"Peace Activists" (a misnomer) Re: Do Everythinger

[Michael Pugliese]

BTW, the new Ted Rall book is excellent.

<< Chuck0 >>

   http://www.tcj.com/247/e_giuffo.html
Ted Rall and His Web of Half-Truths: A Critique
By John Giuffo

"Journalistic hyperbole has no place here ..."
- Ted Rall, from Afghanistan

At a time when the country is overrun by jingoistic sentimentalism, voices of dissent that call into 
question the extent of the War On Terror and the character of the conflict are desperately needed. Ted 
Rall's opinions on those issues then, are that much more valuable because they are so rare. But they 
are also more burdened by the need to hew closely to the facts. Effective dissent requires accuracy, 
not intellectual dishonesty. Lies can't be skewered with more lies. But Rall has a way of ignoring the 
facts that don't fit his preconceived notions.

In short, Ted Rall is giving dissent a bad name.

Time after time in his syndicated strips and columns since Sept. 11, he has shown a tendency to 
distort or exaggerate in order to make a point. His book, To Afghanistan and Back, is a distillation 
of his shoddy and ideologically blind war reportage. The Wall Street Journal and the New Republic have 
called him anti-American, but that's not really accurate. Of course, he does see only the negative 
aspects of America, but that's because he tends to see only the negative aspects of everything. He's a 
cynic, but more to the point, he's a hack.

And that's a bad thing for a political cartoonist to be -- especially one whose work appears regularly 
on the websites for the Washington Post and the New York Times, where potentially millions of readers 
can encounter his work. Meaningful and incisive political cartoons and commentary, especially those 
that attack the common wisdom, must be, at their core, true to the facts. Rall's have been anything 
but. He regularly exaggerates, excludes relevant information from his "analyses," and just plain gets 
the facts wrong.
<snip>
Michael Pugliese