UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, August 25, 1994
Cartoons serve up Clinton
7B
Waffles for breakfast will never be the same
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Clinton is a favorite target of political cartoonists, often depicted with an elongated chin and a vacant stare. But as a waffle?
Of all the caricatures of Clinton, Garry Trudeau may have come up with the one that slashes the deepest.
In his "Doonesbury" strip this week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has been depicting Clinton as a floating waffle.
To A White House already hypersensitive to criticism, the depiction must have seemed like the cruelest cut of all, coming from the pen of Trudeau — whom many White House insiders had viewed as, if not a supporter, at least sympathetic.
After all, George Bush was the one who bore a long grudge against Trudeau for depicting him as invisible. And former Vice President Dan Qauley was drawn by the cartoonist as a drifting feather.
Clinton made Trudeau one of his early White House dinner guests. It seems unlikely he'll be invited back.
The Clinton waffle appears at a time when White House aides are trying to depict Clinton as decisive and
engaged, pouring his energies into crime and health care legislation before a fractions Congress.
Drawing Clinton as a waffle is "more significant" than Trudeau's lampooning Quayle as a lightweight, suggested Bill Kristol, Quayle's former chief of staff. "In politics, you expect your opponents to attack you. When those who should be on your side turn on you and ridicule you, you've got real problems," he said.
In Monday's "Doonesbury," the strip ushering in the new "presidential icon," Trudeau declares his readers had "spoken with a roar" in choosing the waffle over what he called the other finalist for a Clinton symbol—a flipping coin.
In the strip, three quotes emanate from the levitating waffle that poke fun at Clinton's health care utterances. "Universal coverage or nothing," the waffle says in one quote balloon. "OK, 90 percent," says the second. "I can live with 70 percent," says the third.
Cartoonists have not been kind to Clinton in recent months.
A recent cartoon by New York Newsday's Doug Marlette shows a bloated rumpled Clinton. "I'm sick of all this criticism! My administration has put millions of people to work," Clinton says in the first panel. In the second he adds: "Granted, most of
them are special prosecutors."
The Atlanta Constitution's Mike Luckovich portrayed Clinton in a recent cartoon with a big nose and chin and a bandage on his cheek, stuck in a ditch. A large collie labeled "Congress" is lifting its leg on him. "Lassie, help," an oblivious Clinton calls out to the dog.
Political cartoonists can be devastating by reinforcing popular notions, in this case Clinton's supposed indecisionism, said Tom Mann of the Brookings Institution.
Bush was openly hostile to Trudeau. The late Richard Nixon would launch into tirades at the drawings of Herblock in *The Washington Post*.
"Presumably the waffle means this is a president who is so in need of approval that he will say anything and agree to anything — a man without any convictions." Mann said.
Tuesday's Doonesbury shows a young aide named "Josh," no doubt meant to be Treasury official and diary-keeper Josh Steiner, being asked for an update on the Whitewater hearings.
"It's pretty clear we've been involved in a massive cover-up," the Josh character says. "In that regard, the staff has pressed me to ask you something, sir. ... What exactly are we covering up?" The waffle responds: "Depends. What are the options."
France remembers liberation
The Associated Press
PARIS—To the French, it's at least as important as D-Day and more celebrated than the day Germany surrendered. It was the fight to rid themselves of four years of humiliating Nazi occupation.
The liberation of Paris, nine months before Germany raised the white flag, "was the major symbol. It was the end of the Third Reich," said history professor Rene Raymond, a former Resistance fighter now at the prestigious Institute of Political Studies.
"There was relief and affirmation to erase the defeat of 1940." Raymond said. "There was a risk. It was possible the insurrection could have been crushed."
Raymond, who was 25 when he reconnoitered German positions to the advancing French military, said the battle for Paris was one of fear and celebration.
On the heels of an uprising led by the
The French may not consider the liberation of Paris on Aug. 25, 1944, a bigger event than D-Day on June 6, but it is "more important than the end of the war," Raymond said. "It is striking to see that what is more celebrated is not the victory but the liberation in each town."
Never mind that the Germans were invited to the Bastille Day parade on July 14, the first time German soldiers marched down the Champs-Elysees since 1944. No German officials are on the guest list for the liberation celebration.
Resistance, U.S. forces and the French 2nd Armored Division battled their way into Paris to force the German surrender.
"It's one of the great dates of history," said Julien Girardin, a 60-year-old antique dealer. "It was to rediscover freedom. It was a rebirth. We weren't hiding anymore."
For a kid, Girardin said, the first
American tanks meant having chocolate and chewing gum. He learned about D-Davalater.
Colette Gerard-Burns, 71, was outside her apartment in the fashionable 16th district when she saw her first liberator — an American soldier.
"My father and I were looking for snipers. The American was aiming at one, but he got hit instead," she said. "But we took care of him."
On Aug. 26, Charles de Gaulle instructed everyone to go to the Hotel de Ville, or city hall, she said.
It was de Gaulle who beamed his message of a Free France over the BBC from London as she and her family listened in their basement during the war's darkest days.
"Everybody was crying and screaming and laughing. It was like a surprise," she said. "You know you wait for something for so long, and when it finally happens, you're in shock. You couldn't believe it."
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