Holding Onto the Sunday Funnies by a Thread

And then there was one. Doonesbury.

With Opus gone from the Sunday funnies, I need more than one comic strip and “the Sunday funnies” closing segment of late-nite comedy replays on This Week With George Stephanopoulos to get my head straight for the Lord’s day. Don’t suggest church. I tried but found it generally a “laugh-free zone;” not unlike my really-really long-term prognosis if the evangelistas are correct. I don’t have to laugh as a practicing Christian, but I don’t see anything particularly sinful about it either.

Teach me where to laugh, America. In Springfield, Ill ennui’s State Journal-Register, even Doonesbury is becoming half-comic and half moral arbiter — or the reflection of a moral arbiter. Everything seems too cute. I’m looking for Jill Clayburg and Martha Stewart in a world of Marie Osmonds — comically speaking.

Am I getting too frikking OLD to laugh? Are my eyes and sensitivities so yellowed from dodging the flaxen fog of Ann Coulter’s lox — make that locks — that I would not recognize a good laugh if it came up and bit me on my hiney?

Maybe — and I pray this is true — I’m not too old. I’m just looking for laugh in all the wrong places.

But if the SJ-R looses Doones’ what reason will I have to buy the Sunday paper? I’ll have many: the terrific editorial page, the business section, the revised and absolutely maaaavelous front page format and the ever-contemporary James Brady “In Step With…” in Parade. But this seems so “old fuddy duddy,” too bleeding adult of me. I’m still a kid at heart. Trouble is, I’m not a cute kid anymore.

SJ-R readers — and I know you’re out there: I can hear you smiling — where do you go in the comics section to chortle?

Laugh long . . . . and proper.