I took part down toward the end of it, and Noah had to remind me that I had formed a misconception. Somehow I had the idea that Noah saw Ebony as nothing but a distasteful racial stereotype. Yet in his post Noah writes: “I’m willing to accept for argument[']s sake that … Ebony White is a great, funny character…”

So what was I reacting to? To this, the post’s closer:

America still needs anti-racism; it still needs Huck Finn and Mark Twain. Ebony White though? Even if he’s all that Matt [Seneca] says he is, I think the culture is probably paying the Spirit’s sidekick just about as much attention as he deserves.

To my mind, that’s what you’d say about a character that was nothing but an ugly racial stereotype. As opposed to a regrettable racial caricature that is also a wonderful, dynamic, fully imagined ficitonal personality. So Noah’s “all that Matt says he is” disclaimer doesn’t strike me as holding much water.

If Ebony is as great a character as I and Matt Seneca (he started the fuss with a blog post here) like to believe, he cannot be a simple piece of ugliness that deserves to be kept in obscurity. Read Ebony and you’re reading about a person, and that’s the best antidote to racism there is: seeing that the other (if you’ll pardon the phrase) is also human.

It’s not just that Ebony’s human qualities mitigate the racism built into the character; they counteract it. In Ebony we have a racist antidote to racism. Bizarre, but such is life.

I’ll also point out that the works of Leni Riefenstahl get lots of attention. They’re Nazi propaganda, yet one recognizes that they are also fine art, etc. It’s not like America needs Nazi propaganda, but having Leni Riefenstahl around is still worthwhile. So if Ebony’s artistic worth could somehow be split off from his anti-racist properties, I’d still say he deserved more than obscurity.

… finally, I wrote a piece about Ebony here.

One of them strikes me as profoundly disturbing:

Many Americans — and indeed many people around the world — know the meaning of “D’oh!,” “Don’t have a cow, man” and “Mmm … donuts,” even if they don’t remember that the phrases originated with the series.

Surely that much time couldn’t have gone by.

I saw the clip at the Guardian, where the writer said he was disappointed that the clip didn’t contain much about character and motivation. He adds: “There will be those, of course, who will breathe a sigh of relief that the new movie doesn’t look like it’s about to upset the comic-book movie apple-cart, and even more of you who will ask: what was I expecting?” I’m with the second group. It’s funny how these pop franchises can get your hopes up if you’re so disposed. I remember seeing the trailer for Alien Nation and then being surprised by what a color-by-numbers buddy action film it turned out to be. Probably I was the only person to be surprised, just as the author of the Guardian piece is the only one to think that the director of Kick Ass might have done something substantial about the young Professor X and the rest.

The piece has lots of all-cap words and exclamation points, and a frenetic, raddled facetiousness that replaces thought and humor. So go ahead and read it.

update, Guardian columnist David Mitchell caveats:

It turns out that Garfield was born in Los Angeles and has dual citizenship, Cavill is from Jersey, not the new one but it still isn’t part of the UK, and Bale largely grew up in Hollywood. …

Still, they’re a bit British – they’re British-influenced. Cavill was in The Tudors and went to Stowe School, Garfield’s been on Channel 4, and not just in a Frasier repeat, and Bale was born in Wales. He’s slightly Welsh and you can’t get more English than that, unless he was also a quarter Scottish with an Irish great grandparent. So it’s still something, right?

Next he provides some grim analysis:

This is how Charles Gant, film editor of Heat, explains the new global reality: “Superman, Batman and Spider-Man might be American icons, but the primary revenue streams for these films are outside America.” The important demographic, our future Asian paymasters, neither care about nor discern the difference between Britons and Americans. If Cavill’s American accent’s a bit shaky, they won’t give a damn. …

The British are the new Canadians. We’re not taking over American culture, we’re being absorbed by it, and at the very moment when its influence is starting to wane.

Of course the Charles Gant quote doesn’t say anything about Asians, but a provocative tweaker of settled opinion isn’t bothered by that sort of thing. Op-ed columnists in Britain all sound like the same bright 15-year-old whose parents think he’s entertaining their dinner guests.

update, Matthew Yglesias retraces the history of Superman’s immigration status. His account of the court ruling that rendered Superman legal reminds us of Weisinger’s special touch. Apparently the Supreme Court determined that “since he was transported to the planet earth in a kind of artificial womb, he’s actually a natural born citizen of the United States of America.” Sure, a fully viable infant in a metal vehicle is basically an embryo in the womb.

The occasion for the Yglesias post, and for the Guardian column up above, is the alleged fuss being made about the casting of a Brit as Superman. I say alleged because I haven’t looked at any of the sites where such a fuss might logically be found. But I have a horrible feeling the claim is true. Fanboys love to get worked up and there are so many people on the Internet. At least a few must be willing to pitch in and yowl.

Read the story here.

A few years back I told a friend that nobody cared about H.P. Lovecraft anymore. My reasoning was that I hadn’t noticed his books when looking at the fantasy/horror sections of bookstores. I really was wrong, wasn’t I? On the other hand, I don’t know that people still read him, just that his creations come in very handy for pop culture jokes.

… Oh wow, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls tarot cards.

The kids are teenagers now and get in touch with their dad (Mark Ruffalo), who turns out to be a sleepy-eyed, happy-go-lucky, post-hippie huggybear who somehow possesses the get-up-and-go to found and run a vast plantation/restaurant that specializes in organic food and blouse-filling waitresses. This is a very comfortable film. Everyone’s good-looking, no one’s a failure, and we get to see a half-familiar new social departure in the next-to-mildest form it can possibly take. Most of us are all right with the idea of gay parents, but at the same time most of us haven’t seen any gay parents. The movie presents us with Bening and Moore bickering about wine intake, watching guy-on-guy, and giving their kids well-meaning little talks. Even the sitcom Modern Family is tougher, in that the parents are men (straights are more alarmed by gay men than gay women) and the big one has a pronounced queenly bent. Bening’s character has just a hint of the mannish, and Moore’s has none at all. (If you’re curious, the very mildest incarnation of gay parenthood would have been Reese Witherspoon as an accountant and Natalie Portman as a veterinarian, and instead of the gay porn they would have held hands.)

Press notices say the movie makes its point about love, gayness and marriage without trundling the message out in front. But the title couldn’t be more plain. Hey, those kids turned out fine, and it is kind of nice to see movie teenagers busy being themselves instead of problem cases. Where the movie is fresh, it’s in the sight of two teenage boys watching gay porn without making a big deal about how grossed out they are, or a girl kissing a boy who doesn’t know what to make of it all because he isn’t ready for that stuff yet. On the other hand, there’s Julianne Moore’s big speech where she announces that marriage takes a lot of effort, much like Tracy Jordan in 30 Rock (“I know what Kevin and I have looks perfect on the outside, but it’s work, damn it, it’s work!”) but at far, far greater length. In fact, no point in Kids is made subtly. How do we know Moore’s character is feeling neglected? Bening’s character walks out on foreplay to take a call from a patient. How do we know that this neglect causes Moore to get it on with the donor dad? She tells us so.

The Kids Are All Right demonstrates that American indy films can now do the French cinema, but it’s the kind of French cinema where people sit with wine bottles at sunlit tables and laugh like they’re showing the rest of us how it’s done. At least the movie is about behavior and not gags or plot twists, but it’s still lightweight—classy and lightweight as a fine linen tablecloth. Also, Moore’s character fires a Mexican yard worker on a whim, just because she’s feeling guilty about donor dad, and that pisses me off. Bourgeois asshole.

Daily proverb. Still, those kids are nice.

Stan says. Face the furry fury of Koalakkus — in Creatures on the Loose #23!

Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mounteback, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy — but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions — envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains — the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages.

One Friday the team was away and the teacher thought he had the place to himself. But as he ran, he glanced over at the bleachers and saw a kid sitting there. The boy was skinny and knockneed, he had bright red hair, and he sat in a slump, elbow on his knee, the side of his face resting against his hand. His shoulders were shaking up and down.

One lap, the kid was there, shoulders still shaking, face still against his hand. Second lap, still there, shoulders shaking, face against his hand, and the teacher could hear him louder: the kid was crying. Third lap, and the kid was saying, “Oh shit, oh shit, dad’s gonna kill me.”

The teacher said to himself, “I got to talk to him. That’s my job.”

But fourth lap … the kid was gone.

The teacher stopped dead on the track — it was a gray cinder track that looped around the field — and he looked in one direction, looked in the other. But no kid.

He caught sight of one of the custodians. “Did you see that?” the teacher said.

“Oh, I saw that,” the custodian said.

“Red-headed kid,” the teacher said. “Sitting up there, his face like he was holding it up with his hand, and he’s crying away. ‘Oh shit, oh shit, dad’s gonna kill me.’ And now he’s gone.”

“His dad ain’t gonna kill him,” the custodian said. “His dad’s dead.”

“Dead!”

“His dad shot himself for grief and guilt, and he deserved it. His dad killed himself because of what happened to that boy.”

“And what was that?”

“Twenty years ago this night, that boy played his first football game. He was too skinny and weak for football, but his dad had something to prove and pushed him and pushed him. The boy made the team, and his first night his poor neck got broke. That boy died on the field, and his fool dad shot himself because of what he had done. But every year on this night, the poor boy comes back to wail over letting his father down.”

“Come on, I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Mister,” said the custodian, and he swept off his cap, and the teacher could see his thin carrot hair and the raw, red circle on his temple. “Mister,” the custodian said, “you don’t have to.”

And then he vanished.

freely adapted from an item in Urban Legends by Thomas J. Craughwell