Farewell Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can we ever forget you!

All good things end eventually.

It does not matter what that something is. Could be a favorite television show that ends due to low ratings or a long running comic book title that ceases publication due to lousy storylines and low sales.

Who would have thought the Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown, which according to the Jan. 1, 2000 issue of Newsweek, appears in 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and 21 languages would come to an end, but it has.

The final weekly comic strip, published Jan. 3, 2000, featured that beloved beagle, Snoopy, sitting atop his wooden doghouse in front of a typewriter looking at a letter he just wrote to the millions of loyal fans.

The letter was from the strip’s creator, Charles M. Schulz, who announced his unexpected retirement late last November after being diagnosed by doctors with colon cancer.

“Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them...” Schulz wrote.

The final Sunday Peanuts comic strip will appear in newspapers nationwide Feb. 13.

The thought of no more new Charlie Brown comic strips is like mourning the sudden death of a loved one.

I have probably read maybe 20 or 30 comic strips from the Peanuts gang in newspapers and books the past two decades. I cannot say I recall most of the plots except the ones involving Snoopy, who always stole the show and had a mind of his own. In the world of make believe, Snoopy was either the Red Baron, the flying ace from World War I, or an aspiring writer.

In a “Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965), perhaps the only animated holiday show I watch every year, I loved how the smart aleck, imaginative dog danced on his own and yelled “Boo” the moment Lucy announced his master would be in charge of the school play.

“Man’s best friend,” Charlie Brown later said sarcastically.

There were other things loyal fans related to as they read the comic strips.

“He’s independent, helpful and kind,” said 70-year-old Rollie Hester in the Today section of the Jan. 3, 2000, edition of The Dallas Morning News. “What more do you need to know about Charlie Brown?”

In the same section which ran a feature story about the comic strip ending, 17-year-old Kelly Hester related to the character Linus and his security blanket.

“I’ve had a teddy bear, T.J., ever since I was little,” she was quoted as saying.

As much as I cringe to say it, I too had kind of a security blanket when I was little. It was a stuffed dog I named "Bob" that I slept with until probably kindergarten. I assume it is still in the attic (not that I am needing it now or anything).

Seems several characters Schulz wrote about were really caricatures of himself. According to the same column in The Dallas Morning News, when Charlie Brown had a crush on a red-haired girl, the cartoonist modeled her after the love of his life who turned down his marriage proposal.

Schroeder’s love for piano playing Beethoven mirrored Schulz’s love for classical music while his devout Christian upbringing is instilled in Linus who often quoted from the bible.

Last month, the company I work for was giving away Christmas ornaments to all the employees. The one most everyone attempted to grab was the ornament of Snoopy since they knew it would now be worth money.

A coworker named Jerry Jones (yes, his name is Jerry Jones, and I am not referring to the owner of the Dallas Cowboys) had trouble figuring out the meaning of the Jan. 2 edition of the colorized Sunday Charlie Brown comic strip.

That is not at all surprising. Schulz told Newsweek the ideas do not come anymore and often struggled to find the right expression.

“Words are just gone,” Schulz said.

That comic featured a drenched Peppermint Patty during a football game asking “Chuck” what he was going to do with the ball. Finally, Marcie tells her that everyone has gone home and that she should also leave as well.

“We had fun, didn’t we Marcie,” Peppermint Patty said.

“Yes sir, we had fun,” Marcie replied.

Jerry eventually concluded this was Schulz’s way of saying he had fun writing Peanuts (a title the cartoonist has been quoted saying he hates) for close to 50 years.

Although there will be no new Charlie Brown strips to read, it is comforting to think that hopefully kids in the 21st century will not be quoting from the foul-mouthed disrespectful kids of “South Park” (1997).

Maybe they will relate to the characters and situations written in the old Charlie Brown comic strips dating back to 1950 which will run in newspapers across the country and perhaps the world.

If you think that would never happen, guess again.

Carlos Moreno, another coworker I know who takes immense pride at calling himself a “short timer”, told me that at the company meetings, the voices he hears from the supervisors are like those incomprehensible sounds’ adults uttered in the Peanuts specials.

A few weeks ago, I tried writing a film review of Oliver Stone’s football epic, “Any Given Sunday”. I only got as far as the second paragraph.

That was farther than Snoopy got when he tried to author the great American novel. He could only make it as far as the first line: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

“Good writing is hard work,” the beagle said.

How true.

©1/26/00

Bush’s lack of intellect doesn’t mean he can’t run the country

Perhaps one of the only joys I get out of going to work Friday afternoons is not the hour-long drive to McKinney.

It is that much of that hour is spent listening to the Rush Limbaugh show on WBAP at 1 p.m.

I never thought the day would come when I would say I am a student enrolled in the “Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies” until the night of Nov. 4, 1999.

That was the night Dallas based KDXA channel 5 news anchorwoman Jane McGarry said shortly before the 10 p.m. newscast that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush Jr. failed his first political exam.

The exam was given by Andy Hiller, a political reporter for Boston based WHDH-TV, who asked Bush the name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan.

According to an article by the Associated Press in the Nov. 5, 1999, edition of The Dallas Morning News, Bush scored 25 percent on the quiz, getting only one question partially correct. The question was to name the leader of Taiwan. Bush said it was “Lee” referring to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.

I didn’t bother to find out that night what the channel 5 story was about. I knew, just as Limbaugh did, that this was just another bold attempt by the liberal press to bash a conservative presidential candidate and I was right.

Limbaugh immediately went on the offensive the next day and I enjoyed listening to every minute of it. I got to admit it. The guy makes sense at what he says. Bush failing a political exam was not news.

“Are you a journalist or a reporter,” the talk show host asked his “loyal listeners” but addressing, those liberals currently in the journalism profession and those planning on pursuing it.

Limbaugh continued saying Hiller fit his definition of a journalist defining him as someone who creates news for his own “self-aggrandizement.”

Hiller was not, in Limbaugh’s terms, a reporter which he defined as someone who goes, covers a story and reports what happened.

“The Doctor of Democracy”, a title Limbaugh goes by, was right on the money when he said if people are going to judge Bush’s intellect because of this quiz and say he is unfit to be president, then perhaps we ought to develop a whole new system on the way people apply for jobs.

Limbaugh suggested starting with Hillary Clinton who is running for senator of New York.

New Yorkers, for example, should ask her such questions as where Yankee Stadium is and how do you get there? How many people reside in the state of New York and how many of those citizens are registered voters? What the crime statistics for New York City over the past five years?

Such questioning, however, shouldn’t just apply to those running for political office. If someone applies to be a manager of a computer support helpdesk, the interviewer should not be concerned on whether the person managed a call center before that had a hold time of less than three minutes.

The interviewer should ask he/she such computer related questions as what do the letters “PC” stand for? What is a print queue? What is a mini hub? How do you go about setting up a store’s credit/debit card system?

The future manager of a computer support helpdesk doesn’t have to know how to unlock a store’s computer that has only a cursor on the screen. He or she has over 40 helpdesk personnel and supervisors who can address that problem for them.

It is not the president of the United States’ job to know who the world leaders are. He has advisors and researchers who do that for him.

It’s a good bet Hiller himself didn’t know who the leaders of those four countries were before he asked Bush. Chances are he had to look them up in a magazine or previous articles. If so, does that mean he doesn’t deserve to be a reporter? Does the fact Bush didn’t know the answers mean he can’t run the country? Of course not.

“I know what I can do,” Bush said in an interview with Time magazine Nov. 15, 1999. “I’ve never held myself out to be any great genius, but I’m plenty smart. And I’ve got good common sense and good instincts. And that’s what people want in their leader.”

That suits me just fine. I am more comfortable with Bush’s statement than I am that Democratic Vice President and presidential nominee Al Gore knew the answers to all four quiz questions.

For the record, those of you just dying to know the other three answers to Hiller’s questions, the president of Chechnya is Aslan Maskhadov. The prime minister of India is Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the general in charge of Pakistan is Pervaiz Musharraf.

Then again, how many of you reading this blog really want to know the answers to those questions? No one? Not one of you out there really gives a rat’s behind.

That’s how pointless the quiz Gov. Bush took was.

The only ones who gave a damn about it and made a big deal out of nothing was the liberal press.

©1/10/2000