What Would Real Homeland Defense Cost?

In my column this week, I argued that the United States Air Force should keep fighters in the air at all times to defend our soil and reduce response time in the event of a 9/11-style emergency. On 9/11, you may recall, not a single fighter jet was in the air–which is why NORAD wasn’t able to intercept any hijacked passenger plane before it struck its target.

Air Force honchos have written to inform me that keeping planes in the air at all times in sufficient quantities to cover the entire mainland United States would cost $1 billion per year. Too expensive, they say.

To which I would like to point out: We spend $2 billion a year just to prop up the government of Egypt.

No Ted Rall on Air America

As one of the few liberals to have worked as a host for AM talk radio for a major station (KFI AM 640, Los Angeles, from 1998 through 2000), I’m getting deluged with email asking whether I’ll be part of the new Air America leftie radio syndicate that debuts tomorrow.

I haven’t been asked.

As I describe in my upcoming book WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL, I had discussions with the predecessor to Air America, AnShell Media, but the new Air America has decided to take a less partisan, less overtly liberal political stance than the “left wing Rush Limbaugh/Clear Channel Communications” approach originally conceived by AnShell. That may be why they’ve excluded progressive voices.

Their roster includes some brilliant comedians–I’m a fan of both Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo–and it seems that that’s the direction Air America management wants to go: the leftism goes down easier with a dose of humor. While my KFI show did include a lot of humor, including Dave Eggers’ “Brooklyn Traffic”, “Dial a Dump” and the infamous “Stan Trek 2000” reality tour of Central Asia, my approach really was to attempt to be the left-wing Rush–aggressive, unfair to the Republican right, and unabashedly unashamed about promoting a liberal agenda. If Air America ever heard my aircheck tapes, they probably thought I was a little too strident for their tastes.

I wish them well, but to be honest, I believe that Air America is doomed.

First and foremost, political talk radio is a difficult medium, very personal and different than televised and stand-up comedy. Listeners to AM talk radio crave honesty, straightforwardness, the ability to think on your feet when dealing with callers. You also have to know your shit, backwards and forward. It took me a year to find my legs on the air; the Air America hosts won’t have that much time. If I’d been a member of the management, I would have eschewed the big/expensive names in favor of lesser-known liberal hosts with on-air experience in the medium.

Second, moderation is death. Like many Democrats, I listen to Rush and Hannity because they piss me off. It looks like Air America wants to convince Republicans by becoming their friends. That won’t work. Democrats want to hear a strident voice echoing their opinions; Republicans want to throw something at those Goddamn commies. Putting soft liberals on the air–Franken, I read somewhere, favored the war in Afghanistan–doesn’t accomplish that.

Third, the distribution model doesn’t make sense. Air America is only on six small stations. Here in New York, their WLIB is currently the home of obscure Carribean hits (yes, really). If you’re going to buy a station outright or take over its programming, you need to make a big splash. Here in New York, that would have required buying a big 50,000-watt talker like WABC or WOR, where an audience already exists for talk radio. Granted, that would have been prohibitively expensive. A far more intelligent approach would have been the slow build model. Right-wing talk radio, after all, didn’t spring up overnight. It started in the late 1970s. If Air America were serious, it would have begun acquiring stations in smaller markets, using their airwaves as a farm system to develop on-air talent for future national syndication. Buying small stations in big markets is an attempt to make a big political splash during an election year, not build a radio network.

Lastly, what happens if Kerry wins? The real test for leftie talk radio, as I can attest from my experience during the Clinton era, is whether it can attack a Democratic president from the left. Right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush often attack Bush from the right; they lose credibility when they suck up to authority. One suspects that Air America’s milquetoast approach won’t allow for that sort of thing.

Air America was a good idea, but its execution sucks.

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.