Did Ellie Kemper really need to apologize?

I get it when people apologize for things they said when they were teenagers. I don't necessarily agree, because if you think back to when you were a teenager, there's probably no end to the regrettable positions you took.  Taking regrettable positions is part of that idealistic and hormone-driven period of our lives, because we don't know shit, but because we're exposed to a larger world, we think we do.  Like, there was a time in my life where I thought that I was helping by suggesting that gay people settle for civil unions instead of pushing for marriage. Not because I didn't want to see gay people get married, because I did, but because a:) I didn't understand the depth of the problem, and b:) I thought that civil unions and marriage were kinda the same thing. I was so wrong, and luckily, no one read that blog. Shit, I thought I was solving problems here.  And I was in my mid-20s when I did that.

So teenagers getting wild online, while hurtful and wrong, shouldn't be held against a person when they're in their 30s, and that's what y'all are out here doing.  I don't think people should be losing their jobs over shit like that, especially when their lives after that moment tend to be a direct repudiation of the things they said as teenagers.  People grow up, they leave home, they have new life experiences, and they develop a different outlook.  The problem is, this generation has a permanent record of all of the wrong stuff they said, and it's called "Twitter." 

None of that applies to Ellie Kemper (so far, although I'm sure you've all dug into her social media history by now).  She didn't say or do anything racist, she just hung out with them, mostly because she grew up around a lot of racists. So now we're attacking people for their childhood proximity to racists? I'm from Biloxi, MS. You know how many people I grew up around turned out to be racist?

I guess it's newsworthy, in a "wow, that's fucked up," kind of way, but to attack her over it or to turn against her or to suggest that she needed to apologize in the way that she did is kind of ridiculous.  She acknowledged white privilege and said she was sorry, and no one's lives were changed by this. No one was hurt by her being honored in a Klan pageant, either.

Was anybody out there rocked to their core by this stunning revelation? Does anybody look at her differently or feel a sudden surge of energy to organize a boycott of "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt?" No, because that would be silly.  This is something she grew up involved with, and she should be allowed some measure of grace as a result.  She even said that ignorance isn't an excuse, but it kind of is.  That's the kind of thing that's said for speeding tickets or capital offenses.  You can't be expected to know the history of every organization you're dealing with when you're 19.  We hear every day when people tell stories that they didn't know they were poor growing up, and we're like, "Yeah, I get it," even though it's plainly obvious to an adult.  I'm not comparing poverty to racism, but I am making the point that your awareness of the environment around you isn't complete and total when you're a teenager, especially when she was 19. She was 19 in the days before everybody had internet.  There was no Wikipedia entry for her to stumble across in 1999.

Point is, you have blind spots to the things that you think are normal.  We see this all the time, especially with white people (sorry, white people, but I have to address the fact that you are physically white right now).  It isn't that white people aren't aware of the existence of racism, it's that the actual racism happening around them doesn't match with what they were taught racism was. Which is why, unless they see actual Klan robes, or hear the n-word, they don't think it's racist.  It's the same thing here.  

Some stuff is pretty clear when you're 19. "Hey, my dad's an alcoholic."  "Hey, my mom is verbally abusive."  But even things like that aren't so obvious when it's part of the culture of your environment and you think everybody does it.  I know people who think verbal abuse is normal, because it was normal where they came from.  So in a society where some politicians want slavery removed from textbooks, or think that Confederate generals should be honored; in a society that routinely attempts to make Jim Crow politics seem as benevolent as possible, you think some 19 year old kid from Missouri or wherever the fuck, is going to be compelled to investigate the history of some group that holds a debutante ball?  Why would she have thought there was anything wrong with that group?  It's a group of people she grew up around that were asking her to put on a dress and parade around a ballroom.  They weren't asking her to visit a compound in the woods to make napalm for the movement.  Nothing about that would elicit suspicion from a teenager, unless that teenager is Encyclopedia Brown.

Look, I don't know Ellie Kemper, I don't watch her show, I remember her from the latter days of "The Office," when it wasn't as good, but the show was part of my routine and I was powerless to break it.  This is not me caping up for her. This is me saying that the idea that she needed to apologize is ridiculous.  We have a real problem with not understanding that people aren't permanently who they were when they were kids.  We all have questionable things in our history.  The question is, are you acting on those questionable things as an adult.  If you're are, then you should have plenty of ammo in your present that can be used against you, and if you're not, then good job learning and growing.  But holding the acts of a child against an adult is petty and counterproductive, because if you have no space to learn and grow from the most tumultuous stage of development in your life, then why even bother with learning and growing?  

Alan Moore Has A Point

 Written Oct. 10, 2020

Maybe it’s because I’m old and bitter, but I find myself agreeing with a lot of what Alan Moore has to say this time.

Maybe “agree” is too strong a word. But I find myself understanding where he’s coming from when it comes to superhero comics. I guess I’m finally in a place where I can receive what he’s saying without getting defensive.

Because defensiveness is usually the response when it comes to Alan Moore’s criticisms of superhero comics. The fans that are keeping that industry afloat (myself included) looooooves the capes. But I’ve been thinking about the industry and how it continues to shrink, and how prices keep going up. I’ve been thinking about what it would take to get large numbers of kids into comics again. But also I’ve been thinking about if kids would actually want to read these comics. And the answer seems to be “no.”

Because it’s not like kids don’t read comics. The sales figures show that kids still read comics. They just don’t read these comics. And with good reason. Look, I’m not gonna pretend that I’m in touch with what preteens and teenagers like these days. I have a niece and a stepdaughter and I am befuddled by some of the things that they’re into. I’m so old that the word “befuddled” actually describes my feeling on these things.

But just look at the shows that come on these days. Look at the stuff that’s on Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or Cartoon Network. Listen to the music. Watch what they’re watching on YouTube or Tiktok or spreading around on social media. Then plop down Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men in front of them. What about that book would appeal to a 14 year old? It’s dense. It’s serious. It’s slow. Like his previous works, you’ll probably have to read it in its entirety to really get everything. It’s very well written and I’ve come to enjoy it, because when it comes to Hickman, I don’t really read for enjoyment. I find myself reading because I feel like I should. But I see why it appeals to people. It’s just that those people are all in their 30s and up.

You could probably find some kids that will read it, understand it, and enjoy it. But not enough to prop up the industry. And that’s the problem. It’s also Alan Moore’s point.

We all can see that the industry is aging upward. Much of it is written for adults. That’s unsustainable.

Now, Alan Moore isn’t saying this out of love for the industry or anything. But it is an accurate observation that this is a medium that was intended for kids, and it’s basically been hijacked by adults that don’t want to let go. And we don’t want to let go because these stories are good. There are a lot of talented people writing this stuff because they love and I love that they’re writing it. But they’re written for us, and the superhero comics game is focused on keeping us coming back, and it shouldn’t be. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be superhero comics that appeal to adults, I’m saying that shouldn’t be the center of the industry.

It’s 2020. I started reading comics when I was four or five years old, in 1983. And I’ve watched comics grow up as I grew up. It’s basically been trending that way as people born in the 1970s have gotten older, because that’s who drove the popularity of stuff like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or Alan Moore’s Watchmen. “Hey, man, this isn’t kid stuff. This stuff is takes it all seriously.” That was the feeling and it caused a change. And we’re still reeling from that change in 2020. Because now, it all takes it seriously. None of it is kid stuff.

And the truth of it all is that comics should have just let us go as we grew up. If we stay, we stay, but they shouldn’t have kept trying to keep us. It’s like everything else in the world. The demographic focus stays on the young, because they’re just starting, and that’s 20 or 30 years that those industries can get out of them, before moving on to the next. Literally every other entertainment medium does this. And we’ve seen before what happens when you don’t do this, because it’s exactly what the wrestling industry went through. It was kid stuff, then aged up with the teenagers at the time (me) and it threw things into confusion when they tried to go back to kid stuff. It didn’t invalidate the enjoyment you got from the Attitude Era, but they did the right thing going back. They couldn’t go the other way, because mass market adult themed wrestling doesn’t exist. We tried that. It was called ECW and they barely got outside of Philadelphia before they shut down.

The healthy alternative would have been what TV and radio generally does: We become a niche market. I don’t mean that we should subsist on reruns until we die because no one is creating for us anymore, but there are markets geared towards older people that are still into the things they like. We’re just not “pop culture” anymore, and “pop culture” shouldn’t be pretending that we are. I’ve got gray hair in my balls, man. Spider-Man shouldn’t still be trying to keep me around, but I don’t need the same stories about girlfriend problems and not being able to pay bills. And likewise, Spider-Man shouldn’t be a family man. That story can be told, but it shouldn’t be the main story. Talk to these kids, don’t talk to me.

Are superhero comics are too far down the road to make the shift, though? When WWE did it, some of their older fans rejected it, loudly, even in the face of the kids who loved it (your boy is guilty of this one). They seem to have found a middle ground in the last few years, and smoothed it out. But comics have been on this road for decades, and comics fans have shown themselves to be some touchy little bitches when they don’t get their way. Creating new black characters, or queer characters, or HydraCap, or generally anything that takes the focus away from the straight Anglo-Saxon male causes consternation among some fans. Comicsgate exists because they can’t take being the focus anymore. I can only imagine what would happen if the comics industry told them that they were going to focus on the kids from here on out.

But they should do it, anyway, because who’s gonna be left to read these superhero books when we’re in our seventies?

The Virtues of Fist Justice

Written July 31, 2020 

I'm not really one for violence, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate when someone needs to get socked in the mouth. And I generally believe that society has lost something when such self-correcting mechanisms have been removed from the marketplace.

I believe in the notion of free speech. I think that you should be able to say what you want without the looming threat of imprisonment or reprisal from the government. I think that nations where people are imprisoned by the military or dictators are sensitive and thin-skinned babies that should learn to take a little criticism every now and then. Not doing that makes you look a little Trumpian, and he's about the biggest bitch baby there is.  

That being said:

Some people need to learn that they can't just pop off at the mouth all ridiculous without facing repercussions. Not from the government, because that's called "oppression," but from people.  People that work in the Trump White House are talking so spicy and it's only because they know we can't actually physically touch them. Like, Stephen Miller would never be as smug and disdainful if he wasn't being protected by three layers of security at all times. Stephen Miller, alone in the diary section, would never say half of what he says on Fox News.  Or Tucker Carlson. Or Sean Hannity. Or Steve Bannon. Or Donald Trump.  Well, Trump might say it, because he's not smart enough to know when to shut the fuck up.

It's honestly a wonder that people like this don't get in more fights, because they're so disrespectful.  The problem is, our society has become one that frowns on righteous violence.  And I don't mean these white guys that openly carry guns because they think that they're somehow fighting tyranny. No, those people are not so smart people that can't tell the difference between reading propaganda and reading facts.  I mean, smacking people in the mouth when they go too far. There was a time when it was understood that if you talk reckless, you could get hit. Maybe it was a lesson learned at home, maybe it was learned in the streets, but a lot of us were raised to understand that you can't say whatever you want, and if you did, you had to account for your words.  And usually, that accounting came in the form of a fight. 

Our polite society shames those who exact this kind of instant justice, because we're more concerned with the appearance of civility than what's right.  It's a scourge that has infected our society at nearly every level, from the fight to civil rights, all the way down to a disagreement over how shitty of a director Zack Snyder is.  "Can we not reason together as men, without our disagreements devolving into the expressions of our baser selves?" That's the kind of shit that we say, because it seems so distasteful that people can fight over words, and it's usually said by the person who's backpedaling after he saw his rape joke isn't going over so well. 

    "Can we not reason together as m-AGH!"

But yes, we should fight over words, because certain words are intended to be inflammatory.  See, the problem with that civility noise is that it assumes that everyone is speaking or arguing in good faith, and we know that isn't the case, no matter how flowery the language is.  It's the argument that white guys make when they say "you shouldn't let the n-word get to you. it's just a word." And no, it's not "just a word."  It's a loaded word that comes with a connotation and history that is clearly being communicated when it's being said.  You're sending me a message when you say that word, and the message is, "you're a subhuman that should only exist in a world that demands you serve me." At that point, you're no longer respecting my humanity and right to exist freely, and I don't have to respect your right to speak anymore. And if I decide I want to rap you across the face, then I'm well within my rights. You've expressed to me a clear and direct threat just by saying that word. And whether or not you know you're saying all of that, and not just some word that rappers made you think was cool is not my problem. Your ignorance and my survival have come to a crossroads at the end of my fist. 

Now, that example might have been extreme but it communicates the point:  You are out of pocket and you need to be checked.  You need to be taught a lesson that a rhetorical besting will not provide.  The only way you're gonna learn how wrong you were is by reflecting on your mistakes while picking your teeth up off the floor. 

Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump; they routinely find themselves in territory where a blow to the face would be appropriate.  Imagine one of John McCain's sons beating the piss out of Donald Trump after he said "I like people who weren't captured."  He clearly would have deserved it, and being exposed as a bitch to the world probably would have kept him from being President. 

They know that's what they're doing.  They're trying to incite the person they're talking to, and act like they're the civil one when the person rightfully and understandably reacts, then they claim victory, because you dared have an emotional reaction to something so insulting, like a normal human being. They hide behind these societal norms to avoid having to account for the things they say.  You shouldn't be allowed to do that.  And it bleeds down into regular society, because the average person says stuff on Twitter and Facebook that they know they wouldn't say to that same person if they were in the next cubicle at work.  The only way they'd say it is if they had the protection of a gun, which is the bitch's way.  Anybody can talk crazy if they're holding a gun, because right or wrong, the other person is probably going to be killed.  Killing a person because you were wrong doesn't earn you any respect from anyone you'd want to earn respect from, and that's why George Zimmerman will be remembered by history as a bitch who killed a teenager for whooping his ass in a fight.  Take that "might makes right" shit back to the 1800s.

But if we lived in a society where it was understood up front that you could get a sturdy, powder-covered, open hand slap to the face for being disrespectful?  No payback later on, no guns, no calling the cops, you just know that if you say something out of pocket, you have to square up?  We're not talking about roasting somebody, because that's basically just harsh teasing, and if you grew up with that, then you understand that your day eventually comes, and you have to take it or get your own jokes off.  This ain't that. 

Imagine the self-editing that would come.  Society would transform overnight.  Because you'd have to stand by the things you were saying, and you couldn't talk greasy unless you were really about that action. Because if you were, somebody was probably gonna come see you about it.  That's true checks and balances.  And everybody would be more respectful, and we'd probably get more done.  I bet you'd be way more likely to hear out the person speaking if you knew you couldn't just cut them off and say, "You're so fucking stupid, libtard."