Ted, Ted, Ted [Nov 11, 2004]

Just when I thought it was safe to do actual work again, the left's most offensive and annoying writer, Ted Rall, has once again undone the hard work of millions of people with a snide column full of half-assed snobbery. I thnk the following quote will give you an idea:

"But if militant Christianist Republicans from inland backwaters believe that secular liberal Democrats from the big coastal cities look upon them with disdain, there's a reason. We do, and all the more so after this election. ... By any objective standard, you had to be spectacularly stupid to support Bush... So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world."

What, exactly, Ted, are "cooler movies"? Do you think you're better than Bush voters because you preferred Garden State to Torque? And do you and your friends really "earn better salaries"? Because I know a lot of really marginal types in Blue States and a lot of pretty-well-off people in Red States. So you've been to Paris and Thailand and have seen The New Pornographers live. So you "dress better" than someone who works in a factory all day. That doesn't make you any less provincial.

Rall spends a paragraph decrying his suburban Ohio upbringing. It was an "OK place to grow up" with "decent public schools." But apparently there weren't any good Chinese restaurants and people there didn't appreciate young Ted Rall's dream of growing up to become a perpetually angry purveyor of paranoid line art. That's such an original viewpoint. Never before has a sensitive and artistic young man felt hemmed in by his surroundings and misunderstood by his peers.

People have always escaped the suburbs and the country for the cities. Of course the cities offer more diversity and opportunity. But they also offer endless opportunities for smug insularity. Ted Rall, you're certainly prolific. And when your work isn't expressly, didactically political, you even have insight. But as a secular liberal Democrat who, for the moment, doesn't live in one of the big coastal cities, I can tell you for certain that you're not "more interesting" than anyone else, and that your favorite bands suck.

Here are some letters from American soldiers who died in Iraq, sent to their friends and relatives in unsophisticated small towns and suburbs. Many of them, I'm sure, supported Bush, and are, therefore, "spectacularly stupid." I'm sure they'll be glad to know that Ted Rall watches cooler movies than they do.