Our first post rebuttals an editorial piece in The Wall Street Journal comparing former President George W. Bush to Batman's the Dark Knight. You can anticipate heated commentary and humorous fusion with this first blog response. Please stay tuned.
While I find Andrew Klavan’s article to be obnoxiously ludicrous, to be fair to his outlandish and frankly humorous opinion it is essential to note two undeniable realities. First, Klavan IS writing for WSJ, a newspaper that at times can be so right wing it makes Dick Cheney look liberal, making his intellectually offensive piece pseudo forgivable. Second, Mr. Klaven is not incorrect in asserting that George W. Bush represents a character in The Dark Knight, he is just somewhat logically and morally misguided identifying what character Dubya parallels.
George W. Bush and Batman did both wage wars against suspected criminals, so by this logic any prosecuting attorney, police officer or bounty hunter should be eligible for the “paean of praise,” and comparison that Klavan bestows on the former president. If Batman’s proclivity toward “freedom, sacrifice and morality” is and embodiment of the former president, is Barack Obama’s pursuit of equality, progressivism and tolerance more akin to Joker?
Furthermore, if we are going to compare Batman to George W. Bush can we extend this wretched metaphor to another part of the Batman franchise. Maybe Wayne Enterprises is a cinematic portrayal of Halliburton---with its penchant for securing exclusive, no bid contracts for the Dark Knight’s vehicle, hospitality and communications. Protracting Klavan’s metaphor even more, Batman’s secret laboratory was perhaps intended to exemplify the lack of transparency and impenetrable internal workings of Bush’s morally bankrupt White House.
In some ways, Klaven might be accurate in his assessment. George W. Bush did have a tendency to lock criminals up, much like Batman. Unlike Bush, however, Batman did not do such things as start an unnecessary war that diverted funding away from criminal-fighting law enforcement activities domestically. Batman understands that you pursue criminals after they commit a crime, not before leading to messy collateral damage. Batman, too, engaged in a domestic spying program within his specialized facility as a means of determining the culprit of area crime---he did, however, employ targeted spy tactics to avoid espionage on everyone.
On issues like accountability, the eventual restoration of civil liberties and engaging the enemy in smart and strategic ways, the wedding that Klaven meticulously planned between Bush and Batman tragically ends in divorce. Batman eventually takes accountability and is reflective of his moral misdeeds; I cannot remember a press conference where President Bush genuinely apologized for the swirling storms of cluster fuck that he presided over.
While the Bush and Batman comparison might have ended because of irreconcilable differences, Bush may find a life partner in one of DC Comics’ other morally abstract characters. Murdering and threatening to murder countless innocent civilians, allowing "fate" to dictate policy decisions and masquerading criminal activity within the confines of Orwellian morality and somehow persuading us, sometimes through "pseudo events" that it is conscionable to only permit "black and white" choices of good and evil, are all characteristics that Dubya and the Joker share.
Like Joker, Bush tried to painstakingly rationalize to others that the individuals against whom he committed crime deserved it because of their moral transgressions. Further, the Joker's demonstration of a pseudo event- involving the potential, simultaneous explosion of ferry boats, which was only to demonstrate his unflinching "control issues," sort of strikes a chord of resemblance to the landing of a certain leader of the free world on a particular aircraft carrier with the rather inconspicuous banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished." Bush and Joker not Bush and Batman enjoy power's demonstration and having the ability to dictate events favoring their antagonistic and unilateralist intentions.
Batman is noted for his altruistic sacrifice of sparing humankind from evil. Contrarily, George W. Bush created a reputation for driving if off a proverbial cliff. Comparing George W. Bush to the venerable, albeit sometimes shady Dark Knight is the moral equivalency of comparing Wiley Coyote to the Road Runner; no matter how valiantly it tries, it just does not keep pace with reality.
