Jeff Redfern

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Jeff Redfern is a character in the comic strip Doonesbury.

He is the son of Joanie Caucus and Rick Redfern, and was born when Joanie actually went into labor during lamaze class. As a child he spent a great deal of time in daycare because both of his parents had full time jobs. Although this doesn't appear to have affected him adversely, he used to pretend it did in order to manipulate his parents.

Jeff has now graduated from Walden College, unlike Zipper Harris. The two were roommates and spent all their time playing video games and coming up with crazy business plans which they hoped would allow them to get rich without having to actually do any work. Jeff is so video-game addicted, that he ceases to blink while playing, and becomes oblivious to anyone else in the room, no matter who they are or how loud they are speaking. An exception to this is that he can notice people who are delivering pizza. He rarely attended class. He also shared a crush on Alex Doonesbury with Zipper, however he backed off after Zipper pointed out that Jeff's mother (Joanie Caucus) was also Alex's grandmother, making the two of them "like kin". Indeed, Jeff's much-older half sister, J.J., is Alex's mother, meaning Jeff is Alex's half uncle.

On a whim, Jeff sent in an application to join the CIA's summer intern program and, much to his own shock, got accepted. He now trains to be a "spook" during the summer, under Major Havoc. While studying in Afghanistan, he accidentally launched a missile, and nearly caused a disaster. But due to his video game playing skills, the missile demolished an Al Qaeda ammo dump.

Because of this perceived misuse of equipment, as well as other incidents (most notably sending an SMS during a class on waterboarding), Jeff failed to actually land a job with the CIA. He therefore now spends most of his time moping around his parents' house, although recently he was offered $5,000 by government officials to burn a flag in public. The officials were under orders from the president to make flag burning a bigger issue so that the controversy would allow it to be outlawed. Jeff was willing to go along with the plan, but the flag he was given was flame-retardant, and he was unable to complete his task.

Jeff frequently gets into arguments with his father, who finds Jeff's passive aggressive attitude to be infuriating. Most recently they have clashed over the issue of torture, and the CIA's connection to the "interrogations" in Iraq.