Pat Tillman Revisited
Here's the Tillman cartoon again. I've been thinking about Krakauer's sliming. Know what's funny?
He wouldn't even have book to write if it weren't for me. My cartoon was the first shot across the bow that this story stank, although no one knew exactly how much. It prompted a national debate about Tillman and his motivations that ultimately got some of his comrades to confess that the Army had covered up the circumstances of his death.
Krakauer can keep his apology. But my agent wants our 15% royalties.
He wouldn't even have book to write if it weren't for me. My cartoon was the first shot across the bow that this story stank, although no one knew exactly how much. It prompted a national debate about Tillman and his motivations that ultimately got some of his comrades to confess that the Army had covered up the circumstances of his death.
Krakauer can keep his apology. But my agent wants our 15% royalties.
posted by Ted Rall at
11:44 AM
22 Comments:
Ted,
You break a rule that is the cornerstone of our culture. When you are always ahead of the curve, you are supposed to remain the quiet, outcast sage, brooding in the corner. You are never supposed to claim credit.
You will notice that when you stick up for yourself, one of the complaints that always come back is that you look bitter, or that you come off as petty. It never occurs to our style-obsessed culture to evaluate whether you are right, despite how you might appear as a result of breaking the graciousness principle.
Do you live in a vaccum!? YOU WEREN'T THE ONLY ONE THAT THOUGHT THE WHOLE THING WAS FISHY. STEP OUT OF YOUR BUBBLE MR. RALL.
Ted, as a fan of yours going back to the Colin-Powell-with-a-vial-at-the-UN-days I woud like to say, when it comes to you and legal action GO GO GO MAN, GO!
I have seen you harassed in five different ways and if you want me to write letters I'm all for it. In fact, if the American Right can get away with it, why not the left. I'll right an angry letter to Jon Krakauer, and you pirsie legal action.
If all your other fan write letters, that'll be even great!
C'mon guys, lets show Ted our support.
I'll have a letter to Krak-whore ready by this time tomorrow!
Sincerely
Y_S
Pakistan
PS
This news and their smiling happy faces reminded me of your old cartoon from
here
"Do you live in a vaccum!? YOU WEREN'T THE ONLY ONE THAT THOUGHT THE WHOLE THING WAS FISHY. STEP OUT OF YOUR BUBBLE MR. RALL."
Really? Who? When? It took AGES for anyone else to start poking holes in Bush's lies about Tillman. I wasn't just first. I was alone...for a long time.
Mr. Rall, I thought I would take this chance to settle both of your points that you were basically handling Afghanistan and Tillman all by your lonesome self. I would also like to show you that there were people protesting the war in Afghanistan.
For Afghanistan, here are two articles written by the ISO: http://socialistworker.org/2001/378/378_07_Afghanistan.shtml , http://socialistworker.org/2001/386/386_07_USOilInterests.shtml . One is dated 9/28/2001! The other is in December of the same year. But yes... you were the ONLY person who was speaking out against this.
As for Tillman, here are is one article http://socialistworker.org/2004-1/498/498_09_Tillman.shtml , printed May 7th 2004 no less! And here is a letter to the editor printed July 9th 2004 http://socialistworker.org/2004-2/506/506_04_Tillman.shtml .
Lastly, here are three articles (and there are more) discussing the protests of people opposed to the war in Afghanistan as being wrong before the US even started. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/nyc-o12.shtml , http://www.democracynow.org/2001/10/1/thousands_take_to_the_streets_in , http://dailybruin.com/stories/2001/sep/29/thousands-march-in-westwood-to/ . Anecdotally, even my high school at the time had a spontanous demonstration leading up to the war. I believe some students were expelled for a brief time because of it.
I will admit that there may not have been anyone with quite your reach discussing these topics, and that the demonstrations may have been small. But it stands that other people are aware of these things! People were writing and protesting just as fervently as you.
I don't know if your friends are apathetic or just don't care about what's around them. I don't know if you have some kind of stringent standard of what is "really" a protest or an article. I don't know if you have such a multitude of work that you find it hard to get a full view of everything.
But if there is one thing I would like to make clear, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And as soon as you and other people like you understand that, it will strengthen the overall movement. This self serving "Well, *I* was against the war before anyone else" stuff is hurting cohesion.
Perhaps it would have more accurate to say that I was alone, except for ineffectual political parties so totally marginalized by the two-party system that they've forgotten Marx's maxim that It's the Revolution, Stupid. In the MSM, I have been alone...
http://socialistworker.org/2001/378/378_07_Afghanistan.shtml is a history of imperial aggression against Afghanistan. http://socialistworker.org/2001/386/386_07_USOilInterests.shtml is brief history of the Unocal oil pipeline scheme. Neither article overtly calls the invasion of Afghanistan illegal or unwinnable.
As for Tillman, here are is one article http://socialistworker.org/2004-1/498/498_09_Tillman.shtml certainly doesn't go where I did with Tillman, calling him and others who enlisted in the Bush-era military immoral and stupid. Nothing but compliments to the man, there—this from a communist party?
http://socialistworker.org/2004-2/506/506_04_Tillman.shtml is a letter to the editor.
Sadly, as laudable as the Socialist Worker's efforts may have been, they may as well have never happened...because no one noticed. My cartoon, on the other hand, ran in The Washington Post and other major dailies, igniting a massive controversy—and discussion.
Lastly, here are three articles (and there are more) discussing the protests of people opposed to the war in Afghanistan as being wrong before the US even started.
I like WSWS, but http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/nyc-o12.shtml exaggerates the turnout at the Oct. 7, 2001 event as badly as the teabagger rallies. I was there—10,000, my ass. 300 or 400, tops. Moreover, that was NOT an anti-Afghan War rally: " The perspective of the march organizers was limited to appeals to the Bush administration and the Democrats to abandon military action, calling instead for bringing terrorists before a “new, specialized international tribunal with jurisdiction over terrorist crimes.” Puh-leeze. With "radicals" like these...
Yeah, OK, I missed these two: http://www.democracynow.org/2001/10/1/thousands_take_to_the_streets_in (I hope the numbers weren't inflated.)
http://dailybruin.com/stories/2001/sep/29/thousands-march-in-westwood-to/
"I will admit that there may not have been anyone with quite your reach discussing these topics, and that the demonstrations may have been small. But it stands that other people are aware of these things! People were writing and protesting just as fervently as you."
Well, yes, my criticism is that these protests were small. Ridiculously small. And now non-existent.
"I don't know if you have some kind of stringent standard of what is "really" a protest or an article."
I have a hard time taking any protest seriously that is peaceful. A non-violent protest represents no threat to the existing order.
I also have to admit that to me, there is still a big difference between an Op/Ed in The New York Times and one in Socialist Worker.
In the MSM, I was the ONLY person willing to stick my neck out over and over and over...and I've paid a price for it. During that time, my supposed "comrades" couldn't be bothered to defend me against right-wing attacks, including assaults at my own home. Hell, when I was drummed out of one newspaper after another, the "left" didn't even email letters to the editor to stand up for me. Instead, "liberals" emailed me that Afghanistan was the "good war" and that I needed to shut up and follow the Democratic Party line.
Am I pissed off? You bet.
"This self serving "Well, *I* was against the war before anyone else" stuff is hurting cohesion."
"Cohesion"? What cohesion? The left loves to eat its own.
I get treated worse by the left than by the right.
Number of times I have been invited on Fox News: 22
Number of times I have been invited on Democracy Now!: 0
Number of corporate right-wing papers that run my work: 94
Number of socialist papers that run my work: 2
Believe me, I would love this to change...but I doubt it will until there really is a revolution.
Ted was also the last liberal voice to be kicked off the radio.
In California at the time, I would listen to KFI and KABC all day (when the righties were pacifist). Ted was the only progressive on the radio in LA.
Were there HAM radio operators in their room railing against Clinton's free trade nonsense? Probably.
Thanks, Angelo! Air America also wanted no part of me--I'm too liberal for those centrist DLC types.
To continue my rant above, notice how the right takes care of its own. Ann Coulter, for example, appears at mainstream conservative conventions. (I've never been invited to speak at a single Democratic or left-of-center gathering.) Coulter also gets fake "#1 bestsellers" because right-wing groups order her books by the thousands and give them away as premiums to their members. Lefties never do that.
If they weren't fascists, I wish I were a right-winger.
In my own small space, I know a bit how Ted Rall feels at having been 'alone.' Several years ago, I expressed an opinion contrary to a well-accepted myth (in my estimation) on an AOL messageboard. I received a shitstorm of vile attacks on the messageboard. A simple metaphor I used was taken as literal (like the Christian Bible's history of man) when opposing views couldn't follow a reasoned suggestion. It goes without saying, the person to whom I referred is treated like a god, was treated like a god when he was alive and displaying symptoms that would normally find a person in a place of authority either gently or with prejudice ousted from that position of authority and power. There's no talking to half of American 'adults' when one suggests an idea that requires some actual thinking. The threat to their fantasy heroes is tremendous. They would kill the messenger if they could find the troublemaker, as right-wing yahoos often do, or their mentally-challenged worshippers do (murders of abortion-clinic doctors, bombings of clinics, for example).
Ted has gone to areas where he could have been killed by mentally-challenged persons wearing uniforms and/or allowed to carry automatic weapons (or American-college-educated military officers who went back to their countries of birth), unlike the right-wing carpetbaggers Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin and many of George W. Bush's heroic and patriotic armchair warriors. I never read that Ted Rall made a 'surprise visit' to a stan or Iraq.
Courage isn't only manifested by someone receiving disabling wounds or dying while wearing a military uniform or wrapping themselves in the flag while holding the Christian Bible. Ted has remarkably kept his cool when confronted by mad-dog media types who make more and more money the louder they shriek and toss stink bombs and sling mud, because he's honest and right most of the time. His detractors make tons of money by creating division in our American community by pandering to the lowest level of what arguably is referred to as thinking.
I still can't believe Maureen Dowd wrote that George W. Bush is intelligent. The best I can say is that Bush is well trained to recognize when he has pandered to the right, corrupt, criminal, ignorant elements in our society, not unlike Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
Any typos, mea culpa.
More endless bitterness from Rall. It's just so tiresome. On and on and on and on. Boring. Also, mostly untrue.
anon 6:50 pm
Sez you-ooo and Fox noo-ooz! Ted Rall's been out there for YEARS, while we can take our cheap shots and otherwise in the relative anonymity of anonymity, such as it is. Ted doesn't write about himself and black out ENTIRE paragraphs of personal information, as witnessed from the hallowed public records of the former pee-Resident, George War Criminal Bush. Want to see a true waste of talent? Check out the very tired rants of Glenn McCoy, hardly out of diapers AND the CLONE of Irving 'Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish' Kristol.
Coulter also gets fake "#1 bestsellers" because right-wing groups order her books by the thousands and give them away as premiums to their members. Lefties never do that.
What proof do you have of this?
They would kill the messenger if they could find the troublemaker, as right-wing yahoos often do, or their mentally-challenged worshippers do (murders of abortion-clinic doctors, bombings of clinics, for example).
Pot? Kettle?
But but...
Your cartoon isn't saying that the circumstances of his death were "fishy"!! It just takes a different perspective on what was, at the time, the standard story.
The cartoon promotes rather than challenging the then-popular idea that Tillman was gung-ho for the wars that he participated in, it promotes rather than challenging the then-popular idea that Tillman died in a manner typical of how soldiers die in war.
"More endless bitterness from Rall. It's just so tiresome. On and on and on and on. Boring. Also, mostly untrue."
I agree wholeheartedly. Nevermind the substance of what Ted is talking about. Lets just endlessly comment on the way his post makes us feel.
When people stick up for themselves, lets just talk about how bitter they are. Yeah, and boring. Let's also just throw in "untrue" lest we actually address the actual content of what he is saying.
...what was he saying again?
"But but...
Your cartoon isn't saying that the circumstances of his death were "fishy"!! It just takes a different perspective on what was, at the time, the standard story."
More accurately, it challenges the media's positive spin on the then-popular idea that Tillman was a gung-ho pro-Bush moron.
Obviously I didn't know he had died of "friendly fire." But my cartoon was the first "Fuck that" statement to the nascent Tillman Death Cult. And it eventually, in a curious round-about way, led to what we know today.
"What proof do you have of this?"
It's not my responsibility to make you read the news. Google it. You'll see.
Thanks for the reply (to "But but..."). Your original different perspective on the Tillman death, and the courage to stick your neck out at a "patriotic" mob, are appreciated (though I never liked that comic much; too crude in how it makes its point, in my opinion).
Still, I think it's a hell of a leap for you to suggest that your being a lone voice of dissent, "in a curious round-about way", planted a seed or something. Regardless, in time, the Glory Of War media nonsense surrounding Tillman's death would have morphed into more of a "what a waste" sentiment, even if the "friendly fire" and Chomsky aspects of the story never came out. And (thanks in large measure to his mother) those things were going to come out.
Ted you the man. Very few people in the media have been there like you. Period.
I made lots of money so to speak on this, as I wrote earlier (years ago) I bet people immediately when he announced the whole patriotic joining the goon squad. I bet that they would kill him. People were incensed, they didn't understand. I said that was the only way. They didn't get that the tightrope was too long and too narrow. It couldn't have ended any other way. A high profile person with means and a voice could only go one way. It was sad but should have been expected
When he died people were relieved and wanted to rub my face in it. But I knew and redoubled. It was a lesson they had to learn.
In fact I am surely not alone in this. Many people here are tired of arguing with others as to who is correct, I let these people believe what they want but make it expensive for them. That way they will pierce their cocoon and "wake up". It works sometimes.
Again you the man. No way would I travel to the places you do, with or without protection. Against the prevailing forces. Hats off to you.
Ted,
I'm a long time fan.
Your cartoon after Mr Tillman's death upset me alot because I had some knowledge of Pat's motivations and that he was a true Freethinker.
I got over it, because you recognized quickly that Pat's death was used by the corrupt government and the Religious Reich.
Like when the news that Pat wasn't a Christian came out, The Christianists were all: "He's in Hell", whereas before he was their highest hero.
C'mon Ted. Don't be like that.
There's much more work to be done, and you are in a position that the rest of us can only envy.
Be a Hero too.
One of the many, many faults of the Bush Admin was their willingness to spin, or re-write, history to create a more positive narrative around their many fuck-ups.
I am certainly a fan of much of your work, but with regard to the Tillman narrative, you fucked up. You got the story wrong. And your attempt to re-write it by claiming you exposed the fishy story doesn't hold up. There is no credible interpetation of your Tillman comic that paints him as the honorable man that he was being used by the Evil Empire. He opposed the war in Iraq, & he resisted Bush attempts to be exploited.
And it was Tilllman's family that got the story out, it wasn't your comic.
Sorry to be harsh, I am a fan. But you need to man up and take the heat when you screw up, and you did (in my opinion) screw up this story.
"The left-wing editorial cartoonist Ted Rall denigrated [Tillman] in a four-panel comic strip as an 'idiot' who joined the Army to 'kill Arabs.'"
That's the entire, verbatim reference to Rall's strip in Krakauer's book. How is that a "sliming," as opposed to a completely accurate description of the the strip?
More mysteriously, how is it that someone whose career is based on publishing brutally savage insight about others so thin-skinned that he'd refer to a completely accurate and relatively neutral description of his own work as a "sliming?"?
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