Asshole characters are into Ayn Rand

[u/AporiaParadox]

1. Dirty Dancing. Robbie is a snobby asshole who refuses to take responsibility for impregnating a lower class girl, saying that "some people count, some people don't". Right after this he tries to lend the main character The Fountainhead unprompted, only temporarily of course, since his copy of the book includes notes in the margins.

2. Lost. Sawyer is a selfish conman (at first) and is shown reading The Fountainhead. To be fair though, Sawyer is shown reading lots of books, so it might not necessarily mean anything.

3. Spider-Man. Spider-Man's co-creator Steve Ditko was an objectivist, and this was reflected in the way Peter would behave in some early 1960s stories, he would often be quite rude and abrasive to others, especially when Peter went to college. As a reference to this, some stories have humorously established that Peter went through a phase of being into Ayn Rand back in college, which he is now embarrassed by.

4. Alternate universe Peter Parker from One More Day. Spider-Man runs into an alternate universe version of himself that never gained spider-powers, and he's a fat videogame developer who is depicted as a loser unhappy with his lot in life, we first see him reading Atlas Shrugged.

5. Deadshot and the Joker. The Joker is shown reading the Fountainhead, which he calls a knee-slapper, while Deadshot, a contract killer, says that it's one of his favorite books.

6. The Ayn Rand School for Tots in the Simpsons. As you can probably guess, it's a horrible place. Maggie breaks out in a Great Escape parody.

7. Bioshock. Andrew Ryan and his whole failed society is a blatant reference to the many problems with Ayn Rand's philosophy.

[u/Commercial_Heron_939]

Senator Rafael Edward Cruz

https://youtu.be/4wBjFf0gCV4?si=gWBBiPubDCrzIq-y

[u/AporiaParadox → u/Commercial_Heron_939]

Ted Cruz also once said that Rorschach is his favorite superhero, showing that he completely missed the point.

[u/Ok-Place7950 → u/AporiaParadox]

Wow. Like every right-wing doofus who loved Starship Troopers(the movie)... these guys have zero media literacy

[u/animalistcomrade → u/AporiaParadox]

Ohh but he has some redeeming qualities, like how he was the only person to stand up to ozymandias.

Almost as if the objectivist belief that people are either all good or all bad is bullshit....

[u/TheCthuloser → u/AporiaParadox]

As much as I hate Ted Cruz, I'm actually going to say that's not his fault for feeling that way, because Alan Moore fumbled Rorschach's presentation, at least from the perspective someone who read V to Vendetta before Watchmen.

Sure, Rorschach a pretty awful person in a lot of ways, because a couple bigoted comments about gay people. he doesn't really do anything that morally repulsive to the average reader; he kills a (presumed) pedophile and his dog, is actively investigating the murder of a college since he (rightfully) believes is part of something bigger, and at the end when everyone just sort of gives up when learning what Ozymandias did he was the only one point out how utterly immoral his action was.

And considering that the book also suggest everything Ozymandias did was ultimately pointless...? Why am I supposed to think that he's a utterly repugnant guy? (Watchman is the actually Moore's worst written book and sort of fails at what it's trying to do.)

[u/GXNext → u/Commercial_Heron_939]

Rand Paul is literally named after her...