Recent Comments

1. about 4 hours ago on Eric Allie

   Or… we could look to hire people based on their competence in their field, the solidness of their credentials, and their willingness to make sure that students understand the subject matter?

   That’s the present situation: too many professors feel that their classroom is their kingdom, not a place of learning.

2. 2 days ago on Thatababy

   In theory, the comic book industry should be a meritocracy.

   In prior practice, it used to be that writers and artists started out by cutting their teeth on lower-tier books, using those books to build their skills and their reputation before being promoted to working on higher-tier books.

   In current practice, however, an obsessive focus on “authenticity” has led to a number of editors at Marvel, DC, and a few other publishers only assigning writers to work on books whose characters are “just like” those writers. This has functionally destroyed the classic meritocracy approach, resulting in several good writers being pigeon-holed and several inexperienced writers being put on books that their otherwise thin resumes previously wouldn’t have permitted them to work on.

   Industry legend Christopher Priest called this out in an interview he did a few years ago when he explained why he chose to work with Dynamite on their then-current revival of “Vampirella” despite his resume being such that he could have demanded to work on any project he desired: Marvel and DC were only contacting him when they wanted him to work on characters of his same race, and he was sick of it.

   This is a big part of why we’re now seeing a great many would-be writers and artists going indie or resorting to crowd-funding, because they no longer trust the major publishers to judge them on their individual merits.

3. 3 days ago on Ted Rall

   It’s more than that.

   For example, there’s video circulating of protestors at one college literally forming a human wall to prevent Jewish students from entering one of the buildings on campus.

   It’s also been determined that many of the protests are being joined by people who aren’t students and thus have no business being on campus, raising concerns that these people are in fact outside agitators.

4. 6 days ago on Wizard of Id Classics

   I’m an entertainment writer IRL, and so I often have to deal with the stigma caused by these individuals.

   It’s rare for cash to actually have changed hands in these instances, which is what made the Rotten Tomatoes incident so startling.

   Instead, most “bribes” nowadays are paid with things other than cash, such as “exclusive access”, physical goods, “networking opportunities”, “junkets”, illicit substances (which, I understand, were relatively common pay-offs in the 1970s), and even worse if some allegations are to be believed.

   In other words, these are things that are either harder to trace back to the company or that society doesn’t understand as actually being a bribe.

   For example, when video game developer Bethesda did the pre-orders for the game “Fallout 76”, they offered a promotional tier in which people could get a canvas bag that was a replica of the bag the character in the game had. When the bag arrived, however, it was made of nylon. Bethesda responded by issuing a flimsy statement about a supply shortage, offered $5 in online store credit, and waffled from there. Well, it turns out that they’d given so many canvas replica bags as “gifts” to video game reporters that they were unable to fill the customer orders, and so they hastily commissioned the nylon bags in the hopes that no one would mind. Instead, Bethesda nearly got sued for false advertising and had to pay out of pocket to get everyone their canvas bag as promised.

5. 6 days ago on Wizard of Id Classics

   Payola still happens, and not just in the music industry. For example, last year a handful of Rotten Tomatoes-certified reviewers were found to have taken cash bribes to promote a particular movie.

6. 9 days ago on Eric Allie

   There is video footage of these protestors physically preventing a Jewish student from entering one of the buildings on campus.

   This time around, Allie is on the money.

7. 9 days ago on Edge City

   Yeah, that’s a key reason why so many “green” initiatives and mandates fail: the people pushing for them are all too often living lives that aren’t in keeping with what they call upon everyone else to do.

   It’s like the joke about everyone flying private planes to a green summit and then wondering why nobody is listening to them.

8. 13 days ago on Kevin Necessary Editorial Cartoons

   IRL, both sides of the Civil War used conscripts, that is people who only fought as soldiers because they were coerced into doing so by the government.

   A lot of people who fought & died never wanted to be there and didn’t even support the cause they were made to fight for.

9. 20 days ago on M2Bulls

   1 Corinthians 5:9 makes reference to Paul having written a previous letter to the Corinthians, and so it actually could be argued that the two epistles we have now should be shifted up a number.

10. 20 days ago on In the Sticks

    For those who are unaware of the historical context, in 2011 a mentally disturbed individual opened fire on politician Gabby Giffords during a public appearance.

    Giffords was one of several politicians who Palin’s political action group had chosen to focus their attentions on in the hopes of defeating them at the polls, using a crosshairs symbol to indicate the districts these individuals represented.

    This led to the mainstream media and several other groups leaping to the conclusion that Palin was somehow “responsible” for what took place, even though the individual was later found to have had a personal grudge against Giffords over a perceived slight.

    A few months later, a pro-abortion activist would find a list of organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center flagged as being anti-abortion, used them to formulate their hit list, and attacked the headquarters of one organization, only to be captured by a security guard, who was wounded in the effort.

    Cue the SPLC and its supporters going to some length to justify how it was that they shouldn’t be held to account but Palin should.