Goodbye Mr A

The Hoosiers are taking a swipe at the famous comics author Steve Ditko's Mr A who was a 1960s, short-lived, uncompassionate, moral absolutist, superhero -- "You promised you would love us, but you knew too much" and "You had all the answers but no human touch" -- who would punish everyone, killing some, allowing others to die, regardless of the degree of their guilt.

It's also worth noting that Ditko's Mr A was, in-part, the basis for the psychopathic (yet o-so-awesome) "Watchman" Rorschach of the recent film: moral absolutism dictating street justice, who is said to have dropped a nutty-but-harmless, wannabe arch-villian down an elevator shaft. Rorschach was, of course, an Alan Moore parody of Ditko's moral absolutist "superheroes" like Mr A and The Question.

To Mr A, there were only criminals and the innocent, and no shades of gray -- his "calling card" was a card with one-half black, one-half white -- and the innocent who got involved in crime "just a little" were equally as guilty. Mr A stories would describe how those engaged "just a little" in crime would inevitably be buried deeper and deeper until they couldn't just walk away. And they were afforded no mercy by Mr A. The guilty would often attempt self-justification, only to have Mr A definitively explain the error of their logic or ways, before meating-out punishment. To Mr A, no begging for forgiveness, no promises to repent of their ways would cause him to yield. They were guilty; they deserved punishment.

("You who know all the answers")

Killers would inevitably fall into situations in which they needed saving by Mr A, but he'd ignore their pleas.

In some stories, Ditko would depict the crime stories allegorically: criminals on a black platform trying to explain why they compromised their values, while Mr A on a white platform would denounce their self-justifications. Such stories would end with the guilty falling off their black platform into the deep, dark abyss.

("So busy showing me where I'm wrong, you forgot to switch your feelings on.")

The Hoosiers are clearly not fans of such cold, logical, moral absolutism, as the song criticises Mr A for showing no mercy ("You love is a fraction"), lacking a human touch, a lack of human understanding ("You forgot to switch your feelings on"), and for setting himself up as judge and jury. ("So, so superior, are you not?")

"The world was full of fun until you opened my eyes", I think, is linked to the line "You claim science aint magic, and expect me to buy it", that the Hoosiers claim his rigid reliance on logic is draining the colour out of life and insufficient to explain the world.

And where did it all come from? Mr A is Ditko's attempt to put into comics the Objectivism he ardently ascribed to, the hard-nosed philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is perversely regaining currency. (I say "perversely" since portions of its implementation arguably caused this recession.) Mr A comics are famed for the ideological explanations by characters, particularly Mr A himself, for their actions: Ditko's attempt to convince people of Objectivism.

Objectivism was a philosophical reaction to Soviet communism that took power as Rand emerged into her teens, to communism's crushing of any form of individualism, be it of thought, of actions or decisions. However, it was arguably at the other extreme in which an individual's responsibility is ONLY to his/her own happiness, the rest of the world be damned.

Rand's books also alude strongly to Mr A's objection to moral "greyness". In Atlas Shrugged, the protagonist rails against compromise with evil, saying: "Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil." Very Mr A-ish.

SO, noting this, noting the Hoosier's British origins, noting that Thatcherism ("Reaganism" is alleged to be the same thing, but it was faaaaar more tamed) is descended from Objectivism (via Monetarism), AND that Blair failed to completely overturn Thatcherism, one is sorely tempted to suggest the band are as much taking a swipe at the hard-nosed economic philosophy in British politics as a comic book character.

You may be the judge.