The Four Color Media Monitor

The Washington Post wrote up an item about Tidal Wave Productions, a publisher in Oregon that's producing political comics about current USA candidates, both liberal and conservative, and supposedly avoids partisan leanings. One of their writers said:

TidalWave’s comics paint their biographic subjects as neither superheroes nor saints, though the stories tend toward an appealing glow. “Since these are profiles designed for readers of all ages,” Frizell says, “TidalWave wants them unbiased and positive.

“I mention some of the more incendiary things about each candidate,” he notes, “but don’t really flesh those moments out to their fullest.”

Instead, he tries to home in a universal aspect about a life story that readers find relatable. “Sometimes, it’s a moment from their childhood,” he says. “At other times, something happens in their career that drives the narrative [that] humanizes them and makes their stories accessible.”

But what if the candidates in question have some revolting personality traits about them, among other reprehensible matters? The writer in charge of these latest ventures previously scripted "Female Force: Eliabeth Warren" for Tidal Wave, and she's been slammed by Cherokee Nation for falsely claiming to be of part Indian background, and she also falsely claimed she'd been fired as a teacher for being pregnant, when her work contract simply wasn't renewed. Turns out she even lied about her son's school education. Surely those kind of galling flaws don't matter? Because of this, how are we supposed to believe the following:

For Warren’s story, Frizell looked to her tougher times from her Oklahoma childhood. “The fact that her father was sick for a while, and the family was cash-strapped, helped me unlock her story,” the writer says. “Her mother was forced to work and the family car was repossessed. Moments like that are simultaneously terrifying and confusing for children.

But due to her untruths on a number of other issues, how can we be certain the above is factual either? Unfortunately, there's just no way at the moment to be certain. Here's more on another current Tidal Wave project:

And what about Frizell’s newest political project? “Mike Bloomberg was the hardest one to relate to,” the author says.

“While I admire his ability to build a vast fortune from so little, he certainly seemed to accumulate a lot of baggage along the way. It took me a while to find an angle, but I finally settled on his [ongoing] public battle with Donald Trump.”

“By contrasting the two men, I was able to find a way to access Bloomberg’s story that I hope appeals to readers,” says Frizell, who worked on one TidalWave Trump book. (The first book in the publisher’s Trump series, 2012’s “Political Power: Donald Trump,” notably features Joe Phillips’s cover art imagining Trump’s presidential swearing-in — five years before it became reality.)

Well that's flattering they crafted a prophecy, but if this latest on Bloomberg is supposed to spotlight his alleged misgivings against Trump, I think it's awfully trivial. Granted, Bloomberg's defended surveillance of Islamic centers for security reasons post-911 (though his willingness to support building a mosque at Ground Zero was offensive), but he's still not doing any good by going against Trump for all the wrong reasons, and as noted in this NY Post article:

Bloomberg’s foreign policy page is little more than a list of international organizations on climate change that he joined. I saw no mention of his strong support for Israel, perhaps because he’s afraid to upset the anti-Semites in his new party.

Most interesting indeed. A segment Bernie Sanders has been pandering to. If Frizell hasn't mentioned the downside of Bloomberg, that's decidedly galling, and come to think of it, Bloomberg's inability to take a clear stance on Israel is too. Towards the end of the Wash. Post article, it says:

Ultimately, Davis believes he has “a responsibility to create a comic book that does not focus on the negative and slam a person," and he says he is proud that many “subjects have reached out to us to let us know they liked what we did — I have signed copies of our books from Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.”

Ugh. To think the above would associate with conspiracy theorist nuts like Paul, and Clinton, after her own revolting record, and acceptance of donations from Harvey Weinstein. I'm not very fond of Palin either in hindsight. I do think it's a poor idea to focus entirely on negatives, but when any particular politician, no matter their leanings, have traits that are truly awful, the negatives outweigh the positives, and it's hard to appreciate anything better about them. As a result, how can one appreciate what are supposedly the better aspects of Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg when they've gone on to embrace bad ones that make it hard? It's just not easy. So, now that I think of it, how do we know these political bio comics are even selling well? There's something I don't think is clearly stated in these reports, and as a result, I'm not sure what the point of them really is.

Labels: indie publishers, msm propaganda, politics