If you’ve never heard of Ted Rall, consider yourself blessed. I’ve been following him for quite a long time, but only because he is so absurd as to be almost comedic. That quote in the cartoon about idiots is only part of the ridiculousness that spews forth from this guy on an almost daily basis.
What brought him to my attention again recently was this column he wrote about the SEAL raid on OBL:
President Obama’s Sunday evening announcement, timed to fill Monday’s papers with a sickening orgy of gleeful triumph but little information, prompted bipartisan high-fives and hoots all around. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” chanted a mob of drunken oafs in front of the White House. Blending the low satire of two Bush-era classic send-ups of a nation allergic to self-reflection, “Team America: World Police” and “Idiocracy,” they set the tone for a week or a month or whatever of troop-praising, God-blessing-America, frat-boy self-backslapping. “So that’s what success looks like,” wrote New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley in the paper’s special ten-page “The Death of Bin Laden” pull-out section.
The whole diatribe is worth reading for the sheer humor (or, more likely anger) that you get from it. But, I decided that I would plop down my personal credit card and purchase his silly book Anti-American Manifesto on Amazon. Ranked #280,416 in Books, (100,000 places behind Frommer’s Guide to Delaware for instance) it would seem that most folks missed this piece of fiction masquerading as intellectual thought, but your humble blogger managed to read it in a bit under 3 hours. (I’ll never get those hours back, but I suppose I could have spent it in worse ways, watching Army Wives or Teen Moms for instance.)
This review was a dead giveaway on what I would find:
The Anti-American Manifesto is a “wake up call” for all Americans to stop deluding themselves with all that American Dream drivel and propaganda. Our country is fundamentally collapsing around us as once cherished institutions frantically fray about trying to maintain a minimal sense of order. We need to start a serious dialogue amongst ourselves about how crappy things really are in our country and take action. The Anti-American Manifesto is no Declaration of Independence and Ted Rall is no Thomas Jefferson, but the spirit and remedies of both resonate the same. The concept of “revolution” shouldn’t remain unmentionable or considered subversive. The Great Recession is the culmination of decades worth of mismanagement, corruption and chicanery by the “powers that be” and WE THE PEOPLE are the victims (or chumps) of this bold face malfeasance. I recommend this book to any American who loves their country and who are willing to rise up and save it before it’s too late. When words won’t win action will.
The book was all I expected, flush with tropes about how much America sucks. The most succinct statement he makes on the intent of this trash comes at the end:
We must rid ourselves of our shitty, worthless, incompetent, evil-doing, planet murdering government and its corporate and media allies. (Page 271)
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