CKNW Editorial
for February 15, 2000

Death must come to us all but I think most of us sort of felt that an exception would be made in the case of Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame. I often wonder how the name Peanuts came about ... no doubt a listener will have a ready answer.

The tributes rightly roll in. Peanuts was a world wide institution much as Mickey Mouse has become except I think Mr Schulz went a step further ... his humour had the ingenuity of being able to transmit messages to all ages.

Little kids loved it and avidly read it - so did adults of all ages. That does indeed take genius - perhaps the first to be able to do this was Jonathan Swift, accidentally, in the sense that he never intended Gulliver's Travels to be a book for children. Walt Kelly did it with Pogo but he perhaps did it better for adults than children because of the broad satire he employed.

What I especially find fascinating is that Charles Schulz suffered from Anxiety and Depression and was basically untreated. His comic strip is therefore a pretty good look inside the mind of a depressed person where all the insecurities can be found. It's interesting in this light to remember Lucy holding the ball for Charlie Brown and always pulling it away just before he kicked it. In fact Linus with his security blanket now reminds me of the times when my depression was at its worst how the broadcast booth became my personal security blanket.

I think of Schroeder and his Beethoven and the neat juxtaposition of one who purports to know and Lucy, a person who pretends not to care.

Did the Great Pumpkin signify Shulz's anxieties or was it simply a parody on the institution of Santa Claus ands, to a lesser degree, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy? I don't know and I suppose we shouldn't read too much into it.

Snoopy was the most fascinating character I think because this was Schulz's only adventure into the anthropomorphic ... unlike Disney and Kelly where all characters are animals with human qualities ... or A.A. Milne who has one human in amongst animals playing human roles, Snoopy sticks out as a special case ... although there was his brother Spike, of course. But the Walter Mitty like actions of Snoopy as the Red Baron give us a look, however murky, into the often troubled mind of his creator.

The last thing I would suggest is that Mr Schulz simply used Peanuts as an outlet for his own personal problems but still he did do that. And I suppose the question is, don't all artists play out their troubles in their creations? Indeed, wasn't it Mr Schulz's great contribution that he let all of us see our own foibles from a bit of a distance. Can't all of us who never achieved the athleticism in our youth that we wanted sympathize with Charlie Brown the pitcher and relate to Lucy's seemingly carefree attitude towards dropping fly balls in the clutch?

But all of that may be going too deeply into the matter. For whatever motivated Charles Schulz's sometimes troubled mind, Peanuts was good entertainment ... no, great entertainment. And it was funny ... all the way from the humour of slapstick to the tristesse one sees in Charlie Brown being fooled by Lucy once again.

What a contribution this man made. And what eloquent support he gave to millions around the world who suffer from mental illness ... not because he talked about that illness but because we know that mental illness no more than physical illness bars its victims from extraordinary accomplishments.

Above all else, Charles Schulz proved that.