Why Does the Right Hate Obama So Much? Part 2: Ultra-Nationalism vs. American Exceptionalism

I asked for Conservatives to explain the seeming-hatred directed at President Obama from the Right in this country, and I got some great, detailed, thought-provoking responses. I could quibble about little things (Is it Obama’s fault that Congress choose to pass a law that essentially gives law-making power to the Executive branch? That seems more like a good reason to detest a Congress that has been consistently eroding its own constitutional authority for over a hundred years.) but I think it’s safe to say that the most fundamental objection to Obama stems from the belief that he does not ascribe ardently enough to the notion of American exceptionalism. (Correct me if that’s not the fundamental concern.)

I’m still not aware of any particular policy decisions which definitively prove this theory. Sure, Democrats are always for being multilateralists when they make use of organizations like NATO or the U.N. There’s a pretty distinct double-standard on these groups when it comes to the way they are employed by Presidents of different parties. Beyond those, I’m not sure what Obama has officially done. But I am aware of the things he’s said and written, and I think words matter and should fall into the “actions” category I asked for. These words also relate directly to the question of Obama’s interactions with our allies. One of the charges is that Obama has lowered our standing with them. I tried to find some data to back up this claim. It turns out that our standing, at least as measured by polling, has dramatically improved under Obama, at least in the numbers I could find. In the year he took office, we made dramatic gains. Check out page 5 of this report. A more recent article details the improvement based on polling data throughout the world. Part of this might simply be a reaction to the global antipathy toward Bush, a world-wide sigh of relief. But we should also be willing to consider the possibility that Obama’s speeches made in other countries, and his comments regarding our own which have been broadcast around the world, have increased our soft power, something Conservatives like Donald Rumsfeld reluctantly acknowledged is absolutely essential to defeating terrorism and undermining tyrants around the globe.

Take, for example, the situation between the U.S., Britain, and Argentina regarding the Falklands, pointed out by one of the commenters. Despite the anti-Obama slant to the article, it can’t identify any actual harm done by the Obama administration’s advocacy of diplomatic talks between the British and Argentine government over the islands. Perhaps it will tick off the British, but they remain among our strongest allies in the world and like Obama a lot more than American Conservatives do. But look at the flip side. Chavez is a nutjob. He’s on TV in his country for four hours or more a day, ranting about how the evil imperialists in America only want to destroy Argentina. He gets up at the U.N. and calls Bush names to increase his popularity back home. Now he’s been undermined in the eyes of his people. We’re not crazy. We’re also not capitulating or “tossing our allies under the bus as appeasement.” Chavez didn’t get the Falklands. He didn’t even get a sit-down with the British. He was just made to look foolish.

Or consider the case with our relationship with Israel. Obama has taken a beating for saying that negotiations related to the two-state solution should start with the pre-1967 borders and then be worked out in a series of land swaps. This is exactly what the Bush roadmap said, too. The problem is that the Israelis, though desiring the pre-1967 borders as a starting point and demanding land swaps in order to maintain control over Jerusalem, didn’t want their ultimate bargaining position stated aloud. They wanted to demand more, then work to the place that Obama announced. As someone who’s been involved in formal negotiations (of the contract variety, not the peace-in-the-middle-east kind) I understand not wanting to have your final position made public. I also understand that the President is rightly frustrated with the Israeli government’s continued construction of new settlements which the Israelis know they will just demolish later, and which rile up the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab word. Putting pressure on the Israelis might piss them off, but it won’t really diminish the ultimate settlement because the tough negotiating will be about the land swaps themselves, and they already knew we expected those as part of the Bush roadmap. Obama might have hurt himself with Conservatives, both in Israel and in the U.S., but he didn’t really give anything to the Palestinians and he undermined the Jihadist Imams who want to paint Israel and the U.S. with the same brush when Israel is doing things that the U.S. has long opposed. Creating a little political distance between ourselves and Israel is in our national interest, especially if it can be done so inexpensively; Israel didn’t really lose anything, Palestine didn’t really gain anything. The only losers were terrorists and Obama’s ratings in Florida. I’d call that a gutsy move. The Israeli ambassador might say that our nations’ relationship is in the worst shape it’s been in in 35 years, but at the end of the day Israel is still completely dependent on us for their security (their soldiers might be bad-asses, but they are bad-asses holding American guns) and we will continue to provide them with all the necessary security guarantees. Again, a net increase in America’s soft power.

But did these increases in our soft power need to come at the expense of our projected notion of American exceptionalism? Perhaps. It depends on what we mean by that. I think that might be the crux of the conservative antipathy towards Obama. If I am understanding the conservative definition of American exceptionalism correctly, conservatives would prefer a weaker America as long as it fits into a very specific definition of “American,” to a stronger America which fits the definition of “American” actually held by the majority of its people.

My friend who comments as Green Globule writes that conservatives are “not looking across the ocean for a better model.” This is ironic, since the term “exceptional” was first applied to America by Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman. If he’s not a guy from across the ocean who is responsible for this particular model, then perhaps credit should go to the first people to use the phrase “American exceptionalism.” That would be The American Communist Party of the 1920s, who used it to describe why they thought the Great Leap Forward would take a long time to occur here. Only, their definition isn’t really the modern Conservative variant, because they believed it was our “natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions” that would postpone the working class from rising up and offing the rich. When modern Conservatives talk about American exceptionalism, I don’t think they’re talking about our coal deposits or the fact that we don’t self-identify as working-class and aristocrats. Green Globule points to our freedom of speech and our right to bear arms. On these grounds, I think Obama fares very well. Though he talked about closing background check loopholes to prevent the mentally ill from getting guns in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting (any talk about guns from a Democrat raises red flags with some), he is also the first modern Democratic President, to my knowledge, to acknowledge the second amendment is an individual rather than a corporate right. That is huge, coming from a legal scholar who could tell you every argument from those who say it’s a corporate right based on the placement of a comma, and who often avoids politically impossible questions by laying out both sides, slowly, methodically, until the questioner gives up. Obama went out on a limb to say that, angering some gun control folks on his left, and has expanded the right to carry guns into national parks (a particularly big deal in Alaska, where much of the state is National Parks and where you really want to be armed). So if American exceptionalism is the right to bear arms, Obama should be in pretty good standing with Conservatives.

And what about free speech (my personal favorite of our rights)? I think this, along with the other rights guaranteed in the first amendment, is actually the most important element of what makes America great. I think the FCC should be allowed to regulate frequencies so my remote control car doesn’t show up on my radio and so my radio doesn’t control my remote control car. Beyond that, I’d get rid of it altogether. Want to burn a flag? Fine. It’s a stupid protest. It doesn’t tell me what you’re opposed to, specifically. Do you hate CIA intervention in Pakistan, or hate cotton? Mostly it just tells me you don’t like my country, which makes me less inclined to listen to what you have to say. But I love that we have the right to do it. Want to call the most conservative news network “fair and balanced”? Go right ahead, and if people believe that then maybe they’ll also believe I can bench 500 lbs., I’ve climbed Mt. Everest twice, and I have a credit score that makes me worthy of a loan of ten billion dollars. I love, love, love free speech. As an English teacher, it’s my livelihood. Without it, I’d be a propaganda teacher, and that doesn’t sound nearly as fun as my job. As a novelist, it’s my hobby. As a video game playing, novel reading, internet addicted movie buff, my life is pretty much free speech and sleep. So what has Obama done to diminish free speech? What has he done to diminish the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the freedom of religion? Tonight, at the first Republican debate, the candidates fell all over each other discussing Islam, with one candidate saying no Muslim would serve in his cabinet (at least not the kind of Muslim who would want to kill us) and another comparing Muslims to communists and Nazis. And which party has been at the forefront of the movement to censor the arts? Or to pass laws preventing flag burning (which later had to be overturned by the Supreme Court)? In fact, aside from protecting the rights of corporations to donate anonymously to campaigns (Scalia says Democracy is a full contact sport when it comes to signing petitions, and I agree, but apparently the anonymity of a political donation is part of its “speech”) how have Conservatives protected the freedom of speech better than Liberals? This might be part of a libertarian’s definition of American exceptionalism (and is the place where I’m most on board with libertarianism) but it cannot be the bedrock of modern Conservatives’ definition.

Is a Conservative’s definition of American exceptionalism based on our freedom from government intrusion into our lives? That depends on what you want to be free to do. If Brian wants to marry Larry, even if most Americans want these guys to have this right, even if the state can show no definitive reason why their marriage should be prevented which is not based in a particular religious ideology, even if Brian and Larry live in a different state that wants to give them permission to do so, it’s Conservatives who want the government to step in and tell them they can’t. And if a woman and her doctor decide she needs an abortion, Conservatives want the government to step in and stop that. In fact, when the Supreme Court says the government can’t stop that, Conservatives busy themselves passing state laws that tell the doctor he has to wait a period of time, show her an ultra-sound of the fetus, give her a lecture filled with demonstrably false information about the dangers of the procedure, and then complete the procedure before the delay they caused! Want to buy some marijuana for the pain from your chemotherapy? How about an OD on opiates because you’re in misery from an untreatable illness? No, the Conservative’s definition of American exceptionalism can’t be based strictly on freedom. Just some freedoms. The ones they like.

Maybe it’s based on our wealth. We are the richest nation in the world, in total terms. That means that we’re the richest people, on average. Of course, that is of great consolation to people who don’t know the difference between a median and a mode. But if you try to do anything to help more Americans enjoy that wealth, you are a socialist or a communist, a redistributor of wealth, an oppressor who makes slaves of the poor through the soft bigotry of low expectations. (Modern Conservatives do not like this kind of slavery. They did protect the other kind, though, because, as Green Globule points out, Conservatives “first concern is against new mistakes, especially those at the national level which are hardest to undo.” You know, like the 13 Amendment barring slavery. Somebody had to make sure we didn’t jump to that decision too hastily, right?) But some Conservatives are threatening to refuse to up the debt ceiling (in exchange for concessions to limit a woman’s liberty to get a Pap Smear at a Planned Parenthood, no less) and that is the single quickest way to make sure the U.S. is no longer the wealthiest nation in the world, so this can’t be the foundation for Conservatives’ definition of American exceptionalism, either. Oh, and if our wealth were the measure of American exceptionalism, Conservatives would feel lukewarm about Reagan, the first Bush, and Obama, hate George W. Bush, and their favorite President of the last thirty years would be Bill Clinton.

Or maybe it’s our military might. This strikes me as unlikely, since there’s a great deal of dispute within the Conservative movement about whether we should be isolationists, shoring up our military defenses, or neo-conservatives, flexing our military muscles abroad to protect our global interests. Regardless, Obama seems to have split the difference. He hasn’t over-extended the military the way the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict have, but did double-down on Afghanistan and has shown he’s perfectly willing to use the military in Libya, Yemen, and Pakistan. You can take issue with some of those choices (I certainly do), but I don’t see how he could generate such hatred by splitting the difference in the other side’s internal debate.

So, if it’s not our 1st or 2nd amendment rights, it’s not our freedom from government intrusion into our lives, it’s not our wealth, and it’s not our military might, what is the definition of American exceptionalism which Obama lacks? I have a theory.

I think the Conservative definition of American exceptionalism is tautological. In essence, they believe America is better because it’s America, and Americans are better because they’re American. Only, their definition of American is only the Conservative they see in the mirror. This can be pretty easily demonstrated. Conservatives do not like it when you point out that America has made mistakes. Liberals get pilloried for this. But ask a Conservative if the majority of Americans were right to cast a ballot for Barack Obama, and they’ll tell you it was a mistake, that we are “on the wrong track.” If you talk about how we were wrong when the CIA assassinated Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, they’ll call you unpatriotic. But the Bay of Pigs Fiasco? A Democrat’s mistake. The whole Constitution should be read from the floor of Congress because it’s perfect, right? Now, who wants to read that 3/5ths part?

My friend Derek wrote, “Conservatives hold America as a country and an ideal in the absolute highest regard. We do believe America is exceptional. We do believe in a Divine blessing on this nation. Therefore we reject anyone who would do any thing to diminish that exceptionalism as Obama has by apologizing for America…” First of all, even when I was a Christian, I found that notion of a Divine blessing abhorrent. The idea that God prefers Americans not only shows a lazy or willful misreading of scripture, but it’s offensive not just to people outside our borders, but to Christians here, too. It reminds me of those post-game interviews when the reporter stick the microphone in the face of the star of the winning team and he thanks God for the victory. Yeah, because God preferred your team. And you’ll lose next week because God is wishy-washy. If this is the bedrock of the Conservative definition of American exceptionalism, then that God prefers the country where one of the founding principles is that the government of that country shall establish no religion which might acknowledge His preference. That God is either very humble or quite stupid.

As for apologizing for America, Green Globule echoed this sentiment somewhat when he wrote, “When I read Dreams from my Father, the one thing I was looking for above all else was that he loved and respected this country and that he believed in it. I found nothing of the sort, and generally only the opposite.” Here’s the lynchpin of the difference between the Conservative definition of America and the Progressive’s: Obama is considered un-American because he points out that America isn’t perfect. That’s considered “apologizing for America.” I shouldn’t have to write this, but for an African American growing up in the 60s in America, the country wasn’t perfect. Men were being lynched for having skin the same color as his just when he was trying to figure out his racial identity. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean a person hates America, or is apologizing for it. Recognizing that fact, and many other negative facts about American history, is part and parcel of the Progressive’s definition of American exceptionalism: America keeps getting better! We started out with slavery written into our Constitution, but we got better. Women couldn’t vote, but we got better! Children had to work twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, in dangerous conditions, but (thanks to Big Government nanny-state regulations) we got better! Somebody else invented the automobile, but we built it cheaper, faster, and better! Somebody else made it into space first, but we got to the moon! We mistreated lots of different groups of our fellow Americans for a host of deplorable reasons, and we still do, but to diminishing degrees because we keep getting better! Hell, Democracy was invented by other people, and, Green Globule, they lived “across the ocean,” but they are dead and gone and we are still here making it better. And someday we will take gay marriage and some variation on national healthcare and we’ll just keep on getting better.

But…

But it’s not a fait accompli that we’ll just go on making it better. The single biggest threat to what really makes America great is the idea that our greatness is finished, that we don’t need to look across the ocean for new ideas to take and improve because we can just sit on our hands as Americans and God’s divine blessing will keep us on top. This, I think, is really at the heart of the hatred of Obama, and it’s also the origin, at its extreme, of the whole “Birthir” movement. It’s not that Obama was born in Hawaii and spent time overseas. McCain was born in Panama and nobody found that disqualifying. It’s that Obama is willing to look at other models and listen to other ideas. He’s not blinded by the kind of ultra-nationalism that says that everything foreign is inferior and suspect and probably evil. I may disagree with him on the conclusions he comes to about half of those ideas. I may even find some of his policies infuriating. But when I have to choose between Obama and someone who is trying to placate a constituency that sees any recognition of our country’s mistakes as a sign of a lack of patriotism and any idea from any other country as dismissible, I will choose him. Odds are, most Americans will make the same choice.

And maybe that’s a mistake. We do make those.

But I vote that we keep getting better.

Why Does the Right Hate Obama So Much?

I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m one of these wide-eyed, naïve, hopey-changey liberals. Fine. But if we can get past the obligatory name-calling, I really wish someone would explain it to me: Why do conservatives seem to regard the President of the United States with the kind of passionate spite normally reserved for pedophile clergy, genocidal dictators, and malarial mosquitoes?

The other day I got an offer from CafePress offering me free bumper stickers. I like free. With shipping and handling, it’s almost down to my price-range. So I clicked and looked at the “Humor: Political” stickers. What I found would have made a Fox News pundit blush. All the anti-Bush “Somewhere in Texas a Village is Missing its Idiot” stuff paled in comparison. It was like Obama sat in the front row and decided to heckle Don Rickles, with the occasional rebuttal tossed in by Michael Richards on his absolute worst day ever. Some examples: “A Taxpayer Voting for Obama is like a Chicken Voting for Col. Sanders” and “Who Would Have Thought the Biggest Threat to America would Be Our Own President?” Hilarious, right?

Now, people can slap whatever they want on their cars. You want to put a confederate flag on your bumper? Hey, they’re your slashed tires, buddy. Besides the free speech argument, I don’t expect bumper stickers to make nuanced policy arguments. If the colonists had only had a 3 by 8 inch sticker that had to be read by the guy on the horse behind them, the Declaration of Independence would have said, “Hey George! Next time we shove the tea up your ass!” But those colonists did have specific, clear, and demonstrable grievances. Those grievances related directly to the way the behavior of the British affected their daily lives. They didn’t just shout ad hominem attacks across the Atlantic.

So here’s my genuine question: Conservatives, what’s your beef? What has President Obama done to threaten America? What has he done that makes him as lethal to you as Col. Sanders is to chickens?

Please don’t tell me what you think Obama is. I am a firm believer that we are what we do. What has Obama actually done that inspires such hatred?

Some more ground-rules: I don’t believe conservatives are racists. Don’t prove me wrong.

Try and avoid knee-jerk ad hominem attacks. I enjoy some good smarm, but since I’m genuinely trying to understand, try to be factual with me.

Liberals, feel free to fact-check any claims made here, but let’s allow some conservatives to make a case. That’s the point after all.

And nobody mention Kool-Aid. It’s irritating. And don’t call Obama the messiah and think it’s sarcastic and clever. Only conservatives call him that. Liberals have plenty of disagreements with Obama’s policies. I could give you a pretty long list. But my quibbles are because he’s too centrist and too willing to compromise with a political Right.

I believe the Right hates him irrationally. Convince me I’m wrong about that. Tell me what he has done to you to earn your hatred. Help me understand.

James Henry

I just heard the news that my friend, James Henry, passed away.

I met James at last summer's Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University. James was an amazing man in many ways. He was remarkably social, engaging everyone immediately with his warmth. He was so open that his humility took you by surprise; just when you felt you were starting to get to know this unassuming, kind man, he surprised you with the kind of detail most people would lead with, like the fact that he'd won a silver medal at the Paralympic Games in Barcelona. Walking down the streets of Salem on some of our writing field trips, Jim would run into a stunning number of friends. It seemed everyone knew him, and for good reason; James could make a friend in an instant, and then would maintain that friendship. He continued to correspond with me after the OWP, sending me some of his writing and critiquing mine. James was hit by a car while riding his bike some weeks ago, and suffered sever injuries. He was in a medically-induced coma, but, last I heard, it seemed like he was going to pull through, and I looked forward to many more years of friendship. I'm shaken by this sudden loss and surprised by how much Jim came to mean to me in such a short time. Here's a poem Jim read last summer at the OWP. I liked it so much that I had him email it to me, and now I'm so glad I did, so I can share this little treasure he gave me:

Disarmament

Because I have one arm, people stare.
Because people stare, they remember me.

Because I have one arm, swimming is difficult.
Through difficulty I’ve learned the patience of fish.

Because I have one arm, strangers ask how.
Because they ask, I turn strangers to friends.

Because I have one arm, people judge.
Because people judge, I don’t judge people.

Because I have one arm, some things are impossible.
Rather than quit, I master the possible.

Without my left arm, my body has limits.
My body has limits, not I.

--James Henry

It's Thunder and It's Lightning

We went and saw Thor today. Predictable? Yes. Fun? If you're a comic book geek and mythology fan, absolutely! I do have a gripe, though. Back when I heard they were going to make the movie, I immediately thought they should include the song "It's Thunder and It's Lightning" in the soundtrack. Then, every time I heard the song, I thought about how smoothly they could weave it into the story. Or just use it as a final credits track. No dice. Well, enjoy it!

Noah's "Yes Day!"

A few weeks ago, my son, Noah, came home from school and wrote "Yes Day" on the calendar by the fridge. He'd read a book in the school library about the new holiday, and wanted to make sure we observed it. He explained it to me, and I thought it sounded like a great idea. In essence, kids are told "No" by their parents every day of the year. So what if there were a single day when Mom and Dad had to say "Yes" to every request? Conveniently, Noah had chosen a Saturday. We couldn't have pulled this off on a week day; we would not have had time for all his ideas in the afternoon, and he invariably would have asked me to skip work. That would have been tough to explain to my boss. "Sorry, but my son asked me to stay home today, and, well, you see, it's 'Yes Day' so..."

I decided use this as an opportunity to force him to practice his writing. He had to write all his requests down in advance. Not only would this give him time to think about what he really wanted, but it gave me a chance to vet his ideas and get some "No"s in before the big day arrived. My wife, Paige, and I explained to Noah that we reserved the right to say "No" to anything extraordinarily expensive or unsafe. Paige wanted to qualify the whole thing with "as long as it's within reason," but I felt like, since that has no real meaning to a six-year-old, we'd be giving ourselves too much flexibility. We needed to have our hands tied a bit in order for this to work.

Part of what made it possible is that six-year-olds (ours, at least) do not have particularly expensive or extravagant tastes. For example, Noah wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch. I can afford that. He also wanted to go to the park and play a whole bunch of variations on tag of his own design. I can afford that, too, though I did find myself saying, "Yes, as soon as I catch my breath." I made a few suggestions to help him out. By last evening you'd have thought it was Christmas Eve.

Here's something of a run-down of the day. Paige encouraged Noah to let me sleep in a bit later than he did so I would have energy for all his big ideas (bless her!). When I woke up, he asked me to play a particular video game with him which I don't really enjoy. I said, "Yes." After his normal allotted video game time, I reminded him that if he asked for more time he'd get it, so he chose a different game I don't like very much and asked to play that one with me. I said, "Yes."

We went to lunch at McDonald's. I don't like the food there, so I have no need to eat more than the bare minimum. I hinted that if he asked me to get a Happy Meal as well, he'd get two toys. He did ask. I said, "Yes."

After he played on the McDonald's play structure for a while, we went to Circle K and he got to pick out some candy. He picked Jujubees. I think they're gross, but those were the ones he wanted, so I said, "Yes."

Loaded up with our secret stash, we went to see Rio at the local cineplex. It's in 3-D, so it cost an arm and a leg. That's not a cliche. It's an understatement. It cost a lot more than one of my arms and one of my legs would be worth on the black market. My arms and legs are hairy, knobby, pale, and stringy. Hungry cannibals would refuse my arms and legs. On of your arms and one of your legs might have purchased three 3-D tickets.

I enjoyed the movie. It wasn't up to Paige's high standards for animated movies, and I have my quibbles with some of the choices, but Noah loved the physical comedy. It's set in Brazil, so there were lots of soccer balls kicked in faces and people being knocked down by equally round butt-cheeks. Noah would bark out big lung-fulls of laughs, and those are worth more than both my arms and legs.

We came home and Paige asked to be excused from the festivities to work on a project, so Noah and I went to the park. He has this amazing ability to tell a long narrative about the good guys and bad guys, their motivations, their preferred weapons, and a landscape of invisible obstacles, all while chasing me around. And he's asthmatic. I don't get it; how can he run around and talk constantly without taking a breath one day, then need an inhaler in order to sit on the couch and watch TV the next? Maybe, if he'd breathe while playing, he could store up some oxygen for more stressful video game sessions. Anyway, I'm not asthmatic, but he ran me ragged.

We came home and he reminded Paige about the dinner request he'd written down. Wait for it... Wait for it... Mac and Cheese. "Yes."

After dinner he seemed a bit unsure about what to ask for next, so I reminded him that I wouldn't be able to say no to a third round with the Xbox 360. We played another of his games I don't enjoy very much. It turns out that I'm not very good at it, either. Paige reminded him to be patient with his old man, and he graciously acquiesced.

When it was nearly his bedtime, he asked to watch a TV show. We'd already gone well beyond the amount of time I like to let him stare at any screen in a single day, but the book makes it clear that the kid gets to stay up really late on Yes Day, and I was raised to observe holidays in a traditional fashion. I whispered that he could choose a movie, get on his PJs, and fall asleep on the couch. We flipped through the Xbox's Netflix queue and Paige and I rediscovered Robinhood: Men in Tights. We tried to sell him on it, but it only reminded him of the Disney version, so we said, "Yes" to that.

He didn't fall asleep, of course. He never does fall asleep on the couch watching anything. He asked for some ice cream, and asked if he could help scoop it. We did that together without any serious mishaps. Now I know he can scoop me a bowl in the future.

Ultimately, Paige and I made the arbitrary decision that Yes Day ends at 10:00. The book doesn't say for sure, so Noah interpreted that to mean that it ends at dawn the following day. That's a reasonable assumption, but since it was after 10 o'clock, we were allowed to say, "No."

A few times over the course of the day, Noah asked me when it would be my Yes Day and what I would do. I told him that all the things I would want to do would be too expensive, so I don't get a Yes Day. That's not entirely true. Sure, I'd probably choose things like flying off to Europe on a private jet, only to have those vetoed on expense grounds, but I might also choose to sit in my recliner all day and watch NBA basketball. I get to do that anyway, which is precisely why kids deserve a Yes Day and grown-ups don't.

I don't even want to think about the things Noah will ask for as he gets older. Having experienced a six-year-old's Yes Day, I have no interest in a sixteen-year-old's. Considering what he chose today, I think we'll make these events the tradition. Next year, he'll resent not being able to choose new activities, but I think a day of movies, video games, and hanging in the park will go back to being cool just before he dicides it's un-cool by virtue of being spent with his dad. Still, he announced that today was the best day of his life. If I force him to relive that a dozen more times before he goes off to college, that doesn't make me a bad parent, does it?

Because it was one of the best days of my life, too.

My Greatest Professional Triumph is Anonymous

Perhaps it's a bit hyperbolic, but among an English teacher's dreams, the idea of having a student become a published author or poet ranks pretty high. Well, thanks to one of my creative writing students, I've now accomplished this dream.

Note the focus. She has an accomplishment. I talk about myself. This is intrinsic to the profession; her accomplishment is mine, even though I played a tiny role. A whole lot of other teachers taught this student to read and write, and clearly she has a great deal of innate talent, but when she becomes a published poet, I get to brag.

After hearing about her publication from a colleague (who deserves just as much or more credit, but this is about me here, right?) I asked the student if I could brag about her tonight. I hope she felt proud in that moment, because I'm certainly proud of her.

But she chose to have the poem published without her name! When you read the poem, you'll understand why. It's quite personal, and though it might not be her actual experience that she's expressing, it must hit close enough to home to make her hesitant to share her identity. Fine. I still get to claim my little piece of credit. I do wish she'd put her name on it though, because, separate from her emotional experience, it's a fine work of craftsmanship. When I link to it, you can see that she has skill which goes beyond the considerable power of the content.

My other reason for wanting her to get credit is that it messes with my own. Instead of being able to say, "I taught ---- --------, the one who had that powerful poem published a few years ago," I have to say, "I taught Anonymous."

On second thought, that's plenty poetic. So, thanks Anonymous. Thank you for the inspiration to me, as a teacher, and thanks for your courage in sharing your work, even if your name isn't attached. You'll be known (if only to the few readers of this poem, but they will remember you) by your work alone, and there's a special dignity to that which is rare in our world of people obsessed with taking credit. I'm glad you didn't learn that particular impulse from me. Your poem is wonderful.

So, without further ado, I give you Anonymous' "No Lollipop."








Now just try and tell me that didn't kick you in the gut. Yeah, she was one of my students.

Nightmare and Prayer

Today has been strange. As is so often the case, a strange day is a product of an even stranger night, but the particular quality of my current displacement and discomfort (psychic, geographic, and philosophical) is difficult to connect directly to the last night's nocturnal adventure. So let's ease into the weird by beginning from the present and moving backwards.

I'm sitting in the elegant but unusually dark lobby of a large hotel on the banks of the Willamette River, on an island in that river, in fact. Outside the rain that has been falling all day seems to have lost some of its passion and settled into a bored, blue-collar drizzle against the massive windows that surround the room. The large, oddly breast-shaped chandeliers are on but can't compete with the flat grayness that stretches all the way down each window to a fog on the surface of the river.

I'm waiting for my room to be ready. I'm here for the annual Representative Assembly of the state chapter of my union, the Oregon Education Association. I serve on a committee that was tasked to write a plan to educate the public about the importance of public school teachers in order to inoculate Oregon against the virulent anti-teacher fever that has been afflicting other states recently, and to prepare our own members should Oregon come down with the disease. I've never attended the RA before, nor have I participated in presenting a document of this kind on the floor of a large, formal assembly in this way, so I'm out of my element.

And I'm also not in my room because it's still not ready. I knew I would show up too early for the room. Most folks are coming in this evening because they have to teach a full day today, but our district had to cut days out of the school year because of budgetary concerns. I'm here early to stand up for teachers because schools are already embattled enough that my services as a teacher were not required today. That is the opposite of irony.

Because I knew there would be no school today, and because I hate to miss work for doctor's appointments, I scheduled my annual skin check at the dermatologist for this morning. I'm genetically predisposed to a particularly aggressive kind of skin cancer, so I go in annually to have an expert measure my moles to make sure they aren't growing or changing color. I strip down to my boxers and he takes pictures of my legs, back, and chest. Then he measures each mole in millimeters with a ruler, notes the sizes in my chart, and, assuming he doesn't feel the need to remove another with a miniature apple corer, sends me on my way. It's something I have to do just frequently enough that it never feels normal.

After the appointment I drove up here to the hotel. I was pretty sure I knew how to find it, but I wanted to try out the GPS function on my new phone. While I listened to a book on tape, a woman's urgent voice interrupted to tell me that she kept losing touch with the satellite. She didn't tell me that they patched up their relationship, but she continued giving me directions, so I assumed that her troubled marriage wouldn't prevent me from reaching my destination. Then I found myself on a bridge entering the state of Washington. It seemed entirely implausible that the Oregon Education Association would have its largest meeting if the year out-of-state, so I turned around. The woman on my phone must have felt terrible about letting her personal issues get in the way of doing her job, because once she started giving me directions again she hyper-focused in the neighborhood in Vancouver, Washington where I'd decided to turn around. When I was back in Oregon and in the parking lot of the hotel, she was still trying to tell me how to make the proper U-turn to find the freeway. I really hope she works things out with the satellite before I need her help again, because she's lost without him.

Too early to check in, I got some lunch at Taco Bell. Still too early, I went back to my car and took a nap in the driver’s seat. I am a very good napper. The ability to fall asleep anywhere, anytime is my most impressive talent. Thanks to the assistance of the Taco Bell lunch, I had a strange dream that may become the seed of a small town murder mystery novel someday.

When I woke up I was completely disoriented. With my stocking cap pulled down over my eyes, my clues about my whereabouts consisted of my strange position in the reclined driver's seat, the heat of my winter coat and the comparative cold around my belly button where it had ridden up, and the plinking of large drops of water falling from the pine trees onto the roof of my car.

I reached back into my memory for some sense of my location, and this is what I found: I was not in the same place I was when I woke up from the nightmare last night, but I was equally unsure where I was.

I rarely have dreams. Or, to be more precise, I probably dream just as much as anyone else but rarely have dreams worthy of remembering, and almost never have dreams vivid enough to wake me up. Even the plot if today's cop drama is evaporating... Yes, there it goes, another genre I'll probably never try my hand at now. Last night's dream was, in every way I can think of, exceptional.

It wasn't a nightmare. Not at first, anyway. Upon waking one never knows how much of a dream was experienced and how much was exposition, but in the dream I understood that I was the director of a play on Broadway. I also knew it was a revival of something so well known, and which had been done so successfully before, that my attempt to bring it to the stage was probably doomed to failure. So instead of putting the play on again in exactly the way the audience would expect, I decided to present an interpretation depicting the dramatization of a production of the play. “Meta” is very “in” after all. So, not only was I the director, but I was an actor playing the director. Just as the play within the play was reaching its climax, the play about the production spiraled into a chaos of bodies crawling around in white, tattered robes flashing in strange lighting that made them look ghostly. I, as an actor playing the director, crouched on my knees watching the play my character was trying to direct, and these ghost figures pulled on my clothes, tugging me in every direction while I tried to shout, “Get away from me! Get away from me!” (I don’t think it’s the best line, but I guess I was not the writer.) Though I have a loud voice, I’d chosen to act like I was so scared I could hardly cry out. The words strained through my throat in a molasses moan.

But I wasn’t afraid. I was enjoying the fact that the audience was eating it up. Instead of another bored re-telling of a story they knew by heart, they were enthralled by the frightening image of a director trying to bring that story to them and being torn apart by the impossibility of the task. It was going really well.

Suddenly I couldn’t feel the hands of the other actors. I couldn’t hear their screams and wails. I couldn’t hear the music coming from the pit. The white lights, not quite a strobe because they flashed inconsistently, now disappeared entirely. In the total darkness I could only feel one hand on my shoulder, and instead of pulling at my clothes it was pushing me gently.

“Ben?” My wife’s voice, barely a whisper, slid through the darkness. “Ben, you were making noise like you were having a scary dream.”

I think I grunted.

“You sounded really scared.”

I knew that I hadn’t been. But now I was. I couldn’t remember what play I’d been responsible for putting on. Was this part of it? If so, I couldn’t remember what to do next. What was my line? What was my blocking? Where was the audience? Where was I?

Now I was terrified. I didn’t respond to my wife but looked around and ticked-off the clues that led me to slowly deduce I was in my bed, in my room, in my house. But that didn’t alleviate my fear. What had the play been? Was I still responsible for it?

I went to the bathroom, drank some water, and tromped down the stairs. There was not time for ninja-style tip-toeing. The screen of my laptop fills the living room with an ethereal light. I was in no mood for that. I flicked on the kitchen light before plopping down to write a description of my dream-turned-nightmare.

That was 3:13 am.

Now I’ve slept in my car and am ready for tonight’s events. But I can’t shake the feeling. The terror has stopped flowing, but, in its stillness, a fuzzy, slimy anxiety has grown along the bottom of my consciousness. Since last night’s performance, I’ve already played so many roles. Some were more genuine than others. I was the father and husband saying goodbye before a short trip. I was the careful driver on a rainy freeway. But some roles required more acting ability than I actually possess. I pretended to be the kind of person who isn’t bothered when a right-wing friend posts demonstrably erroneous jabs on his Facebook page, but succeeded only in stewing about my biting reply all day. I tried to act like the kind of patient who feels completely comfortable when nearly-naked in a doctor’s examination room but only barely managed to swallow my nervous jokes. I smiled and said it was no problem when the first reception desk clerk told me my room wasn’t ready, and that was the truth. I was hungry anyway. I told the second it was no problem even though it meant I’d be taking a nap in my car instead of a bed, then smiled and told the third I didn’t mind after I woke up. By then I was acting, although I would also have been acting if I’d decided to play the role of the guy who vents his frustration at the completely innocent desk clerk. My smiles only grew into overly-amiable shams as the afternoon wore on.

Tonight I’ll play a new role. I’ll stand with the other members of my committee in front of six hundred people and take credit or blame for the report we’ve written. It will be a bit of improv. Then I’ll go to a reception where I’ll pretend to be comfortable among those same six hundred strangers. Depending on the way they receive the report, my props may have higher alcohol contents.

And then I will go to bed in a hotel room. If I was discombobulated while waking from dreams first in my own room, then in my car, I can only assume I’ll be more confused staring at a ceiling I’ve never seen before, surrounded by soft wallpaper and under the gaze of what I predict will be either an inoffensive piece of neutered modern art or a near-sighted expressionist’s landscape of a farm.
But before I sleep, I’ll play one other role. I’ll be the macro-blogger who desperately wants to believe that someone reads ridiculously long posts on their computer screens. I’ll toss up this whole story. And then I’ll say a little digital prayer.

“Hello, you gods of high speed internet and Buddhas of dial-up. It’s me, Ben. If you’re there Yahweh or Quetzalcoatl or Vishnu or Cthulu, could you do me a favor? Please don’t wait until I am asleep to reach over and shake me awake. Be gentle, but let me know what play I’m in. Thanks.”

Google is making fun of my idea!

Back in June of 2007, I posted an idea about touch-screen laptops here. I even sent the idea to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and asked them for $100,000 and a working prototype (a rockin' deal for them, in my opinion). No dice.

Of course, Google reads everything on the web, and someone there must have come across this paragraph:

"Oh, and since laptops can be fitted with cameras (many already have them internally) and a couple of manufacturers are already working with tabletop computers that identify the motions of hands using two cameras and parallax, why not do that on a laptop, so the person doesn't even have to touch the screen, just lift their hands off of the keyboard and manipulate the information by waving their hands like those cool ads with Jay Z? If no one is already working on this, I'm selling this idea for a cool $200,000. And a working model, of course."

Instead of paying me, for their annual April Fool's joke they made this awesome video. Turns out my idea does not make you look as cool as Jay-Z. It makes you look like a total dork. Fine, Google! I can take a hint!

Pity the Suffering Rich

I read a statistic recently that was so frightening I doubted it could possibly be true. When I came across Jenny Smith’s piece on the Our Progress page, the first part in her “Are you Kidding Me” series, I could believe the stat that 42% of millionaires don’t feel wealthy. “The average respondent had $3.5 million in investable assets,” she reported. “They'd ‘like to have more.’” Who wouldn’t? I would bet that people with 3.5 mil in the bank spend less time thinking about small purchases and more time thinking about big ones. When you’re looking at really big price tags, you probably start thinking that three and a half million is nice, but four or five would sure be handy. There but for the grace of God go we, right?

But at the end of the piece, Smith shared a statistic that seemed dubious to me. “Oh, and a not-so-fun fact I learned last week - the richest 400 people in the US have more money than HALF of the country.” Sure, she hyperlinked it to another article, but I didn’t even bother clicking. I wanted to check that for myself. I went to Politifact, a group that fact-checks claims made by politicians and pundits. Sure enough, they reviewed the methodology that came up with the statistic and found that it was not only true when it was calculated using numbers from Forbes from 2009, but the gap between has grown using stats from 2010. It’s true and getting more true. (Where would Ms. Smith’s link have taken me? Turns out it would have taken me to Poltifact. I looked for any site that might dispute their findings but couldn’t find any.)

So, 400 people have more net worth than half the people in this country put together. How could this be? And why isn’t there a greater push toward a more equal distribution of wealth?

I found an answer to that question pretty quickly after I posted the statistic to my Facebook page. One friend and family member quickly responded that the Clintons, the Kerrys, numerous Hollywood big names, Michael Moore, and all the Democratic high rollers are included in those 400, and thus have no authority to speak about income inequality. So I checked through the list (it’s only 400 names, after all.) No Clintons. No Kerrys. No Michael Moore. The only Hollywood name was Oprah Winfrey. Some are certainly contributors to Democratic candidates, though. George Soros is on the list. I’m not sure if Warren Buffet is a Democrat, but he did say, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Personally, I think he has the authority to say that.

I don’t begrudge anyone on the Forbes 400 their money (as long as they got it legally and morally). I think my friend is missing the forest for the trees. The problem isn’t the top 400. It’s not the top 1% who have more financial wealth than the bottom 95%. The problem belongs to all the folks in the bottom 50% who believe that the interests of those 400 people must be protected at all costs. They believe this, I think, for two reasons. For one, they think these billionaires are a put-upon minority who require their protection. Second, they believe there’s an off-chance they will someday be in this group themselves, and that by protecting the Forbes 400 they are protecting their future selves.

The Forbes 400 are certainly a minority, but their suffering has been overstated by people who lack the most basic understanding of mathematics. The folks at the bottom worry that burdensome taxation will make these men and women poor. It will take their billions of dollars and winnow away at it until they are paupers. Now, I’m not going to weigh in on who works harder, billionaires or ditch-diggers. These folks have worked hard and they’ve been lucky. Even someone like Oprah, who had a brutal childhood, had the luck to be born in a country where a combination of infrastructure, cultural milieu, and demand for her talents could facilitate her rapid rise to Queen of Television. Did she work her butt off? (Pun avoided here.) Yes. Does she deserve to be rich? Yes. Would increasing her tax burden make her poor? No.

Income tax is… wait for it… tax on income. If income taxes are staggered so that the wealthy pay higher rates, they still make more money than everyone else. Imagine if a millionaire had to pay a 50% tax on their income of $200 thousand a year. They’d pay $100,000. They’d only make $100,000 that year. Only. Now, imagine if a billionaire in that same year had to pay 75% on the $200,000,000 they made that year. They’d make $50 million. Would the long-suffering millionaire who says they would “like to have more” suddenly give up on their financial pursuits? “Well, I wanted to have more, but going from an annual income of one hundred thousand dollars to a mere 50 million simply makes it not worth the trouble.” Find me the millionaire who isn’t interested in having 50 million dollars.

And yet, we’re told that increasing the marginal tax rate will cause these folks to stop trickling their money down to the rest of us. George Bush Sr. called this “Voodoo Economics” for a reason. And it wasn’t because he comes from a long line of rabid socialists. It just doesn’t work. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a few people does not lead to improved employment or higher standards of living for more people. Surprise: It leads to higher standards of living for a few people.

But raising the tax burden would lead these 400 people to leave the country and take their money with them, right? Then we would miss out on all those trickle-down benefits we’ve been enjoying so much! Except that’s not true after all. I got into a debate about an experiment in just this kind of thing with another college friend today. When I posted a link to a petition that would ask Congress to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, my friend asked, “How many companies have left Oregon (for example) following the recent tax increase on the top brackets?” He linked to an article about a particular company which was leaving the state. The proprietor who was taking 20 jobs with her said that the decisions was “absolutely tied to (tax measures) 66 & 67.” The problem with this anecdotal example is that it doesn’t gel with the larger statistics about employment. Since the passage of those two tax measures, unemployment has actually dropped here in Oregon by 2%. Those twenty manufacturing jobs might have left the state, but more came in to take their place.

The other little factor my friend’s article gave less prominence than the hostile business climate of post 66 and 67 Oregon: The proprietor had found a buyer for her company in Ohio. So, will the Forbes 400 suddenly emigrate to countries where their income is less threatened by taxes? No, because they make that income here in the United States! Africa has about three times as many people as the United States. I’m sure Oprah could find some despot in Africa who would offer her zero income tax if she would relocate to his country to build her house and store her wealth (and serve as a human shield in the case of a U.S. no-fly zone should his people rise up against him). So why doesn’t Oprah pull her shows off of U.S. TV and relocate? Because she’s not stupid. She knows she can’t possibly make as much money in markets where people don’t have power, let alone TVs. Think Ted Turner (also on the Forbes 400) is going to take TNT and TBS off the air and relocate to Russia if we raise his marginal tax rates? Yeah, right. Think the Koch brothers will give up on mining and drilling in the U.S. if we say they have to pay for the pollution they cause and also have to pay a higher tax rate? Let’s take a little bet on that, shall we?

But I’ll tell you what will make these Forbes 400 leave. If, out of a desire to protect the interests of these 400 people, we de-fund our education systems, cut into our infrastructure spending, and generally do everything we can to provide them with the cheapest, lowest skilled labor possible, we’ll give them a country where they can build call centers and factories, but not one where the people can actually buy the products they’re selling. Tired of hearing someone with a slight Indian accent when you call tech support? Just wait until you’re learning another language to serve the needs of someone who has more buying power than you do in some other country. It will make you wish you’d been a bit nicer to “Bob” and “Mary” from Bangalore. Which language will you be speaking in that call center? I’m not qualified to speculate, but (since this is unapologetic conjecture) let me hazard that it will be the country that realizes the fashionable “austerity measures” that are slowing economic growth are for chumps, and invests in services for the broadest swath of its consumer base. They’ll be the buyers, and buyers lead markets.

The Forbes 400 will be fine, regardless. That’s the kind of security we covet, the ability to roll with the punches of a global economy, and, combined with our innate American optimism, that’s why so many poor and middle class Americans continue to believe that they will someday breathe that rarefied air. And what’s wrong with dreaming, right? I’ve bought a few lottery tickets in my life, not because I thought I’d win but because dreaming is fun and, to a point, healthy. After a point, it’s sick. There is no lottery that will make anyone a member of the Forbes 400.

You will never be that rich.

Read that again.

You will never be that rich.

Whatever job you are currently working at does not create a means wherein, by increasing your effort, you will make a billion dollars. I could be the greatest public school teacher of all time, working 26 hours a day (yes, even if I bent the laws of space and time), creating the most wonderful lessons and meeting all of my students educational needs every day, and they will not pay me a billion dollars.
But this is America, you say. This is the land of opportunity. Anything is possible here.

Yep, but that doesn’t make anything likely. If you really want to increase your chances of getting rich (work smarter, not harder, right?), your first step should be looking into which countries really offer social mobility. You might want to move to Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany or Spain. Oh, guess what’s one of the leading predictors of social mobility. Income equality. “The greater a nation's inequality, the harder it is for its children to improve their lot,” Dan Froomkin writes in the Huffington Post. “That confirms findings by other researchers. ‘The way I usually put this is that when the rungs of the ladder are far apart, it becomes more difficult to climb the ladder,’ Brookings Institution economist Isabel Sawhill tells HuffPost. ‘Given that we have more inequality in the U.S. right now than at any time since the 1920s, we should be concerned that this may become a vicious cycle. Inequality in one generation may mean less opportunity for the next generation to get ahead and thus still more inequality in the future.’”

I have no problem with people trying to get rich. If some people from Publishers Clearinghouse show up at my door with a big check tomorrow because of something I sent them ten years ago, I won’t send them away, and you will probably hear me squeal like a six-year-old girl who just got the newest Barbie doll.

But please, if that check is for one billion dollars, and you see me on the Forbes 400, please, please don’t try to protect my financial interests. Because, since social mobility is related to income distribution, when you put my billionaire interests ahead of your own, you aren’t protecting your future self. You’re hurting your children. That’s not hopeful or patriotic. It’s selfish and stupid.

Stick a Fork in the Meta-Superhero

I just saw Kick-Ass. I know some people were bothered by the amount of blood and the adult language. I wouldn't show it to my six-year-old, but I couldn't care less about those things. Those weren't my issues. Kick-Ass isn't a bad movie (meh) but it's the last nail in the coffin in a particular sub-genre, I hope. I know I'm late to the party, but as an avid comic book fan and devotee of our shared American mythology, I want to officially declare the meta-superhero dead. Fini. Kaput. Done. Played-out.

If not the original, among the first and greatest of the meta-superheroes was The Tick. I loved the dark humor of that story, which served up its satire of the comic book world through the lens of a simultaneously delusional and truly superhuman protagonist who broke out of an insane asylum in the first issue. The Tick was unaware that he was wearing a blue suit (or maybe it was his skin?), "nigh-invulnerable", ridiculously naive, and completely at home in his world of equally ridiculous super-villains. This send-up aimed most of its focus on the tropes of comic books themselves, though it had a bit to say about the nature of madness and the assumption of sanity in a crazy world. It was perfect for me as a high school student, and I will be forever grateful to Ben Edlund for speaking from within the comic book community (i.e. my world) about its shortcomings.

And then there was Watchmen. This pre-dated The Tick, but I missed it in 1986 and probably wouldn't have understood it anyway. I deeply disagree with Alan Moore's politics, a form of extreme libertarianism that casts all attempts at do-gooding as short-sighted, authoritarian, and ultimately evil, and I sympathize with his frustration over the way his V for Vendetta was twisted by Hollywood into an anti-Bush movie even though I love it. (It retains his anti-authoritarian message but turns it on conservatives, while he wanted it turned on the U.K.'s Labor Party.) Watchmen takes the meta-superhero to a much more intellectual, philosophical, and literary level, and despite my disagreements with his conclusions, I have the highest respect the way he used the tropes of superheroes to make an argument against what I am sure he would deem patronizing efforts to help others. Nothing has been done yet which reaches that intellectual level within the world of comic books or comic book movies.

And then there's Deadpool. Deadpool started off as a throw-away villain in one of the last issues of the New Mutants series, and even his name, Wade Wilson, is an inside joke, since he's essentially a rip off of the Teen Titan's villain Deathstroke, whose real name is Slade Wilson. But Deadpool, unlike his DC Comics progenitor, was funny, and after some character development in the X-Force series, he got his own comic book. How meta is Deadpool? He not only makes Shakespearean soliloquies directly to the reader about the comic, but even critiques the comics continuity, complaining that his real back-story is so mysterious because it keeps changing every time there's a new writer. Oh, and he once learned that he'd been cursed by the Norse god Loki to be a character in a comic book. Not too shabby.

(Here's Deadpool in the comic talking about how he doesn't look like the actor who played him in the movie. How you like them meta-apples?)


Hollywood recently gave us two animated super-villain spoofs which were both good despite their similarities. Much like the year when we got both A Bug's Life and Antz, 2010 gave us both Despicable Me and Megamind. Despicable Me chooses to focus on a villain who is a bit more James Bond, while Megamind goes right at the Superman villain, but both glean their share of gags by satirizing the cliches of comic books. And both are genuinely funny. And we don't need a third.

I'm half tempted to include Wanted in the list of meta-superhero movies, because it was so gawd-awful that the viewer is tempted to think they are intentionally having fun with the cliches of comic books. But they aren't. It just sucked. Then it insulted you for watching it. Not just implicitly, mind you. Explicitly. The protagonist gives a monologue at the end criticizing you, the viewer, for wasting your life doing uninteresting things. And since you've just spent the last two hours watching his muddled mess of a story, he's made himself a little bit right.

I'm also tempted to include Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but there are two reasons it shouldn't be lumped in with the meta-comic book stories. First of all, the comic-book-ish-ness of it was internally consistent and not self-referential, so it wasn't poking fun at comic books or saying anything about them. Second, as my wife pointed out, it wasn't really comic books but video game tropes which were being used as plot devices. It was like Doom the movie, only smart, well-made, and enjoyable.

And now, Kick-Ass, an inherently meta-comic book movie about a kid who wonders why comic book fans don't give the whole superhero thing a whirl, decides to try, and proceeds to learn why it's a bad idea. This premise could have been a lot of fun. As I watched the movie, at every step I could see why the writers made their choices. Now, having read up on the comic, I see that the original writer really did hew to the premise and produced a conclusion in which Kick-Ass ends up basically back where he started, rather than the happier movie ending. But even he made the mistake of introducing other, more "real" superheroes (well trained, well armed, lethal costumed vigilantes) to keep upping the ante. While this makes the story far more exciting, it betrays the idea that this kid's plan is obvious folly. Sure, things don't work out so well for the other heroes, either, but they are really heroes, and their failures are heroes' ends based on heroic flaws. The story was at its strongest when it was about this kid's wild-eyed optimism and naivete putting him in danger, but he's not naive to believe superhero-dom is possible if you introduce real superheroes! Anyway, the ending doesn't spoof cliches, but inhabits them so much that it ultimately becomes one. It even ends with a direct reference to a real comic book villain coming from a fake comic book villain who, we're to believe, is now going to become a real comic book villain.

That's why the meta-superhero is finished. He can no longer don his tights and trip clumsily into our normal world, mocking the cliches of comic books, because comic books and comic book movies are now populated with enough of this character that it would be repetitive, reductive, and nostalgic.

But will this stop Hollywood? I worry. Here's what I expect: A movie about the making of a movie about a superhero who has to learn he's a meta-superhero off-screen (but on our screen). Only it's animated. And the superhero who isn't really super is a dog.

Crap, I forgot about Bolt.