The Frisky Mole Boy of Groton
Norman Rogers recounts the summer he spent hiding from the stern love of his father and living as the world-famous “frisky mole boy” in the Groton, Connecticut sewer system.
An American Lion
It’s not every day that a cranky recluse says something, but, with the passing J.D. Salinger, here comes Bill Watterson:
With almost 15 years of separation and reflection, what do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?
The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.
I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can’t explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don’t think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.
What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?
Well, it’s not a subject that keeps me up at night. Readers will always decide if the work is meaningful and relevant to them, and I can live with whatever conclusion they come to. Again, my part in all this largely ended as the ink dried.
Readers became friends with your characters, so understandably, they grieved — and are still grieving — when the strip ended. What would you like to tell them?
This isn’t as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of 10 years, I’d said pretty much everything I had come there to say.
It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.
I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.
When I saw that Dave Barry had a column on the calendar year 2009, I sat back and marveled at the fact that Dave Barry is still alive, and someone is still printing what he has to say:
To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:
Bad news: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.
Good news: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.
Bad news: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.
Good news: A lot more people were tweeting.
Bad news: Ominous problems loomed abroad as — among other difficulties — the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.
Good news: They finally got Roman Polanski.
God, the comedy gold in one Dave Barry column could illuminate the world. Our greatest national treasure is Dave Barry, people.
As you watch this video, please note that the added weight on these “Michigan militia” members would indicate a lifestyle completely at odds with attempting to overthrow anything other than a buffet table. This is a roly-poly clown circus, complete with stumblebums holding their weapons incorrectly. I like the attempt at wearing face camo. Too bad it was applied for style, not functionality. I love the effort made by the fellow who tries to roll into the weeds while wearing his duct-taped skullcap—that was priceless comedy. It was better than anything I’ve seen in weeks.
Now, is there truly anything wrong with having a “Michigan Militia?” No, of course not. I would rate it as about as harmless as having a Civil War re-enactment group. Be careful with those weapons—it doesn’t look like anyone knows how to hold one properly. It’s recreational tomfoolery, nothing more. This is a classic piece of journalistic malpractice because no one depicted here would last five minutes fighting off the munchies, much less actual members of the United States military. No insurgency undertaken by widebody lardasses has ever really caught on, you see. They tend to peter out. All it would take would be one five mile march over uneven ground to decimate such a movement. Someone in the media must think there is a legitimate reason to go off and interview Michigan Militia members—harping on the ‘threat to the Republic’ is a sure-fire ratings winner. Too bad real badasses don’t answer questions from a reporter wearing his North Face fleecey in the woods.
It’s hard to find the words to describe phony outrage. I know it when I see it, but it doesn’t reveal itself to me like it used to. Phony outrage is a misdirection play, an argumentative form of the wildcat play they’re using in football this season, and it is designed to make you think someone cares about x when they really care about y.
I believe the marketing people at Fox News know that when people stop talking about them, that’s when the problems will really start. The histrionic ways in which they react to criticism are designed to keep people talking about Fox News, and this is not because they really want people to think it is a fair-minded and balanced network. No, that would kill off their hardcore viewership. They’re smarter than that. They’re engaged in working the refs, which is a way to get a more favorable amount of coverage. The media hates that, so they become more unhinged and make sharper attacks, which blow up in their face. The truth is, they want people to amplify the real message that they’re trying to get out, which is, if you want to drive liberals nuts, come watch Fox.
There’s nothing wrong with that—everyone should get a chance to test their ideas in the marketplace, unless of course they are reprehensible or deranged. Fox News has subjected itself to the marketplace, and lots of people are buying. It doesn’t get any more difficult to understand than that.
[PBS Ombudsman Michael] Getler writes in his blog that he received some negative correspondence following the October 29th broadcast of the children’s show. In this episode, Oscar the Grouch — the founder of the Grouch News Network (GNN) — receives a phone call from what appears to be a female muppet (or Bret Michaels from Poison) complaining that GNN isn’t grouchy enough.
“I am changing the channel,” she says to Oscar. “From now on I am watching ‘Pox’ News. Now there is a trashy news show.”
It sounded so much like FOX News that even he was fooled by it.
“Everybody who wrote to me heard this as “Fox News,” and I can’t really blame them,” Getler writes. “When I went and watched the tape for the first time, I thought I heard “Fox” as well, perhaps because of the association one assumes when you hear “news” right after the word.”
Getler said in one respect the joke worked, but overall it was too close for comfort.
“Pox News as an alternative and competitor to the Grouch News Network would seem to be a clever and appropriate title,” he wrote. “But you would have to be anesthetized as a producer not to assume that many parents will hear this, or assume this, to be a clever shot at Fox News.”
“I don’t know what was in the head of the producers, but my guess is that this was one of those parodies that was too good to resist. But it should have been resisted. Broadcasters can tell parents whatever they think of Fox or any other network, but you shouldn’t do it through the kids,” he added.
Later in the episode, Anderson Cooper from 4th place CNN, guest stars as a reporter for GNN. He interacts with “Walter Cranky” and “Dan Rather-Not” — Muppets representing real-life liberal news personalities — and they talk about “Meredith Beware-a” and “Diane Spoiler.” But no affectionate nicknames for Fox News personalities; no Spill O’Reilly or Brittle Hume — nope, and the only disparaging characterization of real-world news is reserved for Fox: Fox is a POX. It is trashy. They didn’t even attempt to try “MessyNBC.”
If Mom and Dad watch cable news, it’s better than 50/50 they watch “POX News.” So what gives? PBS — a network partially funded with my tax dollars — has the right to tell my kids that their parents watch “trashy” news? The message is clear, I can’t even sit my kids in front of “Sesame Street” without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority. And don’t tell me, “If you don’t like it change the channel.” There are no channels left! It’s everywhere. Just last week I had Obama’s service and volunteerism promoted on every single major network, including Disney and Nickelodeon.
…by the way, why SHOULD I change the channel? This is MY channel, I’m paying for it!
The fact that this is a re-run from an episode written during the Bush Presidency only reinforces that this is nothing new. The Left has been doing this for years now. All of us have seen it and felt powerless to mention it, because if we do, we’re ridiculed and dismissed (thank you, Mr. Alinsky).
No, this is nothing new. In Julia L. Mickenberg’s book “Learning From the Left” the history is plainly spelled out. Radicals drummed out of mainstream culture in the late 1940’s turned to children’s entertainment for opportunities not just to work, but to influence. In her introduction, she quotes folk singer Pete Seeger about those artists: “I think many of them are thinking more on the lines of, ‘If we’re going to save this world, we’re going to have to reach the kids’.”
Now this is always a slippery argument for us to make from the right, because we run the risk of being caricatured in the way the late Jerry Falwell was in the infamous “Tinky-Winky” incident.
Okay, that’s unhinged, to say the least, and it only goes to prove that the Tinky-Winky episode has manifested itself in a complaint about how the parodists did not give that idiot Cavuto his own lame nickname, although without the obvious Tinky-Winky shenanigans. If you want to be taken seriously, drop the argument that the news anchors have to have “affectionate” nicknames. That goes well past reasonable. No reasonable person is looking to Sesame Street for witty or urbane political commentary, snark notwithstanding. The nickname “Diane Spoiler” is nowhere near as affectionate or as clever as the woman deserves, by the way. A spoiler is a bad thing, sir. Way to blow past the obvious. It was harmless parody, and “Walter Cranky” took a body blow worse than Fox News did, because he recently died. How would you like to be immortalized by a children’s show as “Walter Cranky?” As to the name “pox,” well, go sell crazy somewhere else. It’s a rhyming play on words. Pox, being a Middle English word for a disease resulting in pock-marking of the skin or skin eruptions, just happens to rhyme with Fox. Should they have used Box or Cox or Sox or Rox? My reaction to that is, so what? I believe that one of the necessary ingredients for parody is to find a clever bit of wordplay upon which to hang your hat. Fox News created this problem by branding itself with that particular name. Next time, call yourself Orange News.
The world at large should just lighten up. I don’t understand or engage in parody—it’s never funny, it never works, it makes you a miserable person (or so I have been lectured), and the kids don’t get it. I don’t know. I might engage in it at some point. Right now, I’m busy being fabulous.
Rachel Ray’s Magnificent Ass
Monday, February 1, 2010 
Calvin and Hobbes
