Mystery writer Mickey Spillane has died and the Associated Press has published a condescending obituary.
As usual, the mainstream media can’t understand the popularity of
someone they deem talentless, just as they can’t fathom why people like
Wal-Mart and NASCAR.
In Spillane’s case, though, it probably has to do with his politics:
He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in
good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book
world. Communists were villains in his work, and liberals took some
hits as well.
Not content to leave it at that (since many would see these as good attributes), the AP has to add:
He was not above using crude racial and sexual
stereotypes.
No examples were given, but most of the things AP views as racial
and sexual stereotypes probably appeared in Spillane books in the 1940s
and 1950s, when the threshold for such things was much higher. This is
like criticizing FDR for saying “Negro” instead of “African-American.”
Even The Great Gatsby contained crude racial stereotyping, but it gets a pass because Scott and Zelda are favorites of the lefty literary set.
