Politics imitating art

Remember back in the 80's when every good comic strip published books of all the comics? Far Side books, Bloom County books, Calvin and Hobbs books. In our house we also had pile of Doonesbury books. And while I might not have gotten every joke at the time I was reading Doonesbury, a few of the strips stuck with me. Probably most of what I know about Watergate is from Doonesbury. Not sure what that says about our education system or me, but there you have it.

When the brand new White House Press Secretary called a press conference to spend a few minutes complaining about crowd size, I was immediately reminded of Doonesbury cartoon from one of those books. Not sure why this particular cartoon stuck with me, but it did. Through the magic of the internet, I was able to look it up. Would you believe there is a Doonesbury search engine?

I remembered it was at the White House, I remembered the last two panels distinctly. And without too much effort I was able to find it. The strip originally ran on Sunday, April 7, 1974. Unfortunately, the image isn't very clear.

Here's a link to it: http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1974/04/07

I had no idea who the two men were when I read this in the early/mid 80s. The voice on the left is White House reporter Hugh Sidney and the voice on the right is Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler.

Panel 1: Okay, who'd like a press briefing?!

Panel 2:

Panel 3: ...in sum, the information available to me at this time does correspond to my knowledge at the time of my previous statement.

Panel 4: That was beautiful, Ron.           Any other questions?

Panel 5: Yes. I have one, Ron.                Yes, Mr. Sidney?

Panel 6: Ron, sometimes I imagine you get up in the morning, look in the mirror before you've shaven, and think to yourself, "Ron, you're about to begin another day of evasion and deceit."

Panel 7: Here's my question, Ron: What do you do after you've come to such a realization?

Panel 8: I shave.

I have no idea why out of books and books of cartoons I remember that one so clearly. It's probably pretty obvious as to why it currently came to mind. In the last reporting I saw on the press secretary, when he said, "No, I'm not confused" it felt like he was channeling Martin Short's character Nathan Shurm.

 

"I know that! Why wouldn't I know that? It's my company, I'm quite aware of that! Is it me? It's him, right?"