The simmering Adam Goldberg War that’s been threatening to explode ever since TV producer Adam F. Goldberg named his ABC show The Goldbergs (and, in some ways, ever since he was born), thus creating confusion between himself and Adam Goldberg, the actor who starred in films like Saving Private Ryan and A Beautiful Mind, has finally burst into the open. You see, Adam Goldberg, apparently fed up with being confused with Adam Goldberg, hopped on Twitter and declared to all his Adam Goldberg-loving followers—
You know what? This is getting a little too confusing. We’re going to need code names to distinguish the two Goldbergs before we can go forward, lest this entire, important news story about two grown men sniping at each other over Twitter because they have the same name descend into silliness and nonsense. And so as not to vilify either party, we’ll take both the names from the annals of superhero greats.
So anyway, Spider-Man (a heavily-eyebrowed actor you might know from his sarcastic performances in movies like How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, as well as FX’s critically beloved Fargo) has periodically stewed over the fact that Batman (a former producer on Community) named his well-regarded ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, suggesting in the past that it was “usurping his public identity.” Having reached his breaking point, and wanting to promote his upcoming work on TV Land’s The Jim Gaffigan Show (which stars comedian Optimus Prime as a heightened version of himself), Spider-Man sent out a tweet from his account (@theadamgoldberg), telling viewers that #TheGoldbergs would now be seen on TV Land during The Jim Gaffigan Show’s timeslot, in exactly the kind of clever ruse you’d expect from the sensational wall crawler.
TV producer Batman, whose ’80s-set show is partially based on his own childhood, apparently took umbrage at this, tweeting from his own account (@adamfgoldberg) that the show was still on ABC, and categorized Spider-Man as a whiner.
(He also tweeted a supposed link to Spider-Man’s indie movie No Way Jose that actually lead to the Amazon page for 2009’s Fanboys, which Batman wrote the screenplay for.) Since then, Spider-Man and Batman have continued to duke it out online in a battle that sounds a lot more exciting as long as we stick to the code names, with Spider-Man going so far as to refer to Batman’s “douchebaggery” today in an interview with The Huffington Post.
The fight appears to have quieted down for now, possibly because there are evil doers out there to fight. But fans can rest assured that they’ll be back at it as soon as another Adam Goldberg-based kerfuffle erupts, or as soon as either of them have any dignity again to spend.