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Upsetting Day: Epic Benders
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Golden Age Comics: Chop Chop 🌭
Golden Age comics were racist. Everybody knows that. It’s an old observation, and I’m not here to add to it. I’m not even here to take them to task for it. Even though they were super racist.
No, more racist.
Way more racist than that!
Okay, I guess we’re doing this — the Golden Age of comics was this racist:
That monstrosity up there is named Chop Chop and-
Actually let’s pause and reflect: Isn’t it amazing that you know exactly what monstrosity I’m talking about, despite him sharing cover space with a screaming skeleton?
Chop Chop was a supporting character for a crime-fighter named Blackhawk, and I’m not here to yell about Chop Chop, I just… I just want to figure him out. Every single human being that meets Chop Chop has the same question, and I share it: What the fuck even ARE you?
Chop Chop is a civil war of racial stereotypes. Look at him! He’s a shambling Frankenstein of rival prejudices. It’s like five different racists set out to design him and the brainstorming session devolved into a fistfight about the best way to hate a Chinese guy.
So many of these tropes are just lost to the passage of time — once upon a time we hated the Chinese for wearing bowties in their hair and having onion heads. Where the fuck did that even come from? We need a racism museum just to preserve and understand old hatreds, except that’s every museum.
Chop Chop is so racist that it actually became crippling — he’s barely recognizable as a human up there. You’ve got six unremarkable white guys and a sloth that got lost in a laundry basket. You’ve got a Portland kickball team and then in the middle there’s a quokka from a Dreamworks movie about ugly animals that still deserve love. Look how far I have to go to find visual metaphors for that creature that is just supposed to be a Chinese dude!
What is this? What even is this? I would guess interesting turnip, hot air balloon accident, or elephant from behind before I guessed this was supposed to be a human being.
Jesus Christ, look at that dialogue.
We’d need to find the racist rosetta stone to decipher the injustices perpetrated in this single panel. Every single line of Chop Chop’s dialogue reads like somebody doing a cruel impression of Mickey Rooney doing a cruel impression. Like they saw him in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and decided to fight fire with fire to show him the error of his ways.
“This is you — ‘Is biggee city for shipee silk … all ovee world! Plenty silk… plenty BAD MAN… yes!”
“Good god, I’m not that bad am I? I must reconsider my ways!”
Chop Chop is so virulently racist that it actually interferes with the visual storytelling of the comic. Every panel you have to squint to see if that’s Chop Chop doing a somersault or a monkey fellating itself. From panel to panel, from issue to issue, he’s constantly shape-changing based on hate, his entire form depending on how late the artist’s Chinese takeout was that day.
Okay, what the fuck is that. What even is that? It’s like an intentional study designed to showcase the inherent racism of Chop Chop: Two heads floating in a void, one a perfectly normal white man, the other a sick vole that died on a barbed wire fence last week.
That second panel: So he’s a perfect orb in profile? He has, he has fuckin’ round teeth that just follow the contours of his head?! It’s not that I’m mad about his portrayal. It sucks, it does suck, but I used the R-word 8,000 times in 2004 — we’re all on the wrong side of history at some point. I’m just lost with Chop Chop. I don’t even have the groundwork to understand the start of this racism — did we used to think all Chinese had baleen and fed by filtering the air for oriental sky plankton?
So Chop Chop is not great to look at, and extremely not great to read. If you’re hoping he’s going to be redeemed by his stories-
Hey, not every story’s about a laundromat!
Many are about mistaken identities.
Hey, real quick, why are there so many cases of mistaken identity involving the one Chinese character? Despite him looking like a dried apple head and talking like a fresh motorcycle accident? I bet you can guess!
See, see — that. What the fuck is that? You can always tell a Chinese man by his fat facial features and open mouth? That’s how I recognize a sick catfish. Did they have different Chinese people back then? Am I not getting this because all I know are the Chinese 2.0 we have today, and I’m looking at the beta test Chinese my grandpappy took part in?
Here’s Chop Chop and one of the men confused with Chop Chop, side by side. To show the readers which abomination is the real one, they painted him bright red. Maybe that’s Chinese – you don’t know!
Ancient Chinese Trick, huh? I think painting a fake tunnel on a wall and waiting for your enemies to run into it was Sun Tzu, actually.
There’s an important Chop Chop revelation hidden in the next one, where he’s once again mistaken for somebody else — this time an “oriental king.”
I know your mind is reeling because in the first panel he looks like the Olaf balloon in the Macy’s Day Parade had an accident, in the third panel he looks like a Bob’s Big Boy after a fire, and in the last panel he looks like a rat in a wind tunnel. You’re trying to track a character by visual consistency instead of the consistency of the bigotry, is the problem. I know you want to focus on the sentence “Whee! Chop-Chop not have to be cookee tonight!” because it’s dense, it is dense with problems, it is a fine pemmican absolutely packed with offense so you can keep your hatred up on racist night raids.
But we’re ignoring all of that to focus on this:
He still talks the same in his thought bubbles!
Those should be clear and legible as he thinks to himself unhindered by a foreign language, but he does that fucking accent inside his own head! I haven’t visited Tumblr in years, but is this what they mean by internalized racism?
In the Blackhawk comics, Chop Chop is such a gleeful idiot it might be a crime just to have him this close to open machinery. He’s actually a good fighter, though — they gave him that one thing. Nothing else. He’s a total idiot. He is a nigh-indestructible, brutal killing machine that can only be stopped by shiny bits of coin and passing kites.
But he’s not just a skilled martial artist, like you’d expect of modern racism — he is a berserk terror. He treats every unsmashed head like a labrador treats a thrown ball. He’s less Bruce Lee as Kato and more some kind of mutated violence goblin:
He just happily obliterates every limb in his path without thought or permission. He’s like an elemental whose element is strangling.
You can see for yourself that it rules.
I’m sorry, it does.
If that was just a shaved orangutan the Blackhawks taught six words and how to use a bat to, this would be an article about my favorite character in anything.
Really, the only problem is the horrific racism.
You just cannot pin down Chop Chop. Like you get that they had no respect for him, but there’s no consistency in how that happens. Take his accent:
In the first panel he replaces all R’s with L’s — standard racism stuff. I understand this. I don’t like it, but I get it. Look at the second panel: where he not only swaps the R out, but adds an extra L, and then has no problem saying “interesting contrivance!” and “excellent evidence to send both of you to prison!”
Did the author forget to be racist for half a panel? Did he leap up in his bed that night going “fuck! I forgot to subhumanize Chop Chop in that scene where a foolish crook tries to attack a Chinaman with an iron — their own natural weapons!” Was it a chore to write out the dialogue you wanted, run it through Racist Translate, and then back to English? Look at that third panel — “Chop Chop is seeing things, you bletcha!”
Bletcha?
There’s no R in ‘betcha.’
Before it was just bigot transliteration, now there’s a wild implication that Chinese just like L so much they put it in every word, like a Sesame Street sketch.
I pulled these three sequential panels from an issue where Chop Chop meets the actual devil, which is awesome — most Blackhawk stories are about two white dudes going to Thailand to molest women and punch men, aka the ol’ techbro vacation — but I brought these because of another ingredient in Chop Chop’s bizarre racism gumbo:
He’s a total idiot, immediately fooled by the devil who came disguised as Obviously the Devil. We’ve covered that. But he screams “GLOLLIES!” and “Wheee! Jet-plopelled whoopee!” when he sees a plane. That’s beyond idiot. That’s alien. That is not something from this world.
I’m telling you, this is not racism. Okay, this is not just racism.
You show this to the most vile racist alive today and he’d tell you it should be toned down because it’s better for the movement to focus on one simple thing that sounds reasonable at first, and then he’d ask if you’re against child molestation.
Here’s what I mean when I say Chop Chop isn’t just racist: Every issue of Blackhawk was chock full of racial stereotypes…
Sure, the Mexican guy is a bandito with a sombrero and a ropy mustache; sure, that sucks — but at least he had human proportions before the violence goblin ate his legs.
We’re missing something.
Bigotry alone cannot explain Chop Chop — in those three panels above you can see normal racism on display right alongside Chop Chop’s gonzo racism and it’s like slipping a real bear into a costume contest. Nobody’s fooled by the bear, they just don’t want to be the first to react because it might eat their legs.
Here’s the lynchpin:
The time the Blackhawks went to China.
What!
That’s not great – it’s not a great way to draw Chinese people, but it’s a far sight from the free association at a Trump Rally that is Chop Chop.
What can this possibly mean?
I have two theories:
Theory One:
Chop Chop is not broadly racist, he’s an extremely targeted jab. Those dudes above are supposed to be other Chinese people? It doesn’t add up. Chop Chop isn’t racist against all Chinese — he’s racist against extremely specific Chinese that I’m not traveled enough to have stereotypes for. I can hear the artist explaining “no, Chinese are fine. It’s those Yinchuan guys I hate! Fuckin’ Yins – always underground like mole people. Shouting ‘YIPPSY DLOODLE’ and eating ankles.”
Theory Two:
Chop Chop isn’t racist at all. Those guys above are normal Chinese people, and Chop Chop is an actual inhuman violence goblin. Like if you told the artist he’s being really racist with Chop Chop, he’d say “what the fuck are you talking about? You thought that freakish fist golem was a person? That’s an orangutan the Blackhawks taught six words and how to use a bat! I could not have been more clear about that in my art.”
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This article was brought to you by a hot tip from Priest of Toe and Sock Javo, who is not legally allowed to be proud of that.
In 2005, using only Comic Sans and a questionable sense of reality, Katharine DeBrecht wrote a book about her dodgy conservative values for kids. She called it Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed! and it retailed for $15.95.
The back cover’s first blurb came from Melanie Morgan, a radio host who, let me look her up… said a New York Times reporter deserved the gas chamber, accused Barack Obama of being a Muslim, threatened to kill Nancy Pelosi, and said George Soros worked with the Nazis “in order to further his own career.” And speaking of working with Nazis to further careers, Katharine Debrecht has used every shameless, MAGA culture war trigger word she could think of to promote herself, and she has 13 followers on Twitter and two on Facebook.
So look, if you’re new to this, being “conservative” means you live in a world too complicated for you, so you simply refuse to believe in all the confusing parts, replacing them in your imagination with crazy shit you hate, while also demanding everyone take you serio– you know what? You get it. I don’t need to spend all this time explaining a thing you already know. Besides, I can sum up Conservatism in one word: windmill safety. *windmill safety. Sorry, autocorrect kept changing my punchline from “whitesupremacy.”
Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed! is about Tommy and Lou, two small town, Chrstian, hardworking, great American boys. If this was a movie, book, TV show, video game, or any other media produced in the last 150 years, you would have no doubt in your mind they and their town hid a dark secret. Katharine says Tommy and Lou are good little boys whose only flaw is sometimes they pray a little too fast. You know who talks like that? A woman who isn’t mentioning a third son getting the sin whipped out of him at gay camp, or the many village daughters given to The Man In The Well. If you’re looking for the perfect tone for the opening of a story about a cute small town that eats outsiders, ask any conservative “baseball mom” to describe her idea of Perfectville, USA.
Tommy and Lou want a swingset for their yard, and their loving mother tells them to go fucking buy one. She does this while standing right next to their living room portrait of Ronald Reagan, and I know decoding symbolism in right wing cartoons is like putting diarrhea back into a cat, but telling your children, “I’m keeping all the money and you can go fuck yourself,” is actually a really elegant way to explain Reaganomics to kids.
Luckily, the good little boys are resourceful and clever. They saw their mother point to a lemon tree, tell them to make lemonade, and it gave them an idea: offering her to The Man in the Well to bargain for their lost sisters. Then they had a second, better idea: asking God to pleasemakeSpanishillegal, inJesusChrist’snameAmen. Then, after seven more outrageous joke ones, it hit them: lemonade!
“We’ll make lemonade and sell it!” Tommy spelled out. It wasn’t a complex idea, but the boys had it for hours. They had it all day, and nearly had it past their bedtime. If they weren’t such good little boys, they might be awake still, just having the shit out of the idea to make lemonade and sell it. Anyway, after passing out with all that capitalism adrenaline in their veins, Tommy and Lou each dream the same 34 page (I had to count because there aren’t page numbers) political cartoon.
The boys find themselves in Liberaland, an assault of mixed messages and nonsensical parody. You can tell the artist has picked a side in a culture war, but it’s not clear why or what the win conditions could be. I’m sure Katharine DeBrecht thinks she became the way she is for logical reasons, and I’m sure she has strongly wrong opinions about any wedge issue that turns up on her Facebook feed, but her mind is an empty toilet where grifters dump their propaganda.
When left with the wide open topic of “stuff liberal people do that sucks,” she couldn’t come up with a single coherent criticism. Is it decadent wealth? Discount prices? Working together? Eating Dean’s cream? This picture requires six years of right wing radicalization to even know what she’s referencing and four more to learn why you hate them. And it’s meant to indoctrinate kids? Their skulls aren’t soft enough for this Boomer shit. Here, young boy, enjoy this pun about a talking point used to explain to grandparents how the ACLU will take away churches. If I was six I would assume this was a coffee table book of bad kidnapper tattoos.
Let’s skip ahead a little bit. Their lemonade stand is a success!
The dumb fucking idiot kids can’t read or write, but they’re amazing lemonade chefs and even better businessmen. The town loves their lemonade stand. “Not too sweet!” they scream as they fill the street, blindly wandering into traffic in every direction. I’m not sure how the kids keep their overhead so low when they’re giving away $1.36 worth of glassware with every 25￠ purchase, and I get these are a lot of notes, but I think it’s interesting the author of this book doesn’t know how children, alphabets, lemonade, sidewalks, economics, or streets work. And here this dingbat is, writing a blueprint for navigating all of life.
At this point you might be wondering how these children are the good guys. They’ve turned a public street into a non-stop lemonade riot and they did it for money. Sure, that’s fine. Noble even, but Tommy and Lou also champion the most conservative of all values. No, not drinking your liberal tears. No, not fucking your feelings. No, not measuring skulls with calip– look, if you’re not going to take this seriously, stop guessing. I’m talking about social welfare, of course. In order to make these free market capitalist boys the heroes of this story, the deranged right wing author has them set aside $1.75 to buy shoes for local “kids with no shoes.”
It’s sort of sweet, but should they be doing this? Wouldn’t those shoeless children love their shoes more if they worked for them? I can’t remember which book I read that in.
Now that the boys are successful, a liberal tax lover leaps from behind a tree. “Hellllloo,” he says, touching himself with his meaty hands while he gazes at their money. These are the author’s words, not mine. One of the cool things about being me is I know “fat Democrat jerks off on little boys’ lemonade stand money” isn’t quite right for a children’s book.
The kids, who I mentioned earlier are total fucking idiots, have never heard of taxes. The mayor explains it’s money we give to liberals so they can take care of us, which is a perfectly right wing way to describe something in that it’s kind of not “wrong,” except when you think about it in any way. It’s basically a reworded version of, “I’m exhaustingly uneducated except for conservative talking points and I refuse to apply nuance to anything other than every man’s sexual misconduct charges.”
Ha ha ha the mayor levitates away with their money screaming, “Boo-yah!”
Is the villain supposed to be fun? What a strange and amazing decision from the mind of a truly impenetrable writer.
There’s something I should have mentioned by now. In this vivid and very long dream, the boys are full-time, around-the-clock lemonade men now. Their entire day is running the lemonade stand and their entire night is squeezing lemons. And while they are doing their late night lemon squeezing, they see the man who robbed them come on the TV to announce he is going to take their shoe charity money and spend it on, what’s this? D-dustpans!?
So we all get the criticism this is trying to make– liberals are crazy wrong! They don’t understand shoes like good boys! But what events took place that made Katharine think this? When you’re taking a stand against a thing no one would ever want to do and you have to imagine it inside a child’s dream for it to take place, maybe you don’t need to have this fight? Maybe your enemies don’t exist? This isn’t even my field of expertise, but I can think of a few ways unregulated charities run by children could go wrong. Until I saw this book, I would have assumed anyone could have.
So okay, the book made its point, right? Leave the free market alone and trust in the eventual generosity of the wealthy. Without opening a browser, I’m 98% sure it’s a bad idea, but it’s not like any kid ever read this. I’m just glad this lesson on taxes is over and an author this stupid and clumsy didn’t try to tackle any of the more delicate cultural divides in our country.
Ha ha ha, holy fuck.
Alright, so the kids wanted to thank Jesus Christ for the gift of, and I quote, “Mom and Dad let[ting] them stay up one hour later to squeeze lemons.” So they hang a picture of Him on their lemonade stand, which causes a second liberal to appear. This one is part snake and he tells them the Jesus offended a man in a limousine and now they have to hang a picture of a big toe instead, because conservative grievances are extremely real. To any kids reading, it’s like this: we all know snake men won’t really come in and replace your God with feet, but how dare the liberals try to send snake men in to replace your God with feet! This is why your mommy and daddy are mad all the time, pal, and why you had to watch one of them die on a respirator over FaceTime.
You might have seen this one coming. Hillary Clinton shows up next. She yells at the kids for not following health codes and tells them they have to use less sugar and include a side of broccoli with their lemonade. Again, this is a child’s dream in a book by a maniac, but what’s the ultimate stand being taken here? I don’t think you should trust anyone fighting so irrationally for their right to put whatever they want in your drink. Katharine desperately struggled to come up with a circumstance where “inalienable freedom of drink ingredients” was a smart idea and I would argue she did not find one.
In a series of analogies too graceless to be of any use, the insane politicians have destroyed the lemonade stand. They have turned it into a permanent press conference, but also an overpriced health food stand, but also a socialist commune, but also now their property. There is no longer any messaging and the best case scenario here is that a young reader learns all liberals are mentally ill because they’re crazy. What a waste of $15.95 when you could do the same thing by choking your child to sleep every night from behind a Jimmy Carter mask.
This is a kid’s book, and we’re now twelve pages into an extended satirical argument against business regulations. It’s like Katharine got fired for sneezing into a salad bar and then arrested for starting a fake charity and a voice in her head spent her entire prison sentence explaining how it’s actually the universe that’s wrong and she needs to tell the kids.
Oh my god, it’s still going. Broccoli and dustpans litter the liberal dystopia and I think one of the kids is dead? I feel like whatever political debate was going on was beaten to death half a book ago. I get not everyone is going to agree on how much lawlessness it takes to make the best lemonade, but anyone taking a side in the battle at this point is nuts. Have your wasteland of unsweetened broccoli lemonade. Or your kids running a fake shoe charity scheme endorsed by Jesus. No one cares. Kids, if you think the author is right about those being the two sides of a thing, I have bad news about your piece of shit brain and how hard your life is going to be for you.
Tommy and Lou both wake up from their identical dream, and sure enough, after 34 pages, they never found an opportunity to get the remaining money in their SHOƎ FUND to those shoeless children. I’m not saying it was a scam the whole time, I’m just saying in a wild fantasy designed specifically to showcase the superiority of conservative ideals, our heroes were defeated by enemies who don’t and will never exist and broke a sacred promise they made to destitute children for 87￠. Or the author forgot, but that’s silly. Everyone’s right to give money to charity seemed so central to her anti-liberal beliefs.
Lou’s takeaway from the dream was, “Fuck everything if liberals exist, man.” And the lesson Tommy learned was, “No, brother. We must grind our bones on the mill of capitalism.” And maybe they were both a little bit right because the book ended with them getting right back to work, “like the good little conservatives they were.”
Has the phrase “like the good little conservatives they were,” ever followed something positive? It sounds like something you’d only say after, “They explained to black athletes how they were wrong. . .” or “They sure had a lot to say about transgender people using the bathroom. . .“
I just feel like any sane author would have proofread this and said, “Oh no, I forgot to have a point or a plot or a lesson. Oh no, I think my entire ideology is morally bankrupt. Honey! Honey, I reread my book and saw the reflection of my beliefs and I… I might be a soulless moron! What? What do you mean, you know!?”
…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Dr. Awkward: who only uses their meaty hands to steal from the children of lapsed Catholics.
Doris Sanford and Graci Evans spent the 1980s making inconceivable books about childhood trauma, and they’re my favorite team of well-intentioned maniacs. Today, we’re going to read two of them. One, Please COME HOME, is about divorce because Doris and Graci are always careful to soften a book’s subject matter with a vague title. The other one is called DAVID HAS AIDS. Oh, did you think David has trouble making friends? No, AIDS is what David has. It’s Upsetting Day, not Happy David Day.
Let’s start with Please COME HOME. It opens with Jenny sitting alone in an orchard and thinking back to the time her newly single mom told her her father doesn’t love her.
This is pretty standard development for a Sanford/Evans mother character. When they write moms they think, “What would a lazy Skeletor do here?” I’m not a psychologist, but I do own nineteen of these womens’ books about depressed kids, and the mother in each one is a neglectful sociopath. There’s no bedrock of hope in a Sanford/Evans book. It’s madness and sadness all the way down, and God is there ignoring all of it.
Jenny has decided to never speak to her father again, but quickly changes, then loses her mind. She has entered the Bargaining stage of grief, followed by the Demanding Help From Trees stage. And it can really feel like that, kids. Trees everywhere, and not one of them a custody lawyer. I never thought I’d say this, but this kid’s book about divorce is too depressing and we should switch over to DAVID HAS AIDS.
This is the very first page of DAVID HAS AIDS. It opens not with the dangers of his deadly disease or its origin story, but with a group of mean kids saying, “Keep it moving, buddy. The AIDS section is over there.” This lonely child is dying and we’re going to focus on how he’s being bullied.
Already this is better than Please COME HOME. “My body is filled with AIDS, but theirs are filled with fear,” is something you would say if you were in a prison wrestling league and also a genius. It’s only page 2 and this book is calling 9-year-olds cowards for asking a classmate with full blown AIDS to play somewhere else. It’s amazing. At this point in most Doris and Graci books, the main character would just be sitting around explaining their problem to God.
Right. Exactly like that. What is going on here? Is David praying or sending God a letter? And why is he explaining AIDS to God? As someone who grew up in a religious, conservative household in the ’80s, trust me, God knows exactly what AIDS does. Theologically speaking, this is like explaining how bug spray works to your exterminator. Oh man, that sounded darker than I meant it to… maybe we should switch back to Please COME HOME?
So when we left Jenny she was holding her head and shrieking for a tree, any tree to deliver her from the unbearable pain of a broken family. She’s since pulled herself together to calmly express herself to her teddy bear. This is hard, and it hurts, but her parents’ divorce has not driven her insane.
Oh shit.
Jenny, no. What are you doing? Product of divorce or not, you absolutely need to stop sharing your secrets with the talking bear in the woods. Let’s go back to the kid less doomed than you, the one with AIDS and a God who hates him.
So David got a mysterious bag of cookies from a child who calls himself “Washington,” a name two elderly white women, after a difficult discussion, decided to be “non-racistly black.” Washington has been watching David, and he wants to play with him. It’s all very normal, including how he ends the note with the default 5-word message Shopify prints on every gift receipt, “I know you have AIDS.”
The two become fast friends, so David writes a very weird, very passive aggressive letter to God.
Dear David,
Ha ha what? His comfort is the kind with a FORT in it!? Are you sending me the “maybes” from your grandma’s needlepoint idea notebook? This sucks. If you want to figure out why I don’t treat you like most people do, SEE FUCKING ABOVE.
I know you have AIDS,
God
P.S. I know you have AIDS.
Jesus, is this kid still talking about how safe AIDS is? Look at Washington’s face. Even he is tired of hearing about this shit. David will be going over this for awhile, so let’s see how Jenny’s mental breakdown is going in Please COME HOME.
Not great. Her teddy bear is still speaking in the tongue of Man. You know, it’s been several pages and it’s still not clear if this is a therapeutic exercise, rhetorical device, or total psychotic break.
Wait. Oh no, what. The teddy bear can wave goodbye to her while she’s not looking at it? S-so this isn’t taking place in her head? I hadn’t considered this fourth option: something unknowable whispered life into this toy after hearing a forsaken child’s screams on the wind. It’s safe to say we’re now in a murder race between Teddy and AIDS. Let’s see what David is doing. Probably talking about how safe it is to be his, despite his AIDS, friend, right?
“Class, let’s thank Sandra for bringing in her box turtle, Battlecat. So cute. Now up next for Show n’ Tell is… ugh. David. Okay, let me guess what you brought in. Your AIDS?”
He’ll be doing this, again, for a while, so let’s get back to Jenny.
I don’t know what Jenny’s mom and whatever now lives inside her teddy bear said to her, but Jenny has decided hurting her father is how she is going to make them happy. And Graci Evans knew exactly what you’d be thinking: “I’d love to see a colored pencil drawing of the custody handoff after Jenny rejected her father’s unopened birthday gift.”
This is rough. You know what might cheer us up? Hearing what David is talking about.
Damn it, Dave. Are you still lecturing your classmates on the safety of AIDS? How is that disease your most likeable personality trait? Let’s see what Jenny is up to.
It’s important to remember Jenny is not the narrator of this book, so when you hear them stop the story to editorialize, “UNDERWEAR IS NOT A PRESENT!” remember it’s not a second grade girl. This would have been the perfect time for her to realize she shouldn’t have rejected her father’s love or his presents, but instead her teddy bear stares into her soul and tells her how special she is, forcing her to repeat its words fifty times. I’m, of course, kidding. Can you imagine how insane that would be?
Ha ha, reader. You fell for the classic demon teddy’s gambit. Let’s go see if David has finished his 831st presentation on why someone should play with him, and by “play with him,” David means “listen to his 832nd presentation on why someone should play with him.”
Hold on a second. Is David sitting inside watching Washington spend time with his grandmother? Was the weird bag of cookies and the note a plan to… okay, this is going to sound nuts, but did this kid just steal his grandma? Is this the dying boy version of cuckolding?
We’re not cutting back to Jenny. We need to see where this is going.
Dear David,
Last week, you had a grandma and AIDS. Then I sent you a friend with a bag of cookies, and now all you have is AIDS.
Love,
God
Dear David,
“What is dying like!?” I’m an eternal being, the Alpha and the Omega, and you’re a little boy whose entire life was spent suffering organ failure. Like, you tell me, David. Asshole. You asshole.
Love,
God
P.S. If you think this is bad, let me show you what I do to kids who betray me and follow the teachings of witch bears.
Jenny’s story wraps up nicely with her mother neglecting her, her father being pushed completely out of her life, and her teddy bear just fucking ecstatic about it. It’s nothing, certainly. A horror egg hatching from a broken mind, but a happier ending that any of us should have expected. Let’s see how David’s story concludes.
Dying is… it’s like what? It’s like fucking what, Grandma Brown? Doris and Graci gave Jenny a magical teddy bear to emotionally counsel her through her parent’s breakup. Yet this withering child of God has been begging his creator for an explanation since the day he learned the word “AIDS” and the best the authors could do for him was to send a confused old lady to his death bed to tell him dying is like a reverse movie something, maybe? This is so fucked. But I guess with the way David’s story was going, we’re lucky the book’s finale wasn’t a two page spread of his grandma wordlessly grabbing his neck and ending things her way.
O-oh fuck.
…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme, Dan Bush: who understands that dying is like a backwards movie and living is like a sideways book and fucking? Baby, that’s a horizontal game.
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Upsetting Day: Natural Harvest
Last Ounce of Courage is a 2012 movie about how the struggle of American Christians to celebrate Christmas is very much like -if not exactly- like, fighting in a war. I’m not trying to be cute. That’s exactly what this is, sincerely, and I need you to understand that before we talk about it. It was made by people who think you think Christmas, the popular thing everyone loves, is against the law to celebrate.
This terrible, embarrassing film was endorsed by Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, which helped it lose more money than any movie has ever lost, but we’ll get into that later. More importantly, it was the first and only theatrical motion picture to receive the “Chuck Norris Seal of Approval,” something previously only awarded to flex-crotched Karate jeans. The point is, if you know anything about filmmaking or philosophy, you already know the “Chuck Norris Seal of Approval” is the same amount of prestige as a medal saying “Subway’s Jared Liked My Family Photo.”
Chuck Norris’ ancestors died for my freedom to experience a light-to-moderate amount of Christmas decorations, and in their honor I will place the “Chuck Norris Seal of Approval” on every Last Ounce of Courage screenshot I share, maybe on everything I ever make for the rest of my life. In fact, I just checked with the hospital and they don’t have a rule against renaming my daughter Chuck Norris Approved Karate Jeans Reiley. Plus, hospital administrators are not like lawyers– it’s totally free to ask as many questions as you want. It would have cost me $900 to get this much athlete’s foot advice from my lawy– hold on, it sounds like Chuck Norris Approved Karate Jeans just broke something important.
I’m back. It was just a DVD player, which I was going to retire anyway after it courageously faced down Last Ounce of Courage. Let’s talk about it!
The movie opens with a Ronald Reagan quote about the necessity and virtue of war, which is the tone this movie uses to handle celebrating Christmas. It is your blood duty to enjoy this sacred holiday, and your life could not be better spent than its defense. Does that sound crazy? That you might need to willingly die to protect Christmas? Then get the fuck out of here. This movie isn’t for you. As for the rest of you heroes, take now your Christmas pills and die knowing your sacrifice will be the bullet to finally kill Halloween.
If you followed instructions, you’re dead, but I’m going to keep going anyway. The first seven minutes of Last Ounce of Courage are a sledgehammer of tragedy. A family sends their son off to a distant war for reasons no one mentions or understands, he gets killed, they have a sad, expensive funeral, and their family is torn apart. It’s a lot of great examples of why war is actually bad, but this movie is about as self-aware as a… oh man, let me think of something ridiculous… as a movie about the struggle to experience Christmas.
I should mention that one of the film’s two directors cast himself as a mysterious cowboy haunting the background of every scene so far.
Despite many closeups of himself and his family crying, the main character, Bob Revere, explains how sad he is in a voiceover. He accidentally spells out the mindset of the target audience when he says all he wants is for everyone to stop what they’re doing and understand the pain he’s feeling. The filmmakers think “give me attention and pity me,” is how a hero processes grief. It’s how Ronald Reagan would watch his horse die. It’s how Meghan McCain would drink from a paper holiday cup without an image of the Christ child breaching the birth canal.
We cut to 14 years later, and we see Bob Revere working at a pharmacy when a group of bikers storm in. It’s his old motorcycle club, The Hellfighters, and they need to treat a gunshot wound. Their leader is a little person who they carry around like they just won him at the carnival.
Bob agrees not to report the gunshot wound to the police and they all hug. Both directors seem to have given the note “Hug like the manly love you feel for each other hurts. Hug like there is so much emotion inside you it might rupture from your virgin anus, like our Lord baby God on a real Christmas paper cup.” Every actor makes use of this note, and they all embrace with a grim combination of passion and confusion.
These men hug like men. Sometimes small men, but with the insecure masculinity of an emotionally neglected son twice their size.
If this was better art, you’d think these were desperate men in love, tormented by a secret the town of Mount Columbus is too small to understand. All these platonic embraces between powerful men on the edge of tears reminds Bob of what he used to do with his dead boy.
Bob Revere’s grandson, Christian, has moved back to town after many years. He greets his estranged grandpa with a 12-step high five like a teenager in a Christian movie, and Bob mistakes it for an LA gang handshake. With their characters fully developed the plot gets underway.
The family watches home videos taken of Christian’s father as a child, doing normal kid things like reading his favorite Gideon Bible and celebrating Christmas in full shepherd cosplay. Christian asks , “So why don’t people do Christmas like that anymore? With the shepherds and everything.” It’s not a bad question.
Bob Revere responds, “Well, for a long time, people were trying to pass laws trying to get rid of Christmas altogether.” Christian never gets a chance to follow up on how… theatrical nativity performances in private homes were stopped by… uncited, unpassed laws? Instead, the tape cuts to his dad leaving for war. So the mom filmed seven seconds of her son reading a Bible, four seconds of him in a wise man costume, and then nothing until he got on a bus to war fifteen years later. You know, like a normal Earth home movie.
Christian goes through his dead father’s footlocker and takes his treasured childhood Bible. Then the movie immediately cuts to him in the principal’s office where he’s in trouble for bringing some kind of contraband to school! Is it drugs? No, worse. This is going to shock you, but it was the Bible from earlier. His mother, grandfather, neighbor, and a policeman have all been called in to deal with this extremely serious matter. It would have been less subtle if each actor crawled out of the television to spit the black liquid form of these words into your open mouth: “THEY ARE COMING FOR YOUR BIBLE NEXT!”
Christian is let off with a warni– oh, “Christian.” I just got that. He’s let off with a warning, and he lingers outside the principal’s office to complain about his religious liberties, like a hero. “It’s a stupid rule,” he tells his family, and suddenly he is interrupted by every movie trope at the same time.
A magically wise black school janitor, Leonard, appears to tell them this ban on Bibles? It’s barely a policy, much less a rule. He adds, “They can have their Bibles here if they want to. They’re just a bunch of cowards.” This movie is amazing. This is the fourth time they’ve complained about their rights being taken away from them by people who didn’t and couldn’t take their rights away from them.
Bob Revere goes back into the principal’s office and whines, “Rusty, is there an actual rule that you can’t bring a Bible into school?”
Principal Rusty shrugs, “Well, no! But I don’t want any trouble. You can’t take any chances these days, Bob. Everybody’s looking for a reason to sue us!” He’s done thinking and talking about it. The scene just sort of ends with him taking a phone call while Bob gives him his toughest little frown, holding his dead baby boy’s Bible.
We cut to the family at home with the teenage neighbor girl, and they’re all enjoying FOX News together. They are glued to the screen while Bill O’Reilly reports on some coastal elite town cutting Christmas cheer by 4%. So this film is not set in a fictional world where Christmas is under attack. This is set in our world where “Christmas is under attack.” And so you’re clear on how I feel, this is insanity beneath anyone’s contempt. If you think the billion dollar industry with its own season, music genre, movie genre, TV genre, drug store aisle, and cuisine is “under attack” you’re as wrong as a person can be. You’re stupid as shit, on purpose, and anyone indulging your opinion on anything should be getting paid as a mental health care worker or beating you back through a portal to the backwards universe you came from. Fuck you.
Bill O’Reilly tells viewers, “We’re living in a time when some retail outlets will not say Merry Christmas. Insaaane?” A normal person would see that and say, “Ha ha ha what? Did he– ha ha I can’t believe my grandma had a stroke in front of that guy. Let’s definitely not put that crazy clip in our feature film.” The makers of Last Ounce of Courage went a different way. They used it as the cue for one of the main characters to switch off the TV and ask his grandpa, “WHAT DID MY DAD DIE FOR, BOB?“
Bob isn’t even offended. He tells his grandson, “He gave his life for his country.”
Christian doesn’t give a shit. He says, “So what are we doing. What are YOU doing!?” I’m not leaving out anything. This is what this family said to each other after a very questionable FOX News report riled them up. And the filmmakers, along with Chuck Norris, think this perfect example of why alarmist media is dangerous is actually wisdom. They think these are the good guys.
Christian’s grandmother tries to calm him down. “Your grandpa was in a very special unit. He rescued prisoners of war,” which is not really how the military is structured. What she’s describing is more exactly Rambo. Which I have no problem with! Rambo rules. I’m only pointing out how strange it is for a movie about the glory and virtue of the American armed services to be written by three civilians who know nothing about the military.
Knowing his grandfather was, again, precisely like Rambo has no effect on him. He screams, “What are you doing NOW!?” Like why isn’t he still rescuing Vietnam War POWs as an elderly man in Colorado? Why isn’t his KA-BAR dripping with the blood of Christmas’ enemies?
“It’s not that easy, kid. What are YOU doing?” counters Bob. Please believe me this is word-for-word what these characters say to each other.
“I’m just one kid.” It’s checkmate.
“Well, I’m just one grandpa.” It’s double fucking triple checkmate.
The neighbor girl breaks the tie by saying, “I think… Chris is right. We should all be doing something.”
And there it is. Nothing has happened to them, no one is after them, and they have to do something about it. Something very much like war. These people are irrationally angry and humiliating themselves in order to protect their happiness and pride, and there will never be a more perfect encapsulation of right wing politics. It’s stunning. It’s clearer than any art could hope to communicate. They set out to save Christmas and they accidentally explained white grievance.
Bob is listening to the radio at work and hears some town renamed their “Christmas Parade” to the “Santa Parade.” He reacts to the news with disbelief and sadness, like a chimpanzee watching an escape artist drown. The children are back home, digging through the attic for something, anything to use to express their heroic interest in Christmas. They find a few random, moldy reindeer toys, but nothi– wait, what’s this? A four foot sign that says “MERRY CHRISTMAS?” This might work.
They hang the sign in full defiance of the unspoken anti-Christmas agenda of their rural Colorado neighbors. In your goddamn faces, friends and neighbors! We went to the Christmas aisle in our local store, bought a product called “Christmas lights,” said “Merry CHRISTMAS” to a nice lady who said it back, and then used those CHRISTMAS lights for their ordinary, intended purpose! We say CHRISTMAS in our home we’d like to see you TRY TO STOP US!
Honestly, I’m just having fun at this point. The last two images perfectly sum up Last Ounce of Courage, and there’s no need for any of this. The movie is off the rails anyway. The next scene is Bob shooting out of bed shouting, “Christian’s right! What am I doing!?” Then he goes on the Internet to do hours of Christmas research, and heads to city hall on a full Christmas rampage. By the way, he’s also the town’s mayor. I’m not sure the movie mentioned that until now.
A military march plays. He takes the American flag off his motorcycle. He growls another voiceover. “I had been a coward. Passive. And even selfish.” It is as dramatic as these filmmakers could make it. This one mother fucking man is going to sacrifice everything to make a difference which ends up being going to the city hall storage closet to unpack the Christmas decorations they already had.
With madness in his eyes, he tells his subordinates everything he learned on the Internet last night. He smugly informs them Christmas is a national holiday, which they didn’t know. He tells them, “A public teacher is allowed to objectively teach about the origins of Christmas… in the classroom! They can. They don’t. But they can.” They can’t believe it each of the several times he explains to them how Christmas is, in fact, legal. You can have Christmas! What are we doing here!? As established by your lived experience, the society we all share, and this movie itself, all of this is for nothing. Every moment of this film and culture war is absolutely and pointlessly insane.
This scene goes on for a very long time.
It won’t fucking stop. He retells his entire seven hours of autoplayed YouTube, and it’s as just baaaaaarely not Nazi as it sounds.
By the end of the scene you will learn 400 ways Christmas isn’t against the law along with how unhealthy it is for a 70-year-old to stay up all night reading right wing conspiracy websites, another thing you already knew.
The scene finally ends, and Bob gets hold of a construction crane to hang the city’s tinsel. He asks his assistant how it looks who replies, “It looks illegal! Are you sure it’s not unconstitutional!?”
Oh Jesus. He said the wrong thing. Bob, as if he was waiting his whole life for this question, RECREATES THE PREVIOUS SCENE ALMOST VERBATIM.
The local media shows up to get a shot of the tinsel and guess what Bob tells the reporter? That’s right! “Christmas is not illegal!” The Vietnam veteran losing his mind from untreated PTSD and insomnia tells the reporter he loves Christmas and wants the town to be known as “The Christmas City!” She hears this and tells her viewers, “You heard right. The mayor’s bringing religion back to this little town.” This news is a bombshell. When it goes out over the air, the band at the local biker bar stops mid-set to hear the TV.
Bob’s not the only one in the family saving Christmas, though. The grandson and the neighbor girl are hatching a scheme to sabotage the junior high school “Winter Space Odyssey,” which is the story of the nativity adapted to be about space aliens. Hilarious, right? It’s exactly what those liberal schools would do! But this frantic stab at satire destroys the stakes of the film. It’s too silly even for a universe where you can be arrested for off-the-books Christmas crimes. And the last thing the messaging of this ridiculous movie needed was for the audience to think, “Wait, maybe they’re kidding?”
So, like teenagers do, the kids try out, learn, and rehearse a middle school play in order to sabotage it with a second play they write and choreograph themselves about Christ’s birth.
Every cast and crew member is in on the plan, and they get together in the attic to Christmas-up the script. For instance, the alien Zandor’s line of, “Not to worry Zindor, it’s been f” becomes…
… “Hello I am an angel.” Those parents hoping to watch a Christmas play won’t know what motherfucking goddamn hit them.
Meanwhile, news of the city-approved tinsel has reached the desk of “The Hammer” played by Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. He’s the leader of an ACLUish group dedicated to defeating Christmas. I’m guessing he was cast because the filmmakers wanted the most intimidating actor they could think of to make their hero look tough. Unfortunately, Bob Revere’s defiant Christmas hero face is the same one he makes when he hugs his son and cries.
You approved this, Chuck Norris? This little crybaby looks like he swallowed his dentures and isn’t going anywhere until he passes them. For what seems like three hours the movie is a series of city council meetings and town halls where Fred Williamson tells them they can’t have Christmas and Bob says “Yeah, huh we can!” I am legitimately astonished I am only 40 minutes into the movie when The Hammer tells Bob, “You are breaking the law,” and Bob says, “Show me the law,” and Fred says, “Well, then you are violating the Constitution,” and Bob says, “Mr. Hammerschmidt, that is a lie and you know it.” This life I have chosen for myself has me looking at the stupidest things Man has ever made all day, every day and I’ve never seen anything like this.
Fred and Bob are both making irrefutable arguments, so let’s check back in with the kids. They are having another secret meeting to go over their plan to adapt the sci-fi parody of Jesus’ birth back into a non-parody of Jesus’ birth for an audience of their parents and no one. One girl, this late in the plan, is just now learning Jesus was not really found by aliens. She adds, “Well, I didn’t know! I’ve never read the Bible!” Parents, educators, children… this is what is at stake. This is why school plays need to be about the gentile, virgin birth of the Christian God.
Bob is in another city council meeting where he rants about all the freedoms being taken away, and gives one example. He tells them how a couple of years ago his son mentioned the word “God” in his valedictorian speech and complains, “Well, today we would be sued by some lone humanist.” That’s his whole speech, which means for the 39th time, the thing that has him aggravated is a time nothing happened to him, but he would find outrageous if it had.
Bob leaves in a big rig to get a Christmas tree, ranting at the radio for playing “Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer” which is not real Christmas music. If there’s a reindeer in your song and it isn’t in the barn trying to eat his newborn Lord’s afterbirth, Bob doesn’t count it as Christmas music.
Fred Williamson gets an emergency phone call to inform him about Bob’s plan to get a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree!? Not on his watch, turkey. He organizes a rally of hardcore separation of church and state fans who chant, “SEPARATE! CHURCH AND STATE!” And this is what I was talking about earlier when I said the movie shouldn’t have added the element of satire, because there’s no way these dumbshits are serious.
Hammerschmidt and Bob Revere confront each other at another town hall meeting in a scene where a white actor lectures Fred “The Hammer” Williamson on how a Christmas parade getting renamed is taking his freedoms as a Christian American away. So if you ever need to hurt Fred Williamson’s feelings any time during the rest of his life, remind him he let this happen, for probably about $9000 minus his agent’s fee.
Bob tells the town, again, that Christmas is a national holiday which you can’t change, and he gets a laugh by saying, “That’d be like calling Columbus Day… Great Explorer’s Day!” Then Bob uses the ultimate freedom card. He tells Fred, “As much as I hate what you’re doin’… you’re free to do it. Just like I’m free to celebrate Christmas.” It’s… I don’t know… ironic that the writers created this antagonistic monster and then point out there are similarities between what he’s doing and how we should celebrate Christmas.
Fred has an ultimate card of his own. It’s an envelope containing “a directive” which, if I’m understanding it correctly, takes away the town’s Christmas. Bob leaps to his feet and has to be gently held back from kicking Fred “The Hammer” Williamson’s ass. It’s another perfect digest of the film’s message– losing a make-believe fight and getting really cranky when no one takes your suffering seriously. The Hammer smirks and leaves completely unkicked. Hey, Chuck Norris, maybe you need to explain the process you go through when giving your endorsement. Because this sucks.
Fred Williamson is drunk on imaginary right-wing boogeyman power. He tears down the Christmas tree and crushes its angel topper under his foot. He convinces the “Health Department” to shut down the Mission at the Cross for violating religious iconography statut– oh, I should have mentioned Bob is a Rambo, pharmacist, biker, Facebook uncle, mayor, and also the owner of a religious charity mission, but the kind that isn’t allowed to display religious icons. It’s dumb, sure, but in a way it’s impressive for three writers, two directors, and 12 executive producers to know literally nothing about any of the subjects they’re so passionate about.
The children are busy rehearsing the official version of their play, which involves a sci-fi version of “Silent Night” with painfully secularized lyrics like “round yon SNOWMAN” because everyone involved in this stupid bullshit is just the fucking worst.
No one would have any reason to suspect them of wanting to sabotage this “Winter Space Odyssey.” They are giving it their all and their choreography is flawless. Which means they fully dedicated themselves to learning this play while they wrote and produced a second one to save Christmas*.
* Remind their own parents about the most famous story in American folklore.
They go back to their attic and work more on their theatrical ambush plans. The neighbor girl snarls, “Hopefully the audience will understand that Christmas is about peace! And joy and love!” The fuck it is, though. These are the most belligerent, unhappy people using misplaced hate to safeguard the power of their uncontested cultural supremacy, and with an entire universe designed to make them the heroes, they are still unlikeable pieces of trash.
They’re starting to realize this plan might get them in trouble, and one of them goes, “You know, guys, this could really jeopardize my station as stage tech!” He thinks he might keep his job as the middle school stage tech after he sabotages the middle school play and goes on to high school! It’s just good writing! Still, he reminds the others of how serious this is and they make a pledge, only wait, they need some kind of talisman to swear on! No one balks at this very real tradition, so they rummage through boxes hoping to find an object sacred enough to pledge a Christian theater prank upon.
I’m not sure the editor meant to leave in, but the kids are immediately distracted by a crate of Mardis Gras props.
While everyone else is draping themselves in feathers and beads, Christian finds his grandfather’s Medal of Honor. Oh my God, no. Oh my God, holy shit, these kids are going to swear to perform the wrong play on the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Last Ounce of Courage is non-stop incredible. If this movie was a person, he would be a racecar-driving cocaine addict named Larry “First Date Anal Fisting” Cocaine.
Things are going badly for Bob. Despite his super sane declarations of the legality of Christmas, he’s lost his veteran’s shelter, his Christmas tree, and now his job as mayor. Plus, nobody came to his family’s Christmas party. W-wait? Who’s this at the door?
Why it’s the local unhoused and mentally ill! Along with the substance abusers who lost their support system when Bob’s Mission at the Cross was closed! Yay, they’re here to party! In his home! This “happy holiday” is turning out to be a “Merry Christmas” after all. Now, let’s jam on the KORG!
Wait, hold on. Everyone reset Act 2. Things are bad again. There’s a front page story about how Bob, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor for his special rescue work, isn’t really a war hero.
Finding out his grandpa is a fraud is a pretty big blow to Christian. At least for a few seconds before the magical janitor appears to tell him it’s a lie. You see, he was on the secret Vietnam War rescue operation described by the front page of the 2012 local newspaper. Bob Revere was his sergeant. He says, in perfect military vernacular, “Every mission he performed was perfect. All but one.”
It’s a long, clumsy story, told by someone who did not know any military experts to run it by, but I can sum it up in one sentence: Bob stepped on a booby trap and everyone except him and the janitor exploded. Bob is with his wife telling her the same story. “I was pushing them too hard,” he cries, not quite understanding how words or explosives work.
If you told me 30 years ago, I’d be watching the bad guy from Road House weep for an entire film about failing to save Christmas, I’d have said, “W-what happens to movies in the future?”
The writing here is such a mess there’s no way to know for sure, but I think the reason the newspaper called Bob Revere “Not a War Hero” was because he stepped on a Viet Cong tripwire? I keep complaining about this, but it is fascinating how someone writing a military movie can know so little about the military that they think all of a soldier’s honor is stripped of them if the enemy lands a shot. He led the POW Rescue Squad! You can’t call him a fraud because he’s not immune to landmine. It’d be like Michael Jordan calling the wrong number and hearing, “Who? No, there’s no Scottie Pippen here. I’m sorry, you fraud, but I’m going to need you to throw away two MVP awards and all your championship rings.”
Things look bleak, but for the fifth time in the movie, everyone has had enough and they are going to save fucking Christmas. To the rousing drums of a military march, Bob pulls a “JESUS SAVES” cross into his truck! The theater kids get ready to surprise their parents with the story of baby Jesus! And the bikers pick up their little leader! It’s time to, as they say in the military marines: Army force ahead! For Christmas!
Bob is going to remount the cross on the Mission at the Cross, a Christian organization he owns. This is a big story, so a newscaster is there reminding viewers it was originally taken down “because a single citizen said the cross was offensive to him.” Wait, that’s how the town lost Christmas? Some fucking guy? Christianity, your one weakness was an email from Travis? Jesus Christ, you guys.
Bob is on the roof and the town cheers for him as he struggles to pull the cross up! Unfortunately, it looks like getting it in and out of his truck burned his arms out and he’s mostly just forming new hernias. His grandson hurries up the fire escape to help and Bob screams, “CHRISTIAN! YOU GOTTA GO BACK!! IT’S TOO DANGEROUS!” like he’s disarming a bomb, not lifting a decoration up one story with a rope.
There’s no nice way to put it. From mission objective to execution, this is the pussiest shit in the history of pussy shit. If Bob was up here trying to cry into a teddy bear to save Saturdays and accidentally peed his pants, it would be an identical amount of courage. I think Christmas will be okay, but it will have nothing to do with the wasted efforts of this toddler-dicked clown.
The crowd watches them lose a game of tug-of-war to gravity’s pull on 180 pounds for a while. Mercifully, the bikers steal a fire truck and send up the guy who got his gunshot wound treated at the Target pharmacy counter yesterday. With his help, they get it done! Their Christian charity organization called “Mission at the Cross” has a cross again! Congratulations, Christmas.
Bob starts a speech about he may no longer be the mayor, but he’ll always be a “freedom fighter.” Okay, Poop Crywalker. You didn’t exactly blow up the Death Star. You put a cross back on a building against the wishes of one Travis. This was more like bringing your own Pepsi into a restauran– wait, oh no, he’s still going.
He tells the crowd, “It’s time you stood up for what our brothers in arms, and my own son, died for.” He tells them this again and again using slightly different words. Maybe they shot 70 versions of this and accidentally left them all in? Oh, man. This speech is never going to stop.
The news is running this? Ranting Madman Recites Manifesto From Roof? They are broadcasting this mental breakdown live on the air!? I mean this guy is losing his fu– here, I’ll just transcribe some. This is maybe 5% of it:
“Our rights are being destroyed, perhaps forever. But don’t you see? We’re letting it happen. We’re asleep. We sleep and they come in like a thief in the night and they take what’s left! WAKE UP! We can’t sleep anymore! Wake up and look around you! Look what’s coming over the horizon! We can’t let the enemy take one more inch! NOT one more inch! We can’t be silent anymore! The silence has to stop! And it has to stop today!”
Ten minutes in and it’s not over. Like someone who’s never been allowed to talk this long before, Bob Revere is still going. I want to remind you again he’s talking about enjoying the most popular holiday from the most common religion, and he screams, “YOU CAN HEAR THE VOICES FROM THE GRAVES OF THOSE WHO DIED FOR THEIR FREEDOMS! They’re wondering if they died in vain! We fight for freedom! We fight for freedom! We fight for freedom!!!“
People are crying. They’re clapping. They seem to think this lunatic doing unlicensed construction without a permit in the middle of the night and squealing about the disappointed ghosts of our dead children finally saved Christmas. The film cuts to at least 70 different extras, bursting with tears. Still, the scene needs something else, right? Something to really drive home the magnitude of what this man has done, and inspired all of us to do. Can you guess what it is?
What if I told you that while Bob was getting arrested for his beliefs, his grandson told the cop to step back so he could present him with The Congressional Medal of Honor?
Christian tells him, “If you weren’t a hero before, you are now.” The cheering, weeping crowd has never seen anything like it. But fuck you, it’s still not enough.
The teenage boy chases down the cop car and pounds on it to get it to stop. He crouches down and gives his grandfather a salute, which Bob Revere, recipient of one Medal of Honor twice, returns with honor. The Rocky Mountains explode with ejaculate. The inspired crowd was long ago transformed into pure light and exploded against the evening sky. Tonight, all of Christian America is cumming… cumming all over Christmas’ tits.
And with that, the newscaster signs off with a reminder that the big middle school play is tonight. Fuck! That means all thirty minutes of that went out over the air? And it also means we still have the school play thing to do. FUCK. Poor Bob Revere is going to miss it since he’s in jail, but as luck would have it, the mysterious old cowboy from earlier is in the cell next to him and has a radio tuned to the… live broadcast of the junior high school play?
Bob doesn’t find this weird at all. It’s only a shadowy stranger listening to children put on a play from jail. And let’s talk about the “Winter Space Odyssey.” You already know it sucks. It’s supposed to. But the opening song has six kids dressed as aliens chanting a single lyric: “AHH!” These lazy fucks. The script needed a song, any song, here and the one they came up with has half a lyric and one note. It’s like a world record speedrun of the least amount of effort put into a song. And did this play start at 11pm? We were on that goddamn roof for hours when Christmas was already saved! A guy got the Medal of Honor for it! Why are you still doing this, kids?
The alien performers run backstage and do a quick change into their shepherd and angel costumes. They start in on their Jesus play and no one in the audience cares. Why would they even know? There are 12 people in the crowd and they are Christian parents at a holiday recital. Anyone paying attention is going to think, “Sure, right. Nativity stuff.” The principal and the director are pretty upset about it, though.
If you’re wondering how they handled these two, the magical janitor locks the director in a closet and physically threatens the principal.
I think both Christians and Others can agree kidnapping and coercion aren’t crimes if it’s for a good cause. And there is no cause more good than defiantly, some would say courageously, singing “Silent Night” but without space alien lyrics. Which these wild pranksters do, at least until Christian storms onto the stage and screws up their plans.
Christian commandeers their hijacking to announce they are no longer doing the Christ birth play, but instead they’re going to watch a video his dead dad sent his mom from war. Those are the stakes in this movie. A highly produced pro-Christian prank on a junior high school production of an alien-themed nativity spoof gets sabotaged by a second pro-Christian prank, only the second Christian is a narcissist, not a religion. It’s complicated, but very much not important.
A screen comes down and they show the video Christian’s dad recorded for his wife. It is very personal, and very horny.
He gives a speech about how he would gladly die for Christmas freedoms, almost like he’s daring the universe to kill him. We don’t know where he is, but he says “People here would be killed if they celebrated Christmas. But freedom’s worth it.” And then he dies! Along with every soldier sitting behind him! A bomb hits them and they die on camera!
This is the second interruption of the play and it’s a snuff film!
And none of this is implied by an abrupt cut! The still-working camera falls on his dead face!
It’s the worst thing I can imag– wait, the the crowd is clapping? Everyone starts singing “Silent Night!?” A seventy-year-old wounded soldier, in full camouflage, stands up and salutes!? I guess this guy came straight from Saigon to this middle school play. This is so fucked up.
They ruined a play two times to trick a group of Christians to learn about Jesus to trick that group again into watching a soldier die with extremely full balls. And the man sleeping with that dead soldier’s widow, who has never served in the military, also stands to give a salute.
Back in jail, Bob Revere is crying again, listening to the sweet sounds of people clapping for the video of his boy dying on the radio. The old cowboy teleports through the bars and into Bob’s cell. “Well done, Bob. Well done,” he says. Ha ha ha these assholes can’t be serious.
Bob knows something odd is happening, but still doesn’t quite get it.
When his wife arrives, Bob starts crying again. He heard everything over the radio, and he’s so proud of their grandson. She tells him, like no one should have to, “Bob? It wasn’t on the radio.” He still doesn’t quite get it.
Bob stammers about the gray haired guy who can pass through metal bars and listen to any school play on his radio, but a 90-year-old police officer tells him there was no one else in there with him. Bob is still kind of confused.
They leave jail and the whole town is there to cheer for Bob. They sing “Silent Night” again, the forbidden song those kids sacrificed everything to teach them. Fred Williamson walks up to the cop and insists he arrest everyone, and it’s a testament to my sanity that after 100 minutes of Last Ounce of Courage, I still find it ridiculous for this movie’s drama to hinge on Christmas being illegal while also reminding us many times how Christmas is not illegal.
Bob insolently tells the crowd, “Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to EVERYONE,” like he’s refusing an Obama executive command to have sex with a sheep dog. He says it like he’s on Joe Rogan’s podcast deadnaming a trans man who now goes by Mike Holidays. And at the back of the crowd, watching this hero become a legend, is the mysterious cowboy. With a tip of his hat, he magically vanishes.
Bob acknowledges the man only he can see with an open-palmed salute in another majestic and inadvertent encapsulation of the film’s core message–accidentally giving off fascist signals while losing a culture war against your imagination in order to stick it to an enemy which never existed.
The movie ends with another pro-war Ronald Reagan quote and Bob’s voiceover. “I love being free. But I now know freedom only comes at great sacrifice. From each and every one of us.” It’s breathtaking. It’s half a debate nerd’s talking point about why Christmas should start in September, adapted into a movie by the softest white supremacists. It’s worse than anything, but here’s what makes it even more special– it somehow lost more money than it cost.
I don’t mean it didn’t make its money back. It did, at least before advertising costs. You may not like it, but Christians will buy anything, and right-wing nutbags will watch a sheep dog fuck their wife if you tell them it’ll hurt the feelings of the educated. What happened was, Last Ounce of Courage broke so many laws during its marketing campaign, it lost $32.4 million in a settlement.
To spread the word about this monument to bitch fragility, they robocalled millions of homes with this recorded message from Governor Mike Huckabee:
You’re not allowed to do this for so many good reasons and the $32.4 million they were fined was the nice number. It would have been over a billion dollars in damages if the courts weren’t so afraid of losing Chuck Norris’ approval. Other movies have definitely lost more money than Last Ounce of Courage, but there’s a difference between failed art and this. This wasn’t even trying to be art. This was a shameless pandering to soft-brained idiots who told their grifters exactly what they wanted to buy, and it still lost twenty times more than it cost to produce, not counting the immeasurable damage done to the Chuck Norris Seal of Approval‘s integrity.
