The Four Color Media Monitor

Ace of Spades finds that DC appears to be joining Google in appeasing the Chinese Communists by conceiving a team called the Socialist Red Guardsmen:

I am less bothered by the multi-culti crap than I am by the multinationalist stuff. The Chinese government can be described in different ways -- strategic competitor, rival, enemy biding its time -- but it cannot be described as an ally. And yet DC Comics has decided, it seems, to propagandize on their behalf.

Liberals often criticize corporations for not having the interests of the American people in mind... and they are, often, right. They have their own interests in mind, which is the way of the world.

But I'm becoming a bit more liberal in my view of corporations, as I see DC Comics attempting to help the Chinese government by giving them their own super-team, and Google censoring on behalf of the Chinese government, etc.

What makes me uncomfortable here is the name this team is being given - Socialist. It does little more than to whitewash the fact that socialism isn't exactly favorable to free market trade, and in the case of communists, it's degrading. Just what exactly is DC trying to prove by pandering to a bunch of anti-democratic kooks whose leading offenses include their limit on reproduction? This is certainly far removed from when the Flash featured three Russian defect speedsters, Red Trinity, who also called themselves the Kapitalist Kouriers, and made their living doing speedy delivery jobs.

China may not be anywhere near Saudi Arabia's level of human rights violations, but whitewashing communism, as this seems to be bound to do, is still a serious wrong.

And speaking of the House of Saud, here's the best line from Ace:

I can't wait until DC unveils the "New Jihadis," a super-team of radicalized Muslims who gain their powers from an unshakable belief in Allah and who have all sorts of neat powers, like being able to blow up civilians without remorse. Hey, it's an underserved segment of the market; might as well try to make a buck
there too, huh?

Yeah, I figure. And the New Jihadis will even go around gang-raping defenseless women because, if Mohammed could do it to the 9-year old Ayisha, and, as told in Sura 4:23-24, rape is fully allowed, they feel it's totally within their right to commit similar crimes. Yep, wouldn't that be a perfect role model. Ick.

And one more note on the Socialist Red Guardsmen: this is probably a joke on Ace's part, but oddly enough, what do their members have for powers?

PS, DC is kind of tone-deaf as regards its Chinese super-team. One character, "Mother of Champions," gives birth to a "litter" of 25 super-warriors every three days. Another character, "Seven Deadly Brothers," can split into seven different fighters.

Odd, isn't it, that two of the Chinese teams' members have the power of superpopulating, eh? Why no character named "One in a Billion"?

Might as well call the team "The Yellow Hordes" and be done with it.

Hmm. Maybe. That aside, as insulted as I am by how they're naming the super-team Socialist, it's funny how one of them seemingly does something that goes against current beliefs by those one-child-policy advocates in Communist China. Although the second one's power comes fairly close to reflecting how some couples in China fell under the belief that having a son instead of a daughter* is the way to go. I know it's a takeoff on that old short story, "Seven Chinese Brothers", but still, it succeeds in evoking that Commie notion from the past decade all the same.

(Eerily enough though, "Deadly" comes close to describing the sibling in the original short story who could swallow the sea: the young boy who was helping him mop up the fish in the sea stayed out in the open too long, and the one-in-seven couldn't keep holding the water inside, so it all poured out and the younger one drowned. The versions I read of it though, didn't seem to raise the issues of if that one-in-seven was to blame for causing the youngster's death or not. He was just taken to be executed, and was replaced by another brother and another one until the court decided to just let him go! So much for a real court case there, eh?)

* According to CBS's 60 Minutes, that's something they're trying to change now. Well at least that's good.

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