The Progressive’s Ian Murphy has an interview with me about Daily Kos’ disgusting attempt to stifle criticism of the President here:
As Ruben Bolling, creator of “Tom the Dancing Bug,” notes: anyone familiar with Rall’s work knows that crude, “ape-like” depictions of all races is basically his shtick. We’re primates, after all. And while a lot of the irrational anger directed at Obama is undoubtedly rooted in the irrational fear of melanin, it’s a bit tragic when the left cannibalizes one of its own.
13 Comments.
“[I]t’s a bit tragic when the left cannibalizes one of its own.” Agreed. When I received a solicitation from the Daily Kos to contribute to the cause – because they need money to stay in operation – I thought about what they have done to one of their own (more or less) and decided that it would be a cold day in hell before I donated to a site like theirs!
Which i must appreciate. I suppose the real takeaway is that Daily Kos isn’t really a leftist website. It’s a subsidiary of the DNC, and the Democratic Party is not a left party. So maybe they should just be lumped in with the GOP and the rest of the conservative establishment.
This point isn’t exactly news to those of us inexplicably unable to break our DKos addiction. Sorry you had to learn the hard way!
“maybe they should just be lumped in with the GOP and the rest of the conservative establishment.”
Strictly speaking, you weren’t banned, but “merely” censored with the threat of banning if you should continue to draw the President in the same style. Since you had only been there a relatively short time, I thought it was not such an unnatural thing to view the censoring as the equivalent of banning, which it could as well have been in that particular context. Yet using those two words interchangeably was another source of hilarity and/or derision for the KosKids. Weird.
“Censored” is the most accurate word. Told he would be banned if he kept it up.
Of course, Winston, the two are the same in the real world.
I saw that interview today. I thought it came off well. The saddest thing for me is the thought that this seemingly endless bickering about whether the first black POTUS is being treated with adequate respect will put people off so much they’ll start thinking maybe it would be easier to go back to just running white guys so we don’t have to deal with this. A white guy drawn like you draw Obama would not get much attention.
I can’t imagine how people would respond to a black guy drawn like you drew Bush. But I’m sure Republican voters were overall infuriated by how left-leaning cartoonists drew Bush, with all that “chimpy” stuff.
Witness the sordid history re cartoonists at Daily Kos:
http://bagofnickles.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/is-ted-rall-a-racist-or-is-markos-moulitsas-ship-no-longer-seaworthy/
Ths is a thorough and accurate summary of the backstory, Chaisecat. Thanks for linking to it. I’m PhilJD on DKos too, and watched most of this happen in real time. I’ve noticed this same pattern, and noted parts of it at DKos, but not in this sort of detail.
As I’ve said repeatedly there, some of the criticism of Ted’s depiction of Mr. Obama is unquestionably sincere. Some people there WERE genuinely offended and not without reason. I wish Ted had taken the honest criticism more seriously, although he did respond thoughtfully to some of it. I don’t for a nano-second accuse Ted Rall of racism–that’s a bizarre charge, given his history of progressive activism–but there IS something uncomfortable and cringe-making in his caricature of the President. Some rock-solid AA lefties on DKos were among those offended; the fact that Ted “lost” people like them indicates that the problem of perception is very real.
But…
The history laid out so well in Chaisecat’s link tells the rest of the story. Ted stepped unknowingly into a carefully prepared minefield, where a lot of Kossack supporters of the Obama Administration were predisposed to find “racism” in any cartoon which they disliked for POLITICAL reasons. They know very well that no accusation is as potent as that among progressives, or as effective in shutting down critical discussion of the failures and disappointments of this administration.
We can all learn a lot from this ugly episode, although the lasting lessons may not be those that Ted’s DKos critics find most important.
In all fairness, Phil, I try to make all my depictions of killer presidents cringe-worthy. The question here is, was race part of my calculus in my depiction of Obama? Or did I just draw him the way I’d draw anyone else, using my style? For four years, it seems, no one has ever had any problem with the way I drew Obama except for Obama’s most strident defenders. Who are mostly white guys.
Fascinating history of anti-cartoonist racism-smearing at Kos. I posted it; hopefully people will read it.
I’m confident that race was no part of your calculus Ted, nor some sort of pop-psychology “unconscious” motivation either. I think it’s all an unfortunate coincidence. I don’t question your intent at all, but there ARE points of contact between your caricature of Mr. Obama and well-known and very ugly racist tropes.
In the real world, people aren’t going to research your entire body of work and carefully analyze your politics before drawing conclusions. If people of good will, solid lefties and progressives, are seeing overlap between some of your cartoons and racist imagery, I think you would do well to address it.
“Addressing” it may very well mean changing it a bit, even if that goes against the grain, because it’s indisputable that you’re alienating some people who are predisposed to agree with you.
The thing is, cartooning and writing and music and all creative art requires some contextual knowledge of its creator to understand it. So yes, I get what you’re saying, and I have no desire to offend anyone needlessly or for stupid reasons, yet on the other hand I don’t know how far out of my way I should go for people who obviously only read editorial cartoons when they get links to them that tell them that there’s something they should be offended by.