Attacking a "National Amnesia"

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Garry Trudeau may be the most private public person in American life. His acerbic and politically acute comic strip, Doonesbury, a national institution for some 15 years, appears in nearly 900 newspapers and is the first comic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Spin-offs have been ubiquitous: more than 30 books, an NBC-TV special, a rock album and a Broadway musical, all written by Trudeau. His jabs have provoked outrage from targets as varied as Frank Sinatra and House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Yet with just a handful of exceptions over the years -- mostly college speeches and prepared statements for charities -- Trudeau has steadfastly refused to engage in public give-and-take, to comment outside the strip on politics or, for that matter, to give interviews at all.

Of late Trudeau has been breaking his self-imposed silence, and on behalf of a controversial project: Rap Master Ronnie, a cabaret revue lampooning the Reagan Administration. Begun in 1984 as an off-Broadway lark, the show has been staged in nine cities, including Washington, where it opened in October and has been extended into next year. Trudeau constantly revises, adding for Washington a parody of bargaining with the Soviets for the release of American Journalist Nicholas Daniloff. "I feel passionate about this," says Trudeau. "I want people to think about events during the Reagan years that we tend to forget, to look at this national amnesia of ours. Ronald Reagan has presided over a transformation of America from a country that wanted to be good to one that wanted to feel good -- which I have a suspicion should not be the highest priority of a community."

Doonesbury has earned Trudeau a reputation for ferocity: in the waning days of the 1980 campaign, a character in the strip toured a largely vacant expanse purporting to be "Reagan's brain." The President has returned the compliment. A devoted reader of what he calls the "funny pages," Reagan blasted the strip in October 1984, and has since said that he always skips over Doonesbury. Yet Rap Master Ronnie is outwardly as genial as the President it satirizes. This Reagan (Jim Morris) smiles incessantly; he may be befuddled but he is never cruel. That was a strategic choice by Trudeau and the show's composer, Elizabeth Swados, a theater innovator (Runaways) with whom he also created the Broadway Doonesbury. Says Trudeau: "We wanted to co-opt Reagan's ingratiating style while dispelling the illusion that he doesn't mean the meanness of his policies."

Throughout the lighthearted skits, one-liners fly like shrapnel -- about Reagan's forgetfulness, loose use of facts, light working schedule ("from 9 to 12, from Monday clear to Wednesday") and reliance on pop-culture symbolism ("an idyllic land of tax breaks and lots of big-grossing summer movies"). The title number depicts Reagan as a shameless manipulator of images in defiance of content: he seeks black support for his policies toward South Africa by chanting in the style of rap music and attempting an arthritic version of Michael Jackson's moon walk.

As he describes the show, Trudeau squirms at the unaccustomed pressure of "being naked, airing my views without the filter of my art." He adds, "It ill suits my self-interest as an asker of impertinent questions to pose as someone who has answers for them." Once he gets started, however, his conversation is if anything blunter than his strip or Rap Master lyrics. He refers to the First Lady's antidrug crusade, which the show japes, as the "cynical reinvention of Nancy Reagan." He describes the Reagan White House as an "Administration of radical extremists." Of Reagan, he says, "That constant smile is a real drug. We want to believe it, and so we all do." Trudeau stresses that he is an ardent patriot. "It's just that the nature of my patriotism arises from hope rather than pride. I am one of the few people around who believe in the perfectibility of man." Reluctantly he labels himself a liberal and concedes, "I don't think I have ever voted for a Republican, although I don't rule it out."

A lifelong fan of the theater, Trudeau says he will have to defer further stage forays because of his family commitments. He is the father of three small children and shares the duties of child care and cooking with his wife Jane Pauley, co-host of NBC's Today show. To devote more time to them, he has given up working on weekends. Says he: "That dried up my pool of discretionary time. But I know I will do another show."

He works on Doonesbury every weekday from late morning to dusk in a studio apartment near his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The office is sparely decorated with two couches, a drawing board and chair, Alice in Wonderland sketches by Cartoonist Ralph Steadman and a few posters, including one celebrating Black Leader Malcolm X. He employs neither a secretary nor a researcher and finds subjects to poke fun at by voracious reading, and clipping, of periodicals: "All the main newspapers and weeklies, plus everything from Soldier of Fortune to conservation magazines. I keep active files on 200 to 300 topics that interest me. When there get to be more than that, I start throwing some out."

In the past Trudeau has guarded his privacy, even refusing to be photographed with his wife to promote either his career or hers. As a result he is often described as reclusive. Trudeau disagrees: "I live in every way as outgoing a life as any person. I go to movies, I go to restaurants, I see friends." He ducks publicity, he says, partly because it saves time and partly "because I acquired from my father this quaint 19th century notion that as one stumbles through life, one should be far more concerned with reputation than fame." It may be a tribute of sorts to Ronald Reagan that his impact has prompted Trudeau to amend that rule and emerge from his chrysalis of self-imposed silence.