This Looks Terrible! The Ted Cruz Coloring and Activity Book

Up until about three and a half months ago, I didn’t think a whole lot about coloring books. I enjoyed coloring with my two small children and periodically contemplated buying an adult coloring book about a subject near and dear to my heart for relaxation but I never pulled the trigger. 

Then I had a Eureka moment when I realized that by commissioning the great Felipe Sobreiro to create over eighty original black and white original illustrations forThe Weird Accordion to Al: Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition, I had accidentally created a great “Weird Al” Yankovic coloring book that just needed to be reformatted.

All I had to do to create the ULTIMATE “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC COLORING BOOK was rescue Felipe’s gorgeous work from the thick forests of prose surrounding it and give it a much deserved solo showcase in a new medium uniquely suited for it. 

Of course Felipe will also be creating new artwork for the book, whose campaign officially ends at noon today, and altering existing work to make it more coloring-friendly but the diamond-pure core of the book is his funny and wildly creative illustrations for The Weird Accordion to Al. 

I am subsequently now deeply invested, emotionally, professionally, financially and otherwise in the world of coloring books. 

I’ve always been deeply invested in the world of the egregiously terrible, of course, so when I saw Ted Cruz’s ghoulish visage on the cover of Ted Cruz to the Future - Comic Coloring Activity Book in a Ben Garrison Facebook group I belong to, I knew I had to write about it. 

I had to suffer, Christ-like, through Cruz to the Future for the benefit of society. You’re welcome. The Facebook group that introduced me to this atrocity is called well it LOOKS like a ben garrison drawing but there aren't enough labels after the Trump-loving propagandist’s notorious love for compulsive labeling. 

The cover fit the group perfectly, to the point where it felt unmistakably, if wrongly, like a sly parody of Garrison’s much-maligned, unintentionally hilarious aesthetic. It shows a dead-eyed, suspiciously slender Cruz standing under a radiant sun while surrounded by butterflies and bees—Republicans, no doubt—and pointing to a tree where metaphors go to die brutal public deaths at the hands of the sick fucks over at Really Big Coloring Books, Inc, the trolls behind the book and many others like it. 

Cruz is pointing awkwardly at a tree whose roots are helpfully labeled “Roots.” In an even more hilariously literal move, the roots lead up to grass which is, you guessed it, helpfully labeled “Grass.” 

THEN things get confusing. The tree is weirdly and inaccurately labeled “Tea Plant”, no doubt because of Cruz’s ties to the Tea Party, but that’s where the guffaw-inducingly literal gives way to the perplexingly metaphorical. 

Not a handsome man.

The U.S Constitution is shown as being the base of American exceptionalism, with green, leafy flowers labeled “Opportunity”, “Inclusion”, “Lower Taxes”, “White House”, “Diversity” and “Freedom.” 

I’m not entirely sure why “White House”, a physical residence for the president, is included alongside virtues like “Inclusion”, “Freedom” and “Diversity” but if you were to ask the the white, land-owning men who decided to include slavery in their new Republic, but not voting rights for women or non-land-owners what they valued most they’d undoubtedly say diversity and inclusiveness. They truly believed that America belonged to everyone, as long as they were a land-owning white man. 

In a fascinating bit of revisionism, the tree of tortured metaphors/torturing metaphors shows the Ten Commandments as a branch descended from the Constitution. I’m no biblical scholar but I seem to recall the Ten Commandments pre-dating the U.S Constitution by at least a few years, or a few millennia, but you would be a fool to go looking for logic and sanity in a Ted Cruz coloring book for children. 

In a fascinatingly random development, the cover shows “Gun Rights” and “Free Enterprise” as the righteous leaves of the Ten Commandments. Again, I am not a biblical scholar but if the ten commandments contained in the book as filler are accurate, one of the commandments is “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and guns have been used to kill a whole bunch of motherfuckers through the ages. 

Then again, in the upside down world of Ted Cruz coloring books/right-wing indoctrination manuals people die horrible deaths due to a LACK of guns, not a preponderance, just as hundreds of thousands died unnecessarily when Obama increased access to health care for poor people through Obamacare. 

In the book’s estimation at least, Cruz is saving potentially millions of lives by doing everything in his power to ensure that poor people don’t have access to life-saving medical care but are legally able to assemble a deadly arsenal of high-powered weaponry. 

Because guns don’t kill people: Democrats kill people and Obamacare kills people. 

Cruz to the Future has a hero in Ted Cruz and a super-villain in Barack Obama. A page devoted to the Second Amendment asserts, “Ted Cruz is a firm supporter of the Constitution specifically the Second Amendment. Cruz has stated the president (Obama) has a disregard for the Bill of Rights. That is not surprising, and it is unfortunate Obama and his administration have a consistent disregard. It seems they use any opportunity to go after the second Amendment right and other constitutional rights such as free speech.” 

That might seem like poorly written, barely coherent gobbledygook but I think they might have been slyly referencing the ambient album A Consistent Disregard, which the former president recorded in secret as Obama and the Administration. 

Cruz to the Future adorably pretends to be non-partisan in what is either trolling or vicious sarcasm. The publisher’s introduction insists unconvincingly, “The educational Cruz to the Future comic coloring and activity book does not constitute an endorsement of the Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz organization and is not designed as a political piece to be viewed as an official endorsement of Ted Cruz. All information is fact-based, evidenced in truth and is made available to the public. We gathered information from many sources and did not speak directly to Mr. Cruz and his staff, in order to provide a fair objective review on this positive role model and real life superhero.” 

Putting “objective” immediately before “positive role model and real life superhero” suggests the whole book is sneeringly sarcastic and bitterly ironic, as do passages like the following, on Cruz’s 21 hour speech on Obamacare: 

“Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz gave an epic 21 hour and 19 minute speech on the Senate floor in September 2013. He gave the impassioned speech because of his beliefs, and he stood up for the American people like no other political figure has done in decades. Truth-be-known, a lot of the career establishment politicians are far too out of shape, old or overweight to even perform such a magnificent feat, God bless them all.” 

Why does he look like Scott Aukerman here?

In a further bit of Fox News-style fair and balanced reporting, the book notes of Cruz’s crusade (or Cruzade), “This speech was so important because millions of citizens believe Obama Care is worse than any war. At least American soldiers have weapons with which to defend themselves. When American people lose their health insurance they may not have anywhere to go, nothing to protect the children and senior citizens in which to fight disease and personal illness. Many people may get sick and die of illness if they don’t get insurance than died in all U.S wars since World War II. Many, including Obama’s own supporters, feel the president has betrayed millions of Americans.”

I don’t want to give the impression that everything in this book about Ted Cruz being a “real-life superhero” is hopelessly slanted. A lot of it is clearly taken verbatim from Wikipedia, like a riveting passage about Cruz’s early career that thrillingly asserts, “Ted was also a domestic policy advisor to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law.” 

As you can see, they really go out of their way to make the book as accessible and appealing to small children as possible. 

I also don’t want to give the mistaken impression that Cruz to the Future is even really a Ted Cruz-themed coloring and activity book. Only about half of the 24 page book’s contents are Cruz-based. It’s like that classic gag on The Simpsons where a briefly famous Bart’s quickie biography is just a H. Ross Perot bio with a new cover.

Cruz to the Future operates under the curious logic that because Ted Cruz is a patriotic American politician who loudly professes his love for his country, and its lenient gun laws and low taxes, then by extension everything having to do with The United States, patriotism, the constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments is fair game. 

So we’re treated to a poorly drawn, seemingly random assortment of “Historic American Leaders” that includes Susan B. Anthony, a smattering of “Founding Fathers”, “Frederick Douglass” and Thomas Edison alongside a light bulb. 

In its furious bid to take up space, we’re also treated to the words to “My Country Tis of Thee” and the Star-Spangled Banner, albeit not the long version with the pro-slavery lyrics. 

But that’s not all! The lazy, cynical jackasses behind the coloring book also include the Ten Commandments AND the Pledge of Allegiance.

Given Conservative’s deep, idiotic hatred of participation trophies there’s something wonderfully ironic about the book including a literal “Certificate of Participation” that they can cut out and bring to school and hand to their teacher to indicate their eagerness to take a loyalty pledge every morning. 

There’s also a Ted Cruz word search and a maze that allows kiddies to steer the Texas senator in the direction of the U.S Capitol so he can help incite a deadly but ultimately unsuccessful insurrection against the American government on behalf of a deranged tyrant. 

“The guy we’re about to visit says mom’s ugly and grandpa killed JFK but I think he’s great!”

The book closes with resources for how to contact Ted Cruz to send fan mail. Cruz to the Future closes by asking, “What do you have to say to Mr. Cruz” and “What do you want Mr. Cruz to do for you and your family?” 

I have plenty of things to say to Mr. Cruz, all of them profane and vitriolic, and what Mr. Cruz can do for me and my family is resign in disgrace and give all of his money to Black Lives Matter.

But me and the Really Big Coloring Books folks aren’t ready to have that conversation just yet. 

Cruz to the Future was such a commercial success that it was re-published with additional content AND spawned a sequel but I am not willing to buy a Ted Cruz coloring and activity book multiple times. 

No, I got everything that I needed out of the 24 page original version of the book. I got this article but I also got a good idea of what I do NOT want to do with The Weird A-Coloring to Al. 

I’ve seen the worst. I’d like to see the best as well. So I am asking you fine folks is there a coloring book we should look at as a model? I’m new to this but enthusiastic and, unlike the cynical ghouls behind Cruz to the Future, I’m in it for the right reasons and I am on the side of good rather than evil.  

I want to share the horror of Cruz to the Future with others so one unlucky backer of The Weird A-Coloring to Al will receive a copy of Cruz to the Future personally colored by me. All other patrons will not. 

You can throw it out if you’d like: I just want the cursed object out of my home and life forever, just as I’d love to be able to get rid of its subject, or at least shame him into an early retirement. 

DON’T BUY Cruz to the Future! Pre-order The Weird A-Coloring to Al/Colored-In “Weird Al” Yankovic coloring book at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/weirdaccordiontoal/the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books instead!

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