Now that Garry Trudeau's "Alpha House" TV show is (sort of) on the air, we're finally getting new "Doonesbury"s

[Click to enlarge (a little)]

by Ken

I don't know why I'm so uncomfortable now that Garry Trudeau's DC TV-fantasy is, well, not on the air, but in the Intertubes (it's Amazon's debut series). As the master of Doonesbury, Trudeau is a veritable god to me, and as a case in point I offer today's strip, from the "recap" series with which GT is apparently weaning us off the summer's and fall's reruns, while he's been playing with his TV show. (I really haven't even been able to complain about the reruns, because Doonesbury reruns are pretty terrific. And there were new Sunday strips.)

To go with today's strip, here are the concluding paragraphs of a newyorker.com "News Desk" post, "The Republican War on Competence," by Jeff Shoals, a onetime speechwriter for President Bill Clinton.

[A]s Obama is finding, it's hard for one party to make government work when the other party is determined to make government fail. Yes, the healthcare.gov debacle is manifestly "on us," as Obama had to concede last week. But it happened in the face of a relentless campaign by the G.O.P. to do everything possible to prevent the law from taking effect, or from working if it did. Congressional oversight, particularly as practiced by Representative Darrell Issa, is just another theatre in the war on efficacy. On occasion, we hear of Republican reforms to the Affordable Care Act, but these are offered in the spirit of the vandal who blithely assures you that your car will run better with two wheels rather than four, so would you please hold his jacket while he removes your rear axle.

If there is any ambiguity left to the G.O.P. reform agenda, let it be put to rest by Michael F. Cannon, the director of health-policy studies at the Cato Institute and a former Republican Hill staffer: "The only way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in a governmental activity," he testified before a House subcommittee in 2011, "is to eliminate that activity." When you see virtually every governmental function, a priori, as wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive, from disaster relief to early-childhood education, the only way to save the village, to paraphrase a U.S. military officer in Vietnam, is to destroy it. This, one fears, they can do quite competently.

As I understand it, the official rollout of Alpha House happened last Friday, so I do want to be sure that note is taken of it. I guess I'm just nervous about the transferability of Trudeau's genius. I guess I'm also not thrilled about learning a new way to watch TV series with this Amazon offering. If it means that GT has had less mindless interference than would have been the case if the show had been done for an actual TV entity, that's all to the good. And I seem to recall that Amazon is offering the first few episodes free, so I suppose I'll take the plunge at some point.

ABC's This Week's preview of Alpha House


Meanwhile, on the chance that there's somebody who might want to read the NYT's Alessandra Staley on, well, anything at all, here's her review at no click-cost to you. (I only glanced at it and quickly withdrew at sight of an admiring reference to HBO's Veep. I assume there are critics who noticed that Veep is flesh-crawlingly horrible, but I don't care enough to research the subject. I actually stuck out the whole gosh-darned first season, and still feel weighed down by the lingering psychic sludge.)

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