Ted Rall for April 12, 2010

She’d better…

Good ole sex and violence.

Wait till he gets a load of Sarah Palin!

She’s got the whole super ghetto booty thing going.

Nice comment on how some Americans react to violence.

jrmerm: In the face of something unspeakably horrific and inhumane, some people see only a sexual turn-on. It’s like the warning that pictures of dead earthquake victims contain “nudity” – only a necrophiliac would find that arousing. Subjective perceptions of reality can be absurdly inappropriate.

Think David Cronenberg’s adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s Crash, or the thrill I get from Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. You’d understand this mentality if you were a divorced man or a male culturally prone to decapitating women, that is. Hot.

^Cap’nJay: “a male culturally prone to decapitating women”, is it? Um, need to tell ya, that’s sick, boy. Get some help.

Or get a sturdy girlfriend!

Oh, it’s all about MSNBC, is it. Right.

churchillwasright,

Clean your glasses…

I have to admit I really don’t get this? Please shed some light on your intent, Mr. Rall. I am almost certain there’s a great laugh in there somewhere. ^^

Maybe you agree with the guy in the cartoon. It’s plain that many millions find violence sexy. Such tastes are played to in our culture. Perhaps you are just pointing that out. Hell, it could be you are saying that MSNBC is being singled out for something all news networks do…? Maybe the wife is just jealous!

This just keeps getting more and more interesting ………..Jihad chicks?

I’m not sure how much the Chechens care about Jihad and how much of it is just “I am Inhigobum Monhotoyanov. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”

Religion and patriotism (or nationalism, if you prefer) are not the only reason for people to kill each others, especially in some societies. Good old fashioned vendetta can also work.

I don’t understand how anyone doesn’t get this cartoon. You don’t even have to think about it – the point hits you like a ton of bricks in the instant you see it. I think it’s one of Ted’s simplest and most successful efforts to date. Attempts at deep analysis merely fog up something that doesn’t need to be explained.

What I don’t quite get is the MSNBC reference. Is there a particular reason they are singled out? I don’t watch them.

And thank you, Ted. I felt the same way – the more I tried to explain it, the more it became clear to me that the cartoon speaks for itself better than any explication I could bring to it. It’s sort of like trying to parse a Robert Frost poem.

I wonder how the comments would have differed if you had cited Fox News instead of MSNBC. I never thought that had any relevance to the actual point anyway.

I think, in the same way Fox viewers like Sarah Palin, MSNBC like the ‘Freedon Fighting’ suicide chicks.

People of every political stripe can be made to believe that dangerous people of any kind are their kind of ‘hot’.

The guy in the panel may think he likes the Chechen chick, but she would still hurt him without a 2nd thought- Just like Palin would stab the nearest OReilly viewer if it got her something she wanted.

Maybe- I could be way off-base.

I think the guy in the cartoon just sees the jihadist “chick” as a sex object, and her politics are irrelevant.

(It’s actually just like Andy Capp!)

Well, physical attractiveness has no bearing on moral qualities. It is quite possible that some people somewhere find the suicide bombers attractive phycisally.

Marianne, the symbol of the French Revolution (and prototype of the Statue of Liberty), is portrayed as a goddess, not a hag.

@ pbarnrob: you obviously have no sense of irony, so tell it to Earthday founder and Don Juan, Ira Einhorn, will you? And having seen Kurdish behavior towards women, first hand, The Middle East is a misogynist paradise.

Sirrom wrote “It’s like the warning that pictures of dead earthquake victims contain “nudity” – only a necrophiliac would find that arousing. ”

There is a slippery slope waiting here, and perhaps a tedious discussion about similacra - what about nudity on NYPD Blue, on someone pretending to be dead?

Cpt. Jay your OP is almost as funny as the frame we are discussing. which is VERY funny.

Hmm. The actor pretending to be dead, the jihadist intending to be dead, the rest of us merely waiting to be dead – should anybody’s nudity be censored? A different issue, to be sure. (Not that the jihadist is likely to display any nudity…)

Yeah, even funnier is why the Admin. is in arms about corporations paying for ad-time when Goldman Sachs gave 954,000 dollars to the Obama campaign, making them the second largest donor, which was pushed by former lobbyist Tim Geithner? Hmmmm

I don’t know about the Chechens, but it seems like the media seems to be “sexing up” the likes of “Jihad Jane.”

^ (nods)

‘cuz it sells?

Wow those Tea Party chicks are really hot.— No more fox news for you.

wow those dedicated, liberated, not sexual object, politically aware Chechen freedom fighter women in there freedom burquas are brave and cloyingly alluring.— no more wacko comics for you.