Well, Ted Rall's crawled out from under his rock on the outskirts of Columbia University to issue his take on the whole Mohammed Cartoons kefuffle, and it starts off reasonable enough:
My first reaction is disgust. Why did the Danes apologize? They ought to have stood behind their cartoonist. And even if the cartoons were offensive to the point that they crossed the line (an impossibility as far as I'm concerned, but then I make my living because of freedom of the press), the editors who published them is wholly to blame. Artists create; editors censor. Once an editor signs off on a cartoon, it becomes his or her responsibility.Sadly too few American editors seem to grasp that. They fire the cartoonist when it's the editor who should step down.
Sounds reasonable enough to be.
He then draws on personal experience:
I'm also disgusted at American newspapers who did not reprint the cartoons, if only to show their readers what the big fuss was about. How can readers judge a graphic without seeing it? I too have been victimized by this practice. My "cartoon FDNY 2011, about the firefighters after 9/11, was not nearly as offensive to actually see than it was to read about in brief excerpts.
Sounds almost as reasonable as the first statements, but he's leaping into the realm of resentment, envy, and frustration. Plus, he's lowballing the odiousness of his own product, much like a reeking bum not noticing his stench after a while.
Then, the reason vanishes, and reason becomes merely a launchpad into the stratosphere of moonbattery, envy, and rage...
More disgust: Why don't press accounts reference the cartoonist's name? They're not "Danish magazine cartoons," they're cartoons by a Danish cartoonist that ran in a magazine. You see the same forced anonymity here, e.g., "a New Yorker cartoon shows a man..." There ARE no New Yorker cartoons. There are cartoons that appear in the New Yorker. It's gross that word guys are so determined to turn cartoonists into non-persons. At least this guy might get a little PR out of this mess.
Minor problem, Ted - they're all signed works. You know, like yours, only with actual adult signatures instead of blocky childish letters as your cartoons are. And Franz Fuschel and Claus Siedel are easy to recognize.
And in a few of the archives, they are labeled clearly by author. For instance, check out Human Events Online.
Of course, saying that the cartoons aren't referenced by author would mean that you haven't bee... oh, what were your words... judging a graphic without seeing it?
Oh well. Same old Ted.
I'll make a note to buy him some more stuff off of his Amazon wishlist when the next Pajamas Media check comes in. That'll make him happy.