Opposition to Bush Gets Sharper

Last night on "The Daily Show" Janeane Garofalo said she was now of the opinion that "a vote for Bush is a character flaw."

And editorial cartoonist Ted Rall had the effrontery of taking on the recent death of former N.F.L. pro footballer Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, making the bitter point in a four-panel editorial cartoon that a multimillionaire who enlisted in Bush's War because he believed the lies and the propaganda is more accurately an idiot or a sap than a hero. (Rall's highly controversial cartoon can be viewed here.)

Matt Drudge linked to the cartoon yesterday on the MS-NBC site, which brought in a deluge of nasty e-mails from Drudge's devoted right-wing readers, which led to MS-NBC removing the cartoon from their page.

Editor & Publisher interviewed Nall about the e-mail he was getting: "A few were positive, but most were vicious. As Rall opened each e-mail for the first time, he quoted briefly from each one. 'You make me sick'; 'lies and distortions'; 'move to France'; 'I pity you'; 'disgusting'; 'sad and pathetic'; 'f--- you, you coward bastard'; 'I will s--t on your grave'; 'horrendous'; 'rot in hell'; 'freak'; 'I hope you're killed by an Arab terrorist attack'; 'people died to publish the b.s. you do.' "

(To be honest, reminds us a little of the late Deaniacs going after Maureen O'Dowd at the NY Times back around, oh, the New Hampshire primary.)

It wasn't so much Nall's casting of aspersions on a dead soldier. It's that he was a dead $3 million football player. Mess with anything, but don't mess with our sports heroes!