Econoculture Interview

There’s a fairly lengthy interview with me at Econoculture. Because it was a phone interview, and one conducted over an international phone line at that, there are a number of transcription errors—most of which be obvious to intelligent readers. However, I do touch upon enough points of interest that I thought it worth pointing out here. I hope you enjoy it.

Right-wing bloggers owe me one cent for each citation.

America Gone Wild Release Date

Alf wants to know:

Approximately when is America Gone Wild due for release. I can order it through Amazon.com, but they don't give a date.

Or you can order it from your friendly local bricks-and-mortar bookstore. Either way is fine, though if you have a choice it's always good to patronize good stores lest they go out of business and you feel all sad and stuff the way I felt when Cody's went under on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and realized that I had actually never, ever purchased a book there even though I lived nearby for more than a year.

Oh, the release date: Looks like late September or October. Advance orders are extremely helpful as they help bookstores gauge interest in a new title.

Critics can always get an advance galley for review.

You Decide

Elizabeth asks:

Hope this finds you well. The link below is for a parody of "Lola", called "Coulter". I don't know if the author got the idea from your cartoon, but it sure seemed that way to me! I thought I'd pass it along. Enjoy:

http://www.amiright.com/parody/70s/thekinks25.shtml

"Terror Widows": The Last Word

A number of articles and blogs have compared my March 2002 "terror widows" cartoon about media coverage of opportunistic 9/11 survivors Lisa Beamer, Ted Olsen and Mariane Pearl with Ann Coulter's remarks about the "Jersey Girls," 9/11 widows who have pressed the Bush Administration for answers about the terrorist attacks. Interestingly, there's been some amnesia among right-wing commentators, some of whom posit that Ann is catching hell while I got away scot-free with the same exact remarks.

Well, for one thing, they're not the same remarks. For another, I received numerous death threats and lost clients as a result of commenting on the commodification of grief. Don't believe me? Check out my upcoming collection of cartoons AMERICA GONE WILD. It includes a 35,000-word foreword detailing the hate mail, threats of death and dismemberment, client cancellations and the hypocritical behavior that originally inspired my "terror widows" cartoon. Anyone interested in the truth behind the myth should give it a read.

Silk Road to Ruin

I just finished reviewing the page proofs for "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the Middle East?", and they look great! I can't wait to see the final books, which will first be shipped directly to me at the Comicon in San Diego. They go on sale at the Comicon on July 19 at the NBM booth. Books will start appearing in stores in August.

Reviewers interested in receiving a review copy or advance PDF should contact me at chet@rall.com

I will be offering my usual signed copies, for cover price plus priority shipping, in August and September.

Bulk Discount on Original Art and Books!

It's that time again--time to buy something I can't afford but desperately need. In this case it's a new laptop. I figure it'll run $2000, including taxes and software and loading it up so it'll do everything I need it to do.

Here's where you come in.

If you have $2000 to send me via PayPal, you will receive an extraordinary amount of Ted Rall artwork, marked two-thirds off the regular price of $500 each. In short, you'll get ten (10) originals of your choice. Anything is available, including my work for MAD and other publications, provided I still have it and haven't sold it to someone else. Yes, the vast majority of my work is available. No, "terror widows" isn't.

To sweeten the pot, I'll throw in a complete set of my books, signed to your specifications.

E-mail chet@rall.com if you're interested.

Cleveland ATTITUDE 3 Signing Today

Cartoonist Matt Bors will be signing copies of Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonist with Brian McFadden of Big Fat Whale at Mac's Backs on Coventry Road in Cleveland starting at 6 pm. If you need more incentive to get out of your house than the chance to meet two brilliant cartoonists, they will be set up smack in the middle of the Coventry Street Fair where there will be music, merchants, and food.

You can also order a copy of Attitude 3 from Matt's online store and Matt will draw a sketch in it.

Columnist's Take on Coulter and Me

Phil Reisman's column in The (Westchester County) Journal-News discusses the parallels and differences between Ann Coulter and yours truly, specifically relating to our comments about 9/11 widows. I have to hand it to Ann; she's really going to the bank by plagiarizing my comments from March 2002 in her "new" book.

Among Reisman's comments:

How soon we forget.

Ann Coulter, the self-styled uber-babe of the right, wasn't the first pundit to characterize the relatively small contingent of vocal Sept. 11 widows as self-aggrandizing, media hounds who have capitalized on the deaths of their husbands. She's merely the first to make money out of it.

Coulter's political opposite, the syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall, made ground chuck out of the sacred-cow widows a long time ago. But unlike Coulter, he's talented, original and often funny.

He also paid a price for his searing commentary.

and

Both Rall and Coulter tapped into this zeitgeist, and depending on how you feel about them, they were either offensive in the telling or right on the mark.

At least Rall had the guts to do it first.

Rall sees that as his job. And without complaint, he lets the chips fall where they may.

Rall noted how he and Coulter are often compared. They're both glib and flippant.

"I think the difference is that I'm interested in getting to the truth," Rall said.

"I'm going to say something that she will never say, which is that I reserve the right to one day become a right-wing conservative. I reserve the right to come to a completely different conclusion. I don't guarantee anyone that I will always be a liberal.

"She'll never say the opposite, and that's the difference."

Check it out.

Coulter and "Deep Space Nine"'s Odo

Separated at birth? Just asking.

Ann Coulter Attacks "Terror Widows"

A colleague I ran into at the Denver editorial cartoonists confab was surprised to learn that my phone wasn't "ringing off the hook" after news of Ann Coulter's attack on 9/11 widows. After all, right-wingers like Coulter piled on yours truly when I drew my own take on the 9/11 widow media phenomenon back in March of 2002.

Well, as the following e-mail--one of many I've received from readers lately--says: The media have short memories:

What's your take on the press going after Ann Coulter for her comments on 9/11 widows? I had hoped, at least, that her time had passed and people would just ignore this book (which is what she richly deserves), but apparently it topped Amazon's best sellers list today.
At least Hannity, et al, will have a tough time defending her with the claim that its just the "liberal media" going after her, since they all went after you for what amounts to the same thing -- offending certain people. Then again, these guys do have short memories...

And the fall-out from "terror widows" was serious for me. Not only did I lose the Washington Post online website as a client, countless readers will always associate "Ted Rall" with "9/11 widows." It's not like I don't do other stuff besides making fun of the widows and widowers who, like Lisa Beamer and Ted Olsen, exploited their spouse's deaths to promote books, their fringe religious beliefs or wacky right-wing political agendas on national television--but you'd never know it to read some accounts.

And there were the death threats, of course. I wonder if Ann Coulter will get any of those?

Anyway, here's what she had to say about the fuss on the Today show with Matt Lauer (among other things):

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:

COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.”

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”

Can't say that I much disagree, although there's certainly some hypocrisy--and a failure to cite original source material--in her failure to note that I got there first, paid a price for my comments because I dared to speak up six months after 9/11, not four years. Where was she when her right-wing fans were bashing me? Will her right-wing fans come down on her as hard as they did on me?

Je pense que non.

My take?

First, Coulter isn't always wrong about everything. No one is. Second, she's a lot meaner to the widows as people than my cartoon was, which explored the way specific media figures--Mariane Pearl, Theodore Olsen and Lisa Beamer--exploited their spouses' deaths to make money or political hay. The vast majority of widows and widowers of 9/11, I have repeatedly said and written, deserve our sympathy and whatever help they need to rebuild their lives. My commentary was about the media phenomenon, such as the parade of 9/11 widows who went on stage during the 2004 GOP Necropublican Convention in New York to endorse Bush, then the specific individuals.

As for the right's inability to demonstrate ideological consistency, well, I can't say I'm surprised.

My lines are open. Which is fine.

P.S. A full analysis of the "Terror Widows" hubbub will be published in my upcoming book AMERICA GONE WILD.

Things to do in Denver before I'm dead

I'm heading to Denver for the fabulous annual confab of editorial cartoonists, but--alas--I've never spent any time there before. Thus, what would be appreciated from connaisseurs of the Mile High City, would be information and recommendations concerning:

Denver's best CD store
Its best used book store
Its best dive bar
The coolest thing in town that tourists should but never see (example: in NYC, that would be the subway museum)
Anything else you feel like telling me

Please e-mail chet@rall.com, and thanks in advance for your suggestions.