Ted Rall Clipping Service

It’s time once again to put out a shout out to faithful Ted Rall fans living in cities where my cartoons and/or columns appear in your local paper. I need tearsheets! Mainly to show to prospective clients but also to enter contests like the Pulitzer. Here’s what I need from you: When you see my stuff in print, cut out the WHOLE PAGE and set it aside. Every 2-3 months or so, drop that stack of tearsheets into the mail to yours truly. That’s all there is to it. In return, you get my undying gratitude and a free signed copy of every new book I put out. (Speaking of which: I’ve lost a few addresses of previous TRCSers, so please get in touch if you’re one of them. I want to send you your loot.)

I only need one correspondent per city, so please email me at chet@rall.com. Thanks!

A Note from the Morally Oblivious

From the mailbag:

You are correct, Ted. The Taliban and it’s fighters are not there to kill Americans. They are there to make sure that every man, woman, and child within their grasp has a chance to enjoy being flogged, and have their fingers, toes, eyes, arms, and legs removed for the pettiest offenses. Perhaps, if the subject of this paragon of virtue and fairness that you so loyally defend is doubly lucky, he/she might be able to participate in a public execution in front of the home fans.

And where did I ever say that that stuff was OK? Quite to the contrary, I was loudly decrying the Taliban when they were running most of Afghanistan. That said, what Afghans do to Afghans isn’t my business, your business or George W. Bush’s business. Political change sticks when it occurs organically, without outside interference. Moreover, I’ll happily follow Dubya’s Global Campaign for Freedom when he applies it without concern for oil reserves and/or ideology. When he attacks Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan with the same zest he applies to regime change in Iraq and Iran, I’ll be right there with him. Until then, forgive me if I doubt his motives.

America is not perfect. Nor are it’s citizens, government, and leadership. Sure, we’ve made mistakes, as do all countries.

Is murdering 160,000 innocent Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and civilians a “mistake”? Well, I guess it is. But it’s also an act of genocide on par with the worst moments in human history, and I’m not going to make excuses for the regime that carried it out or the people (including me) who stood by and watched while it went down on CNN.

We are also the only country in the world that is capable of helping other nations.

Really? Tell it to India, a big donor nation for tsunami relief despite being hit hard themselves. Or the Europeans, who gave a lot more than we did on a per capita basis. Or the Soviet Union, who “helped” Afghanistan when they crossed the Friendship Bridge from the Uzbek SSR to invade. Invaders always say they’re there to liberate; hardly ever has it been true.

We citizens of the U.S. will never agree unanimously on the correctness of these efforts to help, or whether they are being carried out in the correct fashion, in the correct places, with the correct amount of money and other resources being allocated to the correct people. The decisions involved in our various aid processes has got to be mind numbing to say the least, and only people who are able to make decisions and withstand criticism from know-everything-do-nothing columnists and media personalities like you should be in positions of leadership.

Yeah, because pundits are so much more of a pernicious influence than, say, Halliburton and other corporate sponsors of the two parties.

You see, Ted, that way we Americans are able to continue to enjoy the freedom to criticize our government, instead of worrying about our government shooting us in the back of the head in front of our friends and family for disagreeing with the Friendly Neighborhood Taliban Radical Islamist that you so staunchly defend.

Except: the Taliban never threatened our freedoms. On that, surely, every sane American can agree.

Friends of Rall

Several correspondents ask, slightly sarcastically: What is required to become a full-fledged FOR (Friend of Rall)? To which, after long rumination, I must reply this: If you have to ask, you probably don’t have it.