Background

Frederick Theodore Rall III was born on August 26, 1963, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Frederick T. Rall and Yvonne Touzet Rall, a high-school teacher.

Education

Rall began drawing cartoons in high school, and published his first work in the Keltering-Oakwood Times in 1980. Rall remembers meeting Mike Peters, a cartoonist at the Dayton Daily News, whose “ink-stained office in the corner of the sports section with a drank sportswriter passed out on the couch” impressed the teenager with its media ambiance. By the time he finished high school, Rall was contributing cartoons to six local papers.

At Columbia University, where he enrolled as a physics major in 1981, Rall drew cartoons for the Columbia Daily Spectator and other campus publications. He also began to skip classes in order to stay up all night enjoying the punk rock scene in downtown Manhattan, and conducted several notorious pranks at the university. He rewired Columbia’s phone system, stole a scepter from an important campus statue, and published a joke paper called the New York Lost, a parody of the New York Post in which Rall repeatedly mocked Columbia’s president. This behavior, combined with bad grades that had resulted in academic probation, caused Rall to be expelled from the university in 1984.

Without a degree, Rall decided to try to get a job on Wall Street. He began working as a trainee trader for Bear, Stearns and then took a position with the Industrial Bank of Japan. These experiences only intensified his criticism of capitalism, which he believes is “completely corrupt.” During this period, Rall also worked as a telemarketer and a taxi driver, and began drawing cartoons again, but he was frustrated in finding an audience. After meeting guerrilla artist Keith Haring in 1986, however, Rall was inspired to post his cartoons throughout New York City to gain attention. Eventually, he signed twelve clients this way. In 1990, he left his work on Wall Street to return to Columbia, this time to study history.

Career

In 1991, Rall signed with Chronicle Features to syndicate his cartoons. Several editors were impressed with Rall’s satirical edge and willingness to take positions that went beyond simple liberalism. In 1992, when he became a Contributing Editor to Might magazine, an influential San-Francisco-based glossy magazine co-founded by Dave Eggers. Ted’s first major piece for Might, “Confessions of the Investment Banker,” was reprinted around the world, including in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, the Australian Financial Review, and the daily Asahi Shinbun newspaper in Japan.

Beginning in 1994 with “Why I Will Not Vote,” he contributed op/ed articles to The New York Times throughout the 1990s.

In 1996, Rall left Chronicle and joined Universal Press Syndicate. Universal managed both his cartoons, which appeared in more than one hundred newspapers, and a weekly op-ed column of “opinion writing for Americans under 65.” That same time Rall began working for P.O.V. magazine until that publication went out of business. As a staff writer for P.O.V. magazine Rall began frequent travels to Central Asia in 1997, when he attempted to drive the Silk Road from Beijing to Istanbul via China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.

P.O.V. published his adventures as Silk Road to Ruin, a title he used for his 2006 collection of essays and cartoons about Central Asia. Rall returned to the region for P.O.V. in 1999 to travel the Karakoram Highway from Kashgar, in western China, to Islamabad.

A 2002 assignment for Gear magazine to cover the world championships of buzkashi in Tajikistan was not published due to the magazine's going out of business, but turned up in an edited form in Silk Road to Ruin. He returned to Tajikistan, Xinjiang Province in western China and Pakistan during the summer of 2007.

Rall edited the first "Attitude" anthology, Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists, in 2002, with its mission to bring together cartoonists who were "too alternative for the mainstream and too mainstream for the alternative." Attitude 2: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists followed in 2004, and in 2006 Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists appeared. Each volume contains interviews with, cartoons by and personal ephemera related to 21 different cartoon creators.

Rall also edited three cartoons collections by Andy Singer, Neil Swaab, and Stephanie McMillan under the name "Attitude Presents".

From 2006 to 2009, Rall was Editor of Acquisitions and Development at the comic strip syndicate United Media. While there, he helped bring to syndication Keith Knight's The Knight Life, Signe Wilkinson's Family Tree, Tak Toyoshima's Secret Asian Man, Dan Thompson's Rip Haywire, and Richard Stevens' Diesel Sweeties.

Rall's work includes the book The Anti-American Manifesto (Seven Stories Press), published in September 2010. His book, The Book of Obama: From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt (Seven Stories Press) was released in July 2012.

From August 1998 to August 2000, Ted hosted his highly-rated, twice-weekly talk show on KFI Radio in Los Angeles. Highlights of Ted’s show included “Stan Watch: Breaking News from Central Asia,” which was simulcast by both National Public Radio and the BBC, and caustic interviews with such figures as former Klansman David Duke.

Ted often broadcast his radio show from overseas, and made American radio history by airing the first live talk radio shows from Cuba, Uzbekistan and the frontlines of the war in Kashmir Province. Ted’s live from Afghanistan reports for KFI Radio and written dispatches for the Village Voice was called “some of the best war reporting from Afghanistan” by The Nation. From 2004 to 2006, he returned to the airwaves on KFIR-FM (106.9 Free FM) San Francisco.

Achievements

• Though cartoonist and graphic novelist Ted Rall began his career in the alternative media, within a few years his editorial cartoons were syndicated in more than 100 publications nation-wide. His opinion columns are published in 44 newspapers, and also appear widely on the Internet. Rall’s satirical takes on such subjects as pop culture, environmental concerns, underemployment, drug abuse, shattered nuclear families, and political scandals have earned him significant critical attention, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1996.
  
  Twice the winner of the RFK Journalism Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Rall's important books include "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids," about the travails of Generation X, and "Silk Road to Ruin," a survey of ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Bernie

    (Insightful, funny, and accessible, this biography-in-grap...)

    2016
  • Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists

    (ATTITUDE includes cartoons and interviews with: Tom Tomor...)

    2002
  • Never Trust a Realist

    (In this collection of his nationally syndicated columns f...)

    2016
  • The Anti-American Manifesto

    (In arguably the most radical book published in decades, c...)

    2011
  • Revenge of the Latchkey Kids: An Illustrated Guide to Surviving the 90's and Beyond

    (Angry, unappeasable, and funny as hell, Ted Rall is a min...)

    1998
  • The Book of Obama: From Hope and Change to the Age of Revolt

    (In The Book of Obama Rall revisits the rapid rise and diz...)

    2012
  • Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?

    (Part graphic novel travelog, part tongue-in-cheek travel ...)

    2006
  • Snowden

    (Rall delves into Snowden's early life and work experience...)

    2015
  • The Year of Loving Dangerously

    (Between acidly funny and disturbingly real, Rall, a carto...)

    2009
  • Waking Up in America: Cartoons

    (A collection of satirical cartoons looks at American soci...)

    1992
  • Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan

    (At first glance, the United States invasion of Afghanista...)

    2002
  • Trump: A Graphic Biography

    (Donald Trump, who never held political office, pulled off...)

    2016
  • After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back as Honored Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan

    (An unflinching account - in words and pictures - of Ameri...)

    2014
  • America Gone Wild: Cartoons

    (America Gone Wild features Rall's most controversial cart...)

    2010
  • My War With Brian

    (Outrageous Ted recounts his junior-high years in the hand...)

    1998
  • Real Americans Admit: "The Worst Thing I'Ve Ever Done"

    (A hilarious compilation of true stories as related to Ted...)

    1996
  • Generalissimo El Busho: Essays & Cartoons on the Bush Years

    (Ted Rall is best known for saying today what will become ...)

    2004
  • Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists

    (This is a caustic collection of the top political and soc...)

    2006
  • Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back from the Right

    (This book is dedicated to the prospect that the left will...)

    2004
  • Search And Destroy

    (Search and Destroy is Rall's first cartoon collection in ...)

    2001
  • To Afghanistan and Back: A Graphic Travelougue

    (Introduction by Bill Maher. When U.S. bombs started raini...)

    2002
  • 2024

    (Move forward two decades. See the world as the giant medi...)

    2001
  • All the Rules Have Changed: More Cartoons 1995

Views

Rall himself prefers issues that he can explore in some depth, such as underemployment, consumerism, or drug abuse. He also often takes on the nuclear family in his work. Though he has commented that he disapproves of irresponsible social behavior, Rall attracted some criticism after a copy of his 1992 cartoon “12 Ways to Kill Your Parents” was found in the pocket of a boy who had just killed both his parents. Rall admitted in an article on his Website that he was disturbed at the possibility that the cartoon had planted the idea. And he acknowledged having “demons” he exorcised in his work.

Rall enjoys writing columns as an alternative to cartoons, pointing out in an Editor & Publisher article that he prefers columns for exploring “the big picture” and cartoons for “focusing on individual follies and people.”

Rall deals with some same themes he uses in his cartoons, though he explains that “A column allows you to expound on topics that are just too complicated to go into in a cartoon.” As with his cartoons, he brings a satirical twist, or even some outrageousness, to his column subjects.

Membership

Ted Rall was a member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, National Cartoonists Society and Newspaper Features Council.

Personality

Rall gets many of his ideas from watching TV news and reading magazines and newspapers. Fluent in French, Rall regularly reads French papers, which, he believes, often contain more concrete information about the United States than is found in the American media. Rall also keeps up with what is new in popular culture, and enjoys punk-rock music, about which he writes as a freelancer.

Quotes from others about the person

• “He brings a certain skepticism and irreverence to many issues. His cartoons generally have some special spark in terms of insight.” - Joe Copeland

Interests

• World War II history, 1920s American literature

• Music & Bands

  Punk rock music

Connections

On May 28, 1994, Ted Rall married Judy S. Chang, an Internet producer.

Father:

Frederick T. Rall

Mother:

Yvonne Touzet Rall

Wife:

Judy S. Chang