Americans are NOT angry. They are not angry because none of the perps are dead yet.

Americans are more than lazy and stupid, as the Japanese told us about 15 years ago. We are also cowards. We are wimps. In a decent nation those Wall Street CEO's and Rupert Murdoch would have been dragged from their offices and hung until dead with piano wire, like Mussolini. But we're too cowardly.

The members of the UAW would have stormed the factories and dragged out all the executives who ordered them to make SUV's instead of high-tech, ecological cars and forced them to watch their whorish trophy wives and their bastard children to be roasted over open fires, before they themselves were thrown on the fires. But they won't, because American unions are cowards.

And Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice would have been grabbed and tortured to death in ways I can't even imagine, on television, and shown 24/7 on the cable networks. It would be an object lesson that nobody should ever do that again, a lesson that Italy (for one example) has learned. But we won't do that, because we are cowards.

And this letter will get cowardly responses by people who think "peaceful" means will do anything besides bring derision and their own imprisonment. In advance, let me tell you folks - YOU are cowards. Here in reality, nothing happens until the correct people are slaughtered.

There's an audio drama group called Pendant Audio (www.pendantaudio.com) that does "fan tribute shows" about DC Comics heroes. Deliberately, the shows do not slavishly follow the exact story lines of the comics. They follow what the producers and writers think should be the proper approach to these heroes and characters. It's so different a branch they describe their shows as occurring in "Earth-P", an alternate Earth from the comic universe - or our own.

In that show, millionaire heiress Kate Kane did dress in a hot Batwoman costume - but only for Christmas, and only to impress her lover, Detective Renee Montoya. (Who in Earth-P is not The Question; just a good cop who once fought The Joker to save Kate's life.) She found herself involved with stopping criminals that were robbing her charity ball. (Another fiction in Earth-P; that rich people actually want to help the poor.)

At the end, Batman complimented Kane. She didn't "fight" the crooks, only tracked them so that he and the Gotham City police could track them down. But he pointed out that her form of supporting the city - helping the poor and building opportunity - was something special she did, far more valuable in the long run than his own chasing of psychotic crooks.

That's more sensible, and better drama, than what DC Comics does. While Pendant's shows can be downloaded for free (they can't legally charge for their fan shows), DC has to constantly perform tricks and stunts to get retarded fanboys like me to buy their comics. Like this temporary "Batwoman" thing, as a pointed example. Curious that even we STOOPID, disgustingly sexist males are getting tired of gimmicks and are looking for just plain good writing for a change.

Not every song needs to be about love

But the industry don’t want you to know

There’s songs on your bathroom floor, songs in your fridge

And every single place that you go

Some say every song’s already been writ

But open your eyes and take a gaze

There’s songs that are wrong and there’s songs about songs

And songs that illustrate all the ways

That everything’s a song (Everything’s a song)

Just take a look around you

You just can’t go wrong (Everything’s a song)

The possibilities may astound you

---Carrie Dahlby, "Everything's A Song"

And the reason is simple. It does not involve the quality of Whedon's work or any of the actors or writers. It's the basic nature of the Fox network.

Whedon wants to encourage thought. Fox and Rupert Murdoch want to encourage obedience. 'Nuff said.

Some people might see it as ugly. I think it's amusing. The last time I attended a "black" film was New Jack City, my attendance inspired by a positive review from a normally sane reviewer. I didn't think the guns-and-betrayal film was worth the time.

However, as one of the few white people in the audience, I was amazed to see a middle-aged black guy, stoned or drunk up to his hairline, wander up to the screen and talk to the seminude actress on the screen, as if he believed he had a chance to score with her. The only way it could have been better is if he had a wife or girlfriend in the audience to argue with him for two-timing her.

It was amazing. And, as I realized later, a really good idea.

Audiences are way too accepting of the crappy films that these megacorporations thrust at us. We shouldn't be. We should talk back, mock, speak truth to power. Joel Hodgson was the second known white man to do this, with MST3K. The first was Sal Piro, who did it at a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and spawned a cult that is still alive to this day.

How much better would it be if we pasty-faces had the nerve of that stoned black guy, and talked back to crappy films like The Blair Witch Project, The Grinch and Steve Martin's depressing Pink Panther films.