Ted Rall

Ted Rall, born 1963 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised near Dayton, Ohio, is a liberal columnist and editorial cartoonist. Unlike many editorial cartoonists, his political cartoons often appear in a traditional multi-panel comic-strip format.

He attended Columbia University, from 1981 to 1984 where he contributed cartoons to the campus newspapers, and returned to graduate in 1991 with a bachelor of arts, with honors, in history. Rall says meeting Keith Haring in 1986, at a subway station, inspired him to pursue cartooning as a full-time profession.

Rall writes a weekly syndicated column. He also travels to and writes about Central Asia, a region he believes to be pivotal to U.S. foreign policy concerns.

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. His startling drawing style reflects a distinct break from the cross-hatched style developed by Jeff MacNelly during the 1960s, a house style that has become virtually synonymous with American editorial cartooning. Syndicated since 1991, he enjoyed success in mainstream newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post with his merciless attacks on sacred cows and unorthodox politics. He was, for example, one of the few liberal cartoonists to call for Bill Clinton's impeachment for lying under oath. He is also opposed to gun control legislation. His cartoons have appeared regularly in Rolling Stone, Time, Fortune and Men's Health magazines, and have for several years been the most reproduced cartoons in the New York Times.

Controversies

Rall's work has a polarizing effect on its readers. While his supporters consider him audacious and brilliant, his detractors call him cruel and untalented. In 1999, Rall stoked controversy, especially among fellow cartoonists, when he wrote an article in the Village Voice accusing Maus creator Art Spiegelman of lacking talent and allegedly controlling who gets high-profile assignments from magazines like The New Yorker through personal connections, including his wife, a New Yorker editor. As a self-described prank, New York Press illustrator Danny Hellman sent an e-mail impersonating Rall to at least 35 of Rall's fellow cartoonists and editors in an attempt, according to Rall, to sabotage Rall's career. Rall responded with a lawsuit for libel per se and other charges related to impersonation. Some charges have since been dismissed; the libel case has not yet come to trial. Hellman has had several fundraisers for his legal defense fund and Rall accumulated at least $30,000 in legal bills. [http://www.tedrall.com/rallvhellman.htm

Rall has also caused considerable controversy with several of his post-9/11 cartoons. One in particular, the "Terror Widows" cartoon which suggested the widows of men murdered in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks were motivated by greed, was called offensive by many and perceptive by others. The comic led to his strip being dropped from the New York Times website. [http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040304-122301-2275r.htm 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 heckles 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". The headline referred to news reports that American troops had systematically sodomized Iraqi prisoners with flashlights and other objects.

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 enlist in the armed forces. Later, after revelations of Tillman's privately held anti-Iraq-war sentiments became public, Rall said he was wrong to have made such assumptions about Tillman's motives. [http://www.tedrall.com/2005_10_01_archive.html#112880323465427889

A year later, another cartoon, titled "Here's where we'll get more troops" ^*, referred to re-using dead soldiers; a drill sergeant shouts to a uniformed living dead, "And duck the friendly fire this time, soldier zombie."

A June 8, 2004 Op/Ed piece 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^* 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 critics.

A November 8, 2004 cartoon^*) depicting mentally disabled children as classroom teachers 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."

On July 4, 2005, Ted Rall, in an Op/Ed piece accused George W. Bush's chief political strategist Karl Rove of being "more morally repugnant and more anti-American" than 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Ted Rall is a frequent guest on "Hannity and Colmes", the BBC and NPR. He contributes a cartoon called "Left Coast" to the Los Angeles CityBeat. In February 2005, BBC Television broadcast a 30 minute profile of Rall as part of their series Cartoonists on the Front Line.

Rall is listed at #15 in Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Rall perceived the list as an honor, replying, "Not only am I grouped with many people whom I admire for their achievements and patriotism, I'm being demonized by McCarthyite thugs I despise." ^*.

He coined the term "theftinomics" to describe economic policies that he says are based on theft or fraud.

Rall is currently soliciting funds from readers and left wing bloggers in an attempt to sue Ann Coulter for libel and slander for her statement that, "Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions" which she first made at the 2006 Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in Washington DC on February 10th and then printed in her syndicated column the following week. As of Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 pledges totalled over $21,000.[http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001995932

In his May 16 2006 column, Rall claimed he has confirmation from his phone company that the Bush administration has tapped his phone. ^*

Awards

Rall's cartoons have won numerous awards, including the 1995 and 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and the Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club Award. His book Real Americans Admit: The Worst Thing I've Ever Done! won first prize from the Firecracker Alternative Press Awards, his Orwell parody "2024" was named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon.com, and his graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back was named as one of the American Library Association's Best Books of the Year.

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)
The New Subversive Political Cartoonists (2002), editor
Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan (2002)
To Afghanistan and Back (2003), graphic travelogue
Working For the Man (2003) William Messner-Loebs benefit anthology; contributor
The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists (2004), editor
Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back from the Right (2004), prose non-fiction, ISBN 1932360220
Generalissimo El Busho: Essays and Cartoons on the Bush Years (2004)
The New Subversive Online Cartoonists (2006)
Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East? (2006), graphic novellas and essays
America Gone Wild (2006), cartoon collection

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
Concurrent mirror of the Ted Rall Homepage This and rall.com are often down, but seldom simultaneously
Extensive review of Generalissimo el Busho
Angry response to Rall
Editorial Cartoons by Ted Rall from Yahoo! news.

Editorials

News articles

Transcripts from Hannity & Colmes

Blog

Search and Destroy: Ted Rall is America's BS detector