Archives
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Eduardo Sounds Off.
How
they really see you.
NOBODY'S SAFE. Some of you savvy
web wanderers may have noticed this
little
gem floating around about Captain America* from Marvel Comics
bashing the Tea Party movement:In issue number 602 of Captain America, a new story line has begun called “Two Americas.” In it the current Captain…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.” While investigating this subversive group, Captain America and his partner The Falcon — a black super hero — have decided to try and infiltrate the secretive organization.Not long after this story made its way around the intertubes, Marvel owned up to their, uh, “mistake”. Quoth Marvel’s editor in chief:
In preparation for the infiltration, Marvel Comics depicts the two super heroes out of costume and observing from a rooftop a street filled with what can only be described as a Tea Party protest. The scene shows crowds of people in city streets carrying signs that say, “stop the socialists,” “tea bag libs before they tea bag you,” and “no to new taxes.” Naturally, the people in these crowds are depicted as being filled with nothing but white folks.
The black character asks the out of costume Captain, “What the hell is this?” And follows that with, “looks like some kind of anti-tax protest.” The Falcon character then snidely tells his partner the Captain, “So I guess this whole ‘hate the government’ vibe around here isn’t limited to the Watchdogs.”
The two then discuss their plan to infiltrate the subversive group that Marvel comics seems to be linking to the Tea Party movement. This discussion culminates in The Falcon wondering how a black man would do such a thing. “I don’t exactly see a black man from Harlem fitting in with a bunch of angry white folks,” he tells the incognito Captain America.
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?
There was zero discussion to include a group that looked like a Tea Party demonstration. Ed [Brubaker] simply wrote in an anti-tax protest into his story to show one of the moods that currently exists in America. There was no thought that it represented a particular group…There, you see? It’s just one of those innocent, stupid mistakes. Could have happened to anyone. They just randomly, on a whim, decided that the plot called for a group of people staging a “generic” protest against taxes because that’s a current mood in the country. There was never a single thought in their head that they might actually be representing a real, high-profile group whose name is derived from a famous tax protest, and slandering them as racist, white supremacists. Case closed. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong. As is usual with these people, it’s all bullshit.
Where Mr. Houston [sic] is correct is in our accidently [sic] identifying in one of the held up signs, the group as being a part of the Tea Party instead of a generic protest group. That’s something that we need to apologize for and own up to, because it’s just one of those stupid mistakes that happened through a series of stupid incidents.
Those precious few that happened to visit the Shuteye Nation Underverse before its untimely death already know where I’m going with this. For everyone else, let me show you why this is just another in the long line of examples of dishonest liberal media bias.
The year is 1991 and the U.S. media is still having
About
as subtle as a sledgehammer to the left temple.
A sober, handcuffed, Hispanic, teenage boy is caught on tape being mercilessly beaten by white cops. Just like what happened with Rodney King. This causes a whole lot of people to stage angry protests outside of police stations (which Captain America and the Falcon are apparently OK with, come to think of it), but then the unthinkable happens. Evil white people show up:
Conservatives are incapable of speaking without
using racial slurs, kiddies. Just so you know.
Don’t worry, though. The Avenger named Rage sends them packing:
I love how"Constitutional rights" is in air quotes. What does that mean, exactly?
And a parting Nazi jab for good measure.
To make things even more ridiculous, it's discovered later on in the story that this small group of
Look, the Avengers are supposed to be fighting interdimensional aliens and teams of super powered villains, not American citizens exercising their first amendment rights when they disagree with what they’re saying. This recent issue of Captain America is not the first time this happened. The comic I’m referencing was published almost twenty years ago. Aside from making me feel old, this perfectly illustrates who these people are.
They are dishonest cowards. Their real message is so repulsive and illogical they have to dress it up and disguise it in comic books and cartoons so they can attempt to indoctrinate kids. When they’re caught, they apologize without admitting they did anything wrong. They never admit they did anything wrong, period, whether it’s slander, global warming, DDT, economics, mass murder, etc. No matter how blatant the lie or how catastrophic the failure, I still have to put up with people like Noam Chomsky putting out excrement like this. I’m sick of it. SICK. OF. IT.
The silver lining here is that twenty years ago Marvel was churning out propaganda like this in every one of their series, from the Punisher to X-Men to Spider-Man. Trust me, I know. It's why I stopped reading comics (even though there's not really any liberal media bias, Noam). Back then, nobody noticed. A week from Sunday, though, a blogger made a post about this new issue of Captain America and a few days later Marvel scrambled to cover its ass and will hopefully be more reluctant to propagandize in the future. Significant? I think so. You tell me.
*AN EDITOR'S NOTE FOR THOSE WHO EITHER DON'T KNOW OR REMEMBER MUCH ABOUT CAPTAIN AMERICA. From the same article Eduardo referenced above:
Marvel Comic’s Captain America is the
mightiest soldier with the super powerful secret soldier formula that
makes him a super man. Sadly, this muscle bound hero that took on the
whole Nazi army during WWII seems to be afraid of those American people
who’ve joined the Tea Party movement. Not only is Cappy quaking in his
little red booties, but he’s sure that the Tea Party folks are
dangerous racists, too.
Isn’t it wonderful that a decades old American comic book hero is now being used to turn readers against our very political system, being used to slander folks that are standing up for real American principles in real life — and one called “Captain America” at that?
Isn’t it wonderful that a decades old American comic book hero is now being used to turn readers against our very political system, being used to slander folks that are standing up for real American principles in real life — and one called “Captain America” at that?
Ironically(?), this website has done battle in the past with another faux "Captain America." Somehow it seems to fit right in to this context. And if you read the Comments, you'll discover that this particular Captain isn't American so much as, uh, Canadian. Serendicity again. --IP.
