And I Thought I Was The Only One Who Noticed

I was all ready to drop a big "WTF, O?" on Garry Trudeau for what I thought was a pretty offensive Doonesbury where he refers to NSA Rice as 'Brown Sugar.' Evidently, it wasn't as offensive as I thought, because I couldn't find any reference to the NAACP, or the CBC, or Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton, or any of the usual race-baiters, criticizing him for it. The only thing I saw was a press release from the Independent Women's Forum condemning the strip. At press time, the IWF link, interestingly, seems to be down, but a Google search makes it pretty clear that it is a right-of-center organization. What a surprise.

However, American Digest got there firster and betterer. Read the whole thing, but here's the money quote:

The full strip can be seen on Slate so you can see the deep and biting "humor" of the entire strip. After all, it's not everyday that a Pulitzer-Prize winning humorist can work miscegenation, illicit sex, slavery, infidelity, and the Old Plantation into a single panel of Bush-Hate. No wonder his signature graces this panel so proudly.

Perhaps the next time Mr. Trudeau decides to scrape the bottom of his soul for a strip, he should just turn in one which has a picture of George Bush in one panel, a picture of Ms. Rice in the other panel, and the lyrics of the above song ['Brown Sugar' by the Rolling Stones] in the two other panels. Just so everybody, at long last, gets it.

And as an additional bonus, his post also has the lyrics. Great - that's one less karaoke song I'll have to mumble through!

I'm just kidding. I'll still mumble through it.

I'm still kidding. I don't do karaoke [sigh of relief from both my readers].

Update: Trudeau's taking a little heat in his comments section (the link may only be good for a few days as comments from more recent strips pile up on it). Also, I'm the second-highest blog listed on Google for 'Garry Trudeau "brown sugar"', even though several other blogs have a smarter take on the issue. Some of them:

• Catch Me If You Can: "Just another coded message from a liberal icon to black Americans: Wander off the plantation, and you'll get branded a "Steppin' Fetchit", a "house negro", a "skeeza", or worse. Real classy."
• Gods of Commerce: "Now, the ruling guru of lefty fundamentalism, the man nearly all lefties turn to for their daily political catechism, has shown his true plantation racist colors."
• the-crease.org: "Picture the outrage were a conservative cartoonist to label a leading black female woman in a Democratic administration "Brown Sugar." Oh, I guess we can't...Democratic administrations aren't famous for putting black females in positions of heavy responsibility like the National Security Council. "
• Croooow Blog: "The talking points have been disseminated... time to attack Rice the way they attacked Tripp, Harris, et al.... now she's "Brown Sugar" . . .."
• The World's Greatest Deliberative Body: "Top Ten Other Nicknames Garry Trudeau has for Dr. Condoleeza Rice. . .."