Our Future President

"Our Hero"

DGH is proud to announce Our First Political Endorsement: Harley D. Brown! for Idaho's 1st district congressman.

Deathless quote:

"Now that I am retired I have an intense burning desire to destroy all the works of those Progressive Liberal Politicians in Washington D.C. whom I brand as vile domestic enemies to the country and Constitution we’re SWORN TO DEFEND."

(Thanks to Charles Davis for alerting us on this paragon of Idaho.)

Boring Ass 2 - The Return of Captain Tedium

It may be that I have mis-judged Amanda Pander. Yes, it's true! I may be wrong in my assessment of her as a mealy-mouthed excuse-making jellyfish pwoggie access-blogger. Instead, it's entirely possible that Ms. Pander is really not the cynical pandering demotard asshat I've believed her to be - but rather a delusional true-believing Obot somewhat on the order of the do-nothing know-nothing moron posting as Extweeeeeeeme Wibberal.

Just as Amanda can't understand that her cherished, holy Democratic Party wasn't created for her and really really doesn't give a shit about her - so it seems that Ms. Pander can't understand that comic book movies like Kick Ass aren't made for her and their corporate makers really-truly-honestly don't give a shit about her.

Let me put it this way. If you follow the trail of slime studio execs leave behind them until you actually corner one - and then feed him enough blow to stun a rhino - eventually he'll admit to you that the main reasons he greenlights comic book movies are:

1: They have a valuable built-in target audience.

and

b: They're cheap to produce.

What I mean about the first point is that, sure, you could produce Barnaby Rudge because it has a built in target audience of Dicken's fans - but that's nothing compared to the Clearasil covered masses of sexually confused adolescent boys who have enough disposable income to buy and entire Pacific island chain. The fact that any hack writer can chop a comic book's simon-simple plot into the simulacrum of a screenplay, and that any hack director can pull down a decent salary while letting the CGI crew do the lion's share of the directing for him, only makes the aforementioned coke-riddled studio exec's decision easier.

In short, comic book movies are marketed to fanboys for profit. Period. End-Of-Story. -30- Over-and-out. Full-Fucking-Stop.

Nobody is trying to slip in subversively women-empowering characters, as Amanda Panda seems to think:

“Kick Ass” is a movie about Hit Girl. What the filmmakers did was a classic bait and switch. They brought forth certain conventions of movies to lure you into thinking you’re watching one kind of movie (about a young man’s coming of age), and instead they gave you an entirely different story. That Hit Girl steals the show is the point.

This is about as absurd as saying that the Obama administrations recent health insurance company enrichment legislation is a way to secretly enact single-payer. It's beyond absurd and into a realm of fantasy seldom visited by the non-chemically enhanced.

Hit Girl is a fetish character - the sort of pre-pubescent school-girl-with-a-big-gun sex object that's been a mainstay of Japanese Anime and Manga (and to a certain extent European exploitation comics) since the early '60s. One of the reasons why Kick Ass didn't do very well on it's opening weekend is that this character isn't even very well known, much less accepted, among American fanboy audiences. Fanboys expect homoerotic undertones to their comic book movies, not the sort of guilt-free crypto-pedophilia peddled by characters like Hit Girl.

This is why I'm beginning to suspect that Amanda isn't just a cynical manipulator of lackwitted on-line pwoggies besotted by O-brand hopium, but an actual hopium smoker herself!

It appears to me that Amanda fundamentally doesn't understand marketing, the profit motive, basic human greed, and a lot basic human motivations. In Amanda's pwogwessive fantasy world the Democratic Party is the hard working champion of the vital middle class and not, as is fairly obvious, corporate-owned warmongering exploiters of middle class ignorance and apathy. Similarly, for Ms Pander, comic book movies subversively hide strong female characters within their garishly simple plots and are not, as again is abundantly clear, rather ham-handedly made fetish product marketed to sexually stunted over-stimulated pud-pullers.

But then again, as they say, there's no accounting for taste.

Boring-Ass

Regular Panderdome reader (actual photo)

Having read Panderdome for some time now (certainly longer than I care to remember) I've come to the conclusion that, as ignorant and distasteful as Amanda Pander's politics are, her taste in movies is far, far worse.

Witness this glowing review of Kick-Ass, a comic book movie so blatantly contemptuous of it's target audience it doesn't even bother to hide it:

There were two things I knew coming out of the movie “Kick-Ass”: that I loved it, and that it was going to be one of those movies that really divides people.

Uh, well, not really. Popular consensus seems to have met oh-so-controversial Kick-Ass with a gigantic yawn. More people went to How To Train Your Dragon and that piece of CGI fluff has been in the theaters for four fucking weeks.

The plain fact is that Kick-Ass is simply another comic book movie that wears it's contempt for it's audience on it's sleeve. That it features some kiddie gore-porn in the form of Chloë Moretz as a violent 11 year old "superhero" just shows how far western comic books are behind Japanese anime. (And, yes, they're comic books. The term "graphic novel" was invented by marketing firms to give a thin veneer of legitimacy to six issue compilation comics that their target fanboy demographic might otherwise balk at wasting money on.)

Reading Amanda Pander's blitherings about the film reveals her basic ignorance of the fact that male adolescent revenge fantasy (with generous amounts of homoerotic undertone) has formed the basis of superhero comic books since their invention. The pimply teenage boys who are comic book movie's target audience don't go to them because they appreciate complexity of visual storytelling or the nuances of cinema. They go so they can grope themselves beneath their popcorn boxes while watching muscular spandex-clad men commit horrendous acts of violence. The reason Kick-Ass did so poorly amongst it's target demographic has more to do with the fact that it did not feature the above mentioned muscular spandex-clad men, but rather a spandex-clad little girl - and your average fanboy is already sexually confused as it is. No way are they going to know what to make of that.

However, I predict that Kick-Ass will do boffo box office amongst Japanese business men.

The Outrage of a Toad(y)

BowWow prepares for a heavy day of craven bootlicking.

Chris BowWow, the DNC lapdog, is bemoaning the potential loss a major anti-teaparty weapon from his potent pwoggie arsenal of justice and freedom. But let's let him explain in his own words:

The methodology by which progressive media has attempted to delegitimize the tea party has two main trhusts:

1. Focus on how it was generated through large media and financial backing, rather than as a bottom-up, grassroots effort;
2. Anecdotally focus on the craziest tea party protesters, implying that they are representative of the movement as a whole.

While #2 has been the most successful, the efforts of a progressive in Oregon is about to singlehandedly render it useless. By publicly declaring his intention to infiltrate the tea parties with protesters to use as anecdotes for #2, Jason Levin is going to call all anecdotal examples of tea party craziness into question, thereby legitimizing the tea party protests even more.

Teh horrors! How dare this non-pwogwessvie-sanctioned upstart deprive Chris BowWow and his mighty pwoggie klaque of kool kids of a successful bit of lying-ass scumbaggery! Harrumph!

The first point is true only insofar as it depends on the group you happen to be examining. TeaPartiers are hardly a cohesive bunch. But BowWow's second strategery has been around since Hector was a pup. Media outlets have been using the 'Lookit the Crazy!' hook since the days of Charlemagne. And it's just as scummy and dishonest now as it always has been. But then, scummy and dishonest are pwogwessive trademakes - along with bootlicking, hypocrisy and a poor sense of style.

OBOMBA! FUCK YEAH!!!

You know that elderly relative that blurs out racial epithets at Thanksgiving and embarrasses you in front of your girl/boyfriend? Well, over at his "institute," (read: 'assisted living community') Grampa has found something out about his much beloved God-Emperor...and finds it hi-larious! What's the source of gramp's mirth? Pakistani drone attack casualties!

"...what goes on between consenting nation-states within the privacy of their own borders is their own business, and this is just as healthy and loving and beautiful as any diplomatic arrangement."

Grampa - "Teh Funneh!"

Because, ya know, eviscerating children with drone-launched Hellfire missiles is a ripe field for comedy. And, hey, remember that picture of the Vietnamese kids running down the road with half their fucking skin burnt off by napalm? Fucking Comedy Gold, man!

And, hey, Gramps even approves of these atrocities! So long as they "get us out" of Afghanistan by 2012, well, Grampa has no problem with this:

Go-'Bama! Go-'Bama! Whooooot!

(Update: More hilarity for Grampa and the demotard peanut gallery as the forces of their God-Emperor admit to murdering pregnant women. Wheeee-Ha! Can't wait for his next laugh-packed post!))