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December 22, 2003

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· Arizona's political cartoonists review 2003
In-Studio Guests:
Steve Benson, "Arizona Republic;"
Brian Farrington, "Arizona Republic;"
Mike Ritter, "Tribune."

>> Michael Grant:
They bring you the news with a bite. They are newspaper editorial cartoonists. Tonight join "Arizona Republic" cartoonists Steve Benson and Brian Farrington and "Tribune" cartoonist Mike Ritter as they draw you in with the cartoons of 2003 covering everything from the capture of Saddam Hussein to the shame of Michael Jackson. Good evening, I'm Michael Grant. Welcome to a special edition of "Horizon." Steve, was this a good cartooning year?

>> Steve Benson:
Oh, I'd say it was an A-plus. Your practice of law wouldn't be up there, but ours was an A-plus.

>> Michael Grant:
Is a war year a difficult year for cartooning?

>> Steve Benson:
Well, it can be if you're -- you're dealing with casualties, death and a lot of angst on the part of the people in the country, but it's also a year of passion, and I don't think I've seen a potential election that's going to be as vitriolic and keen-edged as this one is focused on the war.

>> Michael Grant:
Brian, scale of 1-10, 2003, what kind of a cartoon year?

>> Brian Farington:
It's way up there. It was a great year. We've got the war going on, we celebrity things going on. We had more than we could handle. It was a good year.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, what do you think?

>> Mike Ritter:
Perfect 10. Again, as Steve said, the passion that something like this ignites just can't be beat, and there's nothing that focuses national attention and really questions what the nation is about than going to war, reasons for it and the way it's executed. It touches on everything.

>> Michael Grant:
But as Steve indicated, there obviously are sensitivities associated with something like a war, similar to obviously 9/11.

>> Mike Ritter:
I think actually 9/11 was much more -- because that was -- that was death on such a huge scale and we had someone to blame. Here, there is fingers to point at ourselves and actions of ourselves that must be defended for those who support the war. So it raises -- touched on those kind of passsions that 9/11 doesn't, because we're not just the victims. We're the perpetrators if you want to see it that way, or the heroes.

>> Michael Grant:
Well, we strive to be as current as possible on this program. So we start with Saddam Hussein capture cartoons. Steve, this one is obviously a holiday theme.

>> Steve Benson:
We want to be in the theme of the season. Should he be sent to an international court and dealt with humanely or should we let the Iraqis take care of him? We'll see.

>> Michael Grant:
And you have a second one on the subject.

>> Steve Benson:
Smelling of Saddam's breath, I think that would be a weapon of mass destruction, but people forget that's why we went to war in the first place. Why? Because they had weapons of the mass destruction. Have we lost sight of that? Apparently there are no WMDs over there despite what Mike might say in his cartoons.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, yours takes the ace of spades approach. This is a cool cartoon.

>> Mike Ritter:
Thank you. An ace of spades turns out to be a joker. I sleep very well at night knowing that this man is now in custody, and I think it's wonderful that we were able to get him alive because now his atrocities will be trotted out before the world and the value of taking him down will be laid bear for all to see, even Steve.

>> Michael Grant:
Obviously everybody is emphasizing the bearded one approach, including, Brian, you, but a slightly different --

>> Brian Farington:
This is what little George wanted and this is what he got. So perhaps for his birthday we'll get Osama.

>> Mike Ritter:
I love that cowboy Bush. That's great.

>> Michael Grant:
That's a nice caricature. I like the cowboy hat.

>> Brian Farington:
Thank you. I had to wear one in the mirror to find out one looked like.

>> Michael Grant:
Let's move generally to the war. Mike, this is George Bush as Churchill?

>> Mike Ritter:
And despite what Steve may think, I was somewhat ambivalent about this war in ways, that's what this cartoon was about, got him giving the Churchill "V" for victory sign and American behind him crossing his fingers hoping for the best. This is something that could play out in history as being very positive and something could go horribly awry. I'm aware of that.

>> Michael Grant:
Benson, the timing on this next one must be late September, I think, was when the Zigfried and Roy --

>> Steve Benson:
Yeah, Zigfried and Bush. It could go horribly wrong, and I'm afraid it's portending that way. Almost every day we hear of more American troops either killed or wounded in action, rebellion countrywide, you know, with attacks wherever they apparently want to make them against American troops. This reminds me so much growing up as a young man in the '60s of what we heard with regard to reassurances from the Pentagon about Vietnam. We've got the technology, we've got the body counts, we've got the minds and the hearts of the people. But looks like Bush has got the tail and he's got some trouble.

>> Michael Grant:
But does your point go to entry in the war or the difficulty with the exit from the war?

>> Steve Benson:
I think actually it's extraction that's the difficult part. Now, Bush got us way in over our heads. This is not going to be an easy fight, and Americans quite frankly don't have the stomach for long drawn out wars.

>> Michael Grant:
Brian, you are sounding the same sort of theme with this cartoon.

>> Brian Farington:
Right. Despite capturing Saddam and all the good news, we have to have an exit strategy, or the comparisons to Vietnam are going to continue to escalate or we're going to be in big trouble, but I'm confident that it's -- won't be a Vietnam. I think -- but it may need a makeover.

>> Michael Grant:
Incidentally, is a great television show.

>> Brian Farington:
It is.

>> Michael Grant:
This is a fun show. I like the food guy. The food guy.

>> Mike Ritter:
I met the food guy at a convention of gay journalists this month. He's a great guy.

>> Michael Grant:
Say hi to him.

>> Brian Farington:
Any wines, recommendation on wines?

>> Mike Ritter:
We drink well.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, the Bishop O'Brien story was -- it was -- amazing.

>> Mike Ritter:
Bizarre. Watching that man's downfall, culminating in this, it's comedy and tragedy, mostly tragedy, but you couldn't have written something like this. I wouldn't have believed this if it had been a plot line on "Law and Order" or something like that. This is bizarre.

>> Michael Grant:
What sort of feedback did you get on this cartoon? I mean, how sensitive was this one?

>> Mike Ritter:
This originally did not run when it was intended to run, but I do believe it did run on the op ed page. But my paper was -- I was -- Steve and I were actually -- all three of us were -- you weren't there. We were at the cartoonist convention and Steve drew one and I drew one in my hotel room and we sent them to our newspapers. My paper had already run a cartoon, a syndicated cartoon, on this topic in my absence and so they felt this was perhaps piling on, but they eventually ran it on the op ed page.

>>Brian Farington:
I did four cartoons and none got in. We were thousands of miles away on the east coast, perfectly timed by the Bishop so he wouldn't be criticizing the cartoonists. There's a plot behind this. We need to go to the Vatican.

>> Michael Grant:
There may have been a plot but, Brian --

>> Brian Farington:
His days of being a holy man are over but I think he has an interesting career as a driving school instructor now. He's just -- it is a tragedy. It was a train wreck. But it's a blessing when it comes to what we do, that's for sure.

>> Mike Ritter:
But you do the connection between the covering up, which I think is the point. The whole hit-and-run thing just goes to the heart of his attitude about the other crimes.

>> Brian Farington:
Exactly. The double standard, hypocrisy.

>> Michael Grant:
What kind of feedback do you get on that one? Did you have angry people?

>> Brian Farington:
A few, a few. But generally it was positive.

>> Steve Benson:
The bishop ran over him with his car.

>> Michael Grant:
None of yours ran on this topic?

>> Steve Benson:
Well, the one you're about to see ran.

>> Michael Grant:
Tell us about the one we're about to see.

>> Steve Benson:
What a segue. You know, O'Brien parsing his words, splitting hairs, well, this confession that was wrung out of me by the county attorney really wasn't a confession so the technicality of bless me, father for my attorney says I have sinned. It's interesting, it took not charges of covering up on the sexual crimes, but actually running over somebody and killing this person, the jaywalkers, to get the Bishop finally removed from office.

>> Michael Grant:
Obviously Arizonans, and I want to stress here this was not a crisis, this was only a problem, but the gas shortage that we had in the summer, had you been to Legoland in San Diego?

>> Mike Ritter:
This was just an extension of a bad pun, which I love bad puns. The ineptness of Kinder Morgan lent itself to Kindergarten Morgan, and from that phrase, I tried to come up with a cartoon I could use that in. That sort of suggested the Legos.

>> Michael Grant:
That was the kind of episode -- I mean, everybody was engaged in that thing. I would think one of the problems in drawing a cartoon on this is just figuring out where you want to take a whack at it.

>> Mike Ritter:
Exactly.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, Steve, obviously you decided to take a whack at the governor.

>> Steve Benson:
Well, someone has got to do it. Her solution was to lower the standards so we could truck in dirty gas, which would, of course, pollute our air and which would mean truckers would be driving longer hours, exceeding the federal law maximum and endangering all us. So the real solution is less, not more, getting away from fossil fuels and fossil policies and those kinds of enslaving approaches to our environmental situation and energy crisis that simply are going to keep us continually chained to the gas pump.

>> Michael Grant:
I was going to say, Steve, if you're waiting in a long line and they run out of gas at the time, I don't know that you want to hear a long lecture about well let's move to more fuel efficient cars.

>> Steve Benson:
You sound just like the average American. I mean, I don't have the patience to deal with this in the big picture.

>> Michael Grant:
What's with the knife, incidentally, on the more dirty air?

>> Steve Benson:
Oh, it's so thick, Mike, you can cut it with --

>> Michael Grant:
Oh, I get it.

>> Steve Benson:
Kind of like your hair after you've sprayed it.

>> Michael Grant:
They spray it a lot. You're going after the economic aspects of the gas crisis -- I'm sorry, gas problem in this cartoon.

>> Brian Farington:
Yeah, I mean, I tried to sum it up how we feel when we have to go buy gas in tough times. I mean, we feel this is how we're being taken to task and actually this cartoon --

>> Steve Benson:
Did this get in.

>> Brian Farington:
No, Paul Schatt made me change the word to, I forgot what it was, but this was the original one.

>> Steve:
This is the crime against nature --

>> Michael Grant:
All right. Obviously another bad fire season --

>> Mike Ritter:
Oh, talk about a segue.

>> Michael Grant:
-- for Arizona and, Mike, you sort of jammed --

>> Mike Ritter:
I kind of hate when it like fires and hurricanes dominate the news because what are you supposed to say, natural disasters are bad?

>>Steve Benson:
Fire bad, fire bad.

>>Mike Ritter:
This happened about the same time Napolitano made her executive order protecting gay state employees from discrimination and, of course, the usual suspects raised bloody hell about that, and these characters I use a lot when I touch on this issue because they sort of are my caricatures of that particular set of society. So basically the idea being that why do we care about sexual orientation of state workers as long as they're doing their jobs. So we have this guy refusing to vacate because the person warning him to leave might be not on the straight and narrow.

>> Michael Grant:
It wasn't another Rodeo-Chediski but it was a bad summer, and you're correct, it's probably not good for Arizona tourism overall.

>> Steve Benson:
But you can always look on the bright side, so to speak, as the horizon lights up, not this "Horizon," but -- this is -- but I got a call from someone in that area saying, you know, after all we've been, through all you can do is make fun of us. She demanded an apology as if apologizing this cartoon would stop the fires. I remember flying in and seeing just these large loops of burning timber. It was just amazing.

>> Michael Grant:
Brian, you're trying to focus in this cartoon obviously on, well, how do we turn this thing around so maybe we don't have a --

>> Brian Farington:
To reduce forest density, cut back and there are people totally against that, and I think -- I don't agree with that, and I think we ought to trim the forests a little bit and I think they're being a little dense and trim some of their density, too.

>> Michael Grant:
There was a Forest Service supervisor on the show at one point in this thing and they were talking about, you know, the "urban interface" that became such a popular term and just do -- just do that, get some distance between the town and the forest and he made the point of, you know, as far as I know there aren't a lot of people who like to sit in their house surrounded by a burned out forest, which was a point I hadn't thought about prior to that time.

>> Steve Benson:
Unless you live in California. I mean -- that's the cool thing.

>> Michael Grant:
Schwarzenegger runs for governor in California. Mike?

>> Mike Ritter:
And Clinton endorsed Gray Davis. I thought that actually it would have been more of a fit if he would have endorsed Schwarzenegger, although I don't think Arnold would have welcomed that.

>> Michael Grant:
That's a nice caricature on Schwarzenegger.

>> Steve Benson:
That's Schwarzenegger?

>> Michael Grant:
In looking ahead, do you guys have fun drawing Schwarzenegger.

>> Mike Ritter:
Yeah, he's easy.

>> Steve Benson:
Get a guy that's O.D.'ed on steroids and --

>>Brian Farington:
The gropenator -- "I want to touch you." He's going to provide a lot of great material for us.

>> Michael Grant:
Were you surprised by all of this stuff that came out about him in the 1970s really didn't seem to make an impact?

>>Brian Farington:
It is California, after all. >> Michael: Didn't make much of an impact on female voters apparently based on --

>> Brian Farington:
They'd already swallowed --

>> Mike Ritter:
They had already gotten past Clinton, so -- you know, so they've accepted that. Apparently it doesn't matter.

>> Michael Grant:
Obviously so. There is a reason why they call this man Gray Davis, Steve.

>> Steve Benson:
Yeah, I can understand. He has the charisma of a speed bump. But Arnold, during the early days of the campaign, they asked him what his position was, he said, "I'm for families and stuff." So I knew this was going to be an exciting campaign.

>> Brian Farington:
Because Maria told him to say that.

>> Michael Grant:
Now let's move to the subject of illegal immigration and, Brian, you and Mike actually are going to hit kind of the same theme with these next two cartoons.

>>Brian Farington:
It's a dilemma in this state and throughout the Southwest that people cuss illegal immigration but the fact of the matter is our economy relies heavily on it, and you know, if all those that weren't supposed to be in this country got up and left tomorrow, you know, us -- us dense-brained white guys wouldn't want to do some of the things they're willing to do to make a living, and that's just a reality, and it would put a damper on our economy big time. That's the problem if we told them to pack up and get out.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, you touch on the same sort of, I guess, for lack of a better term, "economic schizophrenia" that sometimes we have on the subject?

>> Mike Ritter:
Exactly. Brian put it perfectly. If tomorrow they were gone, we definitely would miss them.

>> Michael Grant:
Again, I want to ask Mike what sort -- this is a very emotional issue obviously and you're taking not necessarily a popular tact with this. You get a lot of kickback --

>> Mike Ritter:
I get lot of feedback from my parents on this. We go round and round on this issue. But there's got to be a way to --

>> Brian Farington:
They don't live in Arizona?

>> Mike Ritter:
Exactly. But there's got to be a way we can have workers come here -- I guess a sensible guest worker program is the answer. That's what we need to initiate, not a Berlin wall.

>> Brian Farington:
We should buy Mexico. We could have beachfront property and solve the problem there.

>> Michael Grant:
Up against the Wal-Mart?

>> Steve Benson:
There's this national night raid launched by the federal government to round up illegal undocumented workers who are working on cleaning crews at Wal-Mart. I mean, isn't there a better way to expend our limited resources than telling people to throw down the toilet scrubber and up against the wall? I mean, this is just a ridiculous and ultimately futile attempt to get at the problem through public relations.

>> Michael Grant:
No argument there. I think the response normally is, though, that too often we don't focus on the businesses that are acting like magnets to draw these people across the border. We just focus on the people coming across the border.

>> Steve Benson:
But the last time I checked --

>> Brian Farington:
These are Europeans, though, too --

>> Michael Grant:
That's true.

>> Steve Benson:
If you really want to go after the problem, then, if that's the problem as you define it, then let's go after the employers. But are we going to go after the employers? No, we're talking money, we're talking about political support. We're not going to see business people held to account for this. It's easier to go after the cleaning woman.

>> Michae Grant:
The gay marriage issue and, Brian, you've got the Republican party in the form --

>>Brian Farington:
I'm a conservative, despite Steve trying to convert me over to the dark side. I'm a conservative and I look at this issue, true conservatism is less government, and you know, the more I thought about it, I thought, less government means staying out of people's business, and if people want to do that, then I don't know -- we have -- it's in a selfish way we have to protect our own silly rituals so the tables are never turned, and so -- I believe that if you're a conservative you should state out of people's business.

>> Michael Grant:
Steve, you've got George W. Bush on the steps --

>> Steve Benson:
What we did here is we blended George Wallace from the South who said, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever with "George Wallace Bush," George W. Bush and the Catholic church, and other conservative religious institutions banding together to continue to discriminate against a social tide that's simply going to overwhelm the fundamentalist right. They can yell and scream and try to put up as much resistance now, but eventually society will move past them just like it did past George Wallace and like it will "George Wallace Bush."

>> Michael Grant:
Did you have to remote start your car?

>> Steve Benson:
I had my editor do that.

>> Michael Grant:
Your master, as Clay Thompson would --

>> Steve Benson:
My master -- yeah, whip me, beat me. He does it every day.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, I think you're going to have to lay a little context for this cartoon because not everyone is real familiar with Karen Johnson.

>> Mike Ritter:
One of our most vaunted East Valley legislators, Karen Johnson, is very outspoken on the -- on certain social issues, particularly relating to gay rights. She's particularly fond of protecting marriage from those who would treat it lightly. And no one should know better than her because she's on her fifth husband and I think that's enough said. I got numerous letters from people explaining the various -- first she married young, and then she married poorly, and then one died, and then -- I guess -- well, you know, things happen. So --

>> Michael Grant:
Talk about a guy who did not have a particularly good year, and based upon the subpoenas that are still --

>> Brian Farington:
You mean mean the Oxycotton spokesperson?

>> Michael Grant:
Yeah, may not have a good 2004, it was Rush Limbaugh.

>> Brian Farington:
You know, this particular -- this issue is dealing with what Rush said about the football players and the quarterbacks, and although it was not the smartest thing for him to say, I think the aftermath was political correctness gone amok. I think they overreacted a little bit and I don't necessarily think they should have necessarily canned him. As far as his drug problems, I think he was being a hypocrite there in terms of what he said, but in terms of the whole thing with what he said with regard to the quarterbacks, you know, I don't think it was time to nail Rush to a cross time. He's too fat anyway.

>> Michael Grant:
Just in general, it was a year for a lot of celebrity developments, not that every year doesn't have some of them but it seemed like there were just a ton as we'll see in this next series of cartoon.

>> Steve Benson:
I think the phrase you're groping for is "celebrity bashing."

>> Michael Grant:
That's true. The grope -- the gropenator, as well -- Okay, Steve, you puts Ozzie Osbourne and Rush Limbaugh together?

>> Steve Benson:
Ozzie said he had 13 different types of medications that were taking the form of 42 pills a day, and now his doctor is under indictment and may be thrown in jail. Obviously, this would be a matter of interest to Rush Limbaugh. I mean, "Who is your doctor? Let me get ahold of him." Rush was doing what was called doctor shopping. He had four doctors on the hook at the same time trying to get as many pills as he could without telling each of the respective doctors exactly what he was up to. So can you say, Rush Limbaugh in big hypocritical capital letters? We love going after people who are so pompous and self-righteous, excluding present company --

>> Mike Ritter:
This wouldn't happen if you were on HMO. You can't see one doctor, let alone four.

>> Michael Grant:
So far doesn't seem to have impacted his popularity, though.

>> Brian Farington:
You know, Rush devotees are going to listen to him no matter what. >> Steve: It's a cult.

>> Mike Ritter:
He's got a whole new audience now.

>> Michael Grant:
Shifting to the Michael Jackson episode, Brian, you are sounding a theme in this cartoon that an awful lot of people --

>> Brian Farington:
It's basic common sense. What parent is going to drive up to Never Never Land and drop their kid off. Good-bye, Billy, have fun playing whatever, hide the whatever, and I think it's -- you need to have a brain and, you know -- the parents are clearly -- for the last case need to be held responsible. I mean, why they would do that, I don't know.

>> Steve Benson:
By the way, this was voted the best editorial cartoon on the subject by the Fox Cable News Station.

>> Brian Farington:
The conservative Fox Network.

>> Michael Grant:
There was another cartoonist who had sounded a similar theme, I think had the Never Land --

>> Mike Ritter:
Mike Ramirez.

>> Mike Ritter:
It was a bird's-eye view of Never Land --

>> Brian Farington:
"What Are the Parents Thinking Land?"

>> Michael Grant:
Mike --

>> Brian Farington:
Great Michael Jackson here.

>> Michael Grant:
Take us through this one.

>>Mike Ritter:
I sometimes love drawing really creepy stuff, and so this offered me an excellent opportunity. He is just so bizarre. He is a completely unique individual. I frankly have no idea if he is guilty or not. I think he is just so weird that it's conceivable that he did just sit around playing jacks with these kids, but he's so out of touch that people have been trying to tell him for years, you can't do this, you can't be alone with these kids, and he just doesn't hear them. So even if he didn't do it, he's so just detached from reality, he's so -- his -- tried so to make over himself that he is -- I think he's completely lost it.

>>Brian Farington:
Didn't you say today that some news regarding the --

>> Michael Grant:
Apparently joined the Nation of Islam.

>> Brian Farington:
I didn't think they accepted white people.

>> Steve Benson:
Middle-aged white women, they don't accept them.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, it looks to me like you really got into just drawing this cartoon.

>> Mike Ritter:
That was kind of -- kind of point.

>> Michael Grant:
You put together Finkel and Michael Jackson --

>> Steve Benson:
There's always a way to take Michael Jackson's personal tragedies and capitalize on them for local purposes, and we have here Mr. Finkel who was convicted of sexual abuse, I think it was 22 counts or something like that, with regard to the patients who he was providing abortion services for. That would mean, of course, in order to do a good job he would have to have an assistant who was adept and familiar with sexual procedures.

>> Michael Grant:
Now, you mentioned that Finkel sent you a letter?

>> Steve Benson:
I got this postcard that showed Sheriff Joe on the front with a dead camel, part of the theme of fighting against cigarette smoking, and on the back was this scrolled pencil thing, you know, "I was shown this cartoon, and, you know, you are responsible"-- it was from Brian Finkel -- "you are responsible for death threats against me and I will prevail," and I couldn't read the rest.

>> Brian Farington:
Who showed him the cartoon, his cellmate named name Bubba?

>> Steve Benson:
I think a family member, relation, gave him a copy. But Brian -- through the years, Brian Finkel, has been quite regular in his letters to me, faxes, you know --

>> Michael Grant:
Really? He has been a constant correspondent?

>> Steve Benson:
He is really one interesting quirky dude. I tell you.

>> Brian Farington:
Hopefully he watches this show.

>> Michael Grant:
Mike, Bob Hope left us in 2003.

>> Mike Ritter:
Well-known as a huge Bob Hope fan. He's up there now playing golf with Bing Crosby and I just want to do something straightforward and just send him -- I actually had this idea waiting in the wings for about 10 years.

>> Michael Grant:
Thanks for the memories. No, Bob, thank you. It's a nice touch. Mike Ritter, thank you for being here. Great cartooning year. Brian Farrington, thanks to you. Happy holiday season.

>> Brian Farington:
Thanks for having us.

>> Michael Grant:
Steve Benson, always a pleasure.

>> Steve Benson:
Thanks George Bush, that's all I can say.

>> Michael Grant:
Gentlemen, keep up the good work in 2004.

>> It's going to be a good year.

>> Michael Grant:
And thank you very much for joining us on this special edition of "Horizon." I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one. Good night.

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