Covering the RNC
Anyone with a spare media pass to the RNC? If so, please email me at chet@rall.com.
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Wussy Protesters
United for Peace and Justice, the organization applying for parade permits to protest the Republican National Convention in New York, originally requested the use of Central Park’s Great Lawn for a gathering of about 250,000 protesters. When the city agency in charge of issuing permits declined their request, they UPJ agreed to an absurd solution: being shunted to the narrow strip of asphalt called the West Side Highway more than a mile away from the convention site, in an area devoid of restaurants and restrooms where water could be obtained.
Now UPJ is balking at a deal they shouldn’t have cut in the first place, which makes them look doubly wanky.
UPJ should tell the Bloomberg Administration that 250,000-plus people are coming to New York, like it or not. Plane tickets have been purchased, buses chartered. Central Park was never the right spot anyway: protesters should be, and the First Amendment grants the right to be, directly out front of the convention site at Madison Square Garden, right at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 33rd Street. Who cares about permits? Organizers should instruct everyone to meet at the Great Lawn and march down Seventh to the RNC. Face it: the NYPD cannot and is not inclined to arrest 250,000 peaceful marchers. And if they are, well, all the better for the spirit of civil disobedience.
Nothing is more sickening than the current “left’s” excessive penchant for compromise with Constitution-hating neofascists.
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Lt. Kerry Cartoon
Last week I drew a cartoon critical of John Kerry’s repeated reliance on his service during the Vietnam War in his campaign. In a crusade that proves blinders aren’t the exclusive domain of the right, many Democrats have written me to remind me–as if I didn’t know!–that defeating George W. Bush is so important that all patriotic Americans must unite to defeat him. And again: duh.
Look, I’m going to vote for Kerry. And I’m urging others to do so. But Kerry’s vote for the war in Iraq makes him vulnerable to the charge that he was following the polls more than his principles when he cast that vote. And his continued trumpeting of his bravery during Vietnam–a war he came to oppose later than most other Americans–makes it seem like he doesn’t understand one simple fact.
That fact is that there is nothing honorable about having served in Vietnam. The United States murdered more than a million Vietnamese in a harebrained attempt to prop up a corrupt puppet regime fighting a proxy war. U.S. troops, as Kerry testified after the fact, committed countless war crimes and atrocities against innocent people. The war was shit; fighting bravely and gallantly in a shit war doesn’t erase that.
It would be far more effective for Kerry to say that Iraq is a mistake similar to Vietnam, and that he was mistaken to support both.
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Right-Wing Smear Campaign
The following comes from Editor & Publisher magazine:
Group Complains to Papers and Syndicate About Ted Rall
By E&P Staff
Published: August 10, 2004
NEW YORK A conservative Web-based group has targeted cartoonist Ted Rall with protest letters sent to more than a dozen newspapers that publish his work as well as his syndicate, Universal. Rall has responded by denouncing the “Borglike hive-mind of reactionary Republicans.”
The letters e-mailed and faxed were identically worded, according to The Aspen (Colo.) Times, which received about 100 of them, and called for the axing of Rall’s work on grounds that it is “melodramatically ideological, simple-headed, snarling, and tasteless.” The letters identified the source as laptoplobbyist.com, billed as “America’s First and Foremost Online Conservative Community.”
Chris Carmouche of Kansas City, Mo., a board member of laptoplobbyist.com, told the Aspen paper that the letters were part of the organization’s weekly “action initiative.” Each week the organization sends form letters on behalf of its members to policy makers and publications.
Rall commented: “Stuff like this is the result of a point-and-click blogger subculture. It’s only something that started when the Bush administration took power. The right is reactionary. They like to indulge in censorship. The First Amendment is not really their friend.”
Universal Press Syndicate Editor Lee Salem told the Aspen paper that mass postings from online political groups are common and mostly ignored.
Rall’s cartoon, however, was dropped by MSNBC.com after Web editors received many form letters criticizing his cartoon about slain NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman. Rall suggested Tillman was an “idiot” for leaving his family and enlisting for the war in Afghanistan.
Salem said none of the papers that received the laptoplobbyist.com letters have decided to drop Rall’s work. The Aspen Times said it will continue to publish his cartoon every Tuesday.
Many of you have written to ask what we can do about this. Well, a few sharp-eyed FORs have noted that Laptoplobbyist.com’s OWN fax number is:
800-878-6033
That’s:
800-878-6033
in case you missed it the first time. As Laptoplobbyist.com says on its own website: “Today’s battles are being fought with tomorrow’s technology. A personal letter to a decision maker only has a limited effect. Thousands of letters flooding a decision maker’s fax machine at once makes the decision maker stand up and take notice. I want to have a REAL IMPACT.”
That’s a toll-free fax number, folks.
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Alan Keyes, Fascist
So “black Republican” (if there’s anything sillier than that oxymoron, I have yet to hear it) Alan Keyes is running for Senate. I suppose it’s a fine thing that the GOP found someone to run against Obama, but if they wanted to go the black against black route they might have chosen someone who isn’t a died-in-the-wool fascist. Keyes, who ran for president in 1992 and 1996, already is suffering from one of those mass emails going around the Internet containing embarrassing quotes, but one important one is missing.
Because Alan Keyes didn’t like one of my cartoons in 2002, during the height of the Bushite Two Year Hate Against the Left that followed 9/11, he actually suggested that I be shot, imprisoned or subjected to government censorship:
Should such a cartoonist be punished, arrested? Shot at dawn? Or does any such suggestion violate principles which are themselves crucial to the cause we fight to defend?
To answer these questions, we must first of all retain our confidence in certain moral judgments, in our capacity to make certain basic distinctions. Serious debate about the war and its purpose is crucial, and freedom to conduct this debate, in Congress and elsewhere, must be non-negotiable in all but the most genuinely extreme circumstances.
But this brutal and inhuman comic strip was not debate – it was an assault on the decent national sensibilities crucial to the war effort. Such assaults are a kind of pornography in civic discourse. And like our response to pornographers, our toleration of Mr. Rall, and our means for dealing with him, are matters for prudential consideration.
A free people should normally suppress such activities through private moral judgment and association. Pornographers should be shunned by all, and likewise Mr. Ted Rall should have been fired immediately by those with professional authority over him, or in contractual relations with him. Such action in defense of the decent judgment of this people in regard to 9-11 would be more than sufficient to keep such as Mr. Rall from subverting our national resolve.
But it is worth remembering that when serious and sustained attempts to undermine public opinion on a matter genuinely essential to national life cannot be resisted by other means, governmental action may be necessary.
If Keyes belongs in the Senate, Hitler belongs in the White House.
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Clarification on West Coast Book Tour
People have written to ask whether I’ll be doing a book signing in their city. In general, the answer depends on whether or not your local newspaper runs my cartoons and/or columns. I’ve discovered over the years that turnout is far too low in cities where I have a local paper to justify the travel and other expenses associated with setting up an event.
A base paper makes people aware of my work, runs listings or a full-length article and may even kick in money to make the event happen. This is another reason that the Internet is evil; it encourages people to read my work online, where I don’t get paid, rather than ask their local paper to carry me.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to visit every major city. But I don’t want to squander my publishers’ money for signings where 3 people show up.
The exception to the above: if a group willing to buy substantial newspaper advertising wants to sponsor a speaking event, that can be worthwhile for all concerned. However, I charge an honorarium for appearances unrelated to a book tour.
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DNC
Many people are asking why I’m not in Boston this week, so here’s why.
First, I don’t expect there to be any news there.
Second, neither the party or the shadow convention invited me. Unlike George W. Bush, I don’t go where I’m not wanted.
Third, I just got back from the San Diego Comicon and wanted to rest up.
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West Coast Book Signings
It looks like I’ll be hitting the West Coast to sign WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL and GENERALISSIMO EL BUSHO during late October. Cities on the agenda include:
San Diego
Los Angeles
Santa Cruz
San Francisco/Berkeley
Portland
Seattle
Vancouver
Boise (maybe)
If you live in one of those cities and have a contact with a good independent or chain bookstore that might be interested in having me sign then, please email me at chet@rall.com.
I’ll do other appearances along the way, including speaking and/or showing comics, so if you have a good venue and guaranteed decent attendance (i.e., good promotion), please let me know.
