Ted Rall

Ted Rall (born 1963 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is a left-wing columnist and editorial cartoonist. Unlike many editorial cartoonists, his political cartoons often appear in a traditional comic-strip format.

He attended Columbia University, where he contributed cartoons to the campus newspapers, and graduated in 1991 with a bachelor of arts with honors in history. Rall says meeting Keith Haring in 1986 inspired him to pursue cartooning.

Style

Rall is one of a new breed of editorial cartoonists who began in the alternative weeklies during the 1980s and early 1990s with wordy, abstractly drawn strips about politics and social issues. Syndicated since 1991, he enjoyed success in mainstream newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post with his merciless attacks and unorthodox politics. He was, for example, one of the few liberal cartoonists to call for Bill Clinton's impeachment for lying under oath.

Controversies

In 1999, Rall stoked controversy among cartoonists when he wrote a controversial article damning Maus creator Art Spiegelman in the Village Voice for his lack of talent and allegedly controlling who gets high-profile assignments from magazines like The New Yorker. He was heckled publicly after the article, most blatantly by the conservative New York Press and pornographic illustrator Danny Hellman. Hellman carefully copied Rall's voice and style in a phony e-mail sent to at least 35 of Rall's fellow cartoonists and editors in an attempt to sabotage Rall's career. When Hellman refused to back down and sent out yet another e-mail impersonating Rall, Rall responded with a lawsuit for libel per se and other charges related to impersonation.

Rall has caused considerable controversy with several of his cartoons. One in particular, the "Terror Widows" cartoon, which ridiculed the greed of some of the widows of men killed in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, was called offensive by some, brilliant by others. Rall's response to the criticism: "I've done a few lousy cartoons in my time that I'd love to take back, but this isn't one of them."

Rall raised hackles with his May 4, 2004 Op/Ed "AN ARMY OF SCUM: Or, We're Looking For a Few Good Homosexual Rapists", in which he wrote about the Abu Ghraib scandal, "American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS".

Another controversial Rall cartoon was his posthumous critique of Pat Tillman, whom his comic described as an "idiot" and "sap" for abandoning his NFL career to fight in both the war against Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan. A year later, in another cartoon dated May 21, 2005, under the titles "Here's where we'll get more troops" and "Reanimate dead soldiers", a drill sergeant shouts to a uniformed living dead, "And duck the friendly fire this time, soldier Zombie." [1] (http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2005/05/21/)

A June 8, 2004 Op/Ed piece (site (http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20040608)) by Ted Rall published shortly after the death of former President Ronald Reagan claimed that Reagan is "turning crispy brown right about now," implying that the former president is burning in hell.

He created controversy with his July 5, 2004 cartoon (link (http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2004/07/05/)) depicting Condoleezza Rice going to a "racial re-education camp" and referring to her as a "house nigga." Rall, a white man, was accused of racism by some critics.

A November 8, 2004 cartoon (link (http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/2004/11/08/)) depicting mentally disabled children drew complaints from advocates for the disabled and led to his cartoons being dropped from The Washington Post's website. Rall responded in his blog saying: "I regret hurting people who I have nothing against. I do want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and I think I failed in that with this cartoon. Not to mention that the cartoon failed--too many people got bogged down in the analogy and the main point got lost."

Ted Rall is a frequent guest on "Hannity and Colmes".

Publications

• Waking Up In America (1992), cartoon collection
• All The Rules Have Changed (1995), cartoon collection
• Real Americans Admit: The Worst Thing I've Ever Done! (1996), graphic novel
• My War With Brian (1998), graphic novel
• Revenge of the Latchkey Kids: An Illustrated Guide to Surviving the '90s and Beyond (1998)
• Search and Destroy (2001), cartoon collection
• 2024: A Graphic Novel (2001)
• Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists (2002), editor
• Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan (2002)
• To Afghanistan & Back (2003), graphic travelogue
• Attitude 2: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists (2004), editor
• Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back from the Right (2004), prose non-fiction, ISBN 1932360220

Blog

Ted Rall is also the author of Search and Destroy: Ted Rall is America's BS detector (see external links)

External links

• Ted Rall Homepage (http://www.rall.com)
• Angry response to Rall (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/03/15/widow_wrath/)
• Editorial Cartoons by Ted Rall (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=1071&pg=1) from Yahoo news.

Editorials

• Anti-Reagan op/ed (http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20040608)
• AN ARMY OF SCUM (http://thomasmc.com/0505tr.htm)
• Ted Rall defence of op/ed (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040608-114726-8654r.htm)

News articles

• Information about the Rall/Hellman lawsuit (http://www.speranzastudios.com/freedirtydanny/#Anchor)
• Washington Post Drops Rall Cartoon (http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000723114)

Transcripts from Hannity & Colmes

• June 08 2004 (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,122264,00.html)
• May 07 2004 (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,119487,00.html)

Blog

• Search and Destroy: Ted Rall is America's BS detector (http://tedrall.com/rants.html)de:Ted Rall