Throwback Thursday: Howard the Duck MAX #5-6

Previous in this series.

Concluding the reviews of the more adult-oriented Howard the Duck MAX series that came out in 2002. These are also the last two issues that the original Howard the Duck co-creator Steve Gerber wrote before his death in 2008.

Howard the Duck MAX #5
“Gone to Ohio”
July, 2002

Credits: Steve Gerber, writer; Phil Winslade, artist; Chris Chuckry, colors; Richard Starkings and Comicraft, letters; Stuart Moore, editor; Kelly Lamy, associate managing editor; Nanci Dakesian, managing editor; Staff Osborne, consultant and vertical hag; Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief; Bill Jemas, president

Synopsis: Everyone in the Boardinghouse of Mystery gather together in the morning to eat breakfast. Beverly Switzler gets grossed out when Abel offers her cereal that has a human heart in it and his brother Cain offers her coffee in either black or pus. Gonzo journalist Splatter Gomorrah says that he will buy Beverly an Egg McMuffin.

As Howard, Beverly, and Splatter get ready to leave the boardinghouse, Splatter tells them that he and Beverly will appear as a couple on Iprah’s talk show, where she will also have an appearance by her regular guest star, a psychologist known as Dr. Phlip. As explained in the previous issue, Splatter wants to do an expose on Iprah and her media empire.

When the three of them walk out the door, Howard changes from a duck to the rat form he has had throughout this series. Apparently Howard can only maintain his duck form if he stays inside of the boardinghouse.

Meanwhile the two angels from the last issue, the Chairman and Thrasher, arrive at Hell, which resembles the corner of Ninth Avenue and 44th Street in New York City. They are looking for God to give him the news that Deuteronomy is set to arrive on Earth soon. They find God drinking in a bar alongside Jesus Christ and a ghost (who’s apparently represents the Holy Spirit). The Chairman says that there are three of them because God’s Tripolar Disorder is acting up again.

Thrasher approaches the three, who react in unison. When the Thrasher gives God a note from Heaven informing him about Deuteronomy, God reacts by literally exploding, which throws both the Chairman and Thrasher out on the streets. The Chairman says that there is only one alternative left.

The action shifts back to Cleveland where Howard, Beverly are telling Splatter their life story while riding on a bus to the studio where Iprah’s show is taped. Splatter tells them that their recent adventures will make a good story that he intends to write once he’s done with his Iprah expose.

Beverly and Splatter appear as a dysfunctional couple on Iprah’s show. Both Iprah and her guest star, Dr. Phlip, weigh in on Beverly’s problem in an effort to convince her to leave her “boyfriend.” The show then breaks for commercial time.

Deuteronomy arrives at the studio at the same time that the Iprah show resumes from its commercial break. At that moment Deuteronomy takes over Iprah and he begins to speak through her. The possessed Iprah says that everyone is loved because they were born. She announces that her program will never end from now on as she broadcasts her unconditional self-love forever. In the process most of her audience eventually turn into either half-human half-skeletons or full skeletons.

Thrasher and the Chairman are watching the Iprah transmission from Heaven. The Chairman tells Thrasher that since God is currently on an alcoholic bender, there is only one option to stop Iprah. The Chairman sends Thrasher to wake up the Saint of Therapists.

Thrasher arrives at a graveyard in London where he arrives at the proper grave and revives the person who is buried there. The Saint of Therapists turns out to be Sigmund Freud who’s holding a cigar. He tells Thrasher that he can take on Iprah with his cigar.

Meanwhile Iprah is floating in the air in her studio where she talks about how people must honor themselves. Howard, who’s one of the few audience members who inexplicably didn’t become a skeleton, emerges from the audience and approaches Iprah, who begins to talk about how everyone has a spiritual path who become what they believe. When she asks Howard what he believes, Howard says that deep down he believes that people are no good.

Iprah then becomes enraged while accusing Howard of committing negativity. When Howard continues to tell Iprah that he feels that people are good for nothing, Iprah decides to literally throw the book at Howard by tossing copies of books that Iprah had previously discussed on her show as part of Iprah’s Book Club right at Howard.

Iprah then tosses a book at Howard called The Book of Me which she calls the most important book. When Howard picks it up and looks at the pages he notices that they are all blank. Iprah says that it’s a book that Howard can use for journaling. She tosses a pen at him and tells him to write down his most important feelings. Howard then writes a statement where he says that his hostility towards other sentient beings stems from the willful stupidity, wanton self-centeredness, and rampant incivility of other sentient beings. Iprah says that she has never encountered such gross insensitivity outside of Texas and she tells Howard that she will compassionately resolve their differences by killing him with zapping lightning bolts at him.

At that point Sigmund Freud shows up to confront Iprah and Deuteronomy. When Sigmund Freud says that Deuteronomy is the result of a failed experiment conceived by the Archangel Gabriel to replace God, Deuteronomy (working through Iprah) proceeds to zap Freud with enough lightning bolts to kill him again (after all, Freud was already dead and he was simply revived by Thrasher). Freud dropped his cigar while he was being zapped away. Howard grabs Freud’s cigar and points the lit end directly at Iprah. Lightning bolts emerge from that cigar and zaps directly at her heart, which results in her aorta being severed and Deuteronomy being driven out of Iprah’s body.

Beverly and Splatter were hiding near the stage while all this was going on with Beverly looking on in horror and Splatter writing his notes for his Iprah expose. Once Iprah is gone, Beverly and Splatter join Howard, who looks at that cigar while thinking about taking a puff off of it. Beverly and Splatter try to tell Howard to put the cigar down but Howard decides to put it to his mouth and take a puff. At that point Howard turns into a large pile of ash.

The Bottom Line: I felt that this issue was the funniest of this series with its hilarious parody of both Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil. Steve Gerber was usually at his best when he poked fun at current events—whether it was politics or pop culture or religion—and he totally nailed it when he parodied Oprah and Dr. Phil.

This issue evoked the time when Oprah still had her weekday talk show. A few years before this comic book was published, Oprah was sued by a group of Texas cattlemen for libel after she devoted an episode of her show to mad cow disease. She hired Dr. Phil, who then worked as a legal consultant, to help her with that lawsuit. Oprah ultimately won that lawsuit and was so full of gratitude towards Dr. Phil for his help that she invited him to appear as a weekly guest on her show, where he became known as a relationship and life strategy expert. This particular issue was a parody of that time when Dr. Phil was Oprah’s regular guest on her show.

Steve Gerber didn’t just make fun of Oprah and Dr. Phil, he also made fun of the New Age movement in general with hilarious results. Even though Oprah has since discontinued her talk show and Dr. Phil now has his own talk show, the jokes are still just as relevant and funny today as they were back in 2002 (when this issue was originally published).

It was also hilarious when Sigmund Freud confronted Iprah while the latter mentioned his history of misogyny and his smoking habits (both of which are historically true).

In the years since Oprah Winfrey’s talk show has gone off the air but she is still a major celebrity with her own magazine and cable channel. Dr. Phil has his own talk show, which has come under fire over the years for his brand of providing therapy to troubled people in front of a live studio audience. One of his most notorious guests was a troubled 14-year-old girl named Danielle Peskowitz Bregoli who, at one point, snapped at the audience by saying “Catch me outside, how bow dah?”

A few hours later that phrase became a meme and clips featuring her saying that phrase soon went viral on the Internet. In the aftermath she became a rap star under the name Bhad Bhabie and she has actually had a few hit rap songs. Here’s the video for her latest rap song, “That’s What I Said.”

Just last month Dr. Phil became controversial when he appeared on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show decrying the various states issuing lockdowns in an effort to flatten the curve of the Coronavirus pandemic. He compared people dying from COVID-19 to people drowning in swimming pools, people dying from smoking cigarettes, and car crash fatalities saying that “we don’t shut the country down” for the latter three.

Howard the Duck MAX #6
“Creator’s Rights”
August, 2002

Credits: Steve Gerber, writer; Phil Winslade, artist; Chris Chuckry, colors; Richard Starkings and Comicraft, letters; Stuart Moore, editor; Kelly Lamy, associate managing editor; Nanci Dakesian, managing editor; Staff Osborne, consultant and vertical hag; Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief; Bill Jemas, president

Synopsis: After smoking that cigar that turned his physical body into ash, Howard’s spirit (which is still in his rat form) arrives at Hell, which resembles the corner of 9th Avenue and 44th Street in New York City. Howard meets the cherub named Thrasher, who tells him that Howard isn’t exactly dead, he’s currently caught in what is known as an Existential Suspension Loop.

Thrasher accompanies Howard to the bar where God is drinking alongside Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. God accompanies Howard to a side booth where he tells Howard that he appreciates how Howard dealt with Deuteronomy. God buys Howard a scotch on the rocks and invites Howard to ask him any questions.

Howard asks God about which of the various holy books (such as the Bible and the Koran) he actually wrote and God said that he wrote none of them. God also tells Howard that religion is purely a mortal invention. God admits that he gets angry when people perpetrate acts of bigotry and hatred in his name and he generally gets along better with unbelievers.

God admits that while he built the various universes, he’s not really the creator. Instead he’s really the supplier. God said that what he built was a contract job that was done on behalf of a collective work known as existence that’s a corporation where various leaders come and go.

God escorts Howard out of the bar where he tells Howard that there is a lot more than the Judeo-Christian version of Heaven and Hell.

When God tells Howard that he can also take any form that he wants permanently, Howard reverts back to his original duck form. He even gets God to give him a lit cigar that he can smoke.

As Howard and God boarded a monorail to ride across Hell and the rest of the Existential Suspension Loop, God tells Howard about how he had to get a committee to green light what he had made as the supplier. The monorail rides past God’t previous projects that he calls an ornamental universe because it depicts what looks like a moon featuring a giant daisy planted next to what looks like a streetlight with a face as the face vomits water on the giant daisy.

God admits to Howard that the universe that he inhabits is a major tourist destination. God likens superior beings visiting the universe for relaxation to a human owning an ant farm.

God tells Howard that he can’t look to a higher being to find a purpose in life. Howard has to find his own little bit of grace.

God tells Howard that time and space can be reconfigurable due to the Existential Suspension Loop that they are currently in. This means that Howard can travel to any place at any time. When Howard asks God about changing his past to where Howard never fell through the cosmic axis and he remains on his original home planet, God shows Howard an alternate reality based on what would’ve happened if Howard had never left his planet. The Howard in this alternate reality is shown living a very dreary middle class existence where he works at a job in order to pay off a debt he owes his uncle. His live-in girlfriend is depicted as being pushy and bossy towards Howard. On top of it, the couple have custody of Howard’s junkie sister’s four ducklings who are all dressed in urban hip hop clothes.

After seeing that alternate reality, Howard decides that he would be better off with Beverly in Cleveland. God brings up a giant tube chute known as the Trans-Planar Conduit and sends Howard through it. Howard lands inside of Iprah’s studio, which is now empty, and he notices that he is still in his duck form.

Howard walks outside of the studio, where it is now nighttime. He comes across a homeless man on the steps leading to the studio. The homeless man says someone had given him a package for him to give to Howard when he sees him. Howard takes the package and opens it up. It is a snow globe depicting that ornamental universe that Howard had passed by with God and it shows the same scene of a giant daisy on a moon being watered by a streetlight with a face that vomits the water on that flower.

The Bottom Line: That issue was a not-too-subtle parody of Steve Gerber’s lawsuit against Marvel Comics over the legal ownership of Howard the Duck. It was one of the first creator’s rights lawsuits against a comic book company. Ultimately Gerber and Marvel settled the lawsuit with admitting that Howard the Duck was a work for hire and Marvel Comics had legal ownership of that character. Reading between the lines, you can tell that Steve Gerber still had an ax to grind against Marvel regarding Howard the Duck. It definitely took some balls to get Marvel Comics to publish a story that had God admit that his creation of the universe was done as a work for hire for a collective group that’s some kind of a cosmic corporation.

The discussions between God and Howard on the universe and related subject matters reminds me so much of the numerous discussion groups I had attended at my Unitarian Universalist congregation over the years where we actually discussed spirituality-related topics such as the creation of the universe and how there are so many different creation stories among different religious traditions. The only thing is that these discussions ran a bit too long for my taste.

Then there was that interesting alternate reality twist that basically copied It’s a Wonderful Life that showed what if Howard had never left his original home planet. There was only one panel showing the alternate Howard’s dreary middle class existence. I wished that one panel could’ve been expanded a little bit more just to show how bad his job was or what his home life was like with his girlfriend and four nephews. I personally would’ve preferred to see more of this and less of the existential conversation scenes between Howard and God.

While this issue definitely touched on subject matters that one would usually not find in a comic book (such as God and the afterlife), I found it less funny than the previous issue. Yet in a way this issue is poignant because it was the last Howard the Duck issue that Steve Gerber wrote before his death in 2008. When I first read it I thought he wrote this story after he had already been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis that took his life but his Wikipedia page states that he wasn’t diagnosed until 2007 and this issue came out in 2002. Gerber was around 54 when this issue was published so, like plenty of middle aged people, he might have been thinking about his mortality and he decided to write something related to the afterlife for this final issue.

Despite a few hilarious moments here and there, I found this whole series was a bit of a letdown. The fifth issue, with its wicked parodies of Oprah and Dr. Phil, was the closest this series came to the hilarious brilliance of the 1970s comic book series. The big problem is that Steve Gerber chose to do send-ups of comic book series like House of Mystery that may have had drawn an audience in the comic book fandom but the average person whose comic book knowledge may be limited to the big screen Hollywood adaptations would not have heard of it. Unless you know the original source material, you may not even get the intended humor. The reason why Howard the Duck MAX #5 was the best issue is that he had gone back to poking fun at pop culture figures just like he did back in the 1970s.

That’s it for the Steve Gerber-penned Howard the Duck comic books. If you’re interested in reading Steve Gerber’s other writings, the best way to start is by visiting his blog. Gerber started his blog in 2005 and he posted regularly until just six days before his death in 2008. (Since that time a close friend of Gerber’s named Mark Evanier has taken over the blog—starting with announcing his death—and it only gets occasionally updated for things like posthumous awards and similar post-death news regarding Steve Gerber.)

Steve Gerber had also written a variety of other comic books and he even wrote for various TV shows as well. If you’re interested in any of them, I would recommend beginning with the list of his writings on his Wikipedia page then start hunting for them on either Amazon or eBay.

Howard the Duck would continue to be revived periodically after Gerber’s illness and death. I have all of the more recent issues and I originally intended to just keep on putting up new reviews each Thursday until I hit the last issue sometime in early September. But now I’m going to have to take a short break from doing more reviews at the moment. I’m currently doing self-training for my day job at the Census Bureau and I have to get that done by June 1, 2020. Plus I also need to do some additional decluttering of my home and there are some other creative projects that I need to start work on soon. I’ll try to squeeze in writing reviews when I can but it’s unlikely that I will upload any new reviews next week or even the week after.

These issues were reprinted in Howard the Duck MAX graphic novel, which is now out of print but used copies can be found at Amazon and eBay.

Next in this series.

Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection, Volume 1 (1973-1977)

The Early Stories
Howard the Duck #1-3
Howard the Duck #4-5
Howard the Duck #6
Howard the Duck #7 andMarvel Treasury Edition #12: Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck #8
Howard the Duck #9-11
Howard the Duck #12-14
Howard the Duck King Size Annual #1 and Howard the Duck #15
Howard the Duck #16

Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection, Volume 2 (1977-1979)

Howard the Duck #17-19
Howard the Duck #20-22
Howard the Duck #23-25
Howard the Duck #26-28
Howard the Duck #29-31
Howard the Duck Magazine #1

Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection, Volume 3 (1979-1980)

Howard the Duck Magazine #2
Howard the Duck Magazine #3
Howard the Duck Magazine #4
Howard the Duck Magazine #5
Howard the Duck Magazine #6
Howard the Duck Magazine #7

Howard the Duck: The Complete Collection, Volume 4 (1980-1996)

Howard the Duck Magazine #8
Howard the Duck Magazine #9
Marvel Team-Up #98 and Bizarre Adventures #34
Howard the Duck #32-33
Sensational She-Hulk #14-17
Marvel Tales#237 and Spider-Man Team-Up #5

Howard the Duck MAX (2002)

Howard the Duck MAX #1-2
Howard the Duck MAX #3-4
Howard the Duck MAX #5-6

Another Business Executive is Running for President of the United States

The 2020 elections aren’t until next year but it hasn’t stopped some people from publicly announcing that he/she is running, such as Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris.

The most ludicrous candidate so far has to be former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz. He’s running for president even though he has never served in the military nor have he ever been elected to a lower office. Hmmmm, where have I heard that one before? Oh, yes, the current occupant of the White House got elected in 2016 as the first president who had never served in the military or held a lower office.

And look how well that turned out so far with so many of his underlings being indicted and there was that federal government shutdown that lasted for a month. (The government is open at the moment but only for three weeks, which means we will all face Trump’s crazy shenanigans soon.)

What’s more, Howard Schultz has announced that he is running as an independent. Shades of Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996! Also shades of Donald Trump in 2000! (Most people tend to forget this but Donald Trump previously ran for president on the Reform Party platform—the political party that was founded by Ross Perot. His campaign ended up going nowhere and he didn’t even consider running again until 2011, when he simply flirted with the idea by reaching out to the birthers who were convinced that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya instead of Hawaii. But then he ran for real in 2016 and won.)

While I’ll admit that Howard Schultz would be a step up from Donald Trump (as far as I know, he had never gone through multiple bankruptcies and he was instrumental in opening Starbucks cafes all over the world and turning that brand name into a household word), I think enough is enough with business people with zero political experience thinking that they can run for president and expect to win.

I take a dim view on Howard Schultz for the same reason why I refused to join on the brief “Oprah for President” bandwagon that formed after she gave a rousing speech at the Golden Gloves last year. As John Dean, who was Richard Nixon’s lawyer during the Watergate scandal, puts it so eloquently on Twitter:

No more amateurs, please! The country can’t take it. It’s going to take a decade plus to repair the damage Trump has done and continues to do. The presidency is not a place for on the job training. Period. Exclamation point! https://t.co/ylnhKhvrIu

— John W. Dean (@JohnWDean) January 28, 2019

Howard Schultz should just stick with coffee and leave politics alone.

Link-O-Rama

Someone has made 38 hours of playlists that trace the evolution of hip hop and you can listen to it for free.

51 illegal photos of North Korea that Kim Jong Un doesn’t want you to see.

The false promises of worker retraining.

Smile, DC Metro riders, you could be this artist’s model.

The countries that get by without a government.

Nineteen facts about the deindustrialization of America that will make you weep.

The point of Patreon isn’t how many people earn a full-time living, it’s how much of the money from art goes to artists.

Oprah Winfrey is one of the world’s best neoliberal capitalist thinkers.

How a nearly successful slave revolt was intentionally lost to history.

This flapper’s dollhouse costs more than most people’s homes.

Mexican cities secede to escape corruption and cartels, forming corporate dystopias, precarious utopian projects, and Mad Maxish militia towns.

How Christians can emulate Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the age of Donald Trump.

Real books are back. E-books sales plunge nearly 20%.

Republican lawmakers are surprised to learn that no black soldiers served under the Confederacy in South Carolina.

A look at the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike.

The Big Day

Today is the mid-term elections. The polls are open as of this writing. I know some of you are getting sick of hearing others online tell you to vote. I admit that there are times when even I get weary of hearing that same “Vote!” message over and over again on Twitter and Facebook. But this year the incessant constant “Vote!” message is not hyperbole. The United States of America is at a dangerous crossroads that could have an adverse affect on the future of this nation and it’s imperative that all registered voters vote today, especially if you didn’t take advantage of the early voting that many states offer these days.

Don’t know where your polling place is located? This link will help you so you’ll know where to go. If you live too far away from your polling place, you don’t have a car, and/or public transportation is simply not an option, here is some good news. Uber and Lyft are both offering discounted rides to and from local polling places. If you don’t have either app, you can download them to your smartphone for free from either The App Store or Google Play. If you can’t afford either service even with a discount, CarpoolVote.com matches riders and drivers in an area where you can get a free ride to and from a polling place.

Have a friend, neighbor, or relative who is disabled and/or whose first language is not English and he/she is struggling with that language? The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has resources available to make sure that every voter is able to cast a ballot.

There’s one thing I want to warn you about. Once you reach the poll, keep in mind that some states do not allow you to take a photo of inside of the voting booth. Other states, such as state I live in (Maryland) have no clear policy. This link has a map of states that do or do not allow selfies at the voting booth. My advice is that if you want to take a photo of this big day, wait until after you’re done voting and you have left the polling place. When you return home or arrive at a different place (such as your job), just take a selfie of yourself wearing your “I Voted” sticker.

Now I’m going to get a bit more partisan and it may offend some of you. If that’s the case, you’re free to leave this blog right now. For the rest of you who are less thin-skinned, I have a message. Today we need to send a message to Donald Trump and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress that We the People have had enough of their antics. It’s bad enough that Donald Trump is acting more and more like a fascist dictator every day but it’s worse that the Republicans in the Congress are not even doing their jobs and providing a check and balance on the guy. At least the Republicans during Watergate had put country over party and stood up to Richard Nixon. Sadly these current Republicans are putting party and special interest groups over country and they have not lifted even a finger by providing the most minor question to Trump.

Trump started his recent political career in 2011 by catering to the birthers who questioned where Barack Obama was born and, in hindsight, that was a preview of things to come once he was elected. When Charlottesville happened last year, Trump blatantly catered to the white supremacists among his following.

Since that time things have deteriorated further. Here is what happened just in the last few weeks alone:

A pre-Halloween week of violence where a rabid Trump supporter mailed bombs to prominent Democrats and those who support the Democratic Party followed by two African-Americans shot by a white supremacist in a grocery store followed by 11 people shot to death by a white supremacist in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Instead of offering words of condolences, Trump complained at a campaign rally about how the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh have messed up his momentum going into the mid-term elections.

On the same day that the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh was going down, a gun show in Kentucky had vendors that openly sold KKK robes and Nazi Christmas ornaments.

The Trump Administration has indicated that it will not support any efforts to fight white supremacy or domestic terrorism despite what happened the week before Halloween. 

The workers who voted for Trump who are now realizing that Trump has no intention of keeping his campaign promise to halt the offshoring of jobs and bring back the thousands of factory jobs that have been sent abroad since the mid-1970’s.

Trump has been acting in a manner that’s completely unbecoming to the office of President of the United States, as this video montage of all the times that Trump has called for violence shows. One research showed that Donald Trump has told an average of 9.8 lies every day since he became president last year.

Trump has survived multiple bankruptcies in his past. And it looks like he has reverted to going down the same path that has always landed him in bankruptcy court, except this time he’s trying to take America down with him.

Several prominent evangelical Christians have backed Donald Trump despite his multiple divorces and extra-marital affairs. More recently a billboard in St. Louis that was paid for by an evangelical group seems to imply that Donald Trump is a prophet or maybe that he is equal to Jesus.

There was a time when if you were a white racist or a white person who tends to look down on people of other races, you tended to keep your thoughts to yourself because openly dropping the “n” word or any other kind of racial slur was a sure-fire way of being ostracized yourself. Thanks to Trump and his frequent courting of white supremacists, these people are now emboldened to being openly racist assholes. What’s more it has even filtered down to the high school level.

Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke likens Robert E. Lee to Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Time magazine published this poll of Trump supporters that shows that nearly 20% think that freeing the slaves was a bad idea.

A Wisconsin conservative and fervid Donald Trump supporter openly admitted that he would shoot his own sister in her face for Trump.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweets out a Neo-Nazi dog whistle.

A list has been circulating of all of the Republican GOP candidates who are either Neo-Nazis or have ties to them.

A writer and former Republican named Shannon Dingle laments about how her fellow Republicans supported her pro-life stance and praised her for adopting children only to reject her when she began advocating against cutting funds for programs that would feed, educate, and provide health insurance for children.

A white supremacist group has been making racist robocalls that are targeting Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and her celebrity supporter Oprah.

Right-wing militias are currently converging on the southern border to confront a caravan of migrants who are fleeing the violence in their homelands in Central America. 

What’s even worse is that Trump is inspiring other nations to go down this same horrible path. The Nigerian Army quoted Donald Trump when it justified shooting rock-throwing protesters.

Donald Trump has even affected people around me. I know a couple for many years whom I met through my Unitarian Universalist congregation. They have two young adult children, a son and a daughter. Last week they made posts on Facebook announcing that their son came out last year as transgender and she now wants to be known as Hazel. They kept quiet about this for the past year (I don’t remember either one of them talking about Hazel when I saw them in person) but they decided to make their recent posts on Facebook about Hazel after Trump announced a new policy targeting transgender people that will strictly define gender as biological and established at birth. My friends have enough on their plate dealing with what is going on with their child without having to face open hostile transphobia directed at their child and others like her coming from Trump and his fellow Republicans. (After all, the GOP is the party that have enacted those awful bathroom bills on the state and local levels over the past few years.)

After enduring this garbage for nearly two years I am fired up and ready to go to the polls. I plan on voting a straight Democratic ticket this time. If this nation is to have any glimmer of hope of turning around from this destructive course, you need to vote in this order:

1. Progressive Democrat—That is the best option because these people are more likely to stand up to Trump.

2. Corporate/Centrist Democrat—If you don’t have any Progressive Democrats running in your area, then just vote for a corporate or centrist Democrat even if they have this annoying tendency to cozy up to Wall Street too much. At least this type of Democrat is way preferable to a white supremacist Republican with fascist overtones.

As for third parties, I say don’t even bother this time around. (Yes, there are third party candidates who are running. A few Sundays ago there was a guy in my church’s parking lot who was campaigning on behalf of a Green Party candidate who’s running against Representative and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and he was passing out leaflets as people were leaving Sunday service and going to their cars.) We need to elect the one party that will have enough of a majority that it can stand up to Trump. While I would love to see more political parties in the U.S. so the voters would have more of a choice, unfortunately we just don’t have the luxury of voting third party this time around.

When you have conservatives like Max Boot urging Americans to vote against every single Republican, you know things have become really dire in this country.

We need new people in Congress and on the state and local level who will stand up to Donald Trump and all that he stands for. This may be the last chance this nation will get to turn around from going into the disaster zone. If the Republicans prevail today and again in 2020 then you might as well kiss the United States of America good-bye.

Oprah Winfrey for President?!?

I’m old enough to remember Oprah Winfrey back when she started as a local news anchor for WJZ-TV Channel 13 in Baltimore. She eventually went on to co-host a local daytime talk show at that same station called People Are Talking (with Richard Sher), which I used to watch with my grandmother (who watched me during the week while my parents both worked) whenever I was home on summer vacation.

I even saw both Oprah Winfrey and Richard Sher in person once when they made a live appearance at the since-demolished Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie. I happened to be going to the mall that day for a different reason (that I’ve long since forgotten) without knowing about them making a special appearance and I saw them there. (I know it was after I had gotten my drivers license because I remember being at that mall alone.) They were chatting with fans and signing autographs. I still remember Oprah Winfrey with the Afro hairstyle that she wore at the time and wearing some funky mod 1970s chic brown outfit with boots while Richard Sher looked relatively drab in a typical business suit and tie. While I thought it was cool seeing them in the flesh, I didn’t bother with getting an autograph because I felt that they were just a pair of local celebrities who weren’t well-known outside of the Baltimore metropolitan area. If Phil Donahue, who had one of the highest-rated nationwide daytime talk shows at the time, had been there I definitely would’ve made an effort to get an autograph from him.

I regretted that decision years later when Oprah left Baltimore for Chicago, where she began her solo daytime talk show and it was soon syndicated to other TV stations nationwide. She eventually became a bigger phenomenon than Phil Donahue (whom she would ultimately beat in the ratings for having the highest-rated nationwide talk show in the US). She also built her media empire (which includes her own cable channel and monthly magazine) and has appeared in a few movies.

A few nights ago Oprah Winfrey gave this rousing speech at the Golden Globe Awards.

I generally avoid award shows like the plague (because I personally find them to be exercises in boredom and tedium) so I didn’t hear about it until I was checking Facebook the next day. As the day went on I started seeing some of my Facebook friends posting “Oprah Winfrey for President in 2020” and “Oprah 2020.”

I’ll admit that, in some ways, Oprah would make a better president than Donald Trump. She grew up in poverty and had to overcome a lot of hurdles in her life and career as being both African American and a woman so she has more direct knowledge of what it’s like to grow up poor without white male privilege than Trump (who was born into a wealthy white family). She doesn’t openly throw tantrums on Twitter nor has she ever publicly resorted to name calling, unlike Trump. She would be less likely to engage in a childish pissing contest with nuclear weapons than Trump (who has bragged on Twitter about how his nuclear button is bigger and works better than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s). She’s more well-spoken than Trump and I’d doubt she’d make up nonsensical English words like “covfefe” and “bigly.” While I’ve heard that Trump doesn’t even read books, Oprah Winfrey has not only read books but she used to have an ongoing book club on her old talk show where she would pick a book for people to read and she would devote episodes to discussing that book. And I think she would have a better work ethic because I don’t see her taking golfing trips every single weekend unlike Trump (who has taken more golfing trips in his first year of office than his predecessor, Barack Obama, did in his entire eight years in office).

I’ll also admit that it would be cool if someone whom I knew as a local Baltimore-area personality and saw once in person years ago would ultimately become President of the United States.

However, despite my past memories of Oprah Winfrey and my personal opinion about how she would be a step up from the orange-skinned buffoon who currently occupies the White House, I really can’t get behind the “Oprah 2020” movement at all. That’s because of the fact that she has the same problem that Donald Trump has: She has never held any kind of elected office before. That’s a serious handicap when it comes to the highest office in the land. Look at how Trump’s presidency has been adversely affected by his lack of previous experience as an elected official.

The only television talk show host who could even remotely be qualified for the White House that I could think of would be Jerry Springer and that’s because he once served as the mayor of Cincinnati before he began his television career. (However, that doesn’t mean I think he should run. Not only is there his less-than-stellar reputation stemming from his controversial talk show but he hasn’t held elected office since 1977.)

If Oprah Winfrey really wants to become president, she should start by getting elected to a lower office (such as a seat on the Chicago city council or as a representative in the Illinois state legislature) then moving up to a seat on the national level in either the Senate or the House of Representatives. If she does that, and if I like how she voted on the issues, I would definitely vote for her as the first female African American President of the United States.

Otherwise I would prefer someone with actual experience as an elected official. There are other African American women who would be more qualified for the White House than Oprah Winfrey simply because they are currently serving as elected officials, such as Maxine Waters and Nina Turner.

After all, just because someone gives a rousing speech at the Golden Globe Awards doesn’t mean that she is capable of being President of the United States. Giving great speeches and being able to run this country on a day-to-day basis (including dealing with Congress, signing bills into law, and trying to maintain relationships with different countries) are two different things.

Besides, haven’t this country learned from Donald Trump’s crazy first year in office about the pitfalls of electing a television personality with no previous elected political experience to the nation’s highest office?

UPDATE (January 10, 2018): The Washington Post has a list of some of the less savory things in Oprah’s past that could possibly haunt her on the campaign trail (such as her past friendship with Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape) should she decide to run for president.

Link-O-Rama

Silicon Valley is now using empathy as a marketing tool to sell virtual reality equipment.

The late Steve Erwin’s son is an award-winning photographer and these photos show why.

Why it’s hard to separate Woody Allen the director from Woody Allen the person.

Yes, you can make your own solar cells from white powdered donuts.

The first historical record of Jesus describes him as a “magician.”

An interesting looking crochet version of The Exorcist.

Obama goes from the White House to Wall Street in less than one year.

Amateur artist turns old flip-flops into amazing action figures.

12-year-old boy creates creepy yet awesome sculptures using found materials.

The psychedelic retro-futurism of Swedish artist Kilian Eng.

The making of the first hand-drawn VR cartoon.

People are attacking Kendall and Kylie Jenner for their racist handbags…again.

Ivanka Trump hides behind her White House job to avoid a copyright lawsuit.

LuLa Roe has just changed its return policy and its consultants are screwed.

Scenes from 30 movies re-enacted with LEGO bricks.

Eight before-and-after graffiti transformations that create beauty out of blankness.

World-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall likens Donald Trump to a chimpanzee.

Bruce Springsteen lists 20 of his favorite books.

The chateau you should visit in France instead of Versailles.

Pepe the Frog’s creator has found a reliable way to fight the alt-right’s appropriation of his character.

Street-style photographers unite to proclaim #NoFreePhotos

How the band Rage Against the Machine predicted Donald Trump’s presidency 17 years ago.

This amazing tree that shows how languages are connected will change the way you see our world.

One woman’s quest to save Baltimore television, including some early footage featuring a young Oprah Winfrey.

Download Theft! A History of Music is a new free graphic novel exploring 2,000 years of musical borrowing.

Bic ballpoint pen portraits drawn on vintage maps and stationery by Mark Powell.

Link-O-Rama

Happy Earth Day! Here are some links for you to enjoy! 🙂

Donald Trump’s modeling agency is on the verge of collapse, say industry insiders. It will be the latest in a line of failed ventures like the Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Steaks, and Trump Vodka.

The original sculptor of the Charging Bull statue on Wall Street says that the Fearless Girl statue facing his statue distorts his work so much that he is considering filing a lawsuit.

Cannabis industry attracts more mainstream investors as business grows.

A mass-market shoe with 3D-printed midsoles is coming soon.

Eight-year-old boy learns to drive on YouTube then takes his little sister on a joyride to McDonald’s.

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities mean that no .doc is safe.

You’ll be working with robots sooner than you think.

Are you a photographer who needs a light box but you are currently short on cash? Here’s a video showing how you can make your own light box for less than $10.

Google’s new AutoDraw web-based drawing tool is a better artist than you.

It may be time to say farewell to the Pentax camera as Ricoh shrinks its camera business.

Chinese doctors use 3D printing to prepare for facial reconstruction surgery.

Microsoft to offer self-service refund for digital games.

How to stop Microsoft Office hackers from stealing your bank account.

12 ways to study a new programming language.

How Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffet adhere to the Five-Hour Rule where they set aside at least one hour a day (or five hours a week) devoted to such practices as reading, reflection, and experimentation.

Exiles from the war-torn areas of Syria, Palestine, and Afghanistan form a theater troupe in Germany.

Why Kickstarter decided to radically transform its business model.

How Steve Bannon’s multimedia machine drove a movement and paid him millions.

Microsoft will unveil the most powerful gaming console it has ever made on June 11.

Beware of “drive-by” computer scam.

Fake SEO plugin used in WordPress malware attacks.

Yes, some businesses still run Microsoft’s much-maligned Windows Vista.

Ohio inmates built and hid computers in prison using recycled electronic parts.

Dear Microsoft, stop blaming girls for not pursuing STEM careers.

Artist Hasan Elahi discusses racism in the digital art world.

Take a weirdly hypnotizing tour of America’s dying malls.

According to a recent survey, British women said that they prefer knitting to sex to help them relax from stress.

For photographers on a very tight budget, here’s a video showing how you can make your own DIY photography studio in your own home.

Disney files patents to bring humanoid robots to its theme parks.

Gizmodo reports on why people still use Microsoft Word.

Disney launching new animated Star Wars series on YouTube.

Black girls have been playing with white dolls for a long time.

Paper horror houses (including the Bates Motel) that you can download, print, and build for free.

An Open Letter to Lance Armstrong

Dear Mr. Armstrong,

A lot of us weren’t surprised by your recent confession to Oprah Winfrey that you used performance enhancing drugs. For years I had heard rumors that you were not only doping but you had also pressured others on your cycling team to do the same. Your admission is about as shocking as the news this morning that the sun rose up from the east.

The biggest irony about all this is that all of this could have been avoided. I can remember when you decided to compete in the Tour de France after you beat testicular cancer. The story of someone who decided to compete in a grueling race just a year after going through the ultimate fight for survival against a potentially fatal disease was a very inspirational one to millions of other cancer survivors. People were willing to cheer you on regardless of whether you win or not. Had you come in last, you still would’ve captured the hearts of millions for just trying. Just ask Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee runner who competed in the 2012 London Olympics and is still well-regarded despite not winning any medals.

But, no, just competing and finishing the Tour de France wasn’t enough for you. You decided that you had to win at all costs. You knew that, given your recent cancer battle, you would’ve had a hard time winning on your own so you decided that you would take shortcuts to ensure that you would win. Never mind the fact that these shortcuts are not allowed in your sport, you decided to break the rules in order to get your own way and win the Tour de France not once, not twice, but seven times.

In the process you not only passed yourself off as a total fraud but you also denied the legitimate contestants a place on the podium. Over the years I’ve heard interviews with athletes who said that the time they briefly stood on the podium with their newly won award was a bigger high than getting the award itself because of the memories of people cheering them. Sure your competitors will now be declared the real winners of the Tour de France you competed in but given the prize retroactively will never disguise the fact that these people were denied a chance to stand on the podium and bask in the adulation and glory of achieving something.

To be honest, I’m just not that moved by your recent apology given the reports I’ve read that you harassed and bullied anyone who questioned what you did to win. I wonder if you are really sorry and remorseful for what you did or if you are simply sorry that you got caught.

If you really think that your two-part apology interview is enough to get people to forgive you, you have another thing coming. The only way you can totally redeem yourself would be to give up being a public figure and spend the rest of your life comforting and giving pep talks to fellow cancer patients.

In the meantime, please do everyone else a favor. Just go away from the public spotlight and stay away. I don’t want to hear anymore from you until sometime in the future when I read your obituary.

Sincerely,

Sagittarius Dolly