NYC to GOP: Drop Dead

The ever wonderful Ted Rall, writing for Common Dreams News Center (which claims to offer "Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community"), has these kind words in advance of the Republican Convention coming to New York:

The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army. Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places. Objects will be thrown in their direction. Children will call them obscene names.

The much vaunted liberal tolerance and celebration of diversity didn't even make it out of the first paragraph, at least as far as Republicans are concerned. And calling everyone in uniform a "hapless sap" is an especially nice touch. I'll pause while Vietnam veteran John Kerry repudiates that nasty slur: [sound of crickets] Ted goes on:

Well aware that it is barren soil for their party's anti-urban, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, overtly racist ideology, Republican leaders have wisely avoided New York City as a convention site for the past 150 years.

Nothing like a little ad-hominem name-calling to get the progressive juices flowing. Hey, Ted, your ideology is anti-rural, anti-American, anti-masculine, and covertly racist. That didn't advance a debate any more than Ted's screed, but unlike Ted, I don't think that it did. As far as New Yorkers being hostile to Republicans, tell that to Rudy Giuliani and Ed Koch, two somewhat prominent New Yorkers both voting Republican this cycle.

As the nation's official unemployment rate hovers at six percent, the city's runs around eight.

According to this economic analysis, unemployment for July was 5.5%, down from 6.2% a year ago. It would be more accurate to say unemployment is dropping through 5.5% than hovering around six as Ted contends. And according to the same source, New York's June unemployment is at 6.9%, down 0.4% from last year. So in New York, unemployment is dropping below seven, not hovering at eight as Ted contends.

Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. (I guess J.C. Watts and Clarence Thomas will be handed accurate maps - ed.) Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush's policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

Did I call Ted Rall a "covert" racist? I was wrong. He is an overt racist. Moreover, how will the City's liberal prostitutes (now there's an attractive constituency for the Democrats) identify the Republicans, so they don't infect other progressives accidently? I suppose the same way Ted does: by the color of their skin, IQ, and size of their buttons. The prospect of being thought of as a stupid white man by a drug-addled, disease-ridden, prostitute should be enough to convince any conservative of the error of his ways.
Come to think of it, the only apparent physical trait separating Ted himself, a white man of questionable reason, from his view of the dreaded Republicans, is the buttons.

Republicans are neofascists now, and that's why New Yorkers good and true will be yelling at them to go back home.

I get it. The group attending a convention are "neofascists." And the group yelling obscenities, sending people into dangerous neighborhoods, and infecting them with fatal diseases? Ted Rall would certainly call those people "progressives." Ted has an interesting concept of progress.