I love reading non sequitur prose:

"Giuliani would have deep cross-party appeal in a general election. But he is a Machiavellian in the mercurial mold of Cesare Borgia... I got queasy watching Barbara Walters' interview in March with Giuliani and his third wife..." (because of his excessive displays of physical affection).

I mean, what is your point?

As for your remarks about Bush, I think you are largely correct. Good for you. But the question springs to mind, what took you so long to come to those realizations? Four or five years ago when there was a chance to replace Bush with someone who wouldn't make the same mistakes he has, you admired him for his haircut because it made him look like a Roman general or something like that, and you were completetly dismissive of John Kerry's intentions to change course in Iraq because you had problems with his image or something like that. Are you going to do the same thing in the next election cycle? Judging by your remarks about the current crop of Presidential candidates, it certainly looks that way.

I am baffled by the following passage from Camille's latest column:

"The thick-headed Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triad may have grotesquely bungled the Iraq incursion, but Republicans (barring a breakaway third party) will still comfortably retake the White House next year if my fellow Democrats don't get their act together on the cardinal issue of geopolitics... Throwing billions into the desert morass of Iraq isn't getting us anywhere..."

Republicans led us into Iraq and are intent on keeping us there. The current Republican presidential candidates have not offered any alternative besides "stay the course". Let us state the obvious, which Camille has glaringly omitted: if the Democrats have not gotten their act together on the cardinal issue of geopolitics, then the Republicans certainly have not. How then, can the Republicans comfortably retake the White House, given the fact that their shortcomings are at least as bad as the Democrats' by Camille's standards? What is she saying about American presidential politics? Is she suggesting that Democrats will pay for their mistakes, but Republicans will not?

Why doesn't she explain her thesis in more detail? Only this time, let's see her apply the same standards to Republicans that she applies to Democrats.

...of Berke Breathed back in the 80s. Bloom County was a lot funnier and had a lot more to say to me than, say, Doonesbury. It was the best comic strip of all time.

It's really sad that Breathed now feels embarrassed by his earlier work and now feels that he needs to give us better artwork and a stronger "message" at the expense of (delightful) humor. I agree with him when he says that people should expect more from their morning cartoon strips than they get from Peanuts (reruns from a man who died years ago) and Garfield (the work of staff at a large marketing firm). On the other hand, people want something light, funny, and predictable in their morning comics. That's why they keep coming back to the same repetitive fare over and over. I don't know whether Breathed consciously decided to abandon his audience when he tried to redefine morning comics or whether he wanted to make a complete jump to the editorial page. But I feel like he turned his back on the qualities that made me become a fan of his in the first place.

We still have Opus, but now he is mostly just a familiar presence and less of a conduit through which we can look at the world in a cleverly twisted light. Opus (the character) was more fun and more funny back in Bloom County when he had trouble understanding the world around him and when he tried (mostly in vain) to do all the things in life that he thought people were expected to do. His struggle to follow his heart was epic, and it literally took him around the world. Now he inhabits a cartoon strip in what appears to be a barren life. Better satire? I don't think so. Better stories? Definitely not.

At least I got some closure when I saw the calendar illustration in which Opus finally found out what happened to his mother ("She Loved Her Boy"). It moves me to this day. After that, I can say that I'm a Berke Breathed fan forever. Unfortunately, I don't get the same enjoyment from Opus that I got from Bloom County.

Ah well, I'll keep coming back if Breathed keeps trying. I'm glad that he stays true to himself, and maybe someday, something will "click" for me again.

This comic strip is an allegory about the U.S. "intervention" in Iraq. Americans think they know what's best for the people of Iraq. ("You love that I'm so damned smart about what's BEST for you.") Americans think that the Iraqi people want the same things that Americans want. ("You love freedom. You love hotness.") And Americans think they can impose their will on the Iraqis. ("And THAT, little dude, is how we're gonna straighten out the Middle East.") See the reference to a "benchmark"? See the metaphor for a deadline for the Iraqis? See the American jingoism on display? ("America rocks!") This comic strip is about American imperialism.

Issues concerning sexism, feminism, and the right of self-expression are implicit (as they are in almost any situation involving men and women), but in my opinion they are incidental and not the main point.

Lola is portrayed as a fool for adopting customs that don't really suit her. But Steve Dallas is an even bigger fool for being arrogant and overconfident. Just as he fails to understand other people's values, he fails to understand what he's dealing with. He's just like Bush and the rightwingers, see? They're the kind of people that Steve Dallas has always represented in Berke Breathed's comic strips.

If this particular comic strip is offensive, I have to ask, to whom?