Saturday, October 07, 2017

365 Days of Defiance, Day 280: The Nazi or the Tiger

There's a famous story starring Captain Marvel — the Shazam! guy, not any of the later pretenders to that name — defending and fighting for the rights of Mr. Tawky Tawny, the intelligent English-speaking tiger, to live in a house in a neighborhood. I earlier spoofed this story in a post where I suggested that Mr. Tawky Tawny was a gay tiger (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that if he is). But let me take this, a tale with a big speaking cat and a mighty magical mortal, absolutely at face value to remind you that when some persons don't want other tigers persons living in their neighborhood, it's a time to fight back.



Panels from "Mr. Tawny's New Home" in Captain Marvel Adventures #90 (Fawcett, 1948), script by Otto Binder, pencils and inks by C. C. Beck

Hoo boy. Jim Croce didn't have a chance to sing a lyric about this, but you can be darn sure he would have to say don't bitchslap Captain Marvel in a song.


The bigots and racists and anti-tigerists set up a hate rally (sound familiar, 2017?) to push their small-minded prejudice and drive Mr. Tawny out of town. Guys like this don't always wear hoods, but you can tell 'em when you see 'em.


Mr. Tawky Tawny to the rescue of the town!


My point (and I do have one) is just say no to supremacists and racists trying to keep their culture and neighborhood "pure." Or, as pal Andrew, who reminded me of this story recently (Thanks Andrew!), has often wisely said: be the Big Red Cheese you want to see in the world. I think that says it all, don't you?

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