10/15/04

LC041015

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Negative campaigning may hit a new low this year. Can political
humor take off the edge?

Greg Spiridellis>> We thought it would be great to parody Woody
Guthrie, this great, you know, serious political songwriter.
You know, what if he were alive today and how juvenile our
public discourse is. Let's make a parody of it.

Val>> And then, we take you inside a place where art happens.
It's part refuge, part work space, and part incubator for
creative talent.

Those stories and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and
Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> This presidential campaign is shaping up to be one of the
nastiest in history, but one of the things that's helping to
tone down the personal attacks is political humor. Humor is not
only adding to the debate, it's helping foes find common ground.
Toni Guinyard tells us how animated and editorial cartoons are
taking the edge off of mean-spirited politics.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "And to those critics who are so
pessimistic about our economy, I say don't be economic girly
men."

Toni Guinyard>> Consider it a moment tailor-made for those who
thrive on political humor, a punch line package to be repeated
again and again. Some politicians seem adept at making us
laugh, but in the world of political humor and satire, the joke
is often on them.

Daryl Cagle>> There's a lot of wonderful targets. It's great
to be an editorial cartoonist because the world is my set of
characters and there are wonderful characters out there.

Toni Guinyard>> In editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle's world, no
one and nothing is sacred.

Daryl Cagle>> I get up in the morning and I watch the news and
I get mad at something and I have this wonderful conceit of
being able to draw what I think and you have to look at it and
that's so cool.

Toni Guinyard>> What he thinks appears in one small box on the
editorial page of 750 newspapers and in the online opinion
magazine "Slate".

Daryl Cagle>> I think I have the best job in the world. I have
the conceit of being able to make people suffer my opinion every
day. That's just great fun and it is --

Toni Guinyard>> -- and you mean that, don't you?

Daryl Cagle>> Oh, yeah. It is so much more powerful than the
guys who struggle with words that we delight in that.

Toni Guinyard>> Cagle's work, often political and liberal, is
meant to elicit a response, laughter, anger, thought, discussion
and debate.

Diane Chambers>> The whole drama of it, the spectacle of it.
It is absolutely exciting stuff (laughter).

Daryl Cagle>> We're trying to make as effective a jab as we can
and cartoonists like to do cartoons with no words in them
because that's even more effective. The less words, the better
for us. It's kind of like poetry. Boil it down to the simplest
possible thing.

Toni Guinyard>> It's up to readers to decide how the work
should be interpreted and they are speaking out.

Gjanee Davis>> I've seen a lot of things that I've seen in the
media. I mean, not just in cartoons. I say, you know, no more.
Enough. And they don't understand that they're swaying a large
public.

Toni Guinyard>> Cagle's website, cagle.com, is a gallery for
the work of some of the top editorial cartoonists in the world.

Daryl Cagle>> Well, it's made an opportunity for my website
because nothing's ever existed where you could see all the
editorial cartoons at the same time. But at the same time, the
cartoonists on my website are losing their jobs. These are
tough times for cartoonists because, as newspapers consolidate,
more editorial cartoonist jobs are eliminated, so what is a
great American art form is suffering.

Toni Guinyard>> Suffering while at the same time humorous
political perspectives are being presented in different forms.

Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "If you elect me President of the State
of California, I'll trim the fat from the budget the same way I
do from my rock hard body every day."

Toni Guinyard>> The comic strips are becoming a political
playground, taking on issues from the battle over undecided
voters to the run for the White House.

Yara Sellin>> My favorite comic strip is Boondocks and I enjoy
the political commentary as well as the author's deft sense of
humor.

Toni Guinyard>> And the internet has become a screening room
for web animation with a political twist.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> This political parody called "This Land" became
an instant success. So we're no longer limited to getting our
daily dose of political humor from magazines and newspaper
editorial cartoons. The humor is now being dished up on the
internet and people are watching, listening and sharing with
their friends.

April Dinsmore>> My girlfriend just sent it to me on my email.
It's probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen and that
kept it extremely light and extremely -- just a very good sense
of humor. Whoever put it together did an excellent job with it
and I thought it was hilarious (laughter).

Toni Guinyard>> The creative minds behind the web animation are
brothers, Evan and Greg Spiridellis, founders of Santa Monica-
based Jibjab Media.

Greg Spiridellis>> We've been banging on doors in Hollywood for
two years. They didn't listen. When forty million people come
to check out our website, all of a sudden people are calling us
and, you know, we owe that all to the people who are, you know,
passing our work around.

Evan Spiridellis>> In the first sort of two to three weeks, we
received over 35,000 emails.

Toni Guinyard>> And they try to reply to each email and each
phone call.

Greg Spiridellis>> "Sure. Can you tell him Greg from Jibjab
called?"

Toni Guinyard>> Greg and Evan developed politically-laced
online animation for five years before "This Land" put them in
the spotlight.

Evan Spiridellis>> Then we had an animated rap battle that was
Bush versus Gore and they were, you know, doing hip-hop rhymes.

[Film Clip]

Greg Spiridellis>> We did Arnold for Governor.

Evan Spiridellis>> I think with Arnold, that whole recall
election was such like a circus and Arnold is such a big
personality that, you know, that was entirely done in good fun.

Toni Guinyard>> And then they began to focus on the 2004
presidential campaign.

Greg Spiridellis>> You know, Evan and I just sat down, started
batting around ideas and we thought it would be great to parody
Woody Guthrie, this great, you know, serious political
songwriter. You know, what if he were alive today and how
juvenile our, you know, public discourse is. Let's make a
parody of it. From there, it just grew.

Evan Spiridellis>> We don't do the political parodies and
satires to influence anybody or to try and get our own political
point of view out there. Really they're just done in good fun
and with the hopes of making people laugh.

Greg Spiridellis>> The greatest thing about "This Land" and
this experience has been the way that it's brought people
together, you know, people whose views are so different and so
divisive where there really isn't dialogue. You know, we've
gotten emails from people saying I haven't talked politics with
my dad in twenty years without yelling at him, but we both sat
around the computer and got a good laugh out of "This Land".

Toni Guinyard>> But being funny with online animation does not
equate to making money.

Greg Spiridellis>> If you looked at the success of "This Land"
and took out like our costs of rent, Evan and I would still be
kind of far below the average American salary.

Evan Spiridellis>> You don't get rich making internet cartoons,
that's for sure.

Toni Guinyard>> But you are getting a few dollars here and
there from fans.

Evan Spiridellis>> Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. I mean, talk
about the power of the internet and the power of laughter.

Greg Spiridellis>> You have to go off the web to make your
money.

Toni Guinyard>> So Greg and Evan are not limiting their
business venture to the internet. They're working on everything
from children's books to other product lines, an acknowledgement
of sorts that the web is a blessing when it comes to building a
fan base, but it's also a curse. So they are taking advantage
of the attention while the spotlight is still focused in their
direction.

Greg Spiridellis>> Fifteen minutes of fame into a career.
That's our kind of motto we're living by right now.

Toni Guinyard>> Fifteen minutes of fame launched with a
political parody from two guys who say their only agenda is
making people laugh.

Evan Spiridellis>> Well, I hope our work doesn't make anybody
form a political opinion (laughter) one way or the other
because, if you're voting for the stuff that we talk about in
the cartoons, that would be, you know, a little bit frightening.

[Film Clip]

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and Times".


Val>> A report on literacy in Los Angeles County has some
disturbing findings. They looked at adults, not children, but
adults and found out that over half of them have low literacy
skills. Now what does that mean? That means that they wouldn't
even be able to find an intersection on a map or write a simple
business letter.

I talked with Terri Clark, Executive Director of the Literacy
Network. They're joining forces with the city of Los Angeles
community colleges, the LAUSD and the United Way to improve
literacy skills among adults. So, Terri, you've been looking at
literacy in Los Angeles for, what, the last year or so. What
were some of the more dramatic findings that you discovered?

Terri Clark>> Well, one of the key findings that we found and
actually one of the more staggering statistics that we'll be
talking about is that fifty-three percent of sixteen out of
school youth and above, that means adults in Los Angeles County,
are at the lowest two levels of literacy.

Val>> Say that again. Fifty-three percent of adults in Los
Angeles County or city?

Terri Clark>> County, are at the low level of literacy.

Val>> That's a huge percentage.

Terri Clark>> It's 3.8 million people. It's a significant
number. What we also found out is that we're only reaching ten
to fifteen percent of those people.

Val>> With literacy programs.

Terri Clark>> Right. So we have our work cut out for us. And
that's why this project, the Literacy at Work project, was
begun.

Val>> And it's not just in the city of Los Angeles. Glendale,
Pomona, all these cities have thousands and thousands of people
who are low literacy.

Terri Clark>> Exactly. I mean, certainly the city of Los
Angeles because of the sheer number of population is one of the
highest with the highest percentage of low literacy adults, but
Glendale, Pomona, El Monte and Long Beach have a significant
number as well. In fact, the way we're defining literacy is
it's not just reading and writing. It's math literacy, it's
computer literacy, problem solving and critical thinking.

Val>> The Literacy at Work study also found that nearly two out
of three foreign-born individuals cannot read the directions on
a prescription bottle. Now a lot of people will say, well, of
course, this is no surprise because we have such a high
percentage of immigrants in this area and English is not their
first language. So are we unique? Do we have an unusual
problem?

Terri Clark>> Well, certainly Los Angeles is sort of considered
the bellwether for the country and we do have a significant
immigrant population and that does have an effect. Limited
English proficiency has a certain effect, but this is not just
an immigrant problem. What we've also done in the report is
looked at area by area what the predominant language is and
there are certain areas in Los Angeles where the predominant
language is English and there still is a significantly high low
literacy level.

Val>> Okay, so we have a serious problem. Obvious question,
what do we do about it or what's being done about it?

Terri Clark>> At the moment with the learner interest program,
it's very hard to track them if they fall out. In fact, right
now one of the things we've found out in this report is that
there is a significant dropout rate. After three weeks, fifty
percent or more drop out.

Val>> Of the Literacy Program?

Terri Clark>> Of the Literacy Programs. So what we want to do
is improve the referral system, get them into the right
programs, get them so that they're staying in the program and
finishing and completing getting their workforce literacy
certificate and then improving their literacy skills.

Val>> Who will bear most of the weight of solving this problem?
Is the private sector, the public sector? Because it sounds as
if you're asking businesses and employers to do a fair amount.

Terri Clark>> We're asking both. It's certainly a public-
private partnership and we're looking at it from that approach.
Neither can do it alone.

Val>> By far, the biggest provider of literacy programs is the
Los Angeles Unified School District. They serve about 400,000
students in adult learning classes. The community colleges are
next serving 72,000 adults. Now a lot of people would say,
okay, if you have low literacy skills, of course, it's bad for
you individually. You're going to earn a lot less and so forth.
But it actually has a much bigger impact than just on the
individual person and family.

Terri Clark>> Absolutely. I mean, this is affecting the Los
Angeles economy. What we're finding is that businesses are
looking elsewhere because they can't find the educated workforce
that they need to sustain their business.

Val>> Now having low literacy skills obviously is bad for an
individual and their families, but it also has much larger
social ramifications, yes?

Terri Clark>> Absolutely. I mean, literacy and poverty go hand
in hand. If a family can't earn family-sustaining wages, then
there is no spending power. And also businesses can't come into
an area and not have an educated workforce. Then they look
elsewhere.

Val>> The study found that wages for workers with college
degrees have increased while wages for those without a high
school diploma are down. Yet a small increase in literacy can
lead to higher earnings. A dishwasher, for instance, earns
$15,844 a year, but with literacy training, he or she can become
a cook earning more than $19,000 a year. Businesses have a lot
to gain.

Terri Clark>> They do, but they're the hardest to try and get
involved because, you know, they're looking just at their bottom
line. They're looking at, you know, why should I put money into
training? We say, well, you put money into training in all of
these other areas. Why not put it into your other workers where
it will pay off in what we've found, and we have some businesses
who are going to talk about that. You know, high morale, the
retention rate increases when they invest in their workers in
these kinds of classes and things. They keep workers around a
lot longer. They no longer have the high turnover.

Val>> Terri Clark with the Literacy Network, thank you so much
for all your work and your time. We appreciate it.

Terri Clark>> Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Val>> For thousands of struggling artists in Southern
California, making enough money from their art to pay the rent
can be a tough proposition. But an out-of-the-way place in
Santa Monica is helping solve that problem. Vicki Curry takes
us to a community that both shelters and nurtures budding
talent.

Vicki Curry>> You probably wouldn't notice the group of
buildings at the end of 18th Street in Santa Monica, but the
colorful mural out front hints at what's inside, a collection of
studios, galleries and performances spaces known as the 18th
Street Arts Complex.

Keith Antar Mason>> You can't walk down a hall without running
into an artist that is absolutely doing something fantastic and
that you want to go see or that you want to somehow be involved
with.

Marcus Kuiland Nazario>> Being an artist is a way of life and
it's nice to be in a place where people understand the lifestyle
and what it means and the sacrifice it takes to be an artist.

Vicki Curry>> 18th Street is home to over twenty artists and
arts organizations.

Clayton Campbell>> It's kind of mirroring a Los Angeles
experience, you know, where really dispirit elements need to
come together in order to, you know, create a different entity
altogether. To do more than survive, but to really prosper.

Jan Williamson>> It brings the operating costs overall down for
everybody. Everybody here had to own their building, pay
property tax, insurance, utilities, etc. instead of everybody
working together on the one place.

Vicki Curry>> It's a creative community unlike any other in Los
Angeles. Each tenant organization is carefully selected and
some individual artists live on the property as well. But what
sets this complex apart is the shared philosophy of all its
members.

Clayton Campbell>> We're here to not just service artists, but
to service artists who are really involved in crucial ideas of
the time and then make sure they get out into a larger
conversation.

Marcus Kuiland Nazario>> There's institutional support here.
It's not like you're living somewhere because it's groovy and
hip. I mean, you're here because you're committed to being here
and engaging in, you know, contemporary art practice and
engaging with the community.

>> "Every time I would drive on the freeway and see a flag or
see a bumper sticker, I would wonder what does that mean to that
person?"

Vicki Curry>> The art at 18th Street can be cutting edge,
alternative or even political, but for the artists themselves,
it's just an expression of what they see around them.

Clayton Campbell>> I think anymore where there's a bunch of
artists going on, it's kind of a barometer or thermometer of
what's happening in the rest of the world. Cutting edge can
often suggest to the public that the artists are really off to
the side and what we've tried to do is bring people into this
center who perhaps their voices had been marginalized and you
get something out into the public. It stops being marginalized.
So as a platform or a forum for critical ideas, this has been a
really important center for, you know, hundreds and hundreds of
artists since its founding.

Vicki Curry>> It all began in 1989 when a group of like-minded
local artists, including Linda Burnham and Tim Miller, decided
to find a place where they could all work together.

Clayton Campbell>> 18th Street was an experiment to bring the
most interesting artists together who are involved in these
issues of diversity and community and, in putting them together,
see what would happen.

Vicki Curry>> Two of the 18th Street originals are Marcus
Kuiland Nazario, a designer and performance artist, and writer-
performer, Keith Antar Mason.

[Film Clip]

Keith Antar Mason>> I don't think that many artists in the city
of Los Angeles knew about each other. The 18th Street Arts
Complex provided that first glimpse of how we all lived in the
same city and how we could all share in those experiences
together.

[Film Clip]

Marcus Kuiland Nazario>> It was a rag-tag loose collective of
like-minded folks that sort of all found their way here. You
kind of walked on campus, because it's kind of like a school,
and you'd walk into a studio and somebody would be working on a
painting and, oh, come look at my paintings, you know? Then
somebody would burst into song and there'd be a performance art
happening over there and a sculpture over there and it was just
really, really like a beehive.

Vicki Curry>> Several of the other original tenants are still
there, like Highways Performance Space and the Electronic Café,
but 18th Street Arts Complex has changed somewhat since its
early days.

Jan Williamson>> The idea of what this place was or could be
wasn't really clearly articulated early on in the beginning
because it was an experiment, so there was no way to know how
that was going to unfold.

Clayton Campbell>> Part of every institution's arc is that it
needs to become economically feasible or it's just going to go
out of business. That's happened to a lot of nonprofits in the
arts, but it hasn't happened to 18th Street.

Vicki Curry>> 18th Street is always open to the public. Its
formalized programs include exhibits, performances and other
events, a residency program for artists from other countries,
and an arts education program where the resident artists teach
in local schools.

Keith Antar Mason>> I didn't think I would like teaching poetry
to young children, to young people, and I love it. I used to
think that learning was like getting a book and having them read
it and memorize. No, creating a book, creating a poem, giving
them a sense of who they are in the world and how important they
are in the world can come through them making art.

Vicki Curry>> But the heart of 18th Street is a program that
offers artists work space at subsidized rents well below market
level.

Lita Albuquerque>> It kind of gave me a time to not be over my
head to do the kind of work that I wanted to do and I've flown
in terms of my career since I've been here.

Vicki Curry>> 18th Street also acts as a kind of incubator for
artists, offering a co-op office and professional support.

Jan Williamson>> We also really help artists develop their
skills in grant writing, their business practice skills, their
marketing skills. You know, the whole range of things that an
artist needs to have to actually be a successful business
person.

Clayton Campbell>> You'll use these benefits to really either
do a couple of things. One is professionalize yourself so, when
you go back out into the marketplace, you're able to deal with
it better and be successful in it. The other is that you use
this time and the savings to really complete a body of work or
generate new work.

Lita Albuquerque>> It gives a lot of artists the opportunity to
experiment, to do things without a lot of pressure. It gives
room for any kind of art to happen which, you know, a lot can
happen out of that.

Marcus Kuiland Nazario>> This is a great place to come and fail
because you don't -- I mean, in terms of my experience here.
You need to fail. You're not going to learn anything until you
fail.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> That's all 18th Street Arts Complex ever hoped to
be, a place where artists can be together and be themselves.

Clayton Campbell>> The forces brought to bear on creative
people are so, at times, challenging. It's really hard to make
it by yourself and most artists I know and artists we work with
really need these kinds of communal support situations.

Keith Antar Mason>> Here is a place where you can begin to do
something, no matter what age it is. You can take a risk to do
that new thing in your life that you wanted to do.

Marcus Kuiland Nazario>> Many of us wouldn't be making art
today if we didn't have this safe harbor here that kind of has
protected us. I'm like one of the plants here. My roots are
running really deep. I'm like a bamboo plant. You can't get
rid of me. They will not get me out. I love it here. I love
it here.

Val>> The 18th Street Arts Complex is celebrating its fifteenth
anniversary with free exhibits, performances, a live concert and
open studios. It's this Saturday night and it's free. You can
get more information from their website. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

One local family played a key role in the struggle for civil
rights and it's about time they get some recognition.

>> I didn't like it because, for the obvious reason, they
didn't want us there. So where you're not wanted, you don't
really want to be there.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.