People who'd call the late Mr Tillman an 'idiot' are f***wits

[ForrestGump]

And that includes this Ted Rall doofus, perpetrator of the worst-drawn and least funny anti-Bush cartoon that I've ever laid eyes upon.

Tillman's been hyped by the media postmortem, maybe, but that's hardly his fault -- that's what they do. Really brave to snipe at the corpse of this young man who actually did what so many of you armchair quarterbacks never would: actually take action and follow through with acting on his beliefs.

if the a**wipes amiong us could see and think about what they write, maybe they'd experience an epiphany of justified self-loathing and do something constructive like develop a sense of compassion or perspective. Or maybe not.

[toddzilla]

1. i agree

I think as progressives we tend to look for the worst way to interpret these things. This man acted with honor and courage, regardless of whether you agree with the war or not. To me, it really doesn't matter whether he was a football guy or not. His actions speak volumes about his integrity and willingness to fight what he perceived as the good fight.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. I agree. The media shameless in their hyping Tillman....

after his death. But's that the American Media. Ted Rall is
an A**H*l* for his cartoon(still it is protected speech). Tillman fought for something he sincerly believed in. He fought in the Real War on Terrorism!

[sniffa]

5. hmm

gotta see this ted raLL toon i've heard so much about now.

[progressiveBadger]

12. Here

http://www.ucomics.com/rallcom/

[Dookus]

3. Thanks Forrest

I agree entirely.

I usually like Rall but that cartoon was insanely out of line.

Tillman is being portrayed as a stereotypical young, dumb jock. From what I've read, that's not even close to the case. He was a bright, thoughtful man who made a selfless commitment. He died. That's tragic when it happens to anyone, and those who are pissing on his corpse now are... well, you said it best: fuckwits.

[frank frankly]

8. I usually like Rall, too

but he really fucked up with that cartoon.

[quispquake]

11. Yup, he did...

I love Rall's stuff, but even I was offended by this one...

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. I completely agree.

[Killarney]

6. I agree

thanks for this post

To be honest, I'm ashamed of some of the things my fellow liberals have been saying about him.

It's people like that that give liberals the anti-American reputation.

[sniffa]

17. pshaw

we're gonna be LabeLed anti-american no matter what we do or say.

[ForrestGump]

19. Who cares what we're LABELED as?

It's what kind of people we are that really matters. If you know in your heart that you're not a f***wit, then you're going to be okay.

[bhunt70]

7. signed.

[Az]

9. It is a pity

As we need every voice we can get against Bushco. But not this sort. If hadn't read his previous strips I would almost assume he was trying to make antibush types look bad.

[Bluzmann57]

10. Its people like that who give Dems a bad name

"Oh I'm so self righteous, Tillman wasn't a hero, he was a jerk," etc. The elitists are what has made liberal a dirty word in some minds. Maybe you ivory towered intellectuals should come down here with the rest of us working stiffs. Said it before and I'll say it again, Tillman, whether hero or not, at least was not afraid to back up his beliefs, unlike a great number of people out there, including in DU land. So if you all want to accuse me of being a "stupid white man" or whatever because I'm a blue collar, non intellectual guy, then so be it. And ForrestGump, I agree, that Rall cartoon was in extremely poor taste.

29. How do you know Rall is a Democrat?

:)
edit-- maybe he's a socialist,
maybe he's a Communist!:scared:
maybe he's an anarchist:nuke:

maybe he's a cartoonist

[Tim4319]

13. I agree with you!

The only thing I have beef with is, Pat Tillman was not the only person to die. No knock against what Pat Tillman did. Because, he gave up a lot of money! I commend him and thank him very much for doing what he did. But, I have beef with the way all of the other service men and women who were killed in the line of duty, and are given their proper respects almost in secrecy. I know other soldiers didn't turn down millions of dollars. But, they did give up something that they had in common with Pat Tillman. That is family. I believe these other troops should get their recognition for making the ultimate sacrifice. Their lives!

[tom_paine]

14. I agree, except about Ted Rall

You are correct about Tillman-bashing being unwarranted and shameful.

Ted Rall is often insightful and serious. On the rare occasions he tries to be funny he hits the mark, albeit poorly. Sometimes, his passion is excessive and his rhetoric sometimes is shameful, but you sometimes ahve to take the bitter with the sweet.

For those characteristics that sometimes exceed the boundaries clearly drive Ted's incisive commentary and wit.

In summation:

You are right about the Tillman bashing, and about the Ted Rall "Tillman" cartoon.

But I disagree with your about Mr. Rall.

[Bombtrack]

33. Can you please give some examples of his "wit"

I don't think he's ever written anything more witty than any other superiority-complex-having spoiled Ivy League drop-out could write.

He's a turd. He just makes up stuff all the time. He simply proclaims that the whitehouse got the New York Times to fire him because he has such dispicable dillusions of grandeur and self-importance.

He also displayed insane amounts of clear hypocracy when it came to his critisms of Dean's opponents compared to what he said or neglected to say about Dean. Just one of them being his case for why Dean's oppenents were just hurting the party by NOT dropping out and letting him have the nomination, and then completely savaging the notion that Dean didn't deserve the nomination still after he imploded.

[tom_paine]

75. If I think about & I have time (which is in short supply right now)

Besides, you clearly dislike Ted so much, that I wonder if spending 30+ min. to find some good stuff would be worthwhile in that you seem very rigid on this issue.

Go his column archive @ www.tedrall.com and begin reading.

You won't get 5 columns back before you find something worthy.

Ted isn't perfect and he sure is a hothead. (maybe that's why I, a fellow hothead, enjoy his stuff so much)

Sometimes he writes a fucked up column or cartoon. So? We ALL say dumb things.

I like Ted Rall's cartoons and his writings, gaffes and excesses, too, though I may not like them on an individual basis.

[leftofthedial]

15. I think Ted goes over the top to make a good point

We can only excuse blind jingoism so far.

Faced with illegal wars, illegal occupations, murder of civilians on a massive scale, destruction of america's reputation, etc., we have to start questioning the kind of zeal that Tillman showed.

Rall is right. Tillman had to have believed the neocon lies that are the rationale for the "war" on "terror." As Rall put it, he must have believed that we could attack enemies in Pakistan and Sudi Arabia by killing civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. He either was stupid or a willing fascist.

Either way, he does deserve criticism.

[liberalhistorian]

54. I respectfully disagree.

Tillman joined right after 9/11, saying that past and present members of his family had always done their part and made sacrifices and stood up for their country, and that it was time for him to grow up, do the same, and stand up for his country.

He didn't know at that time that the Bushistas would use 9/11 as an excuse to push their own agenda. It was right after 9/11, we'd been attacked, and he thought he was doing the right thing for his country, as his grandfather had done when he enlisted after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.

He was fed a line of bullshit by Shrub, just like the military as a whole has and many soldiers are finally waking up now and seeing that. But they didn't at the time, they genuinely, legitimately, thought they were defending the country and far too many have lost their young lives as a result. For you to say that he deserves criticism is extremely unfair.

I do agree, though, that far too much has been made of his death as opposed to the deaths of the other 700 plus soldiers whom no one seems to think about anymore. The only good thing about that is that I think more people have been made aware of just what is really happening and the loss of life, the fact that these are real human beings with wives/husbands, children, parents, families who love them, who had their entire future ahead of them, has been made much more real to them.

[rumguy]

16. I am all for questioning the media making him into

some kind of one-dimensional uber-hero...

In some ways I see Rall's cartoon as a reaction to the media's inanity more than anything else...

[ForrestGump]

23. The media ARE inane, by and large, but

it's not like Tillman called his publicist, as he was dying, to ensure maximum eposure.

[redqueen]

18. Disagree strongly

I'm surprised at the amount of devoted respect for those who don't inform themselves then go kill others based on their delusions.

I guess it's that 'love the sinner, hate the sin' thing. But the problem to me is that this guy wasn't some young, starry eyed 18 year old. He's an adult. I guess now full-grown adults are to be excused for not really caring about facts or reality.

[ForrestGump]

24. You've never made an error in judgement?

Good for you.

Maybe he made up his mnd based on the 'facts' available -- thank the US 'news' media for that -- and in an emotional place where grief and shock over the 9/11 attacks colored his processing of any contrary inputs.

You seem to be demanding a high standard of proof from people...by that reasoning, those who eagerly signed up to fight fascism in WWII were deluded because they had no guarantee that accounts of what were going on over there were not US government propaganda.

[redqueen]

25. Not proof, reason

Any REASONABLE person would know that bombing the crap out of a whole country to get at a few terrorists is STUPID.

[ForrestGump]

30. Maybe when he signed up he didn't know that that's how they were going to

do it. Seemed to me from the outset that the mission was suited solely to special-operations units.

[LiviaOlivia]

41. Rumsfeld said that same thing

RUMSFELD: Well, I wish that were the case. You can hit their terrorist training camps over and over and over and expend millions of dollars in U.S. weapons against targets that are dirt and tents and accomplish next to nothing. From a cost-benefit ratio, it just doesn't compute.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/COM403B.html

[Atman]

20. What exactly is a "hero?"

I've been involved in this debate now on another board, too, so I'll bring up the same point here. Thomas Hamill, the Halliburton employee who recently, ah...escaped has also been largely hailed as a "hero" this week. But there are a couple of stark incongruities with the accolades being heaped upon these men by some in the corporate media. First of all, we are treating Tillman as a hero because he gave up a big fat salary to go fight bad guys. Yay for him. He'd made enough money already to be able to do so, I think, but hey, whatever. Not so for old Thomas Hamill. He didn't make enough money to be able to leave his wife and kids well taken care of while he was off helping the cause. In fact, he wasn't making any money at all. Hamill went to Iraq to acquire the very thing Tillman claimed to be eschewing...money.

Hamill went to Iraq because our nation is willing to pay 3.6 million dollars to football players like Tillman, but unwilling to make sure hard-working joes like Hamill can support their families when times get tough. Hamill sought out cold hard cash with which he hoped to feed his family. I don't know what Tillman was seeking out. He already had the cash. Maybe he was smart enough to realize that, like Elvis, should he survive his tour, the contracts he'd be offered upon his return would be double his measly 3.6, easy. Maybe.

But anyway you look at it, there is something rather twisted about the way we are calling both Hamill and Tillman "heroes," and for such vastly disparate reasons. I kind of think their stories are best described by popular republican-speak...they made bad life choices.

[ForrestGump]

27. I'm not calling him a 'hero'

It's a term overused to the point of being meaningless. Sports 'heroes' and the like have reduced it to a handy media descriptor...in my mind, even soldiers who serve and those who see combat wouldn't automatically qualify as 'heroes'...well, under the new definition they would, but to me the true definition of 'hero' requires something more than just showing up.

Tillman may or may not have been heroic under that stricter definition, but he did make sacrifices -- ultimately his life -- that few of us would choose to make or risk making. More to the point, the smearing of this young man's memory by Rall and by a truckload of unhinged blindly-radical DUers is disgusting by any measure. On a practical level, that kind of thing isn't going to enhance the perception of 'liberals,' but what really matters is that it's the hallmark of a scummy human being.

[wryter2000]

40. Maybe

Maybe he was smart enough to realize that, like Elvis, should he survive his tour, the contracts he'd be offered upon his return would be double his measly 3.6, easy. Maybe.

Maybe he was trying to protect his brother, too.

[FlemingsGhost]

21. You know, there are several Rall/Tillman threads already

I guess your opinion (and insults) merited attention all their own?

Seeing as you have an affinity for psycho-analysis, explore the issues behind your motives.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[FlemingsGhost]

51. Struck a nerve, did I?

Thanks for such an intelligent rebuttal.

[ForrestGump]

59. Nope. You'll never find my nerves

As I was saying, before deletion of my post got in the way...well...forget it...why bother with you.

Next f***wit, please...

[farmbo]

22. The attacks against Tillman are already showing up in GOP talking points.

...as an indication of the out-of-the-mainstream degeneracy of "Kerry liberals".

Say what you like about Tillman's short-lived existence, but he turned his back on a lucrative career to serve his country in a time of need... much like a certain Brahmin bred Yale graduate in 1968.

Tillman is our kind of hero... not a Right-wing posterboy.

Anyone who villifies him is playing right into Karl Rove's hands and ought to be sent immediately to Abu Ghraib prison.

[redqueen]

26. Sick

Anyone who villifies him is playing right into Karl Rove's hands and ought to be sent immediately to Abu Ghraib prison.

Yeah, but it's the people NOT fellating the troops that are the 'f$&#wits'.

Okay.

Sure.

Whatever.

[ForrestGump]

34. Those are the only two choices?

Spittign on the corpses of American troops or blindly suckign up to them?

I wish I lived in a universe so handily dichotomous. It'd make decision-making so much easier.

28. Rall didn't call Tillman an idiot

look at the cartoon.
There are three people in it.
One says "idiot?"
one says "sap?"
one says "hero!"

Which one is Rall?
Even if Rall is one of the first two, there are question marks after the comments.

[Atman]

35. Thank you, 56kid

People tend to see what they want in cartoons. I've always admired Rall because he is one of those guys that tends to say the obvious stuff that the rest of polite society is too skittish to bring up. In my other discussion, I started my first post by saying "I didn't think Rall ascribed any motivation to Tillman," the reply to which was "He said he wanted to kill Arabs, right in the first cell."

Well, okay, Rall says that. But what else, really, does he say about Tillman? I think too many people are projecting their own freak-outs onto Rall. His JOB is to make readers think. He seems to be a very good job at it, even if some of the thinking is a bit off-base.

[ForrestGump]

37. Who drew the cartoon?

Kinda splitting hairs, aren't we? The intent's obvious...spinning an 'idiot' into a 'hero.' Who do you think is Rall in that panel?

47. Whoever Rall is in the panel, my point still stands

Maybe he's one of the three.
Maybe he's none of them, but a fourth person not in the panel.
They just might be "characters" he's representing, just like a novelist represents characters.
Cartooning is a form of art, sometimes fictional too after all.

[Bombtrack]

39. No, he just portrayed him as an ignorant racist

God it would be nice to see Rall say this to some mainstream non echo-chamber idiot American's face. He would get his ass kicked before he could finish the word "imperialist"

44. You meant Rall, not Tillman didn't you?

have Rall say it to someone's face.

Edit-- Ok, I see you edited. That's what I thought you meant.

55. Rall seems like an in your face kind of guy

I bet if you followed him around you'd probably discover that he does say stuff like this to non echo-chamber Americans.
I don't know this for sure or anything, but he does seem like that kind of person judging from his writing and cartoons.

[the_real_38]

31. No, you're an idiot for buying into the media's ...

... pieties, which they're just using as a front for our country's new turn into barbarism.

[ForrestGump]

42. You don't know a thing about me

or you'd know that I am, and always have been, contemptuous of what passes for the news media in these United States. You're an idiot for assuming that I'm buying anything that the media's shoveling, unless you're just using it as a front for minimizing my disgust over those who attack a dead soldier.

[the_real_38]

46. That soldier ain't the only one who's dead, Slick...

... there's been a whole lot of Afghanis roasted to death by our laser-ray death toys. This whole thing is just a front to rally support for Emperor BUsh's imperial designs.

[ForrestGump]

49. Did I say that he was, Slim?

Did I say that I support Bush or his various crusades-for-profit?

No.

So what the hell is your point?

[the_real_38]

60. When you support this type of Narrative from the media, ...

... Jim-Bob, you're supporting Bush. They're just using this to rally people to the cause, make it seem like a noble enterprise - it's not.

[ForrestGump]

62. This is just an exercise in inanity,

Billy Joe, because I don;t support any media narrative and I'm not supporting Bush implicitly or explicitly. Maybe the very idea of actually having an independent thought, instead of parroting talking points, is just too much for you.

Does the word 'logic' mean anything to you? It doesn't seem so.

[redqueen]

73. Actually,

It seems that what you're doing may very well be a great example of the kind of spin that Rush & Co are spewing today.

[the_real_38]

76. You call parroting the media's story line...

... independent thought? Man, that's like Bush calling removing pollution restraints the "Clean Skies Act". You've been paying attention alright, Ace, but to the wrong people, it appears.

And my logic is just fine - it is this: The media is using Pat Tillman as a prop to justify the continued militarization of our society , and to ennoble George Bush's plans to dominate the arab world by force. If you go along with this narrative, you (whether you like it or not) are enabling this ennobling.

P.S. And BTW, Ace, you notice that the media didn't want to rain on the Republicans parade by stating what seems very obvious from the earlier article posted about Tillman (the one where his brother says he's f*ing dead) - he was gay.

[redqueen]

68. Yep

And it works, because there are too many idiots. ;)

[GumboYaYa]

36. What did Tillman do that was heroic?

Other than giving up a high paying job for a low paying job, which is at least not greedy and somewhat admirable, what did he specifically do that was heroic? Did he save someone's life? If so whose? Did he actually protect anyone from anything? If so what?

I'm not being flip. I think we throw the word hero around so much that it has started to become devoid of content. I'm not saying Tillman is not a hero. Frankly, I don't know enough about Tillman to make that judgment. I am interested to see what it is that everyone who so strongly attack Rall think makes Tillman a hero in contrast to every other person who gets killed in these wars every day.

[ForrestGump]

48. Where exactly did I call him a hero in my original post?

I'm with you on this whole 'hero' thing. Turning his back on that contract, etc, etc, may have been admirable from a point-of-view of purity of belief (or whatever, whether he was wise to or not), but that in itself was not what I'd call 'heroic.' Neither does his relative celebrity make his loss inherently worse than that of any other soldier. Those issues have nothing to do with Rall's f**wittedness or that of DUers who'd put Tillman down postmortem.

[GumboYaYa]

53. I wasn't criticizing you; I was only asking what I think is a relevant

question in this discussion. Personally, I think the invasion of Afghanistan was a foolhardy exercise that had the risk of doing more bad than good. I think to date, Afghanistan has largely been a failure and without some focus and resources soon it will become an abysmal failure. Nevertheless, it is the height of political stupidity to publicly state that Tillman was an idiot for joining the army. There are very few people in this country ready to admit that invading Afghanistan was not necessary and has not made America safer. Sometimes it is better to just keep your mouth shut.

I think we agree almost 100% on this issue.

[ForrestGump]

61. I don't think that we agree ALMOST 100% on that

I think we agree exactly 100%.

A few seconds after I saw the second jet hit the WTC I knew that the US was going to do something stupid that would be a handy recruiting drive for terrorist groups, and when we went into Afghanistan I was not one supporting our presence there. Afghanistan COULD have been done right, but it wasn't. I'd have supported diffuse presence of special-ops units in more than one country if it'd had a fair chance of succeeding, but that's not how the Idiots-in-Charge chose to go about things. And their true motives, even in Afghanistan, were and are highly suspect.

[the_real_38]

38. I just read the Cartoon....

.... he put the truth harshly, but he did tell it.

[ForrestGump]

50. You can't handle the truth

Or recognize it, anyway...

[the_real_38]

57. Oh, I think I've told you plenty today, Slick...

... you need to put your emotions aside and be rational guy for a while.

[ForrestGump]

67. I think that's advice you could heed, sport

Rationality isn't looking like your strong suit.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

43. I would call him naive and uninformed.... probably well-meaning,

a poor unfortunate bloke....

[DrWeird]

45. People who'd call late Mr Tillman a "hero" are fuckwits.

This includes all the terrorists who think that being american means you're automatically good, and who think that fighting for what you believe in makes it OK to kill civilians.

[ForrestGump]

52. I'm not caling him a hero, but I think that the level of

f***wittedness in doing so is far less than that accrued by people who call him an idiot.

[DrWeird]

63. I disagree.

While they are both equally mistaken, the "hero" side is swallowing the hawk propaganda hook, line, and sinker; the "idiot" side is at least on the right side, however mistaken.

[ForrestGump]

69. I disagree

Because, whereas they may both be equally mistaken, the 'idiot' side are also mean-spirited and, further, basing that ugly trait on incomplete knowledge of the man.

[DrWeird]

72. Ah, "idiot" may be mean spirited...

but "hero" is nationalistic. Nobody calls the 9-11 terrorists "heroes" because they died for what they believed in.

[redqueen]

77. Which 'side' kills people (including innocent women & kids) based on PR?

Just curious.

:crazy:

[Forkboy]

56. whine whine whine

[ForrestGump]

70. Quit your whining...

it's unbecoming.

[Forkboy]

74. I'm not the one whining

But I agree it IS unbecoming.

[KamaAina]

58. Mahalo (thank you)

Was he duped by all the Bush* lies about the "war on terra"? Certainly.

So was President Kerry.

Does that make either Kerry or Tillman an "idiot"? Nope.

[RPM]

64. He was duped.

He made the right decision on bad information (read: lies). End result - he was a sucker for BushCo, but an honorable sucker.

[Old and In the Way]

65. It's the administration that should be Rall's focus.

The soldiers are our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Last I looked they have "0" input on foreign policy decisions.

I don't think of Tillman as any hero, his name will be forgotten in 6 months, like the 700+ whose lives were ended because this administration used our military to further their narrow political/economic agenda.

I'm convinced that only posters who's undeclared agenda is to paint Democrats as anti-Americans would post this here. It does nothing but divide the Left and help Bush.

[radwriter0555]

66. I didn't call him an idiot, I just don't think he's anyone's hero. He

should have known better than to sign up for the service.

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that in the military service under bush, they're defending oil fields, contractors and poppy fields.

They SURE as hell aren't defending ME or any other citizen of the USA.

Talk about 'duties as assigned' and 'caveat emptor' eh?

[amazona]

71. i usually like rall but this is really uncalled for! NT

.

[Skinner]

78. Locking`

discuss pat tillman here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1527625&mesg_id=1527625