draggonlaady

You know, I commented to Bruce last night that it is sad for Sarah Palin that it takes someone as repugnant as Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist to make her look reasonable by comparison.

Free speech is an often difficult thing to defend when we are asked to extend that protection to ideas that are fundamentally repugnant to our values, an issue that many people are currently struggling with in regards to the Westboro Baptist Church. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Westboro Baptist Church is now planning to picket the funerals of the people who died in the Tucson shooting, including the funeral of a 9-year-old girl.

Turns out that there is at least one guy striving to make even Fred Phelps look like a class act.

Although in fairness, the Westboro Baptist Church only believes in celebrating "God's vengeance" -- such as the deaths of soldiers or the mass murder of civilians -- after the fact, but do not advocate future acts of violence, which actually puts them a step below Corcoran on the scale of personal irresponsibility. And if you ever reach a point in your life where you realize that the Westboro Baptist Church is taking a more sensitive and balanced view of a political issue than you are, it's probably time for some serious self-examination.

Says Travis Corcoran on his blog: "1 down, 534 to go."

The "1" is Gabrielle Giffords, and the "534" are the remaining members of Congress -- both Democrat and Republican -- who have not yet been shot in the head.

In a post on his blog, Corcoran continued to comment on the shooting by taking the bold stance that while you are in the process of assassinating those 534 political leaders, it is important to aim very carefully so that you do not kill random people around them, as that would be wrong.

I don’t think that anything productive is going to come of killing either the senator or the judge, but, yes, I think that it is morally legitimate to kill pro-regulation senators and pro-regulation judges, if it can be done without harming innocents.

Corcoran runs a comic retail business, Heavy Ink. Several comic artists are currently requesting that he no longer stock their works, which requests he appears to be ignoring. Since the artists can't control who the publishers sell through, they're requesting that consumers choose to buy from some other retail instead of Heavy Ink, so as not to support Mr. Corcoran via their works.

List that I am aware of currently: Warren Ellis, Gail Simone, Paul Cornell, and Nick Spencer.

So, if you're planning to buy works by any of the above (and you are all totally welcome to buy me more graphic novels anytime!), they'd prefer you do so through someone who's not out inciting assassinations.

Sources:

http://warren-ellis.livejournal.com/1042248.html

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/10/heavy-ink-arizona-shooting-corcoran/?a_dgi=aolshare_twitter

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/tag/gabrielle-giffords-heavy-ink/