Patterico's Pontifications

2/25/2005

Ted Rall Challenge Is Bogus

Filed under: Scum — Patterico @ 10:10 pm



Ted Rall has laid down the following challenge:

Several Bushist blogger types have written to assert that there are as many violent and threatening remarks and insults coming from liberals online as there are from conservatives against liberals. I’ve spent many sadly-lost hours online, and I say: no way.

So here’s my challenge: Please email your worst, most vicious examples of liberal/leftie blogger vitriol (with links, natch), and I’ll post ‘em right here. If they exist, obviously.

The problem is, our devious cartoon-boy is bouncing the e-mails sent to him. Mine bounced, as did the e-mails from Right Wing News and Decision ’08. Try sending something yourself. The alleged e-mail address is rightwingchallenge@rall.com.

Meanwhile, Rall gloats that nobody is responding to his challenge. I guess it’s easy to make that claim when you’re simply bouncing everyone’s e-mails.

Glenn Reynolds said: “This challenge is no challenge at all . . . .” He had no idea how right he was.

P.S. Here are the examples that I tried to e-mail to Rall:

Here’s a TalkLeft commenter wishing for the assassination of President Bush:

Somebody needs to take the fratboy and his parasitic entourage down there and rub thier noses in the gore. Reap what you sow. I hope the next McVeigh gets the address right.

TalkLeft was aware of that comment — she edited other comments that followed it, but left that comment there.

And here is a screenshot of a lefty’s post (since deleted) that earned her a visit from the Secret Service. The offending language?

Wassup? How’s it hanging? Yeah, I know it’s been a long time since we talked. This probably stems from my belief that you do not exist. Anyway, the reason why I’m calling you is because last night, President Bush said that he could feel it every time we prayed for him, and since he apparently doesn’t listen to anyone but you, Lord, I thought you might pass this along to him.

Please kill George Bush. I hate him so much. I think he is a giant dick and I want terrible things to happen to him. I’m not really big on the specifics of how he dies, but if you could at least arrange it so that the authorities find his dead body on top of an underage black male prostitute surrounded by a mountain of cocaine and child pornography, that would really be super-awesome. And maybe you could have some media people there when the police find the body, so they can take pictures and stuff. That’d be fucking GREAT. Am I allowed to say “fuck” in a prayer? Shit, I just said it again. Ah, well.

Anyway, that’s my prayer, Lord. Please, please, please kill Dubya. And Dick Cheney. And everyone else in the Bush Administration. Maybe they can all commit mass suicide together or something. I don’t know. You’re the one with all the ideas. You come up with something. I need more coffee.

If sheer insults are enough — and Rall said they were — then we can look at the invective of Martini Republic twin Alex. He called my comments “stupid,” “idiotic,” “[d]umb, dumb, dumb,” “mentally incontinent whining,” “mindless crap,” “incomprehensible gibbering,” and called me personally a “dolt,” “numbnuts,” “Pattynumbnuts,” “idiot wingnut,” “unbridled prevaricator” and “damned liar,” and said: “You demonstrate all the self-awareness of a brick.” And that was just one comment thread.

I don’t mean to suggest that ugly invective is the exclusive property of the left. But Rall is typically clueless in asserting that it is the exclusive property of the right.

And he is typically dishonest in pretending that he will publish examples like I have given.

UPDATE: Mrs. Patterico, always a moderating influence, suggests that there could be an innocent reason for the bounced e-mails. I suppose — in theory. But I doubt it.

Anyone with a reasonable theory as to how this could all be an innocent mistake is encouraged to send their ideas to nosuchaddress@paterico.com. I will print any plausible-sounding ideas as an update to this post. If I receive no e-mails at that address, consider that proof that this challenge is a hoax.

UPDATE x2: Jon Henke and Polipundit report to me via e-mail that their e-mails to Rall bounced too!

UPDATE x3: Welcome to Instapundit readers! Anyone interested in bookmarking this site can find the main page here.

Some commenters have noted that Rall has changed the e-mail address, because “some righties have had trouble with the email address for the contest.” (He did this after Polipundit, Henke, John Hawkins, Decision ’08, and I had all sent him our e-mails.) Henke is going to try resending his. Not me. I’m done. I think the guy has already gotten too much attention.

45 Responses to “Ted Rall Challenge Is Bogus”

  1. Miscellanea: I Took the Ted Rall Challenge and…
    Patterico’s Pontifications wonders how we’re supposed to send Rall our examples when his e-mail bounces, but he takes the challenge anyway (hey, a dishonest lefty? Naw, couldn’t be)…

    Decision '08 (59ce3a)

  2. Sorry for the double comment; the URL on my trackback was wrong; it should be: http://decision08.blogspot.com/2005/02/miscellanea-i-took-ted-rall-challenge.html. Thanks for the link!

    Mark Coffey (5b1c49)

  3. Reading cross-eyed bilge like that “please kill Bush” post and then thinking back to the results of November 2nd gives me a warm feeling inside.

    It’d be funny if God listened to the “prayer,” got hacked off, flipped the safety from his bright-red “Totally Play with People’s Minds” button, slammed it; and made, through the Holy Spirit and poor human surveys, the crank exit polls possible.

    Cover Me, Porkins (57bb08)

  4. For what it’s worth, Rall now says that the e-mail address you should use is chet@rall.com. I’m sure it’ll be something else later, but that’s the one Rall changed to to prevent submissions.

    Bash91 (eb768d)

  5. “dolt,” “numbnuts,” “Pattynumbnuts,” “idiot wingnut,” “unbridled prevaricator” and “damned liar,” and said: “You demonstrate all the self-awareness of a brick.” And that was just one comment thread.

    Man. You aren’t working hard enough to get their goat, are you?

    Dean Esmay (7fe0e7)

  6. Ted Rall’s Challenge
    Ted Rall throws down the gauntlet…

    QandO (e6fca8)

  7. Hang on. We can’t infer dishonesty. It may just be that Mr. Rall is as talented a user of the Internet as he is a cartoonist.

    James Jones (c8e8e1)

  8. There’s a time-tested adage that hangs conspicuously in every internet forum worth reading…”Don’t feed the trolls”. I’d like to see this wisdom applied to the blogosphere as well. Alas, Rall is currently being served a banquet.

    Bingo (747f20)

  9. If you’re going to try again and send anything to “chet@rall.com”, better cc “chat@rall.com” also.

    Mr. SNicth (12ed9a)

  10. When lefties are routinely going around referring to their opponents as traitors, America-haters, terrorist-lovers, objectively pro-terrorist, and so forth, then maybe I’ll shed a tear for your being called a “dolt.” Until then, however, Rall – though he’s a complete jackass, and I really wonder why righties pay any attention to him at all – is more or less on the right track, though he uses the wrong terminology.

    There is, I’m afraid, a rather significant difference between mere “ad hominem” and accusations of treason. Treason is a crime. Being a “dolt” is a subjective evaluation of one’s mental capacity, rather than an indictment of one’s loyalty to his own country. Right-wingers frequently use the term “moral equivalency”: well, saying that even the most vicious name-calling is comparable to being accused of loving terrorists and supporting their aims is nothing but moral equivalency on par with saying that accidental civilian deaths are no different from suicide bombings.

    It would be easy to dismiss such accusations if they only came from people like Michael Savage (which they do, of course, often and loudly), but when we have people like Glenn Reynolds endorsing the notion that the left wants to turn the U.S. into a collection of Soviet gulags, well, we’ve gone to the next level (and don’t tell me about Glenn’s weak back-down – the Nelson Ascher thing was hardly the first time he’s made that kind of insinuation).

    And as bad as Glenn may be, he’s far from the worst. How about Powerline, the Blog of the Year – another victim of the dissent-crushing liberal media, apparently. Or Belmont Club, which also linked approvingly to the Nelson Ascher thing (and check out some of the comments in that thread – puts any DU wacko to shame).

    Ted Rall is a useless (except to the right) tool, and I sincerely wish he would shut up and go away. But his insensate rantings amount to, as you point out, little more than self-parody. Let’s look at a few other favorite whipping boys of the right: Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, and Kos. There’s a common theme here: liberals suck at this stuff. They go way over the top and make themselves look like whiny children who simply can’t face the real world, and so are forced to condemn it in cartoonishly surreal terms. They marginalize and discredit themselves with their own words.

    Glenn, on the other hand, gets 200,000 hits a day. Rush has 20 million listeners. Hannity has a TV show and a radio show (and, apparently now, a dating service). Do right-wingers similarly dismiss these guys as irrelevant? That’s certainly not the impression I get. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s a silent majority of reasonable right-of-center Americans who don’t just jump at the chance to stick a rhetorical trump-card like “traitor” up their sleeve and use it to win arguments. But until I see some evidence of that, all the flogging of Rall, Moore, and Churchill will just seem to me like nothing more than calculating victimology or just blinkered partisanship.

    Mike C (dca672)

  11. This “challenge” from Rall is a perfect example of how blind the left is to their own hypocrisy and prejudice. Rall HIMSELF has insulted many a conservative through his cartoons. We can debunk Rall’s challenge with Rall himself.

    Anyone as clueless as Rall just isn’t deserving of my time.

    MisterPundit (0a12ad)

  12. Pants On Fire
    Ted Rall has, once again, been proven to lie like a cheap rug.

    Part of me says we should ignore such evil people, but my philosophy is that y…

    Dean's World (11ee8e)

  13. Ted’s site was also down for awhile; I think he may have just gotten too may responses.

    TallDave (e15e0b)

  14. It’s not an accident that the email is getting bounced. If you look at the delivery notification you received for the bounced mail, it says “Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table”. Mr. Rall is rejecting email from anybody he doesn’t have in his database.

    Mark Benz (91b720)

  15. Pants On Fire
    Ted Rall is a lying sack of shit. Not like we didn’t all know it, but how shameless can you get?

    The Queen of All Evil (11ee8e)

  16. I’m not sure that’s what that message means, Mark. I think it means that the user to whom the message is addressed is unknown, not the sender.

    I can think of three possibilities. Either (1) Rall was kidding all along, and never actually intended for anybody to e-mail him anything, in which case he’s a disingenuous snot. Or (2) he received so many e-mails that it filled his in-box, in which case he’s a disingenuous snot for saying that he didn’t receive any responses. Or (3) he gave the wrong e-mail address, in which case he’s just a spaz.

    I’m fairly confident that one of these three things is true.

    Jeff Harrell (937967)

  17. Told You So
    Patterico notes:The problem is, our devious cartoon-boy is bouncing the e-mails sent to him. Mine bounced, as did the e-mails from Right Wing News and Decision ’08. Try sending something yourself. The alleged e-mail address is rightwingchallenge@rall….

    Daily Pundit (f342d6)

  18. First, a nit. The live comment preview features is a pain in the a–.

    Second, Michelle Malkin published pretty hair raising hate mail a few weeeks back. It is especially nice to see the left, which is supposedly so enlightened on all racial issues, stereotyping an Asian woman as a whore.

    A.W. of Freespeech.com (c80cfb)

  19. And keep in mind that Rall includes letters to Santa Claus as “death threats.”

    Jim Treacher (a27f0d)

  20. Well, it was too tempting, so i joined the fray :

    http://misterpundit.blogspot.com/2005/02/rall-vs-rall.html

    It’s Rall vs Rall

    MisterPundit (0a12ad)

  21. Coincidentally I just put up a long post on my blog who’s subject is a quite nasty set of comments made on this post at Think Progress. Granted, it’s the commenters, not the bloggers, hurling the invective. But the subject matter of original post is nothing if not inciting.

    Brian O'Connell (858f0c)

  22. Oops- the apostrophe/slash disease is here.

    Brian O'Connell (858f0c)

  23. The e-mail error message means that (a) there is no e-mail address by that name established for the domain and (b) there is no alias set up for that e-mail address either.

    For example, if you wanted to do a caption contest, you might create an alias called “captioncontest@whatever.com” that, rather than being its own e-mail box, would forward the e-mail to a “real” account.

    What this tells me, to be blunt, is that Ted Rall is a disingenuous lefty twit, but that’s kind of redundant since I could sum it all up in two words:

    “Ted Rall”

    andy (8e7308)

  24. Frankly, your examples weren’t too convincing anyway. You chose some random commenter and some person on LiveJournal. Ooh. It’s probably some 14-year-old girl pissed at the world. Try to find something better, will ya?

    Greg (90954d)

  25. Anybody who has ever read anything by Rall should have known that this was bunk. I will have the dignity to NOT to mention Rall’s idiocy. Or his hipocrisy. Or his obnoxiously Charlie-Brown-esque drawings.

    No, we should rise above that. We should NOT mention that Rall is a serial-moron who should have to register his over-inflated ego with the FAA, because like dirigibles, feces float. All those floating turds of self expression that Rall claims are ‘cartoons’ or ‘op-eds’ are merely a way for him to make himself feel big in a world that has neither the patience or the resources to educate his callow mind as to what it means to be a responsible, informed citzen.

    Let’s let bygones be bygones and ignore the fact that Rall is a complete failure as a human being. Let’s respect his right to be a complete jack-ass, to wish harm upon our soldiers, and to breathe the same air that we do. Now, THAT is nuance.

    Josephus LaCroix (5da89e)

  26. From the Ted Rall website
    Now that’s the kind of disgusting, reprehensible shit we’re looking for. Righties do it daily by the dozen–surely you guys can come with more than just one?

    Oh, and: some righties have had trouble with the email address for the contest, so please use chet@rall.com instead. Thanks.

    Challenge ends Monday.

    D (904f36)

  27. THE TED RALL NON-CHALLENGE
    I’m not going to waste much time on this issue because even if I wanted to waste time on it and came up with a lot of damning information, my information probably wouldn’t reach Ted Rall: The problem is, our…

    Pejmanesque (2ae9b5)

  28. It’s not much, but he did respond:

    Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 10:54:48 -0800 (PST)
    From: “David Chute”
    Subject: Does blatent racism count?
    To: rightwingchallenge@rall.com

    http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001417.htm

    From: Tedrall@aol.com
    Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:42:27 EST
    Subject: Re: Does blatent racism count?
    To: david.chute@sbcglobal.net

    That’s hate mail, and since Malkin lies I don’t even know if it’s real hate mail. We’re talking about threats of violence posted at blogs.

    Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:55:35 -0800 (PST)
    From: “David Chute”
    Subject: Re: Does blatent racism count?
    To: Tedrall@aol.com

    Interesting. Have the lies been documented, and if so where? If you have a url or two I’ll certainly take a look.

    From: Tedrall@aol.com
    Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:59:08 EST
    Subject: Re: Does blatent racism count?
    To: david.chute@sbcglobal.net

    She called me anti-American, for instance, and accused me of supporting the terrorists.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 12:09:45 -0800 (PST)
    From: “David Chute”
    Subject: Re: Does blatent racism count?
    To: Tedrall@aol.com

    I would call that a stark difference of interpretation, or at worst rhetorical hyperbole.
    Still a far cry from something like deliberately faking a quote that could easily be checked.

    Got anything else?

    I’m waiting patiently.

    David Chute (38a188)

  29. Sounds to me like Churchill might be behind the whole damn thing.

    If not, does anti-Americanism count?

    J. Peden (ffccb8)

  30. But I guess we’re supposed to take Rall’s word for the hate mail he supposedly gets?

    By the way, A.W., you can just scroll so that you don’t see the live comments preview as you type in your comment. Type in your comment and then scroll down. It does save you a click for the preview.

    Patterico (756436)

  31. I would call that a stark difference of interpretation, or at worst rhetorical hyperbole.
    Still a far cry from something like deliberately faking a quote that could easily be checked.

    No kidding. By that logic, I’m probably a liar myself for calling Ted Rall an asshole, when according to Ted Rall, he really isn’t one. ‘Course, Rall’s a liar himself for claiming Reagan went to hell, despite not believing that any such place exists.

    Xrlq (c51d0d)

  32. Ted says:

    Believe it or not, no, I did NOT know that any of this stuff was out there. I’d read references by Republican bloggers to such things, but no one ever provided a link and I could never find it. Suffice it to say, this stuff pisses me off and should not be tolerated by anyone who purports to be a law-abiding American. And again: mainstream blogs like Kos should delete this shit as soon as it appears–as should the nasty right-wing sites like Little Green Footballs.

    Has the challenge been met? Yes. The scale may not not quite be the same, but there is clearly a significant amount of leftie hate speech out there to match the crap the righties put out. I can’t shame the righties into doing anything, but to readers who agree with me about anything, please consider what this does to us and how it invalidates our arguments.

    Mike C (dca672)

  33. The question is, how high are you aiming? Did Kerry coordinate with anyone to call M Cleland names? To denigrate J McCain’s military record?

    Half of all Americans are below average in intelligence. Both sides have moron supporters.

    Bush, who selected not to go to Vietnam, who was trained in a plane that had been withdrawn from the Pacific theatre (and hence, Vietnam) long before he ever sat in it, worked with other people to question the patriotism of REAL VETERANS.

    Josh Narins (36d433)

  34. Mr. Rall might also consider:

    1. This list from Right Wing News of “The 2nd Annual 10 Worst Quotes From 2004”

    2. Who can forgot Richard Rushfield’s little sojourn through CA, first as a Dem, then as a Repub, just to see how each side reacts to the simple presence of the other?

    3. Can we also mention Mr. Rall’s own depiction of Americans as mentally deficient? (Projection, Ted?)

    4. Jane Smily contributed this lovely article, too, containing such gems as “Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.”, but let’s not forget to read the whole thing; it gets better!

    5. Perhaps Im concentrating too much on prof pundits. Maybe this comment from talkleft.com says it better. In response to the q “what should the new slogan of the Democratic Party be”, the commenter opened with this suggestion “Fuck you, morons! …”. He may have a chance now that Dean is in charge.

    6. Daily Kos is the highest-rated Dem site on the Web. What does he think of conservative. Let’s let him tell us in his own words: “They love war, and regularly resort to it as one of their first choices. They have no respect for the lives their policies destroy, as long as they have more bases overseas. They derive their values from violence, and detest peace.

    There’s so much more that I’m not sure even Ted Rall can ignore it all. He can only pretend to.

    ras (482403)

  35. It was an inadvertant staff error. I have photographic proof:

    Kevin Murphy (6a7945)

  36. Ooops. It was an inadvertant staff error. I have Photgraphic proof

    Kevin Murphy (6a7945)

  37. Ted Rall is a brilliant troll and self-promoter. He’s got half the right-wing web talking about himself.

    We should be taking notes.

    coersu (d9f208)

  38. How could you miss Kos’ “screw them” post?

    Search LGF for more on Kos.

    Aaron's Rantblog (5b17cc)

  39. High Loon
    SeaQue City SeaQue City was a little blogging town on the right fork of the Red State River that got its name from a famous Kiowa Indian chief. Translated, SeaQue meant

    Riehl World View (af7df9)

  40. Rall issues bogus web challenge
    Idiot moonbat supreme Ted Rall claimed in a column last week that right-wing columnists and bloggers are more likely to post violent and vitriolic threats than those on the left-wing.Idiot Rall then invited those of us on the right to…

    Ramblings' Journal (1483fa)

  41. Josh, amusingly just about everything in your comment is false. The myth about Cleland has long been demolished repeatedly by North Georgia Dogma. The F102 was actually deployed to Vietnam for a period of time, and Lt. George Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam with the squadron that deployed but was turned down as not experienced enough at the time. So all you’ve done is repeat long debunked lies about George Bush.

    But thanks for playing in the game.

    SPQR (56a273)

  42. Ted Rall Grows A Spine
    Recently editorial comic artist and left-wing firebrand Ted Rall challenged right-leaning bloggers to prove that the left does indeed hurl a significant amount of hate at the right. Several bloggers responded prompting this statement from Rall:

    I a…

    Say Anything (4f889f)

  43. I don’t get how it is automatic that everything Rall says is bunk just ’cause he said it.

    He accurately predicted Bush’s election in 2000, he has called for and end of the NEA and he takes a very rational when discussing his left of center views.

    I know it is not easy to read a guy who says there is not a shred of evidence against Osama in the 9-11 attacks, because we are all so sure it was him. But think for a second; the only proof I have seen is a video where he says he was surprised the towers collapsed “all the way”. This “admission” to me seems like proof that he is not the engineer he claims to be. google it. He was surprised the towes collapsed !
    Just ’cause he owned a camp where terrorists wannabes crawled under barbed wire, does not mean he planned the attack. For God’s sake, we could blame the designer of the building for saying it could resist a hit from a 707. Afterall, he came up with the idea…
    You need to look at the engineers of the attack, not the guy sitting around a fire saying “hey, what if you crashed a plane into WTC. that’d be cool huh?”

    Angelo (904af1)

  44. Thanks for clearing that up for us Angelo. I think it was Nostradamus (or maybe Paul Lynde) who predicted that the “truth” about 9/11 would be revealed in a 2-year-old Ted Rall thread. Now it all comes together.

    Angelo says:

    …he has called for and end of the NEA and he takes a very rational when discussing his left of center views.

    Indeed. Google it.

    carlitos (b38ae1)

  45. Admit it, you are surprised he called for the death of the NEA.
    My lunch break is not long enough to find the latest rall bash. anyways, as old as this thread is, it googled up fairly prominently, thus, it is as relevant as ever.

    I see the same type of comments on all these threads. Even lefties just dismiss rall as a quack. It is automatic. How about saying why you think he is a quack. Its like you are all scarred people will take him seriously so you can’t mention his name without saying he is full of shit–lest people actually go read for themselves.

    What I find trully telling is that you find it more a pressing issue that the thread is 2 years old. In the little time you had you could have dealt with the meat, but instead you wasted your time posting in a 2-year-old thread to tell me that the thread is 2-years old.

    what do you think, did Osama “I can’t believe the towers fell” Bin Landin really plan the attack on the WTC? oh wait, that is old news right?

    some issues you can choose instead:
    spelling, grammar, more on age of thread, typos

    Angelo (42a4e6)


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