Brett is notorious for calling people trolls. I can't find it, but someone posted a link to an OO wiki page (if I recall) on him that notes his favorite hobby is calling people trolls on the internet, or something close.
edit: even the crappy forum search returns 44 posts where Brett calls someone a troll.
The conversational thread lent itself to seeming like responding to the same person, which was the point I was making.Originally Posted by Andy Bates
If the question is "What kind of headphones should I buy?" or "Anyone know of any dating sims with pigeons?" then that's one thing.
It's another thing when someone makes a baseless accusation about Alan Moore's feelings towards Frank Miller, then requests further proof that the accusation is ridiculous. Brett, meanwhile, is a victim of his own decision to try and jump into your leaky boat so he could rationalize your opinion. That question wasn't asked in a vacuum.
:) I have a position open for a post editor, someone who can check my spelling, correct any errors and verify that the meaning of the post somewhat correlates to the intended meaning of the post.
Position will include no pay and no benefits. Inquire within.
Baseless what? Yes, the part about him retroactively changing his opinion was wrong, and someone quickly pointed that out two posts later (and without calling me an idiot for not knowing that). But I stand by my original point that you can criticize someone's political opinion without having to say (for example), "I always thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided." That's the part that seems childish.
As for Brett's question, he very carefully qualified his question ("Not saying it is incorrect..."), then you called him an idiot for even asking. And you response was another example of Moore criticizing Miller for political reasons, which is why I asked my follow-up question. It just seemed funny to me that I accuse Moore of bashing Miller based on his politics, and you disprove that by posting another example of Moore bashing Miller based on his politics.
Why can't you do both? 300 is wildly ahistoric, homophobic, and just completely misguided, for example, whether you hate Frank Miller's politics or not.
"Whether you hate Frank Miller's politics or not" is the point: If it's a discussion about Miller's politics, I don't see how it adds to the conversation to bash the man's work. Moore's comments seemed unrelated to the issue of Miller's politics. He basically said, "Well, I haven't liked Miller's comics for a long time. I think they're terrible. Oh, and I also disagree with him politically." Why not just address the political point directly?
Furthermore, I think Moore's point is that Miller's world view is what influences both his politics and his work.
Fair enough. If that's the case, I would like to hear more about how Moore thinks that Miller's politics influence his work. I just didn't get that impression from the part I read.
In a very real sense, the comic-book writer community is small. When you are asked to frame a comparison between two people in your mind, you compare the things that you know they share.
If I was asked to compare myself to Joe Schmo (who I know for a fact I can kick his ass at soccer, as we both play in a pickup league) then soccer might very well be something I talk about. This goes doubly for artists, and especially well-known artists, and especially in a relatively confined industry.
It's not like they've never heard of each other. And it's not like Alan Moore isn't treated as an expert opinion on comics, seeing as he wrote them for years and deconstructed an entire genre with Watchmen (which Miller closes his eyes and ignores in DKR). This kind of comparison is inescapable, especially considering the heavy political layering in just those two books alone. To pretend otherwise is to do a disservice to the authors for being too thick to have any clue about what they are writing.
I always found miller to be interesting for his artistic style, not his stories.
300 was cool, but having studied various aspects of Greek civilization around the time of the Peloponnesian wars, I was under no illusion that it was some kind of historically accurate presentation of events. It was still cool though.
The base subject matter is cool though. The greeks against the Persians demonstrated some serious badassery.
Moral of the story, though, is that miller really isn't someone to look to for political or historical guidance.
My impression is that Miller has an aggressively defensive world view, he believes in the idea of implacable, often foreign, evil that cannot be understood and that only understands extreme violence. There are a few thinkpiece type interviews that speculate this comes from his background growing up in Hell's Kitchen. This worldview is expressed both in works like 300 and Sin City as well as in reference to the real world on his blog. He also has it in common with one strain of recent modern conservatism that thought we could only civilize the middle east at the point of a sword. The reason 300 is ahistoric for example is very likely because of Miller's expressed hatred of islam.
To put the point across more obviously Miller is helping us out by recently releasing a book which he himself describes as 'a piece of propaganda' in which a presumably Batman like figure (It was originally going to be Batman before I guess DC got nervous) sets out to violently terrorize Al-Qaeda:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Te...graphic_novel)
This is how Wired described it:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/...-frank-miller/
In short, for Miller his political views have coloured, and increasingly so, all of his work. This is not particularly unusual for a creative with a strong worldview, you could say the same about a lot of Moore's work, particularly his more personal stuff.
Back to Occupy:
My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”
...
When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.
It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.
http://myoccupylaarrest.blogspot.com/
That is such a cop-out, Queeg. Any use of force by the police needs to be reasonable. If you take the blog at face value, the use of force is not reasonable. That's not an "arrest", it's an assault. Further, the police should never be using pain to force citizens to comply, especially when those citizens are engaged in peaceful protest.
No, being the victim of paramilitary thugs trying to make an example of you sucks. Getting arrested is a different thing.
There's also the fact that the LAPD deliberately destroyed private property and then had it carted off as trash.
Slamming faces into pavements is the kind of arrest you would generally make on people that are violently resisting and not on a peaceful and terrified protester. Nevermind the ludicrousness of the rest of the piece with over a thousand police in full gear storming and destroying a group of tents.
I'm all for civil disobedience and it seemed like this group was going about it in the right way. However, the moment the LAPD show up it's time to go. Don't know about how you all feel about your local police department but it has been shown time and time again that those bastards do NOT fuck around.
There you go, that's the way to change things.
I need to bookmark my earlier demolition of this argument. Suffice to say that you are absolutely wrong, this sort of violence on the part of police is not a given but rather stems from the attitude displayed in your post.
jeffd already gave the polite and responsible post, so I'm free to BillD it up!
If all the men that had fucked your mom got up and protested about this, it wouldn't be a problem anymore.
So, wait... you are all for civil disobedience, as long as they give up and walk away when the cops show up?
Are you sure you know what civil disobedience is?
I know what it is and it certainly doesn't involve inconveniencing people!
When the occupiers refused to unlink their arms the cops should have just shrugged their heads, packed up their gear and went home. They should have realized the occupiers had called their bluff and that nobody was going anywhere. Silly police.
Maybe next time they will bring in shrinks who will discuss means of ending non-violent demonstrations with the occupiers. They can talk it out.
After all, civil disobedience is always correct and should always be allowed to continue forever, unabated.
You have a thing about people's moms. Maybe you should talk to someone about that. :)
You get one post from me detailing how stupid that is, and here it is:
If you weren't so busy engaging in every logical fallacy you could lay your hand on, you'd realize that there is, in fact, a middle ground between the two extremes you've chosen.
You should be aware of the fact that if you had been born fifty years earlier, you'd be one of the people criticizing all those uppity black folks for not just leaving and going home when they were getting firebombed and attacked by dogs. Because clearly the police are always in the right and never wrong, right?
Edit, pass along to your mom: Hey, baby. You were great.
Last edited by mrmolecule88; 12-07-2011 at 10:32 AM. Reason: Scuzz's mom, cue SHES DEAD YOU JERK POST
I'm saying that I could not be as committed as those individuals were in facing the LAPD stormtroopers. I'm speaking the truth; I admit to you all that I could not force myself to do that; I would look for the exit door. Glad to see that the QT3 Occupy Armchair is ready to step in though. I'm just being honest about the time and place. jeffd's deconstruction to the contrary, that precise instance is exactly where I would draw my line. Sorry that I failed you (*).
(*) Not really.
Assuming the cops were going to to remove the occupiers. What would you have recommended they do? Honestly. There seems no middle ground here. You either try to unconnect them or you leave them be. Grease them down so that they slide apart from each other? What is the answer. C'mon, you know everything. Let's here it.
And I never called you a jerk when I said my mom was dead. I just said she was dead. So is my grandmother and everyone who lived before her but saying they are dead doesn't make you a jerk. I realize the mom thing is something your generation loves to say, hell, my own daughter uses it on me and she knows my mom is dead.
The author is just like you, he complied with the officer when it was his turn to get arrested. He still got thrown face-first onto the ground and so forth. The only thing his cooperation spared him was the ankle twisting.
Not sure what you think the protesters could've done differently. The police were not there to disperse a crowd, they were there to make an example. And apparently the message they're sending is that peaceful protesters are the worst threat to public safety in the state. 1400 officers for less than 300 protesters? Good lord.
Let's start with picking them up and separating them, rather than using overbearing force, scare tactics, and pressure points. Let's treat protesters as american citizens rather than as opportunities to use (guilt-free) all this sweet-ass LTL shit Homeland Security gave us. Let's pretend, just for a little while, that we live in a republic where people that disagree are free to disagree peacefully, whether you like them or not.
I know it's tough when you're old and cranky and all these kids are on your lawn, but tacitly approving the injury of non-resisting and peaceful protesters is a bad thing. Which many others have already called you out, perhaps in this very thread.
Your mom.
Your post was not about your own level of commitment.
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