APPALLING RALL Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Ted Rall. Though his cartoons are peddled by the Universal Press Syndicate, Rall’s bitter anti-Americanism hardly makes for knee-slappers, and the market for unfunny cartoons isn’t all that great. The Rall market should shrink even further as word spreads about his latest effort. Calling it a lapse of taste doesn’t begin to capture the sociopathic quality of his Feb. 28 cartoon–a six-panel display of deranged misogyny. Perhaps tired of beating up on President Bush, Rall decided instead to ridicule “terror widows”–his term for the women who lost their husbands on Sept. 11–for being interviewed on TV. What really seems to have set him off was seeing Daniel Pearl’s pregnant wife plead for the life of her husband. Most people were moved to tears; Rall was moved to mockery. How else to explain this panel in his cartoon? “Of course it’s a bummer that they slashed my husband’s throat–but the worst was having to watch the Olympics alone!” The rest of the panels are scarcely less obscene. You might have seen the “cartoon” in question if you happened to read the online edition of the New York Times last week, before a vigilance committee of bloggers rode to the rescue of Rall’s victims, and the Times sensibly removed the thing. You can still see all of it, if you’re feeling masochistic, by browsing to images. ucomics.com/comics/tr/2002/tr020304.gif. (The Times says it removed the cartoon after local reporters complained. “We thought the subject matter was inappropriate,” a spokeswoman told the Daily News.) Given his pathological meanspiritedness, Rall finds himself in the curious position, as Andrew Sullivan noted last week, of suing a fellow cartoonist for being mean to him. The Rall lawsuit was filed after a practical joke played by Danny Hellman in 1999. It all started when Rall published a story in the Village Voice, complaining that up-and-coming cartoonists had to pay undue obeisance to Art Spiegelman, the renowned cartoonist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Hellman thought Rall’s complaints were petty and drew a cartoon depicting Rall as a dog urinating on a statue of Spiegelman. Then Hellman sent a fake e-mail to about 30 friends, as well as to Rall, claiming to be Ted Rall himself and saying he had set up a website for struggling cartoonists to vent their anger over Art Spiegelman. Hellman also published fake e-mail responses, all humiliating Rall. On the malice-o-meter, this strikes us as registering substantially below the ridicule of war widows. But like many people who dish it out, Rall couldn’t take it. After two days, he sicced his lawyers on Hellman for $1.5 million in damages–for libel, injurious falsehood invasion of privacy, and, yes, intentional infliction of emotional distress. We suspect once they see Rall’s cartoon, lots more people might be wanting to make a contribution to the Danny Hellman legal defense fund. Details of his case can be found at www.speranzastudios.com/freedirtydanny/. GIVE HER THE SILVER BOOT! Poor Ann Richards. She just can’t help it. She’s a bitter old Texas Democrat and professional Bush-hater who hasn’t kept up with the times. Speaking at a recent Drama League gala in New York honoring gossip columnist Liz Smith, the former governor of the Lone Star State couldn’t resist getting in a few jabs at the president. According to the New York Post, Richards said, “They don’t know how to count votes in Florida,” and “Enron is running the Bush administration’s energy policy.” Richards was perhaps unaware that major events had taken place in New York since the Florida recount, and that she probably needed to calibrate her remarks accordingly. If you recall, back in 1988 at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Richards had ridiculed Bush pere as follows: “For eight straight years George Bush hasn’t displayed the slightest interest in anything we care about, [but now that] he’s after a job he can’t get appointed to, he’s like Columbus discovering America–he’s found child care, he’s found education. . . . Poor George, he can’t help it–he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” It was a convoluted metaphor, but she had them at “poor George.” Her audience lapped it up as a bravura display of wit. No more. At the recent gala, Richards’s hackneyed partisan cracks about Enron drew boos from the assembled New Yorkers. So negative was the reaction, Richards turned to Liz Smith and said, “I didn’t know you had so many Republican friends.” It’s not that they’re all Republican. They just know a tired routine when they hear one. THOSE DEVIOUS REPUBLICANS Bill Press, the thinking man’s James Carville, is like a lot of Democrats these days. Whatever the Bush administration is up to, he’s pretty sure it’s a partisan plot. Thus his peculiar spin on the administration’s contingency planning to assure the continuity of government in case of catastrophic attack on Washington: “If we weren’t so gullible now,” the CNN talking head wrote in his syndicated column last week, “we would see Bush’s bunker plan for what it really is. It has nothing to do with national security. It is all about politics. Like John Ashcroft’s monthly terrorist alerts, it’s all part of the White House attempts to scare the public, keep the focus on the war and enable Dubya to keep his favorable ratings high by playing commander in chief.” Yeah, right. That must be why they kept it secret. THE COURAGE OF HEATHER LOCKLEAR More than a few eyebrows must have been raised when Heather Locklear was overheard badmouthing the president last week on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” “He’s a scumbag,” said the vixen of “Spin City” and formerly of “Melrose Place” (and really formerly of “T.J. Hooker”). But Locklear was quick to clarify: She was talking about President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, on “The West Wing”–you know, that show about a dreamy Democratic president who battles right-wing extremists every Wednesday night? Leno was asking Locklear if it was strange to work with Sheen, who was appearing with son Charlie, on “Spin City,” because he’s, like, the president. And that’s when she made her opinion known (and just as quickly, Leno moved on to less contentious topics like plastic surgery). Calling President Bartlet a scumbag is probably more dangerous in L.A. than saying it about Bush. The Scrapbook hopes Heather’s candor doesn’t get her blacklisted.
