Posted on 02/21/2003 2:16:49 PM PST by Temple Owl
'Boondocks' creator spares no one in IU speech
Aaron McGruder says he got provocative strip into newspapers by putting it in cute package
By Steve Hinnefeld, Herald-Times Staff Writer
Aaron McGruder handed out equal-opportunity insults Thursday as the keynote speaker for Indiana University's Black History Month activities.
Republicans, the 28-year-old cartoonist said, are power-hungry killers. Yes, literally.
Democrats are losers. Punks.
And the Green Party? They're so naive they ran a brainy, awkward nerd for president.
He didn't spare the several hundred people who came to hear him speak, either.
"Americans have completely and totally lost control of their government," he said, and they clapped. "You're applauding as if that ain't your fault," he added.
McGruder draws "The Boondocks," a comic strip that appears in more than 200 newspapers, including The Herald-Times. And his observations at IU's Alumni Hall didn't differ much from the views of the comic's 10-year-old lead character, Huey Freeman.
They were over-the-top, unabashedly radical.
"Republicans do what psychotic, power- hungry megalomaniacs are supposed to do," McGruder said, with what sounded almost like grudging admiration.
"The Republicans play the political game the way it's supposed to be played — dirty, underhanded and messy, and violent," he said.
How bad are they? They killed Minnesota Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, he insisted.
But Democrats keep pretending they're Republicans, he said. Worse, they're ineffectual.
Al Gore? "Al's just a loser," he said. "He got more votes than the other guy and he still lost. How do you manage that?"
McGruder said Gore should have fought for the presidency that he rightfully won. "He would've gone out like a soldier," he said. "He would've gone out for real. He would not have been a punk."
He likes the Green Party's politics but scorns its tactics.
"You can't put Ralph Nader on television and expect people to vote for him," he said. "This is America. People don't like smart, nerdy guys.
"You don't run Ralph Nader. You run a real good-looking guy and Ralph Nader tells him what to say."
McGruder created "The Boondocks" while he was a student at the University of Maryland. It moved later to The Source, an urban music magazine, and became syndicated in 1999.
Speaking without notes and keeping up a give-and-take with the audience, he said his goal has been to get a provocative point of view into the newspapers by wrapping it in a cute package.
"Media manipulation is a wonderful thing," he said.
McGruder said the fact that George W. Bush is president despite losing the popular vote — and needing the Supreme Court to declare he won Florida — is one sign Americans have lost control of their government.
"We had a coup," he said. "If the exact same thing happened in Nigeria, we'd have looked at television and said, 'Look at the poor Nigerians.'"
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Another sign, he said, is that Americans oppose going to war with Iraq, but war is inevitable.
He said he considered dropping "The Boondocks" two years ago. Then the Sept. 11 attacks happened, and the strip was one of the few voices resisting Bush's War on Terror.
"Now that everybody's lost their damned minds, there's a lot to talk about," he said.
McGruder bashed current-day black leaders for their penchant for self-destruction.
Jesse Jackson, he said, defied efforts by white conservatives to discredit him, then blew his credibility with young blacks by harping on "a (expletive) movie called Barbershop."
He said Al Sharpton has the best political ideas and speaking ability of any candidate for president. But the worst hair.
"In a million years, no black man with a perm is going to be sitting at the table of power," he said. "You can replace that perm with a big red clown nose — that's his image to the world."
McGruder said he's impatient with half-way measures to changing the world. Voting doesn't work, he said — Bush's election shows that. Writing letters and debating doesn't change minds.
Take action that's effective, he said, or you're wasting your time.
"Having a lot of money does not make you a bad person," he said. "Having a gun and using it does not make you a bad person. It depends on your motivation."
But don't look to him as a leader. McGruder said his comic strip may be a unique voice, but he isn't changing the way people think.
"No," he said. "No," he said. "I tell jokes for people who like leftist political humor."
He sounds like he would be a perfect clone of the outgoing clown!
There is- "Jump Start". Cop husband, nurse wife, their kids, coworkers and families (also a bi-racial couple next door). Often hilarious, and one of my favorite strips.
There is also one called "Curtis", about a pre-teen living in an inner-city. Worlds bette than "boondocks", in every sense.
I studied geography at a government schools, so you need to help me out here. Is Bloomington, Indiana on the Atlantic or the Pacific? And Dallas, Texas?
Owl
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