Well, Joe, you're asking me to support a point I didn't ever make.  I never said Cap is out of touch with regular Americans.  But it makes sense to me that regular people in the Marvel Universe might think he is.

But okay, let's pretend I did make that point ... Specific instances of Cap not being in touch with American culture?  Well, the first thing that leaps to mind is him not knowing the UN Building in Avengers #4 ... though there's no way he could have known it, unless the Avengers had given him a really thorough briefing on the submarine ride back to New York.  In that Essential volume I'm reading, there's a scene where Cap is amazed that the movie stars of his youth are only enjoyed as nostalgia now and modern kids think he, Captain America, is corny.

It seems like a fundamental schtick used by every good Cap writer since Lee and Kirby brought him back is that other characters think he's a dinosaur and he proves them wrong -- Hawkeye comes to mind. 

I don't know what this above scene sets up.  If the reporter is shown to be short sighted and wrong, that's definitely in the tradition.  If she's shown to be a bit naive, but Cap decides to spend a little more time getting to know "regular Americans" ... maybe we're still in the tradition.  If Cap is shaken to foundation by this and renounces superheroing to start reading blogs and watching reruns of Gray's Anatomy, then, yes, this is more masturbatory crap from Marvel.  But taken by itself, out of context (as it was never meant to be taken), this seen seems more or less okay.

I'm no expert on the Captain America character, but it seems that I've seen him portrayed as being out of touch with pop culture in the past.  I don't recall it being used as a slight towards his Captain America persona, more of a way of building the Steve character.

The reporter's argument may not be valid to you or I, but it's no less crazy than the arguments that I hear on talk radio and the cable news networks.  It seems to be a fair representation of the world that we live in.

If it's entertaining or not is a matter of taste.  Somebody's buying these books and coming back for more.

It looks to me like an extremely watered down version of O'Neil's famous panels of the old black man taking Hal Jordan to task for helping the green skins and the blue skins but doing nothing for the black skins.  But that's been done to death.  The idea of the public standing up to "ground" the hero is old hat.

Noah wrote: ...Well, Stern and Byrne had him with a big stack of Jazz and Big Band records in 1980 ...

And I own LPs from the 1960s. I am quite aware of YouTube, MySpace, and "American Idol," too.

George wrote: ...oh and I would like to add to Matt's and I OT... with the rampent censorship that is TRYING to control what people do on the internet... eventually YouTube-ish sites will become extinct... or just become a very small minority...

While I do agree with you about more people being able to publish themselves on the 'Net, I don't think the rampant censorship will win out against sites like YouTube. The greedy corporations with short-sighted views that seek to squash sites like YouTube will have to wake up and adapt or be the cause of their own undoing. They aren't seeing the future, and that will cost them if they don't come around and realize it soon.

I think sites like YouTube will still thrive even when people can publish themselves because such sites, much like message boards. like this board, here, are about community, in addition to sharing videos. Also, you can get more exposure in a shared enviroment than you can in a spot where you are by yourself, in a sense. The censorship you speak of would touch upon personal websites that are publicly viewed as much as it has on community sites.

Okay, seeing a few more panels, yeah, this is off trackand ridiculous.  For one thing, I'm pretty sure Captain America knows who won the World Series -- especially since it was St. Louis.  He was probably a fan of one of the New York teams as a kid, but I'm sure he admired the Gashouse Gang Cardinals.  Still, those first few panels seemed reasonable.  That'll teach me to give Marvel the benefit of the doubt.

So is Cap going to start fighting for Paris Hilton and High Cholesterol now?  GOSH, I SURE HOPE SO!

Oh, and Matt, yeah, sure ... but I think the point of that scene was that Bernie Rosenthal thought it was weird, or at least quirky that that was ALL he had -- no Ramones or Talking Heads or what have you.

Noah wrote: ...Oh, and Matt, yeah, sure ... but I think the point of that scene was that Bernie Rosenthal thought it was weird, or at least quirky that that was ALL he had -- no Ramones or Talking Heads or what have you....

I understand and I know the comic you are talking about, but I don't think that shows a man who is out-of-touch, but rather a man that still has ties to his past.

I know plenty of older people who don't own music on CD, or albums, whatever, past their youth, yet they own a computer, keep up on politics, and watch the latest TV shows.

I have no use for a mopey slumping Captain America unless he is mourning the death of Bucky or another close comrade. In any other case, it's completely out of character.

He's a HERO who fights crime, saves lives, and defends the American dream. Who the heck cares about MySpace and YouTube compared to that?

"By the way, am I the only one who wants to see someone punch Miss Floyd in her smug face (and, vicarously, the writer)?"

That's assuming that the writer really doesn't want people to see Floyd as a buffoon.  Over at Newsarama, Tom Brevoort is answering peoples' questions about CIVIL WAR.  In one of his responses he says that creators who did not like the whole registration concept were allowed to portray it in a bad light, which might be exactly what the writer in question is doing here.

Mike