Often these turn out to be grossly exaggerated. Or, as in cases like the ones below, completely fucking retarded.

What's wrong with kids these days? Not enough, apparently, since grown-ups seem to feel the need to just make shit up. Even the flimsiest evidence can convince parents and lazy journalists alike that there is some new, horrible threat to our moral character.

6 Comic Books

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We Heard About It From:

The Evil Genius Dr. Frederic Wertham.

The "Threat:"

1954 was a different time in America. The streets were safer and kids played just about anywhere they wanted. Coca-Cola was only five cents a bottle and every kid had a comic book rolled up in his back pocket. There were superhero comics, crime comics, romance comics and horror comics. If you forget the rigidly enforced social rules, the racism, bad haircuts and constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the early 50s were a pretty sweet time to be a kid.

And then this fucker showed up to ruin everyone's fun.



Frederic Wertham. Or maybe George Burns. Who could tell?

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Fredic Werthem was a respected psychologist who fought to integrate the mental health care system, refused to serve in a racial-segregated army and was a pioneer in working with troubled youth. Having conquered all of the real world problems, he then decided to devote his life to bullshit.

During his time working with young offenders, Wertham noticed that many of them were fans of comics. Forgetting his education and lifetime of experience as a scientist, Wertham assumed that comics must be somehow responsible for the trouble these kids were in.

His 1954 book, Seduction Of The Innocent, outlined what he saw as the depraved effect of comics on kids. Granted, some comics in the 50s--especially the horror comics published by E.C. Comics--were pretty gruesome.

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Dr. Wertham is inexplicably shocked by the contents of Shock Illustrated.

But Wertham didn't just go after stories of cold-blooded murder and busty dames. Oh, no. We went after the superheroes, too.

In his mind, Wonder Woman was a lesbian who got off on bondage (we wish!) and horror of horrors, Batman and Robin were actually gay lovers. His evidence for Batman being gay? He wore a dressing gown. Honestly. That, combined with the fact that he had flowers in his house and had a butler, were proof to Wertham that Bruce Wayne and his young ward Dick Grayson were performing Bat-sodomy behind the scenes.

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The lynchpin of Wertham's case against the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder (okay, that does sound a little gay) were panels like these:

Hey, if two dedicated crime fighters can't spend a little time under the tanning lights together, then something's gone terribly wrong with the world.

Leaving questions of Batman and Robin's perversions aside, Seduction Of The Innocent was a huge bestseller and the tempest that Wertham stirred up led to the end of horror comics and the introduction of the Comics Code, which basically meant that superheroes lost what little balls they had left, and Batman always kept a discreet distance from Robin- at least in public.

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But it wasn't all bad. E.C. Comics, faced with the cancellation of all its horror and true crime comics, threw all of its effort into perhaps the single greatest corrupter of America's youth: Mad Magazine. Mad Magazine then led to the publication of Cracked, which eventually led to this very website. So, the next time you're enjoying an article about sexy cartoon characters you can thank the overactive gay-obsessed imagination of one Dr. Fredric Wertham.