This cartoon was inspired by an AP photo taken in South Carolina a couple days ago, depicting a group of very healthy looking people holding signs demonizing health care reform along the President’s motorcade route. In a nutshell, they are defending the insurance companies’ right to monopolize our health delivery system, charge exorbitant fees and make healthy profits by denying “customers’ ” health care when they need it. Makes sense.

For a tiny minority of Obama loathers, simply disagreeing with him fair and square isn’t enough. No, these people have actually decided that he must be illegitimate, and have gone all grassy knoll on us. Even Ann Coulter and Bill O’ Reilly think they’re nuts.

I broke all my own cartooning rules on this one. Non-relevant metaphor, wordy labeling. But I chuckled the whole time I was drawing it. Sometimes that, plus ink and paper are recipe enough.

I also thought I’d show the rough sketch that I almost drew before going with the above image:

Long day at the office yesterday. I did this guest cartoon for today’s edition of USA Today:

And this one for today’s edition of The Journal News:

It’s hard to blame Henry Louis Gates for unloading centuries worth of pent up anger and frustration over the plight of black Americans when he was confronted in his own home
by a cop. Did the officer deserve it? Probably not. He was answering a 911 call. Would the woman who witnessed two men prying open Gates’s front door have called 911 if the men were white? I would hope so. Would the officer have overreacted and arrested Gates for being belligerent if he was white? Based on police behavior I have witnessed – Yep. He would.

I’m sure the whole incident would have played out differently however, if the investigating officer had watched Gates’ PBS special on African Americans’ lives. He might have gotten his autograph instead.

I’m a bit late to the reception after the passing of Walter Cronkite, as I was away for a long weekend – but I thought I’d tell you a personal story that’s too cool not to share.

He and I were speakers at a UN teaching conference in NY a few years back. I did my usual ill-prepared seat-of-the-pants presentation to a frighteningly large crowd, which was inexplicably well-received, then Cronkite took his turn. His presentation was surprisingly opinion-filled for someone we were used to seeing as the consummate impartial anchor. He was searingly critical of the Bush administration. It was riveting. He received a standing ovation, and then a crowd descended upon him to shake his hand and get autographs. My wife and I watched from afar as he spent about five minutes working his way politely but diligently through the crowd toward his intended destination, which was, to my shock, my wife and I.
He smiled and held out his hand to shake mine, and said “young man, that was tremendous. I love your work.”
I gathered my composure, and we had a long chat – and turned out we had many things in common. We were both selling syndicated features. His, a column. At the time I was carried in more newspapers than him, so he asked my advice (!) on getting into more, and I told him he needed to weasel his way into some of the larger papers to build some “name recognition.” We also discovered he lived very close to my wife’s grandparents, and so he invited us to his house for a drink and an outing on his boat next time we were in town. I was dumbfounded, as you can imagine.
I’ve met many celebrities through my work, but I have never met one so unassuming, and exuding genuine warmth and curiosity as Walter Cronkite.

I never did call him when we were in town. A large part of me didn’t want to intrude –
Always told myself I’d call him “next time,” you know?

I’ve done countless cartoons over the years extolling the need for fairness in health coverage (and more importantly, making fun of those that perplexingly paint an insurance conglomerate monopoly as “the free market”.) At this stage, it would be two-faced and cynical of me to not positively acknowledge what looks like an actual possibility of some progress in the march towards some semblance of health care sanity.

Of course, I did manage to do that in my usual snarky way, so as not to upset, puzzle and discombobulate my readers too much. Apologies to space romantics, rocketship pilots and Scott Stantis alike. That said, I find it very cool that there are a bunch of US flags waving on the surface of the moon.