Letters to the Editor
Tideswimmer
Published Letters: 383 Editor's Choice: 47
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Hi Rob Anderson
[Read the article: "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're very impressed with yourself, I think we all get that, but your arguments are not very convincing. You simply dismiss one side of the discussion as being nothing but the childish assertion of "fanboys." And simply deny even the possibility that subtext or deeper meanings of any kind can be found in comics. Wow, that was easy. Clap the dust off your hands. Over, over done! Here's my counter:
You are a moron.
Phew, that was easy! And to think all I had to do to prove my case was to assert it.
Really, Rob? I agree all the intellectualizing can get out of hand, but you can't see how the X-Men might be even a small metaphor for our innate sense of fear of the outsider? You can't see how The Hulk embodies the concept of the id? You don't find it interesting that even as the Hulk mindlessly rampages, more good seems to come from it than bad? Could it be, perhaps, that even in his mindless rage he still holds some concept of right and wrong. Are humans at their core descended from noble savages? Maybe that's ridiculous to you, but you can't deny that the subtext is there.
Have you ever read any of Alan Moore's work? His issues of "Swamp Thing" were poetry. I also remember the Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams "Green Lantern Green Arrow" series of the early '70s which critically examined the soul of a troubled nation. If nothing else, reading comics as a kid, at the very least I learned that "good" was worth fighting for, but it wasn't always easy. There's value in that, don't you think? Or is that just shit for brains thinking on my then 10 year old part?
And in these same comics you find... Nothing? Zero content? Not a solitary shred of any substance in ANY of it? How do you explain its enduring resonance over decades? Oh, that's right, we're all just a bunch of shit for brain fanboys who are too stupid to realize that it all adds up to nothing. We only think we found some value in it.
Look, here I am defending comics; I pretty much stopped reading and collecting back in the mid '80s when the industry started moving toward all these self-serious reinventions. Somewhere during that time, they stopped remembering how to be fun as well.
But to say there's nothing to them - nothing at all - is ridiculous. I'm not saying Stan Lee is Herman Melville, but he did know how to tell good stories and he was definitely drawing on something deep in his brain. It may not be Melville, but then with your same dismissive wave of a hand "Moby Dick" becomes nothing but a fishing yarn about the one that got away.
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14 more killed?
[Read the article: What are we fighting for?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ah, so the surge has begun!
Remember when Bush announced his big plan, and how much support he got from some in the House and Senate who literally weeped because if we pulled out now it would mean that all the soldiers who had died already would have died in vain?
Imagine what they'll say when it comes time to admit that "The Surge"(TM) has only created more of what our doomed-to-fail strategy has created from the beginning: more chaos, death and resentment for the U.S.
Will the weepers weep for the several hundred more soldiers who have died in vain? Will they continue to demand more deaths? What rhetorical justification will they come up with to soothe over all the additional deaths. Will they ever at last have their fill? Will they ever finally say that enough is enough? If so, how can they continue living with themselves knowing they could have drawn the exact same line several hundred deaths earlier?
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Simple, maybe. Simplistic? Hmmm.
[Read the article: "Sicko"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think it's fair to peg Moore as simplistic. It is not his responsibility to explain how to make it all work, how to pay for it, etc. Our current "system" could be called the Gordon Gecko system: "Greed is good. Greed works." Given the massive inertia built into maintaining that system, I think it's unfair to ask Moore to do more than shift the terms of debate; to change the discussion from all the current baby talk into a dialogue leading to something that might actually make sense.
As to being simplistic, the inertia is such that a lot of gung-ho Americans I know still insist that we have the best health care system in the world. "Sure I ignored a bunch of symptoms and refused to have tests because they're too expensive, and now I'm really sick, but think how worse it would be if I lived in Canada."
Simplistic? Maybe, to you. But remember, Moore's audience are these same gung-ho Americans; the same people who looked at George Bush in 2004 and still didn't scent the whiff of utter bullshit he was spewing. That is the audience Moore needs to reach. I don't know if that equals him not trusting them to get it, but their record of "getting it" is not particularly encouraging either.