MINING POLITICAL MINEFIELDS

 Since OD is a "junk-drawer" blog for stuff that doesn't totally fit the more developed theorizing of ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE, here's a "thought-in-development" post spawned by my current watching of the controversial interview between Tucker Carlson and Hitler-fan Nick Fuentes.

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I'm about halfway through the Carlson-Fuentes interview. I see an additional reason Shapiro didn't like Tucker putting Fuentes out there; according to Fuentes he had a history with Shapiro going back to when Fuentes was just an up and coming Trump conservative, still in college. Though it doesn't sound like Fuentes was ever employed by Daily Wire, he formed various acquaintances there. But Fuentes got cancelled for his antipathy toward Israel, possibly by Shapiro himself, and for a brief time lost a podcast show because of DW cancellation.

Now, Fuentes could be lying as to how "reasonable" he was in questioning the US alliance to Israel. His questions, as HE HIMSELF represents them, sound extremely naive. Of course the US gives Israel money, and for the same reason they give money to the Saudis: dollar diplomacy, as a way to hold influence over a fractious nation. I can only assume, given Fuentes' insistence that the US "gets nothing" out of the connection to Israel, that he'd be in favor of dropping all connection with Israel. To Shapiro this could only be heresy, and deserving of cancellation, ASSUMING that Fuentes said nothing more than he claimed to have said. It's worth noting that Carlson has also butted heads with Shapiro over the whole "Israel is the bulwark of democracy" theme, and that, far more than "normalizing" Fuentes' idiotic racism, may be the main reason Carlson gave Fuentes an interview, DESPITE Fuentes having also insulted Carlson previous to the interview.

Of course it's possible that Shapiro might be 99% correct in all of his defenses of Israel, contrary to both the "America First" Right and the "America Last" Left, but in my view he would still not be right to cancel Fuentes. Yes, don't give him a job if you don't like his politics, but if you try to make him lose a job, then you're as corrupt as the Mad Lib Progressives.

I'm now at the point where Carlson is working his way toward mitigating Fuentes' "White people first" views. More on that later.    

PART 2--

So my verdict is that yes, Carlson did play down his opposition to Fuentes because of their fundamental agreement on opposing "Christian Zionists" who supported Israel's right to exist. Fuentes and Carlson may have very different reasons for that conviction, but yes, Carlson's idea of pushback against Fuentes' real racism was just to make very general comments about the wrongness of imputing racial guilt to any people. Since Carlson didn't challenge any particular Fuentes statement, Fuentes just let Carlson ramble on until they got back to what Fuentes wanted to talk about. 

Nothing Carlson did, however, counts as "normalization." I don't know if Ben Shapiro started that whole thing but it sounds very much like a Mad Lib talking point: "we can't allow this speech because it's RACIST." Shapiro would have better off doing as Dave Rubin did, keeping the objections on a purely moral level and not indulging in "If This Is Allowed to Go On" nonsense, because such rhetoric empowers the Corrupt Lefties, giving them talking points about a fragmented Right. Rubin disassembled much better than Shapiro did, highlighting Carlson's statement that he "hated Christian Zionists" worse than anyone, which would include all sorts of Jihadists and Communists who have been making many more people in the world miserable. 

PART 3-- During a televised conversation between Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro this week (following a convo between Kelly and Tucker Carlson the previous day), Ben Shapiro made the claim that another Con broadcaster, Candace Owens, had claimed that Erika Kirk was somehow complicit in her husband's death. Kelly was aghast at the time, but the next day came back on her show and stated that Owens had said nothing of the kind. The New York Post agreed with Owens in calling Shapiro a liar, and the Post hypothesized that Shapiro had over-invested in a narrative about Owens from another broadcaster, Stephen Crowder. As of 11-13 Shapiro has not produced evidence of his claim. Of course Owens is no stranger to rash claims, either, having recently claimed, with no evidence, that the Federal government had faked the messages Tyler Robinson sent to his trans lover. 

Additionally, to the "Christian Zionist" thing, I still think Carlson has over-invested in this narrative, but Kelly spoke to him and he admitted that he did not really mean his hyperbolic hatred for the Zionists.     

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In 1964 Disney launched a comic co-starring The Beagle Boys and "Mad Madam Mim" from THE SWORD AND THE STONE. This story, "By Hook or Crook"  from DONALD DUCK #96 tosses in a third crossover, that of PETER PAN's Captain Hook as well.

The Captain also plays a more standard villainous role in "Voyage to Azatlan" (DD #119, 1966), opposing Donald and the marine mallard Moby Duck.

 

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 In this post I talked somewhat about the crossovers in the ARCHIE universe of super-teens, including their encounter with the evil scientist Mad Doctor Doom, who originally appeared in a 1962 issue of ADVENTURES OF LITTLE ARCHIE.

But I didn't mention this villain-crossover in CAPTAIN HERO--

-- wherein new villain Witch Doctor seeks to impress three "elder states-menaces," in the form of Doctor Nose, The Consumer, and The Whistler-- though as I recall, technically, The Whistler wasn't IN the ARCHIE superhero stories, but in the contemporaneous ARCHIE spy-spoofs, entitled THE MAN FROM RIVERDALE. Not that even I, after all this time, care about the discrepancy. 

MONSTER MASHUPS #151

Here's a Satanic bacchanale attended by many monsters--"ghosts, zombies, vampires and werewolves." The plot of this 1951 story in ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN #25 was probably borrowed from the more famous 1950 EC story, "Horror Beneath the Streets." In the earlier story EC's three horror-hosts pass into the real world and harangue the EC editors into giving the hosts their own books. The writer of this story, probably editor Richard E Hughes (who had a rep for writing many ACG tales under diverse pen names), asserts that Satan resents ACG writer Alan Hartwood for having given mortals such good instructions on how to dispel supernatural evils. After conveniently overhearing that Satan has designs on Hartwood's life, the aggrieved writer spends most of the story fending off werewolves and vampires but then gets spirited away (sorry) to Hell by some ghosts. And yet there's a happy ending, because for some reason Satan then allows Hartwood to continue sending stories to ACG as their new "ghost writer." Wasn't the whole point of the persecution to KEEP Hartwood from writing new stories?

I used the word "Hell" generically, but the script only claims, on page 3, that Satan's minions are "denizens of the Unknown." This would have to be one of the first times that Hughes or one of his writers used that placename as a synonym for some domain that was two parts "afterlife" and one part "collective subconscious." Sixties comics-readers often saw "The Unknown" cited as the stomping ground of the ghostly hero Nemesis.          

 

MONSTER MASHUPS #150

 

It may not be profound but it's the most fun a JLA crossover has been in years. The four icons from the Monsterverse used here are Godzilla, Kong, Mechagodzilla and the Skull-Crawlers. Some new ones are invented as well, though not all of them are given names in the comic proper.

THE WEIRDIE FILES

 

I came across a library copy of the 2012 cluster-crossover JUSTICE LEAGUE TRINITY WAR, and it's pretty standard for its purported architect Geoff Jones: just another sloppy smorgasbord of DC heroes doing stupid things. Its only point of interest is showing a version of Justice League Dark composed of John Constantine, Deadman, Black Orchid, and Frankenstein, though one line asserts that Zatanna was a former member. Whether this was ever a lineup in any other comic book I do not know.    

CROSSOVER MADNESS

 Dracula managed to appear on both incarnations of Filmation's GHOSTBUSTERS, though the two Dracs have nothing in common. In the live-action 1970s GHOSTBUSTERS, the vamp is a senile old bloodsucker who gets his long fangs stuck in a tree (which his mate Countess Dracula finds sexy-- a rare adult joke in this kids' show).

 Then he pops up on the cartoon GHOSTBUSTERS once, looking a lot like the studio's comical vamp from THE GROOVY GHOULIES.