Ted Rall=Ellsworth Toohey
In the Ayn Rand novel, The Fountainhead, Howard Roark is opposed by Ellsworth Toohey, a newspaper columnist. Toohey is a collectivist whose goal is to tear down any heroes that emerge. Because heroes are unique and admired, they must be torn down before they become something that the average person aspires to be.
Ted Rall has
a response to the emails he's been getting about the Tillman cartoon. Perhaps appropriately, his page is entitled "Search and Destroy".
My cartoon is a reaction to the extraordinary lionizing of Mr. Tillman as a national hero. First of all, the media's decision to genuflect to a cult of death is terrifyingly similar to the cult of Palestinian suicide bombers in the Middle East and the glorious coverage given by the Japanese during World War II to fallen kamikaze fighters. Nowhere has this excessive praise for the act of voluntary death been more extreme than in Mr. Tillman's case.
What a whack job! Tillman is nothing like a suicide bomber or a kamikaze pilot. He did not intend to die for his country, rather as Patton exhorted, he wanted to make the
other guy die for his country!
Second, Mr. Tillman served an evil president and an evil cause. Anyone with an open mind after 9/11 could easily have learned the truth, that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq occured instead of a war on terror, not as part of one. A person who planned to risk his life in combat should reasonably be expected to dig a little deeper rather than to fall for Bush's transparent lies. We all judge each other, and while Tillman's decision to sacrifice millions of dollars for his beliefs is admirable, his belief that killing the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan had something to do with defending America was not. At best, Tillman was foolish and misguided.
He grudgingly admires Tillman for giving up millions (what communist could fail to admire that!), but not for this president and this cause. Ellsworth Toohey could not have put it better.
Michele Catalano has a
lot more on this topic, and I should have given her a hat tip yesterday.
