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| Fifth Column | |
| Ted Rall: "New York Times Caves to Republican Pressure, Cancels Ted Rall’s Cartoons" | |
| 2004-03-05 | |
Nurse Ratched! Ted’s decompensating again!
I don’t, but go on . . . you may have noticed a hole on the comics page where my work used to appear. It seems that, under the dismally lame cover of "moving in a different direction," the actual reason was probably something like "Sheesh! this guy’s a moonbat, and his drawings suck!" my cartoons were the only feature out of 10 (all supplied by Universal Press Syndicate) that the Times saw fit to drop. My trouble with the Times website dates back to the "terror widows" controversy. That cartoon, Ted’s finest example of "dismally lame" which appeared in March 2002, became the target of a coordinated email attack by right-wing "warbloggers." These pro-Bush bloggers, ". . . who bombard me with cosmic rays from their black helicopters as part of a secret plot to steal Afghanistan’s oil from Halliburton and . . ." coasting on a wave of post-9/11 patriotism, sent out emails to their followers (helpful souls forwarded some to me) asking each other to deluge the Times and other papers with complaints that purported to come from their readers. "How dare they use the first amendment like that!" The Times, under the mistaken belief that hundreds of their readers had complained about the cartoon, Query: if you run a newspaper, and you get hundreds of e-mails from your readers complaining about something in the newspaper, would you be mistaken to conclude that "hundreds of . . . readers had complained?" dropped that particular piece. Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact that the cartoon viciously insulted people who had lost family members on 9/11--quite a few of whom live in New York and subscribe to the Times. The fact of the matter is that what the Times has done here to me--and to you--represents a "I am an artist! I am entitled to have my work published by a large corporation without regard to its good taste or artistic quality!" They’ve sent the message that political pressure works. It’s one thing for an editor to decide that a cartoon no longer works for editorial reasons, or that it’s not as good as it used to be. . . . or was never any good in the first place. It’s quite another to cancel it simply because you’re tired of being deluged with hate mail. . . . unless Ted Rall sends the hate mail. Then, you have to do what he says ’cause Ted is always right. Dealing with feedback is an editor’s job. ". . . but he’s not allowed to respond to it if it interferes with my If you agree that the Times’ stifling of a On the other hand, if you think the Times did the right thing for once in its wretched existence, please tell them. Rall helpfully collects the e-mail addresses for you. | |
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