The Party of Elitist Pussies, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #186

September 6, 2010 Mike Gold 13 Comments

If there’s one thing you can count on in these troubled times, it’s that when the house is on fire, the Democrats will run over and stand there moaning “why won’t somebody do something?”

After the house burns to the ground, those same Democrats will rename the fire a “thermal cautionary event” and then go to a nice little bistro where they’ll buy a couple bottles of over-priced wine and bitch about Bush and Reagan.

One Democrat has a solution to the growing education nightmare that is our national school system. She is terrifying her constituents into believing that if we don’t put more money into our schools (which, in and of itself, is a good thing), our children will be subjected to the worst of all alternatives.

Yes, children will be left with no choice but to read comic books in class. The historical sign of mindless elitism amongst the hand-wringing class, I actually thought we’d gotten past all that. When I was briefly publisher of Classics Illustrated (Did you know I was briefly publisher of Classics Illustrated? About 18 months. I wound up suing the company that had the rights.) I got a lot of feedback from teachers who were actually excited about the proposed return of the imprint. Many years later at Book Expo America I found myself standing in line behind about a zillion school librarians, teachers and book-buyers waiting my turn for a really great poster promoting Mark Evanier’s excellent book about Jack Kirby.

So it was with a tiny bit of amazement that I saw the piece on Rich Johnston’s Bleeding Cool site about Maryland State Senator Nancy King campaign flyer. The photo is atop this column.

This picture promotes several questions:

1. Where did these young kids find so many comic books geared to their age? If they’re not in college, or at least in AP English, there simply aren’t very many comics for kids – and even fewer for kids that age. Have the Democrats been to a bookstore lately? I mean, you know, past the “organic cooking” aisle.
2. Why would not having teachers mean kids would, ipso facto, read comic books? C’mon, lady, come on up to the 1980s. They’d be playing hand-held video games and engaging in “social networking,” When I was that age, I read my Harvey Comics at home, often sharing with my friends as my aged teachers defined such behavior as “anti-social networking.”
3. How do I get the contract for selling comic books to local school children? I’ve got a Diamond account; I can get a van or something.
4. Oh, yeah. And when will the Democrats finally grow up?

If one has an understanding of post-World War II American political history, the answer to that last question is “you’re kidding me, right?”

Our schools have deteriorated to a point that it would probably be easier to burn them down than to fix them. And all the Democrats like Nancy King, supported by her local teachers’ union, can do is invoke the horror of comic books.

I’ve been saying this for over 40 years now. Please forgive me as I repeat it again. When it comes to book burning, Liberals are always the ones closest to the flames.

Thanks and a tip of the fright wig to my buddies Rich Johnston and to Glenn Hauman for the lead. Fellow-traveler, anarcho-syndicalist and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.