So, yeah, racism’s dead in America now that we elected Obama, right? Ha.
23 Comments | Posted: January 14th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking About Comics, Thinking about Comics MarketingI got an email from a friend of mine in the South today about how his local shop handled the Obama/Spider-Man cover. Please note that it contains racially-charged language that may be considered offensive but is still very much part of the vocabulary of people who really shouldn’t be slinging it around:
OK, here’s what happened at my LCS today. You are not going to fucking believe this…Edited To Add:: The author of this email, Dr. K, has posted his story.
I heard racism was dead. No?
Yeah, not that I ever bought it, but I discarded that overly cheery notion once I saw someone at a Palin rally with a “Barack” (Sock) Monkey. Man, was he ever proud of how clever he was.
I’m dying to know which shop this was (assuming it’s accurate). Why, a review like this should be on Yelp or Google maps.
I believe it. I grew up in a small(ish) town in the mid-west and the local comic store was run and owned by one of the mots backwards thinker person in the town (whom just really loved comics). I am pretty sure he would have thrown the variant covers away before selling them….luckily he was jailed after trying to burn his store down in an insurance scam (gotta love small comic book store owners!)
Variant covers ARE bullshit. They really should just leave the price off of the covers. All they do is anger the consumer… and that anger is directed at the comic book store…
I think that’s sort of beside the point, rick.
Gotta admit, I’ve felt liking commenting elsewhere on Marvel’s unseemly, awful fellating of The Man. Oh how they’ll regret it when this guy turns out to be as awful a bastard as every other politician on the surface of the planet, ever.
And then I thought, nah, if I said that out loud somewhere people would just accuse me of being a racist. So thanks, racist comic book shop guy, for at least starting a debate.
The idiot.
As a purchaser of comics in the metro Atlanta area, I’m pleased that wasn’t my particular LCS.
Also: only $25? Mine was offering their two copies at $49.95 each, plus a handful of copies they got from “secondary” sources, at even higher prices.
Years ago my husband used to work with a guy at the racetrack in New Orleans who blamed everything on “when they desegged the schools.” (This was 25+ years after desegregation.) Welcome to the Obama Blame Game, now through 2036!
Maybe it is dead, but it’s like a huge dinosaur that keeps on going until its tiny brain finally catches up? Possibly?
Can’t I at least dream?
One word can turn a legitimate complaint into a racist rant.
One very stupid word.
Before I got to the end I was trying to find the racism in it. To me it just seemed like a guy at first annoyed by people not understanding variant covers and then not appreciating the amount of good press the man has been getting…both of which are legitimate complaints. But then…idiot.
Whoever thinks racism is going to die is really naive. There will always be people looking to blame their problems on other people, and when these people get together, they’re going to try to find a whole group of people to blame their problems on.
I’m not even sure if there’s anything that can be done about it anymore. We’ve more or less jumped the last hurdle. The majority of us are obviously not racist…but until we all form a hive-mind and are told what to think, there will still be people who have despicable views.
But you guys know this already.
Billy F–It was not the one word that turned a legitimate complaint into racism. The whole tirade was racist. The clerk expressed a clear desire to have the country spiral even further down the toilet just so a black president wouldn’t succeed. This is not a legitimate complaint. Perhaps my narrative doesn’t reflect that as well as it should, but the final comment was just the end punctuation to clarify for everyone exactly what he’d been alluding to all along.
I say if this story is true — and of course, I have no reason to question Dr. K — then to hell with masking the store’s identity. People should know to either a) boycott the store or b) report this to the owner and see if he even gives a damn. And if he doesn’t, then see “a.”
Dr. K,
I didn’t get that out of this. His initial complaints about Obama seemed to me to be based on the amount of attention he’s getting in the media. There are people who are still hailing this man as the second coming of Jesus, and while Obama seems like an honest man, he is a flawed human being and he is just as likely to mess up as every other president we’ve ever had. I mean, this is stuff that’s even getting on my nerves…and I know I haven’t been immune to having thoughts of him fucking up badly just to shut everyone up…but I also know that these aren’t racist thoughts. It has nothing to do with the color of his skin, nor his religion, nor his political party, nor his state of birth nor anything about him…it’s just due to the media’s reaction to him.
I guess that’s how I would be able to read the first half the other way. But this is all moot anyway, because this clerk was obviously racist, and his initial rant was just a racist argument in disguise…but I wouldn’t have assumed that until the end.
He’s the President-elect, for fuck’s sake. He’s going to be pushing huge legislative initiatives practically from day one. He’s newsworthy. And given how the press have jumped on content-free “scandals” like Obama’s non-connection to Rod Blagojevich, quite obviously hoping to find something to jump him with, any suggestion that he’s getting entirely worshipful attention is not only misguided but outright ignorant.
Billy F–Then I didn’t communicate this part clearly enough: though he started out with a rant about the customers, the clerk’s primary complaint was that he had to work in a place where he had to spend the entire day looking at a picture of Barack Obama on the cover of a comic. The shock for me, while listening to the rant, was when the clerk said that he wanted to wipe his ass with the comic. He wanted to defile the image with his own feces rather than look at it anymore. That was probably one of those “You had to be there” moments, and I should have been more descriptive on that moment in my narrative, but it was difficult to convey just how hate-filled this rant was.
Completely unrelated story. I grew up in Richmond. They were going to put a statue to Arthur Ashe. Over 200 people showed up to protest the statue going up. They year…… 1996.
His initial complaints about Obama seemed to me to be based on the amount of attention he’s getting in the media. There are people who are still hailing this man as the second coming of Jesus
In addition to mightygodking’s entirely correct “He’s the President-Elect!” may I also point out that, after the past eight years of conservative worship of George W. Bush, with accompanying declarations that anyone who doesn’t agree with Bush’s policies, is guilty of actual treason… Well, I’m not really a bit sympathetic to anyone who whines that Obama is getting favorable attention from anyone.
Dr. K, Ok, that wasn’t in the original post here on Kevin’s blog. Saying he wanted to wipe his ass with it is definitely something that would push it more in the ‘racist from the beginning direction.
Mightygodking and Scott. I think I wasn’t clear now…it’s not all the media attention Obama is getting that can be infuriating, but rather just the people who are hailing him as the next Messiah. I don’t mean CNN or anything…I mean much lower level…I guess I shouldn’t have used the word ‘media’ because that implies certain things I didn’t mean. As someone embedded in the political world, every day I hear people talking about how Obama is going to ‘save us all’ like he’s some kind of superhero. When you hear this every day, you can get a little spiteful, even if you really like the man like I do.
I’m not arguing that this clerk wasn’t racist (he obviously is), I was just trying to say that criticism of Obama is not necessarily a racist rant. This was a racist rant, so really, the point is kind of dead. But I hope it’s understood that people can not like Obama and not be racist, right?
I agree with Billy F. It’s ridiculous the amount of attention and hype that Obama is getting. And I’m a liberal and voted for him too.
Seriously, has any other President-Elect been put on a comic cover or had a batch of Topps trading cards of them made (and I say President-Elect to convey the fact that he hasn’t even taken office yet; it’d be another thing to have actually already accomplished great things in office).
It’s just disgusting when we start treating politicians and government leaders like celebrities (and this doesn’t just apply to Obama for me, it was just as bad when Palin and Clinton were getting that treatment); at the end of the day they are just politicians with real responsibilities who are still supposed to be held accountable. I understand that his being elected is a huge precedent and very inspiring based on the last eight years that we’ve had to endure, but I hope the spotlight on him won’t cloud our judgment of his actions. That being said, I look forward to the next four (and undoubtably eight) years. Oh, and that clerk is just a dick.
I would love it if, just once, somebody complaining that people are “hailing [Obama] as the next Messiah” would point to someone who is, in fact, actually “hailing him as the next Messiah.” As opposed to, say, people who think he’ll do a good job, or are excited at the prospect of having a president who’s smart for a change.
As for the notion that all politicians are equally corrupt or flawed or likely to screw up — that’s always struck me as a facile and lazy way to avoid dealing with the fact that there are genuine differences between politicians. It’s appalling that anyone who’s lived through the last eight years could actually say such a thing with a straight face.
Chris, hailing Obama as the Messiah is hyperbole. But it is something that even Obama has caught wind that people are doing. Look at his speech at the Al Smith white-tie dinner right after the Hofstra debate. He joked about people “worshiping” him quite a bit. No, of course no one is seriously saying Obama is the Messiah…but there are a lot of people who have unrealistic visions of what an Obama presidency will entail. South Park parodied this with their election episode, the Daily Show made a few jokes about it last year as well, and stuff like this:http://www.businessopportunitystartup.com/blog/time-on-obamas-downside-yet-to-cure-cancer/
appears on the internet all the time. Just google “Obama” and “Cures Cancer” and see what comes up.
The last 8 years have been disastrous. No one can argue against that. Saying all politicians are flawed is not a lazy way to deny differences, but rather a statement that all human beings are flawed. NO ONE IS PERFECT. And human beings who are in the public eye and get scrutinized at every turn can look even more flawed. Of course there are differences between politicians…just like there are differences between all people.
Wait, you’re telling me SOUTH PARK made fun of LIBERALS by depicting them as gullible retards? Stop the presses, this has NEVER happened before!