{"id":193,"date":"2006-10-12T22:21:37","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T03:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/12\/cartoon-freedom-fighters\/"},"modified":"2006-10-13T08:08:27","modified_gmt":"2006-10-13T13:08:27","slug":"cartoon-freedom-fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/12\/cartoon-freedom-fighters\/","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon Freedom Fighters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Politics & Prose Bookstore in DC had a book event tonight for Attitude 3<\/a><\/strong> – a collection of the work of \u201cthe New Subversive Online Cartoonists.\u201d\u00a0 The book, edited with questions and commentary throughout by Ted Rall,\u00a0features the work of people more than happy to expose the lies and crimes of the Bush regime.<\/p>\n

Many of the cartoonists have done recent work on torture.\u00a0 This is refreshing, considering how much of the mainstream media have thumbtwisted themselves away from the subject.<\/p>\n

August Pollack showed a great cartoon with a country singer talking about his new song denouncing those \u201cSaddam-fellating liberals.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Pollack mentioned that he was very pleased with the strong international response his work generated.\u00a0 He confided that this included many financial offers from Nigeria.<\/p>\n

One of the female cartoonists showed a cartoon mocking women\u2019s magazines\u2019 obsessive articles on female bodies.\u00a0\u00a0 She pointed out – as a true story – that\u00a0 women get their small toes removed to fit into pointy shoes.\u00a0 She may have specified New York women, or perhaps this is a more widespread dementia.<\/p>\n

One of the cartoonists on the panel, Stephanie McMillan, has a new book – Minimum Security<\/a><\/strong> –\u00a0 with her own columns.\u00a0 She has the greatest author photo I ever\u00a0saw – showing her bent over a police car surrounded by cops with her hands handcuffed behind her back.\u00a0 (This is a bona fide photo from a 1994 protest).\u00a0 Publishers seem to prefer photos showing authors as erudite or professorial – something that looks safe on a coffee table, apparently.\u00a0 (By the way, I sure as Hades did not choose the photo for the back flap of Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0And it didn\u2019t look that bad when I sent it to New York – along with the photo on this blog. I guess St. Martin\u2019s\/Palgrave was trying to make me look respectable.)<\/p>\n

Rall said that the cutting edge of editorial humor is now online.\u00a0 But he stressed that print mediums also have something special – \u201cYou can take it to the beach or to your cell at Guantanamo.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Q&A, I chucked in a question about the cartoonists\u2019 perception of whether editors had been more cowardly or fearful of controversy since 9\/11.<\/p>\n

Rall replied, \u201cEditors have become incredible cowards – and they never had a lot of balls to begin with.\u201d\u00a0 Rall was one of the cartoonists most often reprinted in the New York Times in 1997 and 1999.\u00a0 But they have ceased using his work.<\/p>\n

Rall related how he was almost hired in the 1990s as a cartoonist for a newspaper in Asbury, New Jersey.\u00a0 He sensed the interview had gone very well – and then came one last question.\u00a0 The editor pointed out the window to the large parking lot and asked: \u201cAm I ever going to look at that window and see someone protesting some cartoon that you drew?\u201d
\n\u00a0So much for that job.<\/p>\n

Mikhaela Reid, a red-haired former Teamster\/Harvard grad, commented, “The cartoons that stay in the newspapers are those that generate the least angry mail… Editors respond to a few cranky letters as if the business is going under.\u201d<\/p>\n

One cartoonist commented: \u201cYou can judge people by the work they don\u2019t do.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Editors choose cartoonists not to offend.<\/p>\n

Rall observed, \u201cWe have all sent our work to all the [top] newspapers – and they have seen it.\u201d Yet chosen not to use it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cartoonists, when they sign a book, tend to draw neat little figures and clever snippets.\u00a0 Other authors usually only sign their names, or merely add a few sentences imploring the person to buy additional copies of the book for their relatives.<\/p>\n

Rall had a great laugh – very hearty and quick\u00a0 – helping his fellow cartoonists as they did their 3 minute presentations of their work.\u00a0 His laugh is especially refreshing considering the deluge of hatred that came his way after 9\/11.\u00a0 (His next book will have a 40 page collection of hate mail he received).\u00a0 He has a new book out entitled Silk Road to Ruin<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His webpage<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is excellent and has links to his cartoons and his op-eds.<\/p>\n

Many, perhaps most, of the cartoonists on the panel tonight\u00a0 are doing their art and political protests after their day jobs.\u00a0 It is refreshing to see non-mercenaries popping up in the Washington area – people doing their best work out of love and passion.<\/p>\n

Cartoonists are doing some of the finest political commentary in the nation these days.\u00a0 It is unfortunate that so few respectable columnists have as much gumption.<\/p>\n

Many of the cartoonists will be appearing this weekend at the Small Press Expo<\/a><\/strong> – America\u2019s premier cartooning and comic arts festival –\u00a0 in Bethesda, Maryland this Friday and Saturday.\u00a0 They are an amiable lot, and catching them at their booths and signings should be a treat.<\/p>\n

I have been fascinated by cartoons for more decades than I can remember.\u00a0 My father encouraged my love of cartoons from the time I was kneehigh to a grasshopper. The Sunday Washington Post was a ritual in our house.\u00a0 But even when I was 10 years old, I still recognized that Herblock, the Post\u2019s cartoonist for its first 130 years, could not draw worth squat. Neither his drawing nor his thinking ever improved.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politics & Prose Bookstore in DC had a book event tonight for Attitude 3 – a collection of the work of \u201cthe New Subversive Online Cartoonists.\u201d\u00a0 The book, edited with questions and commentary throughout by Ted Rall,\u00a0features the work of people more than happy to expose the lies and crimes of the Bush regime. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[22,659,6,10,12],"class_list":{"0":"post-193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","8":"tag-bovard","9":"tag-bush","10":"tag-torture"},"yoast_head":"\nCartoon Freedom Fighters - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/12\/cartoon-freedom-fighters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cartoon Freedom Fighters - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Politics & Prose Bookstore in DC had a book event tonight for Attitude 3 – a collection of the work of \u201cthe New Subversive Online Cartoonists.\u201d\u00a0 The book, edited with questions and commentary throughout by Ted Rall,\u00a0features the work of people more than happy to expose the lies and crimes of the Bush regime. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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