Why Celebs Are Dunking On Ted Cruz's Bad Avengers And Watchmen Takes

Consider Ted Cruz, the junior senator from the great state of Texas, where rumor has it that the stars at night are big and bright. Cruz's political leanings notwithstanding, it can at least be agreed across the aisle that his neckbeard constitutes a clear and present danger to the pursuit of a more perfect union.

Next, take into account HBO's Watchmen and Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War, two of the biggest and most well-received superhero adaptations of the last decade. To the average observer, they are what all good, big-budget science fiction and fantasy adventures strive to be: moral fables with computer generated superheroes exchanging traumatic brain injuries. To Senator Cruz's eyes, however, that's not all they are — at least, not according to comments he made during a recent episode of his podcast. To him, they are demonstrable evidence of "the view of the Left ... that people are bad and everything would be better if we had fewer people."

Now, this is a hot take. Infinity War does, yes, present audiences with a character who wishes to erase half of all life from the universe. It seems worth mentioning, however, that the character is Thanos, a genocidal alien who, like so many genocidal aliens throughout pop culture history, isn't the hero. Watchmen, too, boasts a player who wants fewer people — specifically, fewer non-white people, owing to his fiery-eyed racism. In both cases, the "less-is-more" approach to the human population is something to be combated. Arguing that either story progresses an anti-people narrative seems roughly equivalent to saying that Star Wars promotes blowing up Alderaan.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Watchmen writer Lila Byock tweeted "Literally what the f*** are you talking about?" on Monday at the venerable deliberator from the Lone Star State.