Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Bark louder, little dog.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I was promised a recession.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Cross-Platform Media Promotion

Open Thread: Cross-Platform Media Promotion

by | 61 Comments

This post is in: ,


(Doonesbury via GoComics.com)
I’d actually been wondering about a collusion between these two before the Washington Post confirmed it:

… the fictional character’s [Roland Hedley’s] arrival in McGinniss’s real life marked the beginning of a beautiful relationship. This month, Doonesbury’s creator, Garry Trudeau, has partnered with McGinniss for a cartoon collaboration. (“A wild rumpus, as Joe put it,” Trudeau says.)
__
Check out the funnies Monday, and you’ll see Hedley reading excerpts from McGinniss’s bio, “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin,” ahead of its Sept. 20 release date…
__
Trudeau and Lee Salem, president of “Doonesbury” syndicate Universal Uclick, confirm that the excerpts are from the advance edition that the cartoonist received last spring, courtesy of the author. McGinniss did not return requests for comment, but his publicist at Random House/Crown said, “I can confirm that Joe did like the 2010 ‘Doonesbury’ cartoons, and [that’s] why his agent reached out to Mr. Trudeau.”
__
As for Trudeau, he says, “McGinniss’s office first approached me for [the 2010] strip-reprint rights in March, and then subsequently about a possible review.” The cartoonist says he “demurred on the review, but proposed instead an exclusive first serial arrangement.”…

Yes, I’m old — so old, I can remember when Roland Hedley first appeared, as an early-1970s glossy-newsweekly journamalist getting spoofed into identifying the lilac bush in front of Walden College as a “marijuana tree”.

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    The Chicago Tribune, true to its roots, is not running Doonesbury this week because McGinnis’ book hasn’t been fact checked. I’m sure they fact-check Mallard Fillmore and The Family Circus every day.

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    Special bonus if you can identify the context of the punchline, “I see you learned to count in Vietnam too.”

  3. 3.

    Arclite

    New book explodes myth about Sarah not reading

    Classic. That hits so close to the heart of the matter of the dysfunction of the mainstream media that it’s spurting blood all over the place.

  9. 9.

    thelonius

    I wrote the Trib this a.m. about their censorship. Surprise of surprises, I haven’t received a response yet. Who could have imagined.

  11. 11.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cathyx: Dan Rather, too.

    @dmsilev: I apologize to the ghost of Colonel McCormick. I’m kind of surprised, at this point I thought every paper that carried Doonesbury carried the Duck for “balance”

  14. 14.

    Poopyman

    I just read wikipedia on who Roland Hedley is and it said he was modeled after Sam Donaldson.

    You people are making me feel really really old.

    I thought it was Dan Rather too.

  15. 15.

    Earl Butz

    “New book explodes myth about Sarah not reading.”

    Nailed it to the fucking wall. And yet not one journalist will commit suicide out of shame after reading it. Some of them will probably laugh.

    You can keep the lawyers, I’ve got a much better suggestion for who ought to be first against the wall.

  17. 17.

    Nutella

    AL, if you were really old like me you’d remember reading Doonesbury in your college paper before the strip made it into the MSM comics.

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The name “Roland Burton Hedley” was derived from the masthead of Time magazine in the 70’s.

    But yeah, there’s a lot of that serious fucking asshat, Sam Donaldson, in that character.

    And “New book explodes myth about Sarah not reading” is absolutely perfect and on target. It’s true, but it misses the point, gloriously, the the way only the vermin of the Village can do it.

    @Earl Butz:

    And, yes, when The Revolution comes, it’s not the lawyers we go for first. It’s the “journalists”.

  20. 20.

    lamh32

    ugh, I read gawker sporadically, but are they credible? Cause if this is true, then WTF NYT!

    Is Barack Obama Depressed?

    Really? I’m as much of an O-bot as they come, but someone is gonna have to tell me what is the point of a story like this??

    …We’re told by a source inside the Times that the paper is preparing a story arguing that Obama no longer finds joy in the political back-and-forth, has seemed increasingly listless to associates, and is generally exhibiting the litany of signs that late-night cable commercials will tell you add up to depression.
    Either way, the investigation was described to us as taking seriously the notion that Obama may be suffering from a depressive episode…
    story in question, if it ever comes out, may not end up supporting the depression thesis. But rest assured: There are people at the Times who, based on the paper’s reporting, believe Obama is depressed—the kind of depression where, if he weren’t the president of the United States, he wouldn’t be getting out of bed in the morning…

  21. 21.

    Southern Beale

    My neighbor had 4 trees cut down today. They’re building a swimming pool.

    It’s so naked and wounded looking out there, and I couldn’t get shit done because of the noise. It’s just all so depressing.

  22. 22.

    Southern Beale

    @lamh32:

    …but someone is gonna have to tell me what is the point of a story like this??

    Um, dude. Same point as all of those Enquirer stories about Bush hitting the bottle again. A president with low approval numbers, an election around the corner … you do the math.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    @Southern Beale:

    The “good news” is somebody gets several yards of fill out of the deal. The last folks I know who put in a pool, it took a year longer than planned, in part due to an incompetent/somewhat crazy contractor and in part due to the entire crew being deported by the INS.

    Hopefully your neighbor’s doesn’t take that long. Have you asked what size speakers they’ll be installing?

  26. 26.

    TooManyJens

    @lamh32: Christ, who would find joy in today’s “political back-and-forth”?

    The last thing I want to do is make light of depression (not with my history), but being down and exhausted because things genuinely suck isn’t pathological.

  29. 29.

    nellcote

    @lamh32:

    someone is gonna have to tell me what is the point of a story like this??

    Peer pressure. “Journalists” travel in herds doncha know.

  33. 33.

    Matthew

    I love it! The Chicago Tribune is not carrying the comic strip because it doesn’t meet the paper’s standards for fairness. They run Krauthammer op-ed pieces, but the comic strip doesn’t meet their standards for fairness. Who needs government censorship when corporations excel at censoring themselves?

  34. 34.

    scav

    @BGinCHI: ChiTrib:

    It’s also not soaked in poison or carrying an infectious disease.

    Well, I wouldn’t rule out anything along the prion end of possible disease vectors.

  36. 36.

    Earl Butz

    Who needs government censorship when corporations excel at censoring themselves?

    @Matthew: It’s not censorship when you desperately wanted to not run it in the first place, and were just looking for a convenient excuse.

  37. 37.

    jwb

    @lamh32: The Times clearly had a batch of “Obama is losing it” stories in preparation before the jobs speech. I wonder if that was the last act of the old editor or the first act of the new. He could be depressed, of course—it would certainly be understandable given the shit he’s had to put up with—but if he is depressed, he really hides it well. His body language doesn’t suggest it nor do his vocal inflections.

  38. 38.

    Elliecat

    Back in the ’70s, my mildly liberal Republican parents thought the Chicago Trib was enough of an insufferable Republican rag that when the Daily News bit the dust, they would only get the Sun-Times, even though none of us liked it.

    God, I’d forgotten about Mallard Fillmore. The local Republican rag used to feature that on the op-ed page. Ugh.

  39. 39.

    CAfan

    I thought Hedley had gotten the galley sheets of the Red Rascal book from that CIA kid. How did that turn into an advance copy of a Palin book?

    Is there another Palin book coming out? She ran out of material by 2009.

  40. 40.

    Elliecat

    @Southern Beale:

    Same point as all of those Enquirer stories about Bush hitting the bottle again.

    Yeah, any moment there will be an Obama equivalent to the endless tabloid stories about how Laura was really itching to divorce W.

    Speaking of the tabs I think it’s the Globe that’s trumpeting how Joe Arpaio is getting to the bottom of this PHONEY Obama birth certificate thing.

  41. 41.

    ppcli

    @TooManyJens: Very true not every instance of sadness is depression – it’s not unreasonable to be discouraged when you are trying to accomplish something vitally important, and to do it you have to find common ground and work with pathologically dishonest bomb-throwers like Cantor and DeMint.

    But just to be safe, until Cantor gets tossed out on his ass, it would be good to make Psycho-pharmacologist – General a cabinet-level position.

  43. 43.

    Elliecat

    @lamh32:

    Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race
    Please Don’t Stop Reading This Story About Race Just Because You’re Not Racist

    Thanks for this link. I’ve only had time to start reading but I will finish reading it later. This is a subject that interests me a lot and needs a lot more discussion on the left!

  44. 44.

    Walker

    @Southern Beale:

    The disclaimer on that video game is awesome:

    Although the game was created with the aid of former Blackwater employees, the gameplay does not put players in situations where civilians or noncombatants are targets.

  46. 46.

    CAfan

    PPCLI Thank you.

    But How did the strip get from the Red Rascal book that Hedley got from Jeff ( the CIA kid) to the next day Hedley having a copy of McGuiness’s bk?

    Maybe I missed a couple of strips?

  48. 48.

    Anne Laurie

    @CAfan:

    How did the strip get from the Red Rascal book that Hedley got from Jeff ( the CIA kid) to the next day Hedley having a copy of McGuiness’s bk?

    Jeff “Red Rascal” Redfern went to show off his ‘real book’ to Hedley and discovered he’d been given the wrong galleys. Hedley was just marginally clue-full enough to realize that he could ‘take them off the kid’s hands’ and get a headstart tweeting Big Reveals — with a detour through Totally-Not-Roger-the-Hutt-Ailes’ office for air-quoted fair-and-balanced “permission”.

  50. 50.

    whatsleft

    Also too i think it was in the colbert show that an author was on that wrote about how the best presidents had mental or physical issues n that obama seemed pretty level-headed. So maybe depression is his sign of greatness in office?????

  53. 53.

    Robert Waldmann

    “The New Hedonism” ages badly.

    I recall also him asking a student about his sex life and the guy looked nervous (whoever said Trudeau couldn’t draw) and said “uh still mostly theoretical” and Zonker chimed in “that’s normal for a sophomore.”

    “mostly theoretical” became part of local slang (with a meaning related to “slightly pregnant” but the opposite).

  54. 54.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @TooManyJens:
    @lol:
    Facts plus my interpretation: Meteor Blades left due to issues, and it seems they were in part from the site. Then there was no moderator, and the comments and diaries started getting combative and threatening. Markos, deciding to pay attention once again, went through and started banning people based on their hide rates. The problem is, a bunch of people would gang up on comments that criticized the author of a diary. And a significant percentage of the people that were banned happened to be black (3% of DK is black; >20% of those banned are black).

  55. 55.

    thelonius

    Chicago Tribune censorship update
    here’s the lame Trib response and my reply, for what it’s worth:

    On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 6:42 PM, Brown, Geoffrey F. wrote:

    Thanks for taking the time to write to us about Doonesbury. We have been reviewing reader feedback, and I’ve written a follow-up note for our Trib Nation blog, where newsroom editors and reporters regularly write about coverage and responses to news. Here is a link:

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/tribnation/chi-doonesbury-pulled-from-chicago-tribune-this-week-20110912,0,5161792.story

    while I certainly appreciate your responding to my email, I find your paper’s reasoning intellectually vacuous, if not outright dishonest. It’s clear-cut political censorship and if you think you can rebuild your damaged brand by placating the Palinistas, you are delusional.

  58. 58.

    low-tech cyclist

    Yes, I’m old—so old, I can remember when Roland Hedley first appeared…

    Hell, I’m so old, I can remember when Doonesbury, B.D., and Mark Slackmeyer were the only regulars, before Zonker and Boopsie joined the crew in the fall of 1971.

  59. 59.

    different church-lady

    @TooManyJens:

    Wow, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

    Well, for one thing, we could listen to inaccurate reports about what’s actually going on.

    From what I understand (and it’s so damn foggy over there right now that who knows what’s truly accurate) he didn’t ban people based on hide rates — he suspended certain people’s ability to rate comments based on what he saw as their abuse of the hide rate system.

    His post on the topic said that he pitched out about 30 people outright and suspended ratings on about 30 others. And he also said the suspensions didn’t have to be permanent, but he wasn’t going to reconsider them immediately.

Comments are closed.