The Four Color Media Monitor

While most of the phony fuss over the author Chelsea Cain supposedly dumping her Twitter account because of vicious harassment seems to have worn off - probably because most people came to realize it was all a hoax - it appears Comics Beat is not retracting their own fake story, and not only that, they're even promoting a book by Southern Bastards writer Jason Latour, who has put out a "solidarity" tale, without any comment on whether the whole subject was for real or not:

Following the controversy surrounding Mockingbird writer Chelsea Cain’s harassment on and exit from Twitter, comics artists and writers overwhelmingly banded together to support Cain and take a stance against online bigotry.

Would that include anything like what Pamela Geller's ever received? If the following is any indication, probably not:

In a Tumblr post, Latour explained that he wanted to put the image “to better use than just a social media post.” He indicated that the money raised through sales of this variant will be split between the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU.

He's going to give it to those phonies? False samaritans who've practically ignored the kind of fiends who're willing to do even worse than just online bigotry, and attacked their critics instead? Latour sure is wasting everybody's tax dollars on the wrong sources, and by perpetuating a non-troversy, he's only trivializing the surrounding issues even more.

This is especially absurd when you consider that Mrs. Cain herself admitted her reasons for abandoning Twitter had nothing to do with the harassment her would-be supporters have been claiming, much of the time refusing to provide any proof for. Cain herself said on the site she runs:

...know that I did not leave Twitter because of rape threats or because someone had posted my address, or any of the truly vile tactics you hear about. I left Twitter because of the ordinary daily abuse that I decided I didn’t want to live with anymore. The base level of casual crassness and sexism.

Sure, by the time I deactivated my account on Thursday morning, the whole thing had imploded. And I bet that some of the thousands of posts on my feed were really really vicious. But I don’t know. Because you know what? I didn’t read them. That’s the power we have, right? If a stranger yells at you on the street? You walk away.

Let me be clear: I did not leave Twitter because I was trolled; I was trolled because I said I was going to leave Twitter.

See that? She herself has admitted what her would-be defenders aren't: it wasn't because she'd received anything truly abominable.

Robert Kroese explains why this could've all been happening:

So how do we explain this almost immediate, lockstep reaction from those covering the comic book industry? Well, the obvious answer is that this story was essentially written before Mockingbird was even cancelled. It’s the same story that entertainment journalists (and I use the term loosely) have been telling about Gamergate, the Sad Puppies/Hugo Awards, the Ghostbusters reboot, and a hundred other lesser-known incidents. Anytime the dominant progressive/social justice/feminist agenda in the entertainment industry is attacked, the media responds with these predictable, fill-in-the-blanks stories about right-wingers, misogynist trolls, shitlords, and the “toxic culture” that is threatening the moral and intellectual purity of whatever niche of the industry we happen to be talking about. It’s vapid nonsense, but every nontroversy they can make up becomes more “evidence” for the narrative.

One question remaining is whether Cain herself was involved in the manufacturing of this particular issue. I get the feeling she probably wasn't, yet isn't doing enough to dispel the fakery, and not asking sites like Comics Beat to quit pushing a phony narrative that was far from true. Even Latour'd do well to quit exploiting this as some kind of a scheme to swindle money for the sake of sources that do more harm than good.

There are some very nasty trolls about the internet, no doubt about that. (Some of whom may even include Cain's alleged supporters playing both sides of the same coin.) But in this case, it's clear that whatever she encountered regarding the Mockingbird solo book was anything but revolting attacks, with very little or nothing to back up the claims, and the comics press' willingness to push a false narrative only hurts actual victims of any similar cases.

Labels: indie publishers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics