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Ted Rall: The Times (NY & LA), Mom, and Apple Pie

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D. D. Degg October 2, 2019 1 minute 1 comment

Some Times

Earlier this year the Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes drew one of the most controversial political cartoons in history. His cartoon about U.S.-Israeli relations sparked so much controversy that The New York Times, whose international edition published it in April, decided to fire its two staff cartoonists, neither of whom had anything to do with it. Then the Times permanently banned all editorial cartooning.

What’s clear is that the Times threw its cartoonist under the bus in a shockingly cavalier fashion—a practice that has become so common that it’s contributing to the imminent extinction of political cartooning.

Ted Rall writes about the New York Times abandoning editorial cartoons.

Other Times…

The California Supreme Court has remanded my defamation and wrongful termination lawsuit against the then-LAPD-owned LA Times to the Court of Appeal with instructions to reconsider their previous ruling against me in light of the new precedent set by Wilson v CNN.

This is the usual course of action in these situations.

Oral arguments are currently scheduled for February 8, 2020.

Ted Rall v. Los Angeles Times update.

Mom

When Ted Rall’s mother started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, it meant that Rall, who is an only child, had to navigate nursing homes and crushing medical bills without the help of siblings.

“Political cartooning is inherently a divisive format. It does not bring people together,” [Ted] said. “But the cartoons I’ve done about Alzheimer’s have been non-partisan. Democrats and Republicans both have parents, brothers, sisters, and grandparents – everybody is going to get old.”

Marketplace.org has a written report and a three minute audio interview.

I think Ted started his cartoon series about caring for an Alzheimer’s patient as an exposé about the current health care system in the U.S. and also as a form of self-therapy. It turns out it has also been therapy for others in similar circumstances. His strips about his mother began May 24, 2019 and is mingled in with his political comics. The series can be read at Ted’s Blog or at GoComics.

Apple Pie

Ted has received an outpouring of appreciation from the families of Alheimer’s sufferers,
but his regular columns are also applauded.

From a letter to The Japan Times:

I’d like to express my support for both points [Mark] made. First for the vision, guts and integrity of Ted Rall, who came out against the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions from the start, for all reasons that would eventually be proved right…

Finally, I would like to commend The Japan Times for having continued to publish Rall’s columns when many other papers try to avoid giving voice to his uncomfortable insights.