Messaging: Liberals To Speak In a Language The Proles Can Understand By Explaining Wonders of ObamaCare in a... Comic Book

Well, it's the only way to talk to the morons.

Jonathan Gruber, a nationally recognized health economist who devised the economic underpinnings of Obamacare (Gruber hates the term), said his three comic-loving kids encouraged him to use the hip format of the graphic novel — basically an expensive comic published in book form — to tell the story of the complicated plan to 300 million Americans.

Unlike most comic books, Gruber’s won’t have a superhero like Batman or Captain America or a villain like the Joker, he said.

“I’m going to use the facts to tell the story,” Gruber, 45, told the Pulse yesterday. “I’m the narrator guiding the reader through the law. It’ll have lots of pictures and text.”

Speaking of comic books: Although the Spider-Man musical is still officially in previews (but at full price), the critics have collectively decided to break the embargo now and start reviewing it. Supposedly it's as bad as ObamaCare.

I'm going to guess the critics are right, based on this insight:

In essence, Taymor and Berger tie themselves in knots trying to shove the inherently dualistic nature of melodrama into a psychological hexahedron of their own creation. Great conceptual artists like Taymor are rarely comfortable with melodrama, which has struggled for respect throughout history. Fine. Stay away. But be wary of putting a comic book on the stage.

Time and again, the show runs away from what I suspect the creators feared would be too predictable or cheap, but that we miss. There is no direct Peter-to-Spidey transformation scene. There are no shooting webs (not substantively, anyway). There is no rush of romance. There is no truth. Every time old Spidey gets someone to fight, beyond the eight-legged critter, the villain is immediately defanged by absurdly cartoonish behavior, nixing any of the stakes. His other main foes, The Lizard, Swarm et al., are reduced to a rushed and belated cinematic montage that looks more like a garish version of an outre presentation during Fashion Week. And yet, in other moments, the show is as terrified of its genre as a 1960s mother worried about the eyesight of kids devouring comics under the sheets.

This is something that plagues this kind of show over and over again: Directors basically hate the material and seek to change it, either by spoofing it ridiculously (Batman and Robin) or making it into some overly-complicated angsty jibberish (Ang Lee's Hulk). This is partly true of The Green Hornet, except that movie actually does work pretty well as a comedy. Just not in the other way it should have worked.

In the end, the material is the material. If it's not elevated or adult enough, well, that's the deal going in. There's really no way to change that, and attempts to do so result in failures on all levels.

As is the case with ObamaCare, actually. It's a socialistic redistribution of wealth (both cash-money wealth and health care resources wealth) and attempts to disguise that wind up making it a failure on all levels, too, including a failure with the socialist left who are its intended audience.

A thing is what it is. It exists best in its genuine fundamental form.

Thanks to Mr. Anderson.

posted by Ace at 12:09 PM

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