The Guardian UK on Ted Rall

The venerable UK Guardian, the paper that keeps many Americans sane and informed during the Bush occupation, has an article about yours truly in today’s edition.

‘HUMOUR IS HIS OFFENSIVE WEAPON’

He mocked 9/11 widows and a dead president. But Ted Rall is one of the few prepared to take on the US right

by John Sutherland

It’s harder to offend people than it used to be. Young Stephen Fingleton, an undergraduate at UCL, uses the word “fuck” 77 times in a 400-word farewell column (headlined “Fuck You”) in the London Student newspaper and raises barely a “What the heck?” Time was Fingleton would have been rusticated. Or at least noticed.

Top of the list among America’s most offensive is Ted Rall. If Doonesbury and Michael Moore are the cutting edge of American political comedy, Rall is its bludgeon. He believes liberals should reclaim America from the rightist-Christianists. Humour is his offensive weapon.

He campaigns on many fronts. He’s an author, a print journalist, a tireless blogger and – most effectively – a cartoonist. Throughout the 1990s he built up a following as a “guerrilla artist” among the young and mad-as-hell in New York. He won awards and published a graphic novel, The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done.

Hey, I’m flattered. But I’ve actually published two more graphic novels, MY WAR WITH BRIAN and the Orwell parody 2024. And TO AFGHANISTAN AND BACK, which contains a 50-page graphic-novel-form comic. Back to the Guardian…

There are various schools of thought about the worst thing Rall has done. Some would say his 2002 cartoon satirising the 9/11 widows (very sacred cows) as money-grubbing harpies; others might nominate his comic strip lampooning Pat Tillman, NFL football star turned US Ranger, as a “sap”. Tillman was no national hero, Rall jeered, but a “cog in a low-rent occupation army”. He deserved to die by friendly fire. The Tillman strip attracted 6,000 emails and enough death threats to make Rall wholly uninsurable.

Ted again. Hey, I never said Tillman deserved to die. And I don’t feel that way, either. I do think he was stupid, and possibly ill-intentioned, and I’ve said so. The uninsurable thing is pretty funny, though.

Most, however, would agree that the acme of Rallist offensiveness was his comment last week that Ronald Reagan (the “Proto-Bush”) was char-broiling in the flames of hell and “turning crispy brown right now”: Kentucky Fried President. It was accompanied by a cartoon showing an Alzheimery Gipper in the underworld.

Maybe he’s right, but if so it’s a little weird. Surely it should be more offensive to satirize Tillman than Reagan. Reagan, after all, was the devil incarnate…and the president! No president is beloved by all.

Rall’s Reagan was not the “national treasure” that President Bush eulogised, but the scourge of America’s poor; the man who abolished student aid and let Aids rip; the purveyor of “quack economics” (ie, tax cuts for his buddies); the despoiler of national parks, etc. In short, to borrow a proto-Bushism, Reagan was downright evil. “If there is a hell, this guy is in it,” Rall declared on the day Margaret Thatcher paid her respects before the flag-draped coffin. “And just how old is that nasty old crone?” mused Rall.

It was, however, the cartoon and “turning crispy brown” that really got through to middle America. There were so many emailed protests that his website (Tedrall.com) crashed for 24 hours after the remark and the offending cartoon were posted on the US website Drudge Report.

Typical was “Doug” of West Virginia: “You are a cocksucker. Go back to the USSR, that failed like you. Go to France, cocksucker. Do everyone some good and move down to Cuba. Thank you. Jerkweed Burn In Hell!!!!” Another ill-wisher wrote: “Fuck you Dickweed. I hope the maggots won’t even eat your dead carcass.”

It’s pretty damned awesome that a mainstream British newspaper can print such vulgarities rather than the infantile f*** y** you see in our papers.

“Sexuality”, Rall notes, is an obsessive theme among his critics. “I could tell by the way you talk,” wrote one US army veteran, having seen Rall on TV, “that you’ve consumed much sperm, and are addicted to homosexuality.” Rall is (I believe) straight, anti-abortion, and was pro-impeachment for Clinton.

The last time America was embroiled in a divisive war, protest mobilised in the campuses and in papers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Today the universities are dormant and the press too fearful about circulation to raise its voice above a dissenting murmur. Politicians keep their heads down and salute the flag – it’s election year.

Only the tasteless comedians (Al Franken, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Rall) and the “leftwing Hollywood kooks” (Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins, Martin Sheen) are prepared to take on what they perceive as the Great Rightwing Hegemony. It’s a depressing spectacle: intransigent prejudice (Fox News) versus intransigent protest (Fahrenheit 9/11). You want reasoned debate? “Go to France, cocksucker.”

Overall, a great piece. (Although an assertion that I’m “anti-abortion” is incorrect. My stance on abortion is nuanced; I’m 100% pro-choice while acknowledging that life begins at conception. I believe that women have the right to murder their unborn babies, in other words, and that it’s a right that should be used as sparingly as possible–except in the case of pregnant teens, for whom it should be the first choive.) Does Britain offer political asylum?