Pictures on the Wall

Jon writes to ask:

In the Alberto Gonzales cartoon (12-23-04-C) it appears to me that the picture on the wall closest to

the door is blurred out. Have you been censored? Does the “C” designation mean censored? I’m I just paranoid? As for the content of that blurred frame it appears to be a pyramid of naked hooded detainees, but I might be

wrong. Inquiring minds want to know. If you cannot respond directly to me can you post something on your blog? I’m sure others have noticed. I can’t be the only one.

Indeed Jon is not. The photos on Alberto Gonzales’ wall are of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The one on the right shows prisoners’ hands sticking out through holes in the wall. And no, the “C” doesn’t mean censored. I do three syndicated cartoons a week. The date codes are for Thursday of each week; the A goes online Thursday, the B Saturday and the C Monday. (Though you can see them early by subscribing to the Ted Rall Subscription Service; email chet@rall.com if you have $10/year and an email account.)

Column Correction

Morris writes:

Whether it’s your editors or yourself who put this in your column, I just wanted to correct a minor error: Roosevelt’s mansion is in Hyde Park, along the Hudson River. New Hyde Park is a town on Long Island. (I realize this isn’t an earth-shaking matter!) On a more cynical, serious note: I would venture to suggest that all natural disaster head counts (e.g., the Asian tsunamis) have to be higher for Republicans, because they are obliged by their belief system to count the unborn fetuses. I’m surprised that they’re too stupid to ever make an issue of this.

Morris is, of course, correct. New Hyde Park is in Nassau County, Long Island. Hyde Park, FDR’s home, is upstate along the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie. I’m still chuckling about the fetus thing.

The always astute Norman of A Sharp Stick fame responds to this morning’s post about a pirate radio attempt to organize opposition to Bush’s looming coronation:

I checked out the CNN article on the pirate station in DC. I loved the last para:

“A third group, www.ReDefeatBush.com, seeks to focus attention on perceived voting irregularities in the November election.” “Perceived” irregularities? What a bunch of fucking wimps. When are they going to start reporting perceived bank robberies? I notice the WMDs in Iraq remain perceived, despite being reported as actual.

Salon.com Names ATTITUDE 2 One of Its Best of 2004

Salon, a website that should run my cartoons but doesn’t, reviews ATTITUDE 2 today. Unfortunately, Salon’s website has become a total nightmare to navigate thanks to a new system that forces you to watch ads before you get to the good stuff. So I’m posting the relevant section in its entirety:

Cartoonist/columnist Ted Rall has spent the last several years calling bullshit on the power brokers that have been running this country into the ground. This second anthology of up-and-coming or established alternative cartoonists is Rall’s love letter to the genre that has brought him to prominence.

“For years, I’ve been frustrated at the lack of attention generated by this genre of alternative weekly-based political and social satire cartoonists,” Rall explains over the phone, “which has been around pretty much since the late ’80s and early ’90s. And it’s true that you can argue that not all them are social or political cartoonists, or even in alternative weeklies — most of my clients are in dailies, actually — but there are certain things these comics have in common. They tend to be drawn by a certain age group; Generation X is certainly the wellspring of the first or second wave of the alt-weekly cartoonists. They feature stripped-down or abstracted drawing styles to convey complicated ideas; for that reason they tend to be wordy, text-based exercises. And since I work in that genre, I love it but am endlessly frustrated by the lack of exposure it gets. This stuff always falls between the cracks.”

Unless you’re there to catch it, which some, like Salon and other forward-looking publications, are. But no matter how much indie cred artists like David Rees, Keith Knight and Aaron McGruder receive for their outstanding work, there are toiling cartoonists like Tak Toyoshima, Emily Flake and Max Cannon who may never get the credit they deserve. Which is where Rall comes in.

“Here you have intelligent and funny comics being ignored because no one yet has pulled it all together as a genre,” Rall added. “That’s one reason why I felt these cartoonists had a hard row to hoe, because people need to have genres, to be able to categorize things. If it’s something you’ve never seen or heard before, it doesn’t fit anywhere. So the goal of the first book was to say there’s strength in numbers, and it did much better than I or my publisher ever expected. But this was before 9/11, so in a way the scene we were documenting changed right as we were putting the book to bed.” Ergo, the new book, which features interviews with the aforementioned, as well as 15 more budding Matt Groenings, many of whom deserve to be stars already.

Crash the Party January 20, 2005

CNN is reporting that an underground swell of activism is beginning towards the end of bringing massive numbers of American patriots to Washington to protest the inauguration of America’s first unelected commander-in-chief. Apparently the call is beginning on pirate radio.

(Bush, of course, remains no more legit today than he was before the 2004 election. Running for “re-election” of an office you stole in the first place allowed him to capitalize on a fake incumbency he never earned. It’s like his pal Gen. Musharraf of Pakistan–would he be legit if he ran for president and won?)

Anyway, let’s hope the festivities in Washington are attended by as many real Americans as Bushite neofascists.

Tillman Mailbag

Matthew765@aol.com writes:

Tillman just voted “most inspiring”. Just need a “least inspiring” contest and Ted could finally get a trophy (something tells me he never, every, got one for sports as a kid, boo hoo).

Matt Kremer

San Diego, CA

Yeah, and I lose sleep over that every night. But Tillman is an inspiring example of what happens when you’re uninformed (he signed up to go to Iraq to avenge 9/11, only to later be sent out again, this time to get killed by his own comrades), misguidedly nationalistic and jingoistic. How much better for him, his family and America had he remained here and played the game at which he was so gifted.

Standard Republican Gay Sex–Obsessed Mailbag

dustumho@yahoo.com writes:

Dearest Ted,

There comes a man in every gay man’s life where he has to just stop the lies and admit that you love the cock. Today is your day my fudge-packing, non-existant friend. You’re a target for all queers, accept it.

If you voted for Bush, you voted for this guy.

And Since We’re Judged By Our Enemies

The Washington Times, the hard right paper embraced by the GOP despite being owned by the Moonie cult (maybe because?), has nominated me as one of its 2004 “knaves” (yes, the paper likes its oratory out of Canterbury Tales). In a piece by the editorial board, the Times writes:

Those who denigrated the life of President Ronald Reagan, especially cartoonist Ted Rall, who said, “If there is a hell, this guy is in it.”

If a guy who assassinated children, imported cocaine to fund right-wing death squads and nearly destroyed the economy isn’t twisting on the devil’s fork right about now, who is? Please vote for me, and vote often, Ohio style!

Sorry, Everybody

If you’re familiar with the post-election website Sorry Everybody, you may be interested to know that I wrote the foreword of a new book based on the site.

From the publisher’s press release:

Twenty-year-old University of Southern California student James Zetlen launched www.sorryeverybody.com on November 4 as a way for Americans to express their disappointment (and, sometimes, outrage) about the results of the election and how it will affect people around the world for the next four years. To date, more than 26,000 people have uploaded their thoughts, images, and opinions to the site. Sorryeverybody.com has become an international phenomenon, receiving more than 75 million hits from people around the world. After announcing the book project on the site, Zetlen reported receiving more than 700 comments in just a few hours.

The $14.95, 256-page Sorry Everybody book will be in stores in time for the inauguration and will feature photographs that have appeared on the site: Democrats and Republicans; priests and marines; professors and veterans; suburban moms and hipsters and hipster suburban moms; mountain climbers, divers, and businesspeople; women with gray hair, boys with blue hair, and girls with pink hair; gay people and straight people; people from California to New York to Ohio to Texas to Arkansas. They’ve all come together between the covers of this book to say, “Sorry, everybody.”

Sorry Everybody features a foreword by Ted Rall, America’s hardest-hitting editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, and an award-winning commentator who also works as an illustrator, columnist, and radio commentator.

Ted Rall Named 2004’s #2 Most Annoying Liberal

For the third year in a row right-wing bloggers hellbent on destroying America have declared me one of America’s Most Annoying Liberals. I’ve been named along with such other luminaries as President Al Gore, Oscar winner Michael Moore, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter and legendary CBS anchorman Dan Rather. As Generalissimo El Busho says, we’re defined by our enemies and I am damned proud to be hated by people who hate such admirable patriots.

Attitude Presents: Andy Singer’s “No Exit”

Fans of the ATTITUDE 1 and 2 anthologies of alternative cartoonists will be interested to know that NBM is launching a new “Attitude Presents:” series featuring cartoonists in the ATTITUDE books. Each collection in the series, once again edited by me, showcases an artist who appeared in the book but whose books either have never enjoyed broad circulation or don’t have collections at all. This is an attempt to bring worthy new artists to a broader public–something many comics fans say they want.

First in the series and now available is Andy Singer. It’s 128 pages of hilarious, politically-minded social commentary gag panels by the brilliant artist of “No Exit.” Order now and please let me know what you think!

Volume 2 in the series is by Neil Swaab, of “Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles” infamy.

Ted Rall Subscription Service

Alexandria helpfully inquires:

I was reading your work in the Washington Post online until recently. Now I worry, what if Ted Rall keeps actually saying things and more papers drop him? So I want to point out what Michael and Nicole Jantzen are doing for the Norm. They are offering subscriptions to the strip, and if they reach 4000 people Michael Jantzen will keep drawing the Norm. If not, they are refunding the money (all electronic sources like Paypal) minus the processing fees.

Public television stations say that only a small percentage of viewers actually donate, but you are such a necessary voice maybe this approach would work for you.

I don’t necessarily want anymore coffee cups, bumper stickers, or tee-shirts, so the cafe-press doesn’t appeal to me. I donated to the Norm because the cumulative time I have spent enjoying that strip was worth a fee. I would subscribe to your site using the same reasoning. (Although your styles a wee might different…)

The Times and Post partially aside—both papers still run my work in their print editions—most of my clients continue to be supportive of my work. This is not a THE NORM type situation. That said, it’s true that drawing cartoons and writing columns is a shoestring operation from a financial standpoint. So I’m very, very grateful to anyone who wants to support my work financially.

The best way you can do that is to write a letter to newspapers and magazines that you read but don’t run me to encourage them to do so.

The next best thing is to buy my books.

You could also buy my original art. (Now I accept PayPal!)

After that, there’s the handy dandy Ted Rall Subscription Service, which is coming due, as it does every year, at the end of this month. For a mere $10 per year (did I mention that I accept PayPal?), you can have emailed to you each and every week all three of my cartoons and my columns, plus whatever freelance work I produce. You get the columns as much as a day before they go online, and my cartoons as much as four days before the Great Unwashed Nonsubscribers see them on the Web.

To pay via PayPal:

1. Send me an email at chet@rall.com.

2. I’ll tell you how to pay; after you do, you’re signed up.

To pay by cash or check:

1. Send $10 to Ted Rall, PO Box 1134, New York NY 10027.

2. This is important: Send your email address ALONG WITH YOUR PAYMENT.

Trans-Afghanistan Opium Pipeline

Robert writes:

Don’t know if you’ve seen this column on the death of journalist Gary Webb, who looked into Reagan-Bush regime’s support of drug trafficking as part of the CIA backed Contras effort. and the complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring the story and attacking the messenger. http://www.alternet.org/election04/20742/

Earlier this evening I was looking at a Lisa Ling (National Geographic Channel) report on “The War Next Door” which is basically about the $2 billion US sponsorship of defoliation and anti-guerrilla warfare in Colombia in the last 4 years. Nice cameo by W talking about narco-terrorism and how terrorists fund themselves through drug trafficking. Interesting, given his Daddy’s and Reagan’s illicit drug trafficking and arms dealing with Iran, the Contras, and the state-sponsored terrorism against the people of Nicaragua and Iraq through Reagan-Bush proxies.

Is it ironic that Afghanistan is now the world’s biggest producer of heroin, following the invasion and overthrow of the Taliban? or pathetic? I’m not sure which. Bush’s Double-You -Suck failure in Afghanistan – no Osama, and turning Afghanistan back into a contender in the world of narco-terrorism, to use his own terms.

It’s entirely possible that reopening the heroin trade was a Bushie war aim in Afghanistan. We certainly know that hunting down Osama (he was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan), taking out the Taliban (we didn’t) and getting the 9/11 guys (they were in Egypt and Saudi Arabia) had nothing to do with it.

That said, there’s a number of recent news articles, including one titled “Afghanistan Sees Bright Prospects for Trans-Afghan Pipeline” on News Central Asia (http://www.newscentralasia.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1031), that indicate that the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project is alive and kicking as a major motivator of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

What happened to Gary Webb is a national disgrace. He was one of America’s finest and most honest reporters, punished for nothing more than doing his job. RIP, Gary.

ATTITUDE 2 a 2004 Book of the Year

The UK Guardian newspaper has named ATTITUDE 2: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ALTERNATIVE CARTOONISTS (edited by yours truly) one of its 2004 Books of the Year.

I have a beef with their one gripe, though:

One gripe, though. President Bush is not a simian idiot (see how easily he turned the key caricatural traits associated with him – stumbling over sentences, etc – to his advantage at election time). Rather, he’s the guy who has led a neo-conservative revolution. That’s the ugly fact of the matter, and ‘subversive’ humorists had better get used to it.

Isn’t it possible that W. is a simian idiot who led a neoconservative (counter)revolution?