Recent Comments

1. almost 14 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   Bolling joins many, including the hero Leslie Fiedler, following Albert Bigelow Paine (1912 ) into the delusion that “Jim” has an EPITHET, that he’s like “Pious Aeneas” or “Ingenious Odysseus” or “My Cid” (“African American Jim”). The character Jim has no epithet; important to note, survives a century of delusion because, as you will see if you look at Chapter 2, he’s set apart as the big-souled artist, who, like “Sam” [eponym for the blackman, like “George,” I hear, for Pullman Car Porter] Clemens in real life, commands a paying audience with the product of his imagination. Regarding “ridden by witches,” see Richard Dorson, Negro Folk Tales, nineteen fifty something. I met a guy like Huck this morning, young, needing to say whatever the situation demands; I may misunderestimate him. Stuart

2. about 14 years ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   For me, this strip clarifies–taxes down, profits up, disturbing unemployment “soft,” deficit down, stock market up–and it makes an assertion–the well off, the comfortable hate the Democrats and make these false claims with some mobilization of latent American racial hostility; and the strip asks why. And then the strip offers one answer, to wit, that many among the well off hate humanity–meaning that which is humane–even hating beans, so called, for a duck, so-called. Each of us might ask: what is in in us, in ordinary Americans that makes us vulnerable–to paid-for stories that lure us into opposition against our own interests and opposition to the welfare of those we love?

3. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   In first panel, an unshaven man stands on an outside building ledge above the tops of other visible highrise buildings and comments. Second: a man in his picket-fenced, treed and flowered yard cuts the grass with a power mower and comments. Third: President points to a target with Centerville at the center, Dayton at two o’clock in the fourth ring (rather than eleven o’clock), Kettering behind a talk balloon between, and Miamis)burg to the left, and comments (Yellow Springs not shown). Fourth, on a roof or a floating raft, with a two thirds submerged house in the background, a wet or sweaty or emotionally affected male–Katrina victim–in a tan shirt with the sleeves torn off and a tan baseball cap on backwards that looks like a coonskin cap, holds a piece of paper–relief check and exchanges ironies with a suited and tied man who speaks for the federal government,.

4. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Pray for sinners, of whom I am chief. The panel publicizes the actor’s bizarre suicide and ridicules his folly. The party includes two soldiers and two women from olden days and two modern American adults, one a woman driver killed in a car wreck and one, the autoerotic asphyxiation victim identified by “orest” as the actor. I suppose that few psychoanalysts would see an accident here as the panel does. It focuses his “victimization” on the autoeroticism. That makes it an accident. ALL he was trying to do was get pleasure or off or both and he wound up dead. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Folly. Satire is to ridicule wickedness and folly. I doubt the panel intends to imply wickedness. I doubt many psychoanalysts would find it all that accidental. I admit I know nothing about the Carradines, but whenever someone famous’s son kills himself, I wonder what the pressures were, and whether help would not have helped. It’s not so funny to me. Maybe the publicity can warn someone to cool it on the extreme indoor sports, but it feels to me more like making a gag out of a death before the so-called decent interval. Or maybe not.

5. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   Daylight through the window. Clv or Chigo. Or could be subway outdoors in daytime. Modern art on car wall. Balding man holding straphanger has saber in teeth, wears striped shirt and striped tie. Woman holding pole has sharp protruding lower-jaw teeth. Young man seated reads “Felon Today.” All escapees. White trio rob and murder Gitmo detainee escaping from civilian confinement (“close door after escape”). We are more dangerous than they are! Ex-Guantanomo detainee is gentle and off his guard, so automatic or semiautomatic weapon he carries gets no use. I go with this. Seven years of solitary would have driven me mad(der) and made me passive. It’s a parody of the law of compensation, the law of the free market: what eases up here, tightens up there; supply up, price down; price up, supply up. The robber-murderers have the excuse that the brown man is brown and dangerous, “ji[had]-head” as in towel-head. My prejudices are turned against me. We have met the enemy and … I like this because I am sick with rage over the complicity of people–writers–who should know better in the stupid dehumanization of people we kill and rob, as we have killed and robbed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand that that is the attitude of war–Tolstoy shows it in the scene of Pierre’s last day confined by the French as the troops begin to move; NBlake shows it in Churchill’s night bombings supposed to anger the Germans but at bottom to militate the British; Lincoln too had to mobilize the citizens; all, Hitler, Tito, you have to do it. SO ROUSING PEOPLE INTO THE WARLIKE ATTITUDE IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN NUCLEAR ARMS. (TR calls for the president to resign, but I for one would not accept his resignation.)

6. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   I don’t know where, if anywhere, before Peanuts, the subject addresses the audience in last panel. Granted that it’s a reflection to himself, he does offer a toast, a social act, and since he is not Old Eben Flood, it is as if others can join in his small celebration of “small victories.” The small victory is against the prevalence of euphemisms, an aspect of hypocrisy, justified to spare the feelings of the sensitive and avoid disturbing the children. The woman is right–the human resources worker–that “firing” implies cause, but there are other aspects. The last time I was “laid off,” it was that, on the surface, but there was cause–in my case–beneath the ostensible neutrality of it. As I like to say to myself, if I hadn’t antagonized the city manager, he might have stood up for me to the city clerk, and if I hadn’t antagonized the city clerk, she might have stood up for me to the city manager–in other words, it was good riddance under cloak of neutrality cost saving. There is a PROBLEM, however, in that we always FEEL we were at fault and could have prevented it if we’d been better, BUT IT’S NOT SO–even in my case, as just described. When they have the money, ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS THAT YOU SHOW UP; and when they don’t, THE ANGELIC HOST COULD SHOW UP AND THEY’D LAY THEM ALL OFF–in fact, have done so several times.

7. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   John Sweat Rock of New Jersey addressing the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1862, approximate quotation: “While Mr. Lincoln has not done all that I had hoped he might, I believe that he is an honest man and is doing what he can to remove the degradation and shame brought upon the nation by Mr. Buchanan and his predecessors.” Not the exact words, see Great Speeches by African Americans, Dover Thriftbooks, $3.50

8. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   I will get back and read more of these comments and don’t expect anyone to get this far, just want to say, the paranoia towards Muslims, Arabs, and most of our prisoners, is a mystery to me, is bleeep to me. The Swedes have taken in 80 thousand or more of the millions of displaced Iraqi’s and we took none until last year and maybe a sixth of that number. Whom are you gentlemen afraid of having live amont us? bleeep, you’ve already got me, for one. And if some of our prisoners–after years in solitary and other treatment meant to drive men mad–are tried in our courts, what scares you about that, apart from the danger that some of our courts will prove as hysterical, paranoid, and xenophobic as the rest of us? Respectfully …

9. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

   First panel: general who looks like Abraham Lincoln, the wartime president, demonstrates prevalent U.S. media attitude of concern for our people,’s survival, health, safety and feelings, and utter lack of same for those other people’s survival, health, safety, or feelings. Second, third, and fourth, Afghan guy shown darker, absurdly affectionate towards U.S. military personnel. Colbert-style fatuous jingoism with unexplained use of “gay” as pejorative, either in the fatuous pose or not. Afghan guy gives U.S. soldier a new car. What I perceive as outrageous exaggeration might be an accurate portrayal of U.S. attitudes that it satirizes, might not be outrageous exaggeration; plus an effective assertion of the continued existence of U.S. “torture prison”(s) that I want to believe are gone.

10. over 15 years ago on Ted Rall

    The monster labeled quote Obama quote is speaking rather than thinking. His speech balloon uses pictures: a man in a black pointed hood and orange jumpsuit labeled detainee whom rope suspends by both arms and electric wires serve to torture, a drone pilot in earphones working bombings from afar, a drone, bombs, and explosions. His clumsy claws clutch an oversize coffee cup amid coffee spills. An ordinary man at an adjacent table works a smartphone and looks sidelong at the strange pair, which includes a lady facing the Obama monster. She has a demitasse with a stirrer in it, wears a lavendar sleeveless jersey with red collar trim and a red bracelet on her right rist. Her elbows are on the table, hands clasped together. On her right upper arm and shoulder, quote I heart O quote, on the front of her jersey, quote Saturday looks good to me quote and a picture of a door opening, in her thought bubble a quote liberal’s paren noun paren quote, quote projection paren noun paren quote enclosing a frontal portrait of the president broader-faced, maturer, masculiner, with a vertical string of hearts alongside her hair and running from her tattooed shoulder to her thought balloon. The monster is as nasty as one could imagine, hair red, face–if you want to call it that–eyeless, fang horizontal from nostrils, cheeks, and chin–if you want to call it that–and so forth.