(DC Comics)
Holy America-haters, Bat man!
When did our flag- waving, crime-fighting superheroes become a bunch of Muslim-friendly, politically correct, US-bashing weasels?
The big news to steamroll like a locomotive through the comic-book world last week was that Superman, the iconic purveyor of “truth, justice and the American way,” was pointing his Krypton-powered middle finger directly at the United States.
Superman is renouncing his American citizenship.
It happened after Supe flew to Tehran to support Islamic resisters, thus meddling in Iranian affairs like a buff Jimmy Carter. He managed to piss off both our government and that of Iran, which believed he was an American spy.
The Man of Steel responded in a fashion unbecoming a superhero. He threw a massive, intergalactic hissy fit.
Superman declared that he would stand before no less an America-despising body as the United Nations (that hurts!) and throw away his American citizenship like a used Kleenex.
“I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy,” he said in the latest issue of DC’s “Action Comics.” “Truth, justice and the American way — it’s not enough anymore.”
Reaction came faster than a speeding bullet.
“Sounds as if it was written by an acolyte of the Obama administration,” wrote columnist Cal Thomas.
The character, though born on another planet, has come to represent American ideals of strength, honesty and good character. But it comes as little surprise that he’s morphed into the very definition of moral and political relativism. In the world of cartoon crime fighters, Superman, I’m afraid, is far from alone.
Captain America, for one, is sucking the America out of the Captain.
This summer’s blockbuster movie “Captain America: The First Avenger” is lopping its title to “The First Avenger” in South Korea, Russia and Ukraine. So as not to offend anti-American sensibilities.
As if to put to rest any possible claim that the loss of “America” is an innocent move, “Avenger” director Joe Johnston told The Los Angeles Times that the comic-book star would not be “this sort of jingoistic American flag waver.”
Ouch! Remember, this was a star-spangled superhero who came to life in 1941 with a Marvel comic-book cover that showed Captain America punching Adolf Hitler in the face.
Today, moral clarity has fallen out of fashion in the popular culture. Liberal values and fear of offense have trumped old-fashioned notions of good and evil. And these lessons in global wimpiness are aimed directly at your kids.
“Here you have the two biggest comic-book companies in the world — DC and Marvel — downplaying the characters’ American-ness for the rest of the world,” said one disgusted political observer.
DC also teamed up the Justice League — that’s Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and so on — with The 99, a group of Muslim superheroes deemed sharia-compliant by an Islamic bank.
One gal, Batina, kicks butt covered head to toe in a burqa. But Wonder Woman-style cleavage is banned from the bodies of these Islamic comic-book stars. And male and female characters can’t be pictured alone together. Ever. Talk about truth, justice and indoctrination.
However, a TV cartoon of “The 99” — whose mission was “to instill old-fashioned Islamic values in Christian, Jewish and atheist children,” wrote a Times of London columnist — was scheduled to appear on The Hub (formerly Discovery Kids) last October. After I wrote about it, the show was pushed back to January.
Now “no decision’s been made about airing the show,” a Hub spokesman told me. “It won’t be this year.”
Score one for justice. The American way is hurting.
Yankees’ pinswipes
Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. The world is a fresh-shucked oyster for this pair of alpha males. These guys have great arms and good looks, make gazillions playing for the Yankees, and date smoking babes. So why do they behave like overgrown girls?
A new book — “The Captain,” by Ian O’Connor — paints in excruciating detail the petty squabbles that for a decade tore apart the best of frenemies. Jeter was pissed that A-Rod made more money than he; A-Rod was beside himself that Jeter got better press. Boys, relax. This team and this city is big enough for both.
Or is it?
The divas made peace in 2009 after A-Rod was revealed as a cheating husband who had used steroids. Good thing. It would be a shame to go cat-fighting into retirement.
Library porn shhhhameful
As mayor, Rudy Giuliani whisked the smut out of Times Square. But he couldn’t do a thing to clean up the city’s chief purveyor of porn — the New York Public Library, which offers hot girl-on-girl action along with the works of Tolstoy and Dickens.
The finest legal minds have determined that anyone over the age of 17 bears a constitutional right to enjoy free Internet three-ways and bestiality at the city’s 200 library branches. So the grunting from the guy next to you has nothing to do with studying for college finals.
“This is sensitive, but this is what the lawyers tell us: We can’t shut it off,” a perplexed library source told me. “Maybe someone will take it to the Supreme Court and we’ll get some precedence and shut it off, finally.”
Hey, it gives the lawyers something to do.
Mean streets for drivers
Bike lanes and pedestrian plazas are spreading through the city like fast-moving cancers. So who’s got the time or money to fix those postwinter street craters? “I sense there is a greater priority in the Depart of Transportation for bicyclists and bicycle lanes than on the other priorities,” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “In parts, it resembles the Third World. Or maybe the Second World,”
Brooklyn’s Atlantic and Coney Island avenues are just two of many streets where drivers risk an axle. But amazingly, even Madison Avenue in Midtown is a pitted accident waiting to happen.
The official hostility to cars has gotten insane.
And they’re crazy as a loon
Don’t even think of calling Rover a “pet” or “beast.” Using “derogatory” language to refer to a four-legged friend might hurt his self-esteem.
That’s the wacky verdict of a new academic publication called Journal of Animal Ethics, published by humans with advanced degrees from Oxford, the University of Illinois and
Penn State.
“We invite authors to use the words ‘free-living,’ or free-roaming,’ rather than ‘wild animals’,” said the mag. Phrases such as “sly as a fox,” “eat like a pig” and “drunk as a skunk” are unfair to foxes, pigs and skunks.
This high-brow stuff makes me hungry as a horse.