BRAD MELTZER STANDS AGAINST DONALD TRUMP

The writer of Identity Crisis, along with an awfully crude story in the Buffy comics, gave some strong hints whom he voted for in this election, if he even voted at all, in a Hollywood Reporter article where he demanded the president-elect stand against "hate" that he's not particularly clear about:

What can we do? Be better than what angers you.

We could also be better than to write rancid fanfics about supervillains in costumes who anally rape women out of nowhere, without a shred of evidence from past stories of the Silver/Bronze Age to justify the vision taken. If he won't admit he did something that terrible, he's even less honest than Bill Willingham, who at least admitted he took part in an editorially mandated crossover (Batman's War Games) where Spoiler/Stephanie Brown was intended to be killed.

For a week, many of us have been texting and emailing articles to our fellow Democrats and fellow Republicans, all of us on both sides discussing just how exactly the other side is wrong. It’s a good thing to share our anger and pain with each other — it’s cathartic and lets off steam — but since we usually send these things to friends who are like-minded, it also tends to dig us deeper into our own worldviews. So this isn’t a post about who won, or who needs to “deal with it,” or even who is president. That argument and all of the protests that go along with it are part of the healing process (and if you think that’s not true, you’re ignoring history — to see the protests after Obama got elected, look at Facebook groups like “Obama is NOT my President”).

Umm, what about obscuring more-than-meets-the-eye matters, like why anybody might protest Obama. For example, his quasi-socialist policies, including the whole healthcare debacle, to say nothing of his failure to acknowledge Islamic jihad as a serious issue, or even to give purple hearts to the victims of Nidal Hasan after he'd gone on a rampage at Fort Hood 8 years ago. How comes those issues don't matter?

I gotta wonder: if John McCain had been elected, rather than Obama, would Meltzer be complaining about any Facebook groups that turned up declaring McCain's not their president (and Sarah Palin's not their veep), no matter what validity their own positions had? Probably not. So what's the point of his quixotic grieving now?

No. When I look for why I’m feeling so sick at this moment, it’s about the acts of hatred and violence that have surfaced after the election: A friend who told me her niece was yelled at on the street and threatened because she’s black. A Republican friend who said her relative was threatened because she’s Muslim. A Democrat friend who told me of the swastika that was painted in their school bathroom. Or the N-word that was painted on someone’s car windshield. In the past week, these threats are showing up beyond the norm.

Wow, isn't that cunning how he tries to make it sound like he knows "real" Republicans. But this man is so slickly dishonest and evasive, I'd advise not to take anything he says at face value. After all, if the Republican he speaks of voted for Trump, then surely Meltzer, first and foremost, would be asking why she voted for somebody who's called for better controls on immigration from Islamic regimes, even as he'd simultaneously be shunning the exact reasons why: because many of the Islamic interlopers have proven potentially dangerous. One of the sources he cites as "proof" for his accusations happens to be the SPLC, the same organization that attacked Pamela Geller while avoiding the harder issues.

Meltzer goes on the mention a children's book he's writing about Mahatma Ghandi, and says:

...Usually, I never discuss a book until the work is done, but for months now, I’ve been lost in Gandhi’s teachings, trying to channel him. I’ve never needed him more.

No kidding. The same Ghandi who sold out to Islamofascism, lectured Jews with revolting beliefs that they should allow themselves to be slaughtered during WW2, molested his niece, and whose grandson resorted to anti-semitic smear tactics? Hmm, what indeed is so valuable about an article written by somebody apparently oblivious to the true image of a man who sold his soul to evil?

And, for anyone familiar with his notorious 2004 miniseries from DC, this'll come as a real head-shaker:

Make no mistake, we are in a modern civil war. It’s been brewing for years. I’ve said it before: It used to be, even in comic books, the good guys fought the bad guys. Today, Superman fights Batman; Captain America fights Iron Man. We are a country at odds with itself, each side convinced we’re right. But again, I choose to look to history. These days, as we look back at the real Civil War, both sides — Republicans and Democrats — always point to the same moment as the true turning point: That moment at Gettysburg when Abraham Lincoln gave a speech that lasted two minutes and used only 271 words. The most important five words in that speech? “All men are created equal.”

Umm, what about women? Aren't they equal members of society too? I'm not sure why we have to buy into the grievances of somebody who penned something so vile involving an anal rape that was bizarrely ignored soon after, and made light of a serious issue as a result. It also used to be that in superhero comics, you could distinguish who the goodies and baddies were. But in Identity Crisis (which a writer for Bleeding Cool was right to remind us of in his post about Meltzer's two-facedness), the heroes were made out to look bad, and the story was sympathetic to the villains. Indeed, the miniseries was like an early precursor in its own way to what we're seeing now. Either way, how hypocritical of a man with such a disgusting tale in his portfolio to ostensibly complain about heroes clashing with each other while showing no remorse over his own reprehensible writing. You could even wonder if he's hinting he thinks of the superheroes as though they were real people, when they're not. Besides, didn't his vile screed also serve as a catalyst for at least a few more stories from DC where the heroes did indeed end up clashing with each other? A year after Identity Crisis was published, Geoff Johns wrote a story in JLA where this happened.

And if he's really so concerned about hatemongering, then why doesn't he complain about any of the hateful acts committed by leftists against Trump supporters? In fact, why doesn't he condemn any leftists who made false accusations against Trumpers? And why don't the Hollywood Reporter's own editors research the slimiest ideas he ever thought up as a writer and ask him if he has any comment to make on those? A pure charlatan, ditto the press sources who're letting him off the hook.

Over these past few months with Gandhi, I’ve realized I don’t just write about heroes. I write about values — values that have been sorely missing — for years — from the dialogue of our country. And the core of my own values is this: When you see someone being treated unfairly, you must speak up. We all know this. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. This is common decency. And over the past month, Gandhi made it plainly clear: You must fight against the unfair treatment of all people. You must protest in a nonviolent and peaceful way. And you must use love.

Today, for that reason, I have to speak up. If someone is threatening you because of the color of your skin, I stand with you. If someone is screaming at you because of your race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, I stand with you. And if you do not speak out against these horrible acts, I stand against you. I’m tired of “us” and “them.” I want to get back to “we.” There’s only one way there. Today, all Democrats, all Republicans, all Americans — and yes, this means Donald Trump, too — we must, together, climb to higher ground and speak out against these hateful acts against women, against minorities, against Muslims, against those with darker skin color, against anyone who is considered “different.”

Yup, the same man who turned out some repellent tales where women were belittled wants us to believe he actually cares about the fairer sex. He also wants us to believe Islam respects ladies too, when a closer look would show that's not the case. And anybody who takes a closer look at some of the writings Meltzer did in novels and comics - especially in that grimy little miniseries - will notice that he's a pretty self-serving, dishonest man who demonstrated how fiction can serve as quite the place for hatemongers to express themselves in the most awful of ways possible, even politically, thanks in part to the corporate owners who allow it.

Also, don't hate crimes committed against those with lighter skin color also matter? Not to mention hateful acts committed by Islamofascists against women, against blacks, and also against homosexuals? Methinks Meltzer is doing little more than parroting what other leftards want to believe.

Again, think of Gettysburg. This is Donald Trump’s moment. Like my friend Simon Sinek taught me about George Washington: “Leadership isn’t about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge.” Some will argue that Trump stirred this all up; others that the venom has been here all along. However we got here, people are at each other’s throats. The KKK is planning a victory parade. People across the country are being attacked. Children are being threatened. Donald Trump may be our president-elect, but if he wants to be our leader, he must denounce this violence; he must speak up for those being treated unfairly. He must tell America that we are all created equal. He deserves a chance to say and prove that. If he does, I will stand with him against the hate; if he doesn’t, I will stand against him.

And the same should hold true for any of us — if we don’t speak out, we are normalizing this behavior. I will never do that. I’m done texting and sending articles to friends.[...]

So long as he doesn't admit the way he scripted Identity Crisis normalized revolting acts, and doesn't apologize to the ladies for it, his leftist blabber is a complete waste of time. And sure, I'll bet he's willing to "stand" with Trump...for about 10 seconds, then he'll go back to looking for some other excuse to bash Trump, like if he tries to make improvements to healthcare or defend the US against would-be immigrants with criminal behavior on the mind.

Some of the commentors saw through his hypocrisy, and one said:

Brad, I think if you're protesting the violence you need to talk to the Obama and Clinton camps. The rioting, fire-setting and assaulting Trump voters are all perpetrated by the left. I haven't seen anything about Trump voters attacking the left. One Muslim woman claimed that two white men jumped from a car, tore off her hijab and beat her with a metal object. She then said she lied about the entire thing. I would bet that many of the anecdotal incidents you cite are also staged. As a TEA party member, I remember that we were accused of many violent acts, even spitting on Nancy Pelosi and fellow Democrat Congressmen walking through the TEA party crowd. None were true. I think your admonition to Mr Trump to denounce the violence is directed to the wrong person/people.

Yet it's far from shocking a writer as dishonest as Meltzer would do this. Another commenter said:

What's this spiritual guru wannabe talking about? People like this putz have disparaged US citizens for decades. We're morons, we're dolts, we're cattle, while he rakes in the cash and we feed him, provide him energy, and take out his trash. Trump is our rage personified. The time to "get together" was when Obama insulted our allies, our police, and sent our taxed wages to a country that hates Western Civilization.

Exactly. Men like Meltzer practically exploited the comics he scripted as vehicles for all the sick propaganda he's espousing now. Another reader at the site said:

This guy is an idiot. No one cares anymore if they are called racist by bigoted leftist anymore. It is 2016 Free thought, free speech, and Nationalism (love of country) are the future. I am free... you can call me any name you want. I am a white male and I am done caring about what you think. I will not give you that power in my life. I am a Great person. I know it, and I do not need your, or any leftist, to validate the worth of my life, my thought, my political views. President Trump doesn't need to "Denounce the Hate" because that was a leftist lie promoted by the media. No hate on Trumps side. I love President Trump! By the way, I also help my Wife with her 501c3 that helps mostly Black women pull out of poverty! What the heck have you done besides virtue signaling, waging your tongue, writing words to set yourself up as some kind of moral standard barer. No thanks! Thanks to all the leftist wankers who have criticized hard working conservative white Christian males for so long I for one am beyond caring any longer. Oh and I really don't care if you think this isn't Christian...Not that kind of Doormat believer. If this triggers you then you will have to live with it.

It's good to see there's more people who're getting to know a moonbat propagandist personified. This reminds me, has Meltzer ever done what Frank Cho did, contributing money to a women's shelter? Can't say I've ever heard about Meltzer doing the same, and if he hasn't, then there's one more reason why his drivel doesn't hold up.

If anything, his liberal lethargy does provide a fascinating look at just what kind of a disgrace he really is. He certainly does try to be a cunning propagandist, but all that collapses under a microscope. The best way to let him know what we think of moonbats like him is to avoid his books and other products at all costs. Nothing he's written is worth the paper it's printed on.

A PLOT TO SPRING A TERRORIST FROM PRISON HAS BEEN THWARTED

The authorities have arrested more members of a Hamas cell that wanted to free a jihadist now serving a life sentence:

A Hamas terror cell plotting shooting and abduction attacks was uncovered this week in a joint ISA, IDF and Border Police operation, Israel’s Government Press Office reported Thursday. During the operation, the Internal Security Agency (ISA) uncovered “considerable war materiel” and also found that the Hamas members were plotting attacks by scoping out IDF forces around the Palestinian village of Tzurif.

The cell’s ultimate goal was the release of security prisoner Ibrahim Abdallah Ghneimat. Ghneimat, 58, is currently serving out a life sentence for involvement in terror attacks carried out in the 1990s, including the murder and abduction of Sharon Edri, an IDF soldier.

Ghneimat’s sons, Fadi Ibrahim Ghneimat, Muhammed Ghneimat, and Shadi Ibrahim Ghneimat, were all arrested as participants in the plot.

He certainly raised his sons quite repellently, as they've just proven. Well if they really love their father so much, they can share a cell with him for the rest of their own undeserved lives too.

ONTARIO INTRODUCES ANTI-BDS LEGISLATION

The Canadian province has become the first to oppose BDS:

Ontario has become the first Canadian province to introduce legislation rejecting the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel. Motion 36 rejects "the differential treatment of Israel, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement," the Canadian Jews News reported Saturday.

The legislation passed with a vote of 49 in favor and five against, with almost half of the 107 members of the Provincial Parliament absent, including Premier Kathleen Wynne, who is currently on an official visit to Asia.

According to the report, the motion, introduced by Ontario Provincial Parliament member Gila Martow, who represents the Progressive Conservative Party, came six months after the Ontario legislature voted against a bill seeking to bar the Ontario government and official province institutions from doing business with companies that endorse BDS activities. The bill, which defined the BDS movement as "one of the main vehicles for spreading anti-Semitism and the delegitimization of Israel globally," was defeated by a vote of 39 to 18, and criticized for being "too ambitious and vulnerable to court challenges," the report said.

Well I'm glad the legislation for Israel's benefit has succeeded now. It looks like there is hope for the better in Canada.

A FAWNING INTERVIEW WITH G. WILLOW WILSON IN COMICS BULLETIN

Comics Bulletin ran a sugar-drenched interview with G. Willow Wilson by a fellow Islamist, which pushes the narrative that Islamists in the USA are scared after the election of Donald Trump. It begins with the following:

I conducted this interview a few weeks before the US elections took place. As a black Canadian Muslim woman, I’m fearful for the marginalized groups in America right now and what this means for the world. Many of my friends are scared, sad, angry, distressed and some are even hopeless. [...]

How classic, making it sound like everybody is nothing more than a nervous wreck. Anybody who makes such a fuss over politics so badly does nothing to improve anything. The Muslim Ms. Marvel book - which is far from popular if it sells so much lower than 40,000 copies at store level only - will probably wind up doing attacks on Trump so long as it's still around, much like it did with Bernie Sanders.

After debuting with a roar in 2014, Ms. Marvel cultivated a fanbase before a single issue came out, and now the collections are fixtures in book stores. I wanted to talk about Islam because as a Muslim reader, I wanted to get to the heart of one Marvel’s biggest superheroes; a teenage Pakistani-American Muslim girl from Jersey City.

She's only made this whole piece quite a giggler. The only people who make such a big deal out of it are leftists who want to promote dishonesty, and it makes no difference to them how low it actually sells, even in book stores. The interview continues with her denial that this was ever intended as propaganda:

I think there was sort of two camps in terms of expectations of what the series would be. One camp was like, “Oh, it’s gonna be token diversity. It’s just going to be a model minority book. People are going to forget about it after five issues.” So there was kind of that and then on the other side there was, “Oh, it’s going to be Islamic propaganda. It’s going to promote sharia law in the USA. It’s part of like the global conspiracy of Islamic jihad” or whatever. So you know there were those two extremes and what we wanted to do was something completely different. Something that felt very authentic and I think we would not have been able to get there if there were not two Muslim women involved. I think it could not have happened in the way it happened without Sana.

I guess it's not election propaganda either, huh? Taqqiya (deception) and denial that disapproval in Islam that a woman go without a headscarf is just the propaganda they deny they set out to do. Any book where the lead has a bad religion ascribed to her background doesn't qualify as "model" either, though there is quite a bit about the development that reeks of tokenism. She continues her taqqiya with the following:

I thought from the beginning that she should not wear the hijab. I mean she wears it in the mosque obviously and at certain cultural functions but I did not want to make her like a hijabi in her day-to-day life simply because the majority of teenage Pakistani-American girls do not wear a hijab. So even though I wear a hijab – I’ve worn the hijab for most of my adult life – I thought, “You know what? Let’s make this representative. Let’s not, again, do some sort of model minority book or make her sort of this perfect caricature of what we think a Muslim girl looks like.

And stuff about her family. We didn’t want to shy away from conflict but at the same time we wanted to show love and affection. Just the basic day-to-day family scenes that we don’t see a lot of in depictions of American Muslim families. Where it’s not always politically charged stuff. There’s a diversity of thought and opinion. That not everybody in the same family believes or acts in the same way and that was very important. That was at the heart of shaping her civilian identity.

Uh, is she sure of that? Maybe more to the point, is she claiming Muslim men from any background don't exist in any number who dictate what a woman may or may not wear, or that there aren't Muslim women who're either scared, or indoctrinated enough and lack self-esteem? And even if they don't wear a hijab, that doesn't mean they still don't adhere to any other awful beliefs. Next thing you know, she'll be saying the majority of Satmar women don't wear wigs and even cut away their hair just because the degrading leadership dictates it.

She also fails to acknowledge that we don't always see what can happen in a Muslim family where the father - and mother - can be abusive, and commit honor murders. Indeed, if she's claiming the vast majority of Muslim family portraits in showbiz is literally bad, that's naive and dishonest too. The interviewer then goes on to note:

Fun fact: That first issue of Ms. Marvel… I read it and it didn’t sit well with me specifically because Kamala makes a joke about bacon. That “Mmm… infidel meat” moment and immediately in my head, I’m like, “A Muslim wouldn’t say that. That makes no sense. Why would we ever say, ‘oooh, pork smells amazing or bacon does.” It wasn’t until I read issue two and let some time pass that I realized what I wanted out of Kamala was an ideal. I wanted her to be the perfect Muslim so that… less for me because I myself am not the perfect Muslim. I don’t wear the hijab and I personally struggle with that in terms of what that means to me. So I’m definitely not the perfect muslim and it was weird to expect that from Kamala. Then I realized it [the ideal] wasn’t really for Kamala or even for myself but mostly for other people because Kamala was supposed to tell other people, “Look, this is what a muslim is. We’re not terrible.”

GWW: We’re not supposed to be flawed.

AO: Yeah.

Are they saying they're supposed to be saints? Well it sure comes close to that. She goes further with her ignorance in the following:

GWW: There’s so much scrutiny on the community that it’s like you can’t put a foot wrong. You have to be the perfect American. The perfect Muslim. Never question anything. Do the right thing always and I see people breaking under that pressure because it’s not fair. Especially younger kids who’ve grown up in the post-9/11 world. It’s like they’re carrying the honour of the whole community on their shoulders. They always have to be upright and be the perfect Muslim. It’s something to me… we had to push against it somehow. We have to make it okay to be flawed. You shouldn’t have to be a perfect Muslim or a perfect American to feel safe. You should be allowed to be flawed. An important part of creating Kamala was to say… She’s not flawed in the sense of being morally flawed but flawed in terms of having things that you do well and having things that you do not so well. It’s a big issue and there is that burden of representation where you’re sort of… there’s this pressure to lose particularity of experience to get to some sort of universality that doesn’t actually exist.

Unfortunately, she fails to acknowledge that many Muslims do believe you have to be perfect in every way. It can be like that in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities too; they expect you to follow the customs they dictate perfectly, even though it's idiotic to think one can follow everything on the dot to perfection. Interestingly, the interviewer also notes:

With Ms. Marvel as a superhero and a Muslim, I wonder if you find yourself negotiating with religion like with particular story elements. Do you go, “Man if I write about this magical mischievous Loki… well, should I?” Because some people could be like, “Ugh, magic”. Magic has this place in Islam… it’s kind of frowned upon. As a Muslim woman who is also a writer, I’ve wondered about that.

GWW: It’s an interesting balancing act and sometimes I’ll get these snarky questions on Twitter like, “How could you be a Muslim writer and write about… in the marvel universe, there are gods…” and I’m like… number one, even within the Marvel universe, the Asgardians don’t consider themselves as actual gods. That’s one. Number two, in Islam, anything with a body that can be killed is by definition not god. I feel like comics are, in many ways, in the vein a lot of classical Islamic fantasies like the Alif Laila [aka The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights], The Conference of the Birds and a lot of that older stuff where there is sorcery in the world and genies and communing with the unseen. It’s frowned upon but it’s there and it’s also part of something larger.

No matter how much they themselves may deny it, there are Muslims out there who not only abhor magic (and by extension, Tales of the Arabian Nights because of its own magical stories), they even conducted witch hunts. Though theoretically, belief in magic does exist in various Muslim countries, a lot of clerics condemn it, and/or view the concept of magic negatively. So there may be another reason why some Muslim may not even read a book set in a world involving magic and sci-fi.

There was one commentor on the interview who said:

Disappointing that she did a storyline in Pakistan and didn't address the persecution of religious minorities but I guess that would clash with the softball narrative she's pushing.

Yup, there's people out there who aren't fooled one bit. In fact, was this interview even aimed at a wide, diverse audience? I get the weird feeling it wasn't, and ultimately, it's just a lot of boring hot air, that doesn't get anywhere.