Who Knew?

Ted Rall, defending his latest outrage against the late President Reagan, drops an interesting political factoid:

"Still, I'm not a knee-jerk left-wing guy," Mr. Rall said. "I am an advocate of the Second Amendment; I don't believe in abortion as birth control; and I was the first to call for Clinton's impeachment. I think that this country has shifted so far over to the right that anyone who is a garden-variety Democrat circa 1972 is painted as a Marxist-Leninist."

Whole story here. While I don't believe Reagan is burning in hell (Suckers! There is no hell!), and I think his slam against Pat Tillman was mean and stupid, I can't really work up much umbrage against Rall as a political bomb-thrower because I know him to be a figure much dearer to my heart: a generally offensive asshole.

I was on some mailing list about daily comic strips back in the mid-'90s, and Rall had a consistent, and consistently funny, habit of doing "Predictions of tomorrow's editorial cartoons" every time some terrible news would break. The one I remember best came on the day TWA 800 crashed off Long Island. The predictions:

1. The tailfin floating in the ocean with a caption: "NEVER AGAIN!"
2. Side-by-side tombstones, one reading "TWA 800" and the other "Confidence in air travel."
3. A line of passengers arriving at the pearly gates. Saint Peter: "Welcome aboard!"

Everybody is so full of shit these days that you can't even admit a thing like that made you laugh before it made you offended. But I'll admit it. In fact, I laughed again just now when I remembered it.