Cleveland ATTITUDE 3 Signing Today

Cartoonist Matt Bors will be signing copies of Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonist with Brian McFadden of Big Fat Whale at Mac’s Backs on Coventry Road in Cleveland starting at 6 pm. If you need more incentive to get out of your house than the chance to meet two brilliant cartoonists, they will be set up smack in the middle of the Coventry Street Fair where there will be music, merchants, and food.

You can also order a copy of Attitude 3 from Matt’s online store and Matt will draw a sketch in it.

Columnist’s Take on Coulter and Me

Phil Reisman’s column in The (Westchester County) Journal-News discusses the parallels and differences between Ann Coulter and yours truly, specifically relating to our comments about 9/11 widows. I have to hand it to Ann; she’s really going to the bank by plagiarizing my comments from March 2002 in her “new” book.

Among Reisman’s comments:

How soon we forget.

Ann Coulter, the self-styled uber-babe of the right, wasn’t the first pundit to characterize the relatively small contingent of vocal Sept. 11 widows as self-aggrandizing, media hounds who have capitalized on the deaths of their husbands. She’s merely the first to make money out of it.

Coulter’s political opposite, the syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall, made ground chuck out of the sacred-cow widows a long time ago. But unlike Coulter, he’s talented, original and often funny.

He also paid a price for his searing commentary.

and

Both Rall and Coulter tapped into this zeitgeist, and depending on how you feel about them, they were either offensive in the telling or right on the mark.

At least Rall had the guts to do it first.

Rall sees that as his job. And without complaint, he lets the chips fall where they may.

Rall noted how he and Coulter are often compared. They’re both glib and flippant.

“I think the difference is that I’m interested in getting to the truth,” Rall said.

“I’m going to say something that she will never say, which is that I reserve the right to one day become a right-wing conservative. I reserve the right to come to a completely different conclusion. I don’t guarantee anyone that I will always be a liberal.

“She’ll never say the opposite, and that’s the difference.”

Check it out.

Coulter and “Deep Space Nine”‘s Odo

Separated at birth? Just asking.

Ann Coulter Attacks “Terror Widows”

A colleague I ran into at the Denver editorial cartoonists confab was surprised to learn that my phone wasn’t “ringing off the hook” after news of Ann Coulter’s attack on 9/11 widows. After all, right-wingers like Coulter piled on yours truly when I drew my own take on the 9/11 widow media phenomenon back in March of 2002.

Well, as the following e-mail–one of many I’ve received from readers lately–says: The media have short memories:

What’s your take on the press going after Ann Coulter for her comments on 9/11 widows? I had hoped, at least, that her time had passed and people would just ignore this book (which is what she richly deserves), but apparently it topped Amazon’s best sellers list today.
At least Hannity, et al, will have a tough time defending her with the claim that its just the “liberal media” going after her, since they all went after you for what amounts to the same thing — offending certain people. Then again, these guys do have short memories…

And the fall-out from “terror widows” was serious for me. Not only did I lose the Washington Post online website as a client, countless readers will always associate “Ted Rall” with “9/11 widows.” It’s not like I don’t do other stuff besides making fun of the widows and widowers who, like Lisa Beamer and Ted Olsen, exploited their spouse’s deaths to promote books, their fringe religious beliefs or wacky right-wing political agendas on national television–but you’d never know it to read some accounts.

And there were the death threats, of course. I wonder if Ann Coulter will get any of those?

Anyway, here’s what she had to say about the fuss on the Today show with Matt Lauer (among other things):

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:

COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.”

“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”

Can’t say that I much disagree, although there’s certainly some hypocrisy–and a failure to cite original source material–in her failure to note that I got there first, paid a price for my comments because I dared to speak up six months after 9/11, not four years. Where was she when her right-wing fans were bashing me? Will her right-wing fans come down on her as hard as they did on me?

Je pense que non.

My take?

First, Coulter isn’t always wrong about everything. No one is. Second, she’s a lot meaner to the widows as people than my cartoon was, which explored the way specific media figures–Mariane Pearl, Theodore Olsen and Lisa Beamer–exploited their spouses’ deaths to make money or political hay. The vast majority of widows and widowers of 9/11, I have repeatedly said and written, deserve our sympathy and whatever help they need to rebuild their lives. My commentary was about the media phenomenon, such as the parade of 9/11 widows who went on stage during the 2004 GOP Necropublican Convention in New York to endorse Bush, then the specific individuals.

As for the right’s inability to demonstrate ideological consistency, well, I can’t say I’m surprised.

My lines are open. Which is fine.

P.S. A full analysis of the “Terror Widows” hubbub will be published in my upcoming book AMERICA GONE WILD.

Things to do in Denver before I’m dead

I’m heading to Denver for the fabulous annual confab of editorial cartoonists, but–alas–I’ve never spent any time there before. Thus, what would be appreciated from connaisseurs of the Mile High City, would be information and recommendations concerning:

Denver’s best CD store
Its best used book store
Its best dive bar
The coolest thing in town that tourists should but never see (example: in NYC, that would be the subway museum)
Anything else you feel like telling me

Please e-mail chet@rall.com, and thanks in advance for your suggestions.

New York Appearance

I will appear at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s Art Festival in New York City. Please note that I will NOT be there both days. I will appear ONLY on Sunday, June 11, at the NBM Publishing table. I will be there the whole time, with brief breaks for lunch and whatnot, so drop by!

Along with copies of my current books to sign, including the brand-new ATTITUDE 3: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ONLINE CARTOONISTS, I will also bring copies of my rare and out-of-print books, original cartoon artwork for sale, and advance previews of my upcoming SILK ROAD TO RUIN: IS CENTRAL ASIA THE NEW MIDDLE EAST? Many of the other artists from ATTITUDE 3 will be there, as well as from ATTITUDE and ATTITUDE 2, so this is your chance to collect signatures from a bunch of great cartoonists.

I look forward to seeing you there!

P.S. As usual, many of you will ask why I’m not appearing on any MoCCA panels this year. Please stop asking, or more to the point, please stop asking me. The event organizers determine these things, not me, so please ask them. It’s not like I’m turning them down, as some people seem to assume.

AMERICA GONE WILD: CARTOONS BY TED RALL

Not only is my new Central Asian travelogue/graphic novel/current affairs analysis SILK ROAD TO RUIN coming out this summer, there’s another treat for fans of my cartoons.

AMERICA GONE WILD will come out this fall. It’s a 160-page cartoon collection similar in format to SEARCH AND DESTROY, collecting my work from 2001 until now and featuring an introduction by hard-hitting UK Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell. A special bonus is my extremely lengthy behind-the-scenes discussion of the media shitstorms surrounding my most controversial cartoons, including “Terror Widows”, “FDNY 2011” and those about Pat Tillman. Here for the ages is the hate mail and death threats I received, my personal interactions with personalities like Bill O’Reilly, etc.–all the dish you’ve always wondered about. Do I go too far? Find out in AMERICA GONE WILD.

Book Tour Shout-Out

If you live in one of the following cities and are connected to a bookstore, media organization, politically active organization or college that invites speakers, please e-mail me at chet@rall.com. I am planning my summer and fall book tour and am trying to determine whether appearances to these places are viable:

Washington
Boston
Seattle
Portland OR
San Francisco
Chicago
Los Angeles
Philadelphia
Boise
Las Vegas
Denver

If you live somewhere else, don’t despair! I’ll go anywhere provided there’s a sponsor willing and able to cough up travel expenses and an honorarium. (Total cost, for those who wonder about these things, usually runs about $5000.)

Memorial Day No Show

There will be no Ted Rall Radio Show this weekend because of the Memorial Day holiday.