Thank you for adding this to the thread, as I said I know little of Trudeau (embarrassed to have admitted this) and feel like a doe caught in the headlights.
Perhaps lame, but he is contributing money and his time, so maybe that balances things out.
I certainly do not think it would be right to steal another's creative concept. :(
A little background on Gary Trudeau and Doonsbury:
What you read today in the strip has little relevance to it's origins, only the characters are the same.
Love or Hate his politics, Trudeau is a genuis. You may have at one time heard Rush Limbaugh state how he "uses absurdity to illustrate absurdity". Trudeau had the idea first. The comic really was absurd. In the late 80's, Trudeau aged the characters. BD is no longer the College Quarterbck wearing the football helmet constantly, and enlisting in the Army to get out of midterms. Zonker no longer sits in Walden puddle (Walden was the college that all of the main characters attended), and contemplates existence.
Agree or dissagree with the message, Trudeau was a genius at communicating that message. And it had effect.
Rush Limbaugh, and a lot of people who followed him on Conservative Talk Radio uses his medium in the same manner that Trudeau uses his. Both were true pioneers in their respective fields.
If a liberal radio talk show host had anything near the ability of Trudeau to communicate (and Al Franken doesn't even come close...he wasn't a very good comedeien either), Talk radio competition would be brutal.
This conflict was the Character BD's third war. He served a tour in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom. Maybe one of these days i'll tell you of Phred the Terrorist, a Vietcong friend of BD. (they met when they both got lost on missions).