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The Ted Rall Affair, Revisited
In an idle moment on Tuesday, I was perusing various Twitter feeds when I came across Ted Rall’s. Recall that I had discussed Rall and his squabble with the Los Angeles Times in a previous post here on Ricochet, and in a longer one at PJ Media, which has led to Rall being stricken from the paper’s roster of freelancers. Since being shown the exit, Rall has undertaken a spirited defense, accusing the LAPD of lying, fabricating evidence, and all manner of underhanded behavior in the effort to besmirch his character and deny him his livelihood. Moreover, he;s accuses the L.A. Times of unethical behavior in acquiescing to what he perceives was the LAPD’s inistence that he be sacked.
Rall’s Twitter feed is full of such talk, but my attention was drawn to this tweet, where he wrote, “Far right blog that despises me agrees @LATimes firing was wrong!” Well, that certainly piqued my interest. “Which far-right blog could that be?” I wondered. So imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link and was taken to yet another piece I wrote on the subject for PJ Media, the one where I devoted more than 1,600 words to showing that Rall had lied about the circumstances of a 2001 traffic stop, and that his defense to the charge does not hold up to scrutiny.
I gather that Rall found justification for characterizing the column as he did in his tweet in this passage:
In the wake of all this, Rall’s reputation, not to mention his income, has been harmed, about which I confess to no small amount of schadenfreude. But one cannot truly enjoy another’s misfortune — no matter how annoying one may find that person — if the case against him is not legitimate, so a sense of fairness demands that Rall and his defenders be given a decent hearing, which you can do by reading the posts at A New Domain linked above. If you haven’t the time to read all of that, you can limit yourself to this post, in which Rall posted the “enhanced” audio of his run-in with the police officer as well as a transcript, or rather a transcript of what Rall claims to hear.
Yes, I believe Rall deserves a fair hearing, and if the internal processes that led to his dismissal from the L.A. Times fell short of that, it’s for him to seek redress through the proper channels. But to me the evidence is abundantly clear that he fabricated his tale of being abused during a traffic stop that was nothing other than routine. Rall’s claims that he’s been “vindicated” are nothing more than wishful thinking. He’s starting to sound like the Black Night in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a man who doesn’t know when he’s been defeated.
Published in Policing
I can see how the LAPD could be accused of trying to deny him his livelihood, but I’ve seen Rall’s work. There’s no way they could besmirch his character.
Thank you for weighing in, Randy. I was beginning to think no one was reading the post.
And as for Ted Rall, let’s see how far he takes his quixotic campaign. If nothing else, it’s fun to watch.
Rall is using the Planned Parenthood playbook of blaming the “far right” and tape discrepancies.
In a free society (which we like to pretend we have), why would any at-will employee or at-will contractor ever “deserve” a hearing on termination of the relationship?
I see your point, but if the case against Rall was fabricated — and I don’t for a second believe it was — shouldn’t he be given the chance to offer his defense?
Sure, in the public forum, maybe. I agree that fairness demands that he be given the opportunity to defend himself. Or course we do not know what processes may have been undertaken internally. It being an outfit run by self-righteous liberals, they may not be able to conceive that their initial step one impressions were wrong.
(My theory about liberals is that they are stop-at-step-one thinkers. Example: some people are hungry in the United States. Liberal: Give them some OPM (other people’s money. Problem solved. Thinking stops. But step two would require reflection on long term solutions versus the short term band aid and on the perverse incentives that makes people dependent on welfare, and on the effect when welfare pays better than work. Thus exemplifies liberal resistance to thinking past the initial perceived solution to any problem.)