Fox News attacks Superman

The pro-Trump conservative propaganda outlet trained its sights on the character, who for 79 years has been known around the world for representing truth, justice, and the American way.

In the most recent issue of Action Comics, the flagship title that has told Superman’s story since 1938, Superman is shown defending a group of Latino men from a gun-toting racist, who blames them for taking his job.

A column from Fox correspondent and serial misinformer Todd Starnes complains, “The Man of Steel has now become a propaganda tool for the defenders of illegal aliens.”

Starnes repeatedly invokes the term “illegals” while complaining about the issue, and writes that Superman should be “rounding up the illegals and flying them back to where they came from.”

The writer, whose role at Fox News is to make up stories about conservative culture being under attack — he has been exposed as a fraud several times — winds up his screed complaining, “Don’t be surprised to see the Flash rushing Mexicans across the border or Wonder Woman using her lasso to round up Texas ranchers trying to defend their property.”

The pro-Trump Breitbart also makes a stab at tearing down the American icon, describing Superman as committing “an act of Super socialism” and describes him as “our Social Justice Supes.”

Not only are these conservative publications unusually comfortable attacking the character, who has been a guiding light for decades in instructing both adults and children about standing up for what is right and true no matter what, but they also have the story wrong while leaning on their prejudices about Latinos.

As the sequence of the events show in the issue, there is no reference to the Latino men being undocumented immigrants. Fox and Breitbart are simply taking the words of a gun-toting racist white man as gospel, as they so often do.

2 pages that perfectly capture what #SUPERMAN represents. Protecting immigrants. Standing up to bigotry. True American values. #DefendDACA pic.twitter.com/XJDfpauTHe

— Sheraz Farooqi (@SherazFarooqi_) September 13, 2017

Even if they were undocumented, Superman’s role is to protect all life, no matter their immigration status. He was taught these traditional, progressive values by his Kansas parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who found him as an infant in a spaceship in a field. Instead of using his amazing powers for personal gain, his parents told him that he must use them to help and guide humanity.

From the very first issue of Action Comics #1, Superman has been a social justice advocate. One of Superman’s first actions on the printed page was to save a woman on death row, falsely accused of murder and on the verge of execution. In the same issue, Superman defends a woman who is being battered by her husband and intimidates a lobbyist trying to sow the seeds of war.

Defending the innocent, putting himself in between a racist and innocent workers, is about the most Superman thing Superman could do, so it’s no wonder that Fox and Breitbart hate it. Dan Jurgens, the long-time Superman writer who wrote the issue commented, “The fact that a few people object to Superman saving innocent, unarmed people pretty much proves the point of the story, sad to say.”

In the same issue, Superman even defends “one-percenters’ mansions” from an arsonist who laments that “they deserve to suffer.”

The real reason why Action Comics 987 is incredible. Superman protecting people, regardless of origin or beliefs. Great job, DC!#LodixNXBD pic.twitter.com/Zt9kVLxq7q

— LodiX (@lodix1) September 14, 2017

Almost as if speaking to his detractors at Fox and Breitbart, Superman laments the state of affairs in this issue:

Something darker is at work here. As though anger and ignorance have boiled over all at once. Where people can’t look past their own selfishness and the common good is a foreign concept.

Is it any wonder why the right would attack someone who thinks like that?