Roland Hedley

Roland Hedley is a character in the comic strip Doonesbury, inspired by the on-air style of the veteran US reporter Sam Donaldson. [ [http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/faqs/faq_ch.html Doonesbury FAQ] ]

He is a journalist, who covered sports at the Saigon bureau for Time and once called back was commissioned to write an article about Walden Commune, where most of the strip's characters lived during the seventies. They filled his head with a lot of nonsense, convincing him that the hippie movement was coming back and that they represented a national trend. He was even convinced that Zonker's lilacs were marijuana plants.

Later he resurfaced as a television reporter for ABC. By this point he had developed an extraordinarily large ego, which remains his defining trait to this day. He was a total sensationalist, willing to stretch the truth and say anything that would further his career. Often he was sent on very dangerous assignments, and it is implied that his superiors send him on these intentionally, hoping get rid of him. He plays along, knowing that the danger of his job will earn him higher ratings.

As such he has covered pretty much all of the dangerous political developments of the last thirty years, although he often greatly exaggerates the danger he personally faces in order to boost his ego. Any news story, no matter how direly important, can quickly get sidetracked when he begins to talk about his three Emmys, his high ratings, his date with Christiane Amanpour, and so forth.

His most surreal appearances were two trips into the brain of Ronald Reagan, first to try to comprehend what the then presidential candidate was thinking, and then to try to unlock his memories of the Iran Contra Affair.

After leaving ABC, Hedley did a brief stint as "chief content provider" for Yap!com, but went back to television when the site was downsized by the AOL-Time Warner merger. He then worked for CNN and now works for Fox News. Recently he got in trouble with his fellow journalists Rick Redfern and Mark Slackmeyer when they found out that he was taking bribes from the White House in order to give them "softballs" when interviewing them. He momentarily ceased to do so, and his colleagues decided not to blow the whistle on him, supposedly because they would miss having his arrogant self around too much.

Over the history of the comic strip, this character's name has been given as both Roland Burton Hedley, Jr. and Roland Burton Hedley III. The official website at Doonesbury.com uses the latter, although as recently as July 12, 2008 he identified himself as "Junior." [ [http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20080712 Doonesbury 7-12-2008] ] Hedley's three names evoke the preppie "last name as first name" aura and may have been taken from names on the masthead of Time—Los Angeles Correspondent Roland Flamini, Boston Bureau Chief Sandra Burton and Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917951,00.html Time Cover Story 2-9-1976] ]

References