FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
‘Watchmen’ remix tackles the godawful 2016 presidential campaign
05.01.2017
02:02 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Whether you consumed it at the time or some years later, one of the cultural rites of our era is spending a couple days devouring all of Watchmen, the genre-bending, formally rigorous 12-issue superhero tale by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and John Higgins that was published at DC in 1986 and 1987.

Watchmen managed to point up the silly pretensions of costumed crimefighters even as it offered no fewer than three examples of truly exceptional men doing truly exceptional things in Ozymandias, Dr. Manhattan, and Rorschach, all told in a savvy counterfactual timeline featuring a fictitious third term for President Richard Nixon.

I don’t know if it’s that (shudder) third term or the golden trappings of the successful businessman Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias that reminded Aaron Edwards and Arlen Schumer of our current predicament with a distinctly un-super businessman occupying the Oval Office. In any case they have decided to replay the entire election as a Watchmen remix, with Trump in the Ozymandias seat and Hillary Clinton as….. wait for it… Dr. Manhattan. I suspect this interpretation will not go over in all of the precincts of our great nation. By the end of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan is all-powerful but essentially removes himself from the narrative as his increasingly “universal” mindset makes him insensible to mere human concerns.

On January 20, 2017, Edwards and Schumer unveiled the first installment of “Who Watches the Men?” called “Trump Rises,” on The Outline, and today, May 1, comes the second one, with the title “Hillary’s Escape.” I’m looking forward to more of these.

Weirdly, in the role of Rorschach we have none other than .... Anthony Weiner! (Perhaps Nite Owl will be ....  James Comey?)

If you’re not into Watchmen, It’s worth noting that the entire story is told in a long series of nine-panel pages with each cell being the exact same size (there is one exception to this rule), and Edwards and Schumer have done a wonderful job of sticking to that premise.

Here are some of the panels from the strip, but I recommend you read it all at The Outline.
 

 

 
More after the jump…......

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
05.01.2017
02:02 pm
|
Some thoughts on seeing Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s big concert for Hillary Clinton last night
11.05.2016
06:50 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
I was at the Wolstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University last night to see the much-heralded free “get out the vote” concert for Hillary Clinton featuring Jay-Z and special guest (everyone knew who it was ahead of time) Beyoncé. I had a marvelous time, it was really excellent to see America’s favorite pop stars (pretty much) alongside the soon-to-be-first female president (deep breath) on the same stage. I hadn’t actually gotten the memo that Hillary would be there as well, so it was a wonderful surprise to see her. Wisely, Hillary kept her appearance brief and let the audience enjoy its gift of excellent, free music.

A few thoughts:

1. Big arena rap shows are an awful lot of fun.. I don’t have a big point to make here, just that rap audiences put rock audiences to shame. It may have been an unusual situation because the doors opened around 5 p.m. and nobody actually performed until about 9 p.m. DJ Steph Floss was tasked with keeping the audience engaged for virtually all of that time, and he did so by playing countless rap songs by the likes of Drake and J-Kwon and Lil Wayne and so forth. The engagement of the audience during this whole stretch was impressive. Whole sections were vibrating due to the motion of people dancing, and there were frequent impromptu singalongs when Floss would cut out the volume, and so on. These people were into it. Rock audiences seldom give opening bands, often consisting of several human beings playing actual instruments, the time of day, much less pre-recorded music. This audience treated the pre-recorded music the way a rock audience would treat the Strokes. In general, the role of the audience singing along to almost everything enhanced the show.

2. Donald Trump and his organization could never have organized an event that was anything like this. During his remarks in Pennsylvania the same night, Trump essayed a jab at the Wolstein event, saying that he draws huge crowds and doesn’t need “J-Lo and Jay-Z” to do it. And that’s true enough. Just ask Scott Baio. But Trump’s line sparked another thought, for which it helped to be present in the arena last night.

It is simply this: Trump and his organization have shown no ability to mount a show like this. Hillary Clinton can and did do it. The show featured several high-profile rappers in a boda-fide arena show with a great many specialized voting-specific graphics that were specific to the event. Having been at the Wolstein from about 6 p.m. to about 10:30 p.m., I can attest that the event was very well run.

One of the biggest worries about Trump isn’t so much his terrible racism/xenophobia or the effects his awful policies would have but just his sheer incompetence and inability to execute long-range plans. This insight about the arena show addresses that concern. In a way I’m really complimenting Hillary here, she has high standards that were utterly reflected in every aspect of this event. Trump has shown in this campaign that he cannot manage a large organization (preferring a small one), and his “ground game” and internal polling operations are widely believed to be laughable. Trump may make fun of the Dems’ coziness with creative superstars, but Trump wouldn’t be able to leverage such relationships even if he did have them.

Amusingly, I don’t think the word Trump was mentioned a single time from the stage. It was a kind of game, they’d say “her opponent” or whatever and move on to something else.

3. Beyoncé is the one person in America you want behind you if you are a Democrat. Simply put, Bey is amazing. It’s not exactly an original thought. Before she went on, Jay-Z had occupied the stage for many songs, and had demonstrated why he is considered a rapper of unusual flow, presence, and intelligence. He was very, very good. Chance the Rapper, Big Sean, and J. Cole all had extended turns while Jay-Z rested up, and they all were deserving of the roars of appreciation they received from the audience.

Beyoncé made all of them, including Jay-Z, look like amateurs.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
11.05.2016
06:50 am
|
Artist erects naked Hillary Clinton statue in NYC; fight erupts
10.18.2016
11:43 am
Topics:
Tags:


Photo by Geńenne on Instagram

Perhaps inspired by all the naked Donald Trump statues popping up all over the United States, 27-year-old artist Anthony Scioli created his own “naked Hillary Clinton” and placed it outside Manhattan’s Bowling Green subway station (in the heart of the financial district) this morning.

Onlookers were apparently not amused.

It appears the large breasted Hillary statue has devil-like cloven hooves for feet. A Wall Street banker-type fondles her. It also looks like she’s stomping all over her deleted emails. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here.

Below, a video of passerbys’ reactions to the statue:

A video posted by Michael (@michael.o_brien) on

 
via Gothamist

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
10.18.2016
11:43 am
|
Finally, campaign swag that treats Donald Trump with the respect he deserves!
09.28.2016
12:32 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
September has been white-knuckle season for all good-minded opponents of the unbelievable Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump. In recent weeks Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Bannon and Roger Ailes somehow managed to get Trump to pull more or less even with the front-runner, Hillary Clinton. On Monday, Clinton had a very effective performance in the first debate against the harrumphing and hapless mansplainer, and it may just be the trick that puts the race out of reach for Trump—we can only hope!

In the meantime, you need a way to register your opposition to Trump, and Hillary’s lawn signs, God bless ‘em, don’t strike quite the right tone for a monster as malignant as the Donald. No, for that you should consider Pins Won’t Save The World, a suite of funny, rude, blunt campaign swag put out by Sagmeister & Walsh that is a perfect commentary on politics as it is conducted in 2016.

You can acquire the colorful and profane imagery in several forms: pins ($8), T-shirts ($18-$26), stickers ($1), patches ($10), posters ($20). Some of the best pins are already sold out, unfortunately, but there’s plenty of good stuff still available.
 

 

 
More terrific anti-Trump gear after the jump…..

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
09.28.2016
12:32 pm
|
There’s a petition to make Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ the U.S. national anthem


 
Who’s your favorite candidate for the presidency? The one who plans to carpet bomb ISIS? The one who wants to murder the families of terrorists? Or the architect of our disastrous intervention in Libya, who once threatened to nuke Iran? Whose saber-rattling do you think demonstrates the blithest disregard for civilian lives?

While bellicose enough to reflect our leaders’ thirst for human blood, our current national anthem has a few deficiencies. No one can sing it, its melody is ripped straight from “To Anacreon in Heaven,” and it has a truly awful third verse that disses slaves.

One Shannon Madden of Birmingham, Alabama, has proposed an elegant solution: replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” with Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” This is an idea whose time has come. For starters, you can sing it. “Satan, laughing, spreads his wings” is a more realistic image of the aftermath of our merry adventures than “our flag was still there.” And though I seldom take in a game of sports, on those rare occasions when I do, I would rather lend my voice to an Iommi, Osbourne, Butler and Ward composition than a song by a slave-holding anti-abolitionist. Wouldn’t you?

Sign the petition here.
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
|
03.16.2016
03:56 pm
|
Geto Boys’ Willie D blasts Ted Cruz: ‘He’s a self-aggrandizing, insufferable douchebag,’ ‘scum’


 
Late last week the Cruz campaign released an attack ad against Hillary Clinton, spoofing the iconic printer-destruction scene from the 1999 film Office Space.

The ad itself completely misses the mark. Though the lyrics to the re-written parody of Geto Boys’ “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta” play over the ad, painting a picture of Clinton as a corrupt, entitled Washington insider—the scene itself depicts Clinton as a take-no-shit badass.

The problem, and where the commercial totally fails as an attack ad, is that it depicts Hillary Clinton as one of the heroes from one of the most iconic and well-loved scenes of one of the biggest cult films of the last twenty years. On a subconscious level, if you are a fan of Office Space, you can’t help but view Clinton as the hero of this ad. They may as well have made a Bernie Sanders attack ad, casting him as “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski. It just doesn’t work to cast your political foe in a role completely associated with a hero—an anti-establishment hero AT THAT. Even the camera angles, parodying the original Office Space scene, make Clinton look larger than life and totally in charge. The ad works as a parody of a famous movie scene—as a political attack ad, it’s an utterly dismal failure. The Clinton campaign could take this spot as-is and dub in some different music (perhaps the original Geto Boys cut), and have a great ad of their own.

Republicans seem to have trouble getting the nuances of humor correct and they also seem to have a major problem with musicians getting angry when songs are used without permission in political campaigns.There’s a long history of this, and Cruz’ use of the Geto Boys’ music is the latest in that history.
 

Willie D of The Geto Boys, center
 
Willie D of the Geto Boys had some choice words of his own about the ad and the Cruz campaign’s (parodied) use of the Geto Boys’ music. Willie D called the ad “blasphemy” and “garbage” and asserted that the Cruz campaign runs completely counter to the Geto Boys’ ideals. “I don’t believe he’s all the way human,” he continued, comparing Cruz to “The Tin Man” from The Wizard of Oz. Willie D went on to call Cruz the “scum of the earth” and “a self-aggrandizing, insufferable douchebag,” ultimately demanding,  “you owe us and our fans an apology. I want an apology, Ted.”

Keep reading after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Christopher Bickel
|
02.18.2016
08:58 am
|
So you wanna f*ck a Republican?: Dirty political confessions (NSFW)

001dickpol001.jpg
 
I can honestly say I’ve never been aroused by the thought of having sex with a politician. Not just because most politicians are middle-aged guys with halitosis, bad hair and ego problems, but because politicians are on that “no fly zone” of occupations (along with dentists, proctologists and genitourinary doctors) who for me can never ever be hot, sexy, or remotely attractive. I know, I know, it’s my loss, but you know, I don’t mind—I can live without their alleged charms.

However, it would appear that I am in a minority—as there are many, many people out there who do fantasise about politicians and how they’d like these SOBs to fuck ‘em till they bleed, or reciprocate by tonguing and fingering their oval office. If that’s the party you’d vote for, well three cheers, for there’s a place where you can cast your vote and ‘fess up your secret political desires.

Once it might have been an App, but now it’s a Tumblr—this time a page called Playing Dirty, where peeps anonymously share their “Dirty Political Confessions.” These secret soundbites are plastered over a suitable image of the fantasy object and posted for everyone to..er…enjoy. Admittedly a lot of the naughty secrets involve British politicians like Prime Minister David Cameron—even after all that pig-fucking nonsense—and Margaret Thatcher (apparently someone’s idea of a “MILF”) but there are plenty of unbridled fantasies about Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, “Tricky Dicky” and Hillary Clinton.
 
005gwbdirtpol005.jpg
 

It begins with me being hired to have sex with Bush Jr. I discreetly enter his hotel suite where I find him laying in bed wearing nothing but his socks. I start by tonguing his sweaty taint and asshole until he can’t take it anymore and shoves his cock down my throat, calling me a slut while I gag on his forceful plunges. He then throws me on the bed and fucks me in various positions throughout the night.

 
003hilditypol003.jpg
 

I want to sit Hillary Clinton on the desk of the Oval Office and make her come with my tongue and fingers so many times she wouldn’t know her own name any more.

 
00pryan00.jpg
 

Paul Ryan is a sexy beast. The moment I laid eyes on him I wanted him to fuck me. The way he fights for control and resists his angry urges is a huge turn on. I want him to tie me up in shackles and whip me, bite me, and fuck me till I bleed.

 
More wet dreams of our noble leaders, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
10.19.2015
07:49 am
|
Witch-hunt: Hillary Clinton should swat the gnat named Michele Bachmann

image
 
UPDATE: Respect to Senator John McCain for denouncing Bachmann’s fact-less, pointless, unintelligent attacks on Huma Abedin on the Senate floor today.

And to Anderson Cooper, as well, for his full-throated ridicule of Bachmann (and Louie Gohmert, too). Her nonsense should not and cannot be tolerated by a good society. Bachmann and her idiotic ilk are a cancer on the Republican Party and America itself.


Should there be a minimum IQ test for members of Congress?

Think of it as a prophylactic against idiocy. The type of idiocy perhaps best exemplified by the blinkered queen of the Tea party caucus, MN’s Michele Bachmann. Bachmann’s back in the news for her latest round of pig ignorant neo-McCarthyism, and this time her confused, brain-addled conspiracy theories are directed towards the US State Department.

Bachmann’s latest affront to intelligence, expands on her initial charges against Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin (wife of disgraced former Brooklyn Congressman Anthony Weiner) and others of harboring terrorist sympathy. Last Friday, Bachmann publicized her new 16-page conspiracy theory, written after she was challenged by MN’s Muslim congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, to put up or shut up with her vaguely worded accusations of alleged Muslim Brotherhood “infiltration” in the ranks of the State Department and national security agencies.

What’s on your tiny mind, Congresswoman?

Via Salon:

In the new letter, Bachmann questions why (Huma) Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, was able to receive a security clearance despite having family members that Bachmann believes are connected to the Brotherhood. “I am particularly interested in exactly how, given what we know from the international media about Ms. Abedin’s documented family connections with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, she was able to avoid being disqualified for a security clearance,” the congresswoman wrote.

As evidence, she pointed to Abedin’s late father, Professor Syed Z. Abedin, and a 2002 Brigham Young University Law Review article about his work. Bachmann points to a passage saying Abedin founded an organization that received the “quiet but active support” of the the former director of the Muslim World League, an international NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s through 1990s. So, to connect Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to go through her dead father, to the organization he founded, to a man who allegedly supported it, to the organization that man used to lead, to Europe in the 1970s and 1990s, and finally to the Brotherhood.

The next paragraph of the law review article she cites quotes Syed Abedin concluding that the Koran calls for, “multiple ways of life … i.e. religious and cultural plurality among mankind.” Pretty scary Islamo-fascist stuff. It’s also worth nothing that Weiner, Huma Abedin’s husband, is one of the most unquestionably pro-Israeli politicians in America. But Bachmann would have us believe that the security clearance process somehow missed Abedin’s nefarious connections, and thus she knows more than, say, the CIA and FBI, who are involved in the background-check process.

As Jason Linkins quipped on Huffington Post:

“And from there, all connections lead to the obvious Islamofascist puppetmaster: Kevin Bacon, star of Footloose.”

Pretty much…

This shit is getting ridiculous. At what point will intelligent and morally responsible Washington power-players tell this racist, xenophobic, homophobic shithead to get stuffed? Maybe a censure vote? The longer it goes on, well, drats, the longer it goes on. I realize you can’t legislate against stupidity, but for fuck’s sake does this infuriatingly stupid nincompoop drag American politics down to a low, low, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging level.

To call Rep. Michele Bachmann a fucking moron is to demean fucking morons, everywhere. With this latest affront to intelligence, Bachmann needs to be put in her place.

If congressional weenies won’t do it, I sincerely hope that Hillary Clinton decides to take her dumb ass down over this.

Demonstrably stupid people like Michele Bachmann—that’s not a controversial assessment, she’s got shit for brains and everyone except for the dumbest people in the country know it and have known it for years—are ruining life in America.

Why let them get away with it? Someone should have told Senator Joseph McCarthy to stick a cork up his ass in 1950 and someone needs to tell Michele Bachmann to do the same in 2012.

Responsible people in Washington need to call this Bachmann for exactly what she is, an IDIOT. Why mince words? She’s an idiot, a fucking idiot. That is what she is, her defining characteristic is her STUPIDITY. Her district should be ashamed that an assat like Bachmann wastes their tax dollars like this. It’s shameful.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
07.17.2012
04:29 pm
|