Heh. I try to avoid too many stereotypes about the Left or the Right, but this article tickled a funny bone -- probably because it's about comic books. It starts off noting that a lot of folks have lauded the fine liberal values embodied in the X-Men.

I don't know where some of you are getting the idea that the X-Men are liberals.
Xavier's school is an exclusive private school. Liberals would put the mutant kids in public schools because it's more egalitarian.
The X-Men are not asking for affirmative action/preferential treatment for their favored minority group; merely that they be treated like other people.
Liberal X-men would be spending their time trying to understand the root causes of anti-mutant sentiment, blaming themselves, rather than fighting against their enemies.
In a liberal version of the first X-Men movie, the UN would have sent inspectors to the Statue of Liberty to successfully disarm Magneto without any violence, rather than having the X-Men attack unilaterally.
The same people who support restrictive laws on guns because guns are dangerous are obviously the same people who support restrictive laws on mutants because mutants are dangerous. The X-Men realize that, like a gun, a mutant power is bad when it is used for bad purposes, but good when it is used for good purposes.
Wolverine is hardly the posterboy for the anti-death penalty movement. And liberals think the EPA should be doing something about second-hand smoke from his cigar.

Heh.

Of course, a lot of that sense of X-folk as liberal comes as a legacy of the 60s, when the X-team was created as a commentary on racial prejudice. As much as folks may joke about what Liberalism and Conservativism means today, the Liberal movement was by and large in the fight against racism and Jim Crow, and Conservatives were by and large in favor of the status quo.

Of course, the multi-axial nature of US party politics is such that you can have an old-school Southern conservative sure-was-an-active-racist-back-then like Robert Byrd in a senior position of the Democratic party.

Anyway, I thought it was amusing.

Of course, you could probably turn it around the other way. Here's my stab at it:

I don't know where some of you are getting the idea that the X-Men are conservatives.
Xavier's school is fully inclusive and charges nothing for even the most impoverished student. Conservatives would only allow Old Money mutants to go there, like the Worthingtons, and would probably suggest that those sort of -- funny-colored mutants might do better off in someone else's school.
The X-Men have women members who are just as powerful -- if not moreso -- than the men. and the men are always being encouraged to be in touch with their feelings. Clearly not a conservative institution.
Professor X has this annoying respect for invading others minds. You know what John Ashcroft would do with that power.
A conservative X-team would give lip service to valuing the differences in powers between different members, but you know there would be a clear hierarchy on the team. And you think Professor X would have found the X-mansion so accessible?
Conservative X-men would simply have wiped out the White House "pre-emptively," and shipped any surviving aides to their "special school" in New York for further interrogation.
In a conservative version of the first X-Men movie, the X-folks would have simply let Magneto kill everyone at the UN meeting, and good riddance to them.
The same people who support unrestrictive laws on guns because of the need for self-defense are obviously the same people who would support laws to treat mutants as "trespassers" on human Earth, and thus liable to be shot on sight.
Wolverine is hardly the posterboy for the law-and-order types. And only Liberals would have their primary transport be a peaceful jet with no stealth technology or provocative weaponry.

And so forth.

Of course, which group engages in private, off-the-record, unacknowledged meetings with the President to set major policy?

Heh.

UPDATE: At least this discussion is more amusing than going into the accusations that X2 is an attack on Islam. I kid you not.

Project Islamic H.O.P.E. national director Najee Ali claims that Singer is out to paint Muslims in a bad light. "Within the first five minutes of 'X2,' an evil villain, 'Colonel William Stryker,' is in the White House signing a document," Ali declares. "As he signs, he is shown wearing a ring featuring the Arabic symbol for 'Allah.' Col. Stryker was never depicted as a Muslim in the comic book series. We feel this is a subtle but obvious attack on Islam."

Fox execs are scratching their head, too, not able to see it in any blow-ups of the scene in question.

(update via GoaF)

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The problem is the definition of liberal and conservative changes with time, particularly if your event horizon goes back to the 19th century. Consider the following sentence:

The neo-conservatives (21st Century definition) want to establish liberal (19th Century definition) democracy in Iraq.

Your last example reminds me of a "critique" of the Lion King. Supposedly, Whoopie Goldberg and Cheech Marin's performances were racist and Jeremy Iron's performance was anti-gay.

Time for the obligatory Freud quote, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Sure. And even those labels are simplistic. There are fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. And there's the libertarian vs. authoritarian axis, which doesn't necessarily map to liberal/conservative, either.

As to The Lion King -- sheesh. The jackels are probably prejudicial to folks with mental illness, too. Of course, given that James Earl Jones' role is a very positive and admirable one, does that somehow counter the Whoopie one? Does the fact that the Cheech Marin performance sounded just like every other performance he's given for the last thirty years mean that he's racist by nature against his own people?

I worry more that The Lion King was a rip-off of Kimba than that it was anti-black, anti-Hispanic, or anti-gay. But some folks seem to be more, ah, sensitive to such things than I am.

The X-Men are far more 1960's centrist liberals than anything else.

As for The Lion King, the opener where hosts of prey animals are there in formation to give homage to the new heir the of the lions, the scariest things that eat them, is just wrong.

Sort of like folks lining the streets to celebrate Saddam's birthday, once upon a time? Heh.

Yeah, but don't you know that they're all singing that "Circle of Life" thing, so that they're all happy campers about being preyed upon. Having your neck snapped and being feasted upon alive, having your kids eaten by your alpha rivals who've just done you in, dying of disease and injury -- it's all Natural, hence Good, man.

Disney needed to be extra PC here just to make up for the crows in Dumbo.