Over a long career drawing caricatures and editorial cartoons, I can report that Sarah Palin is one of the greatest gifts ever to our profession! She’s more fun than Bill and Hillary combined. She has the intellectual wattage of George W. Bush coupled with the paranoia of Richard Nixon! And that presents endless comic opportunities for cartoonists. The fact that Palin was a former beauty pageant contestant only helps matters. Contrary to what many lay people think, beauty queens and supermodels are easy to caricature.

So, I LOVE Sarah Palin! Not enough to buy her memoir, of course. That would mean a SERIOUS commitment in time and cash. Besides, Ms. Palin may have taken some “poetic license” in writing her autobiography, at least its chapters on the election, creating an alternate reality for herself. That’s what editorial cartoonists like to do — make things up as they go along. We only happen upon the truth once in awhile, usually by accident. Otherwise, we offer lazy political analysis, inflate grotesque rumors and deliver sarcastic cheap shots. Not unlike Sarah Palin’s style of governance.

But let’s get back to caricature and the subject at hand: Sarah Palin’s face. Starting with her eyes.

Eyes are the key to drawing successful caricature, as personality is most immediately expressed through them. Palin’s eyes are always wide open and quick to judge (usually harshly). They dance with sarcasm and burn with resentment. She’s got axes to grind and wildlife to skin! As for eye makeup, Ms. Palin applies it like a pro. Not in a trashy way (though it’s always fun when some political figure ladles on the mascara and eye-shadow — a la Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner). Rather, Sarah Palin could pass for a cosmetics technician at an upscale, Middle-America department store such as Nordstrom. Her makeup expertise makes my job easier!

No doubt about it, Sarah Palin looks great at age forty-five! I trust she won’t someday “airbrush” the crows feet lines away from her eyes with Botox. They add character, a touch of gravitas, and don’t in the least bit make her look “old.” And let’s not forget that chin! Palin’s facial bone structure, over all, is impressive. But few have a chin as expressive as Palin’s: jutting, clenched in defiance and certitude, in a way that comedian Sarah Silverman would describe as expressing both “arrogance and ignorance.” Palin knows what she knows (to know more would be “elitist”) — and, dang it, she knows what’s right!

As Sarah Palin sets off on her grand book tour, she has let the world know of her displeasure with Newsweek having featured her on its cover in shorts and running shoes. Seems a bit odd, as Palin, a dedicated jogger, posed for a photo spread in Runner’s World just this past August. Nonetheless, she declared the Newsweek pose undignified and the magazine “sleazy.”

I suspect another reason for her objection to the pose. “Sarah Barracuda,” the take-no-prisoners hockey mom, the fierce basketball point guard from high school, has the sturdy legs of a roller-derby queen, not a Rockette. There’s meat on those thighs, and she’s a touch thick around the ankles. Having watched her swimsuit pageant walk on YouTube, I suspect the legs might have cost her the Miss Alaska crown back in 1984. (I haven’t seen the talent part of the pageant).

In terms of faces to draw, political cartoonists have much to be thankful for these days. Barack Obama has a great head — a cranium made for sculpture, interesting in its many angles. His wide, electric smile, second in size only to Jimmy Carter’s, contrasts markedly with his strong brow and flashing eyes. Nancy Pelosi has the eyes of a dragonfly, and the habit of smiling broadly at inappropriate times. But, for the sheer fun of drawing caricature, Sarah Palin’s face is hard to beat! Editorial cartoonists wish her a long and prosperous future, at our expense!

My fantasy caricature of the former governor? Field-dressing a moose in the buff, amid the snowdrifts. Should I ever draw that cartoon, you’ll see it here first!

Well, thanks for stopping by. If you’d like to see additional samples of my work, please click here.

Here’s what Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz, believes: A committee of five Norwegians awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama because he represents a weaker, more pliant America. An America that can no longer “go it alone” when necessary. Dear old dad, of course, wholeheartedly agrees with her.

Are Cheney & Co are onto something? Maybe, but in a perverse way. With regards to power, perhaps we’ve entered a multi-polar world, and there’s no going back? Maybe the difference between Barack Obama and the Cheneys is that the president understands this paradigm shift, and they don’t.

For instance, just saying, over and over, that the USA has the “world’s greatest health care system,” doesn’t make it so. Proclaiming we’re THE GREATEST! in just about every category is surely off the mark as well. Baseball fans can root like crazy for their home team, even when it’s getting clobbered in the World Series. Their devotion is admirable. But when the series ends, and their team is bested four game to zip, it doesn’t mean that the better team lost.

Long gone are the heady days since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Evil Empire, when the United States could claim its trophy as the world’s sole Superpower. Now we share the stage with a United Europe (more or less) and a resurgent Russia. China is expanding and transforming its economy so rapidly that they are likely to overtake us in GDP within the next ten to twenty years. Even India and Brazil are nipping at our heels!

During the Bush-Cheney Era, we clung tightly to the notion that the world couldn’t survive without our “tough-love” leadership. The result? We got bogged down in two unfinished wars, offering murky exits at best. We failed to curtail Iran’s and North Korea’s maniacal pursuit of atomic weapons. And we nearly drove our economy off a cliff, sending the world into the deepest recession in 70 years. (Though, to be fair, the Clinton-Greenspan Era deserves an equal share of the blame here).

America still tries to rally the world round its leadership, but the calls ring a bit hollow now. And while the Norwegians, the rest of Europe, and nearly every country save Israel adores Barack Obama, will they follow his lead? I have my doubts. As Nicolas Sarkozy or Angela Merkel might describe American primacy: “That’s SOOOO Twentieth Century!” And now it looks as though China is set to leap ahead of the USA in green technologies. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman put it: If you like importing oil from the Middle East, you’ll LOVE importing solar energy from China!

So, what’s the USA exporting to the world these days? Offhand, I can only think of three things: entertainment; soldiers; and obesity.

Take entertainment. From “Where the Wild Things Are” to Lady Gaga, America continues its long reign as Numero Uno in the entertainment world. That’s not going to change anytime soon. If you can make it big here, you WILL make it big everywhere!

Meanwhile, our armed forces are second to none. We are the Usain Bolt of armies, and the Michael Phelps of navies. If other nations were willing to pay us what we’re worth, we could, literally, fight all their wars for them.

…Makes you wonder: Rather than have our Marines teach Afghan farmers how to plant peppers instead of poppies, why not have the Afghan government pay for our fighting force with the proceeds from their opium trade? We could battle the Taliban for market share. (Hey, just kidding!)

As for obesity, well, thanks to the miracle of high-fructose corn syrup, we are recreating the world in our own bloated image. (Our current, svelte president notwithstanding).

So what’s Barack Obama to do now that he’s a Nobel laureate? The Norwegian selection committee has a history of making odd choices when it comes to the peace prize. And leaders currently holding office when awarded the honor — be it Woodrow Wilson, Anwar Sadat, Mikhail Gorbachev or Yasser Arafat — haven’t fared well, at home, in the aftermath.

President Wilson barnstormed the country to sell his League of Nations after World War I. The exhaustion from his travels may have helped trigger the massive stroke that confined him to bed for the rest of his presidency. His get-well card from the United States Senate? After 55 days of debate, the Senate rejected the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles, 53-38.

Yasser Arafat, who shared the 1994 prize with Israeli leaders Yatzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, was hardly a Prince of Peace. Six years later, Arafat rejected Israeli prime minster Ehud Barak’s gutsy blueprint for a “two-state solution,” and responded to Ariel Sharon’s ill-timed and provocative visit to the Temple Mount by unleashing the bloody, second intifada.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who deserved even more credit for defanging the Soviet Union than Ronald Reagan, received the 1990 prize for his policy of “glasnost and perestroika.” His Nobel medal got a loud Bronx cheer from the folks back home, where he had something like an 8% approval rating. A year later, Gorby found himself under house arrest in his Crimean dacha. He was briefly returned to the Kremlin, along with his family and his beloved cat, but the Gorbachev Era was over.

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger shared the 1973 peace prize with his Vietnamese adversary, Le Duc Tho, but we all know how that turned out. And Anwar Sadat, who bravely saw the wisdom of NOT fighting Israel, may well have paid for his half of the 1978 Nobel prize with his life!

So, best of luck, President Obama, when you travel to Oslo in December to accept your award. You’ll be the picture of grace and humility, I’m certain. You’ll deliver an elegant speech for the ages. But don’t forget to mention Afghanistan!

Once again, thanks for stopping by. If you’d like to see additional samples of my work, please click here.

My view on health care reform will outrage many: I support a single-payer system. There, I said it.

BUT, for those of you who’ve just written me off as a “socialist,” please bear with me for a few paragraphs before you…pull the plug. Or call me a LIAR!

At this point in the debate, I don’t care WHAT kind of single-payer system we devise. It could be public…or PRIVATE. We could copy the British national health care system, or we could all pay premiums to a single, private, mega-insurance monopoly. 

We need ONE health insurer. No more. No less.

During his speech on health care reform to a joint session of Congress, President Obama cited several tragic cases where our broken insurance system abruptly shortened patients’ lives. But I don’t need to cite similar tragedies to make my point. I need only talk about my own, garden variety experiences in dealing with the “world’s greatest health care system.” 

Two years ago, I fell off a ladder while painting my dining room ceiling. More accurately, the ladder toppled over, tossing my scrawny body across the room. No cause to sue the ladder manufacturer — I alone was to blame. It was late at night, and I was rushing to finish applying a coat of primer so I could get to bed. The ladder got to rocking and…kaboom! 

It was my first serious injury. My femur broke in three places, including a nasty compound fracture which produced blood and gore. There was also a spiral fracture running nearly half the length of the femur. And I’d broken my left elbow, too. Amazingly, the tub of primer landed face up on the floor, right next to my head Thank God for small favors — primer, once it dries, is permanent!

I’d always wondered what broken bones felt like? Now I knew. It was midnight, and I was hollering loud enough to wake up the neighbor’s dogs. My wife called 911. The EMTs showed up within fifteen minutes. Wedged as I was between the dining room table and the window seat, the EMTs had to figure out how to gather me up without harming my back before they could load me into the ambulance. 

The half-mile trip to the hospital took all of four minutes. Treatment at the ER bordered on torture. Dick Cheney would have approved. But violations of the Geneva Conventions were necessary to determine the extent of my injuries. At one point, I lifted my head up from the gurney and asked the doctor peering down at me, “This isn’t going to become an episode of ‘House,’ is it?” He grinned and then proceeded to catheterize me. “TRAUMATIC INSERTION!” he barked to the nurse who was jotting things onto a clipboard pad. That meant the insertion had drawn blood.

I was scheduled for emergency surgery at 6:30 that morning. It took three hours to clean up the wound, repair my femur with a 10-inch titanium rod, and sew me up. The orthopedist had hoped to untangle the gnarl of damaged ligaments around my left knee, but he was unable to do so  — thereby limiting the ultimate range of motion of my left leg.

My hospital stay lasted a week, to insure that the open wound caused by the compound fracture would not become infected. The hospital environment was godawful. The parade of nurses and technicians was, for the most part, a tour de force of arrogance and indifference. The food was vomitous. The room was dirty, with an unemptied potty chair in the corner by the bath. One of my three roommates that week was psychotic. At one point, I dropped my plastic urinal, which was filled nearly to the rim. A nurse’s assistant, brand new to the job, rushed to clean up the mess — only to be called away and scolded by an R.N., telling her not to perform an orderly’s job. The puddle of piss sat there, unattended, for more than an hour. Mere existence in that hospital seemed to put me at risk of serious infection!

Despite these indignities, I was reasonably pleased with my orthopedic surgeon, and the physical therapists who worked with me afterwards were great. Today, my fourteen-inch scar is almost invisible, and I walk with my normal gait and speed — though not without pain or diminished flexibility. My knee looks weird, but it could have been much worse. Compared to some of your own hospital experiences, I got off easy!

Yet, during my week in the hospital, and the three full months of recuperation at home, I learned just how poorly our health insurance system functions. There is little or no choice, but there IS rationing of health care. And there is waste and inefficiency galore — much of it to the benefit of insurers, doctors and hospitals alike. 

The half-mile ambulance ride to the hospital cost over $700, most of which I had to pay myself. I asked the insurance claims adjuster why the ride was so expensive? She blithely replied that the uninsured, using ambulances as cab service to the ER for minor ailments, are jacking up the costs. 

Upon my arrival in the ER that fateful night, the doctors asked me what medicines I was taking? In divulging that information, I was tuning my pharmaceutical routine over to the hospital. The hospital would determine if, when and how much medicine I could take — and THEY would administer it. So, the Albutirol I took only occasionally to treat mild asthma would, I soon learned, be administered to me every day by a respiratory therapist. At grandly inflated hospital prices!

One evening, while receiving my Albutirol treatment, the psychotic roommate went berserk, convinced that flies and mosquitoes were buzzing about the room and eating him alive! Panicked, he began rattling this bed. Then he began rattling mine! The jostling knocked my nebulizer out of whack. The face mask filled up with drug-laced water vapor and my eyes began to burn. The bitter taste in my mouth was sickening. I rang the bell for assistance, repeatedly, but the nurses ignored it. I waited a few moments, then pressed the buzzer four times fast. There was an eruption of laughter from the nurse’s station. Finally, I yanked the mask off my face and let the Albutirol steam pour into the air. The respiratory therapist arrived about ten minutes later, on her regular schedule. She wondered what the hell was going on? By then, the psycho, babbling and drooling, had drifted off to la-la land.

For the privilege of staying at the “Hospital St. Ritz,” my insurer was charged $1,600 a day for room service alone. Thank God there wasn’t a mini-bar! The entire bill for the ER, surgery, hospital room and in-house therapy came to $60,000. My insurer paid for nearly all of it, and for that I’m eternally grateful. But I had to deal with insurance agents, and claims adjusters as though it were a full-time job. I was forever on hold, calling the wrong department, or typing detailed letters. And I had to do a selling job, over and over, to convince these industry bureaucrats that I had, in fact, suffered serious injury.

                    *          *          *          *          *

…On ordinary visits to a doctor, I typically sit in the waiting room for at least an hour, sometimes two, before I’m allowed into the “inner sanctum” of the doctor’s office. Then, I’m ushered into a little room, where I’m left to wait for another twenty minutes before the doctor deigns to see me. The consultation lasts about six minutes. 

(Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish to portray doctors as ogres. One physician of mine, in particular, takes his time with me and takes copious notes. But he’s an exception to the routine).

Virtually every one of you knows this dreadful routine. It remains one of the great mysteries of modern medicine: How can a patient wait two hours for a six-minute appointment? If you’re visiting a group practice, there may be ten medical secretaries crowded behind the front desk, juggling a hundred different insurance companies trying to limit or deny referrals and tests for patients. Hostility lurks just under the surface. Their job seems like a living hell to me.

When your G.P. recommends a specialist, you go to THAT specialist. Few of us have the time or information to make educated choices about doctors. But once you start going to specialists, as so many middle-aged folks do, there’s no escape. You’ve got to keep going back for more tests and consultations — if only to insure that your insurance company will continue partial coverage of the medicines your doctor has prescribed.

There’s got to be a better way to do this. I’m under no illusion that a government-run system, or a private, mega-insurance company, would make health care easy or cheap. The rich may have choices; they always do — whether it’s medical care, college education or asset management. But the rest of us, the toiling masses, have only false choices. We have the insurance plan our employer (or, in my case, my WIFE’S employer) provides. We go to the specialists our G.P. selects for us. We go to the nearest hospital if we’re injured. And when our insurer raises a premium or denies a procedure, we get by with less or do without. 

Now, efforts to reform health care are in the hands not only of Barack Obama and Kathleen Sebelius, but of members of Congress with names like Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe, Nancy Pelosi — and, yes, Joe Wilson. And just like when we go to the doctor’s office, we sit and wait. And wait some more. We’ve been waiting for decades.

On that grim note, thanks for stopping by. If you’d like to see additional samples of my work, please click here.

The Obama administration is mired in the swamp of health care reform. Perhaps it’s time to change the subject? Time to stand up and shout, “IT’S AFGHANISTAN, STUPID!”

Will Afghanistan be Barack Obama’s Vietnam? NO. It will be his… Afghanistan. And that’s trouble enough!

First, a bit of background:

The Reagan administration liked to crow about how they’d WON the cold war. Their secret weapon? Ronald Reagan had bankrupted the Soviet empire into oblivion! 

I never entirely bought this argument. I thought Mikhail Gorbachev deserved equal credit. He’d seen the graffiti on the (Berlin) wall. By the time Gorby climbed to the peak of the Politburo, he knew that the Soviet Union was kaput. The Soviets barely had enough clunky, dial telephones and rabbit-eared TVs to go around, while the West was embarking on the Information Age. Gorbachev’s mission was to guide Mother Russia to a “soft landing,” where she might reform herself and join the ranks of respectable, modern nations.

But I DO believe that Reagan’s policy of bankrupting the Soviet Union was a huge help. The Pentagon upped the ante, exponentially, when it came to military spending. We engaged the Soviet Union in proxy wars around the world. We invaded tiny Grenada, just to keep the Soviets form landing on an airstrip. We threatened the Kremlin with the Big Kahuna of missile defense — the “Star Wars” program. And we poured zillions into Afghanistan, to help the Mujahideen roust the Red Army from every pile of rubble. 

In short, the U.S. forced the U.S.S.R. to spend like drunken sailors to prop up their sclerotic regime. We spent like drunken sailors ourselves, but we could better afford the tab. Reagan & Co. snickered as the U.S.S.R. literally fell on its rusty swords. The mighty Red Army was humiliated in Afghanistan, driven from the unforgiving dust and rocks, hungry and unpaid, by a ragtag bunch of gnarly peasants wearing sneakers and…rags!

Now, two decades later, it looks as though much of the world is snickering at us. The Chinese. The Iranians. Many in the European Union. And, most especially, the Russians. Of course, Vladimir Putin tries to keep apoker face at all times. But I’ve detected a wry smile gracing the prime minister’s face when he practices judo. Or strips to the waist and flexes his pecs in the great Siberian outdoors. 

And no wonder! We’re as knee-deep in the Big Dusty as the Soviet Union was. We’ve got a vastly superior military, of course. And we actually pay our soldiers! But we’re still stuck, and nobody knows how to win or how to get out. Honorably or otherwise. And we spend, spend, spend! Soviet history could have been instructive in this regard. British history, too. 

But isn’t Afghanistan critical to the War on Terror? Isn’t Afghanistan’s security vital to our own? All true — and therein lies the conundrum. Problem is, we’re in a race for hearts and minds with the Taliban. We can build a nice road that leads to a spanking, new school house, outside Kabul. The Taliban can assemble kids in a bombed out police station, feed them a cup of lamb and rice, and call it a Madrassa.

Meanwhile, Afghan president Hamid Karzai has grown rather sick of us, and we of him. His grand, green cape is in tatters, and he might not survive a second round of voting. Abdullah Abdullah might offer a pleasant change, briefly. But we’ll tire of each other, too, in short order. Afghan citizens will continue to gripe about corruption and the lack of basic services, and we’ll wring our hands about opium trafficking and women trapped in burkas. Daily life will change at a glacial pace. 

So, what to do? Don’t look at me — I’m just a cartoonist, unqualified to suggest anything besides a few lame, visual jokes. I might ask why you’re even reading this column? 

…But it DOES strike me that our Predator drones are having success tracking down and whacking senior members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And keeping the rest hunkered down. True, Pakistan gets mad whenever a drone whizzes over its border and hits a terrorist cell in Waziristan. But Pakistan has a problem with anger management, in general. 

Still, the Predators keep finding their targets. Seems to be more effective, and less expensive (in blood and treasure), than full-scale warfare or nation-building in Afghanistan. It’s hard to “clear, hold and build” piles of rubble punctuated by poppy fields. Why re-enact the charge of the Light Brigade? Just maybe, in dealing with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, less can be more? 

Well, enough of my yammering. Read something serious! But if you’d like to see more samples of my work, please click here.

Here’s the only “nice” caricature I’ve ever drawn of Ted Kennedy. Can’t publish the nastiest one.

Don’t get me wrong: Like nearly everyone else, I regarded Edward Moore Kennedy as the greatest legislator of our time —  ranking right up there in American history with Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.

…You know, ordinary citizens could present a eulogy, as a group, at Ted Kennedy’s funeral, and simply recite the titles of dozens of pieces of major legislation the late senator authored and guided into law. Among them: the Voting Rights Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; immigration reform laws; the Clean Water Act; the Family Leave Act; No Child Left Behind. (Well, some children left behind).

Then there was Title IX, which inspired the sports bra. And the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 (and which most 18-year-olds have ignored). Kennedy also cosponsored ratification of the United Nations, the G.I. Bill, and creation of the Interstate Highway System. Not to mention the Missouri Compromise and the Magna Carta. These last sponsorships have only recently come to light.

What’s more, Ted Kennedy not only authored these paramount pieces of legislation, he actually READ them before they were passed by Congress. Such cannot be said of most members of the House or the Senate, who have the barest notion of what’s actually IN the health care bills currently being marked up in committee. And who hadn’t the foggiest notion of the content in their financial bailout packages passed earlier this year.

But Ted Kennedy knew. He’d mastered them all!

Why, then, have I been relentlessly mean to the late senator and the members of his extended family over so many years? Well, because the First Amendment of our Constitution allows me to be a snot. A professionally snarky s.o.b. A small-minded meanie. In other words, an editorial cartoonist.

…And, well, because the flip side of Ted Kennedy (and so many members of his enormous extended family) was so darn flawed. Like the rest of us — only more so, and played out on the public stage. This weekend, as politicians, civic and religious leaders, and Kennedy family friends hail Uncle Ted’s profound achievements, and share poignant stories, I’ll fondly remember the Ted who wandered around the family beach house in Florida…sans his pants. 

In fact, the personal failings, antics, alleged crimes and misdemeanors, and often just the faces of the entire Kennedy clan have given caricaturists and editorial cartoonists a priceless gift for two generations. In this regard, the Roosevelts, the Bushes and the Adamses just can’t compare.

So let us review, briefly, a cavalcade of Kennedys. From a caricaturist’s point of view, the family is hard to beat: those faces that scream, “Kiss me, I’m Irish!” at a raucous St. Patty’s Day parade; the bounteous freckles; the dense mops of wavy hair, the big and/or gnarly choppers fit for a horse…

Take Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg, a dedicated public servant who lives in New York and says, “you know,” a lot.

There’s Patrick, who serves in Congress and wobbles a bit when he drives at night.

And Joe Kennedy II, who pitches heating oil for Hugo Chavez.

There’s Maria Shriver, once a strikingly beautiful news anchor, and now an extreme caricature of herself. Married to the personification of a walking caricature, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

…And then there’s William Kennedy Smith.

I’ve caricatured President Kennedy a few times, all of them long after his assassination. I was but a kid a couple of weeks shy of my eleventh birthday at that tragic time. I don’t have a scan of my best caricature of JFK, done for a book featuring caricatures of all the presidents from Washington to Reagan. I no longer possess the original, for that matter. But it, too, was irreverent. It portrayed JFK with a halo over his head, and a scrap of note paper protruding from his jacket pocket — scribbled with Marilyn Monroe’s phone number.

I can’t recall whether I’ve ever caricatured Bobby Kennedy. I did, however, caricature the late JFK, Jr., a couple of times. He has been the only Kennedy to get off easy. But, then, how do you viciously lampoon someone whose only flaws were being handsome and debonaire?

This past Friday night’s memorial service for Senator Kennedy was warm and full of great stories, particularly the hilarious sailing adventure described by former Iowa senator John Culver, Ted’s Harvard University roommate and fellow college football player.

My contributions, from here in the safety of my studio? Not so nice. But, hey, there WAS that matter of Chappaquiddick. It’s a scar that will forever color Ted Kennedy’s legacy. I agree with the armchair psychiatrists — that Ted’s negligence that night on Martha’s Vineyard, followed by his ill-conceived challenge of Jimmy Carter in 1980, set the senator onto a path of political and personal redemption. Millions of Americans have benefited from Senator Kennedy’s dedication to the least among us. But at least one family may not feel so moved by this weekend’s heartfelt testimonials.

Well, thanks for stopping by. If you’d like to see additional samples of my work, please click here.

Yep — this is a cheap shot! I make a living at it, however measly.

But, come to think of it, I have something in common with the esteemed professor Henry Louis Gates: Nineteen years ago, I was held at gunpoint by three policemen right outside my own studio door. And I’m unmistakably white!

The incident started innocently enough, and rather the same way that things unfolded in Cambridge, Massachusetts: There had been a series of break-ins in the neighborhood.

I was living in Augusta, Georgia, at the time. My wife’s and my apartment was too small for sufficient studio space, so I rented a large room from an attorney who worked downtown. It was a great space in a big Victorian house. It even had an adjacent bathroom, so I could wash my pens and brushes in peace. At $250-a-month, you couldn’t beat the price!

All the houses on the block had been turned into assorted firms and agencies — lawyers, mortgage brokers, government offices. The house next to my landlord’s practice served as a parole office. However, some of the private firms were a bit lax about security, and during that hot summer of 1990, a string of burglaries occurred in the neighborhood.

Early during the crime spree, a man entered the law office where I rented my studio, a little after 8:30 in the morning. He grabbed the purse and snatched the necklace from the secretary who came in before the attorney, his legal assistant or I did. After that, the attorney wired the house with an alarm system, but he rarely set it properly. Late one night, some burglar broke a first floor window and crawled inside the house. However, some noise outside the building apparently scared him, so he crawled back out and ran off without stealing anything.

The next morning, the attorney reported the attempted break-in, but only fit a board, unsecured, where the window pane used to be. He planned to repair the window later. At 6:15 p.m. that same afternoon, I got up from my drafting table to get a sip of water from the fountain in the hallway right outside my studio door. Afterward, I looked out the window next to the fountain and saw some cops looking up at me from the parking lot. I didn’t think anything of this because, as I mentioned, the law firm was right next to a parole office. Cops often chatted, or cooped in their squad cars, in the lot.

So I returned to my drafting table. Nearly 20 years younger than I am now, I wasn’t yet dependent on bifocals, and rarely wore my glasses while drawing. I wasn’t wearing them when, ten minutes later, I heard what sounded like someone fiddling with venetian blinds downstairs in the attorney’s office. Or maybe it was just the breeze coming through the unsecured window? The noise passed, and I resumed my work.

A few minutes later, I heard some more rustling of the blinds, followed by some shuffling and heavy thuds. Startled by these noises, I got up from my table and stepped into the hallway to see what was going on. My door was only a few feet from the stairway that led down to the parlor and the front entrance to the house.

Suddenly I heard a man shout, “FREEZE!” I glanced down and saw three cops at the bottom of the stairs. However, not wearing my glasses, I wasn’t sure whom the cops were shouting at. Fearing there was a burglary in process, I started to duck back into my studio.

“I said, FREEZE.” came the voice again. “DON’T MOVE OR WE’LL FIRE!”

Eyeglasses were no longer required. At that instant, I realized the cops were shouting at me! And that their guns were drawn! I froze in my tracks — and although the cops were at the bottom of the stairs, it felt as though the barrels of their firearms were firmly planted in my sternum.

“But…But, I work here!” I blurted, “stupidly” thinking that my rental situation would explain everything.

“SHUT UP!” another officer replied. “Put your hands up, or we’ll SHOOT!”

My hands shot up faster than he could finish his sentence. In my right hand I was clutching a Faber-Castell #2B pencil, its point in need of sharpening.

“I’ve got a pe-pencil in my hand. Should I drop it?”

“QUIT YAMMERING! Keep the hands up, and slowly march down the steps. Don’t turn, bend over, or do anything but step.”

…I should point out here that I was, and still am, the skinniest person most people have ever seen. At least for someone who isn’t either a hostage or terminally ill. And I was “armed” with nothing but a blunt pencil. Were I a violent and deranged criminal, I suppose I could have suddenly run down the steps and tried to gouge one of the officer’s eyes with the pencil, being brought down in a hail of gunfire. Instead, I ceased talking and robotically descended the stairway.

Once at the bottom, one of the officers grabbed the dangerous pencil away from me, pulled my right arm around my back and forced me, face-down, to the floor.

“You said you work here, huh?” another office asked? “Where are the keys? NO, don’t try to reach for them. Just tell me which pocket?” I told them, right-front, and that the key was used to unlock the door from both inside and out. The officer fished the key case out of my pocket, they stood me on my feet — and, with my right arm still yanked behind me, directed me to the door and said, “Okay — open it!”

I might also point out, here, that one of the three officers was black. They marched me to the front door, which I opened for them. At that point, two more officers came running up the walkway, guns drawn, and surrounded me.

“Ah, forget it — false alarm. Guy works here.” One officer turned to me and said, “Tell your boss to fix the window.” With that, they turned, laughing amongst themselves, got into their squad cars and drove off. No one offered an apology. Not even a friendly goodbye. I’d been a waste of time and tax-payers’ dollars.

I look back on it now like an episode of “Reno 911,” only none of the officers was wearing micro-shorts. Nevertheless, I was mightily shaken, and the next day informed the attorney that I would be leaving the studio at the end of the month. I suggested he waive any requirements of the lease agreement and that my security deposit not be forfeited. He immediately agreed.

Still, all these years later, I can’t help but wonder: Had I been Aaron McGruder, the great African-American cartoonist and creator of “The Boondocks,” would I have been shot when I tried to duck back into my studio?

So, my sympathies with Professor Gates only go so far. I appreciate his outrage and think that police “protocol,” though correctly followed, can border on the Mickey-Mouse.  When the suspected perpetrator is a man who appears older than his 58 years and is hobbling on a cane, fumbling with the lock, chances are he indeed lives in the house. And a clueless, skinny guy clutching a pencil is probably being truthful when he says he works in the building. Still, the police know not to trust too much. And the heat they pack, which I could clearly feel even from 20 feet away, should be enough to shut anyone up — even an esteemed Harvard professor who is a pal of Barack Obama’s. There’s always plenty of time, after the police have left the scene, to vent one’s outrage, demand resignations, bring lawsuits or what have you.

As for Barack Obama, the Gates episode just adds to his current, and growing, stack of woes. Obviously, holding a “conversation” about race, especially when our historic, first black president is doing the talking, is a dangerous minefield. As always, President Obama speaks in measured tones on the subject. Yet even the unfortunate insertion of a common adverb, “stupidly,” could trip him up. And it sure got in the way of the serious health care debate, which has been tripping up presidents for seventy years.

Someday, when President Obama is again navigating the tricky subject of race in a press conference, I’d like to hear him remind Americans that he is half white. But that no one thinks of him as America’s first “mixed-race” president. That “black” is always the default mode for mixed-race in this country. That before he became Barack Obama the Phenomenon, he was, in the eyes of many white Americans, just another black stranger who might be walking up behind them on a street in Chicago. And that someone like his beloved grandmother might have felt uneasy, or downright fearful, in the presence of such a man. Despite immense progress, we’re still a considerable distance from the “Promised Land.”

…By the way: After the beer fest at the White House on Thursday, is Officer Crowley going to demand that Obama and Gates take a breathalizer test?

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In December of 2008, Tribune Media Services, my syndicate at the time, commissioned me to draw an illustration featuring Barack Obama and several of our other presidents, for a special Inaugural Edition to be published by The Chicago Tribune.

Recently, I’ve been asked why there are two versions of this illustration? The one posted to the right was the original illustration. Tribune Media’s managing editor and I had agreed on the concept, and the final rough draft had been approved. When I sent the finished art, as an e-mail attachment, it, too, was approved.

And so the story might have ended. But, a couple of days later, the managing editor called me to say there was a problem. Tribune Media’s president did not like the fact that there was a pair of shoes speeding in the direction of outgoing president George W. Bush’s head. This little joke, in what was otherwise a rather sober illustration, was playing homage to the famous “shoes-heard-’round-the-world” last autumn, when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at President Bush during a news conference in Baghdad with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Assorted videos of the shoe assault, from every imaginable angle, were broadcast the world over, for weeks.

(As an aside, I have to admit that I was much impressed with President Bush’s nimbleness in ducking the leather projectiles. At age 62, the president didn’t miss a beat, and took it all in good humor. Meanwhile, al-Maliki was equally impressive, being absolutely unflappable as the shoes sailed between himself and the president. Of course, al-Maliki is a man who doesn’t sweat the small stuff. During some previous press conferences, the Iraqi prime minister delivered his opening remarks, or took questions, while bullets flew or bombs detonated in an adjoining room. He’d stand there passively, hardly so much as blinking, while ministerial aides and journalists dove for cover).

But back to the point of today’s blog. Tribune Media’s president told the managing editor that the shoes had to go! The president’s concern was that the dig at Bush might scare off advertisers from peddling their wares, for hefty fees, in the Obama Inaugural Edition. This was especially important, given that The Chicago Tribune is Obama’s “hometown” newspaper. Not to mention that the Tribune had recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

So, what to do? I balked a bit at having to make the change, though complaining is something I rarely do when working on freelance jobs. I thought his concern about the flying shoes was silly, but I knew I’d have to give in. I suggested to the managing editor that I could substitute another president for the shoes, but wasn’t sure which president to choose. The managing editor said she’d leave that up to me, but hoped I’d be able to make the correction in a couple of days.

Given George W. Bush’s placement in the foreground of the illustration, I knew I’d have to choose a short president, and preferably hefty one, to fill the gap. That ruled out William Howard Taft, of course, who was 6-feet-tall and weight over 300 pounds. It also ruled out James Madison. Our shortest president, Madison was also the teeniest — just over 5-feet, and weighing barely 100 pounds. Many other presidents, regardless of size, just weren’t “household faces,” and might have puzzled readers.

John Adams, therefore, was the obvious choice. Because I draw at a drafting table, rather than on a computer tablet, I was going to have to trace part of the original art, and carefully construct a patch, with both John Adams and a re-drawn George W. Bush. Once completed, I could literally glue the patch into place, or scan the patch and “paste” it onto the JPEG image of the original art. I opted for the latter, so as to preserve the original piece with the hurtling shoes. Or, rather, I would opt for asking my wife to handle the digital surgery for me. She’s an expert with Photoshop. I’m basically a digital idiot.

Once the patch was inserted, I sent the revised file to Tribune Media Services. Everyone there breathed a sigh of relief. A funny thing happened, though, on the way to the printer. The special Obama Inaugural Edition was full of large editorial cartoons by some of Tribune Media’s best cartoonists. And my own illustration was given good play, as well. The only thing is, the special edition contained NO ADVERTISING WHATSOEVER! Even without the flying shoes, Tribune Media was unable to enlist a single advertiser for the suppliment. The shoe crisis was really much ado about nothing. It was also another example, however small, of the sad shape of today’s newspaper industry.

Still, I can’t complain. My illustration took up half a page of the special edition in Barack Obama’s hometown newspaper. No clunky advertisements were there on the page to compete with my art (an ad for shoes would have been wonderfully ironic). And, in my opinion, the revised illustration makes for a better composition. Also, my revision of Bush, I believe, was better than the first version. Curiously, I’ve always found George W. Bush a struggle to caricature well. Comparatively, Barack Obama’s face is a breeze to draw.

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I’ve discovered that I have something in common with Sarah Palin: The ability to ramble incoherently. So, permit me to blather away! If you get bored, multitask while you’re reading, or skimming, this blog. That’s what I’m doing as I write it.

But don’t worry, I won’t talk about Bristol Palin or the rest of the Palin brood. I’ve never caricatured the Palin’s oldest daughter — and, as far as I’m concerned, the children are outstanding in every way. I’ve never caricatured soon-to-be-ex-First-Dude Todd Palin, either. I’ve wanted to, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. But I will say this about Todd: He’s VERY well groomed for an Alaska outdoorsman. He trims his goatee just so — the kind Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck or some other Hollywod stud might grow. And there’s always a hint of mousse in his hair, perhaps as a counter to the whiff of moose urine in his lumberjack shirt. He’s sort of metrosexual, Klondike-style!

…Not that I’m trying to pass judgment here. I recall the time, a few years back, when there were some major renovations being done on my old house. The contractor guys were knocking down old walls, raising enormous clouds of thick dust, and breaking quite a sweat. Yet, when I stopped by to check out their work one lunch hour, these burly, filthy men were sitting in a circle, eating their deli sandwiches, and discussing hair care products and cologne. Todd Palin would have fit right in there. Me? Not sure I ever sweat enough to need cologne. Besides, I prefer to emit a neutral aroma whenever possible.

But I digress, as does Governor Palin! She’s not only the best-looking elected official in the United States, but she’s a joy to caricature. Her facial features could not be easier to capture and exaggerate. Not sure who is going to replace her as best-looking elected official when she quits the governorship at the end of July? Texas governor Rick Perry, maybe? According to the late Texas columnist, Molly Ivins, Governor Perry certainly has the “pertiest” hair of any governor. And Texas needs a handsome, well-coiffed leader as it prepares to secede from the rest of the United States. The sooner, the better, in the opinion of some.

But back to Sarah. Those big brown eyes that slant a bit downward: the distinctive eyelids; mascara and eye shadow applied to perfection; the oddball, designer glasses that frame and accentuate her eyes so well. Then there’s that lovely, square-shaped skull. Not that square heads are necessarily attractive — often they aren’t. But in Ms. Palin’s case, squareness works: the prominent cheekbones; the strong chin that narrow-chinned comedian Tina Fey can somehow mimic with devastating precision. It’s all great for caricature.

A lot of people think noses are the key to caricature, but they’re not. It’s the eyes, which is why I can go on ad nauseum about them. Still, regarding Governor Palin’s nose, it’s a beaut! Small and finely sculpted — by genetics, not the knife — with an almost vertical bridge. As with her eyes, the glasses just seem to be a perfect fit for her nose.

I could go on — and, well, why not? Governor Palin’s mouth is also great for caricature. It’s a beautiful mouth: lipstick applied as though she worked at a department store cosmetics counter; and her perfect teeth come to a bit of a point where the two top, front incisors meet. This gives her some bite — some credence to the “Sarah Barracuda” nickname she earned on the high school basketball court.

And Palin has aged well. The fine wrinkles under her eyes and around her mouth are lovely. Parishoners at her Wasilla church should pray that the governor doesn’t fall prey to the Botox needle. She’ll never need it.

At age 45, the governor still has a fine figure, too. Clearly, the former beauty pageant contestant did not go to pot after settling for runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest. But, alas, I must qualify a bit on this point: Don’t tell the governor, but she doesn’t have the greatest legs. They’re kind of blah! My cartoon legs of Sarah Palin are always shapelier.

But there’s more. Sarah Palin, we’ve been told, can field dress a moose. But she won’t break a nail doing it! She tends to them carefully, and does whatever it takes to keep her hands looking soft during the harsh, sub-Arctic winters. She wants her hands to look their best while she employs those well-practiced gestures during interviews with Katie Couric. Which actions, of course, only fall into Tina Fey’s hands on Saturday Night Live!

So there you have it. I’ll leave the governor’s peculiar, erratic behavior, her quitting for the “sake of Alaska,” and other odd and contradictory comments and actions, to more qualified pundits. And her accent, speaking style and use of sarcasm — kind of Roseanne Barr without the wit — I’ll leave that to Ms. Fey. But I have to hand it to the governor — she’s been a blast for me and all other caricaturists and editorial cartoonists. Whatever she ends up doing after leaving Juneau, I don’t think she’s venturing far from our collective conscience.

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Something must be wrong with me. Three giants of showbiz died two weeks ago, yet I wasn’t a big fan of any of them.

Ed McMahon? He was a very talented pitchman. But I preferred the hilarious send-up of McMahon, in the guise of “Hank Kingsley,” on “The Larry Sanders Show.” Actor Jeffrey Tambor’s signature Kingsleyism, “HEY, now!” is probably quoted more often than McMahon’s “HEY-OHHH!”

Farrah Fawcett? I never bought that famous poster. She wasn’t my type. I didn’t like “Charlie’s Angels,” and my least favorite of the trio was Ms. Fawcett. Never did care for that “feathered” hairstyle she inspired, either. To tell the truth, I didn’t watch a lot of TV in the mid-1970s. I was too busy disco dancing. But if I had been watching, I probably would have preferred “The Bionic Woman” to “Charlie’s Angels.” I’d forgotten about the bionic Lindsay Wagner until just recently, when she started doing commercials for the Sleep Number mattress company. She look pretty good at age 60, and a bit sleepy, too — just right for the ads!

Ah, but what about Michael Jackson? McMahon had talent, and Fawcett had looks. But Michael Jackson was pure genius — the finest overall entertainer since Sammy Davis, Jr. For about a decade, he singlehandedly rescued the recording industry.

Yet, throughout Michael Jackson’s career, I just never quite got the adulation. In the late 1960s, the Jackson 5 had a string of number-one Motown hits, and they were great to listen to on my AM car radio. But I much preferred Sly & the Family Stone. When Michael launched his solo career in the late 70s, I liked him more. But as a singer and songwriter, in my opinion, he was no match for Marvin Gaye or Bill Withers.

By the time Michael Jackson became a superstar, I’d mostly lost interest in “pop” music. Not the artsier rock of the 1980s — a lot of that stuff was pretty good, and its influence on popular music today remains strong. But the big, arena-filling popular musical acts, whether delivered by heavy metal bands, or R&B sirens Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, or the two biggest acts of that decade — Michael Jackson and Madonna — left me cold. And while Michael Jackson’s dance moves were incredible to behold, I found Prince’s choreography far more intriguing.

Perhaps that makes me strange? However, speaking of strange, I have to hand it to Michael Jackson. He was a weird pleasure to caricature! The skin whitening procedures to obscure his vitiligo, the odd experiments in plastic surgery, the bandito face kerchiefs, the sequined glove and epaulets — all made Michael Jackson an enduring subject for caricature. In fact, in terms of rendering, Jackson made the caricaturist’s job easy. Over time, he reduced himself to a stark black-and-white image. The white, mime-like face, the sharp cut of his reconstructed nose, the dyed black hair hanging like tendrils, the eyeliner and false eyelashes…all of these provided great tools for the caricaturist.

Sunday night, Michael Jackson was honored and memorialized at the BET Awards. Actor Jamie Foxx declared on Michael’s behalf: “We want to celebrate this black man.” As though the audience needed to be reminded that Michael Jackson was indeed an African-American. However, from a caricaturist’s odd point of view, Jackson had personally transcended race. He wasn’t of mixed-race, of course, like President Obama. Whether on the illustrated page or in photographs, Michael Jackson was, literally, both black and white.

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…By the way, a question for you dance experts out there: Since Michael Jackson rarely, if ever, danced with a partner, unlike Astaire or Baryshnikov, couldn’t he best have been described as a “hoofer?”

Well, so much for Barack Obama cozying up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At least in the foreseeable future. Still, I believe the Obama administration is right to seek dialogue with its adversaries, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney having shown the limits of America’s go-it-alone, my-way-or-the-highway “diplomacy.”

I suspect the hardliners in Iran were determined to keep Ahmadinejad in power precisely because they are afraid to talk to the U.S. Perhaps they’re genuinely fearful of Barack Obama? After all, Iranians now know that Obama WOULD hurt a fly! And while the Iranian government rejects any “preconditions” for negotiation on America’s part, they’ve set their own precondition: If America wants to talk to Iran, it will have to be with the Supreme Leader’s grinning madman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His campaign opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, though very conservative himself, just couldn’t be trusted to follow the script. In other words, Iran is GOING to make that bomb!

…Of course, I could be way off base here. Maybe Ahmadinejad DID win a landslide re-election…in a four-man race? However, were this the case, it it would underscore deep divisions within Iran: Between country and city; between the educated North Tehran elite and the unwashed masses; and between Iranians under age 30 (especially women) and those older than 30. Resolving these differences will not be a pretty to watch.

…And, if anyone looks like he could appeal to the unwashed masses in Iran, it’s surely Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Those deep-set, ferret eyes, his seeming inattention to grooming, the maniacal smile, that schnoz, and the impression that he might have been plucked from a “Death to America” rally by the Supreme Leader himself.

As for the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he’s taller than might you think, is quite robust despite a paralyzed right hand, and has been known to smile on occasion. And, compared to his predecesor, the Grand Ayatolla Khomeni (a.k.a. the World’s Sternest Man), Ali Khamenei looks downright bookish — perhaps the world’s nerdiest theocrat.

But don’t be fooled. This “theonerd” won’t let go of power unless it’s pried from his cold, dead hand. Clearly, his regime only knows how to respond with brute force. One powerful ayatollah asserts that dissidents are guilty of “mohareb” (waging war against God), a crime punishable by death. But their brute force is wielded with a very clumsy club, aboard a motorbike. The cold-blooded murder of young Neda Soltan, as she was getting out of a car, has created a martyr for the cause of freedom and democracy. The regime, of course, has ordered that she not be martyred by her countrymen. But it’s too late — Neda, her first name now as familiar as Hillary Clinton’s, has already been beatified the world over.

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