Publicly Answering Ted Rall’s Challenge

Ted Rall has thrown down a challenge to the entire right-side of the blogosphere…

“Several Bushist blogger types have written to assert that there are as many violent and threatening remarks and insults coming from liberals online as there are from conservatives against liberals. I’ve spent many sadly-lost hours online, and I say: no way.

So here’s my challenge: Please email your worst, most vicious examples of liberal/leftie blogger vitriol (with links, natch), and I’ll post ’em right here. If they exist, obviously.

If not, let’s take as a given what we already know: that Republicans’ first impulse is to punch people whose arguments they can’t defeat with logic and to bomb countries whose people know something we don’t.”

Here are the examples Rall gives of the sort of “violent & threatening remarks” that he’s looking for…

Here are some sample posts to one of the “well-known” right-wing blogs, Little Green Footballs (Hawkins’ Note: Rall’s original post had no LGF link. I added it in.)

“I hope Rall dies now.
“I am glad that Bolshevik dog Rall is being targeted for termination.”
“I found out belatedly that he made an appearence at the 2004 San Diego Comic-Con (for what reason I’m not sure) so I missed my opportunity to give him a complimentary tracheotemy or put out a cigarette in his eye or some other fair and accurate constructive criticism of his works.”
“I wish somebody would drop Rall – out of a helicopter.”
Some people can butt-f*ck anything, if they are desperate/ugly enough. Me, I’d butt-f*ck Rall. With a large caliber repeating weapon. Or a high-velocity flame-thrower. My choice… “

About an hour and forty five minutes ago, Rall claimed there was no response to his challenge. Gosh, if there were only someone on the right side of the blogosphere who loved a challenge….wait a second, I LOVE A CHALLENGE. So Ted, here ya go…

From The 10 Worst Quotes From The Democratic Underground For 2003

8) “I’m assuming (Michael Kelly’s) family won’t be reading this, but frankly, I’m gratified to learn that he paid the ultimate price for his sins of warmongering. This guy was scum. My first thoughts on seeing the thread were that I hoped it was that scum Post warmongering writer. My second thought was that it was a late April Fool’s joke. But no false sadness from me, only happiness that someone as mean and vicious as Mike Kelly got what was coming. As for all the posts about “coming by his views honestly” and “not speaking ill of the dead”, congratulations on taking the high road guys, but *ssholes like Kelly have to die sometime, and I prefer it is as a direct result of their sins. But what do I know, I’m happy that Reagan has Alzheimers and that * has access to pretzels. I wish death on my enemies, and these guys are enemies.” — jackswift on the death of Michael Kelly in Iraq

3) “When the 2nd plane hit the WTC I remember thinking……OMG, he’s got his war now. Then, the next day or the day after that, when the roar of “war with Iraq and Afganistan” really got going I couldn’t help but think “well Bush II get’s to finish Daddy’s work now”. As for when the plane hit the Pentagon and the other plane went down in that field in Penn I screamed at the TV, “Get the WH, for God’s sake you missed the WH.” I invented some cuss words on that one. There were times before 9/11 as well as in the days to follow that the boy king mentioned Saddam “tried to kill my Dad” and couldn’t help but scream at the TV each time, “Well, give him a medal for effort anyway.” — LiberalLibra

1) “I realize that not every GI Joe was 100peeercent behind Prseeedent Booosh going into this war; but I do know that that is what an overwhelming number of them and their famlies screamed in the face of protesters who were trying to protect these kids. Well, there is more than one way to be “dead” for your country. They are not only not accompishing squat in Iraq, they are doing crap nothing for the safety, defense of the US of A over there directly. But “indirectly” they are doing a lot.

The only way to get rid of this slime bag WASP-Mafia, oil barron ridden cartel of a government, this assault on Americans and anything one could laughingly call “a democracy”, relies heavily on what a sh*t hole Iraq turns into. They need to die so that we can be free. Soldiers usually did that directly–i.e., fight those invading and harming a country. This time they need to die in defense of a lie from a lying adminstration to show these ignorant, dumb Americans that Bush is incompetent. They need to die so that Americans get rid of this deadly scum. It is obscene, Barbie Bush, how other sons (of much nobler blood) have to die to save us from your Rosemary’s Baby spawn and his ungodly cohorts.” — Starpass

From The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes Of 2004

8) “Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream… giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every– They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.” — U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada

7) “…And then there’s Rumsfeld who said of Iraq ‘We have our good days and our bad days.’ We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger. Do you want to salvage our country? Be a savior of our country? Then vote for John Kerry and get rid of the whole Bush Bunch.” — From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club

4) “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review of all places

From one from the anti-war rallies in San Francisco

Here’s a fun one from The 2nd Annual Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States — The 2003 Edition that Ted should already be familiar with…since he wrote it =D

“…In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the “What Would Jesus Drive?” TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can’t be reasoned with. They’re selfish and stupid. It’s unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing’s for sure: It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving group of people.” — Ted Rall winks at ecoterrorism

Add to those examples the nut who tried to “intimidate” Katherine Harris with his car, the loons from the National People’s Action who (according to the WAPO) encircled Karl Rove’s house while yelling and banging on the windows, and Checkpoint, an entire political novel about assassinating Bush, & I think we can safely say Rall’s challenge has been answered.

Hat tip to RWN reader Ray Stickler & Polipundit for alerting me to Rall’s challenge.

*** Update #1 ***: Rall has an email address up for the challenge. It bounced when I sent a message into it.

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

rightwingchallenge@rall.com

Wonder if it’s an innocent mistake or if he realized this is a dumb idea and wanted to keep the number of responses down?

*** Update #2 ***: Rall now has up what looks to be a working email, chet@rall.com, says he has gotten over 200 replies, and adds

“Believe it or not, no, I did NOT know that any of this stuff was out there. I’d read references by Republican bloggers to such things, but no one ever provided a link and I could never find it….Has the challenge been met? Yes.”

Game, Set, Match.

*** Update #3 ***: Read more on this subject here.

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