Looks as though Condoleezza Rice is again fair game for left-wing cartoonists seeking to vent their inner racist. Back in April it was Garry Trudeau drawing G.W. Bush addressing his national security adviser as “Brown Sugar.” (The IWF issued a vigorous protest of this insult to African-American women; see The Other Charlotte’s Condi Week, April 8.)
Now it’s Ted Rall, famous for his mockery of such targets as: the widows of 9/11; the bereaved Marianne Pearl whose journalist-husband was beheaded in Pakistan for the crime of being Jewish; and Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety killed in Afghanistan in May. (See my More Sheer Nastiness from Ted Rall, May 5.)
This time around Rall, perhaps trying to top Trudeau in the slur-competition, goes the whole hog with the N-word. (Thanks, Andrew Sullivan, for the link.) In a strip recommending that a victory for John Kerry in November be followed by show trials of G.W. Bush and his supporters, Rall depicts a convicted Rice sentenced to a re-education camp where she is forced to confess, “I was Bush’s House N—-.”
Of course I must point out the obvious: that were a conservative cartoonist to indulge in this sort of overt racisim, he or she would never hear the end of the outrage. But there is something else worth pointing out. Take another look at Rall’s strip, which shows an array of cruel and creepy punishments, in several cases with sexual overtones, being meted out to Bush supporters Check out the orifice-violation meted to Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh (it’s a crime in Rall’s world to exercise your First Amendment rights as a political commentator). Suggests that Rall’s own psyche might have a few kinks, doesn’t it?
I’ve often remarked that behind the passive-aggressive stance of many a leftist lurks a totalitarian sadist. Woe to the enemies of the left, as those who passed through Stalin’s gulags, Castro’s cages, or Saddam Hussein’s (not Lynndie England’s) Abu Ghraib might testify. Ted Rall’s little penal fantasy this week bears out my theory.