EASY TARGETS: The latest sound beatings of Robert Fisk and Ted Rall. It's like watching a hit-the-jerk dunk tank at a carnival. And doesn't the dunkee usually benefit from that? They don't do it for free. Fisk is probably just doing his job as he understands it and serving his audience (while entertaining his detractors.) Rall, on the other hand, is a lot better known now than he was before the attacks and he might be playing up to his new audience, who might be nothing but his detractors, while still entertaining his old audience, Comic Relief and alt-weekly newspaper readers (the comics are in the back by the non-sexual massage ads.) He's at least an unpredictable guy, as that Ken Layne summary above illustrates.

I mean, I've always liked his comics. I don't always agree with them but his and Tom Tomorrow's are the alt political strips I check out pretty regularly. And he might be right about Art Spiegelman. Or I could just be a knee-jerk Harvey Pekar fan. But if that original Rall attack on Spiegelman was as out-of-the-blue as some said it was, then there's always been a self-promoting streak there on Rall's part.