I caught a couple of minutes of Hannity’s radio show in the car just now. While I admire Rall’s chutzpah to go on (and Hannity’s for the dressing down he gave Rall over his despicable Pat Tillman cartoon), Rall’s “it’s all about oooooillllll”, claims of civilian atrocities, and telling Hannity “you guys have pushed this country so far to the right” did not serve him well. At one point, Hannity asked him if he’d apologize to the Tillman family. His response? “Not going to happen.”
As James Lileks wrote the other day:
I have no idea if Mr. Rall is personally happy, although the one time I met him he didn’t strike me as a jolly old soul. But it has to be hard to be happy when one carries around so much bile and rage. It’s tiring. Anger wears you down, especially when your anger doesn’t seem to accomplish anything. Ted Rall’s cartoons could have run in every paper every day since 9/11 and there will still be kids who saw Tillman’s choice as a remarkable act. (Tillman’s Choice: there’s a phrase that sums up quite a lot, doesn’t it?) People like Rall are sitting on the curb, feet in the gutter, watching the parade go past, smirking at the guy with the baton, sneering at the cheerleaders. Everyone else watching the parade thinks I wonder if there will be elephants! And when they do appear, he rolls his eyes. Elephants. How obvious.You want to live like that? I don’t want to live like that. Because when you see red all the time you miss things. My favorite panel of the cartoon had Tillman signing up and asking “Do I get to go kill Arabs.” Of course Rall knows that it’s not literally true, but it’s true in some metaphysical sense, which makes it truer than reality itself. And it’s a bitter joke, don’t you know, because that’s the unspoken subtext, isn’t it?
AdvertisementThe notion that there are men literally signing up with the literal desire to literally kill Americans – not even on his radar, apparently.
Ah well. Every era has its Bill Mauldin. Every era has its Nast. And every era has its Rall. We just don’t remember them like we remember the Mauldins and Nasts. You know, the guys who were right. And could draw.
Again: hate takes too much work.
Rall sounded like he was working hard on the phone today.
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