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.
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,
In 1999, Rall created a fervor 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 conservative New York Press and pornographic illustrator Danny Hellman. Hellman carefully copied Rall's Voice style and person, in a phony email that appeared to have come from Rall, in an attempt to sabotage Rall's career. The email was sent to at least 35 of Rall's fellow cartoonists and editors. When Hellman refused to back down and sent out yet another impersonation email, Rall responded with a lawsuit for libel per se and other charges related to impersonation.
Rall has been criticized by some right-wing Republicans with regard to 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 Attack, was called offensive by some, brilliant by others. Rall, commenting on the controversy, replied 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."
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. He also created controversy with his July 5, 2004 cartoon (link) 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 right-wing Republican critics.
Rall also 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".
An Op/Ed piece (site) 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.
A cartoon (link)depicting mentally disabled children drew complaints from advocates for the disabled. And led to his cartoons being dropped of The Washington Post 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
News articles
Transcripts from Hannity & Colmes
Blog
