Days of the Ridiculous
"It's all so goddamned ridiculous," someone wrote; I think it was Dan Clowes.
In the wake of the events of 11 September, I imagine quite a lot of you have been going through a reassessment of your life. The choices you've made, and the manner in which you spend your time. Especially your free time. Do any of us spend enough time with those we love? Especially those of us with children. You know who you are. Oftentimes on my two-hour total daily roundtrip commute, I find myself thinking how that time could be better spent. Reading to my kids. Playing with them, taking a walk to the corner store. There's so little time. And whose fault is that? Mine.
At least one comics creator of my acquaintance says he has been unable to create anything for over a week, as the gravity of the recent past and the potential horrors of the near future weigh heavily on his psyche. I know how he feels. As someone who spent 8 hours a day, every day, live on the air talking about 11 September, I'm more than a little numb. And horrified. Not only by what happened, but by how normal everything seems to be becoming. By how easy it is to slip back into old routines and allow yourself to forget that 6,000 people died horribly for no good goddamned reason whatsoever.
As the World Trade Center holocaust unfolded, I had been at my new job less than a week. It was one hell of a way to get started at a new job in broadcast journalism, and I wish more than just about anything that Tuesday, 11 September had just been another slow news day. It wasn't.
As the days turned into weeks, people seemed to come down a bit from the ultra-high tension that we were feeling in the hours immediately following the mindless, pointless, stupid slaughter of 6,000 of our fellow human beings. After three days or so, the 24-hour news coverage tapered off, and now, in the third week since Everything Changed, the new TV season has begun. The season premiere of Angel went off without even one break-in news update. The reason I know this is I was able to watch an entire hour of entertainment television programming without turning away to find the latest news. It was, you should know, the first time since the 11 September that I was able to sit still long enough to watch any kind of television that did not focus on the terrorist attacks. And yes, I feel guilty about it. But not guilty enough. I should feel worse. As my old friend Steve Cole once said, There should be more here.
One of the most appalling displays of stupidity I've ever seen took place in some posts on the Warren Ellis Forum arguing stupid old rhetoric about a review I wrote a lifetime ago. It is astonishing to me beyond all comprehension that artist Cully Hamner would still feel the need to argue whether I told Paul Jenkins to fuck off in a review of the Wildstorm Summer Special or not. It's beyond my ability to cognate that Warren Ellis thinks it's important to make statements (in regards to online reviewers) that "If they were saying anything worth listening to, they'd be writing comics, not reviews." It's not that he thinks that reviewers have nothing to say that bothers me. Artists have belittled critics as a first line of defense against ego bruises since time immemorial. It's not even the stupidity of implying that the only valid forum to say something worth listening to is in the context of a comic book (!) story. Just -- what a nitwit to think that this arguing over fanboy mentalities and bad reviews this soon after perhaps the worst single day in human history is in any way valid, important, or even acceptable.
That Cully Hamner, just two weeks after 11 September would say in regard to me, "You'd never hear Augie, or Randy Lander, or Don MacPherson tell anyone to fuck off," and think he's somehow made some sort of important point, is monumentally stupid. Augie, Randy and Don have all at one time or another said mind-boggingly idiotic things. So have I. So has Cully Hamner and Warren Ellis. So what?
Not everyone who works in comics has proven themselves to be a fool in recent days, although it's safe to say Cully Hamner and Warren Ellis both have done so with an arrogance and wrongheadedness that is staggering to behold. Tony Isabella and Ted Rall have written very different, but equally compelling pieces in the wake of 11 September. It's brought me new respect and admiration for both of them. It's good to know some people have their goddamned heads screwed on straight. At least, so far.
There are things I regret since I started doing this a few years ago, incidents I wish had not happened, but never once have I tried to do anything but bring you the truth as I see it. This has upset many, many people, who apparently think it is my responsibility to bring you the truth as they see it.
Every one of you who ever thought I had something important to say, and wrote to tell me you appreciated my view, has made this worth doing. I'm grateful as well to those who disagreed but were mature enough to realize that disagreeing does not mean we have to despise each other. You've all made this worthwhile.
Hard to say where things go from here. Suspension of the Constitution? National ID cards? Internment camps? I've heard all these and more passed on as perfectly valid scenarios, with barely a peep of outrage from most mainstream commentators and journalists. What the hell is going on?
For me, I have a new job to continue settling in to. I have children who deserve more attention than they are getting from me.
So I'm going to go eat breakfast with them. Talk to you soon.
-- Alan David Doane