They’re Socialists

When the French Socialist Party swept elections a few days ago, one of the notable aspects of American media coverage was a reluctance to call them what they are: socialists. Fox News called them “the opposition party.” The New York Times called them “the left.”

This is what it’s come to: Now that the political pendulum is swinging left in Brazil, Venezuela, Spain, France and elsewhere, corporate/state-controlled media outlets hope the trend will starve due to lack of coverage. It’s a strange tactic, unlikely to succeed, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

Save the Date: Huge NYC ATTITUDE Book Signing Party

More than a dozen cartoonists—David Rees (“Get Your War On”)(, Mickey Siporin, Tom Tomorrow (“This Modern World”), Mikhaela Reid (“The Boiling Point”), Neil Swaab (“Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles”), Ruben Bolling (“Tom the Dancing Bug”), Emily Flake (“Lulu Eightball”), Jason Yungbluth (“Deep Fried”), Peter Kuper (“Eye of the Beholder”), Scott Bateman, Ward Sutton (“Schlock ‘N’ Roll”), Jen Sorensen (“Slowpoke”), Tim Krieder (“The Pain—When Will It End?”) and yours truly (“Search and Destroy”)—from the ATTITUDE 1 and 2 compilations will be on hand on Thursday, April 29, 2004 at New York City’s “Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art” to celebrate the release of ATTITUDE 2: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ALTERNATIVE CARTOONISTS.

There will be food, drinks, milling around, gossiping, cartoons on the wall and, of course, your chance to get copies of ATTITUDE 1 and 2 signed by the cartoonists, who will also have their own books on hand.

Time will be either 6 or 7 pm, more details to be posted here as they become known.

P.S. Actually both books are the same size. Why they aren’t in the above images, I don’t know. I blame the Clinton Administration.

To Declassify or Not to Declassify

Republican Congessmen are threatening to declassify Richard Clarke’s closed-door testimony from 2002 in a bid to show inconsistencies between his analysis of the events leading up to 9/11 then and the story he tells now. Of course, Washington insiders say, there are no such inconsistencies–it’s merely a Republican smear campaign to discredit Clarke in retaliation for telling the truth as he sees it.

As the debate over Clarke’s book rages, why aren’t Democrats focusing on the obvious retort? Namely, that declassifying classified information solely for partisan politicans is unpatriotic and potentially, since it would jeopardize national security, treasonous. Then, if Republicans say that the information isn’t really all that secret, Democrats could fault them for using classification to keep secrets from the American people. It would really be quite beautiful; too bad no one in Washington has any imagination.

Like everyone with a brain, I can’t help rubbing my hands with glee at the sight of Clarke’s revelations. The fact that he’s a loyal Republican, extremely hawkish and articulate helps sell his story (and his book). But I would caution progressives not to fall in love with the guy.

First of all, he’s still a hawk. In his book “Against All Enemies,” Clarke boasts that providing the Afghan mujahedeen with Stinger missiles was his (good) idea–even though the Soviet defeat it created led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia. And he continues to spread the all too widely accepted lie that, while Iraq was an illegitimate war based on lies about WMDs and imminent dangers therefrom, Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was a logical and justifiable response to 9/11. Nothing, as I and others have written to the point of exhaustion elsewhere, could be further from the truth. Afghanistan, like Iraq, was a distraction from the real threat (in Pakistan). Like Iraq, it made things worse rather than better from the standpoint of eliminating terrorism–Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan is greater now than before the war. And like Iraq, Afghanistan was motivated by access to energy resources. So Clarke isn’t exactly a wise man, but rather a disgruntled Republican operative with a book and a story to tell that, with luck, will contribute to Bush’s defeat this November.

Gone to Bed in America

All of the copies of WAKING UP IN AMERICA are gone. This also means the end of the Bourgeois Offer concerning the two books and original artwork.

I still have some copies of ALL THE RULES HAVE CHANGED left, so if you want one now’s the time to pipe up.

COMING SOON: The moving sale continues! I’ll be auctioning off some Ted Rall-related rarities.

P.S. For those who’ve asked, “Terror Widows” is still on tour, and it goes to whoever offers the most cash upon its return. High bid so far is (gasp) $4,000.

Confidential to Jonathan Walsh

Please e-mail me at chet@rall.com about your book.

The ever-prestigious Sequential Tart gives ATTITUDE 2 a 9 out of 10 score:

Sadly, I think this is the last review I’ll be writing for Tart. Perhaps it’s appropriate that the book I’m reviewing is about attitude, subversion, and alternatives to the mainstream in a section of graphic art. Just as Tart was once the “new subversive alternative” web site, the cartoonists interviewed in this book are true radicals in a very conservative world.

Lavishly illustrated with some of the funniest, most honest, and provocative cartoons you’re going to see anywhere, the book featured some of the cartoonists I read most regularly and admire most. The mix of interview subjects is diverse, both in terms of gender and race. I was so grateful to see some of my favorite female cartoonists featured that I just about cried. Emily S. Flake (Lulu Eightball), Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Marian Henley (Maxine — I adore this cartoon series!) are just some of the women featured here. So many creative women in one setting! Things are changing! Slowly. But changing, they are.

I should also mention that I also like a lot of the men featured here, too. Keith Knight (The K Chronicles), Shannon Wheeler (of the classic Too Much Coffee Man), Aaron McGruder (Boondocks, the best comic strip of its kind since Bloom County), and David Rees (Get Your War On, the comic strip collection that helped me come to grip with the insanity of the post 9/11 world) are all featured here.

I was rather pleased to find that I’ve read the work about 2/3rds of the people featured in the book and am fans of most of them. On a personal note, it choked me up a bit to find that Tak Yoyoshima is now an alternative cartoonist, as I remember his name from back in the day when Tart started. I mean, how many people called Tak do you know?

You need this book. If you don’t support works like this, you’re hopelessly mainstream, square, unhip, and reactionary. Bad things to be, folks. Blow your mind open with Attitude and Attitude 2. The mind you save may be your own.

My pals at Seattle’s Eat the State! have this to say:

Aaron McGruder is just one of the cartoonists featured and interviewed in Attitude 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists, edited by Ted Rall. Others include Max Cannon (Red Meat); Keith Knight (The K Chronicles, [th]ink); Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For); David Rees (Get Your War On); Marian Henley (Maxine!); Brian Sendelbach (Smell of Steve, Inc.); and Stephen Notley (Bob the Angry Flower)–21 artists in all. Rall interviews each cartoonist about their craft, providing an interesting inside view of the life of alternative cartooning, and offers a few pages of selected strips by each one. Attitude 2 follows on the success of Rall’s first Attitude anthology, which was slightly more focused on political cartooning; the second anthology is slightly more eclectic, but the political content is still strong. Many of these cartoonists are only published in a few alternative city weeklies around the country, so this anthology does a great service by bringing together the cream of contemporary cartooning that most of us never get to see. The large-format book is available for $13.95 from NBM Publishing, http://www.nbmpublishing.com. –Lansing Scott

James Heflin gives the anthology the full treatment in the Valley Advocate:

Forget the Lasagna

Attitude 2, Ted Rall’s compilation of alternative cartoonists, goes beyond Garfield

by James Heflin – March 11, 2004

The real news is usually found on the comics page. Doonesbury , Bloom County and Boondocks have all been torchbearers for higher truths than the often-constricted views of mainstream news copy, and that’s just the comics page in daily newspapers.

If you couldn’t care less that a cat likes lasagna or that Cathy’s having a crisis about what freaking bathing suit to buy, peek between the covers of alternative weeklies, and you’ll find plenty of comics that refuse to play dumb. This Modern World often brings news stories into play that get short shrift in the mainstream press; Ted Rall casts a harsh eye on the Bush administration with his crudely drawn strip. Rall, also a writer whose work can regularly be found on alternative news sites, compiled the book Attitude, a fine introduction to the world of “alternative cartoonists.”

Rall continues the project with Attitude 2 , which features interviews and a sampling of work from 21 cartoonists whose work is regularly found in alternative weeklies. Many of them may be familiar — Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, Marian Henley’s Maxine and Eric Orner’s The Most Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, among others, have appeared in the Advocate.

The cartoonists range from merely being alternative because they feature gay characters to being downright disturbing. Neil Swaab’s Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles pushes the envelope more than most, focusing on a pedophile teddy bear who leaves far too little to the imagination. The non-pedophilia Mr. Wiggles strips are often gruesome or explicit enough to embarrass a sailor. Swaab says his strip is about “laughing at the darker aspects of life, finding humor in the sickest regions of the human psyche.” So it’s not Family Circus , then.

Unusual styles are on offer, too. Greg Peters uses clip art, photos and drawing in combination to produce Suspect Device, a strip that takes on the eternal circus of Louisiana politics in grand style. His deft combining of styles makes for the most visually impressive strip in the book. David Rees also uses clip art to great effect, providing a dissonance between a strait-laced look and adolescent-voiced skewering of the logic behind current political moves (Clip art guy with necktie #1 — “Oh my God, this War or Terrorism is gonna rule! I can’t wait until this war is over and there’s no more terrorism.” Clip art guy with necktie #2 — “I know! Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War on Drugs, and now you can’t buy drugs anymore? It’ll be just like that!”).

If you like your cartoons to focus on humor rather than political fire, two major standouts are evident. Max Cannon’s Red Meat (“miasmic molasses for the masses”) plies a strange brand of humor that’s either immediately funny or just plain inexplicable. His drawing style is somewhat like Rees’s clip art, plainly drawn, iconic and decidedly un-dynamic, usually featuring three frames of the same drawing with different dialogue. His very Bob Dobbs “pipe-smoking Dad” character happily espouses some unusual notions. In one strip, he offers someone an “odd job”: “You know … I’d happily pay you four dollars to thrash around on a vinyl tarp covered in melted butter while I throw oranges at you.” In another, he goes trick or treating naked for UNICEF. He also gets up at five and enjoys the “sublime anticipation” of waiting for an apricot to explode in the microwave.

Jennifer Berman makes a major play for the “funniest” crown as well, offering single-panel comics that rely on a peculiar variety of humor somewhat akin to Gary Larson’s Far Side . Sometimes it’s gut-splitting (though just the words without the visual don’t make quite the same impact): the Dalai Lama gets excited at his birthday party — “Wow! Nothing! Just what I always wanted!” A male dog eyes a comely female: “I wonder what she looks like with her collar off!”

Rall’s entire book is a fascinating break from the tired, expected lightness of the daily comics page. The humor here takes far more risks, and the politics move far beyond the safety of journalistic attempts at objectivism. Attitude 2 would be worth a look just for the interviews that reveal intriguing glimpses behind the actual strips, but the book also serves as a useful starting point for further explorations of these cartoonists whose work is often harder to find than Garfield, if far more worthy of print.

“Real Americans” on eBay

I don’t vouch for this seller or anything, but I noticed that there is a copy of the freshly out-of-print Real Americans Admit: The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done! for auction on eBay. Just trying to be helpful.

I Don’t Know Whether Ann Coulter is Out of Her Mind…

…but she sure writes like it. This just in from Editor & Publisher:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today asked newspapers to consider dropping Ann Coulter after her March 3 column that implied Muslims “smell bad.”

None of Coulter’s approximately 50 clients have complained about the column so far, according to Universal Press Syndicate Director of Communications Kathie Kerr.

In the column, Coulter wrote: “Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’).”

This is hardly the most outrageous thing Coulter has written, but CAIR’s response–to call for economic censorship of her work–is a call for the same kind of rancid right-wing tactics we rightly deplore when it comes, say, courtesy of the New York Times or Clear Channel Communications. Shutting each other up will only makes our currently polarized nation more so.

New York Times Cartoon Censorship Story – as seen by the right

You might expect conservative commentators to set aside rank partisanship in the face of rank censorship–especially when a “liberal” paper like The New York Times carries it out. And since I’ve always come out against campus “hate speech” strictures and other attempts to censor right-wing speech, you might expect to see a little gratitude coming from my fellow pundits–even if we don’t plan to vote for the same Yalie this fall.

You might expect that members of the media would be concerned when one of their own is silenced as the result of a concerted campaign of harrassment and intimidation by political ideologues. The same thing, after all, could happen to them.

You might expect–but you’d be wrong. The pro-war, Bush apologist New York Press favors censorship–and says so on Page 2 this week.

The generic warbloggers have the usual argument:

I don’t have any right to have my speech printed in the New York Times and neither does Rall.

Of course, no one has the “right” to be published anywhere. But only a simpleton, or a right-wing blogger typing in his parents’ basement in Tennessee, would fail to see the danger to a free media in an editor who caves into rank political pressure when making editing decisions. An independent press must be responsive to its readers, but that doesn’t mean running scared of a creator some 13 years after you started running his work because some people oppose his politics. If opinion mongers have to worry about getting fired every time they venture off the political mean, the next thing you know, the entire op-ed page will be covered with nothing but bland, middle-of-the-road moderates.

Oh.

Anyway, it’s more important than ever that those who believe that singling out a creator for censorship simply because he opposes Resident Bush speak out. If you haven’t done so already, please write the Times:

Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital

New York Times Letters to the Editor

Ombudsman Daniel Okrent

If the shoe were on the other ideological foot, if a strident conservative had been shitcanned from the Times website simply because liberals didn’t like him or her, you can be damned sure that I’d still be urging you to speak up.