A darkness has befallen Riverdale, a plague known as the “redesign”. Among the first casualties are teenage friends/rivals Betty and Veronica. (via waxy)

Yes, this isn’t the first time Archie and his pals have gone through a drastic redesign, but at a certain point, doesn’t the style become the look? (if that makes any sense) When they’ve been spending the last few decades hiring ghost artists to follow the Archie style guide, then maybe Dan DeCarlo’s art is the definitive Archie look and any redesigns should try to be faithful to that. I agree that the art in Archie comics has become stale and lifeless, but there are better ways to reinvigorate their comics than starting over with a more-realistic (but equally-blank) slate.

What Archie comics should do, is take a page from Peter Kuper’s brilliant reimagining of Antonio Prohias’ classic Spy vs. Spy. Hand the reigns over to a great artist with respect for the material and give them some room to make it their own. Rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater, Archie comics ought to find a good middle ground between their current by-the-numbers fare and the more respectable comics that they aspire to be. In the hands of the right artist, comics that have been written off as disposable and irrelevant can become works of genius. Though the initial signs are hardly inspiring, here’s hoping Archie comics heads in that direction.

Christy at Firedoglake writes the post I wanted to write over the recent immigration raids :

Nine days until Christmas…and Mommy just got dragged away in handcuffs for a bunch of show arrests. Nice.

The shifting rationale for the ICE raids on the Swift Meatpacking plants is making me very peeved. What began as a “raid on illegal immigrants” has morphed into an “identity theft ring” justification in the last 24 hours. Except, the numbers as released thus far, do not hold up for that justification
. . .
So, let’s see what we have here: a meat-packing company with a history of skating immigration laws (and allegations of them having some sort of scheme to import illegal workers from Guatamala) skates out of this scot free thus far.

Meanwhile, a mere nine days away from Christmas, these kids get the present of their parents being seized and hauled away, unable to contact them to let them know they are okay — with no time to make arrangements for their children’s care.
. . .
I have very little patience for folks who violate the law — and that includes the meat packing plant which clearly has a “don’t ask, just git to work” policy when it comes to its own hiring practices. But it is apparently too much to ask that the Federal authorities at the Department of Homeland Security stop and say to themselves, “Should we make an utter wreck of these children’s lives a mere nine days before Christmas without making some provision for these families somehow — some show of decency and compassion to ease things a bit for all of these children?”

Even if you take away the questionable timing and the heartless way in which these raids were carried out, this is still one of the more egregious examples of what being “tough on crime” means in a country run by conservative Republicans. The double standard here between illegal (and some legal) workers who are being treated like enemy combatants and their lawbreaking employers who aren’t given second glances is sickening. There really are two Americas and this is a good example of what happens to the people in the poor, non-white one.

Since repeating yourself seems to be the key to success, recent events have prompted me to bring back the beloved character, Gipper the Talking Points Duck (click to enlarge) :

Yes, that’s based on an actual cartoon. The “write your own joke” gag is also from here and here.

Speaking of Mr. “Conservative and with a duck“, why is it that so many conservative humorists’ impressions of liberalism are completely stuck in the mid-90′s (at best)? Sure, they mention more recent figures like Howard Dean, but conservative hacks like Tinsley are always dating themselves with endless references to Ted Kennedy’s drinking, Bill Clinton’s infidelity, and Barbara Streisand. It’s not like lefties are still telling jokes about Ollie North, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ross Perot. As Jack Chick says, HAW HAW HAW.

My guess is that for conservatives like Tinsley, whose worldview revolves around the idea that mass media is intrinsically immoral and/or politically-biased, their shunning of the society they’re commenting on makes their decent into cultural illiteracy inevitable. In a fair world, they’d be treated like the disgruntled, out-of-touch loons that they are, but in the interest of “balance”, their work is promoted to the same level as people who know what the hell they’re talking about. I can’t help but think that if this sort of thing were happening in any other field, it would launch a thousand self-righteous lectures from the right about “reverse affirmative action” or something equally silly.

Here’s an email I got from my friend Tom about the latest installment from the most overexposed flash animators in the world. I couldn’t agree more :

These JibJab guys really annoy me. They made an animation a couple of years ago and everyone loved it. Even I enjoyed it. It was fresh, original, funny and a much needed laugh during a time when we were all drowning in political manure.

But since then, they’ve followed in the footsteps of every other animation studio by turning they’re one hit into a formula to bank in on success. Here’s all it takes: Take a public-domain song and re-write it plugging in current events while a-politically skewering everyone.

Maybe they’re too busy rolling around in money and fame to come up with a new idea, but this is just getting old, boring, tired, and lame.

Here’s the latest installment in their tired formula.

Hooboy. So, look: I know it’s bad form to revel in the misfortunes of others, and doubly so when those misfortunes spring from mistakes that I, and every single person I’m friends with, have personally made. Repeatedly.

But.

All I’m saying is that when the Father of Mallard Fillmore Himself gets busted for blowing twice the legal limit, mere months after another bust for public drunkenness … well, friends, echoes of Bill Bennett’s Excellent Gambling Adventures are ringing across this great nation of ours, is all I’m saying. Once you read the story, be sure to check out the post on The Comics Curmudgeon, one of the very best sites I can think of, that first tipped me off to this joyous bit of schadenfreude.

God bless,

- Brian

Since pontificating like a third-rate Mr. Blackwell seems to be the modus operandi for the “most trusted name in news”, then I guess it’s perfectly sensible to point out that Jean Schmidt looks like she’s been shopping at the Von Trapp family’s garage sale…

…Rick Santorum looks like a color-blind televangelist…



…and George Bush still isn’t a cowboy, construction worker, or an army man. He’s just a fool.

Looking around on my hard drive for a photo of myself, I found this :

I don’t know where the hell that photo came from, but I can assure you it isn’t me. I’m not a doctor, nor am I a gun-slingin’, superhero/cowboy with a sidekick named Stuff, the Chinatown Kid. I’m not that cool.

But, of the people I share a name with, there’s one person I am cooler than, the other Greg from Tulsa whose Amazon wishlist has been confused with my own. That guy’s wishlist has five books on poker, two books on selling real estate, “The Self-Esteem Workbook”, and ” The Anger Control Workbook”. It sucks to think that my friends and relatives are looking for my wishlist and think I’m an emotionally-immature douche who believes in get rich quick schemes. My wishlist is here and it’s awesome.

Head’s up, everybody. With John Bolton announcing his “resignation” (or, acceptance of the fact that a Democratic Senate will never confirm a nutcase with anger-management issues to be our ambassador to the United Nations), you’ve only got a few more days to make fun of this glorious mustache :

If we chose our representatives based on mustache-milkiness, Bolton would get a lifetime appointment.

I’m not a blog-triumphalist by any means. I think anyone who entertains the notion that blogs and bloggers are better journalists or are more/less ethical than their mainstream counterparts is fooling themselves. Blogging is just another communications medium and as such can only be as good or bad as the person supplying the content. Given the unique aspects of blogging, there are certain things that blogs are better at than traditional media, but anyone trying to draw broad conclusions is going to look like a fool. Blogs are like television. For any bit of great content (Heroes or Unclaimed Territory) there’s a lot of shit (Studio 60 or Little Green Footballs).

Having said that, let me join the chorus of bloggers who think this NY Times op-ed is hypocritical bullshit. (via Atrios)

The Netroots.” “People Power.” “Crashing the Gate.” The lingo of liberal Web bloggers bespeaks contempt for the political establishment. The same disdain is apparent among many bloggers on the right, who argued passionately for a change in the slate of House Republican leaders — and who wallowed in woe-is-the-party pity when the establishment ignored them.

You might think that with the kind of rhetoric bloggers regularly muster against politicians, they would never work for them. But you would be wrong.
. . .
But this year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research.

Nevermind the fact that the premise of this piece is built upon the ridiculous strawman that all bloggers are anti-establishment and that working within “the establishment” represents selling out. The thing that really irks me is that this is, as Atrios noted, an arbitrary standard that doesn’t seem to apply to mainstream journalists. The fact that bloggers are sometimes employed by campaigns is a matter of public record, but the same can’t be said about the multitude of ways journalists have sold out and cozied up with the subjects of their reporting.

The media elite are so deeply ingrained with the Washington establishment, it’s a wonder people even bother to rhetorically separate the two any more. Bill Kristol made the case for the war in Iraq with Cheney and Rumsfeld while NY Times writer Judy Miller helped sell it. Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, David Gregory and dozens of their peers are commanding top dollar to appear at private speaking engagements. NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell is married to former fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Barbara Walters is hosting dinner parties for war criminals. Tell me, again, why are blogger conflicts of interest more newsworthy than the far more numerous examples from the mainstream media?

One of the notions I keep hearing pop up from time to time regarding the clusterfuck that we’ve made of Iraq is that the Bushies, desperate for a way to pull out of Iraq and declare victory, will just pick a side in the civil war and go with it. As the Washington Post recently wrote :

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.

The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Department proposal.
. . .
A second danger is that the United States could appear to be taking sides in the escalating sectarian strife. The proposal would encourage Iraqis to continue reconciliation efforts. But without U.S. urging, outreach could easily stall or even atrophy, deepening sectarian tensions, U.S. sources say.

Of course, the term “sectarian strife” glosses over the most troublesome aspect of this scenario. If the United States abandons the goal of reconciliation in Iraq, we will appear to the Arab world to have picked sides in a thousand-year-old religious war. To the Islamic world (who actually know the difference between Shi’a and Sunni), this would be seen as American endorsement of the idea that the early Islamic leadership should have gone to Muhammad’s cousin Ali rather than the three caliphs who succeded Muhammad. To Western ears that may seem like not that big a deal, but this is roughly equivalent to taking an official stance on whether Catholics or Protestants are the true inheritors of Jesus’ legacy. Not only does favoring one religious sect over another seem to clash with the establishment clause of the Constitution (not that the Bush Administration gives a damn about Constitutional protections), but it puts us at odds with the vast majority of the Islamic world.

Then again, maybe American endorsement of Shi’a Islam will help calm down the tensions with Iran.