About Page
This is the website of Philip Rodney Moon, a writer and film maker from Michigan. I’m using this website to show off and link to my work and to build an online portfolio for professional development.
I’m a 2009 graduate from Michigan State University in Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media and currently work in the television industry. I’ve written for Cracked.com, MadAtoms.com and ArtofManliness.com.
Interesting comments about the irony of symbols.
The Che Guevara irony I get (having read Jon Lee Anderson’s outstanding biography “Che”). I always considered his rejection by the daughter of a wealthy Argentine doctor to be the catalyst for all of his anti ruling class revolutionary actions. Although I agree that people misunderstand Che, I do feel some admiration for him, based on his struggles with asthma during the last days of the Cuban Revolution, holding to the struggle and suffering in the jungle without medication. A truly interesting man ( who was actually descended from an Irish doctor grandfather whose last name was Lynch).
You do seem to suffer from an anti Texas bias. The reason for the revolution in Texas was a lack of Governmental support for the Anglo population in Mexico City, the failure of the government to protect the Austin Colony citizenry from Comanche and Apache raids, and the the Mexican government accusing the colonials of sedition any time they tried to organize their own local governments. Mexico sealed it’s own fate in the war when it massacred Col. Fannin’s army who surrendered at Goliad. Mexico deserved it’s fate.
As far as the “Don’t Mess with Texas” example, please don’t falsely frame Texas resistance in the American Civil War as cowardly. Read the history of the battles of “Mansfield” and the “Red River Campaign”, where a Confederate Army made up of Texans hurled back Gen. Nathaniel Bank’s Union Army back to New Orleans, where they stayed until the end of the war. To lose when Bank’s army had such a superiority in numbers (not to mention Admiral Farragut and Admiral Porter’s gunboats) and armaments tells the truer story. Texas surrendered at wars end because it was the only logical choice left. They rest of the Confederacy had already laid down their arms.
And my last objection is with the pick of John Brown, who was a homicidal maniac, and whose actions in Kansas set the stage for the bloodshed between Kansas and Missouri, easily the nastiest theater of the entire war.
Thanks for illuminating the “Guy Fawkes” irony and the words about Thomas Paine ( a man who was so detested by all that knew at the end of his life).
Best wishes,
Mark McMillan
Austin, Texas
Aside from these glaring issues, I think this is a good
Dear Mark,
Thanks for your response.
On the Texas issue, on the whole the Texans had reason enough to oppose General Santa Anna. Their revolution had some solid ground. The irony is that the same revolution that emphasized freedom enacted slavery, it’s opposite. And unlike the Founding Fathers, who merely kept the status quo on slavery because of political expediency to create the Constitution, Texas went from officially anti-slavery under Mexico to pro-slavery.
The civil war was just to illustrate the ludicrous use of the anti-litter phrase considering history. The idea of that came when recent secessionist talk claimed Texans had a right to secede due to the Treaty of Annexation, although that had essentially been nullified after the Civil War.
Overall I actually like Texas. I am not a believer in the red state/blue state dichotomy or that any state is useless in the union. Texas is it’s own thing, and I actually admire it’s iconoclastic image, especially that in Austin, which I mean to visit some time in my life.
Thanks for your reply.
Hi!
My name is Ballard and I wanted to contact you about an article you wrote on cracked.com. My father is French and my mother is Catalan and Sioux, specifically Lakota. What I would like to say is, thank you. I have been fighting for years and years now, to defend my heritage and the ignorance people display because of laziness. Most people don’t know why the word Indian is offensive to me, and I am always there to show them that, if they want to act like an expert on my culture, they should at least know how to address me. It is so much easier to call me Ballard or say Sioux Nation or Lakota, rather than Indian. All of my friends now know that the word Indian has the same affect on my as does the word Nigger does for others. I was getting really annoyed that people kept saying that building the mosque near ground zero, would be unpatriotic and disrespectful, and it was my main defense to say, how about Mt. Rushmore? Does building Mount Rushmore not disrespect me in a way that is similar to how you feel about that damn mosque? Granted I feel the mosque should be completed, but that’s beside the point of why I am writing this letter. I do again just want to thank you for bringing this topic to light.
Thank you again.
B
Ballard,
I am glad you enjoyed the article. I like how Cracked allows us to illuminate readers while providing humor to them. Thank you for your response.
-Philip Moon
Hey,
I just had a few issues on your “8 Historic Symbols That Mean The Opposite of What You Think” article on crack.
First off, your analysis of Guy Fawkes and how you declare that he is used as a sort of Anarchist or protest symbol against Scientology.
To begin with, you state some kind of off ball shit that Guy was definitively not fighting against ” an evil theocracy” but in fact trying to force one on the free peoples of England!
If you did any sort of research at the time, you would know that this was a time of great religious tension between Catholics and Protestants. The Monarchs at the time were Protestant, they were passing laws and regulations, like the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which forced Priests to convert to Protestant religion or be jailed and/or executed for practicing their beliefs. In addition to this they began levying unfair and unreasonable heavy tax’s on Catholics. If this doesn’t sound like a “evil theocracy” I don’t know what one is then.
The reason the plot was constructed was due to these reasons. Catholics at the time believed that murdering of the Monarch was a justifiable way of removing a Tyrant.
Now it is true Fawkes was from Spain, he was RECRUITED to help with it. He believed he was fighting for Religious freedom.
This is why Alan Moore used him as a base of the Mythos of V.
They are both set in England, and are both fighting against tyrannically theocracy’s of the time.
Now, Fawkes himself is not considered an Anarchist symbol, leader, or anything of the sort due tot he fact the he simply was not an Anarchist. The mask symbol in the article is used by Anarchists because V from V for Vendetta is an Anarchist, not Guy Fawkes.
I’ve seen this article listed numerous time by various people now, and the sad thing is, is that they take your 2, perhaps 3 paragraph writing about it as complete truth.
I know you probably won’t change it, but for the sake of historic truth. Please do.
Phil you might be the dumbest guy on the face of the earth. You’re just awful.
sincerely,
The State of Texas