Category: Uncategorized

This week’s The New Yorker cover, by Barry Blitt, depicts a future President Obama and his wife as terrorists, and has stirred up quite a media firestorm.

Now, back in April, I did a comic using the same comic conceit, and it also generated some discussion.

There are some differences in the two cartoons, and it’s not just that
Blitt is ten times the caricaturist that I am (actually, it goes beyond
that, from a quantifiable difference to a qualitative difference:
Blitt IS a caricaturist, and I’m NOT).

Both comics are certainly satirical.  Even people who find them tasteless and offensive would agree with that.  The question is:  what is the satirical intent?  Is it that Obama is a crazy leftist who has Muslim leanings, so wouldn’t it be "funny" if he ended up a terrorist President?  Or is it that people BELIEVE Obama is a crazy leftist who has Muslim leanings, so isn’t it "funny" to mock their misplaced apprehensions by showing how absurd their fears are?

Because my comic is obviously longer and the premise is more developed, I could make it clear (or relatively clear) that I’m mocking people’s misplaced fears about Obama, not Obama himself.  My comic shows explanations for Obama’s nature and behavior that are clearly ridiculous, making fun of the paranoid, delusional explanations that are actually floating around out there — Barack Hussein Obama is clearly not a "typical" American name that would be perfect for a Muslim Manchurian Candidate.  The people supporting him are clearly not terrorists disguised at young white idealists.

But it’s actually less clear what the satirical intent of The New Yorker cartoon is.  It just shows an America-hating, terrorist President Obama.  Of course, I’m certain Blitt intended to make fun of people’s paranoid perceptions of Obama, not how leftist/radical/Muslim Obama is.  But that’s because I’ve seen his cartoons before, and because I know what could or couldn’t be the stance of The New Yorker.  But if this same cartoon were created by Sean Delonas and published by The New York Post, I’d think it was satirizing Obama himself, and that’s a very different (opposite) point — it would be tasteless and offensive.

A cartoon shouldn’t rely on the context of its creator and publisher in order to successfully make its point.  Some more indicators should have been utilized in the cartoon in order to make the target of its satire clearer.

I was able to do that in my comic because I had eight panels and many, many words.  (And there are those who would argue that I’m not someone who should be arguing that comics should have more words — wait until you see this week’s comic!)

In the early days of this millennium, I performed an occasional radio bit in which I played celebrity reporter Wade Hamilton.  And now, with the limitless space afforded me on the world wide web, I can present the actual scripts I used in these three-minute segments.  I give you Wade:

——————————-

January 9, 2000
Wade Hamilton:  Hobnobbing With Celebs

Hello, fellow Star-Gazers!  I’m Wade Hamilton, and you’re not going to BELIEVE the incredible celeb scoops I’ve got in store for you!  Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Here’s an exclusive, folks.  With the success of Jim Carrey’s stunning portrayal of Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, studios are clamoring for biopics of marginally popular comedians!  The big one coming up:  Joel Schumacher is currently directing Tom Hanks’s uncanny portrayal of late-80s-to-early-90s comedy circuit mainstay Barry Sobel.  Everyone involved in the project has expressed amazement at how Tom Hanks has BECOME Barry Sobel.  Joel Schumacher told me that how Tom has taped into the mystery that is Barry Sobel is an almost spiritual thing — Tom even shows up on the set wearing Barry’s trademark knit ski hat.  One complication that the Man on the Moon makers didn’t have to deal with — Barry Sobel is still very much alive and only just learned about the project.  He is hopping mad that he wasn’t even considered for the part.

In an exclusive interview, he asked me, "Who can do my famoust Buck Jackson’s Mother is Dead better than me?  Sorry Barr.  I hear you, but frankly I’d rather watch Tom Hanks become you than watch you.  That’s Show Biz.

It’s now time for a Wade Hamilton Timeline Quiz.
Smooth, by Santana and featuring Rob Thomas, was the video playing on VH-1, Ricky martin ordered the Mussels in a tomato broth with garlic, parsely and shallots, Tobey McGuire noticed that the milk in his fridge expires tomorrow, Tim Russert asked a smarmy question with a smirk on CNBC, and I had a fleeting sexual thought about Salma Hayek.  Was it:
5 minutes ago,
4 minutes ago,
2 minutes ago,
or 30 seconds ago?
The answer and the end of the report.

I don’t have much to say about Jennifer Lopez’s and Puff Daddy’s run in with the law — except that if you can’t be present at a nightclub shooting and then escape with in an S.U.V. with an unregistered gun, then what good is being a celebrity — But I do have something to say about Jennifer Lopez’s famed insurance policy.  Don’t laugh — I took out a $10,000 policy on my own butt in ’84, and I was able to cash it in in ’95 when it started to sag.  Best move I ever made, and I’ve got the Honda Accord to prove it.

Memo to Fox:  I don’t want to say that this will guarantee a good review, but let’s just say that if I get sent out to Maui next week for the junket promoting Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest flick I’ll be very grateful.  The name of the new movie — well, I don’t know… yet!  But I’m willing to be educated on the matter.  I will say that the word SO FAR is that come April 2001, Leo had better dust off a spot on his mantle for a certain gold statuette of a certain guy holding a certain sword whose name happens to have a certain pronunciation that is OSCAR!

Now for the answer to the Wade Hamilton Timeline Quiz.
Santana blended his steamy latin guitar riffs with Rob Thomas’s smokey Anglo-Saxon vocal stylings on VH-1, Ricky Martin went with the seafood, Tobey McGuire had a temporal dairy moment, Tim Russert became part of the story on basic cable, and I had an intruding notion about Salma Hayek while waiting to start this report.  It all happened…  four minutes ago.

That’s it for this week, fans.  Until next time, With a nose for news and a face for radio, I’m Wade Hamilton saying, What good is the ground when you can reach for the stars?

The Skyfari is just about my kids’ favorite thing to do in New York City.  These people spent five hours waiting to get rescued — I’ve probably spent at least a total of five hours in those things in the past few months alone.

I think I took my art a step up this week.  What do you think?

An alert reader writes, in response to the McCain’s Cash Prize comic, that there already is a cash reward for proving the Riemann Hypothesis.  Now I feel foolish for throwing away the proof I devised as part of the research for that comic.

Fill out the form and win big!

Check this week’s coming comic for details.

Way back, I think in 1999, my buddy and fellow cartoonist Ted Rall got a gig as a radio talk show host for KFI, a huge Los Angeles AM radio station that has claimed to be the most listened to radio station in America (mostly on the basis of its hugely strong signal that spreads out across the western states).  He asked me to contribute in some way, and I came up with a satirical "character," Wade Hamilton, who would do ridiculous celebrity reports on his show.  I came up with a voice (imitating a specific informercial spokesperson who I thought was hilarious), and would spend an hour or so reading gossip websites and cobbling together each three minute bit.

I had occasion to recall these reports when I just did a vanity-google search and found a web-page listing suggestions LA-based guests for a radio show that said:  "The cartoonist Ruben Bolling ("Tom the Dancing
Bug" in Salon.com), I think he lives in LA. [I don’t.  -RB]  He used to do funny sketch
characters on Ted Rall’s LA talk radio show back when he had one."

"Funny sketch characters!"  Never has an anonymous message board posting filled me with such pride.  I had a blast doing the character, meeting Ted in a New York studio at midnight (it aired at 9pm in LA), and gearing up for my segment.  It actually taught me a lot about the nature of performing.

Anyway, I looked around the ol’ hard drive to see if any scripts survived the various computer shifts, and sure enough, I found some.  Take yourself back to April 16, 2000, imagine the hilarious delivery that only a master of voice and humor could muster (yes, please imagine that, because I sure wasn’t actually delivering that), and enjoy an installment of Wade Hamilton, Hobnobbing With Celebs.

—————————————-

April 16, 2000
Wade Hamilton:  Hobnobbing With Celebs

Hello, fellow Star-Gazers!  I’m Wade Hamilton, and you’re not going to BELIEVE the incredible celeb scoops I’ve got in store for you!  You’re going to listen in horror and amazement as I tell tales of titillating Tinseltown that will make you scream in gossip-fueled ecstacy.  If you’re driving, pull over, turn off your ignition, take your hands off the wheel and brace yourself because this report is guaranteed to make you lose all control of your higher and lower motor functions.  Here we go…

Now, what’s all this flak about Leonardo DiCaprio doing an interview with the President?  True, the 25-year-old doesn’t have the celeb credibility of say, a Paul Newman or Meryl Streep, but come on, he kicks Sam Donaldson and Barbra Walters in the butt!  These journalists should be happy they get the assignments they do get, boring interviews with secretaries of state, visiting ambassadors or six-year-old immigrants, but listen pals, once a REAL celeb wants a gig, step aside, juniors, and don’t whine about it.

Now, before I get off the soapbox, let me say I’m sick and tired of all this talk about Whitney Houston.  You’d think no one else had a bad month in their lives.  I myself recently went through … an episode, that, yes included an on-air tirade that I’ve apologized to Ted, KFI and Hillary Swank for, but when a mega star like Whitney Houston forgets a few lyrics and loses her train of though a few times on stage, suddenly the nasty rumors fly.  Listen here, folks, when she rambles incoherently onstage, can’t everyone just pretend they understand and applaud enthusiastically?  When she fails to negotiate a couple of stairs in concert and stumbles clumsily, can’t the entire audience pretend to not see it by bending down to tie their shoes?  Come on, she’s given us so much — show of hands, who hasn’t been alone in the car and belted out I Will Only Love You along with Whitney? — She deserves our support.

Now, Cybill Sheperd’s new Kiss and Tell book failed to mention me, but if it did, I would simply say that Cybill is a wonderful woman who obviously needed to write this book in order to find herself and I wish her the best.  Am I a class act, or what?!

This week’s INSIDE CELEBRITY REPORT is on Edward Norton.  Some celeb reporters might try to get you inside information on this Oscar-Nominated mega-star,  but I dig the deepest — getting you the scoop on his very structural biology.  My spies tell me that this bright young light of Hollywood not only produced, starred-in and directed the smash hit “Keeping the Faith,” but his Malic enzymes in a closed form reveal a divalent cation coordinated in an octahedral fashion by no less that six ligating oxygens — two from the substrate inhibitor, three from the enzyme and one from a water molecule.  Are TYR 112 and LYS 183 possible catalytic residues of the malic enzymes of this chameleon-like actor, who recently purchased JFK Jr.s loft in lower Manhattan with his actress-girlfriend Heather Graham?  Edward “Don’t call me Ed” Norton refused to comment, but let’s just say that changes in the tetramer organization of the enzyme have been observed in Norton’s quaternary complexes.  Wink, wink.

I know money manager Dana Giachetto is in a lot of trouble for allegedly misappropriating or stealing funds from his celeb clients, but I can’t wait til he’s gets of out of jail so I can give him some money to invest!  I mean, did you see his client list?  Ben Affleck, Leo, Tobey McGuire… he must be GOOD!  Dana, think up some strategies for the small but aggressive investor while you’re in lock-up.  I’ve got five grand I’ll be proud to hand over to you when you’re out of the big house.

That’s it for this week, fans.  Until next time, With a nose for news and a face for radio, I’m Wade Hamilton saying, What good is the ground when you can reach for the stars?

Back to you, T-Bone Ted.

Yes, I’ll be attending the famed Comic-Con in San Diego later in July.  Details to be worked out — I don’t even know where I’m staying (hey, if anyone has a lead, let me know), or where and when I’ll be publicly appearing.  But for those of you planning to be there, know that I’ll be there, and that I generally shower once a day.

First reaction to Scalia’s decision striking down DC’s ban on handguns:

It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.