The following is an open letter to Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Spotify, from Matty Boy Anderson. Mr. Anderson is a 28-year veteran of newspaper comics, and has self-published his own comic books for equally as long. He has created Internet content for 20 years, and authored three websites. In 2008, after three years of production, he released a homemade movie that won Best Animated Feature at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival.
In 1993, Rhino Records released the two-volume hardcore punk compilation Faster & Louder, containing a cornucopia of gems from the golden age of the genre. The covers unfolded to reveal spectacular art by the great Gary Panter (above image, Jimbo), and incisive liner notes that briefly break down every track, by Brooklyn record collector and writer Johan Kugelberg.
The hieroglyph depicted in the “punch panel” of this strip represents a circular struggle many of us are grappling with right now. We want to knock it off with the political shit, but we also want a valid excuse for indulging in our baser urges.
We need to talk. Does that phrase make you uncomfortable? Good.
Because yes, we’re breaking up. It’s been a long time in coming.
The problem is, you want to be uncomfortable, and you want everyone else to be even more so. You’re just a malcontent. A killjoy. And despite what you might presume, I am not.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
From “Prince Variant: Seller of Collectibles”, BIUL #2 (2015).
More accurately, an object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless a force acts upon it. This is Newton’s law of motion. It applies to the average blogger thusly; if you’re having a good posting run, it will continue until some force acts upon it.
I adore them. Their art, their culture, their contributions to the enlightenment of our world. Hate me all you want, but I never felt prouder of Donald Trump than I did when he refused to shake Angela Merkel’s hand for a photo op. Trump didn’t want to get France’s blood all over his hand, and Merkel’s mitts are positively oozing with the spilt plasma of Europe.
Last year, all I wanted to do was crack jokes about Hillary Clinton’s ever-smug face. Her daughter Chelsea, too. Throw in that awful Debbie Wasserman Shultz, and you’ve got a trifecta of ghoulish visages I was literally salivating to goof on. Caricature unflatteringly, at the least.
And I didn’t.
I didn’t make fun of the women at the Trump rally, either. I couldn’t; they were all attractive, and could possibly have shamed me as a man.
While the entire media industry decided to make fun of Donald Trump’s face, like a bus full of second-graders, I didn’t stoop to their level. And oh, they had a field day. They’re still doodling him as an anus, or a Cheeto. I’ve seen that illustration of Trump as a shit-spattered baby so many times I could forge it from memory.
Imagine if legendary and revered comedian Bill Hicks hadn’t died in 1994.
Some people believe Alex Jones is really Bill Hicks. I am not among them.
What if- just hear me out- he supported Trump in 2016? How would that make you feel about him? What if he’d gone “right-wing”, pre- or post-9/11? Would he still be referenced in Tool songs?
I won’t touch it. I don’t respond well to condescension. I could contract full-blown AIDS, “Dear White People” could have the cure, and I’d die happily, blissfully ignorant, broth bowl in hand, tumbling to the linoleum with a smile.
Any white person who would willfully watch something titled “Dear White People” is fearful of people who aren’t white. Period.