"I don't want the news to be patriotic. I don't want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don't want any of that." -- Aaron McGruder
Aaron McGruder (born May 29, 1974) 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 TV 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.
"And I'm not so in love with making people mad that I want to live my life around it.""Anyone with a gun can go out and commit an act of terrorism, even without a political affiliation.""I cannot be made into the commentator for the unspoken black masses.""I want the news delivered unbiased. I thought that was the whole point with journalism.""I'm not a Democrat.""Once you give up rights, they're not going to give them back.""One, I push my deadlines closer than anybody else, or let's say it this way: I'm really late.""The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy.""There's some new evidence that has just come out about the CIA planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the '60s and how they were going to set up Castro for it in order to get America behind a war in Cuba.""We have to confront the very scary fact that the president is a moron. He's really dumb.""We have, essentially, a worthless democracy.""When the news wants to tell you something is important, they put dramatic theme music behind it. They scare you into watching the story.""You know, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have supported individuals and regimes that have slaughtered millions across the globe. And they need to be held accountable for that.""You know, every time a summer movie comes out, people think they're gonna get rich off of the merchandise."
Aaron McGruder was born in . When McGruder's father accepted a job with the National Transportation Safety Board, McGruder moved to 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 , 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.
McGruder's strip has been a veritable lightning rod for criticism since it debuted in 1999, with newspapers consigning it to editorial sections, or dropping the strip altogether. Favored targets of The Boondocks include BET, Condoleezza Rice, Whitney Houston, Bill Cosby, Vivica A. Fox, black libertarian commentator Larry Elder, even 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.
During a keynote address at the July 12—14, 2002 H2K2 conference, McGruder connected the Bush administration to 9/11:
In 2003, McGruder accompanied California Rep. Barbara Lee on a controversial visit to Cuba, where they met Fidel Castro. Later that year during a reception hosted by The Nation, McGruder offended many attendees by defiantly recalling his support for Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential bid. McGruder had to endure 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. 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 claimed that he was misquoted, while maintaining he remains "cautiously pessimistic" about Obama's presidency.
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 from Season 2 of The Boondocks animated series which depict BET negatively were not aired in the U.S. and Canada; however, they resurfaced weeks later and were included on the season DVD set.
