Ralls to the Walls
In her latest piece, the Ted Rall of the RightTM stresses that it is liberal ideology, and not individual liberals, whom she considers godless. The Ted Rall of the Left is a bit less charitable than that, comparing his right-wing countepart to a space alien and … I’m not making this up … arguing that his 9/11 widows bit was not nearly as mean as hers.
June 14th, 2006 at 12:11 am
In the article you linked to, Ann confuses “liberals” with “people who want to make their particular moral/ethical position manditory for everyone, and suppress all expression of opposing points of view.”
The latter are not just liberals (although obviously some liberals are the latter). Rather, the latter can be, and are, liberal and conservative alike. Their main common trait is not any particular place on the political spectrum, but simply massive ego and general lack of self-awareness.
Of course, the latter generally do not recognize themselves as such (and yes, I admit that, ergo, I could be one of them) and generally have a harder time recognizing the traits of massive ego and general lack of self-awareness among those who believe as they do.
They do recognize the secondary effects of such traits in those who DO NOT believe as they do — namely general intolerance and impatience for their own points of view. But they perceive that intolerance and impatience not as a symptom of a general lack of humility, respect and empathy, but rather as pure stupidity and inability to comprehend the “truth.”
June 14th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Also, having now read Rall’s take, I think that the following is at least as decent a clarification of his cartoon as anything Coulter has said about her 9/11 widows statement:
“First, Coulter isn’t always wrong about everything. No one is. Second, she’s a lot meaner to the widows as people than my cartoon was, which explored the way specific media figures–Mariane Pearl, Theodore Olsen and Lisa Beamer–exploited their spouses’ deaths to make money or political hay. The vast majority of widows and widowers of 9/11, I have repeatedly said and written, deserve our sympathy and whatever help they need to rebuild their lives. My commentary was about the media phenomenon, such as the parade of 9/11 widows who went on stage during the 2004 GOP Necropublican Convention in New York to endorse Bush. . .”
In other words, he’s saying his cartoon pretty agreed with Coulter’s statement — except he didn’t say they were “enjoying” their husbands’ deaths, but rather “expoiting” their husbands’ deaths, which is a lot more accurate and less inflammatory.
Finally, what’s even mentionable about comparing Coulter to a space alien? She’s rhetorically accused the entire democratic party of, among other things treason and godlessness . . . and you’re concerned with her being jokingly compared to a beloved star trek character? She’s not your little sister, for crissake. You don’t need to bristle at every mild ribbing she gets.
June 14th, 2006 at 9:30 am
True, but in this case, it’s also a lie. Anyone who has read the cartoon in question knows that he suggested they enjoyed the notoriety that arose from what was then a very recent tragedy, not that they merely “exploited” it. The only reason Rall thinks he can plausibly make this argument at all is because his “column” was a cartoon, and therefore didn’t have to use either word in its text. Even the text that does appear in the strip smacks more of enjoyment than exploitation:
Add to that panel 3, which implies that Marianne Pearl thnks she’s a bigger victim than Daniel Pearl was, and panels 2, 4 and 5, which imply that Lisa Beamer and some other random widow weren’t really grieving at all, and you’ve just about covered the entire strip. All that’s left is the final panel, a cynical prediction that turned out to be wrong.
I agree that the space alien bit was no big deal, although it does strike me as more than a tad petty to go after someone’s looks rather than his ideas. The only reason I mentioned that entry, rather than just the essay, was that I didn’t want to be accused of cherry-picking the content (e.g., the worst of Rall vs. the best of Coulter, or some such). To avoid such allegations, I settled on neutral criteria before looking at either site: compare the most recent online writings of each. On Coulter’s site, the most recent entry was the column I linked to. On Rall’s, it was that damned space alien, about which I had relatively little to say. So I bent my own rules just a tiny bit, and instead compared Rall’s two most recent entries to Coulter’s one most recent column. That both of Rall’s entries happened to be about Coulter was a coincidence – or perhaps evidence that Rall has no life?
June 14th, 2006 at 9:53 am
[...] As for the rest of you: read on! — P] Xrlq is kind enough to point us to Ted Rall’s defense of his “Terror Widows” cartoon, and Rall’s plea that Ann Coulter’s Jersey Girls comment was worse: [Coulter is] a lot meaner to the widows as people than my cartoon was, which explored the way specific media figures–Mariane Pearl, Theodore Olsen and Lisa Beamer–exploited their spouses’ deaths to make money or political hay. The vast majority of widows and widowers of 9/11, I have repeatedly said and written, deserve our sympathy and whatever help they need to rebuild their lives. My commentary was about the media phenomenon, such as the parade of 9/11 widows who went on stage during the 2004 GOP Necropublican Convention in New York to endorse Bush, then the specific individuals. [...]
June 14th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
“Anyone who has read the cartoon in question knows that he suggested they enjoyed the notoriety that arose from what was then a very recent tragedy, not that they merely “exploited” it.”
He suggested it, Coulter flat-out said it.
You’re reduced at this point to questioning the timing. Rall spoke truth but should have waited a few years before portraying the relatives of terror victims as heartless, soulless cretins, as Coulter did.
Of course, Rall just says that shows his courage — speaking truth when it was unpopular.
June 14th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
That’s just an ultra-lame way of saying that Coulter wrote a book, while Rall drew a cartoon.
The timing was a major factor in itself, but it’s not the only one. Another, which you also don’t seem to care about, is accuracy vs. inaccuracy, and timing plays into that distinction as well. If Rall had waited so much as one year before telling his “truth,” he’d have had no one left to attack because they had already faded from the public eye.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:57 am
OK, I just hit the link and it seems that Rall believes his piece wasn’t as mean because he named specific individuals, rather than Coulter, who attacked the “Jersey Girls” collectively, without naming specific names, and because he didn’t give the widows he mocked a few years before unloading on them. Did I just read that right?
June 15th, 2006 at 3:41 am
“That’s just an ultra-lame way of saying that Coulter wrote a book, while Rall drew a cartoon.”
Or, it’s an ultra-precise way of saying that Rall only suggested it, while Coulter flat-out said it.
Whee, this is fun.
June 15th, 2006 at 6:52 am
Of course, if you think that accusing a person of smiling, cracking jokes and laughing out loud, and then drawing a picture of that same person smiling “only suggests” that she’s happy. And that calling two (or, if you believe Rall’s implausible lie about Ted “Olsen” being among them, three) individuals “the scourage of the media” is not an attack on them personally, but on a “media phenomenon.”
Between this, accusing me of redefining “enjoy” to exclude “joy,” and pretending there’s no difference between dumping on someone for allegedly acting untoward a few months after a tragedy vs. persisting with similar conduct for years, I’m truly amazed what lengths you’ll go to in order to defend a silly comparison, rather than simply “OK, guys, you got me there; I still don’t like Ann Coulter, but she’s not equivalent to Ted Rall.” If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to think you were in the same line of work as Mike Nifong. Oh wait…
June 15th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
She waited for them to start behaving like heartless, soulless, cretins, insteado of presuming them to be such before the fact. Please, please, someone tell me what the actual rule of propriety is here, is it invariably wrong to say that someone is enjoying the death of someone close to them, or only if it’s untrue, or only in a political context, or what?
June 15th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Yeah, everyone in your profession is totally aboveboard and nobody ever tries to cheat anyone out of anything. (I can’t say what Xrlq’s profession is, but if you knew, the sarcasm would be instantly evident).
Between this, accusing me of redefining “enjoy” to exclude “joy,” and pretending there’s no difference between dumping on someone for allegedly acting untoward a few months after a tragedy vs. persisting with similar conduct for years . . .
June 16th, 2006 at 9:19 am
To a degree, that’s true; both say they said something at odds with what they really did say. However, Coulter’s clarification is a plausible explanation of what she meant, while Rall’s is not.
No, I’m not. The other guy you keep confusing me with is doing that. That definition does exist, but is irrelevant to the Coulter discussion. My point is that enjoy means “derive pleasure from.” You seem to think that the pleasure must be derived directly from X for its use to be valid. I argue that it can be indirect, as long as the causal link between the two is clear. I have no problem saying that millions of Americans “enjoy” shooting heroin or snorting cocaine. Presumably, you’d have a problem with that statement, since nobody really “enjoys” sticking granules up his nose or getting poked with a needle. All they truly enjoy is the high that soon follows. Liars!
It sounds to me like you only half get it. Sensitivity is only part of the timing issue, accuracy being the other. Going after a crime victim for appearing on TV once or twice after a horrible tragedy is one thing, and going after someone for hogging the spotlight years after her 15 minutes are up is another. On February 28, 2002, maybe Rall thought Marianne Pearl and Lisa Beamer were about to become professional grievers in much the way the Jersey Girls ultimately did. Maybe he thought that – but if he did, he was wrong.
June 17th, 2006 at 2:13 am
No, I’m not. The other guy you keep confusing me with is doing that. That definition does exist, but is irrelevant to the Coulter discussion. My point is that enjoy means “derive pleasure from.” You seem to think that the pleasure must be derived directly from X for its use to be valid. I argue that it can be indirect, as long as the causal link between the two is clear. I have no problem saying that millions of Americans “enjoy” shooting heroin or snorting cocaine. Presumably, you’d have a problem with that statement, since nobody really “enjoys” sticking granules up his nose or getting poked with a needle. All they truly enjoy is the high that soon follows. Liars!
And you analogize *that* to enjoying your spouse’s death.
Put another way, you think it *does* make sense for me to say you “enjoy” Polly Klaas’s death if you derive a benefit from the Three Strikes law.
That doesn’t sound strange to you at all. It sounds as natural as saying a drug addict enjoys taking drugs.
Uh-huh.
[Cue Twilight Zone music]
June 17th, 2006 at 9:08 am
If by “put another way” you mean “saying something completely different from, and in fact contradictory to, what you just said,” then perhaps so. Otherwise, no. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, you’re not “enjoying” something just because you derive some benefit from it. For the relevant sense of the word “enjoy” to apply, that benefit has to be joy.
It’s worth noting that “derive a benefit from” does exist as a legitimate definition of the word, e.g., one can say foreign diplomats “enjoy” immunity from prosecution without suggesting that they get some kick out of that status, or even that they’re aware of it. However, I have not argued that this sense of the word is relevant to the Coulter controversy, since it’s clear she was talking about deriving joy, not deriving any random benefit. Else her statement that “I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much” would not have been a criticism, it wouldn’t have made any real point at all. [It also would have been flat-out wrong, as women "enjoy" large inheritances all the time.]