Most of my readership are, unsurprisingly, Americans, so this column should be read – and widely dispersed – by them.

Seriously: polling indicates that four-fifths of the United States opposes raising the debt ceiling. In economic terms, this is like four-fifths of the United States wanting, say, New York City to be blown up with a nuclear bomb; even technical default (e.g. allowing debt to hit the debt ceiling but not defaulting), and the USA’s position as possessor of the world’s reserve community currency1 ends the same day.

Which for me would be pretty awesome because the US dollar would plummet against the loonie and I would be able to buy lots of stuff from Amazon with Canadian pennies, which would suddenly be of incredible value to Americans. Until I lost my job in the inevitable recession that would hit me and everybody else in the world thanks to the USA collapsing, but rest assured that my Amazon shipments would include everything I would need to become the Gyro Captain from The Road Warrior.

1. D’oh! [↩]

So Scott Adams has been busy of late getting a reputation as a jackass, and he feels this is unfair, so naturally he published a long blogpost about how everybody is being unfair to him just because he created a sockpuppet account to go on Metafilter and give himself props:

As a general rule, you can’t trust anyone who has a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is like a prison that locks in both the truth and the lies. One workaround for that problem is to change the messenger. That’s where an alias comes in handy. When you remove the appearance of conflict of interest, it allows others to listen to the evidence without judging.

Well, yes, not telling people who you are does remove them of the ability to respond to you, but I have to respect Adams’ ability to try and present lying to people as a positive. People will tend to get offended when you lie to them, and unfortunately just because Adams had reasons for lying to them doesn’t make it not rude to the Metafilterites who honestly engaged his sockpuppet.1 It also manages to conveniently overlook the fact that, even though Adams’ identity was not known by his debate partners, they still disagreed with his points, rendering his “well they would have disagreed with me just for knowing who I was” line of argument basically invalid.

This week for example, I’m the target of Men’s Rights advocates, Feminists, and one bearded taint who is leading an anti-creationist movement. What do those folks have in common? In each case they are using the same strategy. They take out of context something I’ve written, present it to the lazy Internet media who doesn’t check context, and use it to demonize me to gain publicity for their respective causes. That’s how advocates get free publicity. They find a celebrity to target.

Now this deserves honest examination.

Adams portrays himself as the undeserving target of multiple groups, characterizing their anger at him as being the spawn of misunderstanding – either accidental or purposefully created by a nasty third party. The problem is that, for someone who’s complaining about “lazy Internet media,” he’s being awfully lazy in characterizing these attacks. Men’s rights’ activists aren’t pissed at Scott Adams over a misunderstanding: they’re angry at him because he called them a bunch of pussies.2 Feminists aren’t pissed at Scott Adams over a misunderstanding: they’re angry at him because he compared equal work for equal pay to a child wanting candy for dinner and minimized the difference in amount of sacrifice necessary to maintain a job and family that exists between the genders, not to mention the fact that defining weakness by use of the word “pussies” isn’t something feminists traditionally like at all.3 And scibloggers… well, we’ll get to them.

Adams does this regularly: he says something that even an idiot would know is offensive (or at least gratuitously stupid), then gets hurt when people are offended and says “I was only joking” or “it was a thought exercise!” or something else that expresses the general sentiment that it’s everybody else’s fault for taking him seriously when he says something in a thoughtful-seeming tone, even when his actions after the fact make it perfectly obvious that he knows he’s been bad.

Fine, then. Here is a thought exercise. A man repeatedly says things that are obviously likely to provoke people into anger, then, when they get angry, claims that they shouldn’t be getting angry because he was not sincere. Is this A) his fault or B) everybody else’s fault?

The same thing is happening today with a Republican official who emailed some friends a humorous photo of President Obama’s face on a chimp and a punch line about his birth certificate. If your only context is what the Internet says about this story, you assume it’s a typical racist act by a Republican who is already guilty by association.

It’s funny that Scott Adams, in this rant, is complaining about the media being “lazy” by characterizing her as a racist. Why is it funny?

But if I add the context that Googling “George Bush monkey” gives you over 3 million hits, and most of them are jokes where President Bush’s face is transposed on a monkey, you see what’s really going on. Democrats and advocates of civil rights are using the media to further an agenda at the expense of a woman who was probably so non-racist that the photo in question didn’t set off her alarms as being a career-ending risk.

Well, no, it’s not funny because Scott Adams just compared the tired old joke about George Bush having a chimp-like face to the historical racial slur of black people being compared to monkeys, which is a painfully false equivalency because white people also generally don’t get upset when you call them the n-word. It’s because this woman “who was probably so non-racist” has previously defended other people for making racist jokes and statements. It’s a shame Adams didn’t bother to find this out before championing the aforementioned racist, who of course has it just as bad as Adams.4 5

If you wonder how the evolution rumor started, it’s partly because I made the following argument: The evidence for evolution, by its nature, seems fishy to the average non-scientist independent of the underlying truth. That’s a statement about human perceptions, not the objective reality of the theory.

The sciblogger community isn’t pissed at Scott Adams because they think he’s a creationist: they’re pissed at him because he raised a bunch of easily debunked arguments and treated them as reasonable evidence that creationists had a point, then backpedaled and claimed he was only engaging in a “thought exercise” once people pointed out that his arguments were stupid and that all he had done is prove that creationists survive by peddling lies over and over again.6 People don’t get offended by the process of examining why creationism gets a toehold. They get offended when Scott Adams does it really, really badly and in a way which gives unfair credence to creationist arguments.

Besides which, it’s not like Adams ever comes up with anything novel out of these thought experiments.

I will add some context though. Keep in mind that creating the hapless Dilbert character largely in my own image launched a twenty year career of daily self-deprecation. Likewise, about half of what I write outside of the comic is unambiguously self-deprecating. I’m a short, near-sighted, bald, over-the-hill guy with a bad sense of direction and an astonishing lack of competence at 99% of life’s challenges.

Yes, but Adams is also a millionaire many times over, so really, self-deprecation on his part isn’t charming. (Also, frankly it’s amazing that this self-deprecation all of a sudden disappears whenever somebody points out that Adams has said something really dumb, which makes it seem less like humility and more like a minstrel show.)

Let’s take a moment to call back the discussion of how the messenger changes the message. A large number of you are reading my explanation of the evolution rumor and dismissing it as my pathetic attempt at revisionist history. I’m back pedaling! I got caught being a moron and now I’m trying to save face!

See how this works? The messenger with a strong self-interest is automatically non-credible, and should be.

And this is why Adams had to lie about his identity on the internet!

There are some types of information that can only be communicated by an unbiased messenger. And the most unbiased messenger in the world is one that is imaginary, such as my invisible friend, PlannedChaos.

This is simply drivel. An imaginary messenger is by definition biased towards its creator, because that’s how creators roll. “PlannedChaos” wasn’t ever going to give anybody a reasonable, even-handed critique of Adams’ controversial writings, because he was Adams. Of course, possibly Adams will now claim that he was trying to point this out all along and we’re the stupid ones for falling into his trap, but for someone complaining about laziness on the part of his critics, this is the worst kind of argument if it’s intentional, because it’s baiting, pure and simple. We can either assume that Adams is sincere when he initially writes on any topic, or assume he’s full of crap when he writes anything: when you have someone who claims to be baiting people, those are your only two options for dealing with them efficiently.

On the scale of immoral behavior, where genocide is at the top, and wearing Spanx is near the bottom, posting comments under an alias to clear up harmful misconceptions is about one level worse than Spanx.

“HEY YOU GUYS THERE ARE MURDERERS AND RAPISTS AND STUFF OUT THERE SO WHY ARE YOU GETTING ALL MAD AT MEEEEEEEEEEE?”

1. His complaint that Metafilter is a “cesspool” is just kind of nuts, because Metafilter is probably one of the most balanced and fair discussionblogs on the interwoobs, but whatever. Maybe Dogbert wrote it. [↩]
2. Rightfully. [↩]
3. And also there’s the fact that Adams soon deleted the post from his blog, demonstrating that he knew perfectly well that he had written something offensive, and then maintained afterwards that no, that blogpost he hastily deleted was totally cool you guys. [↩]
4. Maybe she was engaging in a “thought exercise!” [↩]
5. To say nothing of the fact that his argument is just boneheaded. Seriously: who in the hell doesn’t know that you don’t compare black people to monkeys? Like, ever? [↩]
6. See also: Adams’ comments on atheism. [↩]

Okay, follow along with me here. It’s well-known that George Lucas was a big Kurosawa fan during his formative years as a film-maker, and that he cites ‘The Hidden Fortress’ by Kurosawa as a key inspiration for ‘Star Wars’. Some have even described Lucas’ movie as a science-fiction remake of ‘The Hidden Fortress’, much the same way as ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ is a Western remake of ‘Yojimbo’. Which leads me to wonder, what might have happened if Lucas had been inspired by a different Kurosawa film? What if it wasn’t ‘The Hidden Fortress’ that shaped the direction of his classic film?

The Seven Samurai: Tatooine moisture farmer Luke Skywalker stumbles upon information that his insignificant homeworld is about to become the crux in the Empire’s plan to destroy the Rebellion. Princess Leia of Alderaan, a key figure in the Rebellion, is coming to this distant world to exchange vital information with Rebel spies; little does she know that the Empire has already learned of her mission, and has set a trap for her with a hidden garrison of Imperial troops…a garrison led by the Emperor’s personal enforcer, Darth Vader. Skywalker longs to help the princess, but he’s only one man, and an untrained fighter at that; he needs help if he’s going to save her. So he recruits a rag-tag band to help him: An exiled Jedi Knight named Ben Kenobi, a smuggler with a heart of gold named Han Solo, a bestial Wookie named Chewbacca, a grizzled bounty hunter named Boba Fett, and a Rebel pilot named Wedge Antilles. The six of them rescue the princess from the initial ambush; and together, the seven of them retreat into the Tatooine desert, where they use Ben’s knowledge of the terrain to slowly winnow away the Empire’s advantage of numbers. In the end, although Ben and Boba die in battle, Leia succeeds in her mission and (possibly) begins the end of the Empire.

Yojimbo: In the distant galactic backwater of Mos Eisley, Ben Kenobi (a former Jedi Knight who fled to the Galactic Rim after the fall of his order) becomes embroiled in the middle of a war between rival gang lords Jabba the Hutt and Xizor. He hires himself out first to one, then the other, playing both sides against the middle while he secretly works to clean up “the most wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The end features him dueling against Jabba’s top enforcer, Boba Fett. (The scary thing is, this requires only minimal changes to fit into continuity…)

Rashomon: In the aftermath of the death of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi at the hands of Sith Lord Darth Vader, we see differing interpretations of the event from Vader, Kenobi, Leia, and finally the droid duo of C-3P0 and R2-D2. In the end, though we see many versions of the final battle between the two, the truth remains elusive and unknowable.

The Lower Depths: Owen Lars and his wife, Beru, run a small flophouse on Tatooine for scoundrels down on their luck. Among them is Han Solo, a smuggler and thief, and Ben Kenobi, a mysterious wise old man with a troubled past. Han is having an affair with Beru, but his growing friendship with Beru’s nephew Luke makes him consider breaking it off. At the same time, his admiration for Ben makes him think about finding a better life. When he discovers that Owen and Beru beat Luke, he breaks into their house to defend his young friend, only to wind up inadvertently killing Owen. Beru claims that he did it to continue their affair, which ends his friendship with Luke, and Ben flees when Imperial stormtroopers come to arrest the smuggler. In the end, Beru is arrested as well, leaving Luke without guidance and support.

Ran: Emperor Palpatine’s ambitious plan for his succession backfires on him when he delegates power to three of his most senior advisors, Grand Moff Tarkin, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and his apprentice and “son” created through Jedi magic, Darth Vader. Vader questions the wisdom of splitting the Empire between so many ambitious men, and is disowned and banished along with his droids. But Vader is proven right when Tarkin and Thrawn go to war over the Empire, and both of them try to put the Emperor out of the way as a potential obstacle; with his Royal Guard slaughtered, the insane Palpatine is left to wander the countryside. There he is discovered by R2D2 and C3Po, two of Vader’s droids that have remained loyal to the Emperor. They take refuge in a peasant’s hut on the swamp world of Dagobah, only to find it occupied by Yoda, Palpatine’s old Jedi foe who he had ordered to be blinded.

Vader discovers what happened to Palpatine and gathers an army to find him; this is viewed as an attempt at conquest by Tarkin and Thrawn, who send their own armies to stop him. In the final battle, the three armies weaken each other to the point where the Rebel Alliance is able to overthrow them; it’s revealed, in the end, that this was the ultimate goal of Tarkin’s wife, Mon Mothma. Tarkin kills Mothma, but is himself killed when Rebel ships blow up his Star Destroyer. Vader finds Palpatine, but is killed by Boba Fett, an assassin sent after him by Tarkin before his death. Overcome with grief, Palpatine dies, marking the end of the Empire. The film ends with a shot of Yoda, blind and alone on Dagobah, the only survivor of the film’s events.

(And by the way, before anyone thinks to comment on it, yes, I know ‘Ran’ came out after the trilogy was finished. If I can postulate an alternate universe where Lucas based ‘Star Wars’ on other movies, I can postulate one where he did it a decade later.)

All we need is to do is hook up a generator to this perpetual motion machine!

(Although now I must know what the trick is.)

…is this article suggesting that the natural home of hippies is the Tea Party.

No, really. Among the article’s highlights:

– taking an anti-war poster with “Great Society” on it, the point of which was that Johnson’s rhetoric about the Great Society were belied by his actions in Vietnam, and arguing that posters like this meant that hippies actually hated government anti-poverty programs and civil rights

– arguing that conservatives believe that humans are inherently flawed and selfish, just like hippies do

– saying that hippies rejected “artificially constructed collectivist utopias,” which is about as a good a four-word definition of the commune movement as one could manage

– suggesting that the reason Democrats lost in 1968 is because hippies all voted for Richard Nixon

– further arguing that Democrats protesting the 1968 Democratic convention and not the Republican convention is proof of this (conveniently ignoring that in 1972 hippies protested the Republican convention, but whatever, that’s four whole years later)

– glossing over the fact that although both hippies and Tea Partiers believe in “accepting the natural order of things,” that their respective definitions of what that might actually be are wildly divergent

– and, of course, a political spectrum diagram that tells us exactly where “bums” and “trustafarian anarchists” lie on the political spectrum (although it does leave out “those damn kids listening to their Black Eyed Peas” and “my neighbor whose dog keeps digging up my azaleas” on the author’s list of personal bugbears, although I am sure they are both evil commies)

Seriously, folks. This thing is a work of art.

BEST MOMENT!

Either when he suggests that a 15-year-old gay boy killed himself because “he was unable to endure the guilt that the others of words prompted in him” and passive-aggressively asserts that it was the kid’s fault
OR
when he explains why he is a giant pussy who doesn’t allow comments on his Youtube page

Attacking Mister Rogers? Seriously. Mister Rogers, for crissake.

It’s rare that I would quote a Youtube comment as eloquent, but:

Even 4chan doesn’t talk shit about Mr. Rogers. That’s how low Fox news has become.

So the Modesty Survey is starting to make its way around the internet, and for me this is a totally alien subculture. I mean, I was raised Catholic, but being raised Catholic in Toronto is not exactly the strictest form of Christian upbringing, to say the least; the only thing you’re guaranteed to have is a relatively worldly guilt complex and an appreciation of fish on Fridays. Compared to that, this is… really, really weird.

58 percent of them (and bear in mind the “Christian boys” range from 16 to 35, which is pushing it at the upper end, but whatevs) say that a skirt that falls above the knee is immodest! “That’s getting into dangerous territory, especially when they sit down, since it slides up even further.” DANGEROUS TERRITORY! Needless to say, 93 percent have a problem with miniskirts. 84 percent say that a bikini is immodest. “If you understood the purpose of publications like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue…”1 62 percent aren’t even satisfied if girls wear a tankini instead; 55 percent can’t even handle a one-piece halter-top suit. A thirteen-year-old writes: “They tend to show cleavage and your back is too much of a distraction.”2

66 percent say that a shirt with a “lacy, lingerie look” is immodest. 62 percent worry about girls who wear a transparent shirt over a tank top. 76 percent say that “even an inch” of skin between pants and bottom of shirt is a “stumbling block.” 65 percent have a problem with girls who have to adjust a bra strap in public. 56 percent have a problem with halter-top bras, which is probably the same people who complained about halter-top swimsuits. “This sounds stupid, but I’ll be honest: The strings invite a tug.” You heard that guy, ladies! You shouldn’t wear a halter-top lest he be tempted to assault you!3

But hey, it’s not just clothes the Christian boys are concerned with. 75 percent say that “the way a girl walks” can be a stumbling block. 57 percent are worried about when girls stretch their arms because their chests stick out. 63 percent get tense when a girl bends over and exposes her lower back. 61 percent feel sinful when a girl bends over with her ass towards them, and 76 percent can’t handle breasts bobbling up and down when a girl walks or runs.

Really, I know one should feel contempt for the overt misogyny on display here, but really I can’t be bothered to feel anything other than pity. These “Christian boys”4 are just so goddamn pathetic, a scream in the night of “I am powerless over my dick”:

Sisters in Christ, you really have no concept of the struggles that guys face on a daily basis. Please, please, please take a higher standard in the ways you dress. True, we men are responsible for our thoughts and actions before the Lord, but it is such a blessing when we know that we can spend time with our sisters in Christ, enjoying their fellowship without having to constantly be on guard against ungodly thoughts brought about by the inappropriate ways they sometimes dress.

This sentiment is of course the prevailing one. Sometimes it gets justified in weird ways.

A girl has been given something for which she is responsible. That gift is a beautiful body and mystique which has power over a man, and so in being responsible with that gift, a girl must give thought to men. This is just like how men have been given bodies with a different power – physical strength. A man is responsible for that strength and must not abuse it or be careless with it – be that in the context of other men and children, or with women.

“See, men are big and strong, and we shouldn’t hit people. And women aren’t big and strong, but they are pretty, so they shouldn’t hit people metaphorically with their choice of clothing.”

In fairness, when asked what their responsibility is, most of the Christian boys say straight up that it’s first and foremost their job to treat women respectfully and not lust in their hearts and do all the things they believe God wants them to do. But that adult sentiment is choked off when you read their scorn for women who “flaunt their bodies”:

Yes, you can turn me on, but don’t expect me to respect you. Yes, I might find you attractive on the outside, but that won’t make me think of you as attractive on the inside. Sure you might get my attention, but it will be negative attention.

Given that we’ve established that a simple bikini or an inch of skin between shirt and pant gets “negative attention,” this guy needs his head adjusted. What really gets to me is that these dipshits put everything in their own context. A girl wearing revealing clothing doesn’t get respect because of how she makes the guy feel. These guys keep talking about how they want girls of substance and then demand that “substance” cannot wear sexy clothes; they complain about how hard it is for them not to sin and then request that girls self-police their clothing and behaviour as if the two required equivalent effort.

It’s just sad.

1. Wait, do people actually still whack it to the Swimsuit Issue? I mean, seriously, porn is so easy to get now. What’s the point of the Swimsuit Issue? Or maybe we’re dealing with people here for whom the Swimsuit Issue is as close as they ever get to porn? Not that they don’t have access to porn, but that the Swimsuit Issue is the most they can conceive of porn actually being? Like, they look at the cover of a Vivid Video flick and think “I bet that sinful video has simply TONS of girls in swimsuits lounging around.” [↩]
2. I suppose we should applaud that thirteen-year-old for being able to appreciate the beauty of a woman’s back at such a young age. When I was thirteen, I think I would have preferred it if girls were made entirely of tits. Like, foot-to-head. All tits. [↩]
3. TUG TUG TUG! [↩]
4. Up to age 35! Forever young! [↩]

The one thing Archie Andrews can be thankful for is that Betty Cooper doesn’t (usually) have god-like magical powers that allow her to kill or maim other people on a whim. Harvey… er… No-Last-Name is not so lucky. As revealed in this story from Sabrina # 21 (September 1974), written by Frank Doyle and drawn by Stan Goldberg before his characters’ faces started melting, Sabrina has adopted a policy of talking nice to her boyfriend while quietly using her Satanic powers to wreak destruction on any girl who even looks his way.

The violence begins in the splash panel, as Sabrina congratulates herself on her own lack of jealousy while literally raining thunder and lightning down on this poor girl whose only crime was to be (inexplicably) interested in Harvey. The whole thing has a “why don’t you stop drenching and electrocuting yourself” feel too it.

Then, after the girl has made it clear that she’s been thoroughly scared away, Sabrina tries to murder her by making a heavy sign fall on top of her. Just for the hell (again, literally) of it. Also, “Eeyipe!” was clearly a favourite Frank Doyle word along with “EEP!” “Urk!” and “W-ell.”

The freckled hell-spawn then returns to telling her poor sap of a boyfriend how wonderful he is, but senses danger when a stranger winks at him. So of course she does what anyone would do in a situation like that: causes her to have an entire supply of garbage poured onto her. I guess she was allowed to escape without any permanent scars only because she didn’t actually talk to him.

And, as the story ends, we see Sabrina casually destroying the lives, bodies and futures of literally every other young woman in sight, because it’s better to turn them into reptiles amphibians or cast them down to the centre of the Earth rather than risk having them talk to a guy who would later be played by Nate Richert. (Whatever happened to Nate Richert anyway?) I think my favourite image is of the girl being pulled into a mysterious building with a “girls wanted” sign. Apparently Sabrina is also using her witchcraft to sell women into prostitution.

I just wonder what Betty Cooper would do if she had supernatural powers. How could she ever top Sabrina’s combination of cruelty, viciousness and pathology?

I’m sorry I asked.

Is it okay that I am kinda skeeved out by this?

I mean I been busy the last few weeks because I was in America and all and I’m totally gonna talk about that later when I’m not busy being me, but… ewwwwww, Kevin Church! Ewwwwww!

You may or may not have heard about what has recently happened to Constance McMillen. For those who haven’t, she’s an out lesbian who’s graduating from high school this year, and wanted to go to prom. When the school banned her from prom, she sued for the right to attend, so they cancelled the prom. Then the school was legally forced to have a prom, so their response was to throw two proms: one for Constance and her date and a handful of other students (including two kids with learning disabilities – STAY CLASSY, ITAWAMBA COUNTY), and one for everybody else which they kept secret. (Admittedly, the secret prom kind of looks like it sucked, but I think that has more to do with it being Bumfuck Wherever, Missisippi than any sort of guilty.)

It honestly just staggers me that people could be so hateful and petty. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, these shits were lying to her face for what must have been weeks, and for what? Because Constance seems like a pretty awesome person, all things considered. Are these people just trying to confirm everybody’s hunches about what Missisippi is like? Is that the plan? Because it’s fucking working like gangbusters.

I thought for a second that I should be all sanctimonious and write an open letter to Constance about how life’s going to get ten billion times better the moment she gets the fuck out of there and moves somewhere where gays aren’t considered third-class citizens – you know, like Iowa – but then thought better of it, because it’s pretty obvious from all these stories that, as said, she’s an awesome person and she knows pretty well that once she gets the fuck out of there things are going to get better anyway. But it also occurs to me for every Constance out there, there’s got to be a hundred other desperately unhappy gay teenagers, closeted or not, in exactly the same situation as her: having it reinforced, every day of their lives, that they are lesser.

So, to all of them: it’s not your fault. Yes, it is entirely possible to live in a town where everybody else is an asshole. And yes, when you leave, it will get endlessly better in more ways than you could ever believe. If you choose to stay and try and change minds, my heart’s out to you. But if you want to leave and just be happy, then do it; it’ll work out, believe me.

(yes I am still on hiatus shut up)

So a few people emailed me asking me to say something about Warner Todd Huston’s screed about the issue of Captain America where the tea partiers are shown in a less than sympathetic light. Individuals unfamiliar with Warner Todd Huston may need to know that this instance probably represents the apex of his influence as a professional complainant, as Warner Todd has previously complained about all sorts of other things and nobody has ever taken him seriously. However, Marvel Comics is now owned by Disney, which means that Joe Quesada – never exactly one to court the dislike of anybody other than the dedicated fanboys who will buy comics regardless of how many times he makes Spider-Man sell his soul to save an old lady – apologized immediately, because maybe Disney would fire him or something.

(I jest, of course. Let’s be honest: it makes sense for Marvel to apologize because it’s not worth the hassle of Sean Hannity crusading against them. It likewise makes sense for Ed Brubaker to apologize, because regardless of his personal beliefs he’s got a family to feed and there are more important things to go to bat over than a page out of a licensed character comic book that got some cretins’ undies up in a twist.)

This is a multipart saga, so let us begin.

1.) Warner Todd Huston Is Angry About Captain America #602

Warner Todd was very angry about this issue, and the reason he is angry is this:

In it the current Captain (there have been a few of them, apparently) is on the trail of a faux Captain America that is mentally deranged and getting chummy with some white supremacist, anti-government, survivalists types going by the name of “the Watchdogs.”

That “white supremacist” thing is a sticking point for Warner Todd, and it’s part of the reason he’s an idiot. Here are all the quotes from Captain America #602 wherein the Watchdogs are referred to as white supremacists:

(sound of tumbleweed drifting through empty town)

…oh wait, there aren’t any. Now, granted, the Watchdogs were introduced in 1987, a year after Warner “I Know All About Comics, Dammit” Todd says he quit reading them, so maybe he’s not aware that the Watchdogs, while always overtly right-wing and “traditional values”-y, were never actually portrayed as racists. (Mark Gruenwald, as I recall, wasn’t comfortable portraying them as such.) Similarly, in this issue, there is not one mention of the Watchdogs’ attitudes towards race.

Werner Todd is inferring motivation, plain and simple. He sees a mythical organization of baddies modeled after right-wing extremist militias and assumes they must be racist. There is literally not one thing in the entire comic where you can assume anything about the Watchdogs’ or protestors’ racial beliefs based on their actions. You have to want to see it.1

But there is more:

The Captain tells him, “no it’s perfect… this all fits right into my plan.” After this we find that the Captain’s plan is to send the black man into a redneck bar to pretend to be a black man working for the IRS and to get everyone all mad… because… well, you know that every white person is a racist that hates black civil servants, right?

It feels a bit oversimplistic to point out that Bucky’s plan is actually to draw the attention of traveling Watchdog recruiters by pretending to beat up a civil servant and be all “I hate the gubmint” while they’re watching – because the Watchdogs hate the federal government, you see – but amazingly, Warner Todd was unable to figure out this actually pretty simple bit of plot. Now, granted, Ed Brubaker didn’t write in some expository thought balloons saying things like “Must make this look good… so the Watchdogs notice me and ask me to join them!” but then again I guess he made the mistake of writing above a sixth-grade reading level.

So, there you have it, America. Tea Party protesters just “hate the government,” they are racists, they are all white folks, they are angry, and they associate with secretive white supremacist groups that want to over throw the U.S. government.

My word, why would anybody ever associate tea partiers with racism? Why would anybody dare suggest that extremists might try to infiltrate the tea party movement for the purposes of recruitment? (I’m not even gonna bother collecting hyperlinks about tea partiers being “angry” or mostly white, because seriously now, come on.)

2.) Carla Hoffman Decides To Be Reasonable With A Jackass

In response to Marvel’s nigh-immediate capitulation to Warner Todd’s offense that a portrayal of a tea party rally would even dare hint at tea partiers being slightly racist rather than upstanding moral whatevers, Carla Hoffman wrote a response, to which Warner Todd immediately wrote both a patronizing comment wherein he was offended that Carla hadn’t heard of him and he did too know about these here comical books, and then, not satisfied with that, an additional blog entry, because he decided that Carla was a stupidhead.

This is mostly Carla’s fault for treating Warner Todd as someone interested in discourse. She made this mistake because Carla, at root, is a nice person who wants to get along with everybody. I, however, am not a nice person and I do not give a tinker’s cuss if I get along with Warner Todd or not. The man is a pustule on public discourse and should be treated as such.2

3.) Warner Todd Escalates

Anyway. After Warner Todd complains about how liberals are stupid and self-righteous and don’t understand complex concepts – and how come they don’t just talk politely to old Warner Todd anyhow? – for a few paragraphs, he gets into the meat of his diatribe.

I should start this discussion by saying that there isn’t anything wrong with enjoying comic books, even as an adult. They can be fun, for sure. But to imagine that comic books offer anything other than lowgrade entertainment is laughable. Comics are not high art (in fact, most of them are horrible even as graphic art) and they most certainly do not equal anything of the sort of deep, consequential literature. Comics are a childish, formulaic, lowest common denominator form of entertainment. It doesn’t make them evil or useless or bad necessarily. It just makes them low-end, fun. They are nothing to be taken seriously. If you are someone that lives for your next comic, or you want to claim that comic books are “art” worthy of serious consideration… you need to get out of your parent’s basement a little more often.

First off, the incidence of a “parents’ basement” joke (with improper use of an apostrophe, way to go you professional writer you!) should be the first and most obvious sign that Warner Todd is a hack of the first degree and that this moment of accidental relevance is indeed the pinnacle of his professional life, and that should make you feel sad if you are a good person. I am not an especially good person, so it makes me feel dark and demonic glee.

Secondly, the fact that Warner Todd declaims comics as “horrible even as graphic art” just goes to show you that he’s an ignoramus who doesn’t know anything about the form generally. But maybe you want specific proof that he’s an idiot in this regard? Here you go:

Let’s start with the visual. Graphically, it isn’t very well drafted. It does have the benefit of being created in the semi-realist style that began to be popular in the 1980s, though, which instantly makes it better than today’s comics drawn in that horrible Japanese Anime/Manga style that has so pervaded the comic book industry of late.

Overcapitalized and barely coherent attack on manga aside, this is excerpted from Warner Todd’s very very long and very very stupid review of Watchmen. Yes, folks. You got that right. Warner Todd thinks that Dave Gibbons’ art on Watchmen “isn’t very well drafted.”

This is the point where you have to just kind of stare. It’s like somebody professing to know a lot about literature and saying something like “Dostoyevsky, he wasn’t really much of a writer” or how they’re very knowledgeable about classical music and saying “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Nothing really special about it.” It’s not that they’re advancing a contrarian opinion, because there are a number of very reasonable critiques one can make of Watchmen – it relies too heavily on a knowledge of the form and is self-referential, Alan Moore is sometimes too self-indulgent in his asides, the pirate story as allegory is forced – but saying that Dave Gibbons’ art and layouts are bad is just so fucking ignorant of the form itself that you have to immediately disqualify the speaker as knowing a damn thing about comics generally, no matter how many comics he collected back before 1986 when he quit collecting.3

(ASIDE: Other things Warner Todd does not like about Watchmen include: Nite Owl not being able to get it up initially for Silk Spectre, Ozymandias winning, the comic’s underlying belief that in order to be a superhero there has to be something more or less wrong with you, and the two Bernies being “unlikeable characters” because they’re Americans being written by an Englishman. No, really. He says all of this. Really, if you want to see the most trite, lazy comics “analysis” I’ve read in quite some time, do yourself a favour and click the link. We could totally have a contest! “Stupidest Thing Warner Todd Huston Says About Watchmen.“)

Anyway. Enough about Warner Todd and Watchmen, the point of which is merely to illustrate the depths of his know-nothingness. Let us continue. After Warner Todd complains at length about Carla saying “welcome to comics” and how he had tons and tons of comics back in the day (which was twenty-five years ago)

The “letter” was written by one Carla Hoffman and is replete with uninformed assumptions, hackneyed pop psychology, all wrapped up in a total failure to observe the first tenet in journalism: contact your subject before you write anything.

I can’t think of anything I’d want to do more than contact an over-ripe douchebag like this guy!

Again, Warner Todd is taking offense that Carla didn’t bother to do her research and find out that he used to read comic books twenty-five years ago so of course he knows everything there is to know about comics. Instead, Carla merely assumed that Warner Todd’s inability to actually discuss the comic in question, combined with his show of naivete over there being multiple Captain Americas, meant that he was unfamiliar with the current state of comics and comic storytelling. I wonder why she thought such a thing!

Of course, this uninformed assumption shows her arrogance. You see, because I criticized the comic book she assumed that I couldn’t possibly have ever liked comics.

No, Warner Todd. She wrote that because she’s polite, and because your argument was whining bullshit with little to no basis in reality dependent on your projection. Carla, being nice, made the assumption that you were ignorant rather than stupid and/or intellectually dishonest.

Unintentionally funny was her prosaic proclamation that the Internet spawns “strong opinion” as if my piece was merely that, yet her’s isn’t.

DEAR “PROFESSIONAL WRITER” WARNER TODD HUSTON: Please learn how to use a fucking apostrophe.

Also, Carla’s piece might be opinion – sure it is – but “strong?” She used very mild language. She didn’t use any invective or make a single personal attack – you finding ways to be insulted by her essay doesn’t count, Warner Todd – or indeed do anything other than say “you took it one way, but isn’t it also possible to read it this way?” That’s not “strong.” That’s mild. You know how I know it’s mild? Because she didn’t start making fun of your name and calling you “Weiner Todd,” which I am certain happened to you in high school in between vigorous masturbation sessions over a copy of Vampirella, wherein you had two, count ’em TWO, letters to the editor published.

Or, in other words: stop being a whiny-ass titty-baby, Warner Todd.

Apparently someone forgot to alert little Miss Hoffman that there haven’t been any “Pro-Bush rallies” since about 2003 when he last ran for president. Further, Miss Hoffman obviously has no clue that the Tea Party movement is just as mad at Bush as they are Clinton and Obama.

They were so mad at him that they sat on their asses for eight years until President Blacky McBlackerton got elected! That sure showed him. Of course, Carla wasn’t attempting to suggest that Tea Party rallies were explicitly pro-Bush rallies – why would anybody think that – but instead that the Tea Partiers, rather than being apolitical as per their claim, were merely an extension of Republican activism. Of course, reading that would require the ability to understand subtlety and nuance, which Weiner Todd isn’t good at except for when he’s trying to find proof that Ed Brubaker thinks tea partiers are racists.

Uh, no. Sam Wilson is not his “real name.” Sam Wilson is a character’s name. It isn’t a real person we’re talking about here. This poor young lady cannot tell reality from fiction, apparently.

Weiner Todd here feels the need to take a cheap shot at Carla, who was honestly nothing but pleasant to him. “Real name,” in this instance, of course refers to “Sam Wilson’s personal name, as opposed to calling him ‘the Falcon.'” I assume that Weiner Todd knows this, and had to sit back and have a good giggle in his study – fondly remembering his erotic adventures with Vampirella, who whispered in his ear that he was a true comics fan.

Anyway, there’s an awful lot more in this poor girl’s “open letter” that puts her in a pretty bad light for logic, intelligence, and delusion.

“…which I’m not gonna get into. No reason!”

Since right after her letter to me I replied. (You can see my reply here, too), let’s get to the unhinged, hatemongers that chose to reply to my posting after Hoffman’s.

DEAR “PROFESSIONAL WRITER” WERNER TODD HUSTON: Learn how to not splice a fucking comma.

But anyway, the rest of his article is just Weiner Todd whining endlessly about how commenters at Robot 6 weren’t nice to him after he shat copious and unearned condescension on Carla:

There were, of course, all sorts of distempered name calling and obscene language, the sort we’ve come to expect from the left. There was the ever common “asshole,” the varied spellings of “douche bag,” an occasional “jerk,” and “Nazi.” Even at least one “fucking clown” was thrown in for good measure. But remember, each and every one of these poor youngsters assumed that they were more open minded, nicer, more tolerant than that mean old Warner Todd Huston.

This is one of my least favorite tactics: the “barbarians at the gate” argument, ever beloved of conservative writers on the internet. “Oh my heavens! You have said a swear! That completely invalidates every single one of your points because you are clearly no gentleman, sir! Good day! I must exit before I come down with a case of the vapours!”

For the sake of illumination, let me present how Weiner Todd opened his essay attacking Carla:

These emails and replies to my comic book analysis really brought it home that to be a liberal you must make assumptions of your enemy so that they fit neatly into your preconceived notions of the world and you must never try to ask them any questions to determine if they really do fit into the box you’ve constructed for them. You must assume you are more grown up than those you attack. You must assume that you are more intelligent. You also must assume that people that like the same sort of things that you like must think just like you do. In other words, to be a liberal you must begin every discussion, every consideration of ideological premises, with the base assumption that all good people are just like you. Everyone else is venal, mean, stupid or low. Not just wrong, but evil.

I’m not sure what’s more impressive here: the sheer volume of projection on Weiner Todd’s part, or the fact that this is just a long series of personal attacks largely unjustified by the rest of his column where he then complains about other people’s personal attacks. For people like Warner Todd, “civility” isn’t anything to do with attitude or manners; it’s to do with specific words. It’s a set of rules – don’t say this, don’t say that, but this and the other are permissible – rather than a sense of respecting other people. When you understand that attitude, you understand a lot about Weiner Todd.4

1. Now, granted, the Falcon is leery of hanging out with the tea partiers in the book. But guess what: Sam Wilson is a black liberal. Do you think black liberals want to hang out with tea partiers generally? I’m sorry, but when did we get so, ahem, politically correct as to demand that tea partiers be perceived equally by citizens of all colours and creeds as upstanding and moral figures in a work of fiction, and even so by fictional figures who would reasonably be leery of them were they real people? Warner Todd, you big ol’ Tolerance Bear, you. [↩]
2. Also, he is the only guy I have ever seen who manages to look worse both with facial hair and without. If he is going to learn anything from comic books, it is the value of a mask. [↩]
3. “Hey, guys! I know a lot about music! I stopped buying albums back in 1986 but I still know lots about them! Do you guys like Duran Duran? They’re pretty awesome, right?” [↩]
4. And, one hopes, why I completely abandoned any attempt at civility after the first paragraph of this entry. [↩]

– The way that Green Arrow somehow shoots an entire flight of dagger-icicles with a single arrow

– When Hawkman is in his armor he totally has an armor potbelly

– The way that Stargirl was the most annoying character ever

– The fact that Geoff Johns’ dialogue is, what, maybe two steps above George Lucas’ dialogue when the former tries to get all Meaningful and Important and the orchestra rises up in the background

– The way Dr. Fate sounds kind of like a Muppet

– How the members of the JSA constantly refer to those not there by their full names, which makes one wonder if, when they have a barbecue, they say things like “Sorry I’m late – Al Pratt forgot to pick me up. Did we get the hamburger buns?” “No, Alan Scott is getting the buns, and Wesley Dodds is getting the beer”

– Actual line spoken by Hawkman: “Why what, Green Punching Bag?” No really somebody paid Geoff Johns to write that

– Being reminded of the fact that the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern would look incredibly dorky in real life

– How everybody’s attitude towards Clark is about one degree shy of actual outright cocksucking

– The constant carping by Hawkman (played by an actor who is 38) about how he and the Justice Society were fighting crime when Clark (played by an actor who is 31) and Oliver (played by an actor who is 33) were little kids, like having three days’ worth of stubble suddenly makes you super-old

– HEY EVERYBODY J’ONN SAID HOW HE LIKES COOKIES AND THEY NAMECHECKED MICHAEL HOLT SO THIS IS THE BEST SUPERHERO TV MOVIE THING EVER

– Hinting of “the coming apocalypse” by Amanda Waller to give hope to Smallville fans that maybe the Fourth World will be the one major story arc Smallville does not completely fuck up

– That I knew it was going to be this shitty in advance and I still watched it