Riders of the Constitution and Such

Anybody remember the Winter brothers? They're albino (I shit you not) rockers out of Texas. (Edgar recorded "Frankenstein" but I dunno what else they've done)

Quite a few years ago the brothers got all pissy and moany about a really great comicbook that had been published. The title,"Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such" was set in the old west and had a mystical tone to it. the particular storyline featured an albino duo that were brothers and evil dabblers in the dark arts. Well the Winter's caught wind of his and sued the publisher (DC Comics) the artist (Tim Truman) and the writer (Joe R. Lansdale).
Why they sued (in my persona opinion) boils down to being thin-skinned,they either don't understand the concept of parody or thought they'd make money off of this,I don't know which.

I bring this up because that crappy film that the Arab world is using as their excuse to murder Americans is the same kind of deal. I don't think the Coptic Christian that came up with it meant it as anything other than a way to paint Islam in bad light (and it was mighty kind of Islamists to help him with that),but he's allowed to make the dumb thing anyway because the First Amendment allows for things like parody,which is ultimately what this thing ends up being due to how over the top it and generally poorly made it seems to be. The movie has had some Liberals going on about how the law does not protect your right to yell fire in a crowded theatre but I don't see this as being the same thing. Maybe if he made the film after the Libyans murdered our people then the argument could be made but even then I think it would still be parody because his film is ultimately a work of fiction and not a documentary piece in which a viewer has an expectation of the unvarnished truth or that the information being presented is genuinely factual. Ever wonder why Michael Moore is referred to as a "filmmaker" and not a "documentarian"?

Mind you I'm not all defending the Libyan murderers or even Islam and their Prophet who's so powerful that his people have to defend him against the slightest insult 24/7,I'm just saying that the asshole that made the movie had the right to do so. We as Americans also have the right to say that his movie is,moronic and that he's not helping matters any,but it's still his right and I'll defend that right,if not the actual idiot exercising his right.

Fortunately in the case I cited at the beginning of this blog post nobody was killed because the Winter's got their noses all out of joint. They had a nice little lawsuit and DC Comics and Lansdale and Truman won (as they should have) because they showed that their work was intended to parodize the Winters' and other musicians as well as,to a degree,the Western genre. If anything Lansdale and Truman,who are also musicians,meant for the characters that got the attention of the Winters to be a tribute rather than an attack.

My ultimate point here is that the Winters had no case to say they were being maliciously attacked or maligned by the comicbook and neither does the Muslim community in the case of this recent movie.
In both cases the offended party has come away looking far worse off than the the things that offended them would have made them look.

Maybe those Muslims need to read some Jonah Hex comics?

http://cbldf.org/about-us/case-files/jonah-hex/

Always Remember,Never Forget! 9/11

11 years ago today I was still sleeping at around this time. Indiana had not yet been forced to recognize DST so it was still before 8:00 A.M. for us.
Ellen and I were anticipating an enjoyable day constituting a visit from my mother. Our daughter was just a little girl then,only 2 years old and  was asleep still when the attacks began.
Ellen roused me to have me watch the news,she was shocked that some kind of plane seemed to have struck one of the twin towers. We,like NBC in that moment were just a little surprised and were treating it like it was a novelty almost. It wasn't. We just didn't understand yet what had happened.

We continued to watch the news and wait for Mom's arrival and the the worst happened,the second plane smashed into the other tower. It was a moment to surreal to fully grasp.
After this the news just got more terrible and confusing. How could this happen? It's insane to think that two planes could accidentally hit the towers,but of course we did believe that in that moment. I'd like to live in a world where it was the truth,but I don't. The planes hit the towers with deeply malicious intent,they meant to kill and destroy and terrify and demoralize their enemy and they came close to fully succeeding,but ONLY close.

It may seem odd,especially to those without kids,but the worst part of that day for me was getting my sweet little girl out of her bed, She was innocent,she had done nothing at all to encourage these evil men to do this. Neither did any of those in the towers or on board the plane that the passengers bravely battled their captors on only to have them crash it into that field in Pennsylvania. Neither were those in the Pentagon,many of whom were civilians and not members of our armed forces.
They didn't deserve to be killed,many of them also had mothers,daughters,wives. They too were just going about their day. They too loved someone,or were loved by someone,and they too had someone that would be shattered by their death.

Fortunately,no harm came to either myself,or my immediate family (or friends) nor to Madison itself.
My mother visited,we enjoyed one another's company,parted ways,and we tried to make sense of the insensible attacks as we wound down our day. There was no escaping this,even the cable channels devoted to children's programming had already switched to coverage of the attacks as they were unfolding . There was a palpable sense of unease and disquiet throughout the city and there were ludicrously long lines at the gas pumps,including a traffic jam on the bridge over the Ohio River from motorists trying to fill their tanks in Kentucky because of the lower cost.

The terrorist's attacks murdered almost 3,000 people that day. My ramblings here are not designed to dishonor those killed,they're really meant to just serve as a reminder that we all experienced that day,all of us,everywhere. NONE of us came away from that day entirely unchanged,I know I didn't.

Please take a moment today to reflect and remember. Don't treat this as just another day,it's not.