In a time and place where being a Muslim Arab may be hazardous to your health, Award-winning Berkeley-based editorial cartoonist Khalil Bendib continues to produce his wicked, hard-hitting anti-establishment cartoons as if there¹s no tomorrow.
Bendib, who firmly believes that "the pen is funnier than the sword," calls Œem as he sees Œem, unabashedly skewering the usual assumptions, taboos, stereotypes and platitudes so dear to American political culture.
As a naturalized US citizen born and raised in North Africa, he¹s both the perfect outsider and a consummate insider in the world of America media. He made his first cartooning teeth as a teenager in Algeria¹s national weekly "Les Actualités," where he had his first brush with censorship, then in the Daily Trojan, at USC, during a stint there as a graduate student.
He then landed a full-time job as political cartoonist with the Gannett chain of newspapers (at the San Bernardino Sun,) where his work was viewed nationwide, but eventually opted out of corporate American media to develop his own independent voice away from any editorial chaperons.
His work is currently featured in hundreds of small and mid-sized Muslim, Arab, African-American, Jewish and other ethnic and progressive publications, both online and in print media, and he has become by default the cartoon voice of the voiceless in our country, a reliable champion of the underdog, providing a small oasis of cartooning dissent within a vast desert landscape of increasingly homogenized corporate media.
With his biting satire, Mr. Bendib holds up a mirror to American society warts and all holding no punches and earning, in the process, legions of devoted readers and fans who can find their own legitimate concerns expressed in humorous form almost nowhere else in the country.
As a Muslim, an Arab, and a left-progressive in a drastically polarized and increasingly right-wing Post 9/11 world, Mr. Bendib finds he has at least three strikes against him in the eyes of Middle America, and yet, by voicing the unanswered concerns of his own community, he has discovered that he fits perfectly within an America that has traditionally espoused the ideals of freedom of speech and tolerance and he would dream of living nowhere else on this planet.
To view some of the cartoons, please go to: http://www.bendib.com
Plan 9 Publishing: http://www.plan9.org
Please also visit The Black Commentator each week for Mr. Bendib’s other political cartoons plus more insight into the nature of the United States and hope for change. http://www.blackcommentator.com
First, please continue for some of the glowing reviews garnered by this book thus far ...
Bendib, who firmly believes that "the pen is funnier than the sword," calls Œem as he sees Œem, unabashedly skewering the usual assumptions, taboos, stereotypes and platitudes so dear to American political culture.
As a naturalized US citizen born and raised in North Africa, he¹s both the perfect outsider and a consummate insider in the world of America media. He made his first cartooning teeth as a teenager in Algeria¹s national weekly "Les Actualités," where he had his first brush with censorship, then in the Daily Trojan, at USC, during a stint there as a graduate student.
He then landed a full-time job as political cartoonist with the Gannett chain of newspapers (at the San Bernardino Sun,) where his work was viewed nationwide, but eventually opted out of corporate American media to develop his own independent voice away from any editorial chaperons.
His work is currently featured in hundreds of small and mid-sized Muslim, Arab, African-American, Jewish and other ethnic and progressive publications, both online and in print media, and he has become by default the cartoon voice of the voiceless in our country, a reliable champion of the underdog, providing a small oasis of cartooning dissent within a vast desert landscape of increasingly homogenized corporate media.
With his biting satire, Mr. Bendib holds up a mirror to American society warts and all holding no punches and earning, in the process, legions of devoted readers and fans who can find their own legitimate concerns expressed in humorous form almost nowhere else in the country.
As a Muslim, an Arab, and a left-progressive in a drastically polarized and increasingly right-wing Post 9/11 world, Mr. Bendib finds he has at least three strikes against him in the eyes of Middle America, and yet, by voicing the unanswered concerns of his own community, he has discovered that he fits perfectly within an America that has traditionally espoused the ideals of freedom of speech and tolerance and he would dream of living nowhere else on this planet.
To view some of the cartoons, please go to: http://www.bendib.com
Plan 9 Publishing: http://www.plan9.org
Please also visit The Black Commentator each week for Mr. Bendib’s other political cartoons plus more insight into the nature of the United States and hope for change. http://www.blackcommentator.com
First, please continue for some of the glowing reviews garnered by this book thus far ...