Apparently Dead Superhero In 'Not Dead' Shocker

[alexsarll]

Stay Beautiful last night was so close to being good, if it hadn't been for a few too many people with a variety of attitude problems. Some of them blatantly townie types, but others looking like they belonged there. Even among a generation only a little younger, there's a real...discourtesy these days. Which in turn makes one feel like a disapproving old person, which doubtless only encourages them.

The great thing about the Sudan teddy incident is the way it has totally mainstreamed 'islamophobia' aka the legitimate realisation that just maybe this religion is not in fact making legitimate demands, but is dangerously insane. The Danish cartoon row...well, I guess political cartoonists aren't as sympathetic a focus for British public opinion as a well-meaning teacher overseas with good intentions, are they? In a sense they are setting out to offend, so protecting their right to do so isn't quite such an easy sell. Of course, the average liberal acquaintance is one thing - but you can be sure that if anyone is prepared to defend the islamic outrage, they'll be a Guardian reader. Step forward Tom Snow, who places the blame for the incident not with a bunch of psychos looking for offence wherever they can find it, but with the European tendency to like animals! "Many Muslims find our relationships with dogs particularly distasteful", he notes - so to avoid the risk of offending these reasonable chaps again, let's not have any tedies at all, and all shoot our pets!
Tosser.
In fairness to the Guardian, they have also printed Martin Amis' latest word on the absurd accusations recently levelled against him. Realising that everyone except the very slowest children in the class should already understand that islamophobia is not racism, but aware that said children really do need to be brought up to speed, for everyone else reading he really cuts loose with the rhetorical fireworks. I've always liked him more for his essays - and no, not just on this topic - than his fiction, and suspect that's how he'll be remembered.

Speaking of the slow children - Frank Miller seems to be making it increasingly clear for their benefit that All Star Batman And Robin is a comedy book. Not that I mind, because it's bloody funny. Even if the goddamn Batman didn't describe himself as the goddamn Batman once this issue.

Comments

[monkeyssk8.livejournal.com]

You gotta love sentences like this:

The ethos of relativism finds the demographic question so saturated in revulsions that it is rendered undiscussable.

Otherwise, what is Stay Beautiful?

[worldofagwu.livejournal.com]

- aw, no goddamns...? - for shame! ( - i think i counted 8 in the previous issue )

[augstone.livejournal.com]

yeah, amis' essay was pretty good. i esp. liked:

It ought to be a rule of the discourse, of any discourse, that one novelist should give another novelist the basic credit of not being a maniac.

In my own special way....

[mylifebythesea.livejournal.com]

Just read All Star Batman. It's the mirror world version of All Star Superman and, as you say, hilarious.

Also, Dan Dare was indeed brilliant.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the text and sorry for running out without saying goodbye - I had been intending to come back in. I had a very agreeable cigarette with a very convivial young man and I think I realised at that point that my evening had peaked and my nightbus sense started going off and sure enough I got to the stop and my bus arrived.

Stay Beautiful is still fun if you get slaughtered - the last really fun one I had was when Mel and I poledanced and we got told off and I fell down the stairs a bit.

[moleintheground.livejournal.com]

I'm a fuck Tom Snow up. God, how DESPERATE can you BE to pretend that whitey is ALWAYS WRONG?

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

I know we've spoken about this before, so I don't imagine I'll change your mind on this one now, but do you really not see that you and Tom Snow are both making the same error - namely you're assuming that all Muslims will think exactly teh same when it comes to this issue (or indeed any other 'Muslim' issue).

Only a few eejits in Sudan have been pushing the punishment of Ms Gibbons. It's certinaly not a 'whole of Islam' thing. Sudan has received very little support on this from other Muslim countries. Even the usual pricks liek Inayat Bunglawala haven't exactly been tame in their criticism of Sudan.

There are lots and lots of thing that you can criticise about Islam and about the way some Muslims interpret the faith. In many cases that's a majority of Muslims too, sadly. But every time there's some bad news story about Islam it defies logic to say 'You are a Muslism, some other Muslims did this, therefore you must support them'. You can't just see all Muslims as some homogenous block. It's not logical, and it is pretty offensive.

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