So there’s this guy, a white guy, a progger doofus by the name of Ted Rall who makes editorial drawrings. He’s had his work published a lot over the years, been nominated for awards and such, from what I read. Rall once drawred a cartoon that portrayed former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as a “house nigga.”
Ted Rall doesn’t like cops much, either. In fact, his latest awfully-drawn piece which can be found…
You know what? No. I’m not linking it. I’ll just describe it.
A white guy and a black guy are drinking a couple of beers at a bar, watching the news on TV. On the screen is the image of a newscaster with a chryon underneath that reads, “Another police killing, unarmed man shot in back.” Beside the newscaster is what’s supposed to be a photo of a black man.
White guy: “I’m scared of cops.”
Black guy: “I’m scared to death of cops.”
White guy: “I see why.”
Black guy: “Good enough.”
Ooh. Hard-hitting. Thought-provoking.
Yup.
But long before Black Lives Matter became something we all must discuss, Ted Rall has had a hatred for cops, as people paying attention to him have learned. One incident in particular seems to have traumatized the man.
Back in May of this year, Rall recounted a story about getting busted for jaywalking by a Los Angeles policeman just after the turn of the millennium. The LA Times, which has apparently used this fine artist for his services in the past, published it. Rall told a horror story of innocently and properly crossing the street with the light–one of the few times he has, he admits–but then…
All of a sudden, a motorcycle officer zoomed over, threw me up against the wall, slapped on the cuffs, roughed me up and wrote me a ticket. It was an ugly scene, and in broad daylight it must have looked like one, because within minutes there were a couple of dozen passersby shouting at the cop.
Another motorcycle officer appeared, asked the colleague what the heck he was thinking and ordered him to let me go, which he did. But not before he threw my driver’s license into the sewer.
Oh my gosh, that’s horrible! Hashtag white lives matter!
Rall then wrote that he filed a complaint with the LAPD and tells that they didn’t let him know later that they dismissed his complaint.
Fast forward to July 28th, yesterday. Above Rall’s editorial, this was added:
FOR THE RECORD
In a May 11 post on The Times’ OpinionLA blog, Ted Rall — a freelance cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Times — described an incident in which he was stopped for jaywalking on Melrose Avenue in 2001. Rall said he was thrown up against a wall, handcuffed and roughed up by an LAPD motorcycle policeman who also threw his driver’s license into the sewer. Rall also wrote that dozens of onlookers shouted in protest at the officer’s conduct.
Since then, the Los Angeles Police Department has provided records about the incident, including a complaint Rall filed at the time. An audiotape of the encounter recorded by the police officer does not back up Rall’s assertions; it gives no indication that there was physical violence of any sort by the policeman or that Rall’s license was thrown into the sewer or that he was handcuffed. Nor is there any evidence on the recording of a crowd of shouting onlookers.
In Rall’s initial complaint to the LAPD, he describes the incident without mentioning any physical violence or handcuffing but says that the police officer was “belligerent and hostile” and that he threw Rall’s license into the “gutter.” The tape depicts a polite interaction.
In addition, Rall wrote in his blog post that the LAPD dismissed his complaint without ever contacting him. Department records show that internal affairs investigators made repeated attempts to contact Rall, without success.
Asked to explain these inconsistencies, Rall said he stands by his blog post.
As to why he didn’t mention any physical abuse in his letter to the LAPD in 2001, Rall said he didn’t want to make an enemy of the department, in part because he hosted a local radio talk show at the time. After listening to the tape, Rall noted that it was of poor quality and contained inaudible segments.
However, the recording and other evidence provided by the LAPD raise serious questions about the accuracy of Rall’s blog post. Based on this, the piece should not have been published.
Rall’s future work will not appear in The Times.
The Los Angeles Times is a trusted source of news because of the quality and integrity of the work its journalists do. This is a reminder of the need to remain vigilant about what we publish.
—Nicholas Goldberg
Editor of the Editorial Pages
Well, Ted Rall wasn’t going to take this clear injustice lying down, let him tell you.
[R]egarding the 2001 jaywalking ticket about which the LAPD now calls me a liart [sic], I should note that I wasn’t jaywalking. Not even a little bit. I was innocent.
And the cop was rough. While writing me a summons for what is, in Los Angeles, a misdemeanor, the cop shoved me around and handcuffed me. He was contemptuous, too — after issuing me a violation and releasing me, he feigned to hand me back my driver’s license.
Then he tossed it into the gutter.
The gutter? That verifies what the LA Times editor wrote. Didn’t Rall write in the LA Times that the cop threw his driver’s license in the sewer?
(I scroll back up to look.)
Why yes, yes, he did write that. So how does he explain that inconsistency?
Pringle and Goldberg, when we spoke, questioned why in the several accounts I’ve written about this, a detail changed. I had remembered the cop throwing my wallet, not just my license, on the ground. I called the place where the license landed “the sewer” as well as “the gutter.”
In southwestern Ohio, where I grew up, the two words are interchangeable. But yeah. I’m a writer, I should have been more specific on that.
Ohh. While everyone who read his LA Times piece probably thought the cop threw Rall’s license down the sewer, thereby forcing him to have to go to the DMV to get a new one–that cop was a total jerkknob!–the cop in reality just threw the license on the ground. But because people use “sewer” and “gutter” interchangeably in the part of the world where Rall comes from, it was just a simple misunderstanding. We should have known what he meant.
The editors at aNewDomain, the site that published his response to the firing, took his side on the matter:
(Editors note: Across the United States, where the editors grew up, we used the terms interchangeably, too).
Alrighty.
Rall posted the audio from the incident, which you can listen to if you want. I didn’t waste my time. He complained about the sound quality and asked if any sound engineers would attempt to verify the authenticity of the tape for him. It’s his word against the police department’s. The police have evidence. Rall’s story has holes in it, and he doesn’t hide the fact that he hates cops.
The LA Times made the right call. One less fruitcake to feed the masses.
H/t: breitbart.com
