The Four Color Media Monitor

The UK Telegraph had some extra commentary on the emerging scandal of Neil Gaiman facing sexual assault accusations, and notes how for many years, like only so many other knee-jerk leftists of his sort, he supported some of the most "progressive" causes, no matter the cost, moral or otherwise. Absurdly, however, it's also noted:

Neil Gaiman describes himself as a “free-speech absolutist”. So committed is the best-selling fantasy author to untrammelled expression that he likes to point out he was born on the same day, in November 1960, that the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial concluded. The ruling, in favour of DH Lawrence’s novel, was a transformative moment that liberalised publishing.

Gaiman, 63, may be regretting his strident support for outlets to publish whatever they like this week. The creator of The Sandman, Good Omens and American Gods has been accused of sexual assault by two younger women, and is the subject of a police complaint in New Zealand.

Umm, does he support free speech for conservatives and critics of Islam? Because while watching this Vara Dark video about the news, I noticed a commentor stating:

When his friend and longtime collaborator artist Dave McKean was accused of Islamaphobia, Neil Gaiman abandoned him, ghosted him and left him for the wolves. What goes around comes around. This is the world Gaiman promoted, supported and wanted. Hope he enjoys it.

Well if Gaiman sees nothing wrong with the Religion of Peace - not even its record of sexual violence - then it only compounds the perception he's a huge moral hypocrite. Some male "feminist" he is alright. Chances are very high that somebody who may have supported the phrase "believe all women" changes his tune entirely when a lady falls victim to a jihadist. Including Jewish women and girls. On which note, I can't say I've seen him comment on the issue of October 7, 2023. And if he hasn't, that's telling. He once seemingly condemned the attack on Salman Rushdie by a jihadist 2 years ago, but even that was unconvincing in light of his otherwise approving positions on the Religion of Peace, and any offenses he committed against women certainly nullify what he was ostensibly telling everyone. Back to the Telegraph article, they say:

The author has long been seen as a progressive champion who has inspired devoted gay and transgender fans for putting diverse characters in his novels and comics, as well as an outspoken advocate for people who have suffered sexual abuse.

In The Sandman, the comics he started publishing about a family of cosmic beings in 1989, Gaiman had characters that were gay, trans, non-binary and otherwise unconventional in publishing at the time. Netflix adapted The Sandman into a series in 2022 and, among its casting choices, it gave the role of Desire to the non-binary actor Mason Alexander Park.

Before the series premiered, Gaiman reflected on his early progressive streak in a Guardian interview.

“The great thing about having done all that stuff back then is that there’s an awful lot less work to do now,” he said. “There are moments when people yell at me for being woke online, and I’m like: ‘Have you ever read the f—ing comic?’ People have criticised me for casting a gender-fluid, non-binary actor as Desire, but they were in the original. Desire was always non-binary; that was the whole point of the character.”

He added: “I wasn’t out there banging a drum. These were my friends and I wanted to put them into comics. I wanted to change hearts and minds. I had trans friends and still do, and it seemed to me that no one was putting trans characters in comics. And I had a comic. I would learn things from my friends: for instance, people being buried under dead names [the names they used before transitioning] by their families. That was shocking to me. And I thought, here was this opportunity to write a story in which everybody reading it is going to fall in love with my trans character who is going to be awesome.”

He can say what he likes, but the problem with Gaiman is that he's a classic bleeding-heart liberal, and regarding the issue of sexual abuse, which he's now accused of committing himself, his far-left positions contradict his alleged advocacy considerably. Did he champion people who fell victim to same-sex assaults? That's very unclear. And if Scientology were founded upon worship of science, it's surely ironic how people like Gaiman don't seem to apply such logic in cases involving transsexual ideology. Why, what's wrong with the original names of the practitioners who "transitioned"? Isn't that a form of self-hatred if they despise their gender, sort of like self-hating Jews? Speaking of which:

Gaiman has been in the public eye since he was a small child. The eldest of three, he was born in Portchester, a small Hampshire village, in a Jewish family of Eastern European descent. When he was an infant, Gaiman’s parents settled the family in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where they became devotees of Scientology and studied at the quasi-religion’s global headquarters in the town. David Gaiman, Neil’s father, was Scientology’s British PR chief at the time and, in August 1968, wheeled out his then 7-year-old son on BBC radio to do an interview in an attempt to counter accusations that it “indoctrinated” children.

Speaking to Keith Graves, the precocious youngster said that it “helps you to handle quite a lot of problems” and talked about the various exercises that Scientologists practise. He was later kicked out of the Anglican Fonthill School in East Grinstead because of his family’s Scientology links.

This is what's most alarming and chilling about Gaiman's background. There's two things I'd like to say here. One, as some may know already, the actor Danny Masterson, recently sentenced to 3 decades in prison for raping at least 2 women, was a member of the Scientology cult, and what's been told about Gaiman so far certainly does nothing to alleviate concerns about what their level of "education" is like. Two, it's most disturbing how a family with Israeli ancestry brought themselves down to such horrific levels, adhering to one of the worst modern "religions" to come out of the western world. Yet this too can explain why Gaiman's appears to have such negative views of Israel, and if he ever wrote any stories about the WW2 Holocaust, his lenient views on Islam destroy whatever point he supposedly tried to make. He is, quite simply, a humiliation to Israel, and his adherence to Scientology compounds the perception he has no love or attachment to Israel and its native community. Did I mention he once attacked Comicsgate? Sigh.

It's also decidedly quite telling that somebody like Gaiman brags about having tons of LGBT buddies, but never talks about having Bulgarian buddies, Kenyan buddies, Armenian buddies, French buddies, Peruvian buddies, or even Jewish buddies. Anybody who's going to make that big a deal of having busloads of pals who practice LGBT ideology is solely going to care about that kind of lifestyle, and what Gaiman had to say certainly compounds that perception. Recalling his recent divorce from Amanda Palmer, the scandal he's now accused of could explain why she left him, and if 2 victims were discovered so far, chances are high Gaiman may have victimized several more. On which note, consider the following:

To everyone following the Neil Gaiman allegations discourse, I just saw this on Reddit. Seems more people are going to be coming out with their stories soon. My heart hurts. pic.twitter.com/9q0CN1sqUy

— Crowmere (@Crowmere2) July 7, 2024

So if this is correct, there could be as many as 16-17 women who were wronged by Gaiman, which makes this whole affair most disturbing indeed. If memory serves, he was one of the writers who worked on Miracleman early in his career, a comic that involved the topic of sexual abuse, and what's been discovered certainly won't help the reputation of said comic, even if Gaiman wasn't the one who wrote those specific stories. And to think, he actually advocated for victims of sexual abuse? Let's hope all advocacy movements and victims they represent will be firmly distancing themselves from Gaiman after this. One of the most irritating things about men like Gaiman is that they believe acting as spokespersons for certainly ideologies will guarantee a free pass on whatever serious wrongs they committed. As it appears so far, that's obviously a mistaken assumption, as Harvey Weinstein learned nearly 7 years ago. Leftists like Gaiman may not admit it, but if "toxic masculinity" is a problem, they're the ones who caused it, yet they take a whole "it's everyone else's fault but ours" approach to the subject and nothing is mended.

For all we know, in another decade, people could start to view Gaiman's Sandman series - along with other DC/Marvel stories he scripted - very differently. Maybe as, say, the absurd ramblings of a moral hypocrite desensitized to violence. Some of his fans in the past may have tried to use his Sandman series as an example of at least creating stand-alone LGBT characters in their own roles who weren't introduced for the sake of swapping with white protagonists. But it could still be argued Gaiman was an early example of a woke writer who exploited other people's publications for the sake of pushing identity politics that were harmful and degrading, and his commentaries to the press certainly give strong hints at that. And why are we supposed to admire a story from around the 8th issue of Sandman where Death goes about even overseeing the end of an infant's life? Something that bleak and downbeat is not what I want to read comics for. Gaiman's version of the Sandman only represents all that's wrong with modern storytelling becoming overeliant on darkness and horror themes. We could honestly do without it in the long run.

Labels: Europe and Asia, history, islam and jihad, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, violence