What Comic Con cosplay taught me about America’s divided politics

I walked up to the wizard and asked him, “What do they call you?” He clearly got the reference.

“Some would call me Tim.” he said with a smile.

I turned around to see a man dressed as a World War II aviator. “Hey, Amelia Earhart, how you doing?” I asked.

That “Caddyshack” reference  got a laugh. I hope I made that joke my own.

I certainly wasn’t in Washington, D.C., anymore, Toto. No, I had abandoned the freakshow capital of the world and was in the exhibit hall at the San Diego Convention Center, watching thousands of people walk by dressed as their favorite character from comics, sci-fi, fantasy or video games. One guy I noticed looked like Alex Jones as an Ewok. I turned to my left and saw another guy who looked like Stephen Miller dressed as Lord Voldemort. To my right was a woman who looked like Karoline Leavitt dressed as Dolores Umbridge. Behind her? A guy who looked like Tom Homan dressed as the Kingpin.

It was certainly more enjoyable than seeing the real people in D.C. Hey, if you can’t enjoy yourself at Comic Con, the most famous fan convention in several worlds (if the fans are to be believed), then your ability to have fun is even below that of the religious zealots spouting biblical quotes who  gather on the streets outside the convention center every year to protest the event, while becoming part of it. Who looked sillier, the guy wearing a crown of thorns or the guy dressed as the Green Lantern? Actually, I still think that was Pete Hegseth — no matter what he’s wearing.

As a political reporter, I came away from Comic Con with one overriding impression: If world politics were more like the comic book world, reality would be a safer, saner and healthier place. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching world leaders cosplaying their favorite sci-fi or fantasy characters at U.N. meetings, peace-treaty negotiations and other staged events? True peace in the Middle East could one day come with the headline; “Batman and the Joker have signed a historic agreement in Beirut. Details at 11.”

Comedian Bill Hicks famously once said that he not only supported the legalization of marijuana but thought its use should be mandatory. “Shut up and smoke this. It’s the law,” he said, imagining a peaceful world where people stopped taking life “too seriously.” Walking around Comic Con, I couldn’t help thinking that dressing up in gaudy costumes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Doing both? Well, that’s up to you.

If you think that’s an absurd idea, I will say that it’s less absurd than what we see in the White House every day, and it would be a lot more enjoyable. Donald Trump has long since lost his appeal, whatever that was. He offers never-ending reruns of the same speech, and at this point it fails to entertain, enlighten or move anyone. How many more times do we have to hear about how “hot” the country is, how only losers support wind power, how 2% of the people commit 90% of crimes, or how prescription medication is now 600 percent cheaper? 

Trump is dull and lackluster. He looks somnambulant. He is about as entertaining as a stale powdered donut and even less nutritious.

In a Comic Con panel discussion with a “Superman historian” — a man who has relentlessly tracked down every salient fact about Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — I learned that the two comic book innovators met in their Cleveland high school in the late 1920s and first proposed Superman as a newspaper comic strip in 1933, during the Great Depression. One was a ladies’ man and one was a partier. They sold the rights to their creation to DC Comics and much controversy ensued. Siegel apparently wrote letters putting “curses” on people and telling the world he got screwed. Shuster was once found on a park bench and thought to be a vagrant. He told the police he was the original Superman artist, and to prove it he drew the Man of Steel convincingly enough to stay out of jail.

I loved these stories, but the most fascinating thing I learned that night was that I knew far more about the creation of the comic strip that became a billion-dollar empire after listening to a single historian for one hour than I know right now about the Iran war or the condition of Mitch McConnell, the senior U.S. senator from Kentucky, whom I have covered since the 1980s and who disappeared on June 14 into the back of a D.C. ambulance and hasn’t been seen in public since.

Future historians may make their living trying to figure out what happened to McConnell — hell, that story might become a comic book, though not one as popular as Superman. But right now, McConnell and Trump are at the heart of the loathsome divisiveness that defines American politics, makes it so disreputable and nowhere near as much fun as Comic Con.

“United we stand. Divided we fall.” Believe it or not, that’s the state motto of Kentucky. No one in politics today seems to care about our divided nature. They seem to nurture it.

Comic Con, on the other hand, was the embodiment of the Kentucky motto.

The panels featured lengthy, often in-depth discussions. Sometimes they featured celebrities recounting past glories or promoting their newest releases. Only one panel I encountered, featuring action star Alan Ritchson of “Reacher,” ventured directly into politics. Ritchson said that Trump was “raping the world” and that he chose to speak out  because “I want to live a life that feels meaningful.”

It appears Trump was not pleased. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast, “Alan Ritchson is a talentless hack who clearly suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

Keep it classy, Trump people. 

Inside the exhibit hall I ran into actor Sam J. Jones, the former football player who played Flash Gordon back in 1980. Younger fans may remember him playing himself in “Ted,” conducting the wedding ceremony and doing the “Flash” jump at the end of the movie. He was signing autographs and handing out football cards showing him, as Flash Gordon, wearing legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas’ old number 19.

“I recognize you,” he told me.

I said I recognized him too. We talked a bit about politics and he offered this observation: “I’ve worked a lot of these Comic Cons. These are the best people you’ll ever meet. They’re genuine and they are here to enjoy themselves. The world needs more of that.”

All day on Saturday I walked through a world I rarely get to visit and didn’t know I wanted to. From the panels to the exhibit hall, I was floored by the number of artists, the collectibles and the displays. It was like a theme park. Outside in the streets, the cosplayers enjoyed mugging for the cameras or taking selfies and laughing at themselves and others while interacting with their favorite celebrities.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte, also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

As I walked out of a restaurant, I passed a guy who had the most authentic Deadpool costume I’d ever seen. He was prancing about and really getting into it. Hey, I’m sorry for elbowing you, Ryan Reynolds. I didn’t know it was you. But you did step on my arthritic foot.

As Saturday afternoon turned into Saturday night, I felt like I was detoxing from the Friday night debacle back in D.C. — the rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner. Late on Friday, my phone started buzzing with alarms from the speech. I feared the worst. But if anything, it was worse. The president was on stage, trolling reporters, insulting his own speechwriters and questioning why he was even there.

For an hour, Trump meandered through a variety of subjects in a freak-show  appearance, always landing with an insult aimed at the press. He stood in front of a backdrop celebrating free speech, something no one in his administration actually celebrates. Hegseth has tried to kick reporters out of the Pentagon. Trump has subpoenaed reporters, ejected them from the White House press (or tried to), and never mentions us without saying “fake news.”

“This is so toxic. I’m leaving,” a friend of mine texted me from the event. “I didn’t even want to go.” Well, I didn’t either. But unlike my friend, I don’t have a boss who insisted that I do so.

Instead, I was in San Diego at an event that was nothing like anything in politics. I’ve been to a dozen of those dinners. None were nearly as much fun as Comic Con. And that’s coming from a guy who never read comic books as a kid. The closest I got was Mad Magazine. Oh, yeah: I think I saw a guy who looked like Kevin Hassett dressed as Alfred E. Neuman. “What? Me Worry?”

I’m genuinely sick and tired of today’s politics, and I know I’m not alone. I can only take so much of Trump’s nonsense and divisiveness. “I hate some people,” he said on stage Friday night. My friend called it “toxic,” but I would call it corrosive. It destroys the ties that bind and encourages anger and petulance. It is a modern plague on humanity.

Instead of suffering through that, I watched people of every imaginable race, creed, sexual orientation and color enjoying life. Some of them were dressed as aliens. Some of them might have been aliens. Nobody cared. Nobody judged. 

Saturday night ended with some friends at a barbecue place across from the convention center, a spot  made famous by the movie “Top Gun.”

The weather was amenable and the company was great. I listened as people sitting at a nearby table spoke about who made “the best Batman” with all the fervor and passion I hear from those involved in politics in D.C., but none of the vitriol. After a while they laughed, changed the subject and found something they could agree upon. Their biggest area of agreement was that Ewoks were horrible, just an effort “to give the kids something,” and that while “Stargate” was a terrific movie, “Stargate SG1” was an even better series. 

Other stuff that Comic Con people seemed to agree upon, in no particular order: Grogu is cool, “Rogue One” is the best Star Wars movie and “The Wrath of Khan” is quintessential “Star Trek.” Furthermore, if anyone asks you the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, the proper answer is “African or European?”

I looked up from my table, and thought I saw a guy who looked like Hegseth dressed as the surgeon general of Beverly Hills from “Escape from L.A.” kissing his husband, who looked like Josh Hawley dressed up as Mr. Poopybutthole from “Rick and Morty.”

I hadn’t even been drinking but, boy, I felt buzzed.

If only we could all get along like that.