Quote:
Originally posted by jtm
Hall is ridiculing the "gold-diggers" among the widowers, not all of them. The distinction isn't obvious, hence the offensiveness, but clearly there are some widowers who are more mercenary than others, and they deserve the ridicule.
Almost 3000 people died Sep 11, leaving behind MANY widows and families. Do you believe that ALL of them are good human beings with no greed?
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I noticed other people were missing this distinction -- "Terror Widows", e.g. those that take advantage of the national spotlight, vs. terror widows, e.g. those whose SO's died and do not want to be on TV.
I'm a longtime Rall fan myself, and my first impression of this cartoon was that it was more offensive than usual. Then I realized that the reason everyone was missing the point, and what made this cartoon a bit over the line, was the fact that Rall himself doesn't make the distinction anywhere in the cartoon.
The whole problem with discussions like this appearing in news media is that for most people, the first impression of Rall they get will be someone saying he's insensitive or offensive. Yeah, he is, but there's more to it than just that. Fans who've been exposed to him before can see that this cartoon is only a bit beyond his normal stuff, and even that's debatable. So you won't get unbiased argument, you'll get the rhetoric of "who allows this sort of filth to be printed?" And sure, if this was my only view of TR, I'd probably think the same thing. But unlike Howard Stern, who is intelligent and funny but loses points for going out of his way to use his offensiveness as a weapon, TR does an end run around offensiveness to get to his point, and should be given credit for that. Even if he does get tackled by it occasionally.