Patterico's Pontifications

5/18/2013

Ted Rall Dodges My Questions

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:08 am



After I criticized the pointless cartoon by Ted Rall attacking anti-SWATting legislation, Rall showed up in comments to vaguely threaten a lawsuit against me — and to explain his cartoon as motivated by the fact that there are already several laws on the books that address the issue. One of the “crimes” he mentioned was something he called “reckless endangerment.”

Commenter #21 is correct. This cartoon is conservative libertarian in orientation. Why do we need a new law here? Anyone who pulls such a boneheaded stunt is guilty of several crimes, including filing a false report and harassment. If anyone gets hurt, it’s reckless endangerment. If there are property damages, you can sue.

I thought conservatives opposed showboating, redundant, unnecessary laws?

Amused, I challenged Rall to name a few, by specific reference to the California Penal Code. I was especially interested to hear the Penal Code section for “reckless endangerment.” (I won’t reveal the Penal Code section to which Rall refers, but here’s a hint: if you square that number, you get a negative number. Little joke for the math nerds.)

Anyway, Rall has been back to the comments, but he dodged my questions. Which is so shocking as to be exactly what I thought would happen.

P.S. Rall is a “rude, petty, self-absorbed writer/cartoonist.” Hi Ted!

23 Responses to “Ted Rall Dodges My Questions”

  1. Still waiting for those Penal Code sections!

    Patterico (9c670f)

  2. Rall is no Michael Ramirez or Chris Muir, that’s for sure. He demonstrates that when one is a minimally talented person with a far-left bent, one finds a soapbox, then screams and rants the most ridiculously juvenile thoughts that may cross one’s mind. He’s the reason crayons were invented.

    Colonel Haiku (c5a4e9)

  3. Could those sections of the Penal Code be the product of the imagination of a IQ that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers?

    W. J. J. Hoge (9c4b9d)

  4. R.I.P. Ken Venturi

    Icy (64e97d)

  5. yer slippin’, Icy, my man!

    Colonel Haiku (c5a4e9)

  6. Rall is just another leftist that fancies himself a “libertarian”. Just like leftism, his views are cartoonishly 2 dimensional and shallow snarking.

    SGT Ted (0ffd9b)

  7. Don’t feed the troll or the trall.

    Rich (3ef32b)

  8. So Ted Rall, cartoonist (and ass), wants to discuss the California penal code with a California prosecutor? It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

    Jeff Weimer (9cb4a8)

  9. Bigger question-despite being 50 years old and drwaing professionally for most of his adult life, why are Rall’s scribblings still little better than those you see on the walls at your kid’s elementary school open house day?

    Bugg (b32862)

  10. I doubt Rall fancies himself as a L/libertarian. Read his website (use a cached page to avoid giving him hits). He basically says that daddy left me and mommy, I got a full ride to Columbia but ended up homeless, our lives’ circumstances are largely due to luck, so, socialism kthx.

    Mitch (a61168)

  11. Imaginary that.

    jb (169a0b)

  12. Hey…I just thought of something. And that idiot Ralls actually gave me the idea. Stranger things have happened. Could you go after your SWATter for “child endangerment” under the California criminal code? I don’t mean you specifically, but…

    Bets (717964)

  13. Ah, well, the advantage that Ted Rall has over the rest of us: DIY colonoscopy. Saves co-pay.

    SPQR (768505)

  14. I’m no mathematician either, brother Frey, but I think that “imaginary numbers” are something different than what your reference presumes, such that the more one knows about math (and I don’t know much), the less effective the allusion.

    Nevertheless, when one is discussing Mr. Rall, the normal laws and rules of the space-time continuum that the rest of us inhabit simply do not apply. So I denounce myself for this quibble. I am obviously a racist.

    Beldar (36b03a)

  15. Ted was abandoned by his father, struggled at Columbia as a college student, and then resigned to an adulthood of kooky left-wing loathing of civil society…hmmm, where have I read that bio, before ?!

    Elephant Stone (bcf0e3)

  16. Dreams Cartoons From my Father by Ted Rall (& ghostwriter Bill Ayers)

    Elephant Stone (bcf0e3)

  17. If he can read from a teleprompter, Teddy may one day become President.

    Elephant Stone (bcf0e3)

  18. How about a post on USC 7213, which is the violation in the IRS scandal?

    narciso (3fec35)

  19. Stupid wikis.

    Patterico (ff4104)

  20. Re: Ted Rall’s artistic ability

    Under the circumstances*, it’s quite good.

    *The circumstances are that his head is completely within his lower intestine, making it impossible for him to see what he’s drawing.

    NickM (df4650)

  21. Stupid wikis.

    No, I think it was a fair allusion.

    Q. How can -1 have a square root?
    A. If you want to solve this equation, you’ll just have to imagine that it does.
    Q. But the equation is only a problem you made up to fit your solution into.
    A. The Pythagorean conceit that mathematics must correspond to measurable physical phenomena was abandoned a long time ago.

    How come when lawyers make up stuff like that we’re called BS artists, and when mathematicians do it they’re called geniuses?

    nk who's been experiencing grade school again (875f57)

  22. Mendoucheous twatwaffles will be mendoucheous twatwaffles. It is what they do, in my humble opinion.

    JD (b63a52)

  23. I’m following Patterico’s dismantling of Ted Rall on twitter.

    Teddy Boy is so typical of the left—they all like to dish it out with knives facing out, but their glass jaws cannot sustain even a gentle slap to the face. Left wingers simply cannot handle cross-examination.

    I realize that Ted Rall probably had a difficult childhood, and I’m sorry that he did, but that’s not a license to be a vile hater as an adult.

    Lots of people have had difficult childhoods.

    Elephant Stone (6a6f37)


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