Category Archives: Me
USO Camp Trip
Welcome to Team Kuwait. I spent the dying days of August with the guys above drawing service men and women in Kuwait, Djibouti, and Incerlik Air Base in Turkey. The trip was sponsored by USO. The picture above was provided by our fearless leader Bruce Higdon. Bruce is a great punster, cartoonist, and former army colonel. Not that we would follow him into battle.
USO
Left to right: Illustrator and Disney animator Chad Frye, Eddie Pittman of Phinneas and Ferb fame, Paul Combs a fire fighting editorial cartoonist (he’s a real fireman), Sam Viviano art director of Mad Magazine and caretaker of Alfred E. Nueman and Spy vs. Spy, the guy in the middle is Col. Bruce, Rick Kirkman draws the comic strip Baby Blues and came up with the name Wanda for the lead character because he thought it was funny – that’s my mother’s name, Ed Steckley a Mad contributor and Mad Men advertising artist in New York City, Michael Ramirez a fire breathing 2 time Pulitzer winning IBD editorial cartoonist, in full battle dress for some reason, dork at the end – me.
The two happy guys at the top own all the oil.
The trip was a hit with the troops and their families and rewarding for us.
They shouldn’t have let us into the Chief Petty Officers Club. We drew on the walls (note Alfred E. Neuman’s head peering over the guy on the far right).
We like gallows humor but this is a real gallows outside the base in Djibouti.
Cartoon Punch Down
If somebody tells you you can’t draw something, the proper response of any self-respecting cartoonist is to draw that thing. Bosch Fawstin did exactly that and won first prize in the “Draw Mohammad” contest a week ago. In his cartoon a sword wielding Mohammad says, “You can’t draw me”, to which Fawstin responds, “That’s why I draw you.”
He also drew a response. Two heavily armed would be jihadis were gunned down by a cop with a pistol as they tried to turn “Draw Mohammad” into a “Charlie Hebdo” style massacre.
Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau’s approach is different from the Fawstin way. He explained it in his acceptance speech for a Polk lifetime achievement award last month. It’s the punching bag theory of cartooning. He says that satire must always punch up at the powerful and never punch down at the powerless.
Now they tell me. There are rules for satire.
I like Doonesbury but haven’t liked its politics ever since the entire cast cheered Nixon’s wage/price controls back in the early 70’s. But that’s no reason to not appreciate a good cartoon. Doonesbury has been like an ongoing play with well developed characters who grow over time. It’s witty too. Most of the time.
Steyn Punch Down
Mark Steyn, on the other hand, hates Trudeau’s guts. So I picked out some of the good stuff from his column A Contemptible Man Strikes Down:
“The Polk Award is named after a journalist shot dead at point-blank range in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. So you might have thought it would be in ever so mildly bad taste to use the opportunity of a Polk acceptance speech to piss on the graves of a group of journalists similarly murdered. Nevertheless, that’s what Mr Trudeau did:
Charlie Hebdo, which always maintained it was attacking Islamic fanatics, not the general population, has succeeded in provoking many Muslims throughout France to make common cause with its most violent outliers. This is a bitter harvest.
Ah, so Charlie Hebdo is to blame for provoking ordinary, peaceful, moderate Muslims into supporting the Allahu Akbar guys who killed them.
Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.
Artful Art and Big D
My father was a big man. In fact we called him “Big D”. He encouraged it.
Dr. Arthur Bernard Bok, Jr. served 23 years as team physician for the University of Dayton. He was a pioneer in the field of sports medicine. Before that he was team physician for the Dayton Gems IHL hockey team. He was an expert face stitcher. My brothers’ mugs as well as my own were canvases for his work. The same goes for many of our friends. Dad donated countless hours of medical service to everyone from neighborhood rink rats to college athletes. Any kid trying out for any team in any sport was entitled to a free physical at Doc Bok’s office.
Artful Art
He was born in Cincinnati, grew up in Toledo and came to Dayton on a football scholarship.
He played in the first Ohio high school North/South all-star game in 1946. Notre Dame legend Frank Leahy coached the South team. Leahy tried to poach my pop for the Irish. But, this being the pre-Urban Meyer era, dad kept his commitment to the Flyers. This upset my grandmother but pleased my grandfather. It also pleased my siblings and me because Dayton is where he met a pretty cheerleader, Jeanne Stewart, who became our mother.
He really was big for a back in those days – 6’2″ 192 pounds. And fast. He ran a 10 second flat hundred yard dash. The 40 had not yet been invented.
As a 17 year old in training camp he competed against much older returning war vets and earned a starting job as a freshman. He went on to become the Flyers’ all-time leading scorer. In 1948 he averaged 6.7 yards per carry.
The papers called him “Artful Art” and “Mr. Inside Outside”.
Following a 72 yard touchdown run against John Carroll in Cleveland stadium, Paul Brown paid him a visit in the locker room. His hopes, however, of playing for the Cleveland Browns were dashed when the Baltimore Colts drafted him in 1950.
He signed a $5,000.00 contract. Today’s NFL was not my father’s NFL. The team was lousy and the equipment worse. He stuck around long enough to get mentioned in Art Donavan’s book Fatso but soon gave up football for med school and marriage.
He attended the Chicago School of Osteopathic Medicine and returned to Dayton to begin his practice and raise his family.
Everybody loved him. I wanted to be just like him. When I was 12 or so someone asked if I would be a football player too. Big D’s reply was, “he may be small but he’s slow”. That stung but not too much because it was funny. I got bigger and faster but in the end he was right. I became a cartoonist.
My dad lived a rich and rewarding life. He was surrounded by our loving mother, 5 children, and 16 of his 19 grandchildren when it came to an end. After he breathed his last we said a prayer, poured martinis and toasted him. Old number 44 was 86.
Now, back to drawing the people I don’t like!
Washington Post Fact Checks SNL
The Washington Post actually fact checked a Saturday Night Live skit. Zachary Goldfarb rated the skit not helpful to the president.
The sketch was about Obama’s executive action on immigration (mislabeled as an “executive order”, Goldfarb helpfully corrects). It was set to “Schoolhouse Rock” and featured a “Bill” singing about how a bill becomes law. A cynical singing “Executive Order” explains how things really work, while President Obama repeatedly kicks the crooning “Bill” down the Capitol steps.
I rate it Damn Funny.
Since the Post is now rating comedy routines Michelle Malkin immediately wanted to know why it didn’t fact check Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin character for claiming she could see Russia from her house.
Personally, I want to know if Super Colossal Jimmy Carter is really 90 feet tall.
Cartoon Fact Check
My cartoon deliberately confuses Zachary Goldfarb’s fact check with the Post’s Glenn Kessler’s pinocchio ratings. I hope they don’t fact check cartoons now. On the other hand I could use the publicity.
Bystander President
Reagan was the Teflon president. He had an easy charm and nothing bad seemed to stick. Obama is the bystander president. He reads about bad things that happen on his watch as if they had nothing to do with him. He’s just like you and me, sitting at the bar madder’n hell. Except he gets to go on TV and complain. At least I get to draw a cartoon.
