Wow. I never thought in a million years that I would agree with super-conservatve Bill O'Reilly on anything. But after the flap over Ted Rall's cartoon about Pat Tillman, I actually side with O'Reilly; Rall was out of line and insulted the family of a dead soldier in order to make his point about the uselessness of the war in Iraq.
If you haven't been following this on the news, Ted Rall is an ultra-liberal political cartoonist whose cartoons appear in some 140 newspapers across the country. On Monday, most of those 140 newspapers opted not to run Rall's latest cartoon, which depicted Pat Tillman, an NFL player who opted to join the army rather than continue his football career, in a negative light. Tillman was killed in action, and Rall's cartoon calls him a "sap" and an "idiot."
Most newspapers (including MSNBC) will not post the cartoon, but you can see a copy of it here
While I agree with Rall's depiction of Bush as an untruthful, crazed man leading us into war with a country while offering pretty lame motivation for fighting, I think he (Rall) crossed a line insulting the dead soldier. He has every right to say what he wants, and I won't be boycotting his cartoon any time soon, but this particular column is just plain bad. I can't imagine what the Tillman family's reaction was when they saw the cartoon.
The transcript of the O'Reilly interview with Ted Rall can be found here.
What do you think?
Posted by Jen at May 5, 2004 12:50 PMwow that's not nice. the guy is dead for crying out loud. i always note that there is a difference between not agreeing with the war and disrespecting our troops.
Posted by: kat at May 5, 2004 1:29 PMI saw the cartoon on MSNBC's website yesterday and really thought it was wrong. I usually think Rall is good, even if I don't agree with him - not this time.
Posted by: John at May 5, 2004 2:08 PMI'm with you guys. That was just mean and rude.
Posted by: susan at May 5, 2004 3:16 PM