Cartoon Central

I think people always take cartoons for granted.

I have always found it odd and a little frustrating that the largest, most concentrated cohort of Garry Trudeau's core constituency -- that is, we readers of this newspaper on newsprint -- must go elsewhere to read ''Doonesbury.'' And so as a New Yorker who only occasionally buys The Daily News and always forgets that the strip also runs every day in Slate and at nytimes.com, I have had a relationship with ''Doonesbury'' not unlike my relationship with the Metropolitan Museum and ''Nightline'' and the Union Square Cafe and my siblings: they've been around forever, so I take them for granted, and get to them more seldom than I'd like, although when I do I am always reminded, in a kind of self-flagellating D'oh! moment, just how splendid they are.