#amwriting #politics The Democrats Reveal Weakness Over Kavanaugh

The Democrats Reveal Weakness Over Kavanaugh

Since the election of Trump, I have increasingly been glad to live in a monarchy. This was finally confirmed for me by the Kavanaugh hearings.

I understand the arguments about the importance of representation, holding the government accountable, giving everyone the chance of living the American dream — something that has morphed over the years from log-cabin to presidency under Lincoln, to O’Bama’s visionary future of ‘just getting by.’ But if you are honest, I have more chance of becoming King, based on a campaign of strategic murder and fifteenth cousin who died of plague in the Great Fire of London, than the average American has of becoming president.

Then add to the mix the issue of class.

It seems to have escaped the notice of the partisan hordes the class of Ms Blasey-Ford. To call her aristocratic would be fair. And like all aristocrats, in any governmental system ever, being so offers a whole range of privileges. She might as well have said ‘let them eat cake’ instead of fabricating the story she told.

Because her story is a fabrication. As is the story of the people using her that they have the best interests of #sexualassualtvictims. Something proved when it was pointed out, by Ms Mitchell, that running to a lawyer and getting a lie detector is was precisely the wrong thing to do, if you want to know what really happened.

But don’t worry about that.

And don’t worry that Ms Blasey-Ford can’t keep her story straight. One minute she is climbing out the bathroom window, the next she is sneaking out the front door, the next she’s bold as brass exiting through the back door. That is when she is fifteen, or is seventeen? No it must have been fifteen, because she couldn’t drive and it was only a short walk. What? It was six and half miles? Well she got a lift, or she didn’t, well she must have done, and what does that matter anyway when she is being so brave… so very brave…. oh so brave.

Well remind me again about those ‘scandals’ arising from the Mueller probe in which people were indicted for lying to the FBI.

Given Ms Blasey-Ford’s passing acquaintance with the truth, not over thirty some-odd years, but over the course of five minutes, unless she has aristocratic immunity from prosecution: is anyone seriously suggesting that she won’t lie to the FBI?

And before you get all ‘yes, but’… it has already been explained why she has this inability to stick to a story… Ms Mitchell explained it. Had she been allowed to tell her story in her own words, in her own way, she would have been able to form a coherent narrative. Yet it is obvious that she has been coached by the lawyers.

An example would be the way in which her lawyers grabbed the microphone when she started trying to explain in her own words, and in the language of her scientific expertise. Now, I can’t say where this explanation would have gone, or if it would have been relevant, but Ms Mitchell was clearly skillful enough to trigger it from Ms Blasey-Ford. The irony is had her lawyers not shut her up, it may well have lead down a path that definitely placed Brett Kavanaugh on top of her, on that bed.

Interestingly the only other bit of genuine emotion during the whole affair was when a map of the area was produced for Mrs Blasey-Ford to point out various locations. One of the Democrats on the panel freaked out at this. Which made it clear to me that they weren’t bothered about the truth so much as their fiction, in which Ms Blasey-Ford was a useful puppet. Because throughout there was lots of ‘you are so brave’, and ‘you are so, so brave’, and a whole lot of guff about victims. Yet faced with a simple device to connect with the past by way of connecting with possibly suppressed memories, no matter how incidental, that was too much.

It was less ‘show me on the dolly where the nasty man touched you,’ than ‘could you show me the route you took to get home? Did you see anyone? Was someone having a bar-b-que? Do you smell the bar-b-que? etc… i.e the sort of thing that should have been done in the open-ended session but wasn’t because the Democrats went the route of lawyers and lie detectors.

Oh and before moving onto Mr Kavanaugh, I am rather confused with the swim suit. Why was she wearing it? And how was it such a preventative in the alleged ‘potential rape’?

According to the story, it was the inability to remove the swimsuit that caused the assault to stop. Assuming that this was not an old-fashioned suit like your granny used to where, the sort that resembles long-johns, I fail to see how this was such an obstacle.

But onto Kavanaugh.

Now he clearly faces the problem of lying to the FBI. In his case doubly so because from reports it would seem that he has already under-gone at least six FBI evaluations. He also faces the added problem of not being Trump’s preferred candidate, and therefore this is a useful way for Trump to scupper the candidate he used to make peace with the ‘moderates’ in his party, and to promote the candidate he had always wanted: as recommended by his sister: Amy Coney-Barratt.

So from Trump’s point-of-view all he has to do is to condemn the Democrats, throw up his hands and cry that it is terrible that such a ‘good man’ (Trump code for dead-man walking) has been treated so poorly,and get a woman on the court thereby under-cutting practically the last card the Democrats have, ‘won’t somebody think of the women.’

Sprinkle in a few more Democrats being caught out by #MeToo — at some point someone will work out that this hastag is a political tool for Trump to get rid of his enemies — perhaps one of them who were singing Ms Blasey-Ford’s praises during the hearings, and the job is as good as done for the mid-terms.

But back to Kavanaugh.

That the vote has been delayed a week, so that the FBI can use their expertise and superior knowledge, is rather a joke; certainly with regard to the allegations of drinking.

If Kavanaugh really is such a Jekyll and Hyde with a few shandy’s inside him, it seems rather odd to order the same agency that at least six times in the past found that this was not such a problem with regard to his advancement up the judicial career ladder. And, maybe it’s just me, but is it really such a problem if he has the odd glass of wine or three on weekdays? I realise America has a rather odd relationship with alcohol thanks to prohibition, but it strikes me that that all of the professions involved in this tale, journalism, politics, the law and academia all have a reputation for cutting deals over a glass of sherry, or five. And, there is the fact that Kavanaugh is an Irish name….

But then there is little reason for the new Puritans to be any different to the old.

Which brings us to the thorny issue of ‘boys will be boys’….

On this point Kavanaugh’s defence of him being a virgin perhaps doesn’t help him; assuming Ms Blasey-Ford can make up her mind if she was fifteen or seventeen. If it is the former, it certainly doesn’t help him, given that at fifteen if you till haven’t got laid then ‘everyone knows you’re a poof.’ And if it is the latter, you might just get away with saying you are ‘waiting for the right girl’.

However, and this really needs to be pointed out: let’s assume that Kavanaugh was a virgin, a studious boy who studied hard, played hard at sports and helped old ladies across the road. In short, in the modern parlance, “a role model”.

Then why bother?

If the result of denying yourself, and applying yourself, is the same as if you had gone round screwing whoever, whenever, why bother?

It’s a massive double standard. Particularly when Barbara Boxer is on the tele lecturing anyone who will listen on the immorality of everything. Regular listeners to the No Agenda podcast will know the stories of Ms Boxer getting a ‘lift home’ from Environmental Agency meetings. In fact it was so well know that it was somewhat of a joke as to whose turn it was to fill in the Ms Boxer on recent events. And the rumour was that fulfilling the role would often give you a leg-over — sorry, leg-up — in your career.

But obviously it is no one’s business what a lady does in her private life. And it’s not like she could rape anyone…. well unless you consider the current rape laws with their talk about coercive sexual congress with an unwilling partner. But men being men, they want it all the time… unless they are ‘a shirt-lifter’… gagging for it they are… etc.

Again, it’s odd how, given our ‘enlightened’ age no-one has tackled the homophobia implicit in women not getting their way — which is of course msogyny — which is of course homophobia, since gays are only gay because they hate women….

I think you get the point.

That if the standards applied to men, were equally applied to women, the prisons would be full.

And, I’m not saying, ‘boys will be boys’: what I am saying is that ‘teenagers will be teenagers’, and that the official statistics on these matters, done by actual criminologists, state that the rates of sexual assault are roughly equal for boys and girls, as both victims and perpetrators.

Now clearly this doesn’t fit the narrative here, but then the narrative being given doesn’t fit the narrative. Since the claim is that having been forced onto the bed, and had a hand placed over her mouth, when whoever tried to remove the swim-suit failed, Ms Blasey-Ford wrestled herself free and the assault ended. Which in terms of the narrative makes her the strong and empowered women from countless scenes, in countless films, books and dramas.

This is where class comes into play. For even if it did happen, it is highly doubtful that anybody but an aristocrat, could have such a tale taken the least bit seriously by any investigating authority.

For her to claim that this both as attempted murder and sexual assault is daft. She might as a well demand that the FBI go after a taxi driver who braked a little late and nearly ran into the back of lorry forty years ago. Her feeling of thinking she might die would be just as real, she may even have flashbacks of the incident. She may even still smell the air-freshener hanging from the knob of the radio.

I am sure there are some who will claim I’m taking his side, mansplaining, being an adultist or whatever. That I can’t understand. Which would be wrong. And to entirely miss the point.

Kavanaugh is a judge, and as such I assume he can hear rape cases and the like. So one wonders why this sudden concern about his fitness now, and these claims that women aren’t safe, when by her own admission Ms Blasey-Ford confided the details of this incident to her husband sixteen years ago, but made no complaint. The same applies to these other women who have come forward.

Nor should we overlook the context, that according to Democrats thousands of women will die if he gets elected.

Which brings me back to my initial point about the benefits of monarchy.

I happen to quite like the Queen, not because I am a flag-waving monarchist, but because I don’t have to have anything to do with her. She’s the head-of-state, she cheers people up when she pays a visit to the local factory or old-people’s home, once a year she gives a Christmas message, and that’s about it. I don’t fall out with anyone for liking or disliking her, I don’t have to go out protesting or making a nuisance of myself. I let her do her thing, and she just gets on with what she likes to do: shooting pheasants, waving, and scaring the crap out of the King of Saudi Arabia.

The same goes for judges. The Queen rubber stamps their appointment, on behalf of politicians or whoever. They do there thing, I try to steer clear of them, and am quite happy to give them a piece of my mind if they cock up. Quite why I should want to vote for them is quite beyond me. Especially when the only route that leads to is endlessly ‘tough on crime’, private prisons and all the curtailment of civil rights that entails.

Kavanaugh is being appointed for his legal knowledge, and forty years of legal experience.

That this is now being reduced to the question of something he may or may not have done when he was fifteen is ludicrous.

Particularly when the key to deciding that issue has nothing to do with him. For this is nothing more than an appeal to women, who have had similar experiences, to imagine it was Kavanaugh doing it to them, and to vote Democrat in the mid-term elections.

My hunch is that this demonstrates the weakness of the Democrats.

But it also highlights the strength of monarchy… it’s about the only system guaranteed to produce ‘real people’.

#amwriting #comics #comicsgate — #Marvel Waste Yet More Money on PR

#comicsgate — #Marvel Waste Yet More Money on PR

So the big news from #comicsgate today is that Sana Amanat, VP of content and character development, has revealed Marvel used Stan Lee to condemn #comicsgate and it’s supporters.

Or to put it another way: Sana Amanat misled an elderly man — who was involved in various court cases and allegedly had his blood stolen to autograph comics — to come out and tell people to stop criticising her for being bad at her job. That is assuming Sana Amanat was the one who thought this was a good idea — maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t — but regardless she was the person that popped up the Reveal podcast to ‘reveal’ the information.

And she is the person, presumably given her job title, responsible for the creation of the characters that people have been complaining about.

But settle down kids, Grandpa has told you to behave.

So what is the Reveal podcast? I hear you ask.

And frankly why should anyone care? After all podcasters are like comic book readers, fat, Cheeto dusted losers in their mother’s basement, spouting conspiracy theories and fake news.

Not this one, baby… take a look at these credentials….and stand in awe… of the internet of the future….

Yes that’s right, it’s a corporate non-profit NGO, that tells you the facts, and only the facts, and never speaks ill of any corporation — providing they slip them enough money through the back-door, and into the tax-free, money laundering Utopia of ‘charity’.

As an aside, there was a time when the ‘left’ used to oppose this sort of thing. When they would say such dumb things as, ‘if we taxed charities, we could fund universal free health care.’

Sadly those days are long gone.

But don’t worry, as that list of sponsors has a long history of connections to the eugenics movement. And on no account pay attention to The Center for Investigative Reporting being founded in 1977. Because there is no need to worry..

“ We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but all editorial decisions are made independently, not on the basis of donor support.”

So it must just be my new glasses, that I notice this podcast hits every point pumped out by the Marvel PR machine, with regard to #comicsgate, and Disney more generally with regard to other less than popular products.

According to the blurb…

“ There’s a new battlefield in the culture wars: comic books. The alt-right now has gotten in the business, led by a buxom, Confederate flag-waving superhero named Rebel and a white vigilante who turns immigrants over to ICE.”

In case you are wondering, what he is talking about is the comics being produced by Vox Day, who is interviewed in the broadcast.

That would be the same Vox Day who was roundly told to sling his hook when a few weeks ago he announced he was going to copy-right the name comicsgate to produce a line of comics.

Let us stop for a moment, and consider what #comicsgate is.

And yes, I realise there is the explanation that runs along the lines of ‘it is about making great comics, without overt political messages, that are fun and exciting,’ and at that point people add on all sorts of things like: soy-filled, Nazi, SJW, bigots… etc.

But come with me over to the comics pages of indigogo, or kickstarter, or Amazon, and tell me what you notice about the projects that don’t fund, or the comics that don’t sell… is it the art? Is it the story? Or is it that no one has ever heard of either the writers or comics?

I would suggest the latter.

And if you agree, then ask yourself why have you heard about “#comicsgate” titles like Cyberfrog or Jawbreakers?

No, no, no… answer honestly… none of that yes but, no but…

Now ask yourself, why don’t more people apply the business model: build an audience, be connected with your audience, and provide them with a quality product with good customer service.

But back to the fantasy world of Marvel/Disney PR, bought and paid for journalism.

So having set up the premise that Vox Day is #comicsgate(when he isn’t), and he is bringing out comics using the imprint comicsgate (when he isn’t) based on ‘the South Will Rise Again”, they move onto to talk to Chuck Dixon, an artist who used to work for Marvel and DC but got blacklisted.

He explains why he is working with Vox Day…

“ He approached me. I didn’t know much about him, I still don’t know a whole lot about him, but this is the first time in my experience that I’ve gone to work on a job and everybody’s concerned with who is publishing it and their background, their beliefs, and everything else because this guy is … Man, is this guy a lightning rod. I don’t agree with a whole lot of what he says but he was offering me an opportunity to create our own work. He had a funding thing and he had a distribution deal set up. He admitted that he didn’t know what he didn’t know, so he wasn’t telling me what to do, he was asking me what I should do or what would be best for me and all the rest of it. Offering me an opportunity and didn’t tell me what to write, and still has not told me what to write, so, to me, it was just an opportunity to be free of the kind of constraints that are put on you at the major companies, the political correctness constraints. I wasn’t interested in doing a book that was political. I wasn’t interested in doing a message book.”

And so it goes on, but the thing to note in the interview with Dixon is that they don’t ask him what it is he is actually working on. Presumably we are meant to believe that it is he making ‘the Dixie Chicks Great Again’…

Though for those interested, here is a review of his actual comic, Avalon. And no, it is not ‘alt-right’, or even ‘alt-light’, it is a pretty standard super-hero crime comic.

It should also be noted that Mr Dixon is also working with the real bette-noir of the Marvel PR machine, Richard C Meyer: on another not ‘alt-right’ comic, Devil Dog.

But you can see how this ‘honest journalism’ is working. They are pitching Vox Day, who isn’t #comicsgate, and then they are going to bring on Sana Amanat to soft-soap and schill for the company.

Oh but first we have to bring on Chelsea Cain, and have the moustache twirling cis-white-male hate mob tie her to the railway lines, to add to the hypocrisy of Sana Amanat’s ‘SJW Marvel Hero’ act. I say hypocritical for reasons that will become apparent later.

Funnily enough Chelsea Cain is part of #comicsgate: she is certainly using the business model — but don’t tell John Layman — she has built name recognition, has an audience, and is using it to promote her forthcoming comic, Maneaters. Her problem is that the audience she has, is busy trying to destroy #comicsgate, rather than using the hashtag to promote her work.

And again I ask you… how many of the people listening to this NPR broadcast, weeping into their hankies at Ms Cain’s tragic tale are going to buy her comic? As opposed to say Ms Cain getting down and dirty with That Umbrella Guy on a livestream.

Yes, fine he has slagged her off, and she would take flack from the chat, but Chelsea Cain has a comic to sell, and it wouldn’t be hard to spin the story that she was forced by Marvel to do the feminist schtick, that she didn’t want to do it, they forced her and now she is black-listed.

As Mindy Wheeler has pointed out Image require her to hit sales targets, and that the row between Nasser Rabadi and John Layman is no reason to boycott Image.

I’m just saying…

Interestingly, Chelsea Cain in her interview does get to pitch her book…

“ The Handmaid’s Tale meets Cat People. It’s about teenage girls who turn into killer wild cats when they have their periods, just like in real life.”

Yes, fine the pitch is a bit lame, and may well appeal to NPR listeners who have finished weeping into their hankies and are steadying their nerves between drug commercials with a slug of gin.

Memo to Chelsea… watch the Wolfman with Oliver Reed….

And so having paid to create the narrative, Marvel wheel on their big guns, to explain how this Kultur-Kampf (that isn’t) is just so unfair to poor old corporate Marvel, who never did nuffin, and just trying to be fair, to the down-trodden, the oppressed, the voiceless…

So how did you create Ms Marvel?

“ She came really out of conversations about my childhood, and the idea that we needed a character for the young Sanas of the world, as my old boss Steven Wacker said. The bigger idea was about creating a character who was yes Muslim, yes South Asian, yes of course, a girl, woman, or teenager. Really someone who was relatable and that any fan would fall in love with.”

Yes because who doesn’t love an openly racist idiot who runs an illegal prison, and has seemingly no awareness or ability to learn anything? I’m talking here about Ms Marvel, not Sana Amanat, but then given Ms Amanat’s obsession with ‘browness’ and the Marvel obsession with evil ‘whiteness’… given her job… maybe I’m not.

I should point out here, that if you cast you mind back to the 1990’s there was a hoo-haa about the ethnicity of villains in films. Apparently this promoted prejudice. The biggest of these rows was about an Arab baddy in a Schwarzenegger film, I think it was True Lies (the one where he shoots up a sky-scraper with a Harrier), which in turn led to a wealth of work for white English actors… which may or may not confirm the theory that it promotes prejudice…. but regardless is worth considering the next time someone starts wittering on about representation…. and why there are not enough ‘minorities’ in film, TV, Comics etc…

And at this point you might want to hold onto your sides, in case they split.

“ I was surprised at how well the book did.”

“ Us too, trust me.”

How they are defining success here, is that the book sold well to Libraries. In terms of the actual numbers shipped (we don’t need to get into the debate about shipped copies counting as sold) it didn’t do so well. And ask any author, the regular royalty cheque from people borrowing your books, or from periodicals to which you have contributed, is most welcome. What I am saying is, getting books into libraries, at discount and bulk discount prices, is not a measure of success… particularly when you are cutting the pay rates of writers and artists.

But Ms Marvel did about as well as…

“ Marvel also launched a female Thor, a Korean American Hulk, and a black Captain America.”

These all failed as stand alone characters, with the character either reverting back to the original or being shuffled around into various other titles. The strong rumour being that the only reason Ms Marvel struggled on for so long was that it would have been a total admission of defeat for Ms Amanat.

But to be fair, it is a new character, and new characters take time to build. However to claim that she is a character “that any fan would fall in love with” is either a threat, delusion or marketing speak.

And given that Ms Amanat goes on to say…

“ You know you’re talking about the 40s, and 50s, and 60s, where white men controlled everything. The natural predilection for men creating everything is creating content for themselves. The focus was specifically on a lot of white male heroes.”

I think it is safe to say it is delusion.

I realise that this ‘podcast’ is meant for NPR listener’s, who by now is so drunk on gin, that the are using the speed dial to order every drug being advertised (whether they have the illness or not) without bothering to watch the last third of the advert listing the side effects: and I know this is racist world of ‘Adolf’ Amanat, but at some point surely someone has noticed that she has said the character is based on her, or are we just meant to not notice.

Nor are we meant to notice that this is one of the primary complaints of #comicsgate, that the ‘characters’ and hiring practices of Marvel are specifically based on external surface traits and not on the quality of the art, writing or story.

Yes they might have been the dreaded white men back in the day, but they created good enough stories that the comics survived the 40s, 50s and 60s, and in some cases ran for 100s if not 1000s of issues. Without the need to constantly relaunch, bugger about with the numbering, and rely on press outlets to guilt the gullible into saying the Emperor’s hat look nice.

Oh what does it matter, the NPR listener has suddenly become interested in Tena pads. Which is lucky, since I think I am about to wet myself…

“ I think after the movies came out in the last 10 years, and I want to give credit to the studios, it’s become this really big global mainstream phenomenon. People always knew who Peter Parker was, the cartoons existed. Marvel was really you know at the back of people’s minds, but the movies allowed the Marvel brand and the Marvel roster of characters to literally go global. Because of that, because audiences were opened up, we were able to interact with them in a bigger way and take more risks. Also at the same time, while we’re creating all of these sort of newer characters or experimenting with sort of the wider female roster of heroes that we’ve been able to do in the last 10 years, we knew that more people were waking up to seeing themselves in our comics.”

Again this is one of the major criticisms of #comicsgate. That people go to the see Thor or Ironman, and they get excited, and go down to the local comic shop only to find Jane Foster and Riri Williams. It makes no sense, either to do this, or claim that the films do anything for the comic sales.

And neither does the idea that people want to see themselves in the comics. Yes, perhaps if you are ten, you may very well run around with a parka streaming out behind you thinking you are Batman, but that isn’t because when you picked up a copy of Batman he was a ten year old kid running round with a parka streaming out behind him.

There is this video that did the rounds a couple of years ago. It is of a comic shop owner describing how he had brought more women into his shop, and of course because women are involved, and this being current year, it was all a great success and everyone lived happily ever after.

The thing that struck me watching him say stuff like, “we dust the shelves”, is the same argument could be made for bras.

I’ll wager if you did a breakdown of the sales of bras, you would find that men account for quite a sizable chuck of the market — and women account for a equally large chuck of the people returning them to get the right size, something more practical, or whatever. But every man, who for whatever reason, has gone into a lingerie shop knows that the shop-assistant will ask embarrassing questions… and they themselves will probably do something daft: like when asked the size, the will do that thing with their hands as if muscle memory will do the trick. Of course were any of this to happen to a woman, it would be akin to mansplaining, or manspreading, and it would be a scandal, and the lingerie shops would be shamed into being inclusive. But it’s just one of those things.

More of a surprise is that given the rates of obesity, the bra manufacturers haven’t cottoned on to the business opportunity.

But the principle is the same. You don’t look at bras, or football matches, or someone threatening to jump from a bridge, or any other form of entertainment when you are older than ten, and seek representation and participation.

“ Also realizing, “Oh wait, if that’s for me too, if I can see myself in a comic, maybe I can actually be a part of the creative process.”

If anything confirms that Marvel are hiring on tick-box quotas and not talent, it is this.

I’m beginning to like this interview. I like seeing PR money wasted because events have moved on. Oh sure it will be used to promote the narrative they have worked out to explain the price rises to cover the shortfall in sales, and the expenses incurred from having so much inventory sat around. But it’s always nice to see a corporation make a fool of themselves.

“ I met with Sana a few days before writer Chelsea Kane went public criticizing Marvel, claiming the company didn’t have her back when she was attacked online. I couldn’t ask Sana directly about those claims, but I did ask her this…”

Which is a neat way of admitting that this “honest” “journalism” was coming unstuck. Not least because the transcript spells Chelsea Cain’s name wrong, and Ms Cain accused Marvel of a lot more than that. If you read the transcript, they have clearly mucked about with the editing, because having set up this ‘slam-dunk’ for Ms Amanat to ramble on about milkshakes and the unfairness of people having opinions of their own, we get this…

“ The way that I look at it is, I am a Muslim American woman who is a Vice President at one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, and have been able to make a lot of big strides. That’s how I take them on because I’m here and they’re there. They can be as upset as they want, but we’re not trying to take away anything from them.”

Well you are.

Or you should be, trying to take their money by selling them things they want to buy.

I realise Ms Amanat, though unfortunately Disney apparently doesn’t, that you think this is all about you, but the last time I looked (with the exception of Ms Marvel) you were not available on the shelves to buy. No-one gives a toss about you, beyond their grievances with your kooky hiring, your daft marketing and your inherent racist and political bias.

But when they get around the ‘terror’ of those poor women, she goes back into fantasy land…

“ We’re not trying to further their public face on this, because I think it’s important that they have privacy and that their name isn’t smeared and continue to be smeared. The more that we repeat it, the more that people will pay more attention and have a bigger target on their backs. We want to make sure that they’re safe.”

Really?

Really?

Really?

So that is why Joe Quesada, the Marvel creative director, went on a three day sperg out, dragging up all those names back into the public. That is why your artists and writers and general hangers on, bring them up all the time: in addition to getting involved in rows and flame-wars with people, often over the most innocuous of comments, that then flare into slanging matches.

To call what Sana Amanat says a lie is an understatement.

And then it’s onto Stan Lee, and blah blah, ‘anonymous hate’, blah blah blah…

But don’t worry, the drunken, drugged up, pampered, NPR listener is by now erratically driving around town looking for their cat…

So this will all be filed for future reference for some other lazy journalist to pick up, in order to further spread the narrative of evil-white-men ruining Marvel’s delusion, to anyone daft enough to listen.

#amwriting #Sargon Damages #UKIP More — Just as #Metokur Said He Would

#Sargon Damages #UKIP More — Just as #Metokur Said He Would

It’s a funny old world.

One minute you are riding high, offering advice to the EU parliament and claiming to be on the verge of interviewing Donald Trump, the next you are embroiled in an internet feud and calling Mr Metokur a pedo Next you are involved in a bomb threat at Mythcon and a series of less than flattering articles in the media.

Such has been the journey of Sargon of Akkad over the past week or so.

Oh how different it was back in June when having announced his intention to join UKIP sat down to have a chat with Kevin Logan, in a video entitled ‘Persuading Kevin Logan to Join UKIP.’ Then the talk was about how he was going to take over the party, how he was going to change British politics: all was cheerfulness and bright optimism.

Perhaps if he had listened to the warnings Mr Logan gave him about being ‘sceptical’ he wouldn’t be in his current predicament.

I use this term because rumours are circulating that he is less than popular within UKIP. Something not helped by the release of a taped conversation between himself, his ally Vee, and Mauritian Struggle in which Sargon says that he is not interested in party politics. Which is a decidedly odd thing to say for someone joining a political party and raises serious issues of judgement.

It is one thing to point at John Locke and claim that somehow people both inside the party and in the electorate at large, will somehow understand what is contained within Two Treatises on Government, and just go, ‘the scales have been lifted from my eyes, I’ll vote for that guy.’ And, it is another thing to deal with the real political world of favours and alliances, backstabbing and influence.

Sure, as a YouTuber, Carl of Swindon, understands the principles — voting videos up and or down to boost or prevent another channels growth: of brigading and amplifying, making response videos to bring traffic to your site… etc. And it could be argued that these are genuine transferable skills that could be brought to the political arena.

But rather than reading Locke, or Aristotle, or Belle Hooks to win some pointless argument with a feminist, he would have been well advised to read the Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope, or indeed the Barsetshire Chronicles, to understand how the game is really played, when the stakes are not subscribers or patreon money, but for real things like power and the purse-strings.

Of course his ‘internet friends’ have come to his aid, making videos to express their solidarity.

For instance, the YouTuber the Quartering is outraged at the slandering of his ‘friend’ in the Times. It is utterly baffling to him that they wouldn’t print Sargon’s five paragraph reply to the questions posed to him by a journalist via Facebook. That his reply did not address any of the questions asked, and slithered and slid around with all the finesse of the rolling English drunk on the rolling English road, did not help.

I mean, having joined a party described by David Cameron as consisting of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly”, it was probably not advisable to be caught on a livestream with Richard Spencer that resulted in him calling people “white niggers”, and then going on about how white people should act, and that they were failing to act like white people and were therefore ‘niggers’. Now fair enough, this was in response to him being baited by the chat to answer the JQ (Jewish Question), stuff about his racial heritage, and in that context it is perhaps a reasonable response (if you are a YouTuber).

But the fact that you have to explain it, and it can be so easily misconstrued: and worse the fact that Sargon cannot explain it, and needs others to explain his various gaffs — the ‘I wouldn’t even rape you’ comment to Jess Philips, his ban from Twitter for sending inter-racial gay-porn to the Alt-Right, the clarification that he wasn’t accusing Mr Metokur of actually grooming teenagers, he was speaking metaphorically and suggesting it was emotional abuse… etc.

Luckily for Sargon the press have yet to latch on to his assertion that Andrew Anglin, from Stormfront, was someone he had great respect for as a martyr for free speech, and the most persecuted man in the world — to paraphrase.

Perhaps nothing highlights Sargon’s lumpen wit more than the debate between him and Thomas Smith at last years Mythcon event.

Now to be fair, Mr Smith became fixated and hysterical, which was compounded by his ignorance of Jess Philips and why the offending tweet was sent. I am sure Ms Philips is a charming person in private, however in public she is a rather gobby know-nothing, who famously described the events in Cologne — in which some 800–1000 women were sexually assaulted — “could be described on Broad Street in Birmingham every week”. Something for which she later apologised.

But it doesn’t get around the fact that Sargon’s tweet was poorly worded, by the inclusion of the word “even”. Nor does it get around the fact that he is a very poor debater, thus leading to the Mythcon event being a ‘shitshow’.

And while this event gave him notoriety and a degree of e-fame, it still doesn’t explain why everyone is so shocked that it gets endlessly repeated: for the simple reason that to those not on the interwebz it is about the only thing they have ever heard about him.

When you throw into the mix his anti-feminist stance, and such other embarrassments as the Lush affair. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why it becomes a ready short-hand for political opponents to accuse him of having ‘bizarre’ ideas.

Again I come back to Trollope. I’m not sure where this idea came from that newspapers, and the media in general, are supposed to be impartial pillars of the the truth. To criticise the Times as being less than partial, as Sargon’s ‘internet friends’ have done, when leaping to his defence, is naive at best. Jim Hacker in the sitcom Yes Prime Minister defines the papers best, and as he points out, “the Times is read by the people who actually do run the country.” So if you are feeling generous, it should be taken as a compliment that the people running the country feel ‘so threatened’ that they should run a hit piece.

Though if you are feeling less generous, had Sargon not responded to the questions in the manner that he did, they might have bothered to take him seriously.

However, it should also be noted how many of these ‘internet friends’ are politically utterly worthless: not having a vote. It’s all very well to say things like, “if I was in the UK, I’d definitely join UKIP,” but you aren’t.

And it should also be noted how many of these ‘internet friends’ are currently under the ‘internet drama’ spotlight.

In his livestream to Jim/Mr Metokur/Billie-the-Anti-Bully, that started this current round of ‘internet friends’ white-knighting for the Fuehrer of Liberalists: Sargon laughed at the notion that when he became an MP any journalist would ever ask questions about Mundanematt.

Fair enough.

But then to turn up a week later at a conference with Bunty King, when everyone and his wife is laughing at the video of Bunty King talking about ‘back-door’ oral and having women pee on him. It doesn’t take Christopher Steele to see that this might be somewhat of a problem for a budding politician to have such ‘internet friends’.

And clearly such things aren’t necessarily a hindrance to a politicians career. Who now remembers Boris Johnson’s entanglement with Darius Guppy? In which he supplied the address, that he obtained via he job at the Daily Telegraph, of journalist investigating Mr Guppy’s part in a financial fraud for which he was convicted: as part of plot to have the journalist beaten up.

No doubt, there will be some, that will now bleat, what has been the standard response over the past few weeks, ‘well at least he is out there doing something, what are you doing?’

Well at the moment I am shaking my head, and wondering why the bloody hell anyone thinks it is a good idea that someone so rash, and so flawed, would think it a good idea to get involved in politics: when they don’t have the first idea how the game is played.

True, in show-business there is no such thing as bad publicity — unless you are Fattie Arbuckle, Gracie Fields, Pee Wee Herman, and any number of others who have flown a little too close the sun of fame.

At least Paul Joseph Watson has the sense to steer clear of things like Charlottesville or the Britain First thing. So far as I can see, since joining UKIP he has just done his thing. The same largely applies to Count Dankula.

They haven’t jumped in with their size six boots, headfirst, with their feet in their mouth, and there backside where their elbow should be: at every opportunity.

This really has been a few weeks in stupid.

#amwriting #comics #comicsgate- Mike Deadato Calls For a Witch-hunt

#comicsgate- Mike Deadato Calls For a Witch-hunt

Another day, another daft #comicsgate story.

This time it is Shoot the Breeze who have an ‘interview’ with Mike Deadato jr, who as an artist has worked all over the place within comics. For several weeks Mr Deadato has been grumbling about this and that, and blocking people left-right-and centre in solidarity….

Several days ago, Mr Deadato was calling on conventions to ban anyone who has come of out of the #comicsgate closet. If the conventions didn’t, then he wouldn’t attend. And he called on others to stand with him. Though he made the concession that people who support #comicsgate could attend the conference as paying guests. Which is fine, since most people supporting #comicsgate, or in sympathy with it, would be paying guests anyway… since they are customers.

But now Mr Deadato has gone further. He wants people arrested…

“ WHY isn’t the police involved? There is not a law these people are infringing? Why aren’t they in prison?”

Now let us stop and think about this for a minute.

Let’s use as an example Geeky Sparkles, from Clownfish TV, since she is pretty representative of who people supporting #comicsgate actually are. We can throw Neon in there too, since they are married, and it would be a cruel and unusual punishment were they not to share a cell in Mr Deadato’s gulag — obviously he would empty their pockets first of money (this being a matter of principle to him).

She criticises the practices and cliquey nature of the comic book industry. She is just as critical of people like Mags Versaggio and her threats of violence, or Robbie Rodriquez sending anus pictures — both of which are potential actual crimes. If anything, she goes further, lambasting the way in which the comic industry has coerced and subverted web-comics, cutting off revenue sources for independent creators, gatekeeping, and she has been critical of the ‘SJWs’ .

Of course, the fact that Geeky Sparkles and her husband are liberal Democrats matters not a jot to Mr Deadato, in his self imposed exile behind his block-chains. Because he knows better.

In answer to the question….

“ Despite verbal attacks on creators, Comicsgate has said one of their goals is to promote “organic introduction” to women, people of color, and LGBTQA+ individuals into comic books. How do you feel about this?”

He replies….

“ That is a lie. They are an alt-right group. They want nothing of that sort. The racist and homophobic attacks on social media are enough proof.”

Which given that Ms Sparkles is an art teacher in a public school — not trying to doxx her, just reporting what she has said on her podcast — for Mr Deadato to start accusing her of being ‘alt-right’ could have serious repercussions. You know, because not everyone has indulgent employers like Marvel and DC.

And speaking of indulgence: in the religious sense.

Another question raised over the weekend was whether it is worse to call a woman a ‘cum-dumpster’ than it is to call a man a ‘cum-rag’.

I really should keep a note of these things for the next time I speak to St Thomas Aquinas during a seance. He may well have wrestled with the knotty problem of angels on the head of pin, but I fear his theological training would not have prepared for such a problem. No doubt he would have cited the sin Onon and perhaps a few verses from Deuteronomy.

For those not in the know, the ‘cum-dumpster’ reference comes from the ‘dark roast’, an apocryphal text oft cited by the Catholic Church of Corporate Niceness — CCoCN+ — as a sign of heresy among the unwashed Protestants of #comicsgate.

And lo, the devilish form of Richard C Meyer did accuse the saintly Heather Antos of being Tom Breavort’s work-girlfriend, and in the midst of verbal combat, masquerading as jokes, called her a ‘cum-dumpster’.

Now we don’t need to go into the whys and wherefores of who was insulting/threatening/harassing whom at this point in the story: or why Heather Antos, dear sweet innocent maiden that she is in all of this, was ever mentioned in the ‘dark roast’. Suffice to say it was a joke, in poor taste, since retracted, and not that dissimilar to Gail Simone cracking jokes about eating children in a recent published comic.

So on Friday Nasser Rabadi got involved in a spat with John Layman from Image comics. During this argument Nasser Rabadi accused John Layman of making racist remarks toward him. John Layman claimed not know what race (‘alt-right’) Nasser Rabadi is. Before launching into a tirade about this and that, during the course of which the term ‘cum-rag’ was used.

So unhappy at this customer service Mr Rabadi went to Mr Layman’s boss, Erik Larson, and was given the brush-off: and the philosophical question then arose from this rebuttal…

“ In what way is “cum rag” a racist term? Every insult is not a racial slur. That’s not how that works.”

“ You’re moving the goalpost. “Cum rag” is not racist. “Cum dumpster” is, however, misogynist. There are implications to being called a “cum dumpster” — those are NOT the same when the gender of the insulted is changed and the insult is different.”

Now we can, if you want, get into the weeds on this one, given that Mr Rabadi is of Middle Eastern origin — Lebanese I recall, but I could be wrong — and there are cultural implications to be considered, as anyone who has ever attended a Cultural Sensitivity Workshop will know. For instance, to call someone a ‘dog’ has very different meanings depending upon the part of the world you are in. And it is best to just steer clear of terms like ‘nitty-gritty’ all together.

I’m sure there are some who would no doubt argue that ‘cum-dumpster’ is a word that needs to be reclaimed, to defang it in order to empower women. And equally there are others that would point out that its a bit rich for Mr Larson to be giving lessons in misogyny, given the content of his Savage Dragon books.

I suppose in end it boils down to your attitude to sperm.

Of course given that Mr Larson is a cleric (nay bishop) in the CCoCN+ (well perhaps not — but for the sake of the metaphor we’ll say he is) it would be completely improper of me to point out that ‘cum-rag’ has homophobic connotations. But obviously to suggest that an ally of Mr Deadato, in the trenches of #comicsgate, would not only defend such homophobia, but actively support another ally of Mr Deadato’s use of such terminology when telling a #comicsgate secret-shopper to sling his hook, is obviously far fetched.

Which makes it all rather tricky, especially given Mr Deadato’s call to imprison people.

After all this is on the internet. And there are plenty of countries around the world that calling someone a ‘cum rag’ would get your collar felt for homophobia. Just as there are other countries that the use of the term to suggest you are gay, might well see you grabbed by the fuzz and carted off for moral crimes.

It would all be a bit embarrassing for Marvel or DC if because they published the work of a particular artist or writer, who had sperged out on the interwebz, their comics were banned, and their online store blocked, in those said countries.

Don’t be daft, I hear you cry, this is the CCoCN+, the are the good guys.

Well yes, perhaps, but remember Gerhard Haderer, the cartoonist who was subject to a European Arrest Warrant for his rather sweet comic book about the ‘hippy’ Jesus that was deemed to have broken Greek blasphemy laws in 2005.

Because here’s the thing.

Calling for the police to get involved in the critiquing of comics is daft — particularly when you are doing it from behind a block-bot wall, being fed snippets by people using you for their own ends.

Yeah fine, Mr Deadato might well get a few of his ‘enemies’ into trouble, but he is just as likely to get his friends in trouble or himself.

Of course the real irony in all of this, is that the people who have got these “pros” so wound up, i.e. the comic critics on YouTube like D&C, Just Some Guy and Mim Headroom, have been of late noticing an improvement in the comics being produced, since CB Cebulski, and have been urging people to buy them — sometimes with the caveat ‘or don’t’ because of what the writer or artist has said or done on Twitter.