The Friday Link for 11/13/26

Hi all! Happy Friday the 13th to all who celebrate!

I need to talk about how Trump, MAGA, and his wealthy benefactors are really trying to take over the country on a large scale.  I don't think this is breaking news, but one thing happened in the last week that shows how these fascists will sacrifice their money on a large scale to make sure their ideology is the only one that is presented. 

James Gunn and Peter Safran were fired from DC Studios, part of the Warner Bros. empire, which was bought by Paramount, the same company that bought CBS for the purpose of killing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and the integrity of 60 Minutes and CBS News.  The Ellisons, Larry and his son David, are far-right zealots, and they want to make sure the media America sees is filtered through their worldview. 

Their replacement at Skydance, the newly created media company running it all, is a guy named Jeremy Latcham, who seems to feel as if the world needs more forced Christian and patriotic entertainment, meaning the DC universe is about to get really lame.  They are going to lose BILLIONS, yet they don't seem to care.

Gunn and Safran had resurrected DC entertainment, the weak opposition to the mighty Marvel Cinematic Universe.  They had approached DC by using their primary characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) to create a more expanded DC entertainment universe, and it was working.  Their Superman movie was the best one since the 2nd Christopher Reeve outing. They just put out a Green Lantern series on HBO (Lanterns), and it was one of the best comic book TV adaptations ever, and even their less profitable releases, like Supergirl, were solid and entertaining, pushing the DC movie universe in new and better directions.

Some people have tried to explain that the removal of Gunn and Safran was more nuanced, that revenues were not where the Ellisons thought they should be, but I feel the truth is a little more straightforward.  Like cancelling Colbert because they didn't like how he was mocking Trump, Paramount more than likely had a far bigger problem with what messages the DC movies and TV shows were sending.

Let's start with Supergirl, the movie which was attacked by misogynists for featuring...(wait for it)...an unapologetic strong woman.  Considering the utter disdain the current MAGA world has for strong female characters, I feel as if the modern MAGA frat boy über alles mentality of the Right was being hurt by Supergirl. Their version of female superheroes are ones who need to be saved by a man.

I thought she was great, and Lobo too! 

Superman battles a super wealthy tech genius determined to rule the world. Sounds familiar.  Heaven forbid Superman fight anything based on the real world.  The truth is, Gunn and crew found the old Superman spark that was missing from the post-Christopher Reeve versions of Superman. Watch these clips and tell me you don't see the fun. 

I've posted about Lanterns before.  It was great.  My guess is that Paramount had to stop it because the focus was on the far more interesting Black John Stewart version of the Green Lantern. In the modern anti-DEI world of the far right, Black people can't be the lead when a white guy is standing by.

And the last clip is clearly verbotten in the new Ellison-controlled DC universe.  This is from a cartoon called Creature Commandos, and features GI Robot, a robot from WWII who fights Nazis.  I have a suspicion about why this show is being sent to pasture.  Can't upset a large portion of Trump's base. 

WARNING! This is a fairly violent cartoon.  Seriously, if you don't want to see that, skip it. 

If we don't stop this massive consolidation of our media into the hands of 5 or 6 super-wealthy far-right zealots, we are going to lose a lot of creative thought, replaced with tolerated storylines that don't upset the Republican ship.

That's it for this week.

Please stay up to date on your vaccinations.