Ted Rall

I had previously read two others of Ted Rall’s political graphic non-fictions – Trump: A Graphic Biography and Bernie. I often feel unlearned and at sea discussing politics, but I don’t have the patience to read political tomes, so the graphic novel format works well for me as an introduction to some of these ideas.

Ted Rall is firmly behind Bernie Sanders as he sees much of the rest of the Dems having slithered to the right and caved in to big corporations.

Some of his talking points:

Once in office, Barrack Obama backed corporation friendly politics.

Hillary Clinton’s control of the DNC stole the 2016 nomination from Bernie Sanders.

Third party candidates should not be considered spoilers, but viable alternatives. The only problem is that with electoral colleges, they need huge numbers to win states even if they achieve popular vote such as what happened with Ralph Nader.

The mainline press can torpedo a worthy candidate by not covering them example - of this was Howard Dean’s campaign.

“The Democratic Party today is less about historically disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities and women than it is about urban upwardly mobile minorities and women” p 143

I’m not a fan of Ted Rall’s drawings, but his political points are thoughtworthy.… (more)

I read this book on the night of February 22, 2022 as news out of the Ukraine was looking dire. I write this on the night of the 24 as Russia's invasion has begun. A curious bit of synchronicity that has definitely colored my thoughts on the book, as I've bounced between thinking about that invasion and this book over the last 48 hours.

On its own, the book is a fun romp, and something of a revenge narrative for a journalist embittered by what the news industry in general, and war reporting in particular, has become. The main conceit is that a disaffected war reporter realizes "they know everyone" -- all the players on both sides, legit and not, and starts manipulating events for his own advantage. its a super-spy goes rogue narrative -- only the superspy didn't start in an agency, but on a paper. On its own, fun, but not necessarily great -- and at times a bit self-indulgent in some odd macho, professional version of what I've heard mocked as "mary sue"-ism in other contexts.

That said, that basic premise of the book fits into my personal confirmation bias on what the role of a journalist really is--something I'm probably more prone to look for in the context of current events...

Late stage European monarchs often had a network (spies, secret police, etc.) that reported directly to them aside and independent from their official and formal government. It was a way to make sure they actually were being fed accurate information by their ministers, and that their ministers were actually doing their jobs. If we take the idea of "popular sovereignty" seriously -- well, then we see that in a modern democratic republic journalists actually serve the same role. This is why, while I abhor it, when "western" journalists are targeted by autocratic regimes, I understand why and think the idea of "innocent bystanders" is fairly ridiculous. This is also why in a time like now, where we trust and value neither our journalists nor our officials we are in such a dangerous place. Just think of how many monarchs/dynasties have crumbled because a sovereign no longer knew whom to trust and didn't value those who would tell them the truth no matter how disquieting.. the west, and my own nation in particular, seem to be tipping over that precipice.

(2022 Book 6)… (more)

Waste of time. I picked this up because the cover didn't look familiar, but it ended up being the revised 2019 edition of a book I had read a decade before. I didn't like it then, and I do not like it now. By the way, if you're going to put out a revised edition, why not fix all the errors -- misspellings, word omissions -- in the text?

Anyhow, Rall presents himself as an entitled ass whose problems are always someone else's fault. He ends up suspended from Columbia University and chooses homelessness for a summer because, "My mom would happily wire me some cash, but her price, humiliation and infantilization, would be too high."

The marketing pushes how he slept with women in order to avoid sleeping on the streets, but he really doesn't spend much time on that and does little to develop the women as characters even though he mostly rotated regularly through only a handful of them.

The writing is very episodic with no real structure or arc. The art is stiff and mediocre.… (more)