Revolver (five).
(In which I take it personal. —The personal is political, after all.)
Int. office, late afternoon, and there’s J. Jonah Jameson, editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle and Peter Parker’s nemesis, his Commissioner Gordon, you know, in the movie they got that guy who plays the psychiatrist on Law & Order and the white supremacist on Oz to play him, only this is a Frank Miller Daredevil book, so he’s stern and avuncular in all the right ways, and he’s drawn by David Mazzuchelli, so he’s a subversively old skool figure striped with these impossibly rich, impossibly noir, utterly impossible shadows from venetian blinds. He’s got his sleeves rolled up, by gum, and a pre-Bloomberg cigar is smoking like a chimney, and he’s delivering a stern and avuncular beat-down to ace reporter Ben Urich, cowed into submission by the Kingpin’s goons. “Listen, Urich,” and you can hear the growl coming up off of the cheap glossy paper, “there are thing you just don’t let happen in this racket. Number one is you never get scared away from a story. Not while you’ve got the most powerful weapon in the world on your side.” And then he picks up I swear to God a rolled-up newspaper—this is back when Miller knew how to swing a cliché—he picks up this newspaper and he shakes it at Urich. “This is five million readers’ worth of power. It can depose mayors. It can destroy presidents.”
—Oh, but that’s just dinosaur talk! This is the wired age. Everything’s changed. It’s many-to-many and participatory journalism and Nick Denton gossip. It isn’t five million readers; it’s fourteen hundred inbound links on Technorati. It’s ranking as a Mortal Human on the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem. It’s a taste of the power that took out Howell Raines, man.
And it isn’t a rolled-up newspaper he’s shaking at me, either. It’s a photo he’s sliding across the desk, into the light of a halogen desk lamp, the only light in the room. I can’t see his face. He isn’t smoking, but the place smells like old cigarettes and burnt coffee. “Well?” he says.
The photo is a Time magazine cover from 2003, when they chose the American soldier as their person of the year. Somebody’s photoshopped in a Nazi armband, some notches on a riflebutt. “The American myrmidon,” says the headline.
“What about it?”
“It’s a simple request,” he says. “Just say it clearly and unequivocally.” There’s a click, and from somewhere comes this eerie, tinny mock-up of my voice, like a forgotten voicemail message. “This graphic disturbs and disgusts me and it is not representative of what I believe.”
I don’t say anything. It’s been a while, but I’m wishing I had a cigarette.
He clears his throat, leans forward, his chair squeaking. One hand slipping into the light to tap the photo. “Come on,” he says. “Will you denounce this image as vile hatemongering? As something that doesn’t represent your point of view?”
And still I don’t say anything.
“All you have to do,” he says, “is say, ‘That’s disgusting. I don’t believe that.’” It’s my voice again. I bite my lip. He leans back in his chair. “And I’ll believe you,” he says. “I really will.”
The threat is so implicit, so thoroughly beaten into our lizard-brains by years of bad television upon decades of B movies, that he doesn’t even realize he’s making it.
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Moonbat Alert! Moonbat Alert!
[brrrrrEAP! brrrEAP!] "Alert! Alert! Moonbats off the port and starboard bow, Captain!" "Report, Mr. LaForge!" "Hard to starboard, Captain, sensors detect a once thoughtful liberal...
No doubt your reticence is due to the fact that you are actually a fake liberal.
Only a fake liberal would link to Dean Esmay and trick me into reading his blitherings, after all.
Aw, heck, PZ: I am sorry. But there is a larger point just over the hill thataway, I'm pretty sure. We just need to have faith and believe in ourselves—we'll get there.
But! Look at it this way: these guys want to be called liberals. Julia I think pointed out that the moderates have fallen to arguing about who's really been with the left all along through this dark winter of our discontent. A couple years ago, they all would have fled this terminology shrieking and screaming, or muttering and demurring, at the very least. (My God: carrying an ACLU card could come back into fashion, too!)
So that's got to count for something.
Ech. Now I feel the need to take a shower. I followed this string of links and just felt like I had wandered into a cage of monkeys flinging feces at each other (a couple in the corner masturbate, faces fraught with lonely, desperate eyes). Yet they aren't monkeys, they're self-important suburbanites, either as a demographic or merely as a state of mind, locked into easy-feed paradigms and false dichotomies.
Ech. Fuck 'em.
Yes, there is something backwards in the discourse. I get a similar feeling when I goad some poor creationist beyond the breaking point, and they try to come up with some vicious insult to strike back at me, and the worst they can come up with is to splutter back, "you, you religious fundamentalist!"
I can imagine getting mad at someone. I can't quite get my head around trying to insult them by calling them a "liberal!" or "freethinker!", which would be the equivalent of what these people are doing.
Yeah, there's hope in that deep down a lot of moderates do see the worth of the left and liberalism, even if they are afraid to say it. But one of the things we're learning from the Reagan's and the Bush's of the world is that deep-down thoughtful doesn't stand a chance against glib and superficial jingo.
Sad but true...still, there's hope. I just wish we could run Jed Bartlet.
One question, do you REALLY equate liberal with freethinker?
Many so called "freethinkers" latch onto a liberal theme or idea, and never deviate, is that freethought or merely another form of conformity?
Isn't freethought supposed to be about pragmatism, equality, et cetera....? Liberals or what passes for liberals these days seem to merely be those that enjoy calling bush all kinds of names, linking to michael moore websites, and protesting military actions of any kind. I ronically i fail to see many liberals putting such zeal into important issues such as ecology and such. Seems to me most liberals would rather boast their "openmindedness" than actually do any good
freedom of screech eh?