If you don’t know who Ted Rall is, you’ve never read the alternative media which is not really the alternative to anything. Ted Rall is a left-wing cartoonist who in recent years complained a lot about not getting enough work and proposed a revolution to take over the country.
Now he’s being accused of racism because his Obama has a bit of a chimpy look.
If you showed me that out of context, I wouldn’t think it was Obama. But I don’t really get ape from it either. It looks more like a black George W. Bush cartoon crossed with Homer Simpson.
Still the White Privilege gang at Daily Kos decided it looked chimpy (which Rorschach-like, probably says something about them) but they wouldn’t have complained if Rall didn’t appear to be repeating “right-wing” talking points.
So Ted Rall unveiled a new cartoon, which is one of his not-half-bad ones. Not art-wise, but concept-wise.
The irony though is that he’s still revisiting Republican gags from three years ago. Except with more drones.
“Of course, all humans are apes. We share 99.4% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Which is why I look like an ape and Brad Pitt looks like an ape and Dick Cheney looks like an ape. To not draw Obama the same way I draw everyone else, to make him look less ape-like than everyone else, seems f___ up,” Rall wrote.
So Rall is fighting with DailyKos and fellow alternative media cartoonist you never heard of, the guy behind Tom the Dancing Bug, came to Rall’s defense with more “we’re all apes”.
As Ruben Bolling, creator of “Tom the Dancing Bug,” notes: anyone familiar with Rall’s work knows that crude, “ape-like” depictions of all races is basically his shtick. We’re primates, after all. And while a lot of the irrational anger directed at Obama is undoubtedly rooted in the irrational fear of melanin, it’s a bit tragic when the left cannibalizes one of its own.
Or hilarious. Your mileage will vary.
This isn’t bad for Ted Rall. Not really. He gets to once again do his real shtick, which is pretending to be to the left of the left, by calling them a bunch of censoring Obama apologists… which they actually are.
“From what I can tell, the vast majority of the criticism comes from white supporters of Obama who are willing to pretty much say anything in order to get their critics to shut up. It’s pretty shameful behavior. That’s what we saw coming from that administrator,” Rall wrote.
Daily Kos boss Markos Moulitsas replied, “I won’t justify my support for a new community driven rule of “don’t draw African Americans like monkeys”, with a healthy dose of “don’t be that white guy telling African Americans what is and isn’t racist” — because really, the reasons are pretty self-evident.”
That just goes to show you that Markos is a worse writer than Rall is an artist.
On Twitter Rall announced that he would begin drawing Obama differently. However he draws him, he’ll probably be unrecognizable. Until then, enjoy this unrecognizable, but sorta funny Obama cartoon.























