After lying in furtive restlessness for hours the other night, this DMS member slid from underneath the covers, shuffled to the living room, and decided to re-watch the film adaptation of Watchmen. So now we know who watches them. Please tell Alan Moore. Maybe also check out Moore’s latest hit, Providence.
The DMS’s in-house doctor believes our rapidly increasing bouts with insomnia are a direct result of exposure to information about current events. Also past events. See Thompson, Hunter S., Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie (1995); Thompson, Hunter S., Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973). Unfortunately, our esteemed doctor studied history before medical school, so she is not optimistic that a cure will be developed anytime soon.
As the media, correctly, churn out articles discussing one of two chilling Executive Orders signed by a scumbag on January 25, 2017, in-depth reviews of the same scumbag’s restructuring of the National Security Council appeared below the fold. Maybe it is the cognitive dissonance inherent in feeling nostalgia for the Bush administrations, but during this viewing of Watchmen, we got a bit closer to understanding Sally Jupiter’s refusal to hold a grudge against Edward Blake, the Comedian. We do not condone the Comedian’s many horrific acts of violence, but evidence is piling up that this life is a terrible joke.
We think the Comedian solidifies his opinion that, as Walter Kovacs repeatedly tells viewers, the end is nigh when Dr. Manhattan watches passively as the Comedian guns down a woman carrying his child in Vietnam.
Since we have copies of the comic books handy, we will quote the Comedian from his original rant directed toward Dr. Manhattan.
“You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into snowflakes! You coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Australia[,] but you didn’t lift a finger!” (emphasis in original). Dr. Manhattan, a character with god-like abilities, does not care about humans in the Comedian’s view, and, well, the Comedian saw how terrible humans can be to each other.
In the film, Nixon has ruled with an iron fist for more than a half dozen terms. Democracy is a farce, and the audience is left with a question: Is Adrian the hero, or is it Kovacs? We are reminded of a passage HST wrote while covering the ’92 election:
“Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism—which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place.”
After Nixon died, HST wrote “Richard Nixon was a warrior: He gave no mercy and expected none.
Yet he approved my first White House press pass and never had me busted for the horrible things I wrote about him.”
What would HST write about our current scumbag? He might have written a joke but not the laugh out loud kind.