Fail Quote: Fox News attacks Left over new biracial Spider-Man

From Fox News’s Fox News Watch, wherein Rick Folbaum opines on the news of Ultimate Spider-Man having its erstwhile Caucasian hero, Peter Parker, replaced after his death by the half-Black, half-Hispanic Miles Morales:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to expand/collapse →)

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[transcript via PoliticusUSA; edited to add continuation]

RICK FOLBAUM: […] Peter Parker, the man behind the mask in the original comic series, but did you know there’s more than one Spider-Man universe? In Ultimate Spider-Man, which comic book readers know is different than the original, Peter Parker was killed off back in June, and this week, a new Spider-Man was introduced. Miles Morales is a half-Black, half-Hispanic teenager who has a knack for fighting injustice and comes with some of the same powers, but with different abilities, and this news took some in the media by surprise, questioning whether or not Marvel Comics took a radical left turn to extreme political correctness by killing off a traditional American hero and replacing him with Miles Morales.

The new series starts next month. Peter Parker, by the way, will continue to be the web-slinging Spidey that we’ve all known and loved since 1962 in the regular series, and Miles Morales will exist in his Ultimate universe; we’ll have to wait and see how he does.

Isn’t it amazing how good Fox News has gotten at sneaking in a variety of attacks in such short timespans? In just one line, Folbaum has managed to: A) “Otherize” the new Morales, casting him as different because of his ethnicity; B) insinuate that replacing a White character with a non-White character indicates “political correctness” – an “extreme” one, at that! – as if the introduction of dark-skinned superheroes could only indicate an appeal to sensitivity; and C) further insinuating that Morales, again because of his skin color, was somehow exempt from the status of being respectable solely because he replaced a “traditional American hero”, again with racial undertones heavy enough to break a camel’s back. After all, this Morales guy’s one of ’em Darkies; what could he possibly know about being heroic? That’s just for Whiteys, don’t ya know.

As Jason Easley at PoliticusUSA correctly notes:

It wasn’t a radical turn to the left that led to Marvel creating Miles Morales. It was demographics. Fox News doesn’t want to acknowledge this, but America is changing. A half black and half Hispanic character is more reflective of the national population than the assumption that all superheroes must be white. It was business decision on the part of Marvel. Miles Morales can attract new readers to the series. He could bring new marketing opportunists, and who knows maybe even a new movie franchise? Blaming this on political correctness or left is a stretch even for Fox News.

Only the right-wing media could attack a company for recognizing reality for what it is rather than the ideological fantasy Rightists wish it were. Especially over something as silly as a fucking comic book.

Easley concludes that this signifies “a new low” for Fox. I dunno about you, but it seems to be that “sinking to new lows” is something that neoconservative dens like Fox News tend to do with some regularity.

(via @todayspolitics)

Tags: Spider-Man • Fox News • Miles Morales • Rick Folbaum • Marvel Comics