Sensing his own declining celebrity, serial smirker Ted Rall pokes his limp little stick at a new target:  blogs:

Bloggers are ordinary people, many of them uneducated and with nothing interesting to say. They’re sitting in their rec rooms, regurgitating and spinning what real journalists have dug up through hard work. They don’t have sources, they don’t report, and no one holds them accountable when they make mistakes or flat out lie. Yeah, there’s a new sheriff in town. Unfortunately he’s drunk, he’s mean, and he works for the bad guys.

Leaving aside that Rall’s piece is clearly unresearched, that Rall is himself woefully stupid, that he seems not to understand a thing about how blogs work, and that he recycles the same tired complaint about posting logistics that a host of other dim lights have made before him (question: why does it matter where a post is written, or what the writer happens to wearing at the time?  I mean, for all I know, George Will could be writing his columns on the shitter, and clearly Maureen Dowd is sitting in a bathtub with a bottle of Kendall Jackson and a fistful Percodan when she begins her inane scribblings)—leaving all that aside, what I want to know is, why wasn’t I mentioned?

I mean, Captain’s Quarters gets a mention, and acquits himself well in response.  But what about me?  Haven’t I done enough to rankle Ted?

Well, now that I know he’s reading (though not really comprehending) the blogs, I’d like to take this opportunity to repost a bit I wrote on Ted back in May.  Because frankly, I don’t think ol’ Ted’s done an awful lot of growing since then:

“Ted Rall’s Internal Monologue”

Notice me.  That’s it, not much to ask, a week of Rene what’s his name, the little Puerto Rican fuck with the thick lips and that awful awful hair….notice me, notice me.  Micah Wright?  Christ a tenth of my talent he has, the Photoshop hack, yet all the delicious vitriol spilled on him, wasted on him, spent spent spent on him, but— notice. Me.  Notice me.  I rail and I roil and I boil and assail…notice me.  Notice me. Notice me.  You want controversy? I’ll give you controversy, not like some UMass microbe dicksucker low on the food chain—no.  I’ll do it with pictures, my peculiar blend of humor, love it or hate it but never ignore it because it’s fucking brilliant, I’m fucking brilliant, my art—my art is fucking brilliant. Notice me.  Pat Tillman the jock fuck asshole cocksucker with his square jaw and middle American values, makes me want to puke from the reek of bourgeois bullshit.  Caspian oil.  Pipelines oppression colonial aggression.  Pipelines oppression colonial aggression—easy to remember, like a commercial jingle and you suburban drones are programmed to listen.  Why don’t you just listen?  Instead you hump to visions of muscled heroes, heads filled with funhouse images of patriotism writ large, refuge of scoundrels, messianic apparitions, like a gridiron Christ come to save the whities from the brown people with their sandals and robes and ancient Mesopotamian culture, that beautiful defiant culture. Resident Bush, oh Resident Bush, how can I serve you massah, massah?  Like Colin Powell that fucking Uncle Tom fuck him fuck Rummy and Condi with her Marlo Thomas haircut…That Girl?  Yeah, fuck that girl and notice me.  Notice me.  Notice. Me.  My art at least takes risks is ballsy has guts, dissents.  Nothing more American than—well, apple pie and football and fucking jarhead jocks turning down money or terror widows whining… And—for what?  Illegal wars. Oil and oil and oily pricks like Rene Gonzalezpimp and Micah getting all that attention for a fucking lie everyone knew was a lie, everyone knew was a goddamn lie.  And so what?  Notice me.  I try something original, make it out of nothing, whole cloth, just a pen some ink and an empty space, the void, and me and me and me and me.  Me.  Christ I want a hot dog or something….  Why am I even thinking of that?  With onions and diced jalapenos and chips and a soda, something cold, a Diet Coke maybe.  But fuck if I’ll let Micah fucking Wright get the attention, or that little spic bastard with the tortured prose and the stupid stupid face.  Gives good communists a bad name with that unarticulated drivel. You want anger, look at me.  At me.  I’m the face of anger in America, American anger at the corrupt bully hogbutcher to the world, to the rest of the world who hates us hates our culture and rightly so with its reality TV and its fast food and its comic strips.  Except skip that last one—comic strips rock, heh heh. —Ooh, a burger with chopped onions and some onion rings and a large ice-cold Diet cola… Yeah, see how long it lasts Micah. Shit.  No way. I stir the pot I rule the roost I’m the face of the angry left, Bill Maher knows it, the New York Times knew—before those fuckers dumped me, the cowards.  Fucking cowards. Everyone knows it, it’s about me.  The web, the web, is my domain.  The web is my savior and I stir the pot and notice. Me.  Notice me notice me notice me.  Pat Tillman? Fuck him and his brothers and his family and his honor and the honor of false idols and criminal heroes, all the mercenaries killing Arabs for oil, too dumb to know it, too dumb to care, too dumb will go anyplace anywhere—sent by Bush, Bush, a stinking bush, shrub weed, snatch, stole the election, the chimp.  And now this Rene kid wants to take my place—oh.  I.  Don’t. Thinkso.  Notice me notice me notice me.  See what you think of my latest cartoon, wingnuts, assholes, bloodyfistedwarmongering dupes.  Here’s your hero the asshole the villain the sad stupid jock dupe killed for no reason for no reason, because he’d rather kill Arabs than the spooks on the football field, traded the helmet for the helmet for the Kevlar for the flak jacket for the Hum-fucking-Vee.  And now look, put him in a box, nail it shut, cover it with dirt, shovelfuls—and notice me.  Me.  Me.  Notice me. I piss on what you stand for I hate your flag, your cars, your electronic gadgets. Me.  Me.  Notice. Notice me.  I hate your tennis shoes and your strip malls and your SUVs. Notice me.  I hate.  That’s right:  I hate I hate I hate.  So, yes.  Show me.  Give me.  Bring the rage to me.  I eat it up, chumps, I chew it I digest I crap it back out and it nourishes me.  Micah Wright?  Fuck him. This is about me and bring on the vitriol rightwing assholes, your pumped up steroid-eating hero is on the slab and fuck him and fuck you and fuck your country and your wars and your patriotism and do what’s right. Notice.  Me.  Maybe some tacos, I dunno. Something spicy.  For me.  Yes.  For me….*

(h/t Kate)