By Harry Storm
It becomes clearer every day: We are living in a Bizarro World, a world in which things are the opposite of the way they’re supposed to be. Leading the Bizarro World charge is, of course, the Anglosphere, with the rest of the Western world not far behind.
I was a huge comic book reader until my early 20s. My dad owned a convenience store with a comic book rack, and I read pretty much every superhero comic out there. Among those, of course, was Superman, who first introduced us to the Bizarro World (in Adventure Comics) in the early 1960s. At the time, nobody reading those juvenile comics could have imagined that Bizarro World would be a metaphor for the world we live in today. But it has.
Consider the following:
After 17-year-old Rebecca Phillips spoke up about the presence of a male in the women’s locker rooms at the YMCA, Jason Frye of the San Diego branch of the American Humanist Association called HER a “creepy little voyeur.” Not the large trans-identified male prancing around in the changing room, the scared girl hiding behind a shower curtain. (This is the story that prompted this article.)
In Ireland, trans-identified violent loon “Barbie Kardashian” is to be housed in a women’s prison. Kardashian, who resembles Batman villain the Joker and equals that comic character in wickedness (he once bit the eyelids off a social worker, among lots of other things), will be in solitary confinement 21 hours a day and Irish prison officials insist he will never mix with the prison’s female population.. Still, only in Bizarro World could authorities even consider putting this madman, who threatened to rape and murder his own mother, in a female prison. Then again, the media’s consistent references to “Kardashian” as “she” is further evidence of Bizarro World intruding into our own, as is the more general belief in female penises, or that men can be women in the first place.
And speaking of journalists, where else but Bizarro World would we find journalists against free speech, supporting the suppression of news stories (e.g. Hunter Biden laptop, the Twitter Files, identities of non-white perpetrators of violence, etc. etc.), and even calling on government, big tech and cable TV companies to censor or even stop carrying news organizations they don’t like altogether. Examples include:
Kelefa Sanneh of The New Yorker, who compared “speech nuts” to gun nuts.
An article in Slate post Jan. 6, which talked about half of the U.S. population “chillingly preoccupied with their right to just talk shit.”
Veteran journalists like New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Washington Post columnist Max Boot, MSNBC’s Anand Giridharadas, and CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy, all of whom want to see Fox News and other right-wing cable news outlets shut down for broadcasting what they call “disinformation” but what is really content they don’t approve of. In a chilling Tablet article titled “Journalists mobilize against free speech” (Bizarro enough for you?), Armin Rosen lists some of the growing number of so-called journalists now advocating for curbs on freedom of speech/freedom of the press.
The hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness from these journalists is stunning of course, given the litany of mis- and disinformation the media outlets these people work for routinely provide. But the idea that journalists could self-righteously argue against freedom of speech and freedom of the press is what makes this Bizarro World material.
Meanwhile, in Canada, a Liberal Member of Parliament has been booted out of the party for – get this – advising the Chinese ambassador to urge authorities in Beijing not to release two Canadians – the two Michaels — already in solitary confinement for three YEARS, because releasing them would give a boost to the rival Conservative party. Yes, an MP from the governing party advising the government of a country holding 2 Canadians hostages to keep them in solitary just for domestic political advantage.
And only in our Bizarro World could so many Awards for Women be bestowed on trans-identified men. Caitlin Jenner, formerly Bruce and decathlon champion at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal – was named Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2015, not five minutes after claiming to have become one. In 2021, a man became New Zealand’s “Sportswoman of the Year.” Also in 2021, one of the three bikini-clad cover models for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue was a biological male. In 2022, Lia Thomas was nominated to be NCAA Woman of the Year by the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier this month, an Argentinian trans-identified man was one of 11 “International Women of Courage” honoured by Joe Biden. And finally, the American newspaper USA Today has puts Democratic transgender state senator Leigh Finke of Minnesota on its annual “Woman of the Year” list, though Finke has been a state senator for less than 3 months (like then-President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, Finke’s entry on the list obviously has nothing to do with legislative accomplishments).
Note: To the best of my knowledge, no similar honours (e.g. Man of the Year) have been bestowed on trans-identified women.
I could go on and on. Kellie-Jay Keene (aka Posie Parker) goes to New Zealand for her “Let Women Speak” tour and gets physically assaulted; swarms of violent trans-identified men cause so much havoc the event is cancelled, and the media in New Zealand and the U.K. defame HER as a white supremacist, which she clearly isn’t, and gleefully imply she and the other women who came to speak about women’s sex-based rights got what they deserve. As Andrew Doyle noted after presenting the crazed violence aimed at KJK and the other women on his GB News program, “so many mainstream commentators refuse to condemn these activists. They think this is simply a fragile, marginalized group standing up for themselves. A group so marginalized they have the support of all major corporations and public institutions, are able to call on the police to arrest those who refuse to use the language they demand, and are able to bully and physically assault women who are gathering peacefully to express their views. And the media and political class cheer them on. This is entirely backwards.” Doyle is right. It is backwards. It’s bizarre. It’s Bizarro World.
To conclude, let’s return to the comics. When Bizarro World was introduced by DC in the early 1960s, comics were mainly aimed at adolescents, which is to say, the ideas in them were usually pretty simple; even as a 10-year-old, I thought the the Bizarro World was silly. The Bizarro World was called htraE (Earth spelled backwards). It’s cube-shaped (there must be some incredible waterfalls there). People marry because they hate each other. The Bizarro World code – yes, there is one – states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!” Bonds are guaranteed to lose money. Detectives – including Batzarro, the world’s worst detective – are selected on the basis of their stupidity. Insults are considered great compliments, etc etc. Not exactly Aristotle or even Forrest Gump.
The people who dreamed up Bizarro World surely never imagined their silly creation for adolescents would in any way describe the real world. Yet, here we are, barely 60 years later, and so many people and institutions of the Western world operate as though Bizarro World is a guiding principle.
