"Seems like the only one getting upset about the inclusion of 9/11 is you, Scott.

I'm not upset. I made what I thought was a logical request to avoid sentimental statements that would take us down further tangents.

I may choose to believe it's Tiger but I can certainly understand someone who explains why they think it's Bobby Jones and their explanation for this choice.

"Really?!?  You're going to compare guys that hit balls into cups to a guy that sinks a submarine killing all hands aboard?"

Well, considering that all those golfers are real people and your example is a make believe made up story, sure. And the point of the golfers analogy was to empirically describe a method of debate. The subject of the debate is not relevant but rather the method for presenting an argument and the acknowledging of a point, whether you agree with the central thesis or not. 

"The part where you are still doing the best you can to slip and slide
around the original, utterly fatuous statement that "Magneto is not a
villain". "

What I said was "You can easily make the case that Magneto is not a villain at all." And you are responding to my points by changing the subject of my response. I said: "Enough time has passed that for most people, not all, WWII can be talked about with less emotion and more logic than 9/11. " I clearly stated most but not all people can be objective about the events of WWII when compared with the emotional response of 9/11. How is this statement wrong?

If you can't see by the numerous examples that I've already given that the definition of a hero or villain is subjective to your point of view, then you're never going to get it. To the victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Dresden, etc., FDR, Churchill, etc. are not heroes. But to the Allies, they were.

But I'll try one last time and I'l use 9/11 since you think I'm somehow afraid of the topic. Anyone watching the news that day saw reports from Palestine, North Africa and all across the Middle East of people dancing and cheering in the streets. The single most popular name for Muslim boys in Africa and Pakistan since 9/11 is Osama. To those people Osama is a hero and the United States and most of the west are villains. This is a fact. But if you don't believe me, check any one of the millions of media outlets that will confirm it.

I don't believe Osama or any of his ilk are heroes. But I'm not a muslim from Palestine. I had the opportunity to live in London a few years ago and I met many muslims who explained quite articulately why they disliked the British and American policies in the Middle East. I didn't agree with most of what they said but I understood where they were coming from.

And, JB, I'd imagine that if you wanted to, you could easily get a hold of Chris Claremont. Why don't you ask him why he changed Magneto and if in doing so he offended his own Jewish sensibilities?  

One happened over sixty years ago and the other happened a little over six
years ago. Enough time has passed that for most people, not all, WWII can
be talked about with less emotion and more logic than 9/11.

••

WW2? You mean the Holocaust don't you? That's the 60 year old
event to which Magneto has been specifically linked, retconning in his
"freedom fighter" role. Let's ask our Jewish members if the Holocaust was
long enough ago that it less emotionally contentious than 9/11. . .

What part of "for most people, not all" don't you understand?

*********

SER: Scott, if I say that 90% of the time dog poop tastes like penne ala vodka, that doesn't make it any less an insane statement than if I said it tasted like penne ala vodka all the time.

I have to call bullshit on this statement: "Enough time has passed that for most people, not all, WWII can
be talked about with less emotion and more logic than 9/11."

The Holocaust -- and I agree with JB that its the holocaust that we're talking about here not just WWII -- casts a shadow that will loom over humanity for decades to come. Keep in mind that like slavery, which occurred centuries ago, was based in a very real emotion that still exists today -- racism and anti-semitism are still very much us and a very dark parts of the human race. There are still slavery apologists and holocaust revisionists out there among us in civilized society.

But let's not dance around the larger issue that it's inappropriate to link a major villain to the Holocaust. I would give Claremont a pass on this if there was a least one real-life example of this -- a Dahmer or Bundy Holocaust survivor.

But Stan and Jack created a villain who thought his race was superior to another and that there was only really one way to deal with the so-called inferior race. Historically, the guys who thought that way were Nazis not people in Concentration camps. Sure, Jews have said "Never Again" but more in the Jeffersonian sense of "eternal vigilance" rather than in an agressively murderous way.

The Brotherhood of EVIL Mutants were basically white supremacists, skinhead terrorists. That ain't the JDL.

Sorry, but this is just a sore point with me. I think some writers tried to be cute and took characters that were always intended to be racist goons and painted them instead as oppressed minorities.

"Sorry, but this is just a sore point with me. I think some writers tried to be cute and took characters that were always intended to be racist goons and painted them instead as oppressed minorities."

I think one of the reasons for that shift is that they stopped thinking of the characters as representations or symbols of something in the real world, and started thinking of them as "real" themselves.  Before you can make Magneto a hero or even an anti-hero, you first have to stop thinking of him as having any connection to real world issues of racial supremacy.  That's what you get when any fantasy/sci-fi story becomes soley about itself, instead of reflecting or translating reality in some way.

Mike

But I'll try one last time and I'l use 9/11 since you think I'm somehow afraid of the topic. Anyone watching the news that day saw reports from Palestine, North Africa and all across the Middle East of people dancing and cheering in the streets. The single most popular name for Muslim boys in Africa and Pakistan since 9/11 is Osama. To those people Osama is a hero and the United States and most of the west are villains. This is a fact. But if you don't believe me, check any one of the millions of media outlets that will confirm it.

**********

SER: I stated this before but the problem with your analogy is that one can claim that the Muslim boys in Africa and Pakistan don't know the "real" Osama bin Laden or comprehend, through their own issues, the pain and suffering he caused. I won't get into that debate here. What I will state again is that Stan and Jack *objectively* presented Magneto and Charles Xavier. You could make a case that Magneto is a not a villain and is misunderstood or that Xavier is a sucker or an agent of western imperialism but that's not in the story. We were privvy to the true motivations of Magneto and Professor X and the former was evil and the latter was good. Period.

Sure, Claremont could decide to ignore all that or attempt to justify it by making Magneto "sympathetic" but it flies in the face of what we saw before.

In other words, if you or I were to jump up and down and cheer in the streets when Magneto tried to kill the X-Men, something would clearly be wrong with us because the authors of that story made it very clear that this was a *bad* thing. It's like the arguments some fans make that the Empire is not evil in Star Wars. Again, this isn't the real world. We're told objectively that the Empire is evil. Period. End of story.

Military targets aside, Guerillas also hit political and civilian targets.
"At which point they become terrorists."

Thats an almost romanticised vision of Guerilla warfare you have, Don. I am intrigued to hear of all the guerilla movements youve heard of that havent killed non-combatants.

I have to call bullshit on this statement: "Enough time has passed that for most people, not all, WWII can
be talked about with less emotion and more logic than 9/11."

Bullshit right back at you, Stephen. I have no idea what you're trying to say in that "90%" statement, so I'll just say that I don't accept your premise because it makes no sense.

If you truly believe that most people care more about the WWII or the Holocaust than 9/11, you're mistaken. Most High School and College students couldn't identify who fought in WWII or the dates the war started and ended. For these same people to have opinion on it, they would have to be aware of it. But an overwhelming majority of those same people would have an opinion on 9/11. Why is this such a difficult concept to understand?

"The Holocaust -- and I agree with JB that its the holocaust that we're talking about here not just WWII -- casts a shadow that will loom over humanity for decades to come. Keep in mind that like slavery, which occurred centuries ago, was based in a very real emotion that still exists today -- racism and anti-semitism are still very much us and a very dark parts of the human race. There are still slavery apologists and holocaust revisionists out there among us in civilized society."

When did I dismiss the Holocaust or WWII? Slavery still exists today in many parts of the world and more than likely you and I both own products that were made with from the labor of this slavery. I do not condone any of these things.

"SER: I stated this before but the problem with your analogy is that one can claim that the Muslim boys in Africa and Pakistan don't know the "real" Osama bin Laden or comprehend, through their own issues, the pain and suffering he caused."

What "real" Osama bin Laden do you refer to? The one who was trained by the CIA and supplied by Ronald Reagan's Administration or the one that attacked America on 9/11? They're the same guy. Read about Operation Cyclone. No one in the west had a problem with Osama when he was the mass murderer of Soviet soldiers and civilians, only when he started killing Americans.

I'm sure that Muslim Boys in those regions may not have balanced information about the West (Do we?) but they certainly live with the results of the West's interference in those regions for the last couple of hundred years. Most of the countries in those regions are artificially created by European diplomats who did a fabulous job of drawing borders. Pakistan and India are clearly the best of friends. That is the reality for many of those boys so while I may not agree with their distain for the West, I can understand their point of view.

And now we're even further off topic from my original post.