Sketch

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was recently given a dead by dawn diagnosis from Senator Jim Bunning after she had surgery for cancer.

I Caved

and finally joined Facebook. Not sure why.

I'm also on Twitter.

How To Save Print

Hearst, Zell, Murdoch, Scaife, Sulzberger--Here it is. Behold my completely serious, entirely workable, fail proof plan for saving newspapers. Free papers should go this route as well. Why deny yourself the revenue stream?

Looks like I'm not a moment too soon. The SF Chronicle might go on the block. Either someone's going to buy it or the kids in the local school district will be be getting some more computers. There's no reason why my idea won't save it.




Please Recycle.

Sketches

Pretty good speech. Lots of "Yes We Can" type motivation in there. We never quit. We keep going. We'll get through. I was so amped I started working while he was still talking!

Work for me is drawing funny pictures so I felt I was doing my part to help the country. I would have drawn more but it's kind of a visually boring event.

I like how everyone stood and clapped when Obama said we should end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas. I never knew Republicans supported that. I assume that law will get 100 votes then.


Obama really brought the thunder down on slacker dropouts, pulling the ol' Patriot card. It was his "with us or with the terrorists" moment. You don't spell America with an F, kids. Although "Freedom" does start with one so never mind.


I needed an excuse to draw McCain again. He looks pretty bad without the makeup he caked on during the campaign. Now he's just a crotchety old gasbag shaking his fist about the price of Obama's copters.

Well Put

I was poking around the internet reading about Alan Keyes because, well, he's hilarious and I came upon a quote he made after losing both the Republican and Constitution Party nominations for president in the 2008 election.

"It seems that the pattern of my political career…I have experienced this pattern on several occasions in the course of my political life, where people invite me in, and then they kill me, they invite me in, and then they kill me, they invite me in and then they kill me…I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion."

The New Surge

Barack Obama has kept good on his campaign promise to escalate the occupation of Afghanistan by sending 17,000 additional soldiers. Oddly, I don't hear conservatives complaining about this massive expenditure being "generational theft."

Sending your kid off to war probably seemed patriotic and necessary in 2002. As families lose their houses, jobs, 401ks, health care and everything else they worked their entire lives for, the thought of losing your child to a foreign adventure becomes less appealing.

Maybe Obama will get around to repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" one of these days so all our gay guys and gals can serve openly and miserably in the 120˚ heat. That will present an interesting conflict for conservatives. Which do they like more: oppressing gays or lobbing bombs at Al Qaeda?

Afghanistan is known as the "good war" because it had more to do with 9/11 than Iraq--something we like to congratulate ourselves on regularly. It's also known to be more "winnable" by the chattering pundit class, which is interesting considering that Afghanistan has been nicknamed "The Graveyard of Empires." Conventional wisdom in Washington is so often correct that I'm sure we'll be the exception to history on this one. Afghanistan will become the first Jeffersonian Democracy built on heroin exports!

Read All About It!

A lot of ink is being spilled on the death of newspapers. Every day there's a new "The End Of Print" article which begs for someone to figure out a way for newspapers to turn a profit. Will it be micro-payments, web ads, iphone apps, lemonade stands, restructuring as a non-profit or partnering with organized crime? The speculation is endless.

Well, you can stop writing that stuff because I've figured it all out.

Wednesday's comic will lay out a simple plan that will get papers back in the black with higher profit margins than they ever thought possible. Publishers who don't want to go out of business and want to get filthy rich like an old-timey newspaper man should check this site in two days, which is when I will spark the Platinum Age of Print. I expect full credit when the history books are written.

wow

I really hope Alan Keyes runs for president again soon.

War Is Boring

I've mentioned that I'm working on a graphic novel with David Axe, but I thought I'd make a more official-sounding announcement about the project. David and I have been working together for a few years and what started out as a strip has now evolved into a full-length book.

"War Is Boring" will be published in 2010 by New American Library, their first graphic novel. The book will detail Axe's adventures in war correspondence over the last few years, going through Afghanistan, Chad, Iraq, East Timor, Lebanon and a few other places. The story follows Axe's evolution from a thrill-seeking journalist to one with a full understanding of the humanitarian crises and complicated politics in the world's worst conflict zones.

I'm hard at work on the art chores. Below is a page from the introduction.

Chimp

Can a monkey crazily flinging shit at a wall come up with worse editorial cartoons than Sean Delonas. I don't know the answer.

Who knew a bullet-riddled chimp would end up being the American equivalent of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban? Actually you could probably predict that we were going to be dealing with stuff like this under our first black president. We'll see more of it as the nearly all-white profession struggles to explain their political metaphors involving primates and Gangsta Rap over the next four years. Socialist Godzilla destroying America? Fine. Comrade King Kong capturing a white woman labeled "American Values." That's bad.

To tell you the truth I don't think Delonas' intent was to portray the chimp as Obama at all. But when shit blows up in your face this bad, you know you overlooked something in the idea phase. But I can't really call for editorial oversight of Delonas when I think, like a crazed chimp, he shouldn't be allowed to hold a pen in the first place. It becomes a danger to people's eyes.

Pope Praises Pelosi

Joe Ratzinger's in the news:

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday told U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, that Catholic politicians have a duty to protect life "at all stages of its development," the Vatican said.

Then they drew attention to the post-larval adult stage of human development, blasting the U.S. for its support of the death penalty. He reminded judges and politicians that it is their duty to oppose the death penalty at all costs, reading a long list of names of all Catholics that serve in public office. "You should be ashamed!" he bellowed, causing his large hat to shift about his head.

A number of the bishops in the United States have questioned Pelosi's stance on abortion, particularly her theological defense of her support for abortion rights.

While noting her stance on abortion, much of their time was spent lavishing praise on Pelosi for her belief in evolution, opposition to the death penalty and child molestation, as well as her support of the poor through social programs--all in line with Catholic church doctrine. "It's just amazing how in touch she is with the theological justifications for all of these wonderful things." said Cardinal O'Rhorty. "We spend so much time railing against conservatives for their un-Jesusy beliefs--it's nice to meet someone who is so close to our core beliefs."

Actually, I'm making all that up.

Bluffer's Guide

Why be informed when you can sound informed? That's what Newsweek will be asking when they launch their new feature, "The Bluffer's Guide" which "will tell readers how to sound as if they are knowledgeable on a current topic, whether they are or not." I suppose they needed something for people who can't slog through their 300 word articles.

This is where news is headed. If it doesn't fit into a text message it can't hold people's attention.

Why Do They Hate America?

Michelle Malkin has a graphic on her blog that says "Proud to be an unpatriot in Obama's America."

I could probably spend about 2 minutes digging up dozens of instances where she accused various people of hating America and being insufficiently patriotic for opposing medieval torture and a dumb war, but I'm not going to. I'm going to go to sleep instead.

Don't Call It A Bonus

The Co-President of the bailed out Morgan-Stanley says the cash he gives out to employees is not a "bonus" but a "retention award." Democrats call their greed obscene but can't manage to put a $500,000 cap on a welfare CEO's salary.

Bankers are pretty clever with inventing ridiculous terms and complicated math to convert worthless garbage into gold. They managed to bundle a bunch of sub-prime mortgages into AAA rated securities and convince investors to buy them. Now we're emptying out the Treasury to save their criminally reckless asses.

Special thanks to Kevin Moore for advising me to tighten the premise of the comic when I showed him the original version. He's the reason it is mediocre instead of a complete disaster.

Don't Call It A Donation

I prefer the term "charitable retention gift."

You may notice the handmade cardboard sign on the right urging you to donate to my cartooning endeavors. While I don't much like asking or begging for money, I will say I offer far better services than the Wall Street banks that already received a few of your hard-earned dollars in the form of a bailout.

And you'll get a return on your investment in the form of continued cartooning! AAA rated by the most reliable institutions!

Also, if you'd like to get something in return other than my eternal gratitude, you can invest in some original art by purchasing your favorite strip, all hand-lettered and nice looking. Shoot me an e-mail if you're interested.

MailBag DoucheBag--Talkin Bout Nuts Edition

Kenny writes:

Sure Bush was and [sic] idiot, but you are idiotically as far to the Left as the idiot Bush was to the right. Additionally, your inability to see the dangers of collectivist socialism borders on infantile. My guess is you have no nut-sack. Your comics are complete drivel. I read them for a few weeks and then I put them in the category of Peanuts, not worthy of any intelligent person's time.

Ah, yes. Peanuts. I feel ashamed being put in the category of that widely derided failure of a strip.

What's with Kenny's affection for nuts? Peanuts. Nut sacks. Guy loves nuts. Kenny, you're my Nutty Buddy!

I've Got The Pulitzer Locked This Year

Foreign Aid

Printpocalypse

Your latest depressing and outrageous news...

Kevin Allman (who I recently interviewed) points way to a great new business strategy used by a free daily paper in Toronto. They fired their entire writing staff and are now using unpaid interns to write the news. The publisher calls it a "small adjustment."

Audio Books

I'm burning through audio books at an incredible rate as I draw this graphic novel. It's getting to be expensive. If you have any used ones you'd like to sell, please e-mail me: comics *at* mattbors {dot} com.

Adding: Hey, I know about libraries. I'm just trying to stimulate the economy here!

They Won't Fist Bump

Maybe the most ridiculous thing ever.

Via August.

Getting Your Own Cartoons Wrong

Or "Bitching About Cartoons, Episode 4,239"

Observe today's cartoon from Michael Ramirez. Note the basket is labeled "economy" as well as "economic stimulus." How can it be both?

Let me help. The idea behind the cartoon is simple: We're trying to lift up the economy with only a small amount of tax cuts (more would work) and it's being weighed down by the big spending of the stimulus. It'll never get off the ground that way!

There. So the basket is the "economy." The balloon is "tax cuts." And the boxes inside the basket are the "economic stimulus."

MailBag

Ken:

Just a quick comment about today's strip. I find it humorous that you included a crossed out "colored" in the RNC chairman block, when nobody in this country can figure out that until we all get on the same page with race issues, nothing is going to change. In fact, isn't it ironic that we now have Black America and White America and it's racist for a white man to refer to a black man as "colored" when the largest group for "black rights" is the National Association for the Advancement of COLORED People?

Do you really want them to change their name to The National Association for the Advancement of African-American People? That's way too many A's.

Fairey Update

The AP tried to intimidate Shepard Fairey by threatening to sue him, writing their own article about the "news" to drum up the controversy. Bad move. Fairey is now suing the AP for claiming he violated their copyright and seeks to legally establish that his famous image of Obama is his work.

The Los Angeles-based artist and his company, Obey Giant Art Inc., used the AP photograph “as a visual reference for a highly transformative purpose,” according to the complaint. “Fairey altered the original with new meaning, new expression and new messages.”

He'll win.

My favorite part of the article:

The AP, which claimed on Feb. 4 that Fairey’s image infringed the company’s copyright, threatened to sue Fairey by tomorrow, according to the complaint. The AP said it used “special technology” to determine the image’s original source

"Special Technology." Uh huh. You mean Google Images?

Pot Shots

Cagle has a round-up of Michael Phelps pot cartoons titled "Phelps likes Pot."

Of the eleven cartoons featured, not one criticizes the media's obsession with celebrities, defends Phelps against prudish moralizing or says a word about our insane war on drugs. It's just gags about pot.

A "scandal" occurs and cartoonists put it through their gag cartoon processor without so much as bothering to add any commentary to the issue. Like Pavlov's Dogs, the media rings a bell and cartoonists mindlessly salivate.

Even the innocuous gag cartoons in the pages of The New Yorker feature comments and observations about life, business, culture and politics. These...they do nothing. What a complete and utter failure of a profession founded on satire.

I Sense A Trend

Turd of the Day

Black guys. Always stealing money from good honest white folk.

(click here to view)

David Cohen Asheville Citizen-Times Feb 9, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

The New GOP

The GOP hasn't learned a lot from their November defeat. Their new strategy seems to be to yell about tax cuts even louder and with greater frequency. Being a moderate Republican or a conservative egghead these days means pretending your party isn't made up of--and controlled by--the sneering stupidity of the Rush Limbaughs and Sarah Palins of the world.

This comic contains some things that have been on my mind lately: Snuggies, Shepard Fairey posters and Sean Hannity. Have you seen his new Alan Colmes-less show? It's a priceless glimpse into the mind of a paranoid reactionary.

I caught a segment about the woman who had octuplets that implied you, me and all hard-working Americans are going to have to pony up for her 14 kids to have car insurance when they are teenagers. Remember that Hannity makes around $100,000 a day. He could pay for the daily wages of four full-time nannies for the woman with the income he makes before taking his morning shit.

You can tune in to the show at almost any point for reality-bending statements. Here's an exchange I caught Friday between him and Whoopi Goldberg.

Hannity: Maybe this is naive. Maybe I'm living in a fantasy land. Maybe I need to live in Disney. Because if you're our president, tell me the truth. We lived with a president recently that didn't tell us the truth.

Whoopi: Yeah, but you guys defended this cat for--

Hannity: I'm talking about Clinton.

Whoopi: I'm talking about Mr. Bush.

Hannity: George Bush didn't lie.

Whoopi: [shocked expression gives way to hysterical laughter.]

News Site Puts Out A Call For News

Here's a screen grab from the Huffington Post today. The top story? "Find us a top story!"


They ask you to spot "any major differences between the original senate bill and the compromise." It's like those touchscreen games in bars where you spot the differences between two photos of a bikini-clad hottie sunbathing on the beach--only it's with a 1,400 page trillion dollar stimulus package! "Hey, I don't recall seeing that $3 million for "janitorial restoration" of the Native American History Museum in the original version..." Ding!

Shouldn't news organizations be telling us what's in the bill?

On the bright side, this does encourage citizens to become involved in the legislative process once again. Come home from a long days work, crack a beer and put on your citizen journalist detective hat!

Cartoon Futures Market

I'm taking bets. Here's the Valentine's Day cartoon this year: An exasperated Obama as cupid, trying to shoot heart arrows into an elephant and donkey who just aren't feeling each other. When will we see the first? How many will there be?

Ad

This insert came in The Oregonian. It appears to feature Katie Holmes from the future.

Change Poster

The AP is threatening to sue Shepard Fairey over his famous "Change" poster. Apparently, it is news that he based the image off of a photograph. Like many things on the internet, lots of people have strong opinions about this based on nothing whatsoever.

I thought I'd add some facts, observations and opinions of my own.

• The poster is not a photograph and has not been altered in Photoshop with a simple click of a mouse, as people on the internet who know absolutely nothing about Photoshop are claiming. It is a new illustration based on a photograph that was most likely created in Illustrator.
  
• Some people are defending him on the basis that he didn't make money off of it. It doesn't matter either way. You are allowed to profit off of your own work, which this is. You are also allowed to make derivative works, which this could be considered. Marcel Duchamp famously drew a mustache, goatee and caption on the Mona Lisa and created something different with an entirely new context. (In this case mocking fine art and its rich admirers.)
  
• The photographer and the AP deserve no credit or compensation. He should mention it is based off of a photograph only when talking about the creative process of the piece. (Fairey has done this even though it's self-evident he used a photograph.)
• These types of things have been hashed out in the art world and in courts for quite a while. His work clearly and squarely falls into the category of fair use. Any lawsuit would be completely frivolous.

Adding: The comparison to Duchamp's Mona Lisa was not right since Fairey didn't alter or add something to a preexisting work. (i.e. a derivative work.) I think the case is simple because Fairey never reproduced one pixel from the AP's photograph. He didn't alter it in any way. It's an entirely new illustration and the legality of what he did is far from the edge of Fair Use law.

Serfdom

Hey, it worked longer than this system.

No Respect

The Times describes a cartoon:

A recent political cartoon in The Record, a newspaper in Hackensack, N.J., shows rats fleeing a sinking ship, labeled “Wall Street,” with treasure chests held aloft tagged “CEO” and “Bonus.” There are “I Hate Investment Banking” T-shirts for sale online. Last week on “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart rolled a clip of John A. Thain, Merrill Lynch’s chief executive, defending bonuses as a way to keep “your best people.”

John Stewart gets the name drop but not the cartoonist. (It's Jimmy Margulies, by the way.) Bob Scheiffer did this around the election with a Nick Anderson cartoon he thought was fantastic but just couldn't be bothered to identify.

It may seem like a small gripe, but this is routinely how cartoons are referenced in the media. You would never quote a brilliant rhetorical flourish from an op-ed column without saying who wrote it.

It should be added that the New York Times has a policy of removing artists' signatures from the work. Instead they run a small credit line under the cartoons, sometimes misidentifying the artist. (I'm referring to the Sunday edition. During the week they run no cartoons.)

The Future of Alt-Weekly Cartoons

If you follow the blogs of my colleagues in the alt-weekly cartooning world, you are probably aware of the panic that is taking hold due to the continued loss of paying clients. It feels like the industry is in free fall. (If you are not up to speed, see Tom Tomorrow, Max Cannon, Derf, and Jen Sorensen for starters.)

Predictions range from the grim to the apocalyptic. We know we aren't near the bottom yet, but the biggest fear is that we haven't even reached the point that print will bounce back to once the economy recovers. Print newspapers will continue to exist, but there's the sad realization that all of us are fighting for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie. It means less income for all of us and I'm not sure we'll see everyone producing their strip on the other side of this recession.

What follows is an interview with Kevin Allman, editor of The Gambit, an alt-weekly out of New Orleans. He reached out to express his sympathies to us ink slingers and agreed to answer some questions to put this all into perspective and see where the industry is headed.

•••

Matt Bors: Editor and Publisher had an article about 10 alt-weeklies that grew in 2008. I'm seeing a lot of small independent papers on that list. What are they doing right?

Kevin Allman: If you look at that list, you'll notice two things: the papers that are OK are in smaller markets and they're locally owned. In smaller markets, the advertisers that make up the bulk of alt-weekly ads have no other place to put their ads. And being locally owned is a big advantage right now, since the alt-media conglomerates almost all uniformly overbought. VVM, Creative Loafing, etc. -- they've all made some of the same mistakes that the big newspaper chains like Tribune have made.

But those growth papers aren't immune from the hurt, either. If you read the list, you'll find that many of them have grown with ancillary products (bridal guides, special supplements, "annual manuals" and the like). It doesn't mean that the page count or the profits on their weekly papers, where you would appear, are growing or even holding steady. It means they've found new vehicles for advertising, not editorial.

MB: We cartoonists are biased as to the importance of our craft, but having a good amount of comics in your paper seems like a no-brainer. They are widely read and relatively cheap. The Boise Weekly and Seven Days carry a ton. Many don't run more than two. And it seems like they are some of the first things to be held or canceled when there's cuts in the page count and budget. The recent VVM suspension of cartoons has us worried about it becoming widespread. As Jen Sorensen put it, "Heaven help us if the cost of cartoons makes or breaks the industry." How do comics figure into the budget of alt-weeklies--and how important do you think they are to the makeup of a paper?

KA: First: I love "Slowpoke" and would carry Jen if I could. I really, really like her work. So Jen has a big fan here. (I also love Keith Knight and "Big Fat Whale" and several others that I won't mention so I don't hurt anybody's feelings. But I hope you get the idea: I do read comics and think they're important.)

The cutback in cartoons has less to do with the budget than it does with page counts going down. Let's face it: you guys aren't paid shit for what you do, and it's got to be infuriating to feel like your measly $25 is the first place editors look to cut. We don't. It's a space issue.

The two big expenses are newsprint and salaries. My paper (Gambit in New Orleans) reduced its trim size in January by about an inch at the top. That actually saved jobs, I believe. But it means that stories are shorter, listings are briefer, and a lot of content ends up web-only.


The factor that's not mentioned enough is ad-edit ratio. Most papers try to operate on a ratio of 55-60% of ads to 45-40% of edit. In good times, there is some wiggle room -- editors can plead with their publishers for some extra space when the money is coming in. When it's not, the ad ratios get more strict, and the papers get skimpier, and the editorial space contracts even more.

So we have smaller pages and less editorial space vis-a-vis ads. We cut, and the best editors (I believe) don't make wholesale cuts in one department, but spread the pain. Drama reviews go down a couple hundred words. An art review might turn into an extended listing. Cover stories go from 2500 words to 1750. A third-news item moves to the Web. You get the idea.

And in that equation, cartoons are lost.

How do we make that decision? In my case, I went with the local guys: Greg Peters and Bunny Matthews. They both do New Orleans-specific stuff that our readers get, but wouldn't translate outside our market. Their drawings are the equivalent of local news stories. And I try to treat them with as much respect as I do the columnists, but they have to suffer too with the smaller page layouts.

It's less a matter of money than it is space. That's the hard truth. What you see as $25 for a cartoon, the publishers see as potential ad space that could sell for 10x that amount.

MB: The VVM comic suspension is only supposed to last for the first quarter of 09. Papers that have dropped me all cited money and space and said they would like to have me back if they could. (Not including the ones that went out of business.) I think the biggest worry is that they won't bounce back when the economy eventually does. Once the dust settles, what do you think the future of alt-weeklies will look like?

KA: I have no idea. I do think the ones that will survive (physically and as legit news sources) will be the ones that spent wisely when times were good and were not overextended when the bad times arrived. Those with strong local relationships -- with writers, with readers, with advertisers -- will fare better, as they will still have a unique niche that neither the Web nor the dinosaur dailies can fill.

As for VVM, I would never make a promise like that, but I hope they stick to it. If you have a good relationship with your editor, then I hope you trust him or her to bring you back as soon as possible.

MB: When you think about your comics lineup, what do you look for?

KA: Local and funny. I'm lucky in that I have some seriously talented cartoonists who produce city-specific stuff that cracks me up and makes me think. If I had a whole page to run nothing but cartoons, I would...and I would probably look for a combination of complementary drawing styles and points of view. And I would ROTATE them once in a while and let some new voices get a chance to be heard and judged on their own merits.

MB: When I first met you, it was after an AAN panel in Portland where, oddly enough, Arianna Huffington spoke about the future of alt-weeklies. The business model she espouses doesn't quite fill me with excitement.

Her news aggregator/gossip site is very popular but it relies on linking to the reporting of others and not paying for most of its original content. (blog posts by Deepak Chopra and Jamie Lee Curtis.) She also suggested that alt-weeklies let her run their content on her website for free; you get a link back to your site. Cartoonists are finding it hard to find paying clients on the web as this mentality takes hold. What's your take on the "working for exposure" model?

KA: You know I think it's bullshit. It's less related to an internship (which at least provides some practical knowledge and experience) than it is an exploitation of labor that not even a Walmart would countenance.

As for "exposure" -- let's get real. Where does a writer stand a better chance of being noticed: on his/her own well-done Website, or on an aggregator site with 500 other contributors, 495 of whom are probably better known than you are?

And further on "exposure" -- please name one person who has used HuffPo successfully to make money or otherwise leverage the work to get more work. Just one.

MB: Much of the problem is that ad rates on the net can't sustain a newsroom the way print ads used to. A newspaper's website may get 10 times the eyeballs that the print version gets but only generate a tenth of the revenue. How do alt-weeklies make the internet pay more than peanuts?

KA: That will change, eventually -- the NYT is making a profit off Web ads. Alt-weeklies need to look at ways to use the Web in other ways besides just putting an ad banner on the site and selling it in the same way as a paper ad. That makes sense to me, but I'm not the best person to answer the question, since I stay away from that end of the business.

We had a party last year and the marketing director sold a sponsorship to a car company. I don't know all the financials, but I do know they paid for the party and then some in exchange for a clearly sponsored Web video about the event.

MB: Alt-weeklies like the Tri-City News in New Jersey doesn't put their content online, preferring to focus on the dead tree edition. Other papers look like they are gearing up to go entirely digital someday. You've been big on developing your paper's website while keeping the print edition worth picking up every week. And you've done an almost unheard of thing: paying your bloggers. How are you beefing up online content while paying contributors and still staying afloat? What's to be said for a paper in this day and age forgoing the internet altogether?

KA: Bloggers have to be paid; it's content with value. If we couldn't pay a few freelance bloggers, we'd just have to have an all-staff-written blog. Otherwise we'd be hypocrites and no better than Arianna.

I can see where various business models make sense for various markets. The all-Web papers seem to be struggling (with the exception of the mega-sites like The Daily Beast, which aren't city publications anyway). I think the Beachwood Reporter in Chicago is an excellent all-Web publication, but I don't know its financial picture.

And if it works for papers NOT to put their content on the Net -- well, good for them. I would question where their next generation of readers is coming from, though. The average age of an alt-weekly reader is (I think) mid-40s. Younger people have made it clear they'd prefer to get the same news on their computers. I'd be afraid of having my print publication's demographic becoming even more restricted without a decent Web site. And - let's face it - the Web is a far better way of searching listings than the print paper is...and listings are a big reason people pick up alt-weeklies.

Image credits: Shannon Wheeler, Me, Ted Rall, Me, Jen Sorensen. Used with permission.

Eat Your Weedies

Radley Balko pens the public statement he'd like to see Michael Phelps deliver.

Checking In With The Crazies

I'm tired of all the stuffy pundits with their numbers and boring analysis. Let's see what some lunatics have to say about recent news events!

Let's check in with David Duke, a self-described "racial realist," and get his thoughts on the new RNC Chairman.

The Republican Party leadership in its latest act of self-immolation appointed, Michael Steele, a radical Black racist as the leader of the Party.

Very cogent analysis, David. I'm sure you love the new president.

Moving on to Fred Phelps at the God Hates America Blog. (Yes, he has a blog.) Surely the Westboro Baptist Church has some interesting thoughts on the election of Barack Obama and the challenges we face as a nation.

He has a burning lust inside him to rule the world; he is churning in all his rage against God; he is the son of the Devil himself; and he will be energized mightily to carry out this plan to rule the world and fight against Christ and his Church.

Well argued! But let's move on to a more serious scholar...

Credo Mutwa, the "Zulu shaman, or sanusi," whose view that the Global Elite are an alien race of shape-shifting reptiles is constantly blocked by the mainstream corporate media. ( It's controlled by the aliens, natch.) He has penned a poem about Obama and urges you to "circulate widely." The following is but an excerpt:

You are Barack, oh, son born to deceive
The suffering hoards of Africa look up to you,
See a black saviour where nought but a Judas strides.
An entrapper of nations, bringer of dismal war
Behind the robes and the nylon wings of hope
Oh, may those who look upon you, see you as you are.

"Nylon wings of hope..."

Hello, Pulitzer Committee! Oh, that's right. They are run by aliens. Sorry.

Turf War

I have no way of knowing if the $200 million to resod the National Mall that was pulled from the stimulus bill was wasteful or or not. It might have made some sod contractor in the area a very rich man. Compared to the billions in cash that have disappeared from Iraq's reconstruction money, it's hard to be upset. Also, it would be nice if the capitol city of the most powerful nation on earth had some nice green grass at its most important monuments.

Whatever the validity it's difficult to take Republicans claims of fiscal prudence seriously after the last eight years. And why do Republicans hate condoms so much? I know Trojans can take the thrill out of bareback sex in a bathroom stall, but c'mon, they're necessary.

That said, I admire their willingness to stick together and yell about more tax cuts in the face of a national crisis. A President needs a loud opposition. If only Democrats could have stood together and voted No on such things as the PATRIOT ACT, Iraq War Resolution, and wiretapping.

Puzzling Cartoon of the Day

Michael Steele and an elephant go...riverdancing?

(click here to view)

d.rano Conway & Berlin Daily Suns, … Feb 1, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com