There was a good turn out for Ted Rall at UIS last night but it's a little disappointing that he didn't fill a bigger room. The David Brooks event sponsored by the Lincoln Presidential Library in '06 was more widely promoted and moved to the larger Sangamon auditorium. Rall should have ten times the crowd considering that he was vindicated in his views over the last eight years while Brooks has been wrong about pretty much everything.
Anyway, Rall spent most of his time talking about his non-syndicated projects, which are very interesting. He pointed out that since it's difficult to make a living doing newspaper editorial cartoons, it's necessary for cartoonists to find other outlets for their work.
He showed this hilarious animation as an example.
I didn't know that a lot of papers dropped Rall after 9/11. I can't believe anyone takes the idea of "liberal media bias" seriously after the last eight years. It wasn't pro-war conservatives getting fired for their views after 9/11, and it only takes a few reporters getting silenced for everyone else to get the message. Playing the liberal media bias card is nothing but a tactic to silence all liberal viewpoints in the media and dismiss inconvenient facts as bias. Anyone who keeps harping that line should be laughed off the public stage.
He said something at the beginning about responding more if people asked hostile questions. So, after a lot of softballs, I got the last question of the evening and decided to challenge him a little.
I agreed with him that liberals need to criticize and push Obama, but wondered if he was trying to make Obama sound more moderate or conservative than he really is. I gave a couple examples from his comments that I think were inaccurate (no prosecution of Bush crimes and no liberals in the cabinet) and suggested that some liberals were so impacted by Bill Clinton's betrayal of the left that they expect the same from Obama.
Is Rall transposing Bill Clinton onto Barack Obama?
There are many liberals on cynicism auto-pilot after decades of being in the opposition. Some of Rall's cartoons about Obama, in my opinion, read like they're about Bill Clinton and I think he's jumping the gun. Now that we have a President who responds to liberal viewpoints, the left needs to create new approaches other than all cynical, negative attacks all the time.
Rall gave a long, thoughtful response, and while he made some very good points, I remain suspicious that he's reliving the Clinton years regardless of what Obama does in office. Some liberals want Obama to scream and shout about how progressive he is like Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, but that's not how someone with a background in left wing movement activism gets elected President.
Rall said that positive cartoons in support of politicians make bad comics. Even if he agrees with Obama on something, he isn't going to write a cartoon about it. I respect that from a cartoonist's perspective even though I don't think it's a good strategy for the progressive movement.
A few people in the audience reacted when he accused Obama of being a master of weasel words. He showed a cartoon earlier in the evening about Obama not supporting prosecution of Bush administration officials and I pointed out that he did plainly say during his first press conference that they would be prosecuted like any ordinary citizen if criminal activity is found.
After acknowledging that Obama said he favors prosecution, Rall argued that Obama's other statements (looking forward and not backward) were signals that he isn't serious about investigating crimes. That's a fair argument similar to what some liberals have been saying about many of Obama's statements since the primary. He often acknowledges two sides of an issue, which leaves things open to interpretation.
In this example you could also interpret Obama's comments as a signal that the Senate investigation he was speaking about won't be a wasted effort because crimes will be prosecuted once revealed. He also chose to bring up torture and due process, even though it wasn't part of the reporter's question. Is that a signal that he believes there likely was criminal activity in those areas that should be looked into further?
Rall tends to look for negative signals in Obama's statements that suggest he'll betray the left, while I tend to look at the positive ones. Time will tell which one of us is right and I think we'll both have our turns at being wrong.
I don't believe Obama will be another Bill Clinton who betrays his progressive platform and gives us eight years of status quo with little lasting change to show for it. That's not what people voted for.
Obama said during the primary that he wants to be a more politically transformational President than Clinton. So far that's happening. He's already doing more to stop climate change during his first month in office than Clinton did for eight years.
I thought Rall was engaging, likable and had a lot of interesting things to say. The UIS visual arts gallery has his work on display until March 23.
I wrote most of this post last night and this morning I see that half of the SJ-R article about the event is based on Rall's response to my question. Cool.