Wimpy is for Hamburgers, Not Americans

I’ve always thought of myself as a tough American male. Granted, I never went into the military service, nor have I ever fired a gun heavier than what the good Lord gave me at birth; but I’ve driven the freeways of Los Angeles at night, fought off the wheel-chaired crowds on Black Friday, and suffered through enough blind dates with professional virgins to produce stigmata.

Toughness. I’ve walked the aisles of gun shows in fatigues with an unsmiling face and clenched fist looking for semi automatic super-soakers; been tattooed by near sighted artists (I still have URE MOMA in a place only a double jointed gymnastic could wash properly); and researched enough urban lingo to ask a white clerk in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota Wal-Mart whether the store sold 50 Cents' Straight to the Bank as a single.

Toughness. I gave rocks to peaceniks next to me to throw at National Guardsmen during my years at Wisconsin, had my girlfriend purchase condoms when the check-out counter was manned by a female, and refused to purchase a Rolex on the streets of New York unless the guy from Somalia produced a bill of authenticity.

Toughness. I’ve attended enough court-ordered opera and ballet performances to qualify for anger management credit and sat through every foo-foo French film where two women kissed each other in bath tubs for no apparent reason. I’ve run up the Laurel and Hardy stairs in Silverlake, yet refused all CPR or hospitalization care afterward. I’ve walked down Hollywood Blvd at 1 AM looking for the John Bunny Walk of Fame star (1715 Vine). I know from toughness.

So I was somewhat confused by my sudden wave of wimpification this morning. I actually passed on my normal breakfast of a burnt piece of toast and a rotten egg. Then I remembered I had fallen asleep in front of the television last night watching Fox News.

Fox News has saved me from being a non-muscled star on MSNBC’s Lock-Up for years. Whenever too much testosterone courses through these old plaque-congealed arteries, I don’t rush out and shoot up the neighborhood or pick fights with older arthritic women waiting in line at the local salad bar. I sit down with a glass of saltpeter and watch Fox News, where every segment concerns Armageddon in your backyard, toxic threats in your front yard, and human malignancies coming at you from every direction. I get so shook up I forget to leave my apartment. The 24/7 fear factor is so acute that yesterday I had 48 cases of beer delivered to sustain me throughout the long Memorial Day weekend.

Today’s scare de jure is the closing of Hotel Gitmo and how western civilization will collapse like Rome against Odoacer in 476A.D., if these prisoners end up on real American soil. Last week, the cause of our extinction was Swine Flu, the week before it was Obama and socialism and before that it was Obama and --- (fill in the blank). Where to put all the un-indicted co-conspirators picked up God only knows where for who knows what reason has everyone in Congress pulling out their out-sourced backbones and scrubbing away their Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and George Patton July 4th State Fair vocabularies.

Not since post Larry Craig, when both genders in Congress refused to use public urinals within a 500 mile radius of the Twin Cities, has their been so much male wimpiness and outright terror amongst our representatives. I thought guys from Montana and Nevada and Kentucky were born with steel ones. I dissected a frog in ninth grade with larger "nads" than these guys. Then I was told by Mr. Olson, my biology teacher, that what I was examining were ovaries.

Men who look manly enough to whip any Waldorf salad with or without croutons; who are virile enough to stand tall and justify not giving the average American the same sort of health benefits they automatically receive; and who bathe daily in the poisonous waters of Lake Pharisaism, with its dual undertows of hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness, suddenly become like a bunch of frightened three year-olds in a bedroom without a night light.

A 24 hour marathon session of Lock-Ups is video proof that our current Supermax prisons are simply too laid-back to hold these Gitmo ghouls. The current prison population of rapists, murderers, skin-heads, pedophiles, arsonists, and Central American drug lords is no match for any group that can withstand 24/7 viewings of American Idol audition tapes from Sheboygan. These toughs make Lex Luthor and the Joker look like comic book villains. Only New York cabbies act tougher and are angrier.

Now I’m not Brandeis, but doesn't securing any of these cutthroats in anything other than a military prison or naval brig force us under law to go through all of that bothersome Perry Mason/Judge Judy stuff. Why bother? Who are they going to complain to? I don’t even want to do jury duty unless I can give someone the chair.

I remember some pantywaist bleeding heart liberal from Arkansas telling me decades ago that he used to live close to an WWII German POW’s camp. Hogwash, I told him. Then I did some investigation and discovered that during the Second World War this country housed some 400 thousand Axis POW’s in about 500 separate camps.

Several Christmases ago, instead of receiving from my Wisconsin admirers another polar fleece sweater for the sub-zero Los Angeles winters, what should Santa deliver but a fascinating book about my home state: Stalag Wisconsin by Betty Cowley. Who would have thunk that America's Dairyland held sway to over 20 thousand German and Japanese soldiers in 38 branch camps? A number of these men refused repatriation after the war, deciding instead to wait in line to secure perpetual season seats at Packer games.

Lately we've been told that Nazis and Fascists were weak-kneed weenies compared to the Al-Qaeda threat. WWII produced the “greatest generation” where big balls became so mandatory that even capons and mules were required to grow a pair. But followers of an organization that can wreck the world of English spelling by simply refusing to follow a Q with a U shakes the very foundations of who we are. We're not equipped for such psychic intimidation. Is it any wonder after 9-11 our generation was told to go on vacation or the terrorists would win? Instead of Pearl Harbor, we went instead to Sag Harbor.

As none of our super-max prisons are anything other than playgrounds, perhaps Congress might favor these guys on American soil if we wrapped everything up with a little bit of historical bunting and made a profit out of it: Quarantine them in an Andersonville or a Camp Douglas. These names are more American than Guantanamo. The possibility of a privately run gift store enhances its marketability, as would daily tour groups where tourists could feed the prisoners non-pork products. I think Fox and Friends would kvell over this suggestion except for the pork products stuff.

Excelsior! Turn me sideways and slap me with marmalade. Thank goodness for my comic book collection. I knew something was not right in tough guy land. Why would NRA members of Congress act and sound as if none had ever held a fully automatic weapon in their hands? Or lose their courage like some punk asses waiting to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island? Or put their cojones in moth balls (is that redundant?)? What weren't we being told?

It’s now become as clear as the picture of these ovaries I just downloaded. The pundits with their pint-sized pecs, consistently so wrong on so many subjects for so long a period of time have been sending us masked signals: Beware these imprisoned aliens for good reason. The answer like all of life's meanings emanates from both the Marvel Universe, X-Men in particular and Tolkien.

Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp is a government front, a rouse, a black ops illusion. Blow away the smoke. Gitmo is actuality Genosha, the existence of which was first broken in Uncanny X-Men #235 (October 1988) by investigative reporters Chris Claremont and Rick Leonardi. The characters the ACLU want loose to traipse along the boarded up shops of Main Street aren’t ordinary run of the mill super terrorists. They're far worse than that. In the language of Arda, Al Quada means "mutant".

Yes, those mutants with the X chromosome. Unless kept behind mutant secure bars (none of which currently exist in any Supermax), these forces would align themselves with the likes of Magneto, Mr. Sinister, and possibly even Apocalypse and go after the Justice League of America or the snot-nosed Teen Titans. Well screw that. Other than Batman, there isn’t a single member of the JLA team that has a decent movie franchise going so what sort of fight would that be.

Gitmo isn’t a prison run by the Navy or Marines. The individuals keeping us safe from thugs that can read our minds, dissolve metals, shoot lasers from their eyes, levitate buildings, turn rivers into concrete among other powers are thankfully named Punchout, Pipeline, Wipeout, and Hawkshaw. Thank God for the Press Gang and the Magistrates. They might not be as tough as Seals or Army Rangers, but they have really cool names.

Now that I've put all the pieces together, I feel less sweaty about my future. I understand why Congress, the President, Fox News and the bubble safe Washington punditry class want to keep Genosha open. They're not protecting us from mortals. They're protecting us from bad mutants. I can't wait to call up Moira MacTaggert and tell her of my conclusions. Perhaps afterwards we can head off to the Troubadour. I hear the Acolytes are performing tonight their number one hit, "Legacy Virus". But first I have to reseal my Days of Future Past and Fall of the Mutants issues for they do speak the truth.