March 05, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Okay, I know I said
Okay, I know I said I wasn't going to be crabby, but this is revolting. Ted Rall, apparently sensing that he'd worn out the patience of his viewers for ceaseless whining about the most trivial adventures of the Bush administration, sought out a new target and found: the WTC widows.
Now, I too, have questions about the wrangling over funds by families, which often seems to imply that the purpose of the emergency money is to enrich the beneficiaries rather than keep those affected by the tragedy from financial devastation. Part of me says, "What the hell, they deserve it -- they're suffering is a proxy for all of us as Americans." Another part of me wonders about the level of funding. But the way to make such arguments is by stating them quietly, in a reasonable voice, that tries to establish what obligation the rest of us have to those who were affected by the tragedy.
It is not making fun of the widows in a petty, sarcastic tone heavily redolent of Freshman Composition.
I imagine that Ted Rall thinks he has established himself as a sort of latter-day H.L. Mencken, unafraid to lampoon even the most dearly held prejudice of those of us in the "Booboisie". All I see is someone whose emotional depth seems permanently halted in early adolescence, to whom noone's suffering is worth acknowleging except his own, and who justifies the most gratuitous cruelty by an idealism that cannot stoop to take actual human beings into account. Can Mr. Rall honestly say that if someone he loved were ripped from him, he would be perfectly sanguine about those who disliked him directing this sort of self-righteous editorial at his suffering? Oh, I'm sure that he would say so, but I can't believe he would mean it -- or rather, I can believe it only by believing what I halfway suspect to be true -- that Rall is incapable of experiencing the kind of love that leads to deep grief, and therefore feels free to make brutal fun of the WTC widows for not displaying what he believes to be the proper outward signs of an inward emotion he cannot imagine.
Charles Johnson noted this, and started an email campaign which apparently, at least in part, got the cartoon pulled from the New York Times site. I have no doubt that we will hear much whining from Mr. Rall over the next few days about his "free speech" rights being violated. Mr. Rall of course has a perfect right to write what he will -- just as I have a perfect right to cancel my subscription to the New York Times except, oops! I already did. Anyway, my point is that while he has the right to say anything he wishes, I also have the right not to fund his revolting emissions. What Rall wants, of course, is not free speech but speech without consequences. I will be glad to see him get his wish: when he is sitting alone in his room, mumbling into the mirror.
Posted by Jane Galt at March 5, 2002 06:21 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links