More teh stupidz from Ted Rall spread: He now deliberately spreads misinformation

If Frederick Theodore Rall didn't have a sense of pomposity (which extends to past lawsuits he has filed, and not just the anti-anti-SLAPP one against the LA Times), and if he didn't have groupies who were ignorant of these issues, if not deliberately dismissive, I wouldn't blog about him, and I'd have a small bit less fun.

It's really fun when Rall has four teh stupidz in the same column.

He talks about US MSM "censorship," and does so in the context of claiming that RT and Sputnik have never censored him.

Well, there's two of teh stupidz right there.

First, even for someone trying, and failing, to reinterpret anti-SLAPP laws, using "censorship" in the colloquial instead of the legally proper sense is not acceptable. American media may well decline to write about the number of people in the US who like socialism (Rall's pet peeve that led to the column) but that's not censorship.

ONLY governments — including state controlled media — censor. In the US, if the Voice of America omitted information from a story, especially if it were just rerunning an AP story, THAT would be censorship. Nothing else is.

Second teh stupidz is his claim about RT and Sputnik.

Of course they haven't censored you. You're writing about Merika. Try writing about Pussy Riot, or even worse Russian government thuggery, on RT, Ted, then call us back. Given that RT is a spinoff of Russian state media, only lightly spun off and arguably at least "semi-official," if RT doesn't let you talk about Putin's authoritarianism THAT would be censorship in the proper use of the term, too. Given that former RT staff, per links at Wiki, have complained about it distorting their stories, in addition, it has an actual known history in this area that you have also chosen to ignore.

And, yes, it's not that you're uninformed, Ted. You've chosen to ignore information that I know you have.

Third, the actual issue he wrongly claimed was being censored?

Rall, again willfully is the only logical assumption, misinterprets a USA Today story.

There's a big, BIG difference between 37 percent of people having a positive view of socialism than 37 percent of Americans "being socialist," let alone communist, which wasn't even discussed in USA Today's piece.

Fourth? I love it when the likes of Rall engage in petard-hoisting.

Ted, how is stuff like this being "censored" by the American MSM when you linked to a USA Today story which cited the factual information you claim is being censored? And USA was citing a Gallup Poll, surely read, and surely written about, by other MSM. Damn.

I kept Ted on my blogroll, for laughs, after my previous cleanup. But he's getting close to conspiracy theory land now. And, in the service of RT.

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Update, May 27: Carl Beijer reports in detail on the actual Gallup Poll and shows that, contra Ted, it doesn't say people support socialism after all. The big takeaway is that a majority of Americans say they still want the free market to run health care.