Ted Rall Sucks

[Annie]

There are too many ways to count. He is a "political cartoonist" and a pygmy of a person. At his website you can view his **cough**work**cough**, but you'll have to find the link yourself, I won't post it.

Today he wrote a screed, which is being 'fisked' http://volokh.com/2002_08_04_volokh_archive.html

The term refers to Robert Fisk, a journalist who wrote some rather foolish anti-war stuff, and who in particular wrote a story in which he (1) recounted how he was beaten by some anti-American Afghan refugees, and (2) thought they were morally right for doing so. Hence many pro-war blogs -- most famously, InstaPundit -- often use the term "Fisking" figuratively to mean a thorough and forceful verbal beating of an anti-war, possibly anti-American, commentator who has richly earned this figurative beating through his words. Good Fisking tends to be (or at least aim to be) quite logical, and often quotes the other article in detail, interspersing criticisms with the original article's text.

by a number of bloggers already. Here is a really decent one:

http://asmallvictory.net/archives/007414.html

A small excerpt:

Ted Rall's new column at Common Dreams -NYC to GOP: Drop Dead.

Ah, Ted. Even his titles are controversial.

Before I take this on from the beginning, I need to wade into the middle of this dirt to clear something up right off the bat.

Anti-Republican sentiment is rising to a fever pitch here as the dog days tick down to the dreaded affair. A poll cited by the local ABC affiliate shows 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want their city to host the RNC. And many of them are planning to do something about it.

I had to go searching for this poll because Ted doesn't link to it. There's a reason Ted doesn't link to it. His entire paragraph is dishonest. By throwing the words anti-Republican and fever pitch in there, Rall wants you to believe that 83% of New Yorkers are foaming at the mouth because the damn dirty Republicans are coming. Except, for most, politics doesn't even play into it.

From the NY ABC affiliate, where the poll originally appeared:

A recent survey by a Manhattan public relations firm found 83 percent of those polled do not want the Republican convention in town. When asked why, more than half, 53 percent, were worried about traffic, street closures, and security hassles.

That's right. 53% of 83% of the people polled were worried about being inconvenienced. You do the math. It doesn't quite add up to the anti-Republican fever that Rall thinks the entire city has come down with. It's not about Bush or Cheney or the war in Iraq. It's about parking.

Let's go back to the beginning now.