Worst... Pundit... Ever!!!

I'm a huge nerd, but I'm not a comic book nerd, so I wouldn't have heard about this post's topic if it hadn't been for the intrepid M. Bouffant. I won't link to the piece he critiques, seeing no need to drive additional traffic to the asshole's site, but I will link to a piece by the always entertaining David Brin (whose "Uplift" novels are a fun read) which excoriates the author's best known recent work.

When I read M. Bouffant's synopsis of a scathing opinion piece about the Occupy Wall Street movement by Frank Miller, I thought I remembered that Frank Miller guy... wasn't Frank Miller the guy who used to make prank phone calls? Oh, wait, THAT Frank Miller... the comic book guy- he used to be really funny. How about we dip into the fetid, inky waters of Frank Miller's troubled psyche? I'm going to yank pieces out of the essay to snark about, claiming "fair use" all the while.

Miller starts off with a funny intro... Everybody’s been too damn polite about this nonsense: Heh, indeed, the media's been treating the movement with kid gloves. Good one, Frankie.

The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. Yeah, the City of Oakland has embraced the Occupy movement, right... "unspeakable cowardice", Frank, I do not think it means what you think it means.

“Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America. Whoa, Frank Miller is actually a pen name for Sean Hannity... who'd a thunk it?

“Occupy” is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at anarchy, to the extent that the “movement” – HAH! Miller, a professional writer, actually wrote "HAH!" Also, attempt at anarchy? If you don't succeed at anarchy, it's probably because you are disorganized - HAH! Facchinello this guy got paid to write shit? Some “movement”, except if the word “bowel” is attached- Folks, this is nothing short of a clumsy, poorly-expressed attempt at humor. Frank, Frank, Frank, leave the POOP! jokes to the pros. is anything more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves. Damn kids and their fancy electronic geegaws! Damn, they should be using cans and string to communicate if they are so poor and downtrodden... and they should GET OFF FRANK'S LAWN!!! Damn, I always suspected that Miller was a hack who made his living by piggybacking on the intellectual property of others, but this whole "THEY GOT iPHONES" shit is really unimaginative hackery-dickery, doc.

This is no popular uprising. This is garbage. And goodness knows they’re spewing their garbage – both politically and physically – every which way they can find. Wow, how original... DIRTY HIPPIES ARE DIRTY!!!
 
Wake up, pond scum. America is at war against a ruthless enemy. Oh, good, Frank's going to admit that the "too big to fail" predatory banks and "collateralized debt obligation" traders have been waging war on the middle class? I say, I say, is a glimmer of reality filtering through that little blue bonnet of Frank's? Uh... no:

Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty tidbits of narcissism you’ve been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you’ve heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism. Huh? Yeah, they've never heard of al-Qaeda. Damn, Frankie, the head of the head of al-Qaeda is now hanging in the Oval Office, and, anyway, al-Qaeda is not a mass movement, but has always been an astroturfed organization funded by shadowy, reclusive millionaires.

And this enemy of mine — not of yours, apparently - must be getting a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh - out of your vain, childish, self-destructive spectacle. Yeah, just like this enemy got a dark chuckle, if not an outright horselaugh out of the costly, fraudulent Iraq War. Stupid comic book guy is st00pid.

Here comes my favorite part of Miller's cri du cul:

In the name of decency, go home to your parents, you losers. Go back to your mommas’ basements and play with your Lords Of Warcraft.

So, let me get this straight, the guy who makes his money writing comic books is telling the kids to move back into their parents' basements. Yeah, by all means, retreat from the real world, stop trying to change your circumstances for the better. Why engage with the world, and take your place at the center stage of domestic affairs, when you can retreat, and lose yourself in escapist fantasies? "I know you don't have any bread, but I have circuses for you... BUY THEM!!!"

To add to the hilariousness of Miller's crossness, it has to be noted that Miller's career was based on cribbing off the intellectual properties of better talents. He made his name by giving an "edgy" reboot to Batman, a character actually created by Bob Kane, a nom de plume of the late cartoonist Bil Keane, created so he could indulge his darker leanings. As an aside, the issue of Batman in which the caped crusader stops a crime wave perpetrated by master criminal Not Me is a riveting read. Yeah, Miller's career has basically consisted of piggy-backing on the works of others... so much for the Randian superman, making it on his own.

Hey, let's give Miller another kick in the metaphorical 'nads... Another one of Miller's more popular works was his take on noir-ish urban melodrama for people lacking the literacy required for tackling Raymond Chandler and lacking the cultural sophistication to sit through Aldrich's masterpiece... noir for numbnuts, if you will.

Perhaps his most successful recent endeavor was a homoerotic soft-porn distortion of history for sexually repressed neocons. Brin's takedown of this bloody, fascistic distortion of history is a must-read for all Miller maligners.

Yeah, Miller's a hack, even the derivative work which put him on America's cognitive map is hackwork. Shit, Miller's take on Batman was supposed to be edgy, but shit, look at this... if that's edgy, I have a goddamn head of hair that Chewbacca would envy. Why not have Batman riding on a unicorn, with a rainbow in the background? As if that weren't bad enough, Miller ripped off the concept from a bootleg action figure. Fuck, Miller, you can't even steal from the best, ya clown.

Furthermore, Miller's success has always been contingent on the availability of the "99%" to earn enough money to spend on entertainment (protip- the Koch brothers don't buy comic books). Frank. the kids who just aren't making it anymore were the customers who lined your pockets. Foot, meet bullet.

For your final taste of Miller self-ownage, here's the closer:

Or better yet, enlist for the real thing. Maybe our military could whip some of you into shape.
 
They might not let you babies keep your iPhones, though. Try to soldier on.

Uh, nothing in Miller's C.V. suggests that he ever served in the military. He's a classic example of a chairborne ranger, playing a tough guy on the internet. He'd say he did his part... didn't he write three-motherfucking-hundred, thereby saving the world from the Persian menace? I picture Miller huddled behind the skirts cape of his comic-book protector, ranting at people he thinks should fuck off back to their parents' home and buy his juvenalia.

This bravado, this macho insistence that these kids shut up and knuckle down, is telling... fuck, even his "Lords of Warcraft" crack is a tell- does the d00d, who's probably been to more comic conventions than just about anyone on the planet, really think he's fooling anyone by pretending to be geek-unaware? Even the movie projects he's been involved in seem to be visually informed by video game imagery. Perhaps the memory of the cold metal of the locker interior chilling his exposed skin haunts him decades after his freshman torments have ceased. Perhaps it's the fact that a slight miasma of cat pee will always cling to him, impervious to any amount of scrubbing.

More likely, it's probably his bitterness at having his latest, most reactionary work being excoriated for being a piece of crap.

Frank's the one who's never grown up, the bubble of his fantasy world pierced only by fear of an enemy who has been largely defeated. The kids on the street? They're growing up- fighting back against the system which has been gamed shamelessly for the past thirty years, they're finding their voices, and creating institutions to replace the ones that have failed them. Frank wants them to regress, to return to their parents' basements, to enmesh themselves in the not-so-protective cocoon of childish escapism, to shut up and hand him their dwindling cash supply.

It's too late, Frankie, they've left you behind, and that's what's really chapping your ass.

NOTE: I changed "hackery-fuckery" to "hackery-dickery", which scans better. I also cleaned up some grammatical errors (protip- he who lives by the cut-and-paste dies by the cut-and-paste... if he doesn't edit afterward).