Does anyone know exactly what Ted Rall believes in? Half the time he sounds like he has nothing better to do than snipe at Republicans and the other half he sounds like he’s gonna run off in the mountains wit’ his guns and his beer.
I cannot stand the man as he seems to be utterly hateful to anything and anyone except his own ego.
I crave exception from the General Questions box since I suspect this will soon touch off a massive debate.
Well, at least he’s consistent in his views.
nahtanoj
That pretty much describes most political views out there, donnit?
I mean, geez, have you read the fund-raising stuff the GOP puts out? Half the time it’s “If we don’t win the Senate, the world will implode upon itself and the liberals will take over! Aieee!” 
I had started a thread about Rall some time ago, but I failed to find it via the search engine.
Anyhow ISTM he’s a garden-variety far leftist.
– America is the bad guy
– Israel is wrong; Arafat is right
– Republicans invariably have bad intentions, obviously
– Conservative Republicans are worse than bin Laden.
There was a cartoonist named Rall
Who bosted that he knew it all.
He said the US
Was a hell of a mess
And, deserved its inevitably fall.
We all know this drill.
Your limerick just doesn’t scan.
It was written without any plan.
Your rhyme scheme is shot,
the poem has barely a plot
and limericks have five lines, my man.
Anyway, Rall is left wing, but I like him. His cartoons tend to make me stop and think. I think they have been getting worse, lately, though.
CA, that 6th line was meant to be after a line skip. rather than part of the limerick. Here’s a better-scanning, nastier one
A famous cartoonist named Rall
Lacked wit, and could not draw at all.
So, how did our Ted
Get so widely read?
Through anti-American gall.
He’s no Tom Tomorrow, although he thinks he is. He isn’t even Ruben Bolling. Tom Tomorrow makes me laugh even when I disagree with him. Rall is just vacuous, thinking that controversy is a good substitute for wit and insight. He’s also notoriously thin-skinned.
Also, Rall can’t draw. All his people look the same. Rall’s Bush is one of the most un-Bush looking Bushes I’ve seen.
Ted Rall is a louder, shriller Michael Moore without the sense of humor.
So who is he? I see his articles listed on Yahoo’s most-emailed list from time to time, but otherwise haven’t heard of him. I didn’t know he drew cartoons until this thread.
In this article Rall discusses the Le Pen candidacy in France. Rall has dual French citizenship. From the article:
So, Rall’s view is that the Democrats and Republicans fail to speak for “three-quarters of the population.” I suppose Rall sees himself as the spokesman for what we might call a mew “hidden majority.”
[sup]But, I thought the hidden majority was comprised of conservatives? How can 2/3 of the electorate also be leftists?[/sup] 
Rall also sees a successful American fascist candidate right around the corner.
At least he didn’t claim that the Supreme Court had already elected an American Le Pen as President.
Maybe, just maybe, an editorial cartoonist’s job is to be a gadfly, to attack the powerful and discomfort the comfortable. You can be upset that it is your particular cup of tea that the guy is spitting in all you want, but it is not fair to condemn him for that. It is what he is supposed to do. Don’t look for balance or fairness here, although a little wit and inventiveness would be nice. Editorial cartoons are not and never have been a rapier, they are a bludgeon. The idea is to club the object of ridicule to its knees, not to administer a fine and well reasoned political treatise.
“to attack the powerful and discomfort the comfortable”
The New York Fire Department is powerful and comfortable?! :rolleyes:
If this is your opinion of the job of an editorial cartoonist, you’re entitled to it. I wonder if there are any cites on this point.
My own view is that his/her job is to bring insight into situations-- particularly to cut through bullship and pomposity. Some cartoons help one to see a situation in a different way. Others help the reader to feel the impact of some occurrence. SG’s criteria are OK as far as they go, but don’t seem to me to be sufficient.
E.g., a series of cartoons calling implying that college professors were a bunch of Communists and traitors would be a way of using a club to attack the powerful and discomfort the comfortable. However, such cartoons would not be praise-worthy, to say the least.
Implying that Americans in general are about ready to vote for a fascist government strikes me as comparably inappropriate. YMMV
I don’t personally care for his political views, they tend to be a bit, shall we say, “left of Lenin.” But conservatives who automatically bash him should check out his writings about being raised by his mother after his father split. It’s as close as you’ll get to a “family values” type of point of view on the left as you’ll get, even if his approach isn’t as warm ‘n’ cuddly as Morning In America. And he savaged the hell out of John Lennon a couple years ago for his shitty treatment of Julian.
The New York Fire Department developed into quite a sacred cow after 9/11. That makes them fair game.
originally posted by Squink
Well, they earned it. They went into a danger zone and risked life and limb and many of them died, much like the NYPD. It may be an extension of their normal duties, but they haven’t been exactly mugging for the camera, either. What could anyone possibly have against them, other than Usama ibn Laden for showing the world (and America) why Americans still have and are heroes.
Darn it, forgot to post the rest.
I actually couldn’t tell where he semed to lie on the political spectrum. As I said, he seems to vary between Militia Nut, and, as Semp put it, “left of Lenin”.
I like Semp’s turn of phrase, though 
He just seems not only to absolutely hate all which I hold dear and more, he also has nothing good to say about anyone except Arabic Fundamentalists, as near as I can tell. He so freakishly bitter it spooks me.
Rall’s strip is, indeed, often so far left it would make it would make the QEII list to port. However, while I disagree with him in degree most of the time, I have note that he is the perfect balanceweight to Mallard Fillmore. Mirror-twins. Both totally unfunny, both blatantly biased, both incredibly smarmy in attitude.
They’re like the matter/anti-matter of political cartooning. I kind of wish someone would put them both in a nice, big room where they’d convert to pure energy when they touch and we’d be rid of both of them.
jayjay
Well, let’s take a look at today’s political cartoon. In it, Rall documents the rather abrupt decline in civil rights experienced by those asserted to be terrorists by the US Government. (I’m thinking of the alleged dirty bomber.)
Not a very popular, POV, I concede.
But one that should be aired.
Furthermore, I should note that Rall is one of the 2 practitioners of graphic journalism that I know of, the other one being Joe Sacco. Those 2 artists deserve praise for tackling that sort of project.
Now it’s possible that people don’t like Rall because he tells them nothing new. Or maybe he tells them things they don’t want to hear.
Finally, for those who cannot abide by Rall, there are plenty of alternatives. What follows are a collection of cartoons that are against military tribunals: http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/TRIBUNALS/main.asp
I picked a collection that was closest to the ideological POV presented in today’s cartoon by Ted Rall. IMHO, many of these mainstream cartoons are serviceable …but also a little lame. Rall, in contrast, has edge.
Final link, Dan Cagle’s Professional Cartoonist’s Index: http://cagle.slate.msn.com/ Plenty of yuk-yuks.