That reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in which a man pulls his scuba gear wearing cat out of the toilet tank saying “You can come out now, Fluffy, the landlord’s gone.”
While it can be hard to remember now, since Trump brought the whole thing so much farther downhill, but Bush’s nicknames were meant to be demeaning. It was a power play. At the time it was suggested that someone should have confronted him and said that it was disrespectful to elected representatives of the people to use those childish nicknames. It was also disrespectful to their constituents.
You felt that it was controversial that a character encouraged voting by young people? As for being too political, in the real world we would be seeing far more political involvement (including demonstrations) by students, particularly on college campuses, than we have ever seen in Luann. In any case as I recall the reason Delta was pulled from the strip was because at the time Greg was uncomfortable with characterizing a person of color without making them absolutely perfect. Clearly he and his daughter got past that later.
Actually I realize his last name was Bowers. To put it very politely, he helped closeted gay and lesbian actors find (usually casual) same sex partners. Among other things he implied that Tracy and Hepburn had a “beard” relationship rather than a full blown romantic affair. Whether or not his stories were fully accurate there are plenty of tales behind the scenes about famous actors who had aspects of their lives that wouldn’t have gone over well with their public in the 1940’s and 50’s. The Hollywood system and even the press tended to “protect” them in those days, and often forced closeted gay actors to get married for appearances sake. There were also, of course, stars who had pleasant public personas who were complete jerks to those in their personal lives. Class is a relative term.
As for Ariana, I wonder what people would have to say about the lives and foibles of virtually every male rock musician one could name. But more to the point of this comic strip it makes perfect sense to me that 19 year old girls might not be familiar with film stars who were best known 80 years ago (although probably L and B had seen It’s a Wonderful Life at least once).
I think the longest arc was when Pitts high school decided it was appropriate to hold a student beauty pageant.