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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
This Is What Black People Need To Do If They Want Authority Figures To Treat Them With Respect
Compare with...
And yet, we don't see this...
All comics (which are separate, but thematically connected) written and drawn by Matt Borrs.
How Ferguson Showed Us The Truth About Police
Written/drawn/narrated by Molly Crabapple for Fusion. Presented without comment.
A Round-Up Of Terrible People Who Still Received More Flattering News Coverage Than The Late Michael Brown
For those who don't know, The New York Times recently posted an article about the life of Michael Brown, the teenager who was recently gunned down in Ferguson, MO. The piece, which ran opposite of a flattering profile on the life of the (surviving) police officer who shot the poor boy six times for the crime of walking down the street, criticizes the dead teenager who can't even defend himself for being "no angel." His numerous faults include occasionally disagreeing with his parents, drawing on the walls as a toddler, trying to escape from his crib, dabbling in drugs and alcohol, and listening to "the rap music." These behaviors reflect a common psychological condition known as "being a god damn kid" — a condition which, yes, is fatal, but usually not for another 70 years or so.
If you're struggling to understand why painting a dead black teenager as a "thug" because he did the things that teenagers do, The Boston Globe offers a particularly eloquent takedown of the problematic of this piece. I suggest you read it. Meanwhile, I've rounded up some of my favorite responses from the around the web (read: seen on Twitter), comparing Brown's obituary to similar mainstream retrospectives on other individuals who are almost universally accepted to be more deservedly reviled.
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More White People Believe In Ghosts Than Racial Discrimination, And Other Depressing Facts
As of today, donors have raised over $200,000 in support of the police officer that shot the unarmed — while a similar campaign on GoFundMe in support of the family of the unarmed teenager who was brutally shot 6 times by a cop has only raised $150,000.
There are literally more people willing to shell out money in support of a police officer who has not been charged with any crime and is currently on paid vacation, than people who could monetarily support the family who has to deal with the fact that their innocent son was gunned down for absolutely no reason.
Please tell me that you see what's wrong with this.
Read MoreAttack of the Literal Grammar Nazis
Today on "Idiotic Psychopaths Desperately Hoping For Public Relations Damage Control," following on the recent news of the NRA asking their members to maybe not show off their Open Carry rights by "casually" bringing assault rifles into restaurants even though it is technically legal in some places, my buddy Jake retweeted a cryptic link from Heeb Magazine, which in turn led me to this remarkable gem:
Yes, that is a tweet from the actual real-life official twitter of the American Nazi Party, in which they are being fascistic about grammar. They are literally Grammar Nazis.
Perhaps more disturbingly, I agree with them. Good grammar IS important. I share personal philosophical beliefs with the American Nazi Party. This realization was slightly disconcerting, of course, so I decided to peruse their Twitter feed to see what other kinds of causes they tweet in support of. Things like...animal rights...sustainable organic foods...they're vocally pro-life...and encourage a straight edge lifestyle (less surprising than it should be)...they're anti-corporation, and support local businesses....ooh, and they also love Moms! Er, wait a second...
Okay well then so ignoring that last little hashtag there, and the swastika, and the specification of "Aryan" moms above all, maybe Neo-Nazis aren't so bad? It seems they care about a lot of the same things I care about, or the things that people like me care about. That's kind of weird, right?
Oh. Well. Nevermind. We're now back to your regularly scheduled supremacist scumbags. Still, this is certainly a lesson in the banality of evil — that for all my touchy-feely artist progressive politics, I could (unfortunately) find some commonality with the American Nazi Party. And in a weird way, I kind of respect their attempts to police the grammar of their followers. Poor language skills often (though not always) betray a lack of education, and, well, they wouldn't want us got-dayum libaruls to think that modern-day Nazis are ignorant, now, would they?
Ahem. Right. Anyway.
Discovering this horrifying corner of Twitter reminded me of a happy little tune I used to sing with friends when I was just a wee young lad haunting American Legion Halls across Connecticut. It went a little something like this:
Glenn Beck is J. Jonah Jameson
Did you hear? Spider-Man's black! Well, technically, he's half-Hispanic, half-African-American. He is not, despite Glenn Beck's mad raving, also gay. Nor is it Michelle Obama's fault. But here's some hilarious footage of J. Jonah Jameson that I dubbed with Glenn Beck's ridiculous rant about a (Oh Em Gee!) black Spider-Man:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkLNjDeaYPA&w=425&h=349]
Update: AOL's ComicsAlliance.com has also picked up the video as part of an article on the same topic.
Comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis, who is not only responsible for the creation of the new Spider-Man but is also the one who joked about the idea of the mash-up video in the first place (I can't take full credit!), has also been tweeting it pretty heavily.