Nov 13th, 2008 at 10:27 am
President Geek
It seems that Barack Obama, like Rachel Maddow and all decent progressives, is a comic book fan. Excellent news for America.
74 Responses to “President Geek”
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November 13th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Yes, but does he wear pajamas in the basement writing his blog like Rachel showed us?
BTW, anyone think it’s a good idea for him to put out a blog? Who listens to Saturday morning radio broadcasts from the President anymore? It would be far more productive to get even a couple sentences from the White House every day.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Another president who prefers to escape from reality? Not such a good sign…
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/
November 13th, 2008 at 10:42 am
37. He apparently favors allowing Joe Lieberman to continue as Chairman of Homeland Security.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Comic collecting, I approve of. Conan the Barbarian? Not so sure. The Wire, Bob Dylan, and Spike Lee make up for it, though.
But nevermind that–he had a pet ape! Named Tata! How cool is that?
It’s like the premise for a really bad ’80’s comedy–the President and his old friend, the ape. Zany hijinks, tired banana jokes, and monkeys giving the finger, ensue.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I feel dissed. I’m now an indecent progressive per MattY…. guess I’d better go buy a comic book.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Can we trust a president who doesn’t drink coffee?
November 13th, 2008 at 11:00 am
And his favorite TV show is The Wire!
November 13th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Can we get any kind of reaction from Matt on possible cabinet picks? Larry Summers is still getting mentioned as a top name for Treasury Secretary, Obama is talking about developing a parallel legal system to try Guantanamo prisoners, and every other post here is about how neat Barack Obama’s quirky little life is. He reads comics! Babies are named after him! Yeah, Matt, we know you like him, now how about writing something about what he’s actually doing?
November 13th, 2008 at 11:03 am
And his favorite TV show is The Wire!
So is McCain’s.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Can someone set up a petition to get Obama to go to Indonesia to pick up another pet monkey? Like yesterday? “Mr Prime Minister this is my Chief of Staff Rahm and my VP Joe. This? Oh this is just Tata…my protector monkey. Don’t make eye contact, she can get territorial.”
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
November 13th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Yeah, Matt, we know you like him, now how about writing something about what he’s actually doing?
Well, we don’t actually know what Obama’s actually doing. We hear a lot of chatter about what he might do, and what people think he will do, and most of it is contradictory. So talking about that stuff is problematic at best.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I was telling my gf yesterday this great news, although she mocked me for some strange reason. Unfortunately, there are too few of us African-American comic book fans out there. Hopefully, once he’s taken care of the AA taking care of your children stuff, he can quickly shift to encouraging comic’s. Although someone needs to push him away from the Conan, and on to something like Y:The Last Man or Secret Invasion.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:16 am
I haven’t played with comics since college, but I had a collection of Conan comic books myself. Started reading them back in high school when a upper classman brought them to study hall and shared them with me.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Obama: Crom-dammit Rahm!
November 13th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Some of you people are still bitching that Obama should do more to humiliate attention whore Lieberman? This commenter on Wonkette had it right: “Oh, that is so demeaning for Jackass Joe. The new President condescends to let him keep his job, and lets him know that his treason was meaningless, fruitless, and pathetic.”
November 13th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I was also surprised by Conan. I’m guessing that’s escapism from having to be so dang calm all the time.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:30 am
“Comic collecting, I approve of. Conan the Barbarian? Not so sure.”
Dude! Even if you don’t care for Roy Thomas, Obama having an appreciation for Barry Windsor-Smith and John Buscema is all good.
Mike
November 13th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Obama’s an extreme outlier if he really likes comic books. Most adult male comic book fans are pathologically introverted Beta loser nerds who live in Mom’s basement, are either cadaverously thin or grotesquely obese, would sooner stare into the midday Sun for five minutes than make a second’s eye contact with another person, and can’t score with women to save their lives.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Don’t forget the Cheetos, Peter.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Derrick, you just made me think that Matt should do a post where we can talk about what comics we read. Y: The Last Man was a great comic! Is that what people around here read, or is this more of a tights and capes crowd? Are we all hip and indie or do we lean more towards the catalogs of the big two publishers?
Matt, we need this thread!
November 13th, 2008 at 11:47 am
So Peter, do you have any evidence for all of that, or are you just repeating a stereotype?
November 13th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Most adult male comic book fans are… Does this incredible statement include graphic novel fans? If so, I must be the exception. I’m pathologically extroverted living in my own home, slightly over average weight for my height, make eye contact a bit too much, and, hmmm, I won’t respond to the last part in case my wife is reading this.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Survey 100 random women and ask them whether they’d drop their panties for (a) a comic book fan or (b) an NFL season ticket holder.
My reasoned guess is that, oh, about 100 of them would choose option (b).
November 13th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Peter,
Is this really the place for you to work out your self-loathing?
November 13th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
about 100 of them would choose option (b).
I guess I am an extreme outlier.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Survey 100 random women and ask them whether they’d drop their panties for (a) a comic book fan or (b) an NFL season ticket holder.
If the options are used as proxies for disposable income, astute women will inquire into titles and back numbers before dismissing (a).
November 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Peter,
My fiance collects comic books and I think it’s rather endearing. Some women appreciate men with brains. Makes things all the more interesting for us. Don’t get me wrong, there are women who’ll go for the brainless brawny type but only because they’re that much easier to lead around.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Peter,
Is this really the place for you to work out your self-loathing?
Nice guess, Sigmund, but I don’t collect comic books.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
A Spider-Man fan in the White House? It’s too good to be true. I’ve lost count of the number of times over the last eight years that I’ve wished Bush had learned the same lesson as Peter Parker: With great power comes great responsibility. By Crom!
I wonder where Obama stands on Howard the Duck???
November 13th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
“Nice guess, Sigmund, but I don’t collect comic books.”
So…one just sexually molested you, or something?
Mike
November 13th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
General: What is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
General: That is good! That is good.
I won’t be satisfied until McCain weeps openly on C-SPAN.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Jesus, people, don’t feed the troll. Do you really think Peter’s comment at 11:34 had any point other than to get attention?
Are we all hip and indie or do we lean more towards the catalogs of the big two publishers?
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. You mention Y: The Last Man, which was published by Vertigo, and isn’t Vertigo a branch of DC Comics? To answer the question personally, I’d say both. Watchmen and Y: The Last Man for the “hip and indie” side, and Invincible and Blue Beetle for the tights and capes side.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
General: What is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.
General: That is good! That is good.
This is full of win.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Jesus, people, don’t feed the troll. Do you really think Peter’s comment at 11:34 had any point other than to get attention?
Think again, Einstein. In the real world, as opposed to the fantasy land where you live, huge numbers of men are being left involuntary single because woman flock to so-called Alpha males. Why do you think men pay thousands of dollars for “pick-up artist” seminars? Why do you think there’s a burgeoning mail-order bride industry? Why do you think outfits like eHarmony.com and Match.com have far too many men and far too few women? Why do you think any woman under age 50 who isn’t frighteningly ugly or fat can have sex almost on demand if she so chooses? Given how miserably difficult the dating and relationships world has begun for most men who aren’t testosterone-dripping, NFL season ticket-owning Alpha studs, being interested in nerdy things like comic books is a disastrous mistake for a man. Most any guy who thinks “Gee, Obama likes comics, guess it’s okay for me to like them too” will end up with a “romantic” life consisting of hot dates with Mrs. Palm and her five daughters.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
There once was a time when decent progressives were actually expected to have or at least strive for a somewhat solid grounding in philosophy and related, boring stuff (and no, geeks, Asimov, Lem, Heinlein, Clarke etc. don’t count – sorry).
November 13th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Nope, no self-loathing there!
November 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
There once was a time when decent progressives were actually expected to have or at least strive for a somewhat solid grounding in philosophy and related, boring stuff (and no, geeks, Asimov, Lem, Heinlein, Clarke etc. don’t count – sorry).
Well, there was a time when everyone was; I didn’t know that progressives were particularly singled out. And either way, it’s not like a somewhat solid grounding in highbrow stuff and an appreciation for lowbrow stuff are mutually exclusive.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Well, we don’t actually know what Obama’s actually doing.
Since when has that stopped Yglesias, or bloggers in general, from commenting on a possible policy or political appointee? George Bush hasn’t bombed Iran, and it looks like he probably won’t, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from weighing in on what a disaster it would be if he went and bombed Iran, which was a good thing, because it provided additional public pressure against bombing Iran.
If Obama appoints Larry Summers or someone like him to be head of the Treasury Department, that’s going to be a very bad thing – and a lot of bloggers will have been sitting on their hands giggling about Obama’s favorite comic books and Obama’s secret service code names in the meantime, which is just really, really stupid. The last eight years should have taught you people that presidents aren’t to be trusted to do the right thing, and that Democrats aren’t to be trusted to do the right thing even when you apply tons of pressure to them. Right now people like Yglesias are applying no pressure at all to Obama, and he’s sending every signal that he’s going to the right.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Well, there was a time when everyone was
Cyrus @ 40, by “everyone,” do you mean white upper-class males?
I probably would rate the first volume of Runaways over Y: The Last Man, but BKV is mostly all good. And I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Ex Machina in any of the comics threads Matt’s had — it’s good stuff, if sometimes topically late.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
That reminds me of a quote…
November 13th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
by marked decline in such evidence of mental retardation as the incessant reading of comic books by adults.
Ladies and gentlemen, let us now consider the evidence for the case of Barack Obama’s mental retardation…
November 13th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
“Don’t make eye contact, she can get territorial.”
Not as much as Cameron does. When she first met Riley she marched right up to her and stared at her, until Riley was uncomfortable. John had to tell her not to stand so close to people. Then she crawled into John’s bed this week to try to get rid of Riley. The fans are assuming she’ll off Riley altogether behind John’s back if she can.
Meanwhile, strasmangelo jones has it right: as usual, Matt is fixated on irrelevancies while Obama lays plans to expand the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. and apparently intends to enlist every male between the ages of 18 and 25 – Matt, being 27 or 28, misses out – into some sort of paramilitary “Peace Corps” here in the US. If that doesn’t sound like the “Hitler Youth”, I don’t know what does.
I predict four years from now, we’ll be talking about the “good ol’ days of George W. Bush”.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I object to the classification of comics as “low brow”. Indeed, I object to just about all sweeping generalizations of what comics “are”. Comics are a medium with a wide variety of styles, genres, etc. and are unclassifiable in any way other than the things which make a comic a comic, that is, all comics are sequential art.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Leeee, yeah, BKV is pretty awesome no matter what he’s writing.
Cyrus, yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that “indie” and “mainstream” were mutually exclusive groups. I’m just interested in what people here read in the comics world and thought a thread dedicated to sharing thoughts would be an interesting thing for Matt to do.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Well, there was a time when everyone was; I didn’t know that progressives were particularly singled out.
If you’re part of the establishment or just a conformist, you don’t need to know such things, since you have overwhelming force of the status quo behind you. If, however, you want to effect societal change, as progressives and others do, a good grounding in philosophy etc. is necessary, because you will have to convince a lot of people of changing their ways in favour of something new and your assumptions will be questioned constantly.
What makes you an Alpha male is coming across as very self-confident, and you can combine that with any interests you want. Indeed, doing whatever the heck you want as opposed to doing stuff just because someone tells you the ladies will like it is part of being very self-confident.
Since the women I like don’t like alpha males and the women who like me don’t like alpha males, that’s not really my problem. I guess doing stuff just because someone tells you to is a bad thing. Still, sometimes it helps if people tell somebody that they should stop being self-centered geeks and pull their head out of their @ss.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Another president who prefers to escape from reality?
No, no. There’s nothing at all wrong with escaping from reality, even for the President.
The problem with the current jackass is that he never ever returned to reality.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:02 am
I’m currently a few chapters into Dreams From My Father; several of these factoids (comics, Indonesian meats and “street urchins” (the Telegraph’s term, not Obama’s), Tata the orangutan, and “Bar”) are straight out of that section of the book.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:26 am
DTM, you are right and truth be told I myself am bit of a film geek, my work involves a lot of geekery and many of my friends are a bit geeky when it comes to their respective fields. That can actually be quite interesting, because you learn a lot about different areas when you sit around with e.g. the policy geek, the history geek and the photography geek. But I think it’s important to be able to shut up when things get too geeky and to keep an open mind for other things. For most people this comes naturally as they grow a bit older and are exposed to different social and cultural contexts. But some geeks seem to never learn this, prefer to stay in their bubble and surround themselves exclusively with like minded people – and that is a bit sad, because they don’t grow. Of course there are a lot of self-centered non-geeks too.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Although I might note I think there are many a “geek” in that sense who retreat into the world of sports, and so to bring this full circle, I think you can easily be a “geek” in that sense who owns NFL season tickets.
The difference is that women don’t have any problem with men who are total sports nuts, or sports geeks if you will, even though most women aren’t as interested in sports. Women do have a problem with men who are geeks with respect to such things as science fiction and comic books.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:28 am
The difference is that women don’t have any problem with men who are total sports nuts, or sports geeks if you will, even though most women aren’t as interested in sports. Women do have a problem with men who are geeks with respect to such things as science fiction and comic books.
Wow. I think someone needs to meet more actual women. The ones in three dimensions would be a good start.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
The difference is that women don’t have any problem with men who are total sports nuts, or sports geeks if you will, even though most women aren’t as interested in sports. Women do have a problem with men who are geeks with respect to such things as science fiction and comic books.
My fiancee has her own list of set-asides from the household comic pile. She doesn’t read BRPD, but does read Ulitmate Spider-Man and Usagi Yojimbo.
You’ve been hanging out with the wrong girls, Peter.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I’ve heard some testimony on the subject but Peter is the real expert on girls here (I’ve never interacted with any myself) but is it true that girls like to shop and play with Barbies?
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