A while back, not so long ago, everyone who was anyone was talking about the oh-so-extraordinary upcoming conservative agitprop comic book Liberality for All, by Mike Mackey and Donny Lin. At long last (after a one-month delay) the first issue was published last week, and because I suck so very much, I bought it.
“It is 2021, tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11 It is up to an underground group of bio-mechanically enhanced conservatives led by Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North…”
If you actually need more than that, you are reading the wrong weblog.
But enough of the past! You all surely want me to stop writing immediately get to the recapping of the comic. And so I shall.
The story opens on a letter titled “Proud To Be an American,” addressed to one Reagan McGee on September 10, 2021. As it will become almost immediately apparent, this letter is in fact being written by Reagan, so it makes no sense that it’s being sent to him; maybe the postal service is different…In The Future!
The action proper begins in October 2000, on the day that Rush Limbaugh has a very special guest in the form of soon-to-be media host Sean Hannity. If the purpose here is to make me nostalgiac for the pre-9/11 mood of America, it worked. Because I’ll admit, I would do just about anything to return to the simpler times when Sean Hannity wasn’t on television.
Rush and Sean tease each other a bit about being members of the vast right wing conspiracy (har dee har) as a man driving a car with a “Nader 2000” bumper sticker fiddles with the radio. I don’t see how a Naderite ended up on Rush anyway, but this is an alt-realty story, so I guess I’ll buy it. Anyway, as Rush talks about how Gore is all set to lose the election unless something dramatic happens, Mr. Naderite jerks out of the way of a dog in the street, rear-ending a parked car. Rush asks Sean to pray for Gore’s defeat because “without strong leadership, America’s future is doomed!” To which the future pundit and Holmes-baiter replies that “the course the liberal lefties have this country on is deadly!” Being called a “liberal lefty” always does warm the cockles of my heart. Also, I want someone to find out if this is an actual Limbaugh transcript, because I’m totally calling bullshit on that “strong leadership” line.
As Brooding Narrator Reagan muses as to what one event shifted the country so far to the left, Mr. Naderite explodes in a fireball as the FDNY arrives just too late to save his sorry Green ass, and it wasn’t until here that I realized it was actually Ralph Nader Himself in the car, and this event is what ends up handing Alt-Gore the election. I think the implication is that listening to Limbaugh and Hannity babble causes people to explode, and I agree.
For a reason that doubtlessly makes a great deal of sense to the type of people who agree with people like Rush and Sean, Cast Away is very prominently playing in the theater across the street from the Nader-que. I’ll refrain from mentioning that Cast Away was a Christmas release, because I needed the IMDb to verify that, and surely Mackey has more important things to do than dig through that most unnavigable of websites.
Jump cut to 9/11/2001, on the wings of a truly horrible narration that a synopsis cannot do justice to:
“The numbers 911 once stood for something different than they do today. In my father’s time it was the number you had to remember if there was a crisis. But after September 11, 2001, when you thought of a crisis, they were the numbers you wished you could forget.”
Hey, remember after the attacks, when all the police departments and hospitals changed their emergency lines from 911 to 1-900-HELP-MEE? I remember that too.
President Gore appears to entreat the American public that the first thing to do is ponder the terrorists’ motives, and let time heal the wounds of the country. Because that’s what we liberals did, you see. Actually, the only major leftist I remember making that argument was Noam Chomsky, and his chief argument was that if we just barrelled in and took the fight to the fundamentalist Muslims, we’d be giving them exactly what they wanted and fanning the flames of anti-American sentiment throughtout the Islamic world. Thank God that didn’t happen.
Segue’o’Fun #2: Reagan wishes that “we all should have experienced it the way [the firefighters] did. Perhaps then we would not have forgotten.” Meaning, I suppose that those who experienced 9/11 firsthand would be much more receptive to the military pomp of the Republicans who repudiate that soft-minded librul nonsense. Except, if my memory serves me, New York is pretty solid blue. Let me check. Yep, pretty fucking blue.
We now learn the tragic part of the story: young Reagan was born (gasp!) on 9/11, and that his dad (a firefighter) was in the hospital at the time, and thus survived while all his friends died. The narration leaves the sense that Papa McGee resented Reagan for this, which seems like a really shitty thing to do, but I guess for wingnuts it goes Party>God>Family, or summat.
Jump to December, 2002. Sean Hannity exposits that in the year since the attacks, President Gore has sat with his thumb up his ass while he plays therapist with Al-Qaeda (Support the Preznit Watch: although bin Laden is named dropped constantly, in a surprising show of “yeah, it wasn’t actually Saddam who attacked us” clarity, the actual group is never named. Y’see, if bin Laden had no international network, than he would have had to go to Iraq to get the support he needed, and then Operation Enduring Cockup would have been perfectly justified). Now, I was one of those damn dirty liberals saying that we needed to figure out the “why” of the attacks, rather than just bomb the living shit out of Afghanistan (a shit-bombing which I supported, by the way). This was not because we thought the terrorists just needed some cocoa and a nice long talk, it’s because if fundie wackos are going to attack us, we felt it made some small degree of sense to figure out what we’re doing that’s pissing them off. “They’re evil” doesn’t cut it. If that was all it took, the Quebecois would have stormed our borders decades ago.
Sean name drops his new book, Injustice and Liberality for All. Hey, you shore are clever, Sean! And you know what, that’s the name of the comic! Whoa. (As good a time as any to point out: the “ALI” in the title on the cover is over the UN logo. Meaning, I suppose, that if you take the UN out of “liberality,” you get “liberty.” Which is clever, by the sub-basement level standards of this comic). Bin Laden and his cronies listen to Hannity’s broadcast, and take this as evidence that the U.S. is weak and pussified, and the time is ripe to ATTACK! So that’s twice that listening to Sean Hannity has brought evil into the world. I think I dig this comic.
Sean asks the listener, “Can you imagine what might happen if bin Laden develops an alliance with Saddam?” Yep. Pretty much what we have now, only most of the country wouldn’t feel like all the president’s men deliberately lied to us to have their little dick-measuring contest out in the desert. Which would, I argue, be a net improvement. Meanwhile, bin Laden dun-dun-DUNs that he has enemies in America that have to be dealt with, and I assume he means Hannity & Friends, but we’ll never know because just like that it’s September 2021 (a patient man, that bin Laden). In Baghdad, a shady white man (I think…the art is not so much “good” as it is “appalling,” and skin tones are kind of arbitrary) gives “A Device” to “The Ambassador,” one of a group of Muslim men. Meanwhile, “The Doctor” mumbles a bit, as his tongue has been cut out. It is unclear for what purpose. Because Muslims are teh evil, I suppose.
Then, it’s page 8, and I get a break, because now I can resort to the preview pages. Reagan bitches about how the Great American Way is to get what you want by beating everyone else, not by being nice, and I suppose that’s true, because if we didn’t kill non-white people, we wouldn’t have things like the Dakotas, Texas, or Guam. Meanwhile, what is clearly a team of plucky conspirators coordinates some covert action as a UN functionary escorts “The Ambassador” into the UN. She makes a point of apologizing for the recent vandalism. A plot point! Actually, no: there is some vandalism, but it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the actualy UN building. And if she’s apologizing for every act of vandalism in New York City, then…damn.
Page 9: we finally get our first good luck at “The Ambassador,” who is none other than Usama bin Laden. Yes, “Usama.” Which I know is technically just as accurate as “Osama,” but I think it tends to be used by the same people who say things like “Moslem.” Or “Musselmen.” Or whatever the hell the Right calls the Non-Christian Devil Hordes these days. The Ambassador rambles about how swell the US has been to him (name dropping President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore, and there are so many reasons that that’s just fucking weird that I can’t even express them because I can’t figure out where to start. Suffice it to say, I want to find out where Mackey gets his acid), while Reagen narrates that the lesson we should all have learned is “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” and if that’s not a Fahrenheit 9/11 reference, then no work of art has ever referenced another.
Page 10: elsewhere, two Great Young Americans prove their patriotism by defacing a UN poster. Because dissent is only disloyalty if you’re a liberal. If you’re a conservative then resisting the liberal hordes is your civic duty! your moral right! I want to make sure everyone notices, the group being defaced as “UNacceptable” is a black man, a white woman, and a child, and isn’t it nice to see that even in The Future there are still people fighting the good fight against miscegenation.
As the police drag the vandals (“krimnells,” in something that I suppose is a Clockwork Orange homage, or something), the police radio announces that Michelle Malkin’s arrest has raised Matt Drudge to No. 1 on the FBI’s most wanted. Two things: first, this is classic projection. We on the left might hate the things that someone like Malkin says (actually, I think you’d have to be someone like Goebbels to like most of what she says, but whatever), but we respect her right to say it as long as we get to call bullshit on it. We don’t tend to demand that wingnuts be imprisoned for treason. We don’t, for example, write books vilifying our opponents with titles like Slander and, um, Treason. Second, if there was legislation against hate speech, ain’t no way Malkin makes it to 2021 without being ripped apart by a righteous mob.
Page 11: Reagan begs for a voice in the wilderness to pull America’s head out of its ass. Right on cue, we see an heroic figure, with a big ol’ headset (oops, spoiler) warming up for a broadcast. But no! cry the PC cops! ’tis Hannity! And ‘gainst such dulcet tones, how can our strength stand? We fail, we falter. Actually, that’s nothing like what they say. But mine’s better. Meanwhile, Krimnell Vandal Girl tells the cops to “get out of my country.” Right, that’s another thing the Right does that the Left doesn’t. Own America. See, I think I share America. I share it with some real assholes. But asshole deserve love. Okay, that’s a lie, and there’s been a number of times I have wept thinking of how they’re fucking over my country. Which is France, or something, because I can’t be a patriot, because I don’t have a picture of the UN on the inside of my toilet so I can piss on it. Meanwhile, the UN commandos triangulate Hannity’s position.
Page 12: Charles Kane pronouncing “Rosebud” as he dies. The camera moving in on Wayne’s face in Stagecoach. Gene Kelly singin’ in the rain. Dave Bowman resurrected as the Star Child. Next to these iconic images, I proudly place our first glimpse of Hannity of Borg.
The link makes it pretty clear what we’re looking at, but let me just bask in the transcendence of this image for a moment: Sean Hannity, with one eye and one dark socket (like Wotan! He has sacrificed vision for wisdom!), and the ability, apparently, to interface directly with technology. And that arm! Meaning that at some point his arm was ripped off! Probably by a mob! Oh thrice-blest mob!
Ahem.
The international team of cops track him down as he babbles about having been the voice of truth for 20 years (in fact, he says nothing else. So the whole point of his broadcast was to establish how wonderful he is.
It is you Sean!)
Meanwhile, Reagan non sequiturs, “The benefactors of all we held precious volunteered to be targets in war after war, and if they survived, they said, ‘I was just doing my duty…just doing my job.’ Such honor is a concept that many who grew up in their shadow fail to comprehend or appreciate.” and an Antagony & Ecstasy t-shirt to anyone who can diagram that fucker for me. But as it appears that Sean of Nine will be the Chosen One to bring the light of truth the masses, a quasi-French cop tracks him down! “Sacre bleu, that’s just up the rue!” he exclaims, as Anthony Burgess spins a few dozen times in his grave.
Thus endeth the first twelve pages of Liberality for All #1. What will happen to Sean? Who is Reagan? Isn’t Ollie North in here somewhere? Will Tim be able to spend another two hours digging through this shit without going insane, or will he just give up? Stay tuned!