Best Instant Messge Ever

So I had to throw open my Instant Messages to the general public this morning in order to contact a fellow cartoonist about ATTITUDE 3: The Subversive New Media Cartoonists, and starting receiving IMs from all sorts of folks. But this one sort of stands out, which I’m sharing it with y’all. Enjoy.

ECp15789: hey
ECp15789: hello ted rall
ECp15789: i was wondering if i could get some information about getting involved in the democratic party ?
ECp15789: hello ?
ECp15789: Mr rall?
ECp15789: mr rall are you there?
ECp15789: all i want to do is try to get involved and try to make this country a better place
ECp15789: you know what FUCK you ted ral…l FUCK you !
ECp15789: you goat fucker
ECp15789: do you hear me ted rall ?… fuck you
ECp15789: hey i want to thank you for you and your gay democrate commie friends for fuckin up america
ECp15789: you should be proud of yourself
ECp15789: your mother should be proud of a ass fuck like you

Ted Rall Radio Show

Looks like The Ted Rall Show, last broadcast on KFI Radio in Los Angeles in August 2000, will be back on the air soon (no, not on Air America–they never even bothered to send me a rejection letter). More details as they become available.

Turnabout, Dick Cheney Style

Jackson sends this:

Dr. Ben Marble’s ebay auction has ended so he is allowing everyone who wants to view the video he and a friend shot of the scene before/during/after him saying, “Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney.” Marble is also a punk rock musician and artist.

To view it, go here.

Commandeering Private Property

Tom writes:

You wrote a sentence in your article, “No Gas, No Food, No Lodging” that I just couldn’t believe: “Commandeering private property is the act of a civilized nation, not the leaner, meaner, tough-break United States.” I guess by “civilized nation,” you meant Stalinist Russia or “The People’s Revolution” Red China, not a nation that I would normally think of as civilized. I guess next disaster, we’ll send FEMA to fetch your family’s SUV, that’d rescue about six people who otherwise wouldn’t have the transportation and you shouldn’t be having it anyway, it pollutes to much and is too much of a gas hog in an energy crisis. And while we’re at it, we can move all of you into a tent in your back yard, the rest of the rooms in your house will do very nicely as housing for the indigent who will need the shelter more than you do.
Thanks to the example set by this kind of disaster, I am carefully stockpiling emergency food, water, and medical supplies, which I expect to use not only for myself and for my loved ones, but also judiciously for others in the community who may need special help. But to hear you, I’d probably better not spend my time and my money, as the “civilized” solution would be for FEMA to simply come in and take it all away from me and give to others who had no foresight to plan for their own safety.
“Commandeering private property” probably sounds nice from up in a Marxist ivory tower, but when the armed military is walking up your driveway, it’s probably not quite the good idea you thought it was.

I was of course referring to commandeering corporate property, specifically Greyhound buses, to evacuate flood victims from New Orleans. But, while I share a bit of the survivalist/look out for numero uno mentality myself, I ultimately think it’s better for the guvmint to take your SUV to make repeat trips back and forth out of a flood zone than it is to be used for you and yours on a one-way journey.

Just Say No to Fox

Jim says:

I enjoyed your article about appearing on Video Pravda, but disagree on one point. I don’t think you should appear on Fox any more. Their ratings on the “screamer” shows are dropping and soon their 15 minutes will be up. No one else will go these shows. They’re getting short of cannon fodder. With no liberal guests, there is no show. Don’t feed them, unless you’re putting cyanide in their almond pastry.
Always a loyal fan, Jim

They don’t even have decent food in the Fox green room so there’s nothing to poison. It might even be a non-dairy creamer situation for the coffee, as I recall. Grim. MSNBC, on the other hand, has a tasty little layout (including fruits) at their midtown Manhattan studio. But Jim may have a point. Without ratings, there’s no point for a liberal to appear on those shows.

Ted Rall, New FEMA Head

Don writes:

I really enjoyed (in a sad way) your last column in UExpress about the hell that is N.O. under Katrina and Bush. Very informative, it’s unfortunate that the pigs running the show have neither the sense nor the compassion of a syndicated cartoonist…
To paraphrase a character from “Aliens”- they oughta put you in charge…

Well, at least I couldn’t suck as much.

Not One Liberal on National Network or Cable News TV

In my column a couple of weeks back I noted that there isn’t a single liberal hosting a TV show on cable news TV (CNN, MSNBC or Fox) or network TV (ABC, CBS, NBC or PBS).

Cadat asks:

You said there isn’t a voice from the left on Cable?
On the Sundance channel there is, at 11:30pm Monday through Friday.
Course, it’s not exactly primetime your-own-channel multi-million dollar budget Fox, but its still something. Still worthy of note I’d think. I’d hope anyway. Btw, I liked your recent Baghdad New Orleans oil comic. Good stuff. Thanks.

I don’t get the Sundance channel, but isn’t Franken’s show just a televised version of his Air America radio show, sort of like Howard Stern’s “TV” version of his radio show? Anyway, Sundance isn’t cable news so my statement stands. And it’s very low profile compared to O’Reilly, Scarborough, etc.

Once More, the Fuhrer Principle

Google it if you don’t know what I’m talking about. FOR Dave brings up another example of the Fuhrer Principle at work under the Bushies:

Here’s some more support regarding the current right-wing trend towards fascism: FEMA Director Michael Brown resigned today. An excerpt of his statement: “I’m turning in my resignation today,” Brown said. “I think it’s in the best interest of the agency and the BEST INTEREST OF THE PRESIDENT to do that and get the media focused on the good things that are going on, instead of me.”(Capitals added for emphasis)
I guess the best interest of the country doesn’t matter as much, much less its’ people in general, much
less the people in the affected areas, etc. etc. etc. I imagine you’ve caught this already, but please spread the word….
And, as always, keep up the great work.

New Contender for Stupidest Bush Quote Ever

On August 25, Bush said about soldiers who get killed in the Halliburton War:

I guess you couldn’t ask for a better way of life than giving it for something that you believe in.

I guess. Or not. But is dying a “way of life”?

Terror Moms

My Saturday cartoon results from several impulses. Part of it was experimental, to see whether the extreme rightists who run the war blogs, Fox News, Drudge, etc. would rev up their attack machine to defend Cindy Sheehan et al. at Camp Casey when confronted with a cartoon that exactly parallels my March 30, 2002 terror widows critique of Lisa Beamer and other 9/11-related widows and widowers who exploited their spouses’ deaths for partisan (right0wing) political gain, book sales, etc. So far, not. They’re total fucking hypocrites: when a person exploits their private grief for partisan Republican/pro-Bush/pro-war gain, at bare minimum she deserves to be free from criticism because she’s lost a loved one. When she does it for partisan Democratic/anti-Bush/antiwar gain, no one runs interference for her. I just wanted to prove that for all to see.
But that’s a secondary motivation. The main one was for me to avoid being a hypocrite. A political cartoonist is supposed to call them as he or she sees them, and that includes sending up the tacky, maudlin and gauche on the left even–especially if–that’s where he or she stands politically. The Camp Casey phenomenon has (alert, second Billy Wilder reference on the blog in recent weeks) assumed a certain “Ace in the Hole”/”Big Carnival” atmosphere which to my eyes neatly parallels the disgusting and appalling spectacle of relatives of 9/11 victims parading on stage at the 2004 Republican convention to endorse George W. Bush’s election campaign. Someone has to say something when no one else dares. That’s my job description.
I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan. I think she’s great, although maybe not as great as the African-American father who broke down and cursed Bush on national television upon learning that his son had died for the worthless misadventure in Iraq. They censored that story, which is how you know it had power. But Sheehan is on the correct side of this issue, and I applaud her for galvanizing the perpetually confused and focusless antiwar movement.
And careful readers will note the piece’s careful dissection of the lunacy of this war and its supporters.
So why Terror Moms? Like Terror Widows, Saturday’s toon isn’t about Sheehan, just as my Pat Tillman toons weren’t about him. These are about the media coverage, the way that Americans are programmed to perceive them. A right-winger writer recently posited that we are at war with a “totalitarian death cult,” i.e., fundamentalist Islamists. Setting aside that the people we’re actually fighting are largely secular nationalist resistance fighters (in Iraq) or that we’ve increased funding to radical Islamists after 9/11 (in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia), this assertion prompts the point that the Bushist neocons are actually trying to establish a totalitarian death cult right here in the United States. Consider, for example, that the current debate over the Iraq war now centers around those who lost relatives who were soldiers killed over there. The left and the right each have their respective martyrs to push around the afterlife. Sheehan counterbalanced Tillman. Bush recently dragged out other relatives to counterbalance Sheehan. The assumption, as accepted as it is absurd, is that only the dead and their survivors enjoy the moral high ground to discuss the issue. That sure leaves a lot of us out. And it’s just not true. They get a vote, sure, but it counts no more than anyone else’s. Only in other societies where despair has led to the creation of a death cult–the Palestinian Territories, Northern Ireland, etc.–has a consensus arisen that gives survivors of tragedy a special voice in the dialogue. And that is what Terror Moms attempts to point out.

SM writes an interesting email:

I appreciate your contributions to public discussion and am with you about 85 percent of the time. I understand your comments about “terror widows” when they pertain to someone trying to leverage his or her family tragedy into book deals, tee-shirt sales, and political gain. I also understand that there may be a fine line between the heartfelt public activism of people like Cindy Sheehan and a degeneration into media hijinx for its own sake. Frankly, I despise the “America Stands With Cindy” logo plastered on CommonDreams — it’s sleaze and gives neocon character assassins something else off-point to aim at.
Similarly, I don’t appreciate seeing Joan Baez pumping the all-power fist in the air as if maybe we can all bring back the sizzlin sixties at Camp Casey.
However, I think that sometimes the better part of social commentary, like valor, might be some discretion. It’s hard to see the point of mocking parents who have lost children in a war (or any other tragedy) or passing judgment on the motives behind their public expressions (unless of course they’re trying to trademark their loved one’s last words). There is a whole legion of neocon automata who can do that job without help from you. Why would a savvy guy like you waste bandwidth helping those psychopaths do their job even given the fact that, regrettaby, the “Big Carnival” hangers-on at Camp Casey risk undermining
the credibility of the protest?

Someone very close to me said the same thing. “When we’re under siege,” she said, “isn’t it better to stick together, to avoid criticizing our own side?” Well, yes–if you’re a party activist. But I’m independent, both in spirit and in politics. (The righties may have forgotten how mean I was to Clinton, but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have been.) Moreover, a political cartoonist is not a party activist. Once I start adhering to any party line, I become no different than the right-wing hacks who drew cartoons parroting Administration lies about Saddam’s fictional WMDs–or, for that matter, the left-wing hacks who depicted John Kerry as anything more than the Anybody Bush Bush clench-your-teeth-and-pull-the-lever choice for patriotic Americans.

I know virtually nothing about Cindy Sheehan except that she is responsible for an action that has helped war protest to break through to mainstream media during the August “silly season.” Nothing, as far as I can remember, has been as effective at publically pointing out exactly what a putz and a dunce our federal chief executive is. It’s hard for an opponent of this hateful, sinful, fascist war of aggression not to admire Sheehan’s actions for their own intrinsic value. And even if you can find something in that to wisecrack about, what’s the real value? Why not put craven DLC democrats in your crosshairs more often instead of taking cheap shots at parents or spouses who have suffered the ultimate loss… for reasons worse than none at all.

I often criticize the DNC and I’ll do it again.

You and I agree that anyone is a fool if he or she joins the military for college money and weekend adventure with the Army Reserves. We evidently don’t agree on the issue of publically mocking their stupidity after they’ve died or been mutilated.

It’s not about mocking them. It’s about trying to educate other young men and women currently considering enlistment. Joining the military is stupid. This uncomfortable truth, one that millions of people say quietly in private, needs to become a loud chorus if we’re to unmask the cult of militarism that feeds Bush’s cult of death.

To be honest, I wonder if you aren’t playing a bit of the Politics of Identity that you so correctly attack in “Wake Up” and elsewhere. From time to time I think you overplay your self-appointed identity as America’s BS Detector. If you want to play that role — and there are few people who can play it as effectively as you — then I feel it would be good practice to turn the BS Detector on yourself once in awhile. I hope you don’t become smug in your role because I think it makes you less effective.
Thanks for reading this and I hope you will take what I say mostly as a vote of confidence and admiration. I wouldn’t have spent an hour composing this note if I didn’t care about your work. Best wishes.

No doubt, that is great advice. Smugness is the great enemy of the social commentator, one that I hope I don’t succumb to too frequently.