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.

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.

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.

Book Offer to Expire

The offer for signed copies and sketches expires August 15th.

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.

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.

Patience is a Virtue

If you’re waiting for your copy of EL BUSHO, fear not–I’m not running a cash scam here. I’m waiting for a fresh box of hardback EL BUSHOs from my publisher so I can send them out. Your books will likely go out early next week.

The Death Threat Guy

He called back! “Saw your web [sic],” the fascist said, “but it don’t bother me none. We know where you are, and we’re comin’ to git you.”

He’s still at the same number.

Update to This Week’s Column

There’s an interesting development in the Jack Idema case, the subject of this week’s syndicated column. Idema is the ex-Special Forces soldier arrested for running a private torture chamber in Kabul.

As the invaluable Asia Times reported:

During a press briefing on Wednesday at the US State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher repeated that the United States had had no official contact with Jonathan Idema, the leader of three US civilians on trial in Afghanistan accused of kidnapping and torturing suspected Afghan resistance fighters.

“That’s their story now,” I wrote. That story is already changing. Now they admit that Idema wasn’t quite as “off the reservation” as the Pentagon would like us to believe. Sez the BBC:

The US military has admitted it detained an Afghan man handed over by a US citizen accused of running a freelance counter-terrorism operation.

A military spokesman said the prisoner was handed over by the American, Jonathan K Idema, in May.

A BBC correspondent in Kabul says that the disclosure is embarrassing for the US, which said it had had no links with the alleged American mercenary. “We did receive a detainee from Idema or his party,” said Major Jon Siepmann, spokesman for the coalition forces. “The reason we received this person was that we believed that he was someone that we had identified as a potential terrorist and we wanted him for questioning,” he said. But forces strenuously deny that Idema was working for the military in any official capacity and insist that he is a mercenary. They argue that they were not aware of Idema’s “full track record” prior to his arrest earlier this month along with two other Americans and four Afghans.

Don’t be surprised if it ultimately turns out that Idema was on the books after all. Should that happen, neither he or we should hold our breath for an apology.

Nor should the three innocent Afghans found hanging by their feet in Idema’s home.

The Soldier as Spitoon, Redux

On the other side of the post-Vietnam spitting argument comes the following email. Again presented without comment:

I enjoy your cartoons and columns and visit your Web site regularly to read them.

Your latest column, “Boycott the Military,” was particularly interesting. Among my circle of male friends and relatives, we are nearly all veterans of the Vietnam era, most of us with in-country duty and quite a few with combat experience. I have never heard one of them say they were spit on, yelled at or otherwise reviled when they returned to this country. That this myth and others persist is a testament to the right wing’s skill with propaganda.

I hope young people, especially the poor, will boycott the military during Bush’s war. As far as I can tell, the children of the wealthy are doing a good job of boycotting. The stories I read of the dead and maimed all seem to involve the lower economic classes of our country.

Anyway, stay on Bush’s case, and the Republicans, and the weak-kneed Democrats that are fearful of stepping too far left.