The Doonesbury cartoon strip for next Wednesday -- the day after the election -- has already been sent out to subscriber newspapers by his syndicate.
Guess who Garry Trudeau says is the winner?
The Doonesbury strip for Wednesday is set in Iraq with his military characters sitting around a television as Obama is declared the next President of the United States.
That comes from John Robinson, editor of the News and Record of Greensboro, N.C.
Risky? Reckless?
Not for a cartoonist, but there's some discussion on the journalism listservs that suggests that this assumed outcome of Tuesday's election is a limb too far for newspapers.
I don't understand that concern, given Trudeau's cartooning history. I'm thinking that if McCain wins, the embarrassment is Trudeau's, not ours. Isn't there anyone who doesn't think he's liberal? Besides, if McCain does win, just imagine how much fun it will be to watch how Trudeau handles the turnabout.
Yep. If McCain actually wins, he can hold up a copy of Doonesbury -- like that famous picture of Harry Truman holding the copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune declaring Thomas Dewey the winner.
Of course, that isn't going to happen. The odds of a McCain win are not quite as good as a hurricane striking Manitoba in January.
Nonetheless, newspapers will have to decide before the results are in whether to use the strip. We'll see how many of them chicken out. The syndicate has sent out a rerun of a strip from August for those prone to wringing their hands over such things.