In case you missed it, while the rest of the world was remembering the life and work of Stan Lee...failed comedian and political pundit Bill Maher decided to try to piss on it. Here’s excerpts from Maher’s screed about us mourning the loss of comic book icon Stan Lee…
“they’re for kids … and when you grow up you should move on to big-boy books without the pictures.”
He blathered on that around 20 years ago, adults realized … “They didn’t have to give up kid stuff. And so they pretended comic books were actually sophisticated literature.”
“I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that Donald Trump could only get elected in a country that thinks comic books are important.”
…let’s start at the core here. No one asked Bill, he just saw the outpouring of grief and decided to type out a blog chastising it. Which give us two possibilities. He was, at four decades into a career, trolling for a cheap pop off of someones death or saw this outpouring of grief and it bothered him so much he just had to speak out. I suspect its the first one, but either way, just as one human being seeing the actions of another…this tough to watch. This is not the work of a content human being with a full life and people around him who love him…is it? This is some joyless bitter stuff. And disconnected at that. Hey, all you people out there with mortgages, car payments, hard jobs, and kids to raise…Bill thinks you should start dealing with serious grown up stuff. So go get a copy of some 400 page novel and unwind with that. Doesn’t that sound like fun after a 40 plus hour work week?
It’s a straw dog argument anyway because I didn’t notice anyone talking about whether or not comics are sophisticated literature. You could argue one way or the other, but no one was. They were talking about the profound impact Stan Lee had on our culture and the joy he brought into people’s lives. Bill felt someone need to try to put a stop to that?
…frankly, I’m not even sure I believe Maher believes anything he said, but as long as the dope is serving up a slow pitch down the middle of the plate…
-actually Bill, comics are not nearly the cultural powerhouse they have been. They used to sell in the millions…like the three times Franklin Roosevelt was elected, when Dwight Eisenhower was elected, or when John Kennedy was elected…hell sales are slightly down from when Obama was elected.
-speaking of Obama, he’s mentioned being the fan of a comic book character or two…perhaps you’d like to tell him what an idiot he is and how he should start reading “grown up books”
-once you are done explaining it to Obama…you’d better tell the Smithsonian museum to get ride of their comic book collection.
-Hardly anyone reads a comic book when mulling over who to vote for…way more people listen to political pundits for that. Of which YOU are one. It’s not the fault of comic books that YOU suck at your job.
-He implies comic books are not important, and yet he clearly made this statement in hopes of getting some exposure by trolling the topic. One does this to topics of greater importance than themselves, otherwise the exposure would at best be a zero sum gain. So he has in a sense, told the world that he himself feels he is less important than comic books.
-I seem to recall he bought partial ownership of the NY Mets…that’s a pretty large investment in a baseball team…I guess that doesn’t count as “kid stuff”? It’s defiantly money that could have been donated to the Democrats in 2016. Defiantly more than the price of a comic book.
-In addition to all that I have already thanked “the man” for, I will now also thank Stan Lee for the role his work played in keeping me from becoming a joyless crone like Bill Maher. For F*cks Sake Bill, what do you think we are all fighting for in the end, if not freedom and safety for joy in whatever form we can give it? If life is ONLY about the struggle, then the struggle has no point.
What are you fighting for Bill? Do you even know anymore? Do you think we should all only exist to argue about laws and political leadership and then once we have won…sit in our den reading moby dick in between your show airing? Or are we allowed to have some joy? To make use of the freedoms we fight for by indulging ourselves in childish past times? I know it’s not a book, but Citizen King is a fairly respected work of fiction…you might want to watch it. Pay attention to the end.
I’d guess maybe he’d get the point if he somehow sees this…or maybe he needs some words with pictures?
…Those responses are all, so-so, it’s like batting practice. You can hit one clean out of the stadium and it’s still not that impressive because you were only getting 70mph pitches. and he’s been getting his brains beat out on twitter. As far as trolling goes, it wasn’t very sophisticated. It’s pretty standard- pick something a lot of people like and piss on it- But it’s strangely ineffective. Effective trolling is pissing off half the people but getting the other half to cheer. This just pissed off half the people and got the other half to wonder what he thought he was doing.
I don’t know myself if this was trolling or he really felt he needed to say all this. All I can say for sure is that as far as just being a human being…Bill might be all used up.
anyways...
