A new beat

Bob Baldori and David Small met as teenagers in Detroit in the late 1950s. Baldori, a musician who has performed worldwide, and Small, a successful illustrator, each tells their friendship’s origin story, emphasizing the other’s talent. While Baldori, 81, remembers how he and Small were “nuts for comic books.” Small, 79, recalls Baldori’s gift for the piano.

“He had a piano in the basement of his parents’ house and I was taking jazz lessons, so he asked me to play something,” Small said. “I played a complicated riff that I’d memorized, and Bob said, ‘Do that again.’ I did, and then he sat down and duplicated what I had just played, note for note. I was absolutely gobsmacked. I had never met anybody with a real musical imagination like that. I resolved to give up the piano and concentrate on something I was really good at,” continued Small, with a laugh. “It was the beginning of a very long friendship.”

The artist at work: David Small illustrating digitally in his home studio.

The two men say their friendship paused between their teenage years and mid-’60s as two uniquely creative and successful lives unfolded.  Baldori founded the Woolies band at Michigan State University, which hit it big with Bo Diddley’s song “Who Do You Love?” Baldori, a keyboardist, went on to work with Chuck Berry before becoming an entertainment lawyer in the 1980s, then released a documentary and toured internationally as one-half of the Boogie Kings in the 2000s. Small became a go-to illustrator at The New Yorker, won a Caldecott award in 2001, and published the award-winning graphic novels “Stitches” in 2009 and “Home After Dark” in 2018, now banned in Missouri and Florida.

Encouragingly, both men developed these long and successful artistic careers without uprooting from their home state.

“I’m a Michigan guy,” said Baldori, who lives in Meridian Township, “Even in the late 1960s, I thought the world had changed enough to the point where you could operate remotely. New York and L.A. were the centers for the music and entertainment business, and I was connected in those places. But the other side of it is that you can’t be in those places without getting watered down.” Baldori described his brand of boogie-woogie as “the story of the Midwest,” detailing how the music started in Texas and New Orleans before coming up the Mississippi and through Chicago. For Baldori, there’s no place like home. “Michigan is the best place to live in the world,” he said, “except in January and February.”

“The closer Trump has come to actually getting reelected,” Small said, “the more nervous I’ve become.”

The invention of the fax machine allowed Small, who lives in a village south of Kalamazoo, to work as a successful illustrator while maintaining his Michigan roots. “Back before the internet, before cell phones, I really was convinced that one needed to go to New York to be successful,” he said, “But as it turned out, even back then, the artists that I met and the illustrators that I knew in New York were pretty much fleeing the scene. I’d had some editorial cartoons in The New York Times and an agent in New York. I got a pretty permanent gig with The New Yorker. It didn’t pay very well, but it was exciting work, and I could do it from my Michigan home.”

Fast forward 50 years, and the pair can’t remember how they reconnected in the 2010s. But they’ve kept in closer touch over the past decade.

This year, they’ve teamed up on a new, creative collaboration: The Boogie Kings Newsletter. It’s a two-to-three-time post-per-week Substack newsletter by Baldori, with illustrations by Small. Although initially conceived as a project about music, movies and even gardening, the newsletter focuses on how the media covers national politics with pithy paragraphs and colorful cartooning.

Over the past few years, Baldori said he has been reinvigorating his web presence and social media channels. “My daughter made me aware of Substack,” he said, “She set it up for me so I could just hit ‘Publish.’ One day, I got upset about something I saw on the news and just vented there.”

“It was around the time that the Supreme Court elevated Trump to the position of king,” said Small, referencing this year’s argument in Trump v. United States that limits a president’s liability for actions in office. “Bob saw an illustration that I had posted on Facebook, and he asked to use it. That was the beginning.” Baldori shared the newsletter with some of his closest confidants, who encouraged him to keep posting.

Baldori and Small have an easy working relationship. Sometimes, the newsletter starts with a vent from Baldori; other times, Small has a sketch or an image that he’ll send to Baldori for a reaction. “David and I — our brains are linked,” Baldori said. “Partly because we go back 60 years.”

“Bob is much more aware of what’s going on in the world,” Small said, “When he sends an idea, it’s fun to try to put it into visual form and visual metaphor. I’m not a writer, I’m not a thinker, but we make a good pair.” Of his political cartooning, Small said, “You try to get the whole scene without using text. A good visual image gets past all the guard towers and straight into the heart.”  

Baldori (right) and Small met as teenagers in Detroit in the 1950s. They were “nuts for comic books,” Baldori says.

Baldori said he is writing the newsletter to push back on “the delusional framework of false equivalence,” he said, “It’s the idea that a flat-earther is given the same amount of credibility as a real scientist. It degenerates into a shouting match, and it’s a nightmare of chaos. The media creates this framework that is totally delusional.”

Before 1987, the Federal Communications Commission had a policy called the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcast license holders to present controversial issues of public interest and spend time reflecting fairly on different viewpoints. The FCC abolished the doctrine in 1987 while Ronald Reagan was president. Some scholars see that as a contributing factor in America’s political polarization ever since. Baldori said that for Americans under 40 (over 160 million people and more than half the population of the United States), the time before false balance, known colloquially as “bothsidesism,” is hard to imagine.

“It’s not news, it’s not even opinion, it’s straight-up propaganda,” said Baldori, describing the changes in the mainstream media landscape over the past 30 years. “Big money took over talk radio and started burying the country. Once you know what it is, you see right through it. But there’s millions of people buying into it, and that’s why Trump is so popular.”

Small described his political concerns as firmly rooted in his position as an artist, “The closer Trump has come to actually getting reelected, the more nervous I’ve become. I’ve read up on Nazi Germany and the way things developed there, and I’ve kept an eye on Russia and the way things have been developing there.”

He relayed the story of Sasha Skochilenko, 33, who was sentenced to seven years in a Russian prison for distributing antiwar messages. “It suddenly struck me that the same thing could happen to anybody making disloyal comments about Trump. My whole life could change just because of some drawings,” Small said. “I’m sure it is very egotistical, self-centered and solipsistic that I, here in Michigan, might be fingered for disloyalty to our great leader. But such things have happened throughout history.”

Baldori said he doesn’t think the newsletter will change anyone’s mind about voting for Trump, that’s not why he’s writing it, saying, “I’m doing this because people get buried with propaganda and they don’t have time or the resources to respond. I have the resources to let the sane people know that other sane people are out there. They’re not alone.”

But Small hasn’t given up hope, “I have intuitions about these people, and the only way I can express them is through my medium, drawing. If my caricatures could help change even a couple of people’s minds, that would be good.”

As a lawyer, Baldori doesn’t mince words when it comes to his point of view about the media coverage and the former president’s convictions.

“The courtroom is where facts matter,” says Baldori. “Election interference and free speech are concepts that work on the public, but Bozo’s been convicted of 34 felonies, every single one of them in furtherance of an attempt to corrupt an election. It was a unanimous decision by a jury of his peers. Facts don’t mean anything to him, but they mean something to a lawyer. That makes him guilty, and that makes him a felon. And if his supporters don’t care that he’s a felon, well, you’re not living in a democracy. You’re living in a fascist dictatorship.”

When asked what the pair will do in November if Democrats win, Baldori said he’d like to write about other things. “I’m trying to get away from politics, but the convention will pull me back in.”

As for Small, he said, “Certainly, the great caricaturists never hesitate to go after anybody for infractions over what they think are the proper ways to govern. Obama used to get it from the liberal press when he overstepped. A true political caricaturist finds fodder whenever he looks, but I don’t know if I’m the same. When Bob started this, he thought it could go towards music, film reviews, even gardening. And any of those would be a passion of mine.”

The notorious republican shill Peggy Noonan (about which more another time) pontificates:  “She has one great advantage, she’s a very beautiful woman.  You can’t take a bad picture of her. Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce: radiance. It is foolish to make believe this doesn’t matter.”

Bozo’s response: “I am much better looking than her,” Bozo said. “I’m a better looking person than Kamala.”

More evidence for the commitment file.  Pancake makeup, the fright wig and the farinaceous cheeks are not exactly a good look.

Then there is that weight issue which Bozo is too old to correct.

“They will say he’s rambling. I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy,” he said, rambling stupidly.

Did someone say “Dementia”?

A dumpster fire that just won’t go out.

Last night I attempted to watch the unwatchable republican convention. It is a disgusting attempt to create an alternate universe, where up is down and black is white. You have to wonder why any of the MSM, including CNN, would broadcast this other-worldly fantasy without constant disclaimers. None of this is real, yet it is being foisted on the electorate and made to look credible by a relentless, billion dollar propaganda apparatus.

J.D. Vance? What is the over/under on when he turns on Bozo? He already knows, and has stated publicly, that he is dealing with a nut case. It’s only a matter of time.

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And there is Bozo in the wings with his ear patch, as his dystopian vision of the US is hammered out by his sycophants to his adoring cult. Time to switch to TCM or a sporting event, as nausea is setting in.

The assassination attempt in no way negates Bozo’s unfitness for ANY office.

First, and most obvious, no one is more singularly responsible for inciting this type of behavior than Bozo. He has generated more hate than anybody in the history of the White House. And so, because up is down and black is white, blame Biden.

He has been found guilty of 34 felonies, each in the furtherance of his corrupt effort to undermine a free and fair election - the bedrock of democracy. He bribed both a porn star he was screwing, as well as a playmate he had an affair with, as part of his corruption of the 2016 election - which he probably would have otherwise lost. And everyone - even his cult followers - knows he did it. All of it.

He is an admitted serial sexual predator with a conviction for the equivalent of rape and a penalty of over $150 million- along with claims by over 21 other women - many under oath, of sexual harassment including rape. He has been found guilty of 27 fraud counts and fined close to half a billion dollars and barred from doing business in NYC because he is so corrupt. Then there are the six bankruptcies along with three other serious indictments - all of which he is stone cold guilty. And that is just a partial description of the many reasons - each of them dispositive - that he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again.

Oh yeah - he really is Putin’s Puppy and out to destroy the US and everything it stands for. There is that.

Anyone who supports him has serious mental health issues. See DSM-5, Delusional. It’s clinical. They believe things contrary to easily ascertainable facts.

And so the turmoil continues. Sentencing Sep 11. A reality check? Stay tuned.

The wolves are out for the amiable VP nominee Tim Walz.  Master propagandist Chris LaCivita, perpetrator of the  deplorable “swiftboat” assassination of John Kerry, erstwhile and now current Bozo advisor has turned his sites to Mr. Walz.

It turns out Tim had a DUI arrest 30 years ago and paid his fine.  And Walz also inadvertently uttered the phrase “in war” during a conversation about automatic weapons.   Apparently that’s a deal breaker for Mr. Lacivita.

If Walz had been convicted of the equivalent of rape, had 34 felony convictions for corruption of an election, 27 fraud convictions and was barred from doing business in NY and generally behaved like an incompetent sociopath – that would be OK.  But that DUI is too much.

And of course to even raise the issue of military service exhibits breathtaking chutzpah when you consider the facts.

Candidate Captain Bozo Bonespurs dodged the draft, never served, and labels those who do “suckers” and “losers” while continuing to disparage military service.  And that of course in addition to his criminal history.

But hey… Hillary’s emails!!!

Monday’s yawn inducing, technically plagued conversation between two tone deaf billionaires, which was loaded with pratfalls worthy of the 3 stooges, has landed both of them in more legal trouble. Bozo’s desperate attempt to push the Kamala juggernaut out of the news cycle blew up in his face like a loaded cigar.

Shawn Fein, the brilliant UAW leader on Tuesday filed federal labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board against former President Donald Trump and bromancing billionaire Elon Musk for publicly applauding the practice of firing employees who threaten to strike.

It is illegal to fire workers who threaten to strike, because the right to strike is protected under federal labor law.

Musk and Bozo pontificated themselves into yet another legal entanglement.

So tone deaf that they don’t know when they are breaking the law, which Bozo does routinely.

“I mean, I look at what you do,” Bozo told Musk on Monday night. “You walk in, you say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.’”

Build a wall. Drill, baby, drill. Marxist, socialist something-something. Harris only recently became Black. Blah, blah, blah.

Stumbling and slurring through admissions like a true rapist of everything in sight - women, workers, the environment, couches...

Two rich weirdos few people like, including the hypocrites who will vote for Bozo anyway - see Nikki Haley, Bill Barr et al.

Bozo is totally off the rails and heading for a jump suit.