| Friday, November 19, 2004 |
14:43 - Do we detect a pattern?
|
(top)  |
So the Washington Post has finally dropped Ted Rall's comic strip... and look at what Dean Esmay identifies as the final straw:
So. The Washington Post finally dropped Ted Rall. This time for a cartoon displaying America as a profoundly retarded, drooling freak.
To which I can only say: so repeatedly drawing cartoons comparing America to Nazi Germany, accusing the late Pat Tillman of being a bloodthirsty racist, 9/11 widows as being money-grubbing opportunists--this was not enough?
Why do I suspect that the only reason the Washington Post really acted finally was not because Rall is vile and hateful, but because he made fun of the mentally handicapped?
Somehow I'm not surprised that it's this strip, not this one or this one, that finally did it—let alone this piece of reasoned and nuanced geopolitical analysis. No... he finally stepped on something the WaPo actually considers precious this time, even if accidenally, in passing as it were—mere collateral damage. Too bad.
Is this kind of thing rare, though? Not hardly. Not to look at Kofi Annan's coming vote of no confidence—not over the mounting billions of Oil-For-Blood money stolen on his watch by UNSCAM, not over failing to prevent genocide in Rwanda or Darfur... but over a sexual harassment scandal.
Are people actually, perhaps, trying to bring odious people like these to justice, using the only tools they have available to them—technicalities to which their peers are actually susceptible? Is this the equivalent of nailing Al Capone on tax evasion charges? My optimistic core sort of hopes this is the case, because it means that while the forces of good are marginalized and forced to argue in meaningless and petty terms in order to bring real evil to justice, at least they're being heard, however indirectly. The alternative—that honestly nobody cares about people spreading vile propaganda or condoning genocide—is too depressing to contemplate.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
