Kucinich, Idiot Box Fan

It's true! I ran into Dennis Kucinich at the AAEC convention last week and introduced myself as the cartoonist for the Cleveland Free Times (where he lives). He was familiar with my work and said he liked the cover of him spanking Cheney so much he wants the original.

We then snapped this pick with his tall, attractive wife who is young enough to be his daughter. It would even be physically possible for her to be his granddaughter if the Kucinich family had a particularly strong devotion to breeding young.

Kucinich delivered the keynote address at the main dinner banquet which was, for the most part, good. I was worried he would give the same kind of phony campaign speeches I've seen him give everywhere else. Even on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman (a friendly venue if there ever was one) he still seems like a constantly on message politician and never like a normal person. For the first part of his speech he was seriously funny, making some harsh jokes at his own expense and getting the crowd to laugh.

After the speech he went to a Q&A. I'm not sure why this was part of the dinner, but it was a predictable snore fest from then on out. People lobbed questions about his long shot Presidency, terrorism, Iraq, etc, and he went on and on. And on.

Kucinich is the only person I'll name drop having met. Suffice to say, I had many drinks with many cartoonists I have been waiting to meet. I don't have the energy to recap it all. Daryl Cagle has some posts on his blog (scroll down) and Editor and Publisher did some write ups here, here, and here. And an article about the panel discussion on drawing comics during war with David Axe.