McGruder Gets Booed At The Nation

Believe it or not, my little pomegranates, The Corsair once worked as an intern at The Nation on a weekly stipend provided by none other than Barbara Streisand. Trust me, though, there is nothing glamourous about the long hours, intense factchecking under strict deadlines and that tiny "Babs" stipend, although there was that unforgettable boozy lunch with Christopher Hitchens, where roughly twice as much was spent on drinks than on food, in which The Corsair stumbled through the streets of NY, weaving in and out of traffic, barely escaping the clutches of death in the form of a delivery truck several times in the process of getting home. Ah, The Nation: the memories! The hangovers!

So I wasn't surprised to hear that mildly funny cartoonist Aaron McGruder, writer for "The Boondocks" was booed at the 138th anniversary Nation dinner attended by Uma Thurman and John Waters, among others. The Nation magazine projects high seriousness into the sphere of politics, but the atmosphere within is playful and as light as Publisher Victor Navasky's love of boxing.

McGruder is a hostile, but hostility is not a crime, although it is a social misdemeanor in the world of cartoons. Chances are that when one's eyeballs come to rest on the comic section of the paper, said person is probably looking for a laugh, and not an attack on National Security Advisor Condi Rice's sexuality. Just a thought.

And one more thing: if you are getting booed at left institutions like The Nation and attacked by the right at Free Republic... uhm, that's not good.

Unless, of course, he wants to be hated by all sides ... which, uhm, is not good.

So: Along with the robust multivitamin for Time Magazine's Joel Stein, The Corsair offers McGruder some Prozac.