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So Long, Charlie Brown

January 3, 2000
Web posted at: 12:02 p.m. EST (1702 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I've always considered Charlie Brown to be a real person. Television footage of Charles Schulz effortlessly sketching him on a crisp white page always manages to look more like an act of God than some guy from Minnesota drawing a picture. Celebrities don't get as famous as Charlie Brown is without establishing some deep emotional connection with the public at large. And Charlie Brown's public is the entire world. Folks of all ages, sizes, nationalities and political mindsets see a little piece of themselves in Charlie Brown. The connection is so binding, most people eventually start viewing him as an old friend, not a drawing.

Charlie Brown is the spiritual heir of an earlier proletariat Charlie, Chaplin's Little Tramp. Both were rather peachy theoretical constructs. Both were losers with big hearts, and they were never shy about showing their anger when simple good humor wasn't settling anything. They're both also (and will always be) monstrous marketing commodities. If you open a few magazines and rummage through your closets right now, you're almost certain to find their images staring out at you in one way or another. Charlie Brown took over when the Tramp was put out to pasture. But, just like the Tramp, Charlie Brown will forever remain with us in an almost inconceivable number of ways. He's too much of us not to.

Try the crossword puzzle and baseball game from Snoopy.com
 
The "Peanuts" comic strip is something completely positive that's often taken for granted. I certainly paid more attention to it when I was kid, coming to a certain understanding with Charlie Brown before I even tried to understand myself. I grew up a stone-cold Cleveland Indians fan. Not too many years ago, this was tantamount to rooting for Charlie Brown's ungrateful crew of moaners, losers and canine shortstops. How, I ask you, is cheering for "Super Joe" Charboneaou any different than Charlie Brown pulling for his favorite lousy ballplayer, Joe Shlabotnik? Charlie Brown and I formed a lifelong brotherhood of hope based on especially hopeless outfields.

As an adult, I've gone through periods where I made sure to check in on Charlie Brown, to see if he ever got his hands on that little Red Haired girl (no); to see if he ever managed to kick that football before Lucy pulled it away (no); to see if he could ever convince Snoopy to act like a real dog, rather than a World War I flying ace or a sweater-wearing hipster or a vulture (no on all counts.) But you didn't really have to keep up with Charlie Brown in order to keep up. You simply knew that he would never succeed, and that he would never fold no matter how bad things were.

There's something Zen-like about Charlie Brown's peacefulness, his unerring sense of self. Who among us would have the strength to wear the same unfashionable, zigzag-patterned shirt for 50 consecutive years? Could you continue functioning if your head were three times the size of the rest of your body? And what about that haircut? Envisioned in three dimensions, Charlie Brown would be completely bald, save for a ball of fuzz just above his eyebrows. Did he ever complain? Yes, he complained constantly. But never about things that he couldn't change! Including his shirt.

Charles Schulz's farewell letter  
Lucy may have been more aggressive, Linus had the go-to prop of a security blanket, and Snoopy had multiple personalities to do his formidable bidding. But Charlie Brown was the one taking it all in. He was our eyes and ears around the neighborhood. It's not uncommon in these increasingly fractured times to view the rest of mankind as "them," the simple-minded "others" who you have to put up with in order to have a life. Charlie Brown was a master at this while never wholly distancing himself from the fray. Everyone and everything drove him crazy, but he never took the logical route and locked the door. He kept rounding up a baseball team, year after year, fully expecting with each new season that everyone would finally see the light and work together toward a common goal. Then he'd get buzzed by a line drive and all his clothes would fly off.

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The crowning achievement of the Charlie Brown universe is almost certainly "A Charlie Brown Christmas," the yearly TV special that can transport you back to the second grade after two bars of Vince Guaraldi's rollicking theme song. This is Charlie in his purest, uncut form. Later specials had him and the gang doing things like riding mini-bikes and rafting down rivers. Too busy. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" mostly consists of Charlie Brown whining, hoping, and (for once) getting his point across. Every second of it is great, and there's not a person between the ages of 10 and 40 years old who can't duplicate at least one of the visionary dance steps that the kids fall into when Schroeder starts tickling the ivories. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is one of the most charming things that I know of. It'll remain that way until the day I slide into that big home plate in the sky.

It's sad, of course, when your friends leave you. But if they really are your friends, they remain with you even in their absence. I'll miss new pieces of wisdom from Charlie Brown, the new longings (and even the old longings) that somehow never find closure. The heart that gave life to that set of squiggly lines and swirls may have belonged to Charles Schulz in the beginning, but it wasn't long before Charlie Brown was a manifestation of our own humanity. Like any loved one, he'll live as long as our hearts keep beating.

As he bids us farewell, I want to remember Charlie Brown walking with Linus, heading down that snowy path toward the sweeping klieg lights, looking for an old-fashioned, living Christmas tree among the scary aluminum ones. Charlie insisted on securing a sapling with a spirited will to live, no matter how much abuse he would receive from his friends for doing it. And, with a little decorating help from the gang, the tree flourished.

Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, that odd-looking kid in the funny papers was always the Charlie Browniest. And that's why we loved him.


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