Rall's Tillman 'toon
As I type this sentence, I've gotten more than 200 hits today from people looking for Ted Rall's cartoon regarding Pat Tillman, the former professional football player who joined the Army after Sept. 11, 2001 and was killed recently in Afghanistan. I suspect that most of these people are indignant right-wingers who are ready to lynch Rall for refusing to worship one of our "heroes," but here is Rall's 'toon anyway. (I also know from my hits that lots of people want to see pictures of Michael Pitt and Eva Green nude. I'd post some if I could find some. Anyone?)
I don't know about Rall's 'toon on Tillman. First of all, as I wrote, Tillman looked like a musclebound caricature, so why Rall's cartoon depiction of Tillman makes him look like a normal human being I'm not sure. I wouldn't go so far as to call Tillman a "sap" or an "idiot" because I didn't know him, and I don't know -- and I don't think that Ted Rall, does either -- that Tillman's motivation in joining the Army was "to kill Arabs." Nor do I know that "Tillman...falsely believed Bush's wars against Iraq and Afghanistan had something to do with 9/11" or that Rall has any more knowledge of Tillman's beliefs than I do. I do agree with Rall that it's all about the oil, though, at least where Iraq is concerned.
Being a gay pacifist who doesn't like sports (for some reason I can watch men's diving and men's gymnastics, though -- go figure) and who would like to see the end of the rule of stupid white men, I suspect that Tillman and I couldn't have been best buds. And from most of the pictures I've seen of him, he does look like he might have been capable of date rape:
 
But he also might have been a nice, although misguided, guy. (Anyone who joins the military is, in my opinion, misguided. [I love the Army recruitment poster in Rall's 'toon.] The last just war that the United States fought was World War II. Now, the United States pretty much goes to war only to protect or to expand stupid rich white men's fortunes in the name of such noble causes as "freedom," "democracy" and "liberation.")
Anyway, had Tillman died in Iraq, I could say confidently that he died for nothing, that he died for the war profits of BushCheneyCorp and its subsidiaries, such as Halliburton. But as he died in Afghanistan, and as the United States had at least some reason to invade Afghanistan, I'm not willing to say, with the information that I have, that Tillman died for nothing.
I do want to state for the record that, despite what you might hear from Rush Limbaugh, we left-wingers do not celebrate the deaths of our young men and women in uniform, especially when they die pointless deaths, as have the 700-plus who have died in Iraq since the Bush regime illegally, immorally, imperialistically and unprovokedly invaded the sovereign nation in March 2003 based upon the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and thus posed an imminent threat to the United States and its allies.
We left-wingers don't eat babies, either.
Most of us don't, anyway. (And I don't know that Ted Rall doesn't eat babies, which would be OK on the Atkins and South Beach diets, I think.)
Update (Wednesday, May 5, 2004): So this is why people are so interested in Rall's Tillman 'toon (this item is from Editor and Publisher via Yahoo! News; as I write this it sits on top of Yahoo! News' list of "most viewed" news stories):
May 3 -- A cartoon questioning late footballer-turned-soldier Pat Tillman's credentials as a "hero" was pulled from MSNBC.com this afternoon. The drawing also brought Ted Rall 110 e-mails in less than 15 minutes.
The volume of mail had much to do with the cartoon being mentioned on the Drudge Report site, seen by many conservatives. Drudge linked to MSNBC.com until the cartoon was yanked. Then Drudge linked to the cartoon at Universal Press Syndicate's site (http://www.ucomics.com).
In a statement posted on its site, MSNBC.com said Rall's cartoons, like those by other creators, are "published daily on the site via an automated syndication feed. Such feeds are rarely reviewed. However, MSNBC.com Editor in Chief Dean Wright concluded Monday's Rall item did not meet MSNBC.com standards of fairness and taste."
Rall said in the cartoon that Tillman -- who gave up a $3.6-million National Football League contract to join the military and then died last month -- "falsely believed Bush's wars against Iraq and Afghanistan had something to do with 9/11. Actually, he was a cog in a low-rent occupation Army that shot more innocent civilians than terrorists to prop up puppet rulers and exploit gas and oil resources. So when Tillman got killed by the Afghan resistance, one word naturally came to mind: 'Uh -- idiot?' [says one person in the cartoon's final panel]. 'Sap?' [says another]. 'Hero!' [says an editor]."
When E&P called Rall, he had only received one message about the cartoon. But, as the interview went on, the messages started pouring in. A few were positive, but most were vicious. As Rall opened each e-mail for the first time, he quoted briefly from each one. "You make me sick"; "lies and distortions"; "move to France"; "I pity you"; "disgusting"; "sad and pathetic"; "f--- you, you coward bastard"; "I will s--t on your grave"; "horrendous"; "rot in hell"; "freak"; "I hope you're killed by an Arab terrorist attack"; "people died to publish the b.s. you do."
Rall, who risked his life in Afghanistan himself as a visiting cartoonist/writer after 9/11, told E&P: "The word 'hero' has been bandied about a lot to refer to anyone killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But anyone who voluntarily goes to Afghanistan or Iraq [as a soldier] is fighting for an evil cause under an evil commander in chief."
"Tillman gave up millions of dollars," Rall added. "To that extent I think he's admirable, but the cause is not.... He would have been a better person and a better husband if he took the $3.6 million and played football and left the poor and beleaguered people of Afghanistan and Iraq alone."
Rall's editorial cartoons have 140 clients (roughly half of them print newspapers). Universal Director of Communications Kathie Kerr said today that there has been "no reaction from editors as of yet, but a few e-mails from readers who oppose" the cartoon.
As I indicated, my main problem with Rall's 'toon is that I doubt that Rall, unless he read published remarks by Tillman or the like, really knows Tillman's thoughts and motivations. Also as I indicated, the right-wingers' main problem with Rall's toon, I think, is that Rall refuses to participate in "hero" worship. After all, football is king in the "red states."
I could call the young men and women in uniform who are dying right now "heroes" if they were actually dying for a just and noble cause, but they aren't. They're dying for the war profiteering of BushCheneyCorp and its subsidiaries, such as Dick Cheney's Halliburton.
I could call the young men and women in uniform who are dying right now "heroes" if they were actually protecting us from danger, but the fact of the matter is that because the Bush regime's "coalition of the willing" has killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians -- including scores of children -- in the past year, we'll be seeing those dead civilians' relatives (fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, uncles, et. al.) in the coming years when they seek their revenge -- long after "President" Dumbfuck and his warmongering, war-profiteering handlers are gone, so they won't get the blame that they deserve. (Probably it will be a Democratic president who will get the blame.)
I get occasional e-mails from right-wing idiots (that's redundant) like the ones that Rall describes. The word they use to describe me most is "asshole." Often they just call me something like "asshole" -- a stirring "argument" for their position -- and that's it. Sometimes they use one of the same old tired stock right-wing "arguments," such as the one that Rall relates: "people died to publish the b.s. you do." (That argument is particularly funny, because right-wingers are all for censorship, especially the censorship of those whose views contradict theirs; I mean, look at the censorship of Rall's Tillman 'toon -- the hooplah over which, no doubt, has gotten the 'toon more views, not fewer. Great strategists, those right-wing geniuses are.)
Finally, it's rare that a right-winger can write a single simple English sentence in an e-mail without at least one glaring error in punctuation, spelling or grammar, which only reinforces my belief that right-wingers are dumbfucks, like their evil commander in chief.
If you can't get enough of the baby-eating Rall, this is the first paragraph from his latest column:
Now it's official: American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS. Like the Germans during World War II, they cordon off and bomb civilian villages to retaliate for guerilla attacks on their convoys. Like the blackshirts who terrorized Europe, America's victims disappear into hellish prisons ruled by sadists and murderers. The U.S. military is short just one item to achieve moral parity with the Nazis: gas chambers.
I need Ted Rall, so that I can point to at least one person on the planet who is further to the left than I am.
P.S. More on the Nazi-like censorship of the left: I just read this Reuters news item:
Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore's documentary linking President Bush with powerful Saudi families, including that of Osama bin Laden, is stirring up controversy even before its release.
That's if it even gets released.
Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety said in its [today] edition that Walt Disney Co. has moved to prevent its Miramax Films unit from distributing "Fahrenheit 911."
The Disney edict could herald the bloodiest political battle yet between Miramax's feisty co-chairman Harvey Weinstein and Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who oversaw the purchase of Miramax a decade ago, Daily Variety said.
"Fahrenheit 911," Moore's follow-up to his Academy Award-winning film "Bowling for Columbine," will still premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in France later this month. Rumors had been circulating of a July release date in North America, but the film does not appear on Miramax's summer schedule, the paper said.
It quoted a Miramax spokesman as saying that the company was "looking forward to resolving this amicably."
Officials from Miramax and Disney were not immediately available for comment on the report.
First of all, I know that right-wingers, who claim to support the First Amendment as much as they support the Second Amendment, are giddy over such news, so their "argument" that Americans died for the freedom of speech is empty and hollow, as are most of their "arguments" and their "patriotism."
Secondly, this kind of news is the best fucking publicity that "Fahrenheit 911" could get. If Disney/Miramax won't release the film, someone else will -- and they'll makes tons of money.
Finally, right-wingers, take notes here: It's shit like this -- the blatant censorship of opposing viewpoints, the current climate in the United States that its "leaders" may not be criticized -- that causes us left-wingers to compare "President" Dumbfuck to Adolf Hitler and his followers to Nazis. The shoes fit.
8:49:49 PM 
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