Mike Baron’s view on conservative persecution in comics

I’ve been pondering a post about politics and comics for a while, specifically about readers decide to act when find comic creators speaking forthrightly about their politics. This is not that that post. 

Lately, a couple of comic writers whose work I enjoy have opined their conservative beliefs, and even though my purchase and joy of their comic creations aren’t affected, I question their arguments and claims. 

For example, Mike Baron discusses how comics, like other entertainment fields, is swamped with liberals and how unthinking they are.   

I think quoting comments is typically viewed as shooting fish in a barrel, which Baron does. And I can quote the conservative comments similarly:

• “It’s funny that so many comics folks (fans and creators) are liberal given that the general thrust of most comics is to, you know, get the bad guy.”  Really. I had no idea liberals were champions for the bad guy. 
   
• “ I must admit I’m a bit shocked that ANYONE in the comics biz would be conservative or even a moderate. And although I’d heard about Miller’s Batman story over a year ago, I had him pegged as liberal too.”  Of course, Frank Miller is a liberal based on the fact that everyone is assumed to be a liberal until proven otherwise. Even Baron himself is guilty of this fallacy when he describes Jackie Estrada as a ‘true liberal.’ Estrada responds in the comments, ‘Gee, this is the first time I can recall anyone ever calling me a liberal.’
   
• “Superheroic comic books are by their nature inherently conservative: absolute morality, the judicious use of force, the clear good and bad, the encouragement to show your special nature and work hard against evil, personal responsibility overcoming personal whims, and so on.” Yet, Captain America’s co-creator [among a host of comic heroes] was a liberal [and quite likely, so was Joe Simon, the other creator]  Will Eisner, creator of the Spirit whom several posters think is conservative, donated to the Democratic party. The idea that liberals don’t understand “bad guys” and “good guys” is contradicted by liberals’ moral outrage, which conservatives even in those comments acknowledge. Alex Ross is something of a liberal, but he has been advancing idealistic superheroes in his work. In fact, Kingdom Come by Ross and fellow liberal Mark Waid is a story of the ‘traditional’ DC heroes reigning in the new breed of ‘heroes’ led by Magog. Their Superman has a very definite idea of right and wrong.

The point is that commenters of all political persuasions make asinine claims. 

Baron then complains, ‘Occasionally a conservative voice breaks through what Emmett Tyrell calls the kultursmog.’ Conservative in what sense? Sometimes, this kind of complaint stems from a desire to see heroes situated in today’s political issues, such as the call for Superman to fight terrorists as he did against the Nazis and Japan in the 40s. And so Baron cites Frank Miller’s plans of a story in which Batman fights al Qaeda. Right. Because no liberal has ever advocated fighting al Qaeda. 

As a counterpoint, I have enjoyed Willingham’s Fables and Baron’s Nexus because they were good stories, stories of right and wrong, of good and evil. Even though I am a liberal, I never found their comics and themes particularly political in terms of the American spectrum — Mass murderers are evil and should be brought to justice, and tyrannies are wrong and should be fought. If these are conservative values, then I guess I’m a conservative, except that I’m not, as least not in its current corrupted form.

I think comics work best at this general level because these kinds of themes are nearly universally accepted. Thus, comics are capable of unifying us in spite of our political affiliations. As several comments on his piece indicate, the politics of the Golden Age and Silver Age heroes were liberals, heroes that readers identify as conservative. 

It seems that Baron doesn’t want comics to depict stories that appeal to conservative — he wants conservatives to come out of the closet, so to speak, by taking what he considers conservative turns. 

So, let’s look at his ‘conservative’ views.

If you had not read Baron’s “Manifesto” article [which I could only find as a cached version], you might take Baron at his implied word that these liberals cannot tolerate conservative opinions. The fact is that Baron doesn’t want to use comics to wage a propaganda war on islamofacism but against Islam itself as he asserts the following as the messages of his proposed propaganda:

Islam is intolerant.

Islam is incapable of dealing in good faith.

Islam has no respect for human life. Highlight the loss in human life of the Intifada. Dramatize how Palestinians gladly sacrifice their own children to kill Jews—or any non-believers. 

Baron is dishonest about the disagreement and the comments that he quotes because he hides anti-islamic statements behind the word ‘islamofascism.’ He further deceives when he says that one particular comment summed up the reaction to his “manifesto” article:

’Islamofascism’–Interesting that this bullshit word took all of 2 days to seep so deeply into the public conciousness [sic].  Amero-fascism is what has got me scared.

There were 26 comments to that Newsarama post. Only one other poster wrote anything remotely resembling an anti-American tone, so Baron’s quote hardly captures the gist of the reaction:

There’s a sickness running wild in America, and he’s the latest casualty.

. . . I’m not in any way saying that America as a whole is sick, but parts of it are suffering from some terrible fever dreams right now. I think it’s the intellectual equivalent of the 70s, where masses of people went a bit crazy – but instead of bad fashion and the Village People, everyone today is into factionalism and ignoring reality, even as it crumbles down around our ears. Hopefully this era will end soon, and we’ll all still be around to feel foolish about it. 

The fact is that Baron is deceptive in his argument, making the criticism of his manifesto piece seemingly an attack on conservative opinion in general and on the fight against terrorism specifically. 

He obviously fails to see the problem of confusing, to use an analogy, Germans with Nazis. Or, worse, he does see but doesn’t care. 

Mike is free to have his opinion, but he’s not free from criticism for bad arguments.