Two guys and an op-ed column
Posted on August 5th, 2008 by
Writing in the International Herald Tribune in late July, Mark D. White and Robert Arp had the courage to ask the question that people who aren’t thinking are thinking about:
But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn’t that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there’s a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives?
Explain the logic underlying the question, and please show your work.
Two guys and an op ed column. Where’s the brains?
Dur.
(Doy/0)
Paragraph 1:
“How many of us would agree with that? Quite a few, we’d wager. Even Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight” marvels at Batman’s refusal to kill him. After all, the Joker is a murderous psychopath, and Batman could save countless innocent lives by ending his miserable existence once and for all.”
Stop right there. You see, the Joker marvels at Batman’s humanity, because he’s a fucking murderous psychopath. But enough about the Joker – he’s easy, even if you want Batman to wack him. How bout the people on the boats? Who should kill whom?
Here in Atlanta, the Journal-Constitution’s resident wingnut columnist Jim “w00t!” Wooten posed the following question back in the winter: How could one possibly be against the death penalty when No Country For Old Men had a really evil bad dude in it? And by posed, I mean was paid handsomely to write that. Ow, my brain.
You’re mixing reality and fiction. Take your meds, and don’t leave your room.
But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker
Have we properly dealt with Jason killing the kids who were having sex yet?
Thinking Batman is real is a big step up from thinking “24” is real, IMO.
If the Joker’s victory over Batman taught us anything, it’s that torturing and/or killing people is the way to win. Just like that whole thing about how the Nazis would “retaliate” against an entire village like Lidice, which is how they won WWII.
Okay, that took about two minutes to write. I can has several hundred dollars?
If you enjoy eating Green Eggs and Ham, doesn’t that mean you should enjoy waterboarding brown people and raping children in Iraqi prisons, Sam-I-Am?
Taking simply the quote above, it’s a correct statement. The problem is, if you want Batman to kill the Joker (actually WANT him to do it, not want him to do it the way he wants to do it but restrains himself), you have completely missed the point of every Batman comic, movie, or television show in the past SIXTY YEARS.
Batman is a weirdo in a costume who runs around at night beating up people and delivering them to the cops. Joker is a weirdo in a costume who runs around killing people. The difference between them is not just why they do what they do, but what they do. If Batman had his motivations but Joker’s methods he’d be The Punisher (created as a bad guy, only ever written as a villain by anyone competent or moral); if Joker had his motivations but Batman’s methods he’d be… well, a joke.
Please nobody hit me in the face, but I don’t think the column is as bad as this quote makes it sound. Standing alone, the quote looks like a rhetorical question, but in the context of the column it seems to be part of an at least outwardly honest attempt to look at the moral implications of the Batman-Joker quandary. It doesn’t really endorse torture. It gives essentially equal time to the following idea:
Many Americans who oppose torture explain their position by saying, “It’s not who we are,” or “We don’t want to turn into them.” Batman often says the same thing when asked why he hasn’t killed the Joker: “I don’t want to become that which I hate.”
I’ll grant that the column reads like it was written in about 15 minutes, but it’s not as bad as all that.
OW, MY FACE!
I just saw that movie over the weekend. I have to say, people who recommend having our foreign and domestic policy guided by fictional characters are just … creepy.
If Death Wish II was a movie instead of a documentary, do you think that Charles Bronson would have kept digging that tunnel out of Nazi Germany? If not, what are you, a pinko or something?
Explain the logic underlying the question, and please show your work.
Let Batman be George Bush – B
Let Joker be Everyone George Bush Doesn’t Like – J
J – responsible for the deaths and threats on the lives of untold numbers of people
B – fabulously wealthy vigilante who operates outside the rule of law
We assume that B has a widely varying approval rating, but that consistently criminals don’t like B. B has a rather sensitive ego, and it appears that if criminals don’t like B, then criminals are a subset of the group J.
Torture is illegal and it is something that the United States doesn’t do. Fortunately, that allows B – who as we have stated operates outside the rule of law as a vigilante – is allowed to do it. Thus B is allowed to torture.
J is constantly plotting things against B, and it is impossible for B to be aware of all of them – J was one step ahead of B until the very end of the movie. As was seen in the movie, B gets information from criminals by dropping them off of buildings. But criminals don’t give up that information if a superior threat – another J – is present. So B must present the most serious threat in order to get information from J. That means B must use torture or death to secure information from J. Since you can’t get information from a dead guy, you must resort to torture.
Finally, J was responsible for the death of dozens of individuals and the potential death of hundreds more. Only people in the set J would be ok with this. Since you are not with J, we can assume you are with B. Therefore, we can assume you are not ok with all this killing, and you support killing J.
But because J consists of more than one person, it is necessary to torture elements within J to uncover other elements of J until such a time that all elements within J can be killed by B.
Ergo, if you wanted to see Joker get killed by Batman – and only someone who sympathized with Joker would feel otherwise, thus making that person just as bad as Joker – we can conclude that you are ok with torturing terrorism suspects for valuable information. Also, since Batman didn’t kill Joker, they are the same person. Hence we were dealing with one giant verbal BJ the whole time.
QED.
Who gets to wear the tights?
Standing alone, the quote looks like a rhetorical question, but in the context of the column it seems to be part of an at least outwardly honest attempt to look at the moral implications of the Batman-Joker quandary.
Oh, well, than in that case we should torture real people because, after all, we wanted a superhero in a movie to do something to someone else.
More importantly, where the Hell is Robin?
“I thought we were a team, little buddy. A team…”
Next up, how Two-Face’s coin-flipping can be applied to American-foreign geopolitics.
Heads, America wins, heads, foreigners lose.
Yeah, the comparison doesn’t really make that much sense because killing is not torture (we KILL terrorists all the time).
However, I don’t think it’s such a big deal to look at how you respond morally to a fictional story and whether that aligns with your real-world morals (which they don’t necessarily have to do in my opinion). It doesn’t mean you’re basing your life around a fiction, just that you’re thinking about fiction.
Does wishing The Joker got more screen time make me pro-terrorist?
Ugh, K-Lo like grammar above, sorry…
However, I don’t think it’s such a big deal to look at how you respond morally to a fictional story and whether that aligns with your real-world morals (which they don’t necessarily have to do in my opinion).
Sure. Also in the movie The Joker is the star of video footage promising to kill people, a promise he proceeds to fulfill. Who exactly has been served up before Guantanamo interrogators with such a wealth of evidence against him?
Did they… did they NOT WATCH the movie? The whole point is that if Batman kills the Joker, the Joker wins. “Come on come on I want you to do it I want you to do it come on HIT ME!” And the way he laughed when he was thrown over the edge of the building? That’s how the real terrorists are laughing at us when we squander our world standing by committing human rights abuses.
if Joker had his motivations but Batman’s methods he’d be… well, a joke.
Or possibly a libertarian.
Jackasses who don’t understand the movie are not allowed to base their arguments on the movie.
Also, and i say this as a lifelong fangirl trapped in a fanboy’s body, grow the fuck up. Shouldn’t our national security geniuses have a better basis for their strategies?
Did they miss the part where the tortured Joker gave the Batman the exact opposite of the information he wanted, causing the terrible spoiler of Batman’s spoiler spoiler? Where does that fit into their philosophy?
Also, comic book movie, duh, more like a masturbation fantasy than a treatise on good government, don’t-cha think?
Let Batman be George Bush – B
Let Joker be Everyone George Bush Doesn’t Like – J
Okay, but only if this means we get to sic the police force on B like they did at the end of the movie.
Who gets to wear the tights?
Dick Cheney.
The colostomy bag is going to pose a bit of a problem.
Ok, I of course haven’t seen any of the batman movies.
But this does seem to be prima facie stupid for the purposes touched on above.
Batman is the GOOD GUY.
The Joker is the BAD GUY.
The BAD GUY tortures and murders and terrorizes.
The GOOD GUY plays within a set of moral boundaries, even in those cases where he knows or at least suspects that to operate outside of those boundaries would make him a more successful GOOD GUY.
Because if the GOOD GUY has to become the same as the BAD GUY in order to defeat the BAD GUY, the GOOD GUY has not actually prevailed. He has lost, and not in just the most simplistic sense, for if he has lost the very things that made him the GOOD GUY he has not eliminated the BAD GUY, he has doubled his numbers…
mikey
I don’t understand. Would it be harder for Batman to get information out of the Joker once Batman had killed the Joker? Surely Batman has some sort of telepathy machine which only works on a corpse. On Earth 4. After the Multiple Eternity Republication Rewrite Crisis 5.
It doesn’t mean you’re basing your life around a fiction, just that you’re thinking about fiction.
Yeah, but the trouble is, they’re supposing that if you DO respond one way about an action in a movie, you’re not examining your morality via the lens of fiction — you’re being a hypocrite because you can cheer for something in a movie that you wouldn’t support in the real world. It’s an idiotic premise.
Like you can laugh about Indiana Jones shooting a guy who does fancy tricks with his sword, but if you thought, in real life, in real time, such a thing would be horrifying — it doesn’t really make you a hypocrite. Also, you can kill someone in a fictional story you write without having to kill someone in real life to prove yourself.
Incidentally, stupid movie.
Step One: Watch The Dark Knight.
Step Two: ???
Step Three: Torture!
/wingnut logic
Please. The only logical conclusion that one could draw is that the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent.
I think that what we really need to discuss is whether or not Catwoman will be in the next film, and which of today’s hot young actresses will play her.
If wingers want to equate Bush to Batman in the Dark Knight, they have see that analogy all the way through.
**Spoilers**
Harvey Dent says that one day Batman will have to stand up to laws he’s broken. And then at the end, Batman takes on Dent’s death and other crimes making himself a scapegoat.
Will Bush take responsibility and go to jail for his crimes? Wouldn’t it be just awesome to see Bush running away being chased by dogs just like the end of the movie?
I think I would have liked the movie even more if I had seen it before reading that other op-ed, the one about warrantless wiretaps. I’m glad I saw it before reading this crapfest of a column. Seriously, why do these people have to write pop culture they don’t understand like they’re borderline retarded preachers writing sermons about how Jesus is like pets dot com and you better “invest” now?
er, write about pop culture
Note that Batman did in fact torture the Eric Roberts character for information, so torture’s okay.
I had work, but the files mysteriously vanished from my house.
That I wanted Ilsa to stay with Rick proves I’m anti-marriage. Boy, won’t my husband be surprised!
If Batman is actaully a treatise on the moral implications of torture, is Friday the 13th an argument for conservatism’s support for abstinence education at the expense of contraception and brith control?
If George Bush were Wiley Coyote, he would paint a picture of a tunnel onto the side of a giant rock and try to trick Osama Bin Laden into racing into it. Since the ACME Corp. is a subsidiary of Halliburton, this tactic would be unsuccessful and stick the American taxpayer with huge cost overruns.
What does this mean for cosplay?
I think Devildawg is on to something.
Let us here praise a friendlier method of dealing with criminals.
Batman should not kill the Joker. Batman should put the Joker in one of those machines that they put on Arnold Schwartznager’s head so you could see on the TV that he was thinking about fighting giant evil ants on Mars. The movies show us that there are options other than torture.
FYWP.
I meant my first comment as a joke, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Doesn’t J. Sidney III campaign tactics bring to mind the type of politics Daffy Duck would engage in? This would make Obama Bugs Bunny.
Vote Bugs Bunny 2008
Andrew Klavan tried to make the same point, and he was a dumbass because he disregarded everything but that one movie.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Bush is more Harvey Dent than he is Batman (who has a fucking moral compass).
Honestly, looking at the latest news about everything from Dick “Have the Navy Seals Shoot at Our Troops” Cheney and George “Blame that Anthrax on the Terr’ists” Bush, the whole damn Administration has been making decisions on coin tosses.
The Joker only got away because Batman smells, Robin laid an egg, and the Batmobile lost a wheel.
Oh, and to BSD: Good point about Punisher. I just started reading a lot of Batman comics, and I’ve got to say Batman is one of the weirdest motivated characters ever. He is truly a piece of work that could only exist in a comic book.
Read the following passage from Under the Hood to see how much Batman and Bush are alike. I’ll let you draw the conclusions yourselves. This is Batman talking about why he didn’t kill the Joker after he killed Jason Todd (the second Robin after Dick Grayson):
For years a day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t envisioned taking him… taking him and spending an entire month putting him through the most horrendous , mind-boggling forms of torture. All of it building to an end with him broken, butchered and maimed… pleading – screaming – in the worst kind of agony as he careens into a monstrous death… I want him dead – maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place… I’ll never come back.
Yeah. Bush = Batman FTW.
There are a LOT of movies ever since Fatal Attraction (probably earlier, but it’s the first popular one I remember) where a “normal” person you’d see in every day life (a mistress in Fatal Attraction, in Single White Female, a roommate, etc.) turns out to be horribly sinister to the point where that person MUST die by the end of the film. I mean, it’s what everybody is hoping for in the audience. It’s how otherwise moral characters can retain their “hero” status when they take on the role of vigilante. This is no different. Still, as real life is so much more complex than fiction, and there are precious, precious few truly evil people in the world, in most cases vigilante = murderer and torturer = criminal.
Let’s make the world a Tweetie cartoon instead, and then the terrorists could endure a series of self-inflicted mishaps while we make snappy comments made more adorable by our childlike speech impediments.
A proactive Tweety means torture is okay.
FYWPx2
But if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place… I’ll never come back.
Yeah. Bush = Batman FTW.
Totally Bush = Batman! Batman’s problem was that he didn’t consider outsourcing.
Clearly, Batman did not torture Joker hard enough.
Indeed, and this is a vital thing to keep in mind when watching superhero movies, which are sort of inherently horrifying.
This column pisses me off. While I do sympathize with the argument they present as Kantian (Not having read Kant I have no idea how accurate White and Arp are about his views), the main reason I don’t like torture or the death penalty is that I don’t trust the fucking government to always get the right man.
If we torture, we’re going to torture innocent people. If we have the death penalty, we’re going to murder innocent people.
Call me crazy, but I don’t like it when innocent people are tortured and killed.
Of course, this isn’t even mentioned in the op-ed.
Here’s the thing: Batman, like all superheroes, is ridiculous. He’s the good dictator who only seizes power in an emergency and can be trusted to release it when the emergency is over. The entire premise of Batman is that Bats is a guy who can wield absolute power without risk of corruption, and always get the right man. Furthermore, the Joker is a character who can effortlessly kill hundreds, and who simply can’t be stopped by ordinary, non-lethal means.
If we accept these premises, then my objections to torture and the death penalty pretty much evaporate.
I pay enough attention, though, to realize that those premises are never true in real life. So it’s pretty easy to say, “I’m against the death penalty, but Batman is a dipshit for not just killing the Joker”
The Punisher was the only “Superhero” I ever could get behind.
No powers outside of his guts and 5.56NATO Ball.
Entirely mortal, and always at risk of death.
But mostly because he was actually “modeled on” (some would say ripped off from) one of the truly great fictional characters of our time, Sgt. Mack Bolan.
Which makes him ok wit’ me…
mikey
What vaudeville taught us was that our enemies deserve nothing less than a good spray of seltzer water to the face. Today’s more hardened opponents may require feminizing epithets.
Note that Batman did in fact torture the Eric Roberts character
The fact is, Eric Roberts has been asking for it for a long long time. At least since “Star 80.”
The fact is, Eric Roberts has been asking for it for a long long time.
The Bedbug took his thumb f’chrissakes.
That sounds like an internet tradition that we should be aware of. It has all the same intellectual quality, after all.
Let the record show that the Joker doesn’t want to kill off Batman either. If I’m recalling the movie correctly there’s a scene where Ledger explains his interest in keeping the Batman alive so they can duke out their philisophical differences.
Also, what about the scene where Heath experiments with groups of humans to see whether they’ll each blow the other up to survive. They don’t. He’s duped. Batman scores a victory, Heath loses his wager that humans will resort to the worst in themselves when push comes to shove.
For years a day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t envisioned taking him… taking him and spending an entire month putting him through the most horrendous , mind-boggling forms of torture. All of it building to an end with him broken, butchered and maimed… pleading – screaming – in the worst kind of agony as he careens into a monstrous death… I want him dead – maybe more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place… I’ll never come back.
But didn’t Batman, unlike Bush, NOT do that? Cuz Bush totally did. I mean, not with bin Laden, but with a whole bunch of little people who didn’t mean much.
Can we compromise? I’m willing to let bush torture the joker.
I remember the good old days when comic books were going to corrupt the youth. Now they’re used to justify torture.
Also Bush is supposed to be the pre-Two Face Harvey Dent: the public’s servant, incorruptible and good.
Batman, in this case, must be, oh, willing soldiers like Vox Day, who would totally kick ass on, uh, people he would kick ass on if he wasn’t telling people he would kick ass on certain people.
OK. Gonna try and show the work.
You see, when you look at it like…
From a certain angle it appears as if…
When you consider the fact that…
If you rotate the middle one topwise…
Nope. Nothing.
I vote for a reboot of the past eight years, recasting Bush with Abraham Lincoln. Oh, and we can replace his suit with a newly-designed spandex costume while we’re at it.
All I can say is sweet Jaysus and Wholly Merry mother of God.
Now then. Let’s imagine I’m Batman.
Thanks very much. You are free to go.
Let’s just base our policies, foreign and domestic, on the following premise:
What would Batman do, if you were totally Batman, and you had the Joker hanging from a building, and you could soooooo kill him if you want.
Somebody shoot me in the face, holy f*#$k I hate stupid people.
I said it before, I’ll say it again: Torture didn’t do Batman one goddamn lick of good in TDK. And the Joker wasn’t a terrorist. Terrorists have goals. Joker was just having his own brand of twisted fun.
I have a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, but you can’t handle the truth.
a “normal” person you’d see in every day life (a mistress in Fatal Attraction, in Single White Female, a roommate, etc.) turns out to be horribly sinister to the point where that person MUST die by the end of the film.
Yes, DAMN the multitudinous hordes of sinister psycho blonde women running amok in life killing people! Of COURSE they must die!
I said it before, I’ll say it again: Torture didn’t do Batman one goddamn lick of good in TDK.
That must prove something.
Mark D. White and Robert Arp.
Two men.
One mind.
To be generous.
The whole point of comic books is exaggeration of moral issues so they are suitable for the nine-year-old brain to struggle with.
Ergo…
The whole point of comic books is exaggeration of moral issues so they are suitable for the nine-year-old brain to struggle with.
Sputter! Why I’ll have you know that, uh, well…
But could Batman beat up Jack Bauer?
But could Batman beat up Jack Bauer?
Who arrests whom for torture?
This thread is torture.
I saw the Batman movie at an Imax theater. It was so crowded we had to sit close to the front and watch it with our heads tilted upward. Tell ya the truth, I can hardly remember anything about the whole darkly lit quick-cut thing, except Christian Bale was a total stiff and Heath Ledger was terrifying in that comic-book villain over-the-top way. And Maggie Gyllenhaal was in it. That’s about it.
And they went to China for some reason. And Eric Roberts got tortured.
Not that I don’t love comic books. I do, and I came to them late.
But they are theater, meant to distort for purposes of stark illumination.
They are not philosophy, meant for adults to debate permutations.
Is it me, or do wingnuts have a reality problem so severe they really do mix up fantasy with reality this badly?
Which is irony with a cherry on top, since they are largely incapable of creating the very art they cling to.
No wonder they hate the left, who hold their imaginations in the Mason Jar of Unbridled Creativity!
Bwahahahaha!
Would Batman want to KILL Jack Bauer?
mikey
Archie, Betty and Veronica. Now that was some comic books.
But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn’t that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there’s a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives?
This question is essentially meaningless without the background about the Joker’s boner.
Archie, Betty and Veronica. Now that was some comic books.
Even they had their turn at the Dark Side.
Archie, Betty and Veronica. Now that was some comic books.
Argh, my other comment about Archie got et. Is it the links?
How about this one?
Let Batman be George Bush – B
Let Joker be Everyone George Bush Doesn’t Like – J
The only problem with this construct is that Bush is married to the Joker. Or at least someone who looks just like him. Though I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Bush doesn’t like his wife, either.
I’m fairly sure his wife is not that fond of Bush.
You don’t get that Thorazine face when you’re happy.
You are so gonna get Randed when Mr. Ditko sees this.
Comic books. Neocon opinion-makers (or at least, opinion-parroters) are resorting to fucking comic books to justify their foreign policy.
Is it any wonder the rest of the world wets its pants in hysterical laughter every time we try to do something on the world stage? (Except when they’re being bombed by us, of course; then they wet their pants in fear.)
I got yer logic right here:
1. Batman’s real.
2. ???
3. Profit.
And they went to China for some reason.
Jeepers I forgot about that part. I guess the location shots made it seem like a commercial and I repressed it.
The Batman defense is the new Chewbacca defense.
Uh, you do realize that not all comics are about costumed vigilantes, right?
…
Some are totally pornos. They’re awesome!
*wank wank wank*
But seriously, please don’t judge comics as a whole by Marvel’s latest summer crossover. (which is totally rad, in case you were wondering) Get your ass to your local library and check out Love and Rockets, Maus, and Stuck Rubber Baby, just to name a few that are as serious as any old-tymie word book.
Also, Preacher. Not because it’s an in-depth look at the morality of friendship as well as the consequences of blind worship and obedience, but because it features a guy carving a miles-long FUCK YOU into the Arizona desert as revenge against NASA for rejecting him. Also: angels partaking of hookers and blow. And the sexual detectives.
{red}Just fuckin’ DIE!{/red}
Since things have been reduced to simple movie plots, how’s about this.
The Democrats are the Delta’s and the Republicans are the Omegas?
-GSD
This flick does a fine job of summarizing the Republican platform.
While I like Zifnab’s approach…*cracks knuckles*
But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn’t that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there’s a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives?
B = Batman should kill the Joker
T = We should torture terrorism subjects if there is a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives
Translating this into propositional (first order) logic, and operating on the assumption that B is false:
If B then T
Not-B
Therefore T
This result is valid because of the nature of “counterfactual” conditionals, which state that for any conditional statement (If A then B) where the antecedent (A) is false, the statement as a whole always evaluates to true, regardless of the truth value of the consequent (B). Thus, Arp and White’s statement is formally true.
However for this to be the case, B (“Batman should kill the Joker”) must be false. On the other hand, if instead B is held to be true, then the relationship of implication (If…then…) is required to hold in a logically necessary fashion and, given that T is quite clearly false, the statement as a whole also evaluates to false.
This can be represented as follows:
B
Not-T
Therefore Not-(If B then T)
(I could be a little rusty on the terminology here, it’s been nearly ten years since Logic 101, and I never did much outside the modal logics.)
Watching cinematic adaptations of cartoon characters and extracting guidance from them for moral dilemmas will be a lot more fun when the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers finally hit the big screen.
If the “Dark Knight” writers were trying to mirror real-world events, then Bush is Two-Face: getting even with everyone related to his misfortune except for the one guy directly responsible for it.
The Joker is obviously a terrorist – a faceless individual whose motivations are poorly understood at best, and who gets his point across by terrorizing the citizens of Gotham. Torture doesn’t faze him. He simply lies, and laughs when the misdirection allows for his real plan to unfold without interference.
Batman isn’t anyone in the real world: He’s who most of us wish we could be in the face of a criminal enemy.
The question raised by that movie is legitimate: “What makes a good guy, good?”
This is a tired old question from the comics. The truth is, the Batman’s mercy is not the reason the Joker is still alive. The real reason is that he’s too popular to kill off.
Unfortunately for the prisoners being held at Gitmo and various black sites, their Q rating just isn’t high enough.
File under small victories. From this trackback we learn that the WSJ has issued a “correction” to the Obama is too skinny story:
Pretty weak but it’s something. Yay J-!
Batman is a regular man. He metes out justice impartially, never giving in to corruption. He engages in hand-to-hand combat with gun-wielding mobs on a nightly basis, never killing anyone and almost never being injured. He is the world’s greatest detective, and self-taught at that. He trained with ninjas instead of going to college, but still possesses the business acumen to run one of the world’s largest corporations in his spare time.
Frankly, the average super-hero who got his powers by getting dunked in a vat of radioactive waste is more plausible.
Oh, and as to the comic book superhero question-as Alan Moore’s Watchmen illustrates so beautifully, anyone who thinks that dressing up in a disguise and beating people up is somehow “protecting the innocent” is at best an extreme right-wing thug with no faith whatsoever in other human beings, and at worst a deluded sadist using the “vigilante” label as an excuse to act out their most violent fantasies.
He trained with ninjas instead of going to college
University lecturers hear this excuse all the time.
Now it’s time for the NYT to issue a “correction” for MoDo’s column. Something like this would be appropriate:
It’s never a “tired old” question. It’s relevant to every age – especially one in which rights are only secured and defended for the popular folks as opposed to for all those people rotting away in America’s not-so-secret foreign prisons.
Are they good people who sit idly by, or who openly justify torture, if they’re saying or doing these things for the “right” reasons?
A lot of people think this is a complex question – the province of intellectuals with fancy, long-winded arguments – when it’s really not: If something is considered wrong in peacetime, can anyone who unapologetically supports or does that thing as “part of the war effort” be considered a good person?
You don’t get that Thorazine face when you’re happy.
If you were married to him, would you be happy? Wouldn’t you, in fact, demand Thorazine? I mean, how else could you bear it?
I’d have to say that it is pretty tired in comics, if not in the real world.
C’mon, the Joker has gleefully and publicly killed thousands and thousands of people, and he tried to gas a session of the United Nations once.
I realize you need to suspend your disbelief while reading stories of spandex wearing vigilantes who swing around the city with grappling hooks, but come on. No sane world would allow the Joker to be captured for the eight-hundredth time and say, “Well, he’s still insane. Just toss him back into that cardboard box in Arkham Asylum’s front yard. Oh, never mind, he already escaped, killing five people in the process. That wacky Joker!”
Of course, questions of due process here in the real world are vital and important. That’s why I’d prefer they not be filtered through the latest popcorn flick.
I guess it could be worse. Everyone could be talking about Wanted instead. *shudder*
Completely off-topic, but too good not to share: Paris Hilton has completely pwn3d John McCain.
Getting totally owned by someone you’ve been busily portraying as a vapid airhead? That can’t be good for a campaign. But that’s not the best part.
The best part is that the McCain campaign responded. To Paris Hilton. With an actual press release. Which they titled, “Paris Supports Drilling.” Well, yeah. Anyone who saw her sex video knew that already. (Ok, sorry for the bad pun.) But…funneeee. They didn’t mention how she mocked him for being old.
Maybe even funnier yet was the Obama campaign’s response when contacted for comment. Through a spokesman: “Whatever.”
Anyone catch Obama at an appearance today (?) finally calling the R’thugs on their lame tire-gauge gimmick? He said something along the lines of “It’s like they take pride in their ignorance!”
Well THANK YOU.
CNN bobbleheads “debating” Obama’s negative campaign in relation to McCain’s delicious ribs in 3… 2…
You’re too kind, Lawnguylander.
Completely off-topic, but too good not to share: Paris Hilton has completely pwn3d John McCain.
Ouch, pwned him she did. So can we now expect B. Spears to make a statement?
Anyone catch Obama at an appearance today (?) finally calling the R’thugs on their lame tire-gauge gimmick? He said something along the lines of “It’s like they take pride in their ignorance!”
Video.
If you were married to him, would you be happy? Wouldn’t you, in fact, demand Thorazine? I mean, how else could you bear it?
I wouldn’t just demand Thorazine. I’d demand Thorazine suppositories.
Let’s see if this comment, too, gets sent to Defensio quarantine.
You want a Barack Obama tire gauge? Just give McCain 25 bucks.
One got through! I’m one for two tonight!
Maus.
Best. Most. Important. Graphic. Novel. Ever.
I wonder why no one has animated it yet.
Rightwingsnarkle–
“I wouldn’t just demand Thorazine. I’d demand Thorazine suppositories.”
Tragically, thorazine suppositories do nothing to alter your mental state and are typically used to combat severe nausea due to chemotherapy, severe migraine and other debilitating diseases.
It really was a good joke, though.
It’s official:
McCain has started a debate with Paris Hilton and he’s losing.
Oh no, Sen. John! Things happen so fast on the internet. You thought you made a funny, but look at all the funny coming back at you! I can’t keep up. Can you?
Via.
They did. By the time Don Bluth had adapted it, it was called “An American Tail.”
Hoosier X, hush your mouth!
I’d be rather cautious about any attempt to animate Maus It’s such a slow, stately graphic novel that I’m not sure it could ever be made “theatrical”
Then again, I’m probably still bitter about the horrendous job they did animating Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight so I may not be in the best frame of mind about this.
And the way he laughed when he was thrown over the edge of the building?
Kidding? That’s totally stolen from one of my favourite, albeit extremely icky, Japanese movies, Ichi The Killer (oh, please, read the review. I wrote it, and think it’s rather good). The guy who goes off the roof is a major masochist, not in the sense of a quivering coward, but a real, honest, up-front masochist. Who’s also a yakuza. And he’s after a crazed killer, who is a quivering coward, but also a real, although unadmitted, sadist. Marriage made in hell.
[Does a little dance] Word-press, it does love me [More little dance] I must be so coo-ool.
[Dances off into the distance, warbling happily]
If we want cartoon role models, we should be looking at Scooby and the Gang. They gathered evidence, caught the terrorists, handed them over to the police and got a confession without ever resorting to torture – except for that one time with the Harlem Globtrotters and the naked pyramid. But in that case, it really was more of a fratternity prank.
Because if the GOOD GUY has to become the same as the BAD GUY in order to defeat the BAD GUY, the GOOD GUY has not actually prevailed. He has lost, and not in just the most simplistic sense, for if he has lost the very things that made him the GOOD GUY he has not eliminated the BAD GUY, he has doubled his numbers…
Except that in the Cheneyverse, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. So if Darth Cheney converts GOOD GUY into BAD GUY, Cheney wins, because now there are twice as many BAD GUYS, and according to this summer’s other big comic-book movie, SIZE MATTERS, therefore life aboard the Buy’N’Large satellite is moar awesum than even Gotham City…
I don’t know if this has been mentioned but if Bush is Batman and the Joker is…say Osama, and let’s face it, Osama is a good candidate for the role considering 9/11 and all the shit that’s gone down in his name.
Bush said in 2003 that he was “no longer concerned” about bin Laden and wasn’t particularly interested in the hunt for him. What does that tell you? At least the fictional Batman would have gone after the actual Joker instead of a fake Joker.
Is it any wonder the rest of the world wets its pants in hysterical laughter every time we try to do something on the world stage? (Except when they’re being bombed by us, of course; then they wet their pants in fear.)
Uh, I think that nasty smell is mostly coming from the fReichtards themselves. Between Piddled-Jammies Media and the Doughy Pantload, the American market for enzyme deodorizers and stain removers has never been greater.
Wait, so Archie shot down a lot of fish? In WWI?
But if we say that Godzilla should be set loose on Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster, doesn’t that imply that we should make an alliance with a nuclear-armed Iran if there’s a chance of countering Sunni fundamentalism?
Batman = Our Hero = Those Who Protect The American People = Our Military, Our Police, Our National Intelligence Agents
Joker = Bad, Bad, Very Bad Man Who Makes Us Shit Ourselves = The Terrorists
Batman killing the Joker because we want him to = Those Who Protect Us acting outside the law to keep us from shitting ourselves
Our Military/Police/National Intelligence torturing terrorists for Vital Information That Will Save Innocent Lives = Those Who Protect Us acting outside the law to keep us from shitting ourselves = Batman killing the Joker because we want him to.
Of course, there are a few parallel equations that go along with this:
Batman killing the Joker because we want him to = Batman killing the Joker because we get a sadistic thrill out of seeing some guy in a mask kill some freak in clown makeup = Our Military/Police/National Intelligence torturing terrorists for Vital Information That Will Save Innocent Lives because we get a sadistic thrill out of looking at the Abu Ghraib photos
And, lastly:
Batman killing the Joker because we want him to = Batman killing ANYone who makes ‘us’ feel threatened = Our Military/Police/National Intelligence doing anything they want to anyone they want To Keep America Safe.
In other words, what the editorial is saying is, if the American people can support lawless violence when a fictional good guy is enacting it on a fictional bad guy, then the American people should be equally supportive of lawless violence when their representatives within their government authority structure inflict it on goddam ragheads, stinking hippies, and other godless enemies of all that is good and right.
Is that all clear?
They gathered evidence, caught the terrorists, handed them over to the police and got a confession without ever resorting to torture…
They did worse than torture! They meddled!
Wait, so Archie shot down a lot of fish? In WWI?
I found that image pretty confusing too – but the confusion was overruled by the dread inspired by seeing armed Jesus freaks saying it was “time for God’s people to go on the offensive”.
MzNicky,
And Eric Roberts got tortured
He didn’t, though. Breaking his legs in that fall probably hurt, but it wasn’t the pain associated with major organ failure.
Explain the logic underlying the question, and please show your work.
We iz right, the dirty brown terrarists is brown.
QED!
thorazine suppositories do nothing to alter your mental state and are typically used to combat severe nausea due to chemotherapy, severe migraine and other debilitating diseases.
If being married to FratBoy ain’t debilitating, nothing is.
(Thx 2 Jennifer 4 premium linkage, just had 2 put it in this reply:)
When clubhopper heiress/supermodels are handing you your ass, maybe you’re doing it wrong, huh?
The thing with responding with a dead-serious, full-bore press-release sure smells damn near as sweet as Dan Quayle bravely donning sword & shield to valiantly take on that attractive yet darkly subversive menace to Wholesome American Family Values(TM), Murphy Brown.
Cunning plan: ” we’ll bootleg into a Hail Mary into our own end-zone & win via magic Leprachauns! Damn, those smartypants Dems will never have a strategy planned for THAT, will they now? Nyah haha ha ha haaaaaahh!”
Mmm I smell campaign derailing … smells kind of like … turkey.
Paris’ ad is almost as sharp as one of Obama’s – so she gets a subsidiary pwn for not coming off as low-fi as the original McCain ad with her
in(lol, flip-flop) removed from it.Plus she only slightly screwed up one line whilst doing so, beating Bush’s average by several orders of magnitude. But I’m guessing neither one of them is big on rehearsals.
Just idly wondering what some younger GOP voters might think of all this. The bit with the person their Big Kahuna candidate just tried to use to call Obama a naive celebrrity airhead doing her own response-ad & well, um, effortlessly making him her bitch in about 45 seconds, I mean.
***camPAIN / epic fail***
I used to wish Sylvester would catch that snotty litty big-headed bird and eat him for lunch! (I also kind of wished Mr. Coyote would catch the ever so beepingly annoying Mr. Roadrunner, but not to the degree that I rooted for Sylvester.)
I don’t know if this makes me a terraist symp.
That is a question for our time. As is this one:
Easy Answer: who is this we, exactly, that is saying that Batman should kill The Joker?
I haven’t seen this new Batman movie yet. Is Robin played by Jake Gyllenhaal? Because that would explain a lot.
, but in the context of the column it seems to be part of an at least outwardly honest attempt to look at the moral implications of the Batman-Joker quandary
Well, thank god. After all those dishonest attempts.
Forget whether Batman should kill the Joker. If the Gotham police were anything like the NYPD, the Joker would have been riddled with bullets during that whole ambush/chase scene. If a hairbrush equals fifty rounds, how fast will the police be unloading when the RPG comes out?
My comment appears to have been eaten…by the Joker!! Trying this again, just to see if this was some momentary glitcharoo.
My analysis:
But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn’t that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there’s a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives?
My thesis on the underlying logic is as follows:
1 – All US government employees are superheroes
2 – EEEEeeekkk!! Waahhhhhhhhh!!
3 – Profit!
To wade any deeper into the underlying logic, I will require a Ph. D. for a reward, and a 6-month vacation in Hawaii to recover.
But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn’t that imply that we should torture …
A lot of the time people will say things like “This begs the question: how did the fire start in the first place” or “… which begs the question, why are there so many songs about rainbows?”. These people are using the term wrong. Begging the question really is about asking someone to accept a faulty premise as true, not so much “for the sake of argument” but in order to draw a faulty conclusion from that faulty premise.