(no subject)
So there's apparently a bit of a controversy about the most recent issue of Captain America; in which a Tea Party-ish protest is pictured. Those complaining are conflating the white supremacist militia "the Watchdogs" which are the villains of the piece with the protesters who were shown in passing. Since box_in_the_box pointed out that one Warner Todd Huston had written a screed which railed against this, I just had to go and spread some reasoned thought over there. So, I commented on the article thusly:
First, the original article betrays the fact that the book was not apparently read for comprehension: The Tea Partiers are shown as exercising their Constitutional right to protest. The perception that Tea Partiers might “hate the government” is in no way an indictment of their position, nor is it a perception that is all that very surprising, any more than one would think that the liberals who protested outside the Pentagon during the Vietnam War might “hate the government.”
Further, the Tea Partiers are in no way shown as villains; instead it is the Watchdogs, an organization which has been in the Marvel Universe since 1987, who are the ones to which Captain America is in opposition.
(A further note: When first introduced, the Watchdogs were fought by a new captain America, John Walker, who was portrayed [and remains so to this day, in his identity as the USAgent] as a man with hardcore right-wing sensibilities.)
What I find particularly interesting is that right-wingers and social conservatives attacked Captain America and Marvel Comics not that very long ago, when Michael Medved and others took umbrage with the writing of first John Ney Rieber and later Robert Morales when, in books written by the first, a terrorist goes off on a tirade about how guilty America is of assorted evils-and, Medved angrily pointed out, Captain America did nothing to rebut what the terrorist said.
(Except, you know, to FIGHT the guy.)
Medved was also put out when Morales wrote a Captain America miniseries called TRUTH which posited that the government first tested the Super-Soldier Serum (which made the frail Steve Rogers into Captain America) on black soldiers, in an analogy to the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, to disastrous results.
Medved was upset at what he saw as a “Blame America” mentality in these stories.
Similarly, many conservatives were angry in the 1970s when writer Steve Englehart wrote the “Secret Empire” storyline into the Captain America comic, an allegory for Watergate.
Really, I’m trying to understand the dichotomy here. Is it only okay to write things which can be read as critical of the government when the administration is one with a more liberal bent?
Here’s the interesting bit; something you should perhaps take note of:
There have been 23 responses to this post in two days. Of those 23, you have a “Flanders” who talks about a “Captain Zion”, a “Frank Fredenburg” whose entire post is antisemitic, a “Scooter” who states that he feels that a major corporation is anti-American because it does not discriminate against homosexuals, a “kim” who states that she “was never racist but i am being [sic] to think that way,” and a “james madison” whose post advocates violence against (murder, really) people whose political beliefs are different than his own.
And these are people who complain about what they perceive as “bigotry”.
If you lie down with demons, you should expect to be demonized.
So now I'm waiting for the semiliterate, antisemitic hate mail. Yay!
First, the original article betrays the fact that the book was not apparently read for comprehension: The Tea Partiers are shown as exercising their Constitutional right to protest. The perception that Tea Partiers might “hate the government” is in no way an indictment of their position, nor is it a perception that is all that very surprising, any more than one would think that the liberals who protested outside the Pentagon during the Vietnam War might “hate the government.”
Further, the Tea Partiers are in no way shown as villains; instead it is the Watchdogs, an organization which has been in the Marvel Universe since 1987, who are the ones to which Captain America is in opposition.
(A further note: When first introduced, the Watchdogs were fought by a new captain America, John Walker, who was portrayed [and remains so to this day, in his identity as the USAgent] as a man with hardcore right-wing sensibilities.)
What I find particularly interesting is that right-wingers and social conservatives attacked Captain America and Marvel Comics not that very long ago, when Michael Medved and others took umbrage with the writing of first John Ney Rieber and later Robert Morales when, in books written by the first, a terrorist goes off on a tirade about how guilty America is of assorted evils-and, Medved angrily pointed out, Captain America did nothing to rebut what the terrorist said.
(Except, you know, to FIGHT the guy.)
Medved was also put out when Morales wrote a Captain America miniseries called TRUTH which posited that the government first tested the Super-Soldier Serum (which made the frail Steve Rogers into Captain America) on black soldiers, in an analogy to the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, to disastrous results.
Medved was upset at what he saw as a “Blame America” mentality in these stories.
Similarly, many conservatives were angry in the 1970s when writer Steve Englehart wrote the “Secret Empire” storyline into the Captain America comic, an allegory for Watergate.
Really, I’m trying to understand the dichotomy here. Is it only okay to write things which can be read as critical of the government when the administration is one with a more liberal bent?
Here’s the interesting bit; something you should perhaps take note of:
There have been 23 responses to this post in two days. Of those 23, you have a “Flanders” who talks about a “Captain Zion”, a “Frank Fredenburg” whose entire post is antisemitic, a “Scooter” who states that he feels that a major corporation is anti-American because it does not discriminate against homosexuals, a “kim” who states that she “was never racist but i am being [sic] to think that way,” and a “james madison” whose post advocates violence against (murder, really) people whose political beliefs are different than his own.
And these are people who complain about what they perceive as “bigotry”.
If you lie down with demons, you should expect to be demonized.
So now I'm waiting for the semiliterate, antisemitic hate mail. Yay!