AIG is a Sucking, Bottomless Pit
Both Democratic and Repulican senators are (finally!!) getting angry over the massive bailout money forked over to AIG. AIG was supposed to be an insurance company for investors. But what did they do with their assets? The leveraged them outrageously in a frenzy of horrendous greed and mismanagement.
And now? Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Donald Kohn, wants to give them more money — get this — “to protect investors.” Uh, the time to protect investors was a long time ago when AIG was ripping everyone off and taking huge heaps of profits from what should have been a very conservatively run business. Where was the regulation? Where was the oversight?
It’s starting to look more and more like dirty deals and the ultra-wealthy protecting the ultra-wealthy.
I’ve got a proposition for you. How about the federal government gives the money DIRECTLY to the investors and cuts out the middlemen at AIG pulling down the fat salaries!?!?!?
Whew. Okay. Calm… I swear, sometimes you just don’t even want to know this stuff.
The Watchmen
Graphic novels are gaining in popularity, which I think is great. For the most part, the form is dismissed by the literary establishment who think these epic tales are just comic books. The Watchmen is anything but.
I have to admit that when I first picked it up I had big doubts. The author, Alan Moore, also wrote V is for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Those were really compelling, and different from the Watchmen chiefly because the illustrative style is fairly classic and conservative. Watchmen’s art looks like a DC comic book that would include BOOM! and BOF! sound effects. It’s a typical superhero-looking style that I resisted reading. I’d read Persepolis and other works by by Marjane Satrapi and Blankets by Craig Thompson so I knew looks could be deceiving. These are sublime graphic novels with simple art that belies the weighty, complex, and sometimes gut-wrenching issues they examine. So I decided, after many recommendations, to give Watchmen a try.
People, read it.
This book, while somewhat bizarre in its excess, manages to challenge the morality of our bent for human destruction like no other novel I’ve read. It succeeds on both personal and political levels with powerful characterization and unflinching illumination of the concepts of justice, global war, vigilantism, and the implications of personal choice. Its characters are flawed individuals in ridiculous costumes, yet somehow they manage to speak to us through a genre that until now has delivered hyperbole without message. Watchmen has impact. Read it before the movie comes out!
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