THIS MODERN WORLD

…will only be available for three more days. I’ve learned that I have to do this at Christmastime, to keep from being inundated with last-minute orders I can’t possibly get out in time. After Friday, I won’t be filling any more orders until 2005, so if you want to order one for a present, you need to take care of that soon. (The link is over to the left at the bottom of the text links.)

“On the Right, batshit-crazy is the new polyester.”

— Roy Edroso

Citing that material contained therein constituted “clearly piratical copies” of registered and recorded copyrights, a shipment of comics bound for Top Shelf has been seized by US Customs in Charleston, SC. The books in question are copies of the Stripburger anthology containing the stories “Richie Bush” by Peter Kuper, and “Moj Stub” (“My Pole”) by Bojan Redzic. Top Shelf has asked the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund to look in to the matter, and as a result, the CBLDF has retained counsel to challenge the seizures.

According to the CBLDF: “Richie Bush,” appearing in Stripburger (Vol. 12) #37, is a four-page parody of Richie Rich that also satirizes the Bush Administration by superimposing the personalities of the President’s cabinet on the characters from the comic. “My Pole,” appearing in Stripburger (Vol.3) # 4-5, which was published in 1994, is an eight-page ecology parable in Serbian that makes visual homage to Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Woodstock in three panels. Customs seized five copies of the issue with the Peanuts reference and fourteen copies of the issue containing “Richie Bush.” The stories were both published in the middle of their respective issues and no graphics from either story appeared on the covers.

Story. Peter Kuper’s a friend of mine; many of you will remember his “Richie Bush” ad, which graced this very page until not too long ago. He’s doing what a lot of us do from time to time — momentarily appropriating known characters for the purpose of political satire. Sure, you can’t do it every week, you can’t make a career out of using those characters, or you’re on touchy legal ground — but doing as a one-off is pretty clearly falls under acceptable standards for parody.

My wife and I were watching the local news once, several years ago, and a woman who was being interviewed about her troubles, whatever they may have been, looked into the camera and said, “It’s like being nibbled to death by duck-billed creatures.”

We looked at each other and simultaneously repeated: “Duck-billed creatures?”

So that’s become the catchphrase around chez Tomorrow, and it’s how I feel, every time some new idiocy like this comes down the pike these days: we’re being nibbled to death by duck-billed creatures.

Taibbi:

We’ve got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party’s left… We can’t have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural values.

— Al From,
CEO, Democratic Leadership Council

You know, let’s let Hollywood and the Cannes Film Festival fawn all over Michael Moore. We ought to make it pretty clear that he sure doesn’t speak for us when it comes to standing up for our country.

— Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think-tank of the DLC

THE FIRST THING I thought when reading these passages — both taken from a “soul-searching” roundtable held by the Democratic Leadership Council — was this: Who the hell is Will Marshall?

I couldn’t remember seeing his name at the top of anybody’s ballot. I didn’t remember which, if any, elections he had ever won. I was a little mystified, in fact, by the nature of his popular support — who he meant, exactly, when he used the word “we” to talk about whom Michael Moore does and does not speak for.

According to the last data I could find, Moore recently made a movie that was seen by tens of millions of people around the world and has grossed nearly $120 million in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, it was, according to exit polls, a much better demographic success than the actual Democratic party. A Harris poll conducted in July found that 89 percent of Democrats agreed with Fahrenheit 9/11, along with 70 percent of independents. That means Moore outperformed John Kerry among independents by about 19 points, if we are to go just by the data presented by bum-licking power-worshipper Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times at the DLC roundtable.

More.

I was in the car the other day, running some errands, and had the radio tuned to our local Clear Channel station, on which some lesser Limbaugh was speculating as to who might be the worst home-grown villain in America. Scott Petersen and O.J. Simpson were high on the list, as was Timothy McVeigh. The host and his callers then went on to bring up names like Al Gore, Janet Reno, Barbara Streisand, and yes, Michael Moore, if only to discuss why they weren’t quite as evil as Scott Petersen, et al. But the consensus seemed to be that they were pretty darned close.

So here’s my question: why do people like Beinert (and the rest of the Sensible Liberals who’ve been weighing in on his recent essay) obsessively insist that Decent-Thinking Democrats denounce Michael Moore, when right-wing crap like what I heard the other day is being spewed on talk radio at pretty much any hour of the day or night? Republicans don’t play this game. You don’t hear Republicans whining about the need for Decent-Thinking Republicans to repudiate Limbaugh, Hannity, et al.

Isn’t it about time mainstream Democrats stop blaming progressives for their own shortcomings?