|
"I walk this strange line between being a satirist and being a proponent of certain ideas, such as campaign finance reform or health care reform or what have you. It was one of those moments where you have to either put up or shut up, so I felt like I didn’t have a choice. But I admit that it was a bit of an uncomfortable role, because I’m used to sitting on the sidelines, and with Nader I was an active participant, going out and speaking at these super-rallies..."
tom tomorrow's modern world
smokebox interviews dan perkins
by marc covert
 The year was 1991: America had recently vanquished the assuredly evil empire of Saddam Hussein and was busily showering her returning heroes with parades, accolades, and endless, adoring media coverage. A San Francisco-based alternative cartoonist named Dan Perkins, who kept himself out of trouble with his temp-agency bosses by using the pseudonym Tom Tomorrow, was outraged over the scant media coverage given to anti-Gulf War protesters. Since 1984, his photocopy collage-style cartoon This Modern World had focused on the world of working stiffs and the consumer culture in which they toiled. Perkins says it was then that he realized he had a public forum, and switched his focus to the strange bedfellows of mass media and politics.
Three presidential administrations later, Tom Tomorrow is one of the most readily recognized political cartoonists in the nation, with his work appearing in over 120 newspapers; This Modern World also graces the pages of online magazine Salon.com. Although he is not a member of any political party, he claims to be of a "lefty" bent; his animated cartoons featuring Ralph Nader were shown at Green Party rallies in the 2000 presidential race, and he appeared in person at many of those rallies. His determination to lampoon any political party or personage whom he deems to be deserving of his ire has landed him in hot water with both Republican and Democratic supporters, who he sees as increasingly becoming one and the same. He has won numerous awards in his field, including the 1998 first place Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartooning. His new animated cartoon and his five books can be accessed at his website, www.thismodernworld.com. It would be hard to find higher praise than that accorded him by Kurt Vonnegut: "Tom Tomorrow is the wry voice of American common sense, humor and decency which has been scorned or ignored by big-time journalists."
Tom Tomorrow took time recently to speak with Smokebox writer Marc Covert.
Smokebox: You’re known as a steadfast Ralph Nader supporter; he had one of his first rallies here in Portland, Oregon. He had over 10,000 people show up at seven dollars a pop, which really said something about his popular appeal. I think they showed your animated cartoon at that rally, didn’t they?
Tomorrow: They showed it at some of the rallies I spoke at, but I’m not sure about Portland. If they showed it in Portland I didn’t hear about it, but it’s entirely possible.
Smokebox: Some folks have reacted rather badly to This Modern World; I know that Matt Drudge, did, for one; and a group called Oklahomans for Children and Family didn’t take too kindly to your infamous campaign finance reform/orgy scene cartoon [http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/1998/04/06tomo.html/]…
Tomorrow: Yeah, they weren’t really happy about that.
Smokebox: So I’m wondering, who have you managed to get into trouble with lately?
Tomorrow: Lately I guess I got into trouble with the Democrats, because I didn’t support Al Gore, and because I didn’t use my cartoon as an extension of the Gore campaign. That was another thing that attracted me to the Nader campaign. Obviously I never thought Ralph Nader was going to become president, but a presidential campaign like that is a vehicle for conveying a message; the message in that case being that both candidates are equally controlled by corporate power. So which corporate special interests are running the show? It may vary from administration to administration, but it’s an equally corrupt, bought-and-paid-for system, and that was Nader’s message.
If you go back through the archives I’ve always been an equal-opportunity critic; I’ve always equally criticized whoever’s in power, Democrat or Republican, so it was a bit shocking to me that people were so upset, claiming that Nader was just a monkey wrench in the works. And I’m still trying to decide; Nader came along and he basically stood for everything I stood for over the course of my career, and I’m just not sure…it was admittedly an awkward role for me, to be an advocate. I walk this strange line between being a satirist and being a proponent of certain ideas, such as campaign finance reform or health care reform or what have you. It was one of those moments where you have to either put up or shut up, so I felt like I didn’t have a choice. But I admit that it was a bit of an uncomfortable role, because I’m used to sitting on the sidelines, and with Nader I was an active participant, going out and speaking at these super-rallies.
Smokebox: Wasn’t Nader a little uncomfortable himself, appearing in your animated cartoons?
 Tomorrow: I don’t actually know Ralph Nader very well, but my sense of him is he’s just one of those people who is always a little uncomfortable [laughs], so I couldn’t really tell you. There was a funny moment, when we first went down; we did a bit with him in the animated cartoon at the point when he was not being allowed in the presidential debates–which was really outrageous–so we did an animated cartoon about that. We got him to contribute his own voice; we went down to record him in D.C., my animation partner Harold Moss and I. Harold had already sent down the script, and they read the script and didn’t have any problems with it that we knew about.
So the whole point of the cartoon was, Nader and Sparky are trying to fight their way into the debates, past these ninja Secret Service guys; it was a take-off on the old Hong Kong action movies and the Batman TV series, with that whole Whap-Pow-Zap sort of fight. So we got down there and we were setting up to record this scene and Nader says, "Well, they told you we have to take out the violence, right?" And we just kind of looked at each other. One of the precepts of the Green Party is that you can’t have any violence at all. So Harold, thinking quickly, said "Oh, it’s okay, you guys won’t be doing anything violent, you’ll just outwit the Secret Service guys," and we got him to go ahead and record the script, and we went ahead and did what we wanted to do in the cartoon.
But that sort of thing…if you say you can’t have any hint of violence in an animated cartoon–I mean, everyone always goes too far. That would eliminate The Sopranos; that would eliminate most of Shakespeare, and that sort of absolutist thinking is why I’m not a member of the Green Party. I’m not a member of any party, because there’s always something where it just goes too far, and it just makes my head hurt. Which is not to say I’m not very sympathetic to the Greens; I do in fact support them in most of their goals, but I am still an outsider. I am still an observer; I just can’t shut that part of my brain off.
Smokebox: You mention being in trouble with the Democrats, and it seems like a no-win situation, and I’ve noticed that with Derf too [John Backderf, The City by Derf], now that there is a Republican in the White House, and he’s poking fun at George Bush and that whole gang, he’s getting all this hate mail saying, "Why are you a shill for the Democrats?"
Tomorrow: Yeah, people are really stupid. Those are the people who only ever see one cartoon. I was as harshly critical of Clinton for the past eight years as any Republican partisan, for my own reasons: because I thought he was a conservative sell-out; because I thought he screwed up health care reform; because I thought that welfare reform was one of the most evil things that any president could have done; and then of course we got into the whole sex scandal. And even at that, even in those times, when the 104th Congress was a particularly juicy target, even then whenever I’d do a cartoon about Republicans I’d get all this hate mail from Republicans accusing me of being a Democratic shill.
There’s a really strange little weekly paper here in town, called the New York Press, and the politics are all over the place, but the editor has these very Republican, Libertarian leanings, and they kept making all these references to me as a "Democratic apologist," even in the last campaign. After I had come out publicly endorsing Ralph Nader, they ran this long bit about me in their paper about what a Clinton apologist I was. It’s just very aggravating. I mean, maybe you don’t agree with me about my lefty take on health care reform, or welfare reform, or whatever, that’s one thing. But this binary, either-or view of politics, "if you don’t agree with us, and we’re Republican partisans, and you don’t agree with us, you must be a Democratic partisan, and shame on you for being so partisan," I mean, no no no! That’s just so wrong!
Smokebox: What’s the state of political satire in 2001? It goes without saying that political reality has gotten to be more odd, more weird than many writers or cartoonists could ever come up with. How do you top eight years of Clinton, and the crazy, insane things that kept happening there?
Tomorrow: You top it by getting a president in who lost the popular vote, and then is ruling as if he has a mandate. I have a lot of problems with the Democratic party, and I still suspect that they are going to confirm every Supreme Court nominee Bush throws at them, but I was really delighted to see Jim Jeffords switch parties, just because it fouls things up for Bush. The Democrats can no longer say, "Well, he controls everything, there’s nothing we can do." And I think that’s a good thing. I think Bush really, by all rights, had no other option but to come in and govern as a moderate, as he promised he would. But he came in with this incredible arrogance, and brought in this whole hard-right coalition with him.
There’s just something that happens with new administrations, they always stumble at first. There is this psychology at work–you’ve been begging and fighting for this job for a year and suddenly you’ve got it–you’re the man, you’ve got the power, you’ve got your finger on the button–and I think that a certain arrogance sets in, until our system of checks and balances catches up with the person and they suddenly realize that they may be the world’s most powerful person, but they are not in an absolute dictatorship, and there are still many, many battles to fight. Ultimately, I think that’s a good thing. It means that some good things don’t get done, but it also limits the damage that anyone can do. I just wish that there were more of a balance between extreme right and extreme left, rather than this current balance between extreme right and wishy-washy moderate.
Smokebox: It seems that the left is swinging to the right, and the extreme right has no intention of getting anywhere near the middle.
Tomorrow: Yeah, and that’s my problem with the Democratic Party, and that’s why I get so much hate mail from Democrats.
(tom tomorrow interview --part 2)
|
