The new column is on the current furor over the Syrian immigrant menace and how much it resembles past freak-outs over Japanese, Jewish and Catholic immigrants.
•Speaking of which, the Holocaust Museum reminds us that refusing refugees can get them killed.
•Digby takes a closer look at Eric Erickson’s whine about how he’s too scared to go to the movies without a gun. Digby also pokes holes in Erickson’s claim that he’s not afraid of ordinary shooters, it’s only Muslims that are scary. Tell that to people involved in a movie theater argument that elevated to a shooting, a shooting in Tennessee, or the retired cop who killed a man for texting in a movie theater (but had been texting himself). John Scalzi, while not specifically referencing Erickson, suggests being terrified is not a good approach to this crisis, or to life (an FB friend of mine discussed how liberals are all advocating letting people in because they’re acting on feelings—like fear isn’t a feeling?).
•Speaking of guns, Digby also covers a group of armed anti-Muslim activists waving guns outside a mosque while insisting that Muslims are sooo scary it’s not safe to confront them unarmed. I can just imagine the reaction if a bunch of Muslims did this outside a church …
•Right-wing columnist Kurt Schlichter fantasizes about how real men would crush ISIS. Ben Carson thinks we should bring back torture because not using it is just political correctness.
•Antonin Scalia thinks of himself as a strict interpreter of the Constitution. Scott Lemieux shows the holes in his pose.
•McDonalds has settled claims of discrimination against immigrants for $355,000.
•The sugar and corn industries settle a lawsuit over whether high fructose corn syrup can be called “corn sugar.” Somehow when libertarians complain about “frivolous” lawsuits they never mean this kind of B2B four-year legal battle—it’s only frivolous when ordinary people file suits.
•Scott Adams explains that even if he buys a woman dinner, she gets to decide whether they have sex or not, so therefore we live in a matriarchy. And that men are driven to commit terrorist acts partly because they don’t have enough sex (a common view). As noted at the first link, Adams doesn’t explain what the alternative is to letting the woman decide (but he’s on the record with saying the problem with rape laws is that they make natural male behavior illegal). Nor does he consider that the man can refuse too, and some men, with a given women, may indeed say no (if any date had ever told me “But you agree about the Holocaust, right? The Jews had it coming.” I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have put out).
•Jennifer Lawrence says a lot of guys act like jerks with her. Men’s rights activists freak out and explain how she has it coming.
•Trump lies about how almost 90 percent of whites who get shot are shot by blacks.
•An FBI informant flirts with an activist and pushes him to organize a terrorist plot. The FBI covers up how much it directed her in manipulating him, so that it would like the target was the real ringleader.
SHOWCASE PRESENTS AQUAMAN Vol. 3 (cover by Nick Cardy, all rights to current holder) gives me almost a complete run of the Silver Age Aquaman (I have the next dozen issues or so reprinted elseewhere) which despite all the jokes the Sea King gets, I’m quite happy to have. This collection makes Aquaman’s wife Mera (the first super-hero marriage of the sixties, followed by the first super-hero baby) one of the stronger women of the Silver Age, as she gets to fight alongside him in a lot of adventures. Writer Bob Haney introduces a string of super-villains to pep up Aquaman’s previously non-existent Rogue’s Gallery—Black Manta, Ocean Master, the Huntress, the Awesome Threesome, Ogre, the alien city of Necrus, though almost none of them returned (I will say by the way that Haney’s Ocean Master comes off a lot more interesting and human than most later writers treated him). I can’t help noticing that the next-to-last story in the book shoves Mera unconvincingly off-stage (a silly and implausible spat), followed by a multi-part story where Aquaman’s searching for his vanished wife. Given that Dick Giordano took over as editor around this time, I wonder if he just didn’t like Aquaman as a married guy?
I’d originally listed THE UNDEAD (1957) as a possible film (all rights to image to current holder), then decided it wasn’t, then thought I should check just in case … and yes, while the main plot concerns a modern-day woman experiencing her past life under hypnotic regression, she’s able to change her past to save her previous incarnation’s life, then one of the scientists working with her has to go back to fix it (a rather unconvincing grandfather paradox argument, that if she doesn’t die on schedule, none of her later incarnations can ever exist). Directed by Roger Corman, this drags a lot in the medieval sequences, but it still has a level of competence a lot of the clunky amateurish productions I’ve written about here can’t approach. “Thou art the author of the piece—and Satan be the critic.”
TENCHU by contrast, is a terrific Japanese miniseries in which a female ninja from the warring states era is mysteriously hurled forward to the present, where she becomes the surrogate daughter/ninja enforcer for a suburban senior who’s determined no-one should ever suffer the kind of tragedy she did when she lost her daughter. This is often rather issue-of-the-week (spousal abuse, sex slavery, scam operations targeting seniors) but it works well. Part of that is the two strong female leads, partly that the fight scenes are awesome: no stereotypical ninja stuff, just moving fast and hitting hard (all rights to image with current holder). “Lives are important—you should never take them away.”
For a break from Lester Dent I read DOC SAVAGE: His Apocalyptic Life as the Archangel of Technopolis and Exotica, as the Golden-Eyed Hero of 181 Super-Sagas, as the Bronze Knight of the Running Board, Including his Final Battle Against the Forces of Hell Itself for the first time in around 40 years.
