Why, Will: The Cowards of the Country

Everything is bad. And there are a few people to blame.

The Splash

When I’m good and angry and I want to wreck someone and the facts fit the moment, I reach for something special.

It’s not “asshole” (vague, common), nor “bastard” (weak) nor “motherfucker” (got a nice sound to it, but it’s not angry enough). And I don’t grab the ol’ “see you next Tuesday” or anything else dripping with misogyny.

No, if I want to gut punch a deserving dipshit with a word, it’s got to be the one I can say with the most contempt, the word that makes me angry to even think it, the name that curls my lips and twists my nose into a righteous sneer:

Coward.

It’s not the physical cowardice that gets me — society doesn’t work, after all, if we’re constantly brawling with one another. Rather, it’s the moral cowardice — the willingness to stare the right thing in its plain and obvious face and then do some other damned wrong thing — that burns me. The truly evil of this world are irredeemable, but the cowardly, the evil for convenience’s sake among us, are doing just as much harm, and they goddamned know better.

University of Alabama President Stuart Bell is a coward.

I found that out last year after Breitbart and other right-wing commentators came after Dr. Jamie Riley, the then-dean of students, for some old tweets that (correctly) suggested the United States is a racist country. Instead of publicly supporting an employee facing an organized brigade of bigots, Bell — as cowards often do — slunk into the shadows and quietly organized (or said nothing to prevent) Riley’s exodus from the university complete with an almost $350,000 settlement.

It was a situation that required leadership and maybe a scootch of sacrifice to bear the momentary spotlight of bad faith alt-right trolls to serve a higher purpose. But the president didn’t do nothing in the moment: Bell, without a single measure of self-awareness or shame, called for a committee on diversity. Because committees fix everything. Alabama deserved better, but it got what it has often received: morally deficient political expediency.

Or, you know, cowardice.

The United States finds itself in a similar moment with Donald Trump’s loss and subsequent refusal to concede the presidential election. Trump, though, is not a coward, as he lacks the requisite capacity; Trump might as well be a toddler, a slow dog or a loaf of bread for all of his ability to make morally informed choices. He is a festering canker in every way, and he still manages to disappoint. No, the cowards today are his fellow Republicans possessed of the same understanding of reality as the rest of us, the ones who know he lost and privately muse “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” or refuse to publicly acknowledge Biden’s victory. When they dare to be honest, they wallow in the safety of anonymity, all while that motherfucker does whatever he can to denigrate an election (and therefore threaten the core of American democracy) because he can’t cotton the idea of losing to “Sleepy Joe.”

The cadre of miscreants supporting the president know that questioning the legitimacy of the election is wrong. But they stay quiet to placate the asshole and continue to stoke the anti-truth base they have built. We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose, given the pliability of Republican morals these last four interminable years, but I thought there might be some final red line. I thought we’d back away from the politics of mutually assured destruction. I thought, when faced with a choice between the abyss and anything else, Mitch McConnell might not choose the inky black darkness.

I was wrong.

On Nov. 3, millions of Americans chanced the ravages of a pandemic to vote in person. Thousands of volunteers worked to enable their ability to exercise that right. Many of those voters and poll workers contracted the coronavirus that day.

Some will die.

Trump will spend the rest of his miserable, wasted life shitting on their sacrifice.

And an army of cowards will enable him.

William C. Nevin Memorial Pick of the Week

Bourbon. Comics. Whatever. It’s my pick.

This week? It’s “Spider-Man: Miles Morales.”

“Miles Morales” is a heckuva game, but that comes with a couple of important provisos: (1) Aside from the new console, it’s not much of an advancement over the original “Spider-Man” and (2) Given its length, it serves as something more like an incredibly meaty expansion rather than a sequel. But if you accept those things, it is easy to fall into this game like a warm bath, contentedly mashing buttons, clobbering henchmen and swinging from every building in a snowy, glittery NYC. Miles is a great character, and I think the designers really took the charges of “copaganda” from the first game to heart as the PDNY is barely referenced in “Miles Morales.”

Insomniac and Sony have a great franchise brewing. Maybe in a few years it will get the fully formed sequel it warrants.

And Now, Your Questions

Tweet me (@willnevin) or just scream at me with some stupid thing you want answered. If you don’t ask me questions, I’ll find you and beg you for them. Don’t make me beg.

@Asimov_fangirl: Hello! What is better to have as your first and start to fall in love with comics: a really good one, a really bad one or something in between?

Your first comic is a lot like your first serious-ish relationship: You’re going to be super into it, but it will take years to see it for what it was. In terms of unpacking, maybe it’s best that your first book not be something terrible, but conversely, do you want to spend your comic reading life trying to reach the high of the very best of Frank Miller while all you have left is every other average to terrible thing he did? Tough spot to be in.

But, like your first love, you’re going to enjoy it. So maybe the merits aren’t as important as we might think.

@FieldsofAthnry: Let’s suppose that you are a non-Christian singing “American Pie” as your karaoke entry. What do you replace “the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” with? (“Abram, Isaac, and Ya’akov” is taken)

I had hoped Weird Al’s “The Saga Begins” might have been of some use here, but it (“Met up with Darth Maul and now he’s toast”) absolutely was not. My best answer is “bourbon, hops and possum farts” — I’d hope the first two there are self-explanatory. As to the third, it fits the structure, and Pablo’s farts are incredibly cute.

@BigDadEnergy_: Is it worth buying a new video game console day 1?

I’ve had a Game Boy, a Super Nintendo, a Virtual Boy, a 3DS and Playstations 1-4, but the PS5 is the first console I’ve gotten on launch day. It’s been nice, but could I have waited? Of course — reddit is full of people complaining about hardware and software issues, the launch titles aren’t going to blow anyone away and the various shortages are a headache. (I paid double on eBay for a sold-out controller charger because the knockoff I got from Amazon is so shitty.) If I had infinite patience, I’d wait for the first console redesign: It’ll be smaller, cheaper and the catalog of games will be much deeper. But that’s years from now, and Miles Morales has shit that needs taken care of today.

@skeletonman20: why am I like this

You are like this because you are smart and cognizant of what’s going on in the world. I’ve always been a little jealous of those with religious faith; they can simply believe that a higher power will take care of them, and that everything will be OK or at least in accordance with His will. Without that faith, we are left to drift through a world rife with problems and miseries, a world in which we know that everything will not always be OK. So we do the best we can with what we have. We look for joy where we can find it. And we work to make the world a better place.

You are like this because you are a realist. It is the only way we can be.

@jbushwords: I spend more time googling young people slang than I do reading tweets. Should I even be on Twitter anymore?

Twitter is a shit bucket hellhole made even worse by these goddamn Fleets. I hate them so much — I hate the fact they hang out at the top of my screen, I hate that they’re so disconnected from the rest of the Twitter ecosystem and I hate that I can’t opt out of them. But even before Fleets, it was a miserable place; it’s terrible for the self-promotion of content, bad for intelligent discourse and a giant waste of time. The only thing worse than Twitter is Facebook. The only thing worse than Facebook is wailing on your genitals with a clawhammer. (Unless that’s your thing. Then, be sure to do it safely. Go with God, kinkster.)

We should have all deleted Twitter yesterday.

(Please share this article on Twitter, Loyal Content Consumer.)

The A+ WHY, WILL Loyal Content Consumer of the Week Double Bonus Question

@Asimov_fangirl: Hi! What in theory should be the ideal price for 22 page comics in the US? Should digital versions of those comics cost less? I know there are lot of factors but it intrigues me that reprints of those in Mexico are 50% cheaper

As someone who exclusively reads digital comics, I get the idea that digital comics should be cheaper. But think about what the cover price of a comic covers: the labor in its production (writer, pencils, inks, colors, editing), profit for the publisher and profit for the distributor. The actual cost in printing a comic is small compared to those, so I’m not surprised that digital and print comics are often priced the same. I can’t say with any confidence the strategy of the reprint pricing, but it would make sense that these are books that have already made money, and now, they’re serving as new entry points. (Image has done dollar reprints of many of its biggest series under a similar theory.)

My ideal price for a monthly book? $3-$5. Anywhere in there seems fair. Above and I think you’re getting greedy unless you can justify it with additional content. Below that and it seems too cheap to me.

The William C. Nevin Memorial-ier Extra Pick of the Week

Bourbon. Comics. Whatever. It’s my other pick.

This second pick of the week? “Ice Cream Man” #21

Read “Ice Cream Man.” You’re going to miss it when it’s gone.

Your ‘Why, Will’ Weekly Planner

Today, Thursday, Nov. 19: For my fellow Libras, here’s our daily horoscope from the Sydney Morning Herald: “Ruled by Venus, you’re a true romantic as well as being the sign associated with marriage. With the love planet in your sign, you’ll crave closeness and moments of passion and expressions of love. However, Mercury, the planet of communication, is also in your sign, so you’ll also want mental stimulation and lots of conversation.”

Friday: “Katamari Damacy Reroll,” a remaster of the first Katamari game, drops for PS4 (and 5, presumably) and Xbox One. Super cute game worth your time if you missed its first iteration 16 years ago. Jesus, that long? [Grote’s note: Naaaaaaa na nana nana na na nana na nana na ….]

Saturday: “SNL” takes off its second weekend in a row and will probably make it three with no new show the week of Thanksgiving. The show doesn’t feel like must-watch material from an artistic/comedic standpoint (Your answer to the last time it was will probably depend on when you started watching), but it still feels like a barometer for where we’re at as a culture — or at least what Lorne Michaels and his writers think. Season 46 has been fine so far — although one of the most promising things about the incoming Biden administration aside from a marked decrease in state-sponsored racism has to be the possible end of opening *every* show with a “this week in politics” skit.

Sunday: “Survivor Series” will once again mark the end of the three worst weeks of the year in WWE television. Why Vince feels the need to do the stakes-less Raw vs. Smackdown matches every year is beyond me, and the build to each one — with supposedly grown-ass adult characters all dressed in matching T-shirts and squabbling over who gets to be team captain — makes me feel stupid as fuck for ever watching this trash company. If there’s a definitive finish to Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre, I’m officially putting my money on a Roman vs. Rock Wrestlemania match. I’d also be willing to put my money on this show not being Undertaker’s “final farewell.”

Monday: Thanksgiving Week begins. Prepare yourselves accordingly.