Dave Sim's blogandmail #256 (May 25th, 2007)

1. A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the raising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time.

2. It makes great sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society.

3. A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus.

4. So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice.

5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.

6. It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be women only environments from which men are excluded.

7. Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society.

8. It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public.

9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically.

10. Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone.

11. Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals.

12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.

13. A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself.

14. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.

15. Legislature Seats must be allocated to women and women must be allowed to bypass the democratic winnowing process in order to guarantee female representation and, thereby, make democracy fairer.

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Okay, we have no headline capability, but it is the twenty-fifth of the month and as all good Blog & Mail readers know, that means it's

FEMINISTS GET A FREE RIDE IN OUR SOCIETY DAY.

Any word from Jackie Estrada or Heidi Macdonald or the Friends of Lulu about my suggestion that they solicit the FOL membership to find out how many female comics professionals would be willing to sign a petition that could be used by the CBLDF denouncing censorship or why that suggestion was rejected by the original FOL board back in 1997? Nope. QED, folks. FEMINISTS GET A FREE RIDE IN OUR SOCIETY. If you have a minute, In honour of FEMINISTS GET A FREE RIDE IN OUR SOCIETY DAY, please actually review the Fifteen Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast at your leisure rather than just scrolling quickly through them as you do every other day of the month, pretending a) that they don't actually exist and b) you could refute them with ease if you weren't so busy doing other more important things and c) who cares anyway? Remember intellectual dishonesty starts on feminism's doorstep and it's up to you (and YOU and YOU) to do what you can, personally, to get society back to a more sensible and genuinely fair (for BOTH sexes) track.



Okay, secure in your intellectual dishonesty, you can stop scrolling down now and actually read this part since it has nothing to do with feminism:



I had had an idea for some visual comedy that could be accomplished in ten minutes or less (the Challenge of YouTube!) that involved me dressing up in a Green Lantern costume and announcing that I was running for President of the United States. That was the first 10-minute clip. The second ten-minute clip would be a mock press conference, again, with me in a Green Lantern costume:



Yahoo #1: I'd like to ask the candidate what his stand is on the War in Iraq.



Dave: [using Bill Clinton's mock sincerity voice and "gesturing with a pointed thumb" technique] ["I did not have sex with that woman, that Ms. Lewinsky."] I'm very glad that you asked me that question. There is no issue that more divides the American people than the War in Iraq. Let me turn that around for a minute and ask YOU, "What is YOUR view of the War in Iraq?"



Yahoo #1: Uhh – Well, I think it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place and I think we should withdraw immediately.



Dave: And I agree with you. One hundred percent. I, too, think it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the first place. And I, too, think we should withdraw immediately.



(the Yahoos murmur amongst themselves)



Yahoo #2: But…Dave…that's not TRUE. You've said repeatedly that you think the invasion of Iraq was a GREAT idea.



Dave: That's very true. [directly into the camera] But when I expressed THOSE opinions I was expressing them as Dave Sim, CITIZEN. However, now I am campaigning to become the forty-fourth President of the United States. And I intend to be the President not of HALF of the American people. But to be the President of ALL the American people.



Yahoo #2: But…you have to take a stand one way or the other.



Dave: Allow me…with all due respect…to disagree with you on that point. And further, allow me to show you exactly what I mean. [to Yahoo #3] Tell me, what's YOUR opinion on the War in Iraq?



Yahoo #3: Uh. Well. I'm not crazy about it, but …now that we're there, I think we have to finish the job. We can't just leave the Iraqi people hanging in the lurch.



Dave: [with emphatic thumb gestures] And I agree with you. One hundred percent. I too, am not fond of the War in Iraq. But I, too, think that now that we're there. I, too, think we have to finish the job that we have started. And I, too, believe we can't just leave our Iraqi friends and allies hanging in the lurch. [turning back to Yahoo #2, gesturing with arms outspread and raised eyebrows: "See?"]



Yahoo #2: [irritated] But…but…you can't do that for an entire Presidential term.



Dave: [with emphatic thumb gestures] Allow me, again…with all due respect…to disagree with you on that point. [looking directly into the camera] With your help. And with your prayers. And with your assistance. I believe I can do EXACTLY that. Until the third week in January of 2017.



Yahoo #1: Let me…shift gears a bit…here and ask you about a reference to Green Lantern being a CANADIAN super-hero in your announcement yesterday.



Dave: [facing directly towards the camera with emphatic thumb gestures] I am very glad you asked me about that. It's a little known fact that John Broome, the creator of the Silver Age Green Lantern, specified that Green Lantern's alter ego, Hal Jordan, was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.



Yahoo #1: The reason I ask is because I'm a huge Green Lantern fan and, frankly, I've never heard of that before.



Dave: [facing directly into the camera with emphatic thumb gestures] That information was contained in a notebook that Mr. Broome kept at the time. Which. Unfortunately. was destroyed in a freak accident shortly after he wrote it down.



Yahoo #1: Then, uh, how did YOU find out about it?



Dave: [completely silent, his mouth a hard thin line, gradually starting to turn red and obviously breathing heavily and grinding his teeth] [strips off his Green Lantern mask and throws it in the direction of the Yahoos] All right. You don't want me to run for President? Fine. I'm not running for President. You HAPPY now? Hanh? Is THAT what you wanted? You know why you can't find good candidates? It's…because of this relentless…grinding…inquisition…



That's about as far as I got with it. When I went to buy the Green Lantern costume at the costume shop it was locked up tight as a drum midday on a Friday. I can take a hint. I mean, I thought it was funny but I'm always guessing wrong about human nature: people are deadly serious when I think they should be light-hearted and light-hearted when I think they should be deadly serious. It's also hard to know what YouTube is actually about this early in its genesis. A lot of the appeal seems to be watching people embarrassing themselves by being unconscious about how bad they are at something or by demonstrating a hypocritical switch in viewpoints (which was part of the motivation for my doing a mock presidential campaign that was less than twenty minutes in length). I thought if nothing else a "lead shot" of Dave Sim in a Green Lantern costume a) sitting at a presidential style desk and b) standing behind a lectern would at least brighten up the "menu" of YouTube clips of Dave Sim. Of course you can't get rid of that once it exists and it would certainly suit the feminist agenda to use the clip of Poor, Hopelessly Crazy Foolish Dave Sim the Evil Misogynist in the Green Lantern costume anytime that I'm discussed anywhere in audio-visual land from now until the end of time. So it's all for the best, right? Uhhh…right?



The Yahoos suggested we should act out parts of High Society and do an interview for indyspinnerrack. Which we did. Whether or not we all embarrassed ourselves will probably be established by the number of hits that it gets. Or maybe not.



Anyway, I thought I'd type out those parts of the Green Lantern bit while it was still fresh in my mind. I have no idea how many people laughed when they read the above and how many people are just aching with false sympathy for Foolish Dave Sim the Evil Misogynist that he thinks any of that was remotely funny. That might yet prove to be what YouTube is about: people not knowing how they're "supposed" to react to things and, so, having a more and more difficult job being politically correct since there's no audience reaction or Gallup Poll or Neilson ratings for stuff on YouTube for them to make sure that they're reacting the "right way" to what they're viewing (of course that will probably change if and when YouTube starts posting – if they haven't already – what are the highest "rated" clips with the most number of hits) . Given enough time and what I see as the inevitable complete collapse of network television YouTube might prove to be the catalyst for a worldwide Personality Meltdown among those people for whom "being politically correct" – i.e. viewing what they're "supposed" to be viewing -- is a high ideal and not God's whoopee cushion.



Hey, let's hope so, eh?



Tomorrow: My Contact at Marvel, The Comic Eye cover and perhaps more

There's more for you in today's blog and…maiillll.

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REPLIES POSTED ON THE CEREBUS YAHOO! GROUP
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If you wish to contact Dave Sim, you can mail a letter (he does NOT receive emails) to:

Aardvark Vanaheim, Inc
P.O. Box 1674
Station C
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 4R2

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