Tagged: Barack Obama

Is Hillary Clinton Really The Thing? By Dennis O’Neil

Is Hillary Clinton Really The Thing? By Dennis O’Neil

I never talked to either Jack Kirby or Stan Lee about politics, so I don’t really have any idea where they stood on the subject. My guess would be that following their political spoor wouldn’t take you very far west and that they didn’t have much sympathy for the hippie-rebels of the 60s (and here allow me to blush and hide my face). After all, they and their parents (and my parents) fought for a place in the American mainstream because, finally, acceptance meant an increased chance of survival and for those outside the tribe, who suffered the Great Depression, not surviving seemed to be a real possibility. Then here came the snotty kids with their tie-dye and their girly haircuts and their wiseass slogans saying that a place in the tribe was not worth struggling for – in fact, the tribe itself was stinking of corruption.

Both generations were, in their own way, right; both had a piece of the truth.

Stan and Jack were – are – of the first of the two generations and so they were – are – probably politically a bit to the right of me and maybe you (and my parent and most of my siblings.) But events of the past week make me guess that their greatest creations were liberals. I refer to the Fantastic Four who, along with Spider-Man co-launched Marvel Comics, as one or two of you might have heard. True FF aficionados know, and perhaps relish, the tendency of the members of this supergroup to squabble among themselves. Two of the four, The Human Torch and The Thing, seem particularly apt to indulge in petty argumentation.

Remind you of any particular political group?

Yeah, right. Liberals. Witness the recent news: Ms. Hillary Clinton’s die-hard supporters are threatening to vote for John McCain, the Republican candidate, unless Ms. Clinton’s presidential aspirations are accorded full acknowledgement at the Democratic convention, which will be soaking up media time in about two weeks. This despite the fact that Ms. Clinton has already lost the nomination to Barack Obama, whose crew must be thinking harsh and uncharitable thoughts about the Clintonites.

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McCain, Obama Profiled in IDW Comics

The trend of using comics in politics has been picking up steam of late, starting with the graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Commission Report to Dan Goldman’s upcoming 2008 campaign book to that nutso Oklahoma county commissioner who thinks he’s being attacked by Satan and gays.

Now IDW is jumping into the political waters with a pair of comic book biographies of the two (realistic) contenders for the presidency. The Presidential Material books feature John McCain and Barack Obama in what sounds like it’ll be a guide for voters.

They’re $3.99 a piece at 28 pages, and will ship in October.

At right is the cover of the McCain book, which I posted instead of the Obama one. Liberal media my ass.

Touchstones, by Elayne Riggs

Touchstones, by Elayne Riggs

Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby
Can you tell me where he’s gone
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With
Abraham, Martin and John.

Well, last time I did an actual comic book review, and as expected it received almost no comments. So I don’t want to hear from anyone about how this column isn’t about comics!

I could probably make it about comics. After all, I’m going to be discussing the ’60s, which were about many things. Many people my age cut their fanboy and fangirl teeth on Marvel comics of the ’60s. (Me, I didn’t start reading until the mid-’80s or so, even though my late best friend Bill Marcinko tried pretty hard to get me interested in the Marvels of the late ’70s.) But, despite my trepidation about the kind of Google ads this column will attract, today I want to write about something else that happened in the ’60s, and about the persistence of memory.

Last week on the campaign trail, in an interview given to South Dakota’s Argus Leader, a frustrated Hillary Clinton reiterated her response to the "why won’t that bitch just quit?" crowd of media pundits that she’d initially articulated in a Time magazine interview back in March. Her original words: "I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual."

This time around the phrasing was only slightly different: "My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June. We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just don’t understand it," the "it" in question being the pundits’ incessant and unprecedented calls for a leading candidate to step aside (as if the media were orchestrating the process rather than the voters of each state). In March, nobody seemed to notice; this time, with the anti-Clinton hysteria ratcheted up as high as it’s been since the Whitewater nonsense, suddenly all sorts of folks were up in arms.

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Barack Obama and the Comic Book Time Machine, by Mike Gold

Barack Obama and the Comic Book Time Machine, by Mike Gold

I have always been a major league comic book fan. Always. As a child, whenever my parents dragged me out of town I would make them stop at every possible drug store, newsstand and dime store so I could check out the comics stock. In those days we had no forewarning of what was coming out when, and few outlets carried every title. Some even ignored entire publishing lines.

So when I think back on those trips, I can date them by the comic books I had seen along the way. For example, I encountered Lois Lane #1 at a roadside inn on the road between Gary and Indianapolis Indiana, since replaced by Interstate 65. Ergo, that trip was at the very beginning of 1958. I was seven years old.

In the corner behind the comics rack, I encountered separate drinking fountains: one said, “Whites” and the other said, “Colored.” That confused me, and I asked my father why they needed two. “Because some people are damn idiots,” Dad replied in undisguised disgust.

We were in central Indiana, a place that just a few decades earlier had been the focal point of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, mind, you, if not for the Ku Klux Klan I wouldn’t be alive today.

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Stranger Bedfellows, by John Ostrander

Stranger Bedfellows, by John Ostrander

 

Forget whether or not Barack Obama is “black enough.” The newest wrinkle in the Presidential Campaign That Never Ended is whether or not John McCain is “conservative enough.” Evidently, according to two of the biggest conservative blowhards on the air – Rush “Dr. Feelgood” Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, She-Wolf of the Neo-Cons – the answer is “no.”
 
Limbaugh has been on a rampage about McCain, tearing the presumed Republican nominee a new asshole almost daily over issues like immigration and McCain’s voting against tax-cuts. Rush jokingly says he would endorse Barack Obama over McCain as Obama was “a blank canvas upon which anyone can project their fantasies and desires.” (Why am I not amazed that Limbaugh finds a black man to be a “blank canvas?” And you’re going to project your “fantasies and desires” on him? Oh, Rush – how Mandingo of you! Heavens, I feel all flushed! I swear I may have to swoon!)
 
Coulter has gone so far as to declare, on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, she would campaign for Hilary Clinton rather than support McCain. That, if it came down to Hilary Clinton or John McCain, she would vote for Hilary Clinton as being more truly conservative. And on her site, she continues to champion “her Hilary.”
 

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