I think where there may be an opportunity to use mohammed, just the fact of having that in the cartoon would overshadow the point i was trying to make and take away from the effectiveness of the cartoon. So it is not that i am not opposed to using mohammed but i am more for ensuring the message that i am trying to communicate to the audience. Gets to the audience. Brian this is a personal question. We will talk about your book. Are you really the brother to two sisters that are medical doctors and two brothers as well . Michael i am. And their spouses are as well. We have like nine people that are closely related better all that are all doctors. The only way i can get them to show up at family reunions is i say i deal with politicians and congress, so i am sort like a proctologist. Them a sort of let me into the family reunion. Brian go back to this, two sisters and two brothers are medical doctors. And how many of their spouses are . Michael my older brother is a fertility specialist. His wife is not a doctor. She is the only one. All the other ones are doctors. My grandmother and my grandfather were both in the medical profession. My grandfather was a doctor in japan and my grandmother was a pharmacist. Brian your mother and father . Michael not. I wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon. I never wanted to be a political cartoonist. I was saying in his speech at the other day, president obama got a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing but i should get one for all of the lives i save by being a journalist instead. Brian go back to the beginning. You have a japaneseamerican mother and a mexicanamerican father. How did that happen . Michael im am half japanese. One quarter spanish, one quarter mexican and completely confused. My father was in the military in army intelligence. For 23 years. He met my mother in japan. She lived in the United States. But i was born in tokyo, japan. My older brother and i. The first one which i spoke was japanese. It has been a long road. I have lived all over the world. It has been good exposure because i lived in belgium, germany for two years, paris for eight months and on and off between the United States and japan. Brian the political cartoon came to you when . Michael i never anticipated being a political cartoonist. The strangest part of this story is i really wanted to be a doctor. I recall reading the newspaper every morning with my dad. We had two when i lived in california. We took the Orange County register and the l. A. Times. The register had jeff mcnally. He was working for the Richmond Times at the time. It ran his cartoons. We had this morning ritual where we would have breakfast, he would read the l. A. Times first and halfway through, we would swap papers. I was aware of political cartoons and i loved political cartoons. And i loved paul conrad dark images. They were moving and they had deep messages. I think paul i think jeff took that a step further with his wonderful sense of humor that i think extended the reach of the cartoon by reaching a much larger audience with a message with the humor. And so, like any other reader, i loved looking at the political cartoons but i never in my life envisioned being a political cartoonist. I stumbled into it by accident. Brian were going to show a whole bunch of cartoons from your new book. Before we do that, this is your what book . Michael my second book. Brian this cartoon may have been in your first book but it is not in this one. It was very controversial. You will remember it because the secret service came after you. As the cartoon you explain what it is. Michael basically, i used an old, very iconic photograph from the vietnam war era where the Saigon Police chief had just caught a vietnamese terrorist who had killed a colonel and his family in saigon. He basically executed them on the streets of saigon. I used that iconic image to portray george w. Bush being assassinated by politics during the advent of the iraq war. That image itself somehow got communicated to the secret service that i was advocating assassinating the president. Or Something Like that. But honestly, i dont think i ever really was investigated initially. I think what happened was, a drudge letter, a headline that said political cartoonist being investigated by secret service. Boy, when i got into the office of the l. A. Times, we were inundated with calls. Wanting to interview me. This cartoonist being interviewed by a conservative administration. But, i had really not been contacted by anyone in the secret service. The general rule at the l. A. Times is all you have to do is call and start cussing and they would forward you to my phone. I never really received any phone calls before the story broke. And then as it turned out, the l. A. Branch of the secret service did contact me but only because they had this big publicity about me being contacted by the secret service and i think they felt left out. And so i got a call in the middle of the day after numerous calls and this guy said i am with the secret service and i would like to see you. I said you will have to get in line. How do i know you are with the secret service . And he said well, i have dark sunglasses, a black suit, and a black time. A method, by all means, that proves it, come on down. I thought it was a crank call. A few minutes later, the receptionist said the secret service was there to see me. I couldnt remember any counterfeiting that i had done lately. The l. A. Times dispatched their lawyers, a team of lawyers down there and they promptly escorted him out of the building because we did not want to set a precedent of a journalist being interviewed by the secret service. Brian we have 18 seconds of video. It was shot originally by eddie adams and somebody from nbc. Whats watch this 18 seconds to show how graphic it is. [video clip] [end of video clip] brian you are not that old to remember that . Michael i do sort of remember that. I do not remember the entire clip, of course. Back in television in those days, they did not show the entire thing, but i do remember the photograph as an iconic image of the vietnam war. That is what political cartooning is all about. Using images that people are familiar with two convey a point of view. Brian another controversy that you were involved with michael i was involved in another controversy . Brian a hate cartoon. You were accused of showing the wailing wall in jerusalem. Here it is on the screen. What was that cartoon. Michael it was called, worshiping their god. What i did was, i took the stones that looked like the wailing wall and i produced the letters that spelled hate. It was during the first intifada. There is a figure that is a conglomeration of extremist Israeli Settlers and people that were opposed to the establishment of the palestinian state. The people creating the violent upheaval there. In addition to that, having a palestinian figure, if you notice, he is on a prayer rug but he has his shoes on. Both of these figures are using utilizing a false religion for a political purpose and stead of pursuing a religious advocacy, they were just worshiping hatred. This cartoon, when this appeared, i got numerous complaints from both sides. Both the jewish groups were upset that i would use the wailing wall figure and the palestinian groups were mad at me because i was accusing them of hatred. It proves once again that i am an equal opportunity offender. Brian when was the first time an editor and you are syndicated how many different papers are you syndicated in . Michael about 540. I get hate mail in all different languages now. Brian when was the first time an editor said, i am not going to run that. Michael i only had one incident in my career. Lionel lindner was the editor of a memphis paper. He brought me over to memphis where i won my first pulitzer. Brian and you were there for seven years . Michael i was there for seven years. Lionel was killed in an awful accident on new years eve day. And, Angus Mccarran took over for him. He was the editor of the pittsburgh paper. The rumors were thick that angus was very liberal, and lionel was very conservative. I would be one of the first people to go because i am very conservative. We had Civic Leaders lining up in his office for three days straight telling angus to fire me. We had a pretty terrible beginning. In fact, he kicked me out of one of the editorial meetings. I like engaging in the editorial meetings. On the third day that he was there, on a wednesday, the topic was on welfare reform. They were trying to advocate working to get welfare. I did a cartoon where i had an uncle sam figure lying in an alley, holding a sign saying will work with food. He is looking at the headline and workfare, he is turning to the bum next to him saying they actually want me to work. It is a totally legitimate cartoon. Well, angus canned it. I went up to angus and i said this is a legitimate cartoon i think it ought to run. He said it would not run. And i said, i will send it to my syndicate and it will run it all the other papers. And he said well its not going to run in this paper. He used more explicit language. I called my accountant and said we should get everything together because i think i will probably be leaving. I demanded a meeting with angus on that friday and went into his office. I said look, you have five illustrators in this newspaper that are better artists than i am. If you want them to draw, hire them. Im an editorial cartoonist. My job is to think of these profound images, break them down into something easy to present to an audience for them to understand. It has my name on it. If you want to put your name on the cartoon, by all means, do. But i am an editorial cartoonist and i will not draw your cartoons. I will draw the best cartoon that i can. You give me the freedom to do what i do best. I will research them and do my best with them. I will substantiate them. I will win you a pulitzer prize. But i am not going to draw your cartoons. If you are going to fire me, fire me now. He laughed at me. And he said, no, do whatever you want. From that moment on, we got along great. He gave me the complete freedom to do whatever i wanted. That was the only incident when i had a cartoon killed. Brian how long were you with the l. A. Times . Michael 7. 5 years. Brian what happened . Michael a mutual parting of ways. They were looking for a way to cut costs. Philosophically, it was never a good fit. I dont think. We had talked about paul conrad, my predecessor. Paul and i are probably as diametrically opposed philosophically as two people can be. And you know what, they actually wanted to limit the number of cartoons that i did every week. I had to negotiate upwards to try to do more cartoons. So, there was a huge transition between publishers. And i worked for the publisher. As the publishers came and went, i think the familiarity between me and the publishers left as well. And there just came a point where they were looking at cost cuts and change it and i dont think they ever embraced my philosophy. It was probably the only job that i had outside of military service that i had to put on kevlar and a helmet to walk through the newsroom. Brian we will talk about your new job at investors business daily, where you are now. Let us look at some of your cartoons from the new book. This book is called, give me liberty or give me a obamacare. Why the title . Michael they did not let me put an illustrated guide to impeachment. When i look at this Obama Administration, of things they have done, this massive expansion of government. We have 120 trillion of unfunded liabilities when it comes to entitlements. 15 million more americans on government aid. More than anything, this is what the administration represents. To me, as a political cartoonist. Big government, progressive regime. Unlawful regime. What i am proud about in this book is it really makes the case on all of the things that they have done wrong. Past history is a good way to provide for the future. We are getting into another president ial election cycle. I am hoping this will spark the initiative for people who want real change to get back to our constitutional foundation, to enact them and get involved in the process. That is what political cartoons are. A catalyst for thoughts. And to educate progressives who think clearly and the consequences of these disastrous policies have been. Brian for folks that do not know your politics. One of the introductions in your book is from dick cheney and the afterword is from Rush Limbaugh. No question on where you are. I want to show you what cartoon from 2008. Its from headline of the 47 million uninsured. For those of you that cannot see it, the first figure says i can afford it but i do not want it. There are 18 million under that person. I am 18 to 25 years old and i am indestructible. I am an illegal i am a legal and i am not here. 12 point 6 million. I am in between jobs and only temporarily uninsured. 9. 4 million. I am covered but my parents have not sign me up yet. 8 million. And, i am eligible for Government Health programs and i have not signed up. 3. 5 million. And you have a note that says, there are more. Some have overlapped. Michael this is the sad when i think the media does not do its job. Its sad when a political cartoonist has to put out the relative debate. The 47 million figure has never been really proved. In fact, i think a week after the administration rolled out the 47 million uninsured number, they brought that number down to 37 million because they had pulled it out of the air. I think from what ive read, and the sort of the indepth investigation done at the time, we are talking about 4 of the people that were uninsured at the time. Brian here is another one from 2008. You will see it, there is a woman standing there with amateur over her head. She says, i love corn with two senators walking by. Michael not two women senators. Prostitutes. This is on obamacare. The kind of gift making an trading that was done to convince the senators to go along with this program. There was chicanery in the process and it changed the rules to obamacare. So that cartoon really point said out. Brian this one is from 2010. Tell us about the mad hatter. Michael the mad hatter is nancy pelosi. She is saying, you have to pass this bill so you can find out what is in it. And this is the most Ethical Congress ever. Once again, it was based on this obamacare scheme that this administration was going to push through utilizing whatever methodology that they could. This complicated rule that no one had ever read was going to be passed on to the American Public without really knowing what was in it or what the consequences of what was in it would happen to the population. Brian the cut line on this is, please remove these items from your person. Its from 2010. Michael this was on the debate going on today. Which is on the fourth amendment. How far do we go to protect the general public and what Constitutional Rights do we have to exchange for safety . This is a real question as to the extent of that. The thing that defines america is our constitution, and the liberties that we have, and the freedoms that we have. Hopefully, the fear of this danger from these terrorist groups will not overcome our common sense to redefine what america is. Brian up there in the corner on that badge it says, tsa. Inside it says, u. S. Department of groping . Michael that is when you had the stories where the tsa guys were getting touchy feely. A bunch of them got a bunch of phone numbers. Maybe it was a good thing for them. Brian 2014. The police are keeping us down. Explain this. And the art of this and what you are trying to do for the person that picks this up in the newspaper. Michael we have the juxtaposition of the reality of whats going on in the black community. The vast majority of homicides and killings are done by black on black crime and yet, there are some other Civic Leaders that are blaming it on the police. As we have seen, just recently in the cases with the San Bernardino and the policeman who let these people who could have been hostages out of the building saying i would have been willing to take a bullet for you first. The police have a terrible job keeping us secure. It has made it harder by this movement that is blaming them for the irresponsible behavior of other people. And in certain circumstances, obviously, the police should be condemned for their overzealousness or the horrendous things that have happened. For the vast majority of circumstances, they are there to keep us safe. Brian here is 2012. And it says, theres a darkness rising. Explain this one. Michael this one is directed towards a new generation of folks being brought up a different way than perhaps you and i were where we had a family unit. There was a cohesion. Kind of a person on person relationship. Whereas the new millennium have a lot of violent video games, they communicated in ways that they do not really see people anymore. When we have this incident, this cartoon was about the shooting in colorado. The batman movies. The question was, what changed this person into this monster . The lack of communication. The lack of human contact. Playing violent video games. These are all questions for generation y. Brian the next one is complicated. You are sitting at home and it would be hard to see it. Its from 2012. The headline on it is, a weapon guide for the uninformed. Over there to the left you have what looks like an ar 15. These military style assault weapons. Mass shootings, 18. Is that 18 people at that time . Michael yes. At the time, i wanted to compare the homicide rates and what type of instruments of murder are used and what the damage is. The problem with some of the progressive media is they exaggerate things to fulfill their political agenda. Like this idea that these weapons that look like assault rifles are in fact assault rifles. There is a big difference between an automatic weapon where you squeeze the trigger and it fires off many rounds and these long rifles, which are the same as a hunting rifle where you squeeze the trigger and it shoots one bullet. I wanted to compare and contrast how many murders are done with other instruments, and with the cartoon you can see that blunt objects, handguns, which nobody is talking about, drunk driving, people using their hands and feet in violent acts, auto accidents constitutes far more deaths than these mass shootings. Brian auto accidents were 32,000. Rifles, 453 killed. 6009 People Killed with handguns. 674 by blunt objects. You have a hammer there. 817 with knives. Drunk driving, over 10,000. Hands, feet, fists, 869. That is in one year. Michael thats in one year. I think the statistics came from the fbi