Kim Rosenthal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kim Rosenthal is a character in the comic strip Doonesbury.

She first appeared as a baby in the 1970s, as the last child evacuated from Vietnam. She was adopted by the Jewish Rosenthal family. Her early appearances in the strip had her learning how to talk entirely from television commercials. Her first words were "Big Mac", and she soon was quoting entire commercials by heart.

This became even more extreme during the 1976 presidential campaign, during which she took a liking to the campaign advertisements of Jimmy Carter, and would instantly say "Hi, I'm Jimmy Carter", followed by a summary of his political positions to anyone who would listen.

She was later seen becoming a national honor student in elementary school, which her classmates considered unfair because they believed the stereotype that both Asian and Jewish people are good at math.

After this Kim disappeared from the strip for many years, and reapearred in February 1996, where she met Mike Doonesbury at the CyberCitizens-For-Steve-Forbes Organizational meeting. By then she was in her twenties and was a brilliant computer programmer (she dropped out from a doctorate program at MIT because she found it too easy). She, like Mike, was working for Bernie. She and Mike began to date and, despite a great difference in their ages, fell deeply in love. They were separated for a time when Kim moved to Paris, they broke up, but were re-united October 6 1996, and became engaged in January of 1997. They were married in 1997, on the week of April 14, much to the disgust of J.J., and the envy of Zeke.

Kim has declared a personal war against Nike when she tracked down one of her relatives working for slave wages in a factory in Vietnam, and observed the horrible conditions there. Her actions against them have included creating a software database that keeps track of the employees, organizing a benefit concert to raise awareness of the issue (at which Jimmy Thudpucker performed), and encouraging members of Nike sponsored sports teams to protest. She considered stalking the CEO of the company before Mike pointed out that this is illegal. She also once borrowed Mike's Annual Summer Daydream in order to fantasize about justice being done. In it she imagined Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Lisa Leslie turning on the company and giving back the money they earned from it.

Kim now runs Myvulture.com along with her husband, her stepdaughter and best friend Alex Doonesbury, and several former boyfriends (of which she has an inexhaustible supply).