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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