#--because--AGAIN--there is NO evidence that Jason supports the death penalty! But there is plenty of indirect evidence that he doesn't.
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Does the mass-murdering criminal Jason "Red Hood" Todd canonically support the death penalty?
No, I can't find evidence that Red Hood supports the death penalty.
There is a difference between murder (illegal) and state-sanctioned killing (legal). Red Hood commits unlawful homicide. The death penalty is lawful homicide. Jason is a murderer. The death penalty is not legally considered murder. Commissioner Jim Gordon is a decorated military veteran, not a murderer.
Committing violence ≠ wanting the government to have the right to commit that violence. Batman and his allies brutalize criminals; they don't necessarily support the state brutalizing criminals. Red Hood kills some criminals; Red Hood doesn't necessarily support the state killing criminals. Catwoman doesn't necessarily support the state committing burglary. Et cetera.
The death penalty is administered by the criminal legal system. Jason does not like the criminal legal system (see some of his run-ins with the police). He grew up as an impoverished child who didn't believe in the system, he was raised by Batman to believe that vigilantes can make a difference that the system can't, and he became an adult criminal who still doesn't believe in the system. He's not interested in using the criminal legal system. He isn't interested in giving more powers and privileges to an abusive system that has wronged him and the people he cares about.
When Jason started up his villain business, the death penalty was legal in Gotham City. (See Detective Comics #644, The Joker: Devil's Advocate, Batgirl 2000 #19, Punchline #1.) The death penalty was also in place during his Robin run. Jason didn't argue in favor of the state having the right to kill prisoners, and the death penalty never addressed his complaints about the status quo.
Jason has rescued people from wrongful* imprisonment and the death penalty. Again, based on his own firsthand experiences, he has many reasons to believe that the system is broken. *Some of us would argue that locking any people in prisons tends to be wrongful and inhumane by default, but we could choose to accept the standard premises of crime fiction as without endorsing it as moral instruction.
Jason Todd is a criminal: a mass murderer, a terrorist, a villain. He does evil. He doesn't represent or support the legal system. He probably has the least political capital out of all the Batfamily-associated characters. He doesn't promote the death penalty. He commits murder—illegally, as a criminal, state-unapproved.
Some recent comics related to the topic:
Gotham Nights (2020) #11 "One Minute After Midnight", written by Marc Guggenheim
Red Hood and Nightwing team up to investigate the case of a man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. Both of them disapprove of how the broken criminal legal system botched this case.
Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #8 (2023), written by Matthew Rosenberg
"You familiar with Hannah Arendt's concept of Schreibtischtäter? Desk murderers? It's people who use the state to kill for them, so they don't have to get their hands dirty."
#Jason Todd#Jason Todd meta#Batfam meta#Batfamily meta#Batfam#Batfamily#Robin II#Batkids#Batman Gotham Nights#DC Robin#Red Hood#Joker The Man Who Stopped Laughing#Matt Rosenberg#canon vs fanon#fanon vs canon#panels#RHATO 2011 opens with Red Hood saving somebody from being unjustly executed. Don't read it. It is bad. Just trust me.#Jason Todd is legally dead and not registered to vote.#I could make a much longer post about Jason's general contempt for authorities but let's limit it today.#thecruellestmonth#I know the 1992-2010 comics purists are going to come after me for using recent comics.#I could make a much longer post about Post-Crisis Jason Todd's attitudes about the police and the state.#But that longer post still wouldn't have much to say about the death penalty--#--because--AGAIN--there is NO evidence that Jason supports the death penalty! But there is plenty of indirect evidence that he doesn't.#Do the words ''system''‚ ''state''‚ ''criminal''‚ and ''legal'' look like real words anymore?#ID in alt text#described#image described#ID in alt#image description
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Dickheads of the Month: June 2018
As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of June 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.
It somehow didn’t occur to Isabel Oakeshott that, when she has seen evidence of collusion between Arron Banks of Leave.EU and the Kremlin, the correct course of action is to report this to the relevant bodies immediately - not withhold the information for a year thinking it would make her look really, really important when she reveals this information in her next book - a book which may well have been released after the after the Electoral Commission’s investigations into Banks’ activities - which also happens to obliterate her defence of not knowing how important the information was if she was holding it off for her next book, so her haranguing of Carole Cadwalladr when Cadwalladr suggested these links now looks a whole lot more unpleasant as Oakeshott knew Cadwalladr was correct but had to maintain her pro-Leave psychosis anyway
Satan’s personal cheerleader Ann Coulter outdid everyone on the right not named Alex Jones by claiming, on national television no less, that every single child see crying as they were torn away from their parents to be locked in cages were actors and their tears weren’t real - which not only comes across as sociopathic with her smears, but the fact she’s cribbing InfoWars’ usual gamibit means she’s not even being original
Architect of Britain’s economy tanking Boris Johnson responded to legitimate worries of British businesses that Britait will hit them hard with the comforting response of “fuck business” - which shows that Johnson is still doing a fine job of justifying how we send £141k a year to pay his salary when it could literally be spent on anything else, let alone taking responsibility for him being the person responsible for this complete mess
In a blatant attempt to pull the wool over the license fee payers’ eyes, the BBC reported how the proposed £20bn funding increase for the NHS would be paid for by a tax increase - pretending that they didn’t report just 48 hours previously that the cost would be comfortably paid by this mythical “Brexit dividend” that they were banging on about at the time in spite of the fact people with the most basic understanding of economics or mathematics (as well as MPs on both sides of the aisle) calling this a complete fabrication used to try and dupe the taxpayer
Unofficial spokesman for the FBPE mob Eddie Marsan decided the best response to somebody having the temerity to suggest that acting as if Britait is the only notable thing to happen in British politics since 2010 and that nothing else matters at the voting booth by calling the person with such foolish ideas a “stupid, over privileged, hipster socialist” - and that’s a direct quote
Lover of all the creatures on God’s green earth (except women, homosexuals, the poor, the elderly, and animals at the receiving end of bloodsports) Christopher Chote proved himself to be a master of the political world by blocking a debate into making upskirt photography illegal - which would have at least won him a few friends with The Sun, given their habit of publishing upskirt photos taken of random female celebrities without their knowledge or consent
Having dragged himself back into the limelight by paying the dessicated husk of UKIP’s £30, Milo Yiannopoulos rapidly reminded everyone what an irresponsible dickhead when telling a journalist “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight” - and two days later, after somebody did just that in Maryland, the best he could come up with to defend what he said were how his words were something something twisted by the leftist agenda - rather than sounding remarkably like the threats that Brandon Griesemer sent to CNN back in January, the only difference being that Griesemer didn’t attempt a pathetic backtrack of “B-b-b-but I didn’t mean it, you leftist scum” when called out on it
So either Melania Trump is so brainless that it doesn’t occur to her that wearing a jacket bearing the slogan “I don’t really care” when going to visit one of her husband’s concentration camps for Mexican children could be seen as either grossly insensitive or outright antagonistic, or she knew exactly what she was doing which means that Ivanka isn’t the only one of the Trump women who the phrase “feckless cunt” applies to
Tommy Robinson fanboy Jason Collins attempted to raise support for his boneheaded messiah by tweeting a photo purportedly showing the massive turnout for the Free Tommy protest in London - only for anyone capable of noticing landmarks to point out it was a photo from Liverpool taken in 2005 for their Champions League winners parade. But apart from being the wrong city, the wrong decade and completely out of contest it proves...oh what’s the fucking point?
In response to the Argentine football team cancelling a friendly against Jerusalem in protest of Israel’s actions in Gaza, Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman harrumphed about how "We will not yield before a pack of anti-Semitic terrorist supporters" - which is less a statement and more a high-scoring game of Zionist bingo
Britain’s answer to Ted Nugent Morrissey claimed that he was cancelling his entire tour because something something left-wing agenda, as opposed to the more commonly-accepted reason for him cancelling his tour (which is hardly unique, as he;s cancelled over 100 concerts since 2012) being related to lack of ticket sales due to tickets being priced at £75, which is double what several bands playing the same venues are charging
In response to Jimmy Durmaz conceding a last minute free kick that led to Germany winning the match in the last second, Sweden fans responded by racially abusing Durmaz on social media while sending death threats to him and his family
On a similar note, Columbia fans sent Carlos Sanchez’s death threats after his handball led to Columbia conceding a penalty and him being red carded - which, considering what happened to Andres Escobar after his own goal in the 1994 World Cup, is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly
Completing the trifecta of football fans, fans from various African countries were quick to accuse the VAR system used in the World Cup of racism after Senegal failed to win a penalty after VAR rightly adjudged that the tackle from Columbia’s Davinson Sanchez (who also happens to be black, but that’s not important right now...) was fair. Among the conspiratorial nonsense was a damning indictment of both these vocal idiots’ knowledge of geography or their memory spans
After literally years of horror stories predicting Russian fans committing acts of hooliganism and drowning matches under a tsunami of racist chants at their World Cup, it has to be pointed out that the most notable act of racism in the first two weeks of the tournament is Alan Sugar’s tweet about the Senegal team
Obnoxious host of Singled Out (no, not Jenny McCarthy, the other one) Chris Hardwick responded to accusations of being an abusive and controlling boyfriend by saying that Chloe Dykstra cheated on him, which not only failed to dismiss the accusations but also imply that Dykstra cheating on him meant it was perfectly okay for him to be an abusive and controlling boyfriend
Z-Pack spokesperson Chris Amann very kindly allowed his own incompetence to become a part of the legal record with his nuisance lawsuit against CM Punk & Colt Cabana which saw him attempt to claim loss of earnings and damage to his reputation in spite his remaining in the employ of WWE to this day, failing to even prove that Punk named him in the podcast in reference to what he was suing for, and hiring a lawyer who managed to submit the wrong evidence to trial on several occasions. Suffice it to say Amann did not win - but he did draw attention to the fact he had an affair with a WWE employee...
Somehow it occurred to neither Chris Grayling nor the BBC that the chaos inflicted by Govia Thameslink on people using their Northern franchise was not unique, as those using their Southern franchise have suffered the exact same problems on a much larger scale but somehow this minor detail continued to be overlooked again and again and again
According to Priti Patel it is not acceptable to see rogue behaviour from government ministers. Just a reminder: last year Priti Patel was sacked from the government for claiming to be on holiday when she was actually holding covert meetings with several Israeli officials, meetings she had not informed the government nor the Foreign Office about
It’s interesting that left-wing blogs such as Squawkbox, The Canary, Evolve Politics and Another Angry Voice all received micro donations of between 1p and 10p due to members of the FBPE mob and the usual Tory and UKIP trolls operating under the belief that donating so little money would cost the blogs money, when all they were actually doing was giving PayPal free money while giving those blogs plenty of free material - not just the story of people deludedly thinking they could bankrupt them with donations of a few pennies, but also how the supposedly left-wing FPBE mob are just as keen to silence opposing viewpoints as followers of Farage and Rees-Mogg
In a remarkable lack of awareness, Butch Hartman stated that he loves anime but suggested that all animators should practise other art styles - which not only came across as remarkably condescending to a vast number of animators, but seemed oblivious to the fact that every single show he created uses the exact same art style
For some reason Real Madrid thought the best way to prepare for Spain’s World Cup campaign would be to announce they had signed Spain coach Julen Lopetegui as their new manager just three days before Spain’s opening match. The RFEF agreed that it was such a good idea that they promptly sacked Lopetegui the day after Real Madrid announced his signing - which of course drew the usual conspiratorial bollocks from Florentino Perez, who decided to play the victim rather than consider the concept that maybe not announcing Lopetegui as their coach on the eve of the World Cup might be a bloody stupid thing to do
So having torpedoed her comeback with a bunch of racist tweets, what has Roseanne Barr done since? Attempt to blame it on being under the effects of Ambien and, when that failed to convince anyone who checked her post history, came up with some mealy-mouthed waffling saying that her tweet that compared Valerie Jarrett to an ape was actually about anti-semitism, convincing precisely nobody
While promoting the forgettable fluff that is Ocean’s 8 Sandra Bullock stated that any and all criticism from male film critics could be ignored as the film is not for them. Let me put this into perspective: when noted misogynist crackpot Sam Peckinpah never tried that line to dismiss any negative reviews from female reviewers such as Pauline Kael, yet Sandra Bullock attempts such obvious gatekeeping, this is the sort of things that people who believe that GamerGate was their Woodstock will pounce on
Special mention to both Nike and Adidas for their kit designs for the World Cup, where the two companies appear to be in a competition to take what should be a series of straightforward kits to design and instead decide to be “creative” and create something ugly
And finally, because of course it is, there’s the the only person who ever took advice about prison reform from Kim Kardashian Donald Trump - although he amazingly didn’t flip-flop on that decision like a petulant child, as opposed to a child he ripped away from their parents and locked inside a cage
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