a Tulsan and longtime reader of the strip who remembers many of the originals in the current Classic Doonesbury retrospective, I am appalled that the Tulsa World has dropped the strip. Michael is from Tulsa! I hope that we will someday be able to read the strip in his hometown again.
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MEANINGFUL
If the word "classic" can mean something as meaningful today as when it was created, then today's "bomb" strip is the all-time classic of the Doonesbury collection. Talk about standing the test of time -- unfortunately and tragically.
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FUNNY
Funny that the Blowback from Sunday's strip focuses on the doctor's waiting room time and not the tidbit that an oil exec (propped up by federal tax subsidies) is making EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS AN HOUR.
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WAPO
I see that the site is now carried by The Washington Post instead of Slate. I hope this is not going to cause any issues, like subscriptions, sign-ins and fees.
Editor's Note:Nope! And you can read about the move in Michael Cavna's "Comics Riffs" column, here.
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FAVORITE LINE
Even 40 years later, I think that "I said, 'Look, Martha, here come the bombs'" is still just about my single favorite line from a Doonesbury cartoon.
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B.D.
While I miss having new daily strips to keep a true perspective on life in the 21st century, I am getting a huge kick out of revisiting the past. Of particular fun for me was the series with B.D. in Vietnam. I have just moved to 'Nam (not even a week ago) to teach English, so the series has a special relevancy for me. No, I haven't run into Phred yet, nor do I drink Schlitz. But at 50 cents a can, Heineken does quite well thank you very much.
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MY GUESS
My guess is the fellow in today's strip doesn't have to wait to see his doctor. If perchance he does, well, you get what you pay for, don't you?
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HERE IN CANADA
The most likely reason patients are kept waiting is that previous patients have taken longer than their allotted time, and the doctor has been patient with them. When I read "Rate My Doctor" comments, the largest number either complain the doctor has reminded them they've exceeded their alloted time, or complain of being kept waiting. I have a very good doctor, who has a sign posted: "One issue per appointment, please." If you have two issues, you book two appointments. Here in Canada, this costs people nothing. Sometimes I run over my allotted 15 minutes with him, and often I have to wait 15 minutes past my appointment time. The later in the day my appointment is, the longer I have to wait.
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FAMILY
Arghh! Now that GBT is doing only Sunday strips, I feel this pathetic sense of loss. With no regulars in today's, it only becomes worse. I feel like I've lost a family...
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SUBTLE
Subtle. I suspect a lot of people are going to miss the point of how right wing Republicans do not see doctors as a vital community resource, which is why their time is so valuable.
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EMERGENCIES
Doctors don't keep people waiting just for fun. Sometimes their schedules get thrown by unforeseen medical emergencies. Wouldn't you want your doctor to keep other patients waiting if you had a sudden heart attack in the examining room? It does happen, you know.
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A BILL
Today's strip, in which a patient is kept waiting two hours past his appointment time and charges the doctor for that time, is very familiar. A friend of mine did just that a couple years ago. She was kept waiting about an hour-and-a-half. She could wait no longer. She handed the receptionist a bill for her time and left. The doctor paid her bill.
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B.D.'S ADVENTURE
I've been re-reading B.D.'s 'adventure' in the 10-years-ago section of the Flashbacks page. Oh, seeing that he actually has hair? Yeah, that's a shock. Anyway, flew SAR in 'Nam so I can relate too well but it's not a flashback trigger -- not the way it's presented -- but a deep sigh of relief. And in the 5-1-04 strip, the line "Daddy's coming home!" -- there just isn't anything more to say, on so many levels. Thanks for tolerable reality; thanks for relief; thanks for the attitude.
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SYNCHRONICITY
Synchronicity, you gotta love it. The Mother Jones article in the today's Daily Briefing -- "America's Real Criminal Element: Lead" -- ties in nicely with the 'Cosmos' episode this week. On 'Cosmos', Neil DeGrasse-Tyson details the efforts of Dr. Claire Patterson to raise the alarm about tetra ethyl lead. The Mother Jones article parallels that with a cogent story of how that chemical toxin altered the patterns of our lives.