Cartoonists With Attitude

Happy New Year, Ann Coulter

Yesterday I sent the following e-mail to those who promised to support a lawsuit against Ann Coulter.

Earlier this year I contemplated filing a lawsuit for slander and libel against columnist Ann Coulter in order to hold her accountable for her verbal and written statements to the effect that I had entered Iran’s contest for cartoons about (presumably denying/mocking) the Holocaust. These statements, though false, prompted people ignorant of Coulter’s long history of publishing lies to believe that I was anti-Semitic. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I wanted the chance to set the record straight in court.

One needs to have two things on one’s side to win a lawsuit: money and the law. Toward the first end I reached out to readers outraged by Coulter’s malicious smears against me and others whose only crime is criticizing the Bush Administration. They—you—didn’t let me down. I obtained serious pledge commitments (I asked readers not to send the actual money until and unless I filed a suit) sufficient to make fighting a suit against a moneyed defendant like Coulter feasible.

Because I am opposed to burdening the legal system with vanity litigation, I decided that I would only sue if I had an excellent chance to win. Therefore I asked my attorneys to exhaustively research case precedents relative to slander and libel in New York State and under federal law. Months of research have forced me to conclude that, though a lawsuit against Coulter would certainly withstand initial challenges and motions to dismiss and might ultimately prevail through verdicts and subsequent appeals, the road ahead is too uncertain to justify spending thousands of dollars of pledges, not to mention my own money.

Unlike Bush, I don’t enter into battles I’m not certain of winning.

More than ever, I believe that Coulter’s attempts to assassinate my character are illegal as well a reprehensible. Unfortunately, she may have sufficiently muddied the waters with her toxic brand of commentary that she might be able to avoid a judgment against her by claiming First Amendment protection as a satirist. If Ann Coulter tells a joke, does anyone laugh? If not, is it a joke?

The interesting legal conundrum for Coulter is that she would have had to testify either that (a) she intended her audience to believe I had entered the Iranian cartoon contest or (b) it was just a joke. She couldn’t cop to (a) without getting smacked with a libel and/or slander judgment. If she claimed (b), however, she’d be admitting that she is not, as she presents herself on Fox and other TV networks, a serious political analyst, but rather a comedienne—or attempted one, anyway. It would have brought her ill-begotten career as a talking head, if not to a crashing halt, to a stall. So which is it, Ann? Are you a pundit or a comic? I regret that I’m not going to get to watch her figure that one out at a deposition.

So there’s not going to be a Rall v. Coulter—at least not now. Look at the bright side, though—she could still go down for possible vote fraud!

Jonathan Chait in the LA Times

Jonathan Chait’s column in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times suggests putting Saddam Hussein back in charge of Iraq. Nice thought, or at least I thought so when I wrote it first. (I won’t even mention the cartoon I drew about it over a year ago.)

Some excellent sources for this week’s ‘toon, as we’re witnessing some relevant breaking news on Gerald Ford’s death:

• Ford’s death is relevant, of course, because of Henry Kissinger’s role in the Nixon and Ford administrations, which I also touched on in a previous cartoon. Many have argued over the years that Kissinger’s involvement in the clandestine carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War and the 1973 Chilean coup have earned him an appearance before an international war crimes tribunal. It seems he can’t go abroad these days without someone trying to indict him. And, according to Bob Woodward, this is the guy who has been advising Bush and Cheney lately on the best way to proceed in Iraq.
• Check out the terrific introduction to Sidney Blumenthal’s new book, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime, a comprehensive retelling of the story of “the most willfully radical president in American history.” The good points are too numerous to list, but he does note in the beginning that among Bush’s 2000 campaign promises was to be a more “humble nation” with regards to foreign policy, and also to bring an end to the Clinton administration’s policy of violating the civil liberties of Arabs accused of terrorism. Wow.
• A generally well-argued piece by Alan Wolfe entitled “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern,” which makes the claim that contemporary conservatism is a fundamentally contradictory ideology, in the sense that the conservatives who hold office must operate within the same federal government that they want to make “small enough to drown in a bathtub.” As a result, he says, they attempt to “split the difference” by operating the government in a way that gives them the most political gain, for example, by giving tax cuts to billionaires. His best example in support of this hypothesis is FEMA, an agency that worked so well under the Clinton administration, but under Bush was reduced to a skin-and-bones operation run by the former head of the International Arabian Horse Association. The problem is that the Bush administration was trying to run an agency when they were fundamentally opposed to that agency’s mission.
• Gary Kamiya’s obituary of neoconservatism (which I think may be a bit premature). The neocons’ foreign policy game plan is characterized by a belief that Americans hold a monopoly on nationalism, and by a purposeful ignorance of the varying cultural and historical contexts among different groups within the Arab-Muslim world. Which partially explains why, when we were attacked by a bunch of Saudis, we attacked Iraq…
• Kevin Baker on the conservative art of “the back-stab.”
• A couple of articles on the back-story behind Robert Gates by Eric Alterman and Robert Parry, and a couple on Newt “the Outsider” Gingrich by Alex Koppelman and John M. Broder.

“Conserv-B-Gone!“… check out some other commercial parodies here, here, and here.

Runnin’ a little late here, but it’s crazy holiday time… I figured everyone would be opening presents anyway, or eating turkey, or drinking heavily.

To everyone who takes the time to read my cartoons every week: Merry Groksmas!… y’all are much loved. Stay tuned for the new year, should be some fun developments coming in the Fighting Words world…