Right-Wing Spin (What a Shocker)

An alert reader sends the following:

I just thought you might be interested to know that you column available

this week is being quoted in a Conservative New Hampshire news letter called

the Union Leader. Their article can also be accessed from the Republican

National Committee website as part of their research information for

delegates. Reporter Bernadette Malone has turned your off-hand refferral to

rumors pf prostitutes attempting to spread STDs into an active part of the

protests and over all conspiracy of Democrates and “Republican-haters.”

Instead of saying STDs she says AIDS and then later refers to protesters as

“AIDS-spreaders.” I can’t wait until this hyphenated neo-con jargon begun by

Bush goes out of style. So yeah, I thought that was nice and that you might

be interested to know how your words are being used.

Indeed, there is a major difference between what I wrote and what the right-wing Manchster Union-Leader (a daily newspaper, not a newsletter) said I wrote:

I wrote:

Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch’s call to “make nice” with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers–most of them Democrats–for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq (news – web sites) to enrich Dick Cheney (news – web sites) and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city’s squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush’s policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

Bernadette Malone of the Union-Leader said I wrote:

They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall.

Of course, they could have simply quoted me. But that wouldn’t have been quite so incendiary.

Air America, 8:30 am

I’ll be on Morning Sedition on Air America tomorrow morning, Thursday August 26th, at 8:30 am East Coast time. Check your local listings or stream it online.

NYC Fundraiser for John Kerry

I’ll be there with bells on, toons on the video monitor and books and T-shirts to sell!

“Crash the Party”

A fundraiser to benefit the Kerry-Edwards campaign

Thursday, September 2, 2004

New York City

Between orange alerts and heartlanders in straw hats, there are loads

of reasons to blow town during the Republican National Convention.

But here’s an incentive to stick around …

On Thursday, September 2nd on the East Side of Manhattan, we are

inviting supporters of regime change in the U.S.A. and their friends

to join us for cocktails, conversation, and controversy in support of

the team that wants to lead America in a new direction — John Kerry

and John Edwards.

By any measure, the highlight of the evening will be George W. Bush’s

acceptance of the Grand Old Party nomination, carried live on 25

screens through the miracle of television. Listen respectfully as our

president recites his accomplishments on the economy, world peace and

the environment … or, you could express your true feelings. (The

conventioneers at the Garden will wonder what that dull roar coming

from the East could be.)

Fueling our enthusiasm will be open bar (beer, wine, and liquor) and

light hors d’oeuvres, accelerated by the soon-to-be-infamous Bushisms

drinking game!

Attendance is limited, so reserve immediately!

CRASH THE PARTY

At

Proof

239 Third Avenue between 19th and 20th Streets

Manhattan

8 p.m. The party starts

10 p.m. W takes the podium

Admission:

$85 at the door

$75 in advance (Paypal to crashtheparty@mindspring.com)

All proceeds of this event go to support the Kerry-Edwards election

campaign!

Presented with the support of the New York State Democratic Committee.

Contributions to this event are not tax-deductible.

RSVP and further information, please email

crashtheparty@mindspring.com.

“N Y Hates W” T-Shirts Available Now!

The invasion is coming! Be prepared!

By popular demand the Ted Rall-designed “N Y Hates W” T-shirts are available for ordering! If you already contacted me via email, you will hear from Agitproperties regarding payment and shipping information.

Everyone else should click on Agitproperties.com. If you get your order in within the next few days, you’ll receive your shirts in time for next week’s RNC festivities.

The shirt is high quality and available in all the usual sizes. Order yours today and greet the Republicans in style!

It’s That Time Again

That’s right…it’s even more right-wing extremist hate mail from the Bushists! This time they’re angry about this week’s column, wherein I posit that the GOP may well get the trouble they were asking for when they decided to exploit the Democratic dead of 9/11 by holding their Necropublican National Convention to coincide with the 3rd anniversary of 9/11. As usual, they’re pissed off, annoyed and just plain shocked at the thought that they aren’t beloved here in the capital of liberal America, the home of Ground Zero. And as usual, the righties are obscene, illiterate and violent.

Of course, obscene, illiterate and violent is a synonym for today’s psychotic GOP.

Here we go:

From rfdrj@netscape.net:

You are a goddamned leftwing piece of shit loser asshole…………..

From lonesomevow@hotmail.com:

You sir are a traitor-North Korea, I am sure, would welcome you.

From Pirate2159@aol.com:

Mr. Rall,

You brainless shitdick. In response to your overt call for violence and antisocial behavior toward the Republican guests to NYC, including the amazing call for “children to yell obscenities at you,” I can only hope that if the terrorists who hate us as much as you do come to kill Americans again, and if some must die, that you are among the first. I pray that only those of your ill will are harmed.

Jerry Hurtubise

Homewood, IL

From jmjohn109@yahoo.com:

“the hapless saps”

You my friend are a steaming pile of pile of dog shit

unworthy of the seconds necessary to draft this note.

Your brethren exposed your attitudes to the center who

decide our elections with the Paul Wellstone RALLY

funeral and continue to alienate with each thought &

action. Please continue. You are correct GW is not a

great choice. However, I would rather vote for a

chimp than align myself with the vermin that populate

your idealogical village. You my friend are the GOP’s

best friend.

From frank.brady@sbcglobal.net:

What’s your slogan, you putrid little faggot?

Ass-lickers of the world, Unite?

From livorine@comcast.net:

Dear Mr. Rall:

I agree with you regarding the NY welcome of Republicans. I didn’t want the convention there anyway. Why go to a place where the people live like insects? A New Yorker’s idea of a model society is an ant farm. The only thing more repulsive than the city, are the people. Whenever I leave there, after I get home, I can never get quite clean for a time. New York clings to a person like the discharge of a skunk. No wonder you’re all mostly unhappy and bitter. You have to look around you every day.

I could carve better people out of bananas.

R. Richard Livorine

From rtait@cox-internet.com:

Fuck you Ted……….

From fuller30@mac.com:

Fuck you

I like to meet you in the streets of new york.

go live in cuba.

Fuller Family

Portland, OR 97219

From ancaudill@earthlink.net:

Do you know what being a “neo fascist” means?

It’s stupid little dickless fucks like you that would be the first killed if the Islamic terrorists got their way. Did you forget the fact that they declared war on is in the ’90’s and that crooked dick bitch did nothing but the hired help.

Go to hell you little commie bastard….

Best wishes

ALEX

From Patriot502003@adelphia.net:

Thank god that the New Yorkers are more followers of Rudy Giuliani than your ilk. You are a true piece of garbage that should be thrown out with the Sharptons and that prick on the City Council that believes in reparations for blacks.

Gary Darby

From dxrinc@houston.rr.com:

TURD BLOSSOM>…..lowsey sack of shit

Ted here: True Bush trivia: Bush’s nickname for Karl Rove is turdblossom.

From jkutyla1@san.rr.com:

You are freak

From newsaudio@kidk.com:

Dear Ted,

Eat a bag of shit. You suck.

Cory Bauer

From mywifegripesalot@hotmail.com:

Dear Ted, Just read your story on the rnc in New York. If this is really the way that most New Yorkers feel, then I can only pray every day that you pieces of garbage get slammed by terrorists again. Hopefully 30,000 or maybe 300,000 of you pathetic, liberal, democraps will die instead of just 3000+. I actually felt sorry for your city after 9/11, but not anymore. I only feel sorry for the intelligent New Yorkers who are forced to live amongst the scum like you.

From svdbygrc98@comcast.net:

It’s going to kill you when he gets re-elected isn’t it?

Ted here: You have to get elected in the first place in order to get re-elected.

From Nurse@LENOXHILL.NET:

u suk

From cenbucks10@yahoo.com:

GO FUCK YOURSELF

MOVE TO FRANCE CUNT

From dbstooge@earthlink.net:

I pray for the day I hear about your worthless life coming to an end. You are a communist fascist piece of shit and I will celebrate the day your soul enters Hell. I piss on your filthy corpse and wait for the day to desecrate your gravesite. Die of AIDS cunt.

From Joetrombly@aol.com:

You are a disgusting  human being

I will be looking for you when I come to NY…

And to all those who noted that I misspelled “Mayberry”: Yes, it’s true. I did.

T-Shirt Poll

My T-shirt publisher and I are trying to determine whether to print, and if so how many, the above T-shirt. The perfect outfit for protesting the Necropublication National Convention or just for living in New York this fall, the New York Hates Dubya T-shirt is just $14.95 and available in all sizes. If you want one, you’ll definitely have it on time for the RNC.

Please e-mail chet@rall.com to tell me how many copies you want and in what sizes. Shipping is via priority mail and will be charged accordingly.

If I hear from enough people, I’ll email you back with payment instructions.

Covering the RNC

Anyone with a spare media pass to the RNC? If so, please email me at chet@rall.com.

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.

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.

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.