Bobble Rep, the iPhone app conceived and produced by Ray Griggs and featuring my caricatures of all 540 members of the 111th U.S. Congress was APPROVED by Apple late last night and is now available on iTunes for the low, low price of 99 cents (cheap). This after my innocent little blog post of a few days ago caught fire and was picked up by major news outlets and high traffic tech blogs.

Apple came to its senses yesterday and approved the app. You have to wonder how much of the decision was based on the press covered and image hit Apple had taken, and how much of it was simply that some overworked approval person rubber stamped it as a reject. My less cynical side is hoping for the latter, but I am pretty sure any reconsideration at all was facilitated by the many responses and support of people on the internet who were dumbstruck that such an innocent and innocuous app would be determined “defamatory” to the members of congress we depicted.

Daryl writes:

After Algeria, my Middle East speaking tour took me to Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territories. At my first event in Cairo I spoke to a group of Egyptian journalists who brought a newspaper up to me, proudly pointing out that in Egypt, editorial cartoons are often printed big and in color on the front page of the newspaper. The cartoon they showed me would make an American editor choke; it showed a spitting snake, in the shape of a Star of David; inside the snake/star was a peace dove, behind bars, and above the snake, in Arabic, were the words, “It’s not about the bird flu, it’s about the swine flu.”

Jan writes:

Casablanca has an extremely romantic association for Americans, thanks to Hollywood… and it is a great place, but not necessarily what you think. While “Rick’s Bar” does exist…

Tom writes:

We were bussed a short way to our quarters, where we discovered we had drawn a blackjack. We had been told our sleeping quarters in Iraq were subject to availability and could be tents, container housing, etc. Instead we got incredibly lucky and stayed at a facility on Speicher called “Freedom Rests”. This is like the Club Med of Iraq, only instead of a sandy beach it had a sandy…uh… sand. Freedom Rests is a place were deployed soldiers can get a 3 day pass as a reward for various accomplishments to get away from the stress of their missions and relax. It’s a giant warehouse-like building with multiple entertainment centers, games, computers, a gym, a pool, comfortable barracks and good bathrooms and showers. There is a 24 hour kitchen with full menu. Only a handful of soldiers were there while we stayed for two nights, but it can house up to 100.

MAD’s real problem is one they cannot avoid… they are a magazine. Name me a single magazine, outside tabloid trash peddlers, that isn’t struggling badly right now. I suppose that’s all about content also, right? TV Guide used to sell over 20 million copies a WEEK, and now they sell about 3 million copies… I suppose the quality of their TV schedules has badly declined. Playboy used to sell over 7 million copies an issue and today they are at 3 million copies…. of course we all know the quality of naked women has decreased dramatically since the 70′s. Newspapers are in serious trouble right now, and I guess we can blame that on the poor quality of news reporting and writing in the papers, yes?

» The Jamestown Sun (ND) has picked up Chad Carpenter’s self-syndicated Tundra.

» Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich will speak at North Georgia College & State University on October 14 to talk about his work.

» Comic Book Resources profiles Graham Nolan’s career in comic books and as the artist for the Rex Morgan, M.D. serial comic strip.

» Comic Book Resources continues its daily look at historical editorial cartoonist. Latest cartoonist: John Mccutcheon

» Webcomic PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) has partnered with the AfterCollege network to post career and job information to its comic subscribers.

» Tom Richmond reviews Axiotron’s Modbook vs. Cintiq 12 WX for those who draw directly into the computer.

» E&P mentions that Ticonderoga Cartoon Museum in upstate New York is 4 years old and is run by Stan Burdick, a cartoonist himself.

» The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder was on the campus of Ohio State University doing his usual outspoken stuff.

» Keith Knight will be at the Schulz Museum on May 18.