Ted Rall Discusses the French Elections: Live in Washington DC
I’ll be joining Radio France Internationale correspondent Claude Porsella, TF1 correspondent Guillaume Debré, and fellow cartoonists Jeff Danzinger (New York Times Syndicate), Kal (The Economist, ex-Baltimore Sun) and Nick Galifianakis (Washington Post Writers Group) for a panel discussion about the French presidential elections tomorrow night in Washington.
When: Wednesday, April 25, at 6:30 pm
Where: Alliance Française, 2142 Wyoming Avenue NW | Washington, DC 20008 | Phone 202.234.7911
Cost: $8.00 for members of the Alliance Française, $12.00 for all others
17 Comments.
I too am annoyed by the juvenile name-calling that some people have resorted to when referring to Cho Seung-Hui. I think that this is in part due to the concern that Cho will be remembered as a legendary figure, and thus people want to heap scorn on him to diminish his legacy. But there is another factor at play here, in my opinion. I think some adults retain their adolescent "jocks vs. nerds" mentality, and find it disturbing when this hierarchy is threatened. They want to denigrate people like Cho because it allows them to ignore the sick state of high-school social relations (which you chronicled so well in "My War With Brian"). It reminds me of an Onion article I read a couple of months after the Columbine shootings. The headline read, "Columbine Jocks Safely Resume Bullying." As disturbing as the Virginia Tech shootings were, part of me does not want bullies and popular kids to feel safe tormenting the ostracized.
I come here for rants and what do I find? More spam! Looks like you topped yourself Ted. I didn't think it possible you could write something even less controversial than your last piece. Look, Ted, if I wanted to read banal drivel that could put an insomniac into a 20-year coma, I'd go to Ann Coulter's web site.
Speaking of Ann Coulter, she's been getting a bad rap lately and it's about time someone pointed out her positive qualities. Like how Ann Coulter's Adam's apple is bigger than John Wayne's. That's nothing to scoff at. Also, I've heard that a good reason to invite Ann Coulter to a picnic is because her shrill droning voice frightens bugs away. Oh, and one more thing: if you should accidentally swallow some poison, you can quickly induce vomitting by reading one of Ann Coulter's columns. You see, Ted, it is possible to say nice things about Ann Coulter.
I happen to be a big fan of Ann Coulter. And while some people think that Ann Coulter's fans are hairy-knuckled, degenerate, slop-swilling, drooling, half-witted, inbred hicks that could prompt the miscreant clan of the movie "Deliverance" to turn their heads in scorn, who am I to argue with reality?
(BTW I tried to think of some of your positive attributes, Ted, but unfortunately you don't seem to have any. Sorry to be so brutally honest.)
Ted,
I'm about 90% in agreement with your latest column, especially when you write "as occurred after Columbine High School, the news media is already laying the groundwork for the next explosion of violence by a disturbed young man." However, I think you go wrong in the next paragraph when you blame the media's practice "calling the killer names" for perpetuating the string of school shootings. I and many experts (including in recent studies and news releases, the American Psychiatric Association) believe, on the contrary, that it is the media's excessive glorification and wall-to-wall coverage of school shooters that encourages them. For example, the APA's president wrote (and I agree with him) that the TV network that received the multimedia package from the killer ought not to have broadcast it, but at most reported on its contents in a summary for viewers. Why? Because getting his manifesto out to the world was the main motivation for the VT shooter. The VT shooter, in his videos of himself, even cited the Columbine killers' as precedents for getting publicity through mass murder.
I would even argue that, were the mass media organization in question really to have the public's best interests in mind, rather than the shooter's and their advertisers', they would have turned over this evidence, still sealed in the envelope, to law enforcement authorities, immediately upon finding it in the corporate mailroom. Of course, by this time, I don't expect such nobility and self-denial from our MSM, whose business is really better described as assualting our brains/collective conscience in exchange for advertising money. Still it's worth pointing out how these so-called news organizations "tipped their hand" as to where their real interests lie. Time for us, the viewers, to show them that we are catching on, by turning off the tube.
So Ted, how did the Presidentelles-thing go?
And it's a bit hard to read the text on the pic above (yes, I know it's French!), it's a bit blurry.
Hey Ted,
I'm with you 100% on this one. I watched about 2 minutes of the TV coverage during my continental breakfast in a hotel lobby. I had the same reaction that I did to the terror widows and the nappy headed hos. Don't they have any class?
Gun control will do nothing to solve the problem– how do we make shy kids feel accepted. Tossing them out of school doesn't seem like a good solution to me, can anyone say "postal service."
That said, I was surprised to hear this happened on a college campus. I was the tortured shy kid in HS but college was where I finally found a home. It's sad Cho didn't find the same.
I hate to go off topic like this, but when I heard about the following I just had to post it somewhere:
Did you hear that astronomers found a habitable planet outside the solar system? Scientists said that the single most delightful thing about this discovery is that if it harbors intelligent life they've never heard of Ann Coulter.
I thought the event went well despite a mini-heat wave that made the facility sweltering. Nick and Kal were particularly entertaining co-panelists, with Kal showing off some nifty 3-D animation he's been doing for The Economist after the Baltimore Sun laid him off.
So I'm trying to figure out what the hell you are talking about with the Boris Yeltsin cartoon.
1) Boris Yeltsin references the Catholic Church despite the fact he is Russian Orthodox.
2) You're implying – if you're implying anything at all – that the world would be better off with the USSR, as it would keep America in check.
3) You state that Afghanistan would still be under Soviet occupation, even though Yeltsin did not make the decision to withdraw.
4) You state 9/11 would never of happened. Yet you don't explain why. The Soviet Union, not Russia, withdrew from Afghanistan, and the Cold War still existed at the time of withdrawal. It seems unlikely that Afghanistan would not have sunk to chaos and the rule of the Taliban if Yeltsin had never lived.
5) You also state "One Million Iraqis" would still be alive. Nobody makes the claim one million Iraqi's have died as a result of the Second Iraq war, so I can only assume you are refering to the sanctions. However, you make no case – and I don't think much of a case can be made – that Iraq would not have invaded Kuwait if the USSR still existed.
You have previously written, "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." Also, you have written "Freedom will come to North Korea when the people there rise up and overthrow their oppressive dictatorship. What I think about North Korea's leaders is irrelevant." Considering your opinion that the affairs of other nations are none of your business, I find it strange that you draw a cartoon that mocks the first Russian President, misstate basic facts about Yeltsin's religion, and claim the Russian people should still live under Communism.
Okay Ted and Others,
I'll bite, the reason I logged into this thread in the first place…
How is Royal = to Sarkozy????? They aren't at ALL the same except as the trite NYT points out, they don't head nuclear families.
Re: Anonymous above….
HELL YEAH!
Speaking of events, I'll never forget the time I stumbled into what I took for a reunion of the characters from the movie "Planet-of-the-Apes", but it turned out to be an Ann Coulter Fan Convention. I haven't seen so many hairy knuckles and low sloping foreheads outside of the Neanderthal Exhibit at the Natural History Museum. For a moment I thought I'd stepped through The Twilight Zone into the Land-That-Time-Forgot. And you should've seen the cleaning staff working overtime to mop up the drool. I figured if I stuck around for a while I might get to see these yahoos discover fire, but they were too busy groveling before a creature that must've been their god: a beast resembling a giant, rabid wombat that let out shrill, bloodcurdling screams that sent chills down my spine. But the beast's chief characteristic was its enormous Adam's apple, which seemed bigger than possible for any earthly creature. Even stranger still, it held in its claw a book, whose cover was adorned with a random jumble of familiar words from our own English language: "Godless: The Church of Liberalism"; clearly, if these words intended to convey some meaning, they were employing a grammar completely alien to the field of linguistics.
(Okay, I think my posts are starting to get too surreal, so I guess I better go away for a while.)
Ted I have decided that democrat presidents, are better lovers than republicants. I base my opinion on this: When has anyone heard of a republicant, having women problems in office? It seems obvious then that the pressure of the office renders the republicants, impotent.
Manufactured outrage?
Are you going to tell me that the Rutger's women's basketball team was merely dancing to Al Sharpton's tune?
Your condescension is sickening. We don't need to protect bigots from angry people. And we don't need liberal commentators telling the Left not to hit back.
You might want to take a look at this link from Think Progress (‘Mission Accomplished’ By The Numbers):
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/01/mission-accomplished-07/
Some interesting statistics:
Insurgent Attacks Per Day
8 (May 1 2003) /148.9 (May 1 2007)
Approval of Bush’s Handling of Iraq
75% / 24%
Percentage of Americans who Believe The Iraq War Was “Worth Fighting”
70% / 34%
Bush’s Overall Job Approval
71% / 32%
——————————-
I've heard that Dick Cheney is now one of the most unpopular vice presidents in history. Nonetheless, the power this man possesses is staggering: only Cheney could gun down a lobbyist, and the lobbyist would then go on national television and apologize to Dick Cheney for sticking his face in his line of fire!
Have the Geico commercials taught us nothing? I'm outraged by all this mocking of our more slant-foreheaded and hairy-knuckled brethren. Mr. B.H. Circling: You should be banned from posting comments here for making fun of Neanderthals.
Sorry, I used the Ne word there…I shall now ban myself from this site.
Speaking of Geico, I heard that the ad people originally wanted to use: "So easy, even an Ann Coulter fan can do it", but they quickly realized that no human being with half a brain would buy that. Let's face it. The average Ann Coulter fan couldn't tie his own shoe laces without stopping halfway through to call the Foot Locker for detailed instructions. And the typical reply would probably be something like: "Sir, I believe the reason you're having so much trouble tying your shoes is because that particular brand comes with Velcro." Interesting fact: Ann Coulter fans have a lot of trouble using Velcro because it keeps getting stuck to their knuckles.
(Ted, do you delight in watching me dig myself deeper and deeper into that hole?)
Did you hear that the queen is leaving the country. Not the queen of England, I meant Ann Coulter. (President Bush had a similar reaction when he heard he would be dining with the queen; his first thought was: "Oh great, now I have to sit down with Ann Coulter. I'm gay, but not in that way.") And I'm sorry if I got your hopes up, but I'm afraid Ann Coulter will be coming back.
Speaking of persons who started out with the same gender, the queen of England apparently had a nice time in the USA. When she visited Jamestown, she was attended by Vice President Dick Cheney. I heard that there was a lot of bowing going on — to Dick Cheney I mean; he's that powerful!
When she met with President Bush, we all expected something bad to happen. Well, our expectations were not dashed. As I recollect, Bush called the queen a 200-year-old mother-something. That should really endear him to the UK's new incoming prime minister (I imagine that considering what happened to Tony Blair, the new PM will be avoiding President Bush like Superman avoids Kryptonite).
BTW We've been hearing a lot of bad things about Ann Coulter lately (mostly from me, but with any luck that will change). But let me be perfectly clear on one point: there is absolutely no connection between Ann Coulter walking the streets of Paris and reports of sightings by frantic Parisians of some kind of giant, rabid wombat, which probably escaped from the circus, being loose in the area.
(Believe me, I'm trying to stop.)