Pam debunks all that "Post-Racial Election" nonsense the media has been drinking

Over at Pam's House Blend.

Mikhaela in the news: "Political cartoonists sing hail to the chief"

My cartoon "Bush vs. My Cat" (above) is currently featured in the exhibit "Bush Leaguers: Cartoonists Take On the White House" (at American University's Katzen Museum in DC, on view through July 29). I've even been mentioned in an article about the piece in the Examiner:

Through “Bush vs. My Cat,” freelancer Mikhaela Reid envisions a battle of wits. One of several women selected for the show, this hot hand is among the growing number of female cartoonists.

Full article here (warning: link is to a PDF).

I was also included in a story in Editor and Publisher about the AAEC convention panel on cartoonists and blogging. I was actually in the audience, but panelist Tom Tomorrow kindly suggested I might have two cents to put in:

Mikhaela Reid, speaking from the audience, said cartoonists such as herself who aren't daily newspaper staffers often want to do a blog because it helps build readership. She added that freelance or self-syndicated creators may not do as many editorial cartoons each week as staff creators do, so a blog can be "a valuable place to vent" when not drawing a cartoon that day.

Which I did.

Mikhaela on Morning Edition Monday

I'm going to be appearing on Morning Edition on NPR Monday at 5:21, 7:21 or 9:21 depending on your local affiliate. How cool is that? Here's the link, which will contain live audio after 9 a.m. Monday....

Why Wall Street Journal Reporters didn't show up for work today

Were I still an employee of the Wall Street Journal, I might not have shown up for work this morning, thanks to Rupert Murdoch's insane quest to dominate the world with right-wing wingnut faux news crap.

Even long-time readers might be surprised to hear that I worked full-time for three years (through the end of 2006) as an information graphics journalist at the Wall Street Journal, initially for the Money & Investing section and more recently for the Economy page. I made 2-5 daily charts and graphics, mostly tracking economic indicators and analyzing trends in the stock and bond markets. I also did the occasional medical or technical illustration, including a graphic about abdominal aortic aneurysms that accompanied a Pulitzer-Prize-winning front page series. (Read old blog post here...)

I was also part of the union, and participated in several union actions regarding benefit cuts, pay cuts and large-scale layoffs (I'll spare you the slogans, but it was pretty damn cool to see financial reporters carrying signs and chanting old-school labor song-type lyrics).

The Wall Street Journal is a top-notch paper with reporters and editors of the highest caliber and in-depth investigative reporting and features you can't find anywhere else. Aside from the New York Times, it's the only paper I read almost cover-to-cover every day (with the notable exception of the editorial page, which I take in very small doses on a strong stomach).

So as you can imagine, I've been following the news about Rupert Murdoch's attempts to add Dow Jones to his stable of faux news outlets with growing horror and disbelief. Does anyone REALLY think he would allow the WSJ to preserve its editorial integrity? For example, via CNN I read that even the "editorial integrity protection" deal would give Murdoch sole discretion to pick top editors. I can just see Bill O'Reilly leading the Politics & Economy team!

Via Romanesko, I just heard that many of my former colleagues chose to stay home today in protest. From the union's release:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal's long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That's why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day's news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications' integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

I hope it makes a difference. But my guess is, Dow Jones current owners just see dollar signs and will salve their consciences with lies about "preserving editorial independence" until its too late.

Mikhaela in the news: "Hitting the funny bone"

Ethan Jacobs has a cool piece in Bay Windows this week about the Life Without Fair Courts contest, with a good dabble of quotes from me. Here's one segment:

Reid said the five finalists took very different approaches to tackling the subject of fair courts. Rall, Fox and Bors all painted nightmarish visions of a world without a fair judicial system, with gay couples exiled to Antarctica and people thrown in jail for either engaging in or facilitating sodomy. By contrast, Johannsen and Cruté used a more personal perspective, showing how a lack of legal protections would impact their own lives as an M-to-F lesbian transwoman and a bisexual woman respectively. Reid said the contest is a great way to acquaint people with cartoonists like Johannsen and Cruté who do not yet have a large following.

And

Reid said that Lambda Legal selected her in part because much of her own work focused on similar themes as the Life Without Fair Courts campaign.

“I have a somewhat dystopian view in a lot of my cartoons of what the future looks like when we have people in charge who do not care about equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” said Reid.

Don't forget to cast YOUR vote!

Mikhaela in the news!

Check it out:

• Metro Times (Detroit): "Drawing Ire" by Sean Bieri
• The Villager: "Cartoonist Mikhaela Reid gets graphic" by Rebecca Cathcart
• Chelsea Now: Cartoonist makes mark with biting political satire"by Rebecca Cathcart
• Between the Lines: "Bi, bi Bush: Cartoonist Mikhaela Reid finds 'boiling point' in political climate" by Cornelius Fortune

Here's a quote from the Metro Times (Detroit) piece. I'm blushing!

If easy jokes or pop catchphrases show up in Reid's strip "The Boiling Point" — which is featured weekly on MT's letters page — it's only because she means to subvert them on her way to striking at the heart of an issue. Doublespeak and spin are among her favorite targets, and she often counters them by mashing them up against images of the ugly truths they seek to obscure. Her cartoons are never glib — they're wordy, meaty; there's a lot going on in them. Even her inky, thick-lined drawings suggest the gravity of her subjects. She's topical but not slavishly so, prefering to address the latest wrinkles in the issues she's passionate about rather than jump on whatever media bandwagon happens to be rolling by. And she's not afraid to make issues personal, even appearing in her own strips from time to time to address the reader directly. In a field of sound-alikes, she's a fiercely singular voice.

Last night I dreamt I was a secret agent seeking the real headquarters of Fox News

You know you're a political news junkie when... you dream you're a secret agent with super powers hunting down the real headquarters of Fox News in an underwater bunker.

But let me backtrack.

I just woke up from a really weird-ass dream:

In the dream, I was a mild-mannered art preservationist. I was working in a poorly-lit library, poring over old art-history books to get a feel and context for some ancient mural I would be in charge of restoring. I was talking to my new boss, chatting about this and that, when I realized it was lunch time--clearly, that meant it was time to go hunt for the secret headquarters of Fox News!

So I get on some fancypants silver bullet-looking train heading way fast way out of town. There's a lot of suspicious types on the train, but also just regular commuters and family. Unlucky for me the only empty seats are behind two jerks in plain suits. It becomes clear they are jerks when they lean their seats back so far they are practically horizontal, and my knees are completely crushed. I ask them to move the seats up because I'm losing feeling in my legs but instead they repeatedly raise and lower the seat back, essentially punching me in the knees repeatedly.

So I slam the seat up to get out of there, pushing one dude hard into the seat in front of him.

He bites me on the nose.

I start screaming about how I'm going to call the police and he's screaming that he's going to sue me and I get out of the seat and go to the back of the train. All the empty seats are covered in packages, and the large family whose packages these are claims they're waiting for friends to sit there. Typical.

The only other empty seat is next to some sleeping shirtless dude lying halfway over the other seat, so I gingerly sit on the edge of this seat and feel my unfortunate nose--not broken or bleeding, but damn sore.

Suddenly the train stops at some random out of the way town and the plaid suit guys and others get off. I realize I'm starting to run out of lunch break so I decide to get off, take the other train back, and hunt Fox News another day.

But when I hop off the train, there's a big wooden building with barbed wire and cobwebs and the words "Fox News" handpainted in toddler-class hand-lettering, looks like the fake front on a movie set. And the building is empty.

Then my train rushes by on a nearby track and I see everyone else who was looking for Fox News realize they've missed it and start running after it. I run for a bit too, but when I start losing my breath and losing sight of the train, I remember that I can fly.

Unfortunately, the plaid suit guys see me flying, and when I fly over their heads, one of them pushes me, sending me skidding through the air right into the path of an oncoming helicopter.

I manage to dodge the helicopter but then found myself on a bridge in the path of an oncoming train. I jumped away onto the railing but there was some crazy car chase going on with some gangster silver-gray 1930s kind of car coming at me with machine guns blaring, and an airplane coming from another direction...

So I jumped. Into the water. And immediately felt a vise-like grip tighten around my ankles, pulling me down into the dark water.

I thought I was going to drown. But moments later I found myself in an underwater waiting room. Apparently I could breathe underwater. It was a crowded waiting room, with lots of folks in line to hunt down Fox News' secret underwater bunker.

So I took a ticket.

And then I woke up. Yeesh! I can't even escape Rupert Murdoch in my sleep!

Seriously though, I bet I had this dream because I worked as an information graphics journalist for three years at the excellent Wall Street Journal (the news side, not the editorial page, of course!) and was horrified to hear about Murdoch's recent $60-a-share bid for Dow Jones. As for the art preservationist bit, I fell asleep last night reading a book about Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals.

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging and cartooning...

Review copies of Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela now available! + tentative release date

So the tentative official release date for Attack of the 50-Foot Mikhaela: Cartoons By Mikhaela Reid (i.e. the day you'll be able to start ordering it on this here fine web site) is May 11. It may be sooner, it may be later! But I'm going to need some serious help promoting this thing, for several reasons:

• Although it will have a real ISBN and all that, it's self-published, and I'll primarily be selling it through Lulu.com and this website.
• I'm not sure yet if I can actually afford to sell it on Amazon.com, since they charge a whopping 55% commission fee, which would basically mean I was paying them several dollars per copy.
• HOWEVER, if there's enough interest in the book, I can print enough copies to sell it through Amazon and still make a tiny bit of $$ per book. So we'll see!
• I don't have a distributor, and I'm quite nervous about trying to distribute it to actual stores, since that could mean returned and unsold copies I have to refund.
• But I do have tons of postcards I printed up, and I do plan to see if I can get the book into niche/specialty stores--queer/feminist/leftwing and suchlike bookstores would be good. If you know of any good ones, drop me a line! (cartoons@mikhaela.net)

Anyway, if you could do any of the following, my eternal gratitude is yours:

• Since I'm primarily selling it through the web, I'm particularly interested in sending review copies to blogs with lots of devoted readers who would be amenable to its contents. If you believe you fit this category, please drop me an e-mail (cartoons@mikhaela.net).
• But of course I would still love to be reviewed in print! So the above applies to print journalists/outlets as well!
• I would also LOVE love LOVE to do interviews with any blogs or online outlets (and print or radio outlets, of course). So let your writer/blogger/radio friends know!
• I'm nervous about trying to set up any solo events or signings, but I may try to set up some type of joint events or slideshows of some kind with Masheka and maybe other CWA members. Events at nearbyish colleges, bookstores, etc. I'd love to speak to any Gay/Straight Alliances in high schools (or colleges), too. I'm also happy to do entertaining digital cartoon slideshows in the New York/Massachusetts/Connecticut/Philadelphia type area (basically, anywhere I can reach by bus).

So yes... please help an angry cartoonist out! I'll have postcards, web ads, promo materials and emails and other tools that should make it reasonably easy for anyone who wants to help!

Mikhaela (and Masheka) featured in press on Other Heroes

The Associated Press did a brief piece on the " OTHER HEROES: African American Comic Book Creators and Characters" show currently up at Jackson State University in Mississippi, and they called me today to ask for permission to use a photo of my cartoon from the exhibit.

(Just in case it's not already clear from my photos and self-portraits, I'm not black--I was included in the show because I frequently draw black characters, and the show was about black comics creators AND characters. I explained this to the photographer and suggested he might want to use a different image, but he said he wanted to use it anyway and he was also using images from two of the black cartoonists from the show, Kyle Baker and Mshindo Kuumba).

Anyway, here's the photo of my cartoon "Let Them Eat Toxic Sludge" on Yahoo News. Fun facts: I drew the cartoon at 3 a.m. after coming home from a 2005 Katrina benefit show featuring Dave Chappelle, Q-Tip, Dead Prez and Talib Kweli.

Update: The Freedom Gravy cartoon was also used to illustrate a more detailed story in the Jackson Free Press, and they fittingly discussed my work and Masheka's work (not to mention Keith Knight's work--go CWA!) in the same paragraph:

Almost every viewer should find something in the show that resonates. My favorites include a poster by Mikhaela Reid advertising “Freedom Gravy,” the Bush-family solution to the post-Katrina food shortage in New Orleans and coastal pollution problems all at once. “Let Them Eat Toxic Sludge!” the poster proclaims while a wrinkly, pearl-wearing Barbara Bush offers a green spoonful of Freedom Gravy to a young black girl, saying, “Open up dear—I’m sure this is much nicer than what you people are used to eating.” Also interesting is Masheka Wood’s “Ask CEOs” comic strip, where she asks hideous white male CEOs “How do you spend your $13,000 an hour?” Replies from the executives range from the hilarious—“Imported cashmere wipes for my delicate buttocks.”—to the disconcertingly realistic—“Oh ya know, buying politicians and whatnot.” By juxtaposing both types of answers, Wood asks a pointed question: “Which is more outrageous: Cashmere butt-wipes or buying out politicians who are supposed to represent our best interests?” Also noteworthy for his biting political and racial satire is Keith Knight, whose understated visual style allows his wry observational genius to shine through.