This Was Good

I was only peripherally aware of the Marvel Comics "Captain America" Tea Partier controversy.  Apparently it's been raging on at places I don't read often.

Well given Warner Todd Hudson's reply to a screedy comic book liberal, I may have to start reading his stuff.  This excerpt is observant and very well put:

Next you went on about trying to justify comics as high art. There is no accident in the fact that I finally lost my interest in comics in 1986, “the year many historians believe comics made a great leap towards literary and artistic legitimacy,” as you said. The reason? I wholly disagree with that newfound acclaim! I find that the whole of our culture has fallen to the lowest common denominator and the elevation of the comic book to the level of “artistic legitimacy” is a perfect example of this. Comics haven’t been raised to art, art has been lowered to comics.


Then you go on in a rhapsodic claim that comics helped your “reading comprehension skills, erudite nature, English degree, imagination, and passion for writing.” I submit to you that just about any reading does that. To assume that only comics can do that, like you did, is not a safe assumption. In fact, I’d say that all your above successes could have been increased several fold by reading the great books. Classic literature and history does the same thing but on a much greater scale. I celebrate the fact that you found interest in reading and that your education became one of your focal points, of course. But that comics was your avenue to that only shows me that our public education system is failing.


You next go on to claim that I think liberals are “idiots.” Not true. I think liberalism is idiotic. But I do not think that liberals are necessarily “idiots.” You wouldn’t call an ancient Mayan King an “idiot” because he didn’t know anything abut the automobile! That ancient may have been ignorant of cars, but he wasn’t an idiot. Similarly I find that most liberals are so badly educated that they don’t know how stupid their ideas are. Most liberals are ignorant. Few of them are venal, evil or idiots. Most are just highly misinformed.

I've always said ... liberals think conservatives are evil.  Conservatives think that liberals are misled.

Warner also serves as an excellent example of taking someone to task while remaing civil.