Aaron McGruder

Aaron McGruder (born May 29, 1974)^[1] is an American cartoonist best known for writing and drawing The Boondocks, a Universal Press Syndicate comic strip about two young African American brothers from inner-city Chicago now living with their grandfather in a sedate suburb, as well as being the creator and executive producer of The Boondocks television series based on his strip. Through the exceptionally intelligent Huey (named after Huey P. Newton) and his younger brother and wannabe gangsta Riley, the strip explores issues involving African American culture and American politics.^[2]

Life

Aaron McGruder was born in Chicago, Illinois.^[1] When McGruder's father accepted a job with the National Transportation Safety Board, McGruder moved to Columbia, Maryland at age six with his parents and his older brother. He attended a Jesuit school from grades seven to nine, followed by public high school at Oakland Mills High School and the University of Maryland, from which he graduated with a degree in African American Studies. The Boondocks debuted in the campus newspaper, The Diamondback, in late 1997, under its then-editor, Jayson Blair. McGruder created the comic while working at the Presentation Graphics Lab on campus. At the time, he was also a DJ on the "Soul Controllers Mix Show" on WMUC.

McGruder currently lives in Los Angeles, California, where his projects include the Boondocks animated series and the Super Deluxe variety comedy series, The Super Rumble Mix Show. He is the author of five Boondocks collections: All The Rage, Public Enemy #2, A Right To Be Hostile, Fresh for '01: You Suckaz, and Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper. McGruder is also the co-author, with Reginald Hudlin, of a 2004 graphic novel, Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel, drawn by cartoonist Kyle Baker, and a frequent public speaker on political and cultural issues.

He recently worked as screenwriter in the final treatment of the upcoming film Red Tails. With George Lucas as executive producer, the story is based on the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American combat pilots during World War II.

Controversy

McGruder's strip has been a veritable lightning rod for criticism since it debuted in 1999, with newspapers consigning it to editorial sections, or suspending the run of the strip altogether. Favored targets of The Boondocks include BET, Condoleezza Rice, Whitney Houston, Bill Cosby, Vivica A. Fox, black political commentator Larry Elder, and Star Wars. One infamous strip immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks involved Huey calling the FBI's terror tip line to report Ronald Reagan for funding terrorism. When a 2004 strip had Huey and Caesar handing out "Elder" awards for being embarrassments to black people, their namesake Larry Elder fired back with an opinion column in which he handed out "McGruders" for offensive comments uttered by black leaders.^[3]

McGruder visited Fidel Castro in Cuba with California Rep. Barbara Lee.^[4] Later, during a 2003 reception hosted by The Nation, McGruder offended many attendees by defiantly recalling his support for Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential bid, which many liberals blamed for George W. Bush's election. McGruder endured heckling and walkouts as he defended his commitment to left-wing causes, including, he claimed, calling Condoleezza Rice a "mass-murderer" to her face during the 2002 NAACP image awards.^[4] In 2009, it was reported that McGruder had told a Martin Luther King Day audience at Indiana's Earlham College that then-President-elect Barack Obama was not black. McGruder released a statement insisting he was misquoted, while maintaining he remains "cautiously pessimistic" about Obama's presidency.^[5]

A feud with Black Entertainment Television has given McGruder much material both for his strip and the animated series based upon it; he has had an adverse relationship with BET for years. Two episodes (The Hunger Strike and The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show) in Season 2 of The Boondocks animated series were never aired in the U.S. due to possible legal action against Cartoon Network's parent company Time Warner by Viacom (BET's parent company, also the owners of Cartoon Network rival Nickelodeon and Adult Swim & TBS rival Comedy Central) because of them making fun of BET; however, they resurfaced for television airplay weeks later in Canada. The episodes in question depict BET as an evil media empire plotting the destruction of black people.^[6]

Footnotes