Do We Still Deserve A Superman?

We get the heroes we deserve.

In the last century, our fictional heroes were men and women who stood with their nobility and strength against evil. Cowboys, soldiers, doctors and lawyers all fought the good fight for justice.

And these were not our heroes because we were good. No, we aspired to be as good as these fictional people and we admired their goodness, despite our shortcomings.

Look at the heroes we have in TV and film now: Drug dealers, dirty cops, broken families, vampires, zombies and more serial killers than you can shake a knife at.

Which brings me to Superman.

The Superman we grew up on was stalwart, honest, true, a big ‘ol boy scout. This was memorialized in the classic 1978 Richard Donner film with Christopher Reeve. But do we still deserve this Superma? In 2010, Brandon Routh put on the cape but that Superman movie did not move audiences. And it wasn't Routh, he was good in the role and the move was true to the legend.  I think it’s because that particular Superman was too good.  

Look at the comic book heroes we have now. Batman is a hero more like our society. He is violent, brooding, wears black and kicks ass without question or reservation.  Spiderman is a snarky antihero, Tony Stark is a billionaire asshole and Wolverine, well, that brother got knives for fingers.  He could throw up a gang sign and kill your ass.

So, if we get the heroes we deserve,  do we still deserve a Superman? 

Do we, as a society, still aspire to goodness or do we now worship power, money and might as right? In the new Superman Movie, it looks like our hero is a brooding drifter who struggles to accept his great power.  This could certainly work because remember, Superman is an alien who wants to be human and no one would ever accept a bad Superman.  Badass is another question.

Our world is going crazy right now.  Bombings, drone strikes, mass shootings and nuclear drama.  We could certainly use a Superman and despite out still struggling society, I think we definitely deserve one. 

copyright 2013

The Solution To The Black Man Shortage: Billionaires

Lucas: Billionaire, Hobson: Sister

After years of searching, the solution was right in our faces. 

Black women complain all the time about not being able to find a man. You are looking in the wrong place.

You need a billionaire.

Apparently, billionaires love black women!  There is something about having more money that God that draws them to the beauty and power of the sisters. I think this ia good thing and just what we need to stop these black women from all their complaining about men. All we need is about ten million billionaires.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  There ain't that many billionaires and where is the Sister/Billionaire Hook Up Bar? Well, I didn't say the shit would be easy but given how bad things are, it's at least a start.

If we look at this philosophically, these billionaires are just free men, strong and confident and unafraid of what anyone thinks. Money will do that.  So, we can fill in the gap between the 1,210 billionaires we have and the ten million we need with men who have these qualities.

So fellas, if you want one of these highly coveted specimens of femininity, there are plentiful. I see them all time and many of them are available.   And here's the best part: I think they will forgive you for not having the billion dollars in your bank.

If you have it in your heart.

copyright 2013

OSCARS PROVE COMEDY IS NOT FUNNY.

I was asked what I thought about the Oscar hosting and if it was good or bad.  The answer is much bigger than the host and the always subjective opinions to it.

Humor has changed because our society has changed.  An intolerant and conservative society, gives comedians lots of taboo subjects to use as fodder for humor and promote edginess.  In a more permissive society, comedy has to push the envelope because tolerance levels are low and nothing is taboo.

We now live in a nation with 55% out of wedlock birth, 24 hour porn, Real Housewives talking about blowjobs and vagina grooming at 10 in the morning.  We are also slowly getting dumber and dumber everyday.  So what does a society find edgy and funny when very little is taboo?

Meanness and stupidity.

Much of comedy has become insults and kicking people while they are down.  We revel in the pain of others and understand that any subject is fair game because we are now an enlightened, progressive society.  Today, the three stooges would have to really gouge each other's eyes out to get a laugh.

Sure, there are many clever witty comedians (see below) but this is not about them, this is about us.  Look at what we value in society now: talentless celebrities, non-singing singers and success without accomplishment.  Why would we want to think about humor or find something clever?  That takes too long.  Let's just make fun whoever has fallen down, or is defenseless, "Lindsay Lohan is a ho!" (chortle chortle).

Seth MacFarlane was doing comedy for a new generation, one that wasn't in that theater and one whose movies are never nominated for awards.  He tried to blend the new meanness with the flair of old Hollywood and what we got was something neither generation had any use for, the comedy equivalent of a rotary phone with a Twitter feed.

So what do we do?  We can't go back to comedy that thinks we don't have genitals and gay people don't exist.  But neither can we go on to a world where calling a nine year old a cunt is supposed to be funny. 

Or maybe we should look at those men and women who always knew how to be progressive, edgy and intelligent at the same time.  They knew that relaxed morals still meant all the troubles of a relationship, that a family blended, fractured or broken is still a family.  And they knew where to draw the line and what a funny line it was:

THE POLITICS OF MAYBE

All over the web, I see the most extreme, angry and ugly comments concerning politics.  There is never any attempt to understand anyone with a different idea and of course, we only like those who think just like us.  Anyone else is a complete idiot.

People of both ideologies accuse the other of being racist, fascist, evil and un-American.  And both Bush and Obama were compared to Stalin, Hitler and the Antichrist.

And while we are busy with our petty jealousies, arguing about guns, debt, abortion, God and all the other convenient distractions, so certain that we are the "good" ones, our government steals the world from us.

So I dare all of you to consider something terrifying and completely unheard of: Consider that maybe the other guys are right.

Maybe our government has gotten too big, maybe it's not big or progressive enough.

Maybe Boehner is a real patriot and maybe Obama is too. Or maybe they are both liars and idiots.

Maybe our families are crumbling because we have turned away from faith and maybe we need to let go of ridiculous biases based on fantasy, fear and hate.

Maybe the GOP is trying to save us from ourselves and maybe the Democrats are trying to keep us from repeating the failures of our past.

And maybe, just maybe we should all dial down the hate and intolerance for just a moment and consider that we are all Americans, that liberals and conservatives put freedom and God before differences and built a nation that rivaled those of old, that white men died in the Civil War to free black men and black men died in all the subsequent wars, boldly defending the nation which had once enslaved them.

We are the heirs of that great and heroic nobility and no matter how flawed, this is still our country.

Maybe we need to remember that.

©2013

The Stench Of The Onion

More Than A Tasteless Joke, The Attack On Quvenzhane Wallis Proves That Our Problems In America Are Bone Deep.

The Onion, those masters of satire, often strike at big targets like the President, Congress and the rich and famous. But what made them sink so low as to call a 9 year old girl a cunt.  Well, I'll tell you and you can disagree and call me names if you like, I don't care. 

They did it because she is black.

Never in the history of the Oscars, has a black actress so young been nominated for the highest honor in acting land.  And never has anyone dared to call a child this or any other vile name. Until now.  

Why not Tatum O'Neal, Ellen Page, Abagail Breslin, Linda Blair, Quinn Cummings, Mary Badham, Patty Duke, Jodie Foster, or the many others?

Since Obama was elected President, there is this belief that people can now throw away their political correctness and white guilt and just treat us like everyone else. Because you know, a black President makes up for all that other shit. That's fine, but everyone else was not called a cunt, were they?  

I submit to you that it is not some sense of social equality at work but a subversion of the very notion it purports to defy, that this fake colorblindness is the new racism. Now people can say what they really feel about the races, they can air their unbridled contempt and filthy bigotry about how their fellow Americans of African descent deserve nothing but that unbridled contempt.

And these few individuals bring holy hell down on all white people because so many of us are quick to indict everyone when one asshole goes off.  Stupid shit like this only confirms in the minds of black people that all white people have unstated hatred for them for no other reason than the color of their skin.  We know this is not true, but we do not live in a nation where our media will report the many acts of kindness and civility between the races.  All we see is the dirt.

Do we really have so little regard for one another, that we can't even feel protective of an innocent little girl?  How would you like to be the one to have to tell her what that word means and why she was called it?  

I know this seems like a big reaction, I know it was "just a joke."  I was so upset that I said fuck the Onion in every human language. But it's the small things, that determine the path of a society and the way we treat the most vulnerable dictates who we are.  Today, we have all fallen down.

And the thing that kills me is The Onion had a right to say it.  This is after all, America.  But we have a right to turn our backs on them.  But I know that we won't.  This will blow over by the end of the week and we will be nose-deep up some Kardashian's ass by Monday.

And for all the people who defend The Onion, that's your right, but you only feel that way because your daughter is a cunt.

See how funny that is?

©2013

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

If you look up the word tragedy, you will see that the death of Christopher Dorner and those he killed fits the definition. 

Our hungry media could not even find a picture of this soldier where he wasn't smiling. How did he turn into a killer?  Was he sick?  Was it PTSD?  And did he come home like so many soldiers to find his nation still plagued by age-old problems which even combat in war cannot dissolve?

There was a time when men marched in to war thinking that they were defending freedom, liberty and human principles worthy dying and killing for.  There was a time when black men demanded to be allowed to fight and die for a nation that would not even grant them the status of human being in the hopes of being judged worthy of full citizenship.  America was an ideal, and she would never send men to die for anything but true nobility.

Are we still that nation?

Were we ever that nation?  

I don't have the answer and of there is one, I am sure it's very complicated.  But I do know this: Dorner was one helluva a soldier, a warrior who turned his skills agains perceived enemies at home.  He killed innocent people and in the end, would not be taken alive.  His aggression was against a police force with a past that can only be described as evil at times.

And I also know something else.  Soon, another 20,000 or so soldiers will come home from Afghanastan, tired, stressed out and well-trained.  

How will we greet them?

copyright 2013

THE BEAUTY OF STANDARDS

At What Price Beauty and At What Sacrifice Denial?

The enmity coming out of the Olympics which has pitted some women against each other is so troubling that it has stopped my brain and left one of my characters stranded in a flying 7-11 (long story). When this happens, I have to go all non-fiction and get it out of my system.

The world has many beauty standards but I concern myself only with the one we’ve built here in America.  I say this because there’s always someone who wants to point out that in Kwasafroland, they worship fat women with bald heads. Well, in America if you look like that you’re the trailer park homewrecker on the Jerry Springer Show.

Beautiful people as they are defined are probably less than 1% of our population.  Beauty, outer beauty, is not earned.  It is inherited and so there is a definite lack of respect that goes with it from the non-beautiful.

And yet, we exalt beauty and why? Because we need to. 

Beauty excites the pleasure and euphoric regions of our brains and this is an inborn instinct that has been with us since we were writing on cave walls.

And yet we are all full of shit when it comes to what is beautiful. We lie and try not to hurt people’s feelings. We fall into political correctness and get vague when we want to compliment someone who hasn’t won the gene pool lottery. "Oh your baby is sooo pretty."

And we all want to believe that good-looking people have it good, that they shit money and fall ass backwards into pools of happiness.  And whenever some nice looking person complains about their lives, we resent them, believing that they should never complain about anything.

Which brings me to LoLo Jones and the other two runners who criticized her behavior and her non-medaling performance. Publically, people have said “they are all beautiful” but privately people have said far worse things, like one of them looks like Wesley Snipes.

Why can’t we just say they are not as nice looking as LoLo and that’s why she gets the endorsements because her beauty stimulates our brains and makes us want to buy the crap she’s hawking?

We can’t because we never want to acknowledge that we have a standard and that most of us are not in it. Well, if that’s the case, why not change it? There are more of us than them, right? Then why can’t we just flip the script on this and put Gabourey Sidibe in a Speedo and have her sell us sneakers? (If you're laughing or cringing right now then I rest my case)

Well, we’re not going to do it. We’re not because we really do want to believe that real beauty is on the inside and that it is more significant than outer, inherited beauty. But mostly we won’t do it because we can’t. We are naturally predisposed to be attracted to beauty according to the societal (if not human) standard and opposed to anything outside of it.

So let’s say that LoLo’s criticizers are just as pretty as she is and let’s laugh at her because she didn’t win the race.  After all, she won the Fine Ass Lottery, right? Let just keep lying until our neighbor with the ugly baby really believes the kid doesn’t look like a potato.

Or we could be honest and let people have all of their assets inherited and earned and accept what life has given us and admire what it has given to others. And I'm not saying that we should be mean. We can still spare feelings so no one will have to tell that one Kardashian sister she has a jaw like Jay Leno. But it won’t happen because it is not who we are as a species. God don't like ugly and apparently, we don’t either.

Copyright 2012