Part 2: The Super-Hero’s American Exceptionalism

Editor: This is the second part of a two-part series. You can read part one here.

The 1970s showed the once-invincible comic book super-heroes to be losers, in attitude and sales. Watergate had disillusioned the super-patriot Captain America with a storyline implying Nixon was the head of a terrorist group. The Captain trashes his outfit and becomes Nomad, The Man without a Country. My 11-year-old mind thought this was ridiculous, as Cap was originally a Depression-era 98-pound weakling until given a Super Soldier serum to bulk up and fight Nazis. It was unlikely that one of the “Greatest Generation” would bail on his country so readily. Even then I realized that this development merely mirrored a hippie writer’s attitude more than staying true to a character’s origins. 

Super-heroes became bleaker and even homicidal in the 1980s. The Punisher, a murderous vigilante, has become a top Marvel character. The Dark Knight Returns, a re-imagining of Batman, introduced an elderly caped crusader fighting the corrupt U.S. government represented by a stoogish Superman. Watchmen was set in a dystopic alternate reality where Nixon is still president and the super-group is made up of, among other miscreants, a rapist and mass murderer. It was a transmutation of established super-heroes from the 60s with Steve Ditko’s Objectivist hero The Question recast as the psychotic Rorschach.  (more…)

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Tags: America, American Exceptionalism, batman, Captain America, Comic
Posted Nov 11th 2009 at 2:05 pm in Art, Featured Story, Politics | 259362143 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtodd/2009/11/11/part-2-the-super-heros-american-exceptionalism-by-mort-todd/Part+2%3A+The+Super-Hero%E2%80%99s+American+Exceptionalism2009-11-11+22%3A05%3A40Mort+Todd

Part 1: The Super-Hero’s American Exceptionalism

Super-heroes are uniquely American in origin and reflective of the “Greatest Generation” that created them. Their progenitors can be traced to ancient myths though their direct foundation springs from American legends like Paul Bunyan and John Henry. Pulp literature fermented these heroes from the 1800s with Buffalo Bill, Nick Carter and on to Doc Savage. By the 1930s super-powered and costumed characters showed up in the newspaper comic strips including Popeye and the Phantom. 

The characters we now recognize as super-heroes crystallized with the debut of Superman in 1938. Representative of the American experience, Superman was the ultimate immigrant. Not merely from another country, the Man of Steel came from a whole different planet! With his success, publishers released a myriad of titles featuring crime-fighting patriotic adventurers who all fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” That included those who were born on an all-female island (the star-spangled Wonder Woman), from Atlantis (the Sub-Mariner), robots (the Human Torch) or even dead people (the Spectre and Kid Eternity)! Gaining super powers even reformed criminals as in Plastic Man’s case.  (more…)

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Tags: American Exceptionalism, batman, DC, Doc Savage, Fatalik
Posted Nov 10th 2009 at 12:52 pm in Art, Culture, Featured Story | 25935461 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtodd/2009/11/10/part-1-the-super-heros-american-exceptionalism/Part+1%3A+The+Super-Hero%E2%80%99s+American+Exceptionalism2009-11-10+20%3A52%3A11Mort+Todd

Honoring September 11th: They Want Us to Forget

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

“We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama

In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President Obama has designated 9/11 as “The National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Personally, I liked the ring of “Patriot Day,” and what does “service and remembrance” mean, precisely ? The idea is to get Americans to “engage in meaningful service to create change…in four key areas”: education, health, energy/environment and community renewal. None of these seems to have anything to do with honoring 9/11, but that seems to be the point: in the Huffington Post, Muslim-American playwright Wajahat Ali wrote, “In the US, we are trying to move away from focusing on 9/11 as a day of horror, and instead make it a day to recommit ourselves to national service.” An excellent Spectator article provides a blunter translation: “Nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.” Why? ”They think it needs to be taken back from the right.”

In other words, they resent the surge of patriotism and righteous outrage stirred up by the attacks, sentiments that empower the political Right. In order to advance the leftist agenda of dismantling American exceptionalism and recasting ourselves as the villain in our history books, they need Americans to put 9/11 behind us, forget the victims, forget that our enemy danced in the streets in celebration, forget that Islamic terror plots on our very shores continue to be disrupted, and forget that our rights and freedoms are under assault by a subversive civilizational jihad. (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, 9/11 hijackers, American Exceptionalism, Blocking the Path to 9/11, cosmic war
Posted Sep 11th 2009 at 7:30 am in Featured Story, Military, Politics | 218202127 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtapson/2009/09/11/honoring-september-11th-they-wants-us-to-forget/Honoring+September+11th%3A+They+Want+Us+to+Forget2009-09-11+14%3A30%3A28Mark+Tapson

Bill Maher, Barack Obama and the True Story of American Exceptionalism

Over at the Huffington Post, Bill Maher is outraged that people like me are outraged at a statement made by Barack Obama a few weeks ago. When asked if he believed in American Exceptionalism, the President of the United States replied: “I believe in American Exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British Exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.”

Bill Maher, never one to miss an opportunity to express his contempt for anything not Bill Maher, wrote: “Yes, our so-called President wrote that people in other countries might like their countries better… I was so shocked I nearly dropped the Bible I was using to help me masturbate into my gun.”  

[click image to play video]

People like Maher use this kind of snark to cover the fact that either they have serious issues in comprehension, or, more likely, that they do not care for the lay of the intellectual battlefield and so want to move it to another, slimier, filthier one. 

The question to the President was not whether or not he believed in American Patriotism – that is, the love of one’s country. Of course other people love their countries. But the idea of American Exceptionalism is a specific political construct, much like British Colonialism. I suppose I should have cut both of them more slack, unfamiliar as both hearts are with the feel of patriotism and faced with the clear evidence of lack of intellectual exceptionalism on both their parts.  (more…)

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Tags: Afterburner, American Exceptionalism, Barack Obama, Bill Maher, British Colonialism
Posted Sep 5th 2009 at 6:42 am in Entertainment, Politics, Video | 218070115 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bwhittle/2009/09/05/bill-maher-barack-obama-and-the-true-story-of-american-exceptionalism/Bill+Maher%2C+Barack+Obama+and+the+True+Story+of+American+Exceptionalism2009-09-05+13%3A42%3A33Bill+Whittle

Do The Warhol— Part 2: The Cult(ure) of Personality

“In fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous.” —Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol also spoke that jewel of wisdom, presumably demonstrating a sense of humor in referring to his most famous quote.  Or was it, perhaps, prescient, albeit unintended foreknowledge?  Pity he’s not around to toy with Twitter.

Bridge as visual metaphor, Media as bridge, Pittsburgh.

Looking back at Part 1, we considered a couple of insights into Andy’s Pop Life with the aim of solving some problems surrounding Mr. Breitbart’s incisive assertion that conservatives must come to terms with popular culture, and more, use it to advantage, or fail catastrophically in countering the negative effects of said culture and restoring public confidence in fundamental ideals.  Narcissism, amorality, and an attitude of entitlement, as examples, speak poorly to the future of democracy, while the virtues of valuing others, the practice of ethical discernment and choice, and the elevating ideas of individual liberty and self-reliance are greatly to be desired in the body politic, and traditionally set America apart from typical “statist” governments around the world.  Evidence abounds of the former set of attitudes in common currency as reflected in pop culture; the latter set, highly prized by conservatives, goes sorely wanting for attention in movies, TV, music, etc. (more…)

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Tags: "The Good", American Exceptionalism, Blair Witch, celebrity, Culture
Posted Jul 24th 2009 at 6:56 am in Art, Classic Hollywood, Politics | 18009821 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/07/24/do-the-warhol%e2%80%94-part-2-the-culture-of-personality/Do+The+Warhol%E2%80%94+Part+2%3A+The+Cult%28ure%29+of+Personality2009-07-24+13%3A56%3A06Scott+Graves

July 4, 2009…What Are We Celebrating Today, Exactly?

I’m one of the last liberal believers in American Exceptionalism, and as I look around the political and media landscapes around me, I’m damn lonely. Not just liberals, but conservatives – like Andrew Bacevitch – seem to be shedding any idea that America is more than just another country with bigger shopping malls than most.

I don’t agree, and I think it matters that I be right and they be wrong.

It matters because in a world where the power of images and ideas is becoming stronger every day – where people defend themselves against men with guns by using cellphone cameras – we seem to be fresh out of ideas.

There’s a physical war going on out in the world with us on one side – and on the other a group allied in large part by their rejection of our beliefs as much as their rejection of our power. They are fighting us with bullets and bombs – and with YouTube videos, discussion forums, and impassioned manifestos. They believe, alright. If you ask them, they will clearly tell you that they do and tell you in what. (more…)

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Tags: 4th of July, abraham lincoln, American Exceptionalism, Andrew Bacevitch, Beyond Survival
Posted Jul 4th 2009 at 5:27 pm in Politics | 17680238 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mdanziger/2009/07/04/july-4-2009what-are-we-celebrating-today-exactly/July+4%2C+2009...What+Are+We+Celebrating+Today%2C+Exactly%3F2009-07-05+00%3A27%3A16Marc+Danziger

Sunday Matineé: 1776

March 16 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Broadway opening of “1776.”  Written by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, it went on to run for 1,217 performances.  It’s hard to believe that forty years ago it was still popular to write an unabashedly patriotic musical that openly celebrated American Exceptionalism and painted the founding fathers not just as humans but as the intellectual and moral giants that they were.  Because the 1972 film version is tantamount to a filmed version of the play rather than a Hollywood re-interpretation, its original intent and form is easily accessible to today’s audience.  It deserves a good look and therefore, is this week’s Sunday Matineé.  (more…)

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Tags: "1776", "Sit Down John", 46th Street Theatre, Abigail Adams, American Exceptionalism
Posted Mar 1st 2009 at 3:44 pm in Entertainment, Video | 6880265 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sright/2009/03/01/sunday-matinee-1776/Sunday+Matine%C3%A9%3A++17762009-03-01+23%3A44%3A48Stage+Right