It’s called “All My Rowdy Friends Aren’t Returning My Phone Calls Anymore.”

Found in the dictionary under "Cracker moron."

Along with Dennis Miller (no relation) he is another former hero of mine who seems to have fallen victim to the derangement of fame and 9-11.

He’d been warning us it was coming, this latest work, “Holy Terror”, a hardcover graphic novel that began life as a Batman comic and then got so off the rails that even DC Comics was finally able to tell Miller “No.”

I guess the Spirit movie hadn’t damaged his reputation enough, so he felt compelled to double down with a vulgar, paranoid, amateurish piece of work that feels more like someone trying to parody Frank Miller than it does a work from the guy who gave us “Daredevil: Born Again” or “Batman: Year One.”  Those works had subtlety, humanity and no small amount of nobility throughout them.

Maybe it was the influence of artist David Mazzucchelli.

“Holy Terror” will not be so fondly remembered.  Aside from being bad story-telling, with the first third of the book being a chase scene between characters who used to be Batman and Catwoman, culminating in the kind of tryst that doesn’t cut it at even a slash-fic level, “Holy Terror” is an anachronism.  It belongs in 2002, when the nation was still so scared and ignorant that we allowed Bush and company to lead us into the ruin we’re currently living.  It is ugly, with crude caricatures of prominent figures of the time, plus Barack Obama for some reason.

Oh yeah, Miller postulates there are evil Muslim Al Qaeda infiltrators everywhere, even heading our police forces.  They’re like SPECTRE only swarthier and they don’t speak English.  And torturing them is great.  Even post Abu Ghraib, it yields useful information.  Clearly Miller has been thinking this through a lot.

I’m not going to spend much more energy on this except to note some tragic irony in Frank Miller’s choices of late.  One of his heroes, justly so, was the late Will Eisner.  The Spirit was Eisner’s creation, but he went on to create much more and better material.  Among the last works of his life was a graphic novel debunking of the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, an odious, anti-semitic forgery from czarist Russia that has survived over a century now and has discolored the thinking of generations from 1930s Germany to the present-day middle east.

The terrible shame of “Holy Terror” is that it is of a kind and belongs on a bookshelf not with the works of Will Eisner, but with that despicable hate literature Mr. Eisner made it his business to undo.

Get some help, Frank. Or just go away.

Don't buy this. It is $30.00 of Bad.

Much will be written about the parallels between then and now, much of it apologia for the crackers and their after-the-fact assertions that it was all about states rights.

Crap.

Like most wars it was about money, in this case money derived from a small group of people making a ton of it by treating their fellow human beings like animals.  Then, as now, this small group of plutocrats got a bunch of dumb sons of bitches with nothing to gain and a lot to lose to go out and give their last full measure of devotion for…

The chance to be remembered as racists, traitors and losers?

The opportunity to plunge their families and lands into generations of poverty and ignorance?

A shot at seeing Maryland?

Most southerners never owned a slave. Most teabaggers will never be millionaires.

Then as now, most of us should be asking: Why should we sacrifice our health, our lives, our families, the very wholeness of our country for a wealthy one percent who looks down at our concerns and sniffs “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn?”

Happy Anniversary.

Answering the southern strategy dog whistle

HOW?!?

CF CASTING FRONTIER

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If Sharia law mandated that everyone involved with stuff like this had to be scourged with rusty barbed wire I would have to consider bowing toward Mecca.

So today at my son’s after-school Tae Kwon Do class he was told by the Christian kids that he shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because he doesn’t believe in god.

He was told this a lot, to the point that he told me he didn’t want to go back tomorrow, the last day before the holiday break. It took me a while to get this all out of him but once I got it straight I decided his instructor and I needed to come to an understanding about what was acceptable back-and-forth among kids and what was not. Dinner could wait.

I explained what happened and what the belief demographics were like in my household and I think we got it all squared away.  His instructor is a very nice Korean man, my age, Catholic, with solid English as a second language even if I had to run the word “atheist” by him a few times.

What he understands is that a talk with the class about respecting the beliefs of others  is in order, even if he’s nervous about religion being involved.  As an occasional teacher I’ve dealt with parents of faith myself and understand the thin veneer of Not Crazy some of them have to apply each morning before facing the Earth People.

What my son understands is that, for some of these kids, he might literally be the first person they’ve ever met who says he doesn’t believe in god. He understands that even though some of these kids are older than him they aren’t necessarily any smarter and they damn sure aren’t always right. He understands that you should stand up for what you believe in, as well as for what you don’t.

He understands, I hope, that his dad has got his back.  (His real dad, not the one in the sky.)

Maybe the best part of this awkwardness was that he got to hear from his dad the atheist and his teacher the Catholic that “religion can lead people to do wrong things.”

And that’s why we need to learn Tae Kwon Do.

In the course of his talk he explained that we celebrate Christmas because it’s fun and because both his parents had been raised as Christians. His mom is a Methodist Christian and his dad (the creepy old guy over there, smiling, holding his baby brother) was a Lutheran Christian but is now an atheist. He explained what that meant for the non-college bound kids.

The speech, cookies and music went over well but the proudest moment for me was when his teacher asked him during the Q&A portion: “So_____, you said your dad is an atheist.  Are you an atheist?”

“Yes.”

“Cool!”

To give this moment some context, we’re living in a state that forces public school kids to observe a “moment of silence” every morning. The school principle wears a cross and the library contains books of bible stories. I haven’t noticed any prominent displays of books about skepticism, free-thought or evolution but then I haven’t looked too hard. I devote my energies to keeping my own kids’ minds sharp, rather than trying to save the rest. I plead selfish pragmatism mixed with “tolerance.”

Still… today maybe my bright, handsome, charming son planted an idea in his class of Catholics, Muslims and at least one Jehovah’s Witness we know of.

And maybe tomorrow he gets his ass kicked at recess that he may know God’s love.

But today was a great day to be his dad.

Four months later Hinkley shot Reagan and two months after that some nut shot the Pope.

This was my senior year of high school.

I believe this period of time cemented my status as a worrier.

Please send me candy and spank books while I’m in Gitmo.