I've started to pay closer attention to the imperial helmet that Garry Trudeau uses to symbolize Bush in his Doonesbury "comics." Here is a glimpse of what it looked like last week.
Compare that with what it looked like a few weeks ago in the picture below the fold. The deterioration is dramatic and appears to be escalating.
This February 25th strip shows the helmet. It made me chuckle. Then I noticed that the helmet had a screw loose (see below). That gave me a bigger chuckle, and lead me to research the matter a little.
The entry about Doonesbury in the Wikipedia gives a good summary of how the cartoonist works:
Even though Doonesbury frequently features major real-life US politicians, they are rarely depicted with their real face. Originally, strips featuring the President of the US would show an external view of the White House, with dialogue emerging from inside...More recently, personal symbols reflecting some aspect of their character are used. For example, members of the Bush family have been depicted as invisible. During his term as Vice President George H. W. Bush was first depicted as completely invisible, his words emanating from a little "spark" in the air. This was originally a reference to the man's perceived low profile and his denials of knowledge of the Iran-Contra Affair.
This is what the Doonesbury site's FAQs have to say about the helmet which Trudeau now uses to represent the younger Bush:
During the first years of Dubya's presidency, the former governor of Texas was represented in the strip by a cowboy hat (as in, "all hat and no cattle") floating over an asterisk (referencing his contested ascension). With the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, the commander in chief donned a more appropriate piece of headgear -- a Roman helmet, whose horsehair crest has, like his imperial presidency, deteriorated over the course of the war.
This site which celebrates great illustrations, has an article about Trudeau's outstanding works. There is also a quote referring to the fact that Trudeau went to school with Dubya and knows his character (or lack thereof) very well.
As Doonesbury readers know, Trudeau was no fan of the first President Bush, but he's really scathing about the second.
"George Bush was a competent public servant but no leader," Trudeau says of our president's father. "Now, of course, he seems to me a paragon of decency, moderation and thoughtfulness, everything his arrogant, radical, proudly ignorant son is not. What a shame the world has to suffer the consequences of Dubya not getting enough approval from Dad."
This sentiment is shown again in a rare interview with the cartoonist by Rolling Stone called Doonesbury Goes to War.
The sight of the loose screw gave me a laugh, but it was dark humor. The fact that our president actually has a "screw loose" would explain quite a few things. However, the idea fills me with quite a bit of terror. I have felt this fear for years now--that our country is being run by a madman.
The helmet is deteriorating, Bush's popularity is sinking, and conditions for those of us in the US (who are not rich) are getting worse and worse. This is not a comic situation and I sincerely hope we can all work together to undo the damage this gang of corrupt thieves has done to our country.