Thank you, sir, you just gave me the best laugh I've had all day.

American ideals have nothing to do with what's on television. They have to do with giving you the freedom to watch television without the King of England pushing you around.

People who watch NASCAR are as important to America as people who attend the opera.

Nah, there are a whole bunch of Americans who are unimportant to America. Thousands, in fact.

And they cross all social boundries. Cap doesn't have to be the living representation of Americans to be the living representation of America.

http://mightygodking.livejournal.com/300945.html

'Nuff said!

What I *do* think Jenkins was attempting to get across was that nowadays most Americans care much more about American Idol and NASCAR and MySpace than they do about the federal government eroding civil liberties. Which, to be honest, you could make an argument for. I mean, I know people who got totally worked up about that Sanjaya guy on American Idol, who were throwing fits that the guy was on the show. Yet these very same people had no opinion about George W. Bush or the war in Iraq.

The point is that Jenkins is arguing that it doesn't matter how hard Cap fights for a cause, if the average joe on the street remains indifferent to it. It has often been observed that democracy requires participation and effort to work. And if you have a public were people are more concerned with reality TV than rampant govt corruption, well, nothing is going to change.

Mind you, if this is what Jenkins was trying to get across, he could have done a MUCH better job at clarity, since obviously most readers didn't come away from Frontline #11 with that particular message in mind.

I'd argue that it's not those things, per se, that you defend so much as their right to exist. The right of all Americans - and by extension, all of humanity - to have the rights without which they wouldn't have all this stuff.

Had Ms.Floyd argued that those ideals were changing - that the people he was defending didn't actually want, say, freedom of speech so much anymore - that'd make total sense to me. (And I think that's what the writers probably intended - invoking NASCAR just sounds cooler than the Bill of Rights.)

But just zeroing in on a bunch of stuff and demanding he swear fealty to it is kind of a pointless exercise, really. As is pointed out above, nobody asks Supreme Court nominees whether they have a MySpace page - it would be considered a frivolous use of their time, and rightly so.

But that's not what really made me angry. What made me angry was that Sally Floyd was like, "I had to hide in a subway while you super-people fought it out over an issue of importance to regular people like me!"

...and Cap didn't respond with, "I don't have super-powers. Sure, I train and work out, but the big difference between you and me was that I was up there fighting and you were down there hiding in a subway waiting for someone else to fix your fucking problem."

But that part of it was stupid, too. Cap's been in the modern world for 12-13 years, more than a third of his life, and the vast majority of his adult life -- he was only 23 or 24 when he woke up from the ice. He's worked for a living for most of those thirteen years, as a beat cop, a commercial illustrator, and a teacher. He's somehow more out of touch with the "real America" than Reed Richards, high functioning Aspergers who lives in a damn gated fortress? Tony Stark, child of privilege?

He's used the highest of high tech, he's been all over space, he's travelled across the United States, he was one of the first superheroes to utilize computer networks (BBSes back in the day.) He was the point man in dealing with the President and congress in the Avengers for years. He's been everywhere and done everything.

And y'know, I think the guy who is the biggest baseball fan in the Avengers probably knows who won the fucking World Series.

Frankly, I’d rather have the “Baseball and apple pie” Cap, instead of the “American Idol and YouTube” Cap.

But the point of the argument in the book (and, as I read it, the reason Cap didn't respond [because he thought it was right]) is that you don't get to choose. To be the living symbol of America, you have to defend baseball, apple pie, American Idol and YouTube all at once. People who watch NASCAR are as important to America as people who attend the opera. Mom's apple pie is as integral as a Big Mac.

I've always believed, in a fictional sense, that Cap doesn't stand for America, but for what America can be - however, that doesn't excuse him from not knowing what it is.

And now, to maintain the spirit of the topic:

I think Cap would get along great with Rachel Ray. Because he, too, thinks you should be able to live the high life for merely $40 a day.

Or maybe a week.

Month?

I keep seeing people argue that surely Civil War and Frontline were meant to be ironic and satiric, but it's things like that (plus the repeated insistence of both the writers and Marvel editorial that Tony was right and heroic and Cap was wrong and stupid), that convince me that they really sincerely think that way, that Cap was boring and outmoded and that Tony was spiffy and edgy, and that the real heroes are the people who do evil shit because they are Smarter Than Thou, so just shut up about rights and freedoms.

Given Marvel's sliding timeline, it's far more likely Cap knows about So You Think You Can Dance?, a current show, than American Bandstand, a show which certainly started and went off the air while he was an ice cube.

Cap faked his death so he could catch up on his TiVo.
He has 10 years of the Simpsons, and all of Seinfeld to watch.

Frankly, I'd rather have the "Baseball and apple pie" Cap, instead of the "American Idol and YouTube" Cap.

So, Cap’s “out of touch” with America because he’s not a redneck who likes watching cars turn left for four hours or a teen with a modem and too much free time?

Cap's an American in name only. He may like freedom and liberty and all that old guy stuff, but he doesn't realize what really makes this country thrive is reality television.

Of course, in a couple of years that scene will need to be retconned so they can take out the reality TV references and replace it with whatever the passing fad of the time is.

I bet Rick Jones has a myspace page. He'd probably show Hulk how to set one up.

2. Jenkins played the scene intellectually dishonest by not having Cap respond, instead reacting as if she just made the best argument ever.

"That's it. You're out of my Top Eight!"