Controversial Opinions (For Everything Other Than DC Comics)

[CSTowle]

Wrestling is good because it's basically like a live action comic book.
As evidenced by wrestling comic books.

I always considered pro wrestling to be an action soap opera. Anything with the word opera in it has an unrealistic premise. Opera: everyone communicates only through singing. Space Opera: everyone lives and works in space. Soap Opera: everyone is rich and pretty, plus they can do those terrible things to each other and somehow be on speaking terms after instead of shooting terms. Pro Wrestling: they can still walk after all that.

WWE: As World Turn....

Always thought this myself, and I'd throw in contact sports like Football (US version). Guys in colorful costumes with ridiculous physical characteristics, knocking the crap out of each other and talking smack, good guys vs bad guys, villains, etc. Why I enjoy all 3, though it's been a long time since I've watched a wrestling show and about (gah, I'm old) 20 years since I did regularly.

I think battling over semantics is a distraction from discussing truths. Whether we call him gay, bisexual, a friend of Dorothy, a confirmed bachelor... the question of whether he had sexual relationships with men, specifically with a former Vice President, is worth discussing. Whatever his label, he's part of the LGBT+ community, in some form, IF it was true.

But I think shutting down discussion of it because it's 'inappropriate to label' is a little silly. Regardless in these cases normally the first openly gay mayor/senator/congressman/director/footballer/baseball player etc is the one people count and celebrate. As a great many were in the closet for centuries.

While it might not be possible to definitively label someone there's often times little doubt and it's more than appropriate to speculate and discuss.

[GOLGO 13]

Well, since we are already here...

Adam Sandler in Shakes The Clown?

Completely underrated performance.

If heard Shakes The Clown described as, "the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies." I cannot disagree with the sentiment.

A gloriously hilarious movie. I laughed, I cried--turns out I peed my pants from laughing.

[PCN24454]

If a person is going suffer by living, I'd rather the protagonist just kill them. It feels like a cheap way to keep blood off their hands.

[Jim Kelly]

Here's something I'd post as its own topic, but I hate the responsibility of posting new topics. Don't you think that comic books should be mostly funny books--but for a strange quirk of history in the United States?

On the funny pages, humour has always been dominant--although sometimes adventure strips have enjoyed popularity. In other parts of the world, like Europe, humour is the main thing. When I was a little kid, comic books were mostly humour comics--super-heroes didn't matter to us at all.

Comic book art is about being figurative--not depicting things in a literal way, but exaggerating, distorting, mocking reality. They can be abstract and don't need to be grounded in real life. So doing really funny pictures should be the bias of the medium.

Somehow, because of a niche market, American comic books have got stuck in a realistic super-hero cul de sac. But if they had gone in their natural direction, then they would be a lot more funny.

[PCN24454]

Here's something I'd post as its own topic, but I hate the responsibility of posting new topics. Don't you think that comic books should be mostly funny books--but for a strange quirk of history in the United States?

On the funny pages, humour has always been dominant--although sometimes adventure strips have enjoyed popularity. In other parts of the world, like Europe, humour is the main thing. When I was a little kid, comic books were mostly humour comics--super-heroes didn't matter to us at all.

Comic book art is about being figurative--not depicting things in a literal way, but exaggerating, distorting, mocking reality. They can be abstract and don't need to be grounded in real life. So doing really funny pictures should be the bias of the medium.

Somehow, because of a niche market, American comic books have got stuck in a realistic super-hero cul de sac. But if they had gone in their natural direction, then they would be a lot more funny.

While I agree, realistic is overrated, comic books should always have a variety of genres for each market.

[Jim Kelly]

While I agree, realistic is overrated, comic books should always have a variety of genres for each market.

I agree they should have variety of genres. The funny art style suits a lot of different genres--or could. Harvey Kurtzman's style is what I'd call funny, yet he used it for his war comics. Manga comics often have a funny style but can be about serious topics. Asterix and Tintin both had funny art yet were essentially adventure comics. Art Spiegelman's MAUS is a serious topic in a funny animal style.

I don't know what to call this--because funny or cartoonish don't seem to be the right words--but even within the outright humour category, you have a wide range of sub-genres.

I was enamoured of the realistic art style when I was a teen--but I think it's too limited and there's a lot more that can be done when the artists break out of that straight jacket.

[TheRay]

Gotye should have been huge

[Zauriel]

I finished reading a book called The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years, authored by Edward Klein. It makes me wonder if the Kennedy Curse exists.

Does such a thing exist? I know tragedy happens to large and extended families but But Is there an extended family who had two assassinations, a lobotomization, a couple of drug overdoses, a few plane crashes, a suicide, a drowning incident and a skiing accident?

Joe Kennedy Jr., Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. died in plane crashes. Ted Kennedy almost died in a plane crash but survived. Ted's presidential ambitions were ended by a car accident that cost a young woman her life.

Saoirse Roisin Kennedy Hill and David A. Kennedy died of a drug overdose.

Rosemary Kennedy was lobotomized.

Kerry Kennedy and Patrick J. Kennedy were arrested for possessing or taking drugs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_curse

Patrick Kennedy, (great-grandfather of John, Bobby and Ted Kennedy) died on November 22, the same date of JFK's death.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Kennedy

[CaptCleghorn]

I finished reading a book called The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years, authored by Edward Klein. It makes me wonder if the Kennedy Curse exists.

Does such a thing exist? I know tragedy happens to large and extended families but But Is there an extended family who had two assassinations, a lobotomization, a couple of drug overdoses, a few plane crashes, a suicide, a drowning incident and a skiing accident?

Joe Kennedy Jr., Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. died in plane crashes. Ted Kennedy almost died in a plane crash but survived. Ted's presidential ambitions were ended by a car accident that cost a young woman her life.

Saoirse Roisin Kennedy Hill and David A. Kennedy died of a drug overdose.

Rosemary Kennedy was lobotomized.

Kerry Kennedy and Patrick J. Kennedy were arrested for possessing or taking drugs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_curse

Patrick Kennedy, (great-grandfather of John, Bobby and Ted Kennedy) died on November 22, the same date of JFK's death.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Kennedy

I was born in Massachusetts in 1960 and have lived there my entire life. I can tell you my upbringing was one where the Kennedys were (and still are) put on a pedestal. The "Kennedy curse" is something that is used to extol them as American royalty. What is indisputable fact is that the family has been put under a microscope where the results are often subject to media bias. The Kennedys exist in a mix of tragedy and privilege. They also get much more attention and their tragedies (outside of John and Bobby's assassinations) sren't that different than other families except that they do not get the media attention.

[Zauriel]

I was born in Massachusetts in 1960 and have lived there my entire life. I can tell you my upbringing was one where the Kennedys were (and still are) put on a pedestal. The "Kennedy curse" is something that is used to extol them as American royalty. What is indisputable fact is that the family has been put under a microscope where the results are often subject to media bias. The Kennedys exist in a mix of tragedy and privilege. They also get much more attention and their tragedies (outside of John and Bobby's assassinations) sren't that different than other families except that they do not get the media attention.

I know the media likes to treat them as American royalty. The Kennedys love to be seen as a closely-knit family of pious and devoted Catholics. However some Kennedys are divorced, including Senator Ted Kennedy, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II (RFK's son), Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., Courtney Kennedy Hill, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, and Maria Shriver .

[Kirby101]

Almost a third of Catholic marriages end in divorce. I don't think this is the negative it once was.

[seismic-2]

Many of these "tragedies" (two of the fatal plane crashes, the multiple car crashes, the fatal skiing accident, the drug and alcohol problems, the rape trial, etc.) were in fact the result of reckless behavior by people who thought they could get away with it. Being placed on a pedestal and being hailed as truly exceptional people can certainly help foster a family's belief that they can do whatever they want, ignoring the fact that at least the laws of nature (if not those of society) continue to apply to them.

[Kirby101]

Not sure what would have happened if JFK lived. We most likely would not have gotten as involved in Vietnam as we did. On the other hand we might not have gotten Medicare, the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act. If Bobby had lived, he would have beaten Nixon and gotten us out of Vietnam and not escalated as Nixon did. Hard to argue he would not have been a better President than Nixon all around.

[Zauriel]

Not sure what would have happened if JFK lived. We most likely would not have gotten as involved in Vietnam as we did. On the other hand we might not have gotten Medicare, the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act. If Bobby had lived, he would have beaten Nixon and gotten us out of Vietnam and not escalated as Nixon did. Hard to argue he would not have been a better President than Nixon all around.

I think JFK would get his country involved in Vietnam, if he had survived the assignation attempt. As I recall, he sent military advisers to Vietnam when the war broke out between the North and South.

Many of these "tragedies" (two of the fatal plane crashes, the multiple car crashes, the fatal skiing accident, the drug and alcohol problems, the rape trial, etc.) were in fact the result of reckless behavior by people who thought they could get away with it. Being placed on a pedestal and being hailed as truly exceptional people can certainly help foster a family's belief that they can do whatever they want, ignoring the fact that at least the laws of nature (if not those of society) continue to apply to them.

Let's not forget the drowning accident which was also the result of reckless behavior. Call me cold and harsh if you will, but Maeve Kennedy McKean should not have risked her life and the life of her eight-year-old son paddling in a canoe, just to retrieve a kickball that had landed in the water, when she could afford to buy a dozen kickballs from a store. Risking her own life for a ball was reckless enough, but endangering her child's life was insane and stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeve_...ance_and_death

[seismic-2]

Not sure what would have happened if JFK lived. We most likely would not have gotten as involved in Vietnam as we did.

That's not at all clear. Kennedy loved the whole CIA / Special Forces approach to foreign policy, and as he showed in the Cuban missile crisis he certainly wanted to confront Communist incursions aggressively and with full military force. The top-level people who waged the Vietnam War during the Johnson administration were in fact hold-overs from the Kennedy administration, most of them Ivy League-educated Cold Warriors who had been recruited by Kennedy ("The Best and the Brightest", as characterized in David Halberstam's famous history of the war's origins).