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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Ted Rall and Steve Brodner

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Steve Brodner

Sleeping Your Way to the White House

Posted Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999, at 3:00 PM ET

Dear Ted:

Looks like it's time to clear the dishes from this old Breakfast Table. I'll endure the scurrying roaches long enough to say It's been a lot of fun (although I don't usually have elephant dung with my oatmeal).

I should have known I'd get myself in trouble by calling names of my favorite editorial illustrators. I left out Burt Silverman, Joe Ciardiello, Alan Cober, and Julian Allen (the last two, alas, having passed last year). And Ralph Steadman, the King of Swing.

About drawing ability, don't sweat it, Ted. Your work is so much better drawn than Lurie's that the subject shouldn't even be on the table. You have what all great artists of all disciplines need: self-knowledge. It is the understanding of our own artistic personalities, temperaments, and, yes, limitations that enables us to shape an effective statement on the page. While a burnt-out hack like Lurie sweats bullets trying to be Levine (and failing every single solitary day of his long and lucrative life), excellent cartoonists figure out how to draw in a way that perfectly supports the statement they're making. You mention Thurber. How sublime he is! Those drawings bring you right in. Somehow (and I don't know how) they cause you to stop flipping and really look, and then, of course, you're reading the story. The Tom Tomorrow thing is interesting. He'd be out on his keister without a Xerox machine. But who cares? The image matches the voice wonderfully. And the voice is saying important things. Your work understands how fast we're flipping through the newspaper. It brings us immediately to the idea. Your understanding of blacks is very keen; those lines hold the image and grab our attention. So your cranky left-of-irony point of view comes in loud and clear. For God's sake, don't learn to draw.

For years I resisted The Simpsons. I hated the drawings. It seemed a cheap approach to animation. Plus it was on the Fox Network, so, I thought, how could this be worth the trouble to sit and watch it (TV is a big effort for me)? Turns out, of course, it's perhaps TV's greatest moment. All the crappy drawing and "family situation comedy" is a ruse. It gets the masses in the tent and then Groening lets them have it. It's powerful, experimental, strangely committed. On top of that, there's very real and touching character development. It is a work of unalloyed genius. More than the work of my favorite graphic artists, this program will be the thing our cultural era will be remembered for because he wrapped his message in such strategic cleverness as to make it a Saturn rocket that blasts into every home in the USA. And the guy can't draw to save himself.

I'll finish with Phil Harris (I know you've been waiting). Phil Harris was Jack Benny's orchestra leader on radio. He was also married to Alice Faye, the gorgeous star of many 20th Century Fox musicals. Benny, in an interview, said that the writers always wrote Harris' radio character as if he'd just got out of bed having had great sex. Harris, on radio, is laid-back, flippant, casual, with a little buzz on. You could just see the cigarette. Everyone knows a guy like this: someone so comfortable with himself that he just doesn't give a f**k. And this, it occurs to me, is why Al Gore is a loser. George W. Bush, you just know has great sex. He said to me last year, "Maybe I'll see you in national politics, maybe I won't. I have a cool life." Bill Bradley? C'mon, great sex. He's a jock, could get all the girls he wanted. He's traveled everywhere, knows about life. Every movement is easy. He's comfortable with himself. Al Gore looks like a guy who broke his toe because the vibrator fell out of the medicine cabinet when he opened it looking for a band-aid because he cut his finger trying to undo his wife's bra. People don't think these things, of course. But I think they perceive them subconsciously. If a man is comfortable with himself, he'll be comfortable in the job. It's too bad, though. Stevenson might have made an inspired president. Or Mondale. Or Dukakis. Or Gore.

But I don't think we'll get to find out.

Au revoir,
Steve

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415
from: Steve Brodner

Sleeping Your Way to the White House

Posted Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999, at 3:00 PM ET
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Ted Rall is a New York-based political and social-commentary cartoonist and opinion columnist for Universal Press Syndicate and the author of Revenge of the Latchkey Kids (click hereto buy it). Steve Brodner has been a satiric illustrator for 27 years and has contributed caricatures of political and pop figures to a wide variety of publications.
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Some reactions from readers:

Steve asks if the whole hoo-ha over at the Brooklyn museum is about captions... And the answer is, of course it is.

I have yet to see anyone substantially refute Tom Wolfe's theory, back in The Painted Word, that today's art has devolved into being illustrations for the catalog. Take away the catalog, and there's no there there. One or the other of the fellows cited Serrano's Piss Christ--it's the perfect example. I doubt many people have seen it in person--it's a huge 6-foot-by-4-foot (or so) chibachrome--and more than anything else comes across as a modern chiaroscuro photo-mural. It's reverent. Right up until you read the title, and figure out just how Serrano got those gorgeous tawny reds and burnt umbers. But it's only the title--or the catalog--that fills you in.

The whole Virgin Mary thing is much the same--I doubt there's any way to tell just how the image was made, elephant dung or not, except through the catalog. To be sure, I haven't actually seen it (this summer I've been seeing the Van Gogh, Sargent, Ingres, and Diego Rivera exhibitions as I travel), but that's my bet... Though I'll cheerfully defer to a real live witness.

(To reply, click here.)


Dear Ted,

I agree wholeheartedly with you in regards to the death of the comic strip, and glad to see someone else who views the Peanuts as melancholy. As a former illustrator (I know--do not call me bitter just yet) I think that the entire world of illustration is a rotting cadaver. Working now as a web designer I can't help but feel sympathy for my friends who valiantly try to establish careers in this former occupation. Many believe photography has killed the illustrator, and to some extent I agree, but I think the true blame falls upon the state of art education within our country.

Art schools have become a haven for the untalented and unimaginative, upper-middle-class would-be rebels more concerned with looking the part than being. Instructors, often failed artists themselves, so afraid of offending these cash cows offer no realistic criticism or advice. Since "all art is good art," students who would have been laughed out of my 2nd grade arts and crafts class are encouraged to pursue their "style." After graduating art school, it took me 2 years to enjoy drawing again....and I am not alone. Keep up the good work my brother!

(To reply, click here.)


People always feel that to say things like, "theater is dead," or, now, "the comic strip is dead" raises them to the level of philosopher. So, when someone has some silly stuff to say to seemingly back up such an impossible phrase, they get excited and say it all over the place and as loud as they can.

The comic strip isn't dead. New and great cartoonist will come in great forms no one can predict and, therefore, it's amazingly arrogant to predict the death of an art form. The Internet provides all sorts of new room for artists (this includes cartoonists) to work and spread around their wares.

(To reply, click here.)


Hey Ted Rall,

Yeah, your comic strips are great, but you made a big mistake in your blanket dismissal of all the comics in the comics page (save Peanuts). Your glaring omission: Mutts by Patrick McDonnell. This guy can DRAW! His comics are funny, sweet, and compassionate without being treacly--no mean feat. What's more, he takes a strong and unapologetic stand on animal rights, which takes guts in a nation of necrophages.

McDonnell's a genius. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pray with Johnny Hart.

 (To reply, click here.)


What do you guys think of Tom Toles? His cartoons single-handedly got me through the Reagan/Bush years.

 (To reply, click here.)


I think it's a bit too early to say the comic strip is dead. I think Robotman, Non Sequetor, and Mutts are some of the great comics in the papers, but for the rest I don't bother. It seems true that, in newspapers at least, comics are resorting to simple puns.

However, on the Internet the art of the comic strip is still alive. Some of the best, in my opinion anyway, are Ozy and Millie and Freefall, which are genuinely funny and entertaining. While the newspaper comics may be reverting to single unfunny puns, the Internet may be a place where the art of the comic strip is still living.

(To reply, click here.)



--Michael Brus (10/14)

Washington Post