Batman Comes Out

You Still Don't Know Dick

2011-12-17T06:52:00.000-08:00

ID: You’ve previously waxed poetic about Dick’s positive effect on your life. What’s the worst moment he helped pull you back from?

B: When the Joker murdered his replacement, things got pretty dark for me. I felt like I’d failed him, that if I’d only trained him better… I wanted to murder the Joker, and then quit.

And I might have done it. By then Dick was Nightwing, and we’d had a pretty big fight about his replacement; he wasn’t living in the Manor anymore, and I wasn’t going to find him to talk it over. But he found me. He tracked me down- despite the fact that I didn’t want to be found.

And he told me that we were all mortal. That he and I, we’d survived for two reasons: the first was that I’d put us through Hell, a training regimen that burnt the imperfections off of us. And the second was luck. Dumb, stupid, thoughtless luck. That we were alive only because chance hadn’t claimed us yet, because we were always only one lousy ricochet or one missed landing away from death.

And I’m not explaining it well. Let me see if I can remember the part that really got me. He said, “We’re in a war. We fight every day for a better world, one where children don’t lose their parents. And when we fail, we mourn our losses, and we fight the next day harder for them.”

He gives a hell of a speech. I was never good at those, not like he is; you have to love people to really reach them the way he does, in a way I’ve never been good at. I care but… love is a vulnerability I’ve rarely allowed myself. It’s one of the many reasons I tell people my son is a far better man than me. Because he isn’t scared to love people knowing what it could cost him. It makes him a better leader. And it also means that he feels his losses even deeper than I feel mine. And I knew if he could do it, if he could look past the reasons we’d been fighting, if he could look at the world with optimism for everything we’d seen, then I could keep going, too.

ID: Fighting the good fight?

B: And doing it the right way. Joker had to be brought to justice. Though I’ll admit, since then I hit him a hell of a lot more than I used to. Not that that’ll ever even things out. I could keep him tied to a chair in the Batcave, and beat him until my fists bled, every damn day, and even if he lived to a natural old age, he could never live through that long enough.

ID: Yeah. I wanted to know about what I think is probably the most controversial Dick-related decision in your life. This is actually the second time you’ve retired. Last time, you passed over Dick to take over for you, in favor of a sociopathic brainwashed zealot. Why?

B: Because Dick Grayson was Nightwing, who by simple right of having done the job longer than anybody else, should have been given the job- at least offered it. But Dick Grayson was also my son. And I was afraid of Bane. He destroyed me, almost completely. If it hadn’t been for Barbara, at least at first, and later the rest of my family and friends, he would have succeeded. And I couldn’t bear having that happen to Dick; I couldn’t stand the possibility.

My first successor- whose name isn’t among those leaked by Lex News, so I won’t be dropping it here- wasn’t Dick. I mean no disrespect, but he couldn’t be. Dick had been doing this his entire life, from a boy. My replacement… he was prepared to do it most of his life, but it was a different system. It wasn’t experience. It wasn’t living years of his life on the streets.

But there was a… ferocity in him. If, no, when, Bane was provoked by the appearance of a new Batman, I thought he stood a better chance of surviving the encounter. Or maybe I was scared of him, too, and I just hoped my two fears could cancel one another out.

ID: Like kill each other?

B: Nothing like that. If I’d really thought my replacement was still capable… he tried to reform. Looking back, I think he had a similar upbringing to Damian, and like my son, he tried to combat the horrors done to him in his childhood. But unlike Damian, he wasn’t quite so adept at conquering his demons. I don’t blame him. I think, on some level, I knew he wasn’t ready, wasn’t tested. I hoped he would gain what he needed on the job, but… the mistake is mine. The failure was mine.

ID: And the deaths that occurred on his watch?

B: Are regrettable. But, I weigh it against the lives that would have been lost if he hadn’t been in the cowl. And maybe… it’s actually the fulfillment of an old fear of mine; I always worried being close to people, loving them, would make me make poor decisions, and I think my fears drove me towards this one. But my replacement did take down Bane, at the height of his powers. And I don’t know if that’s something Dick could have done, then. Now, I have no doubt, but then? I’d still be loathe to push it.

ID: I fear we’re getting a little too dour for our own good. What was your funniest Dick in costume moment?

B: There have been a few. Probably the funniest stretch was when he was going through puberty. And like most teenagers, he was gawky, had acne, and his voice broke. And there are few things more comical than a bunch of hardened criminals running away in a panic from a small boy whose voice is cracking as he yells for them to stop.

But I think the funniest in costume moment, and he’s going to hate that I’m telling this story, but it was the first time he was dealing with Poison Ivy

ID: That’s plant-lady doctor, Pamela Isley.

B: But it was their first encounter after he became a man.

ID: Mazel tov.

B: Ivy doesn’t wear a lot of clothes, and she uses pheromones to manipulate men, um, sexually. Well, she had us caught, but she figured since we were who we were, it wouldn’t last for long, so she had this concentrated form of the pheromone that she’d made into a lipstick, that she said would turn us permanently into her slaves. She kissed Dick first. And I guess it must have required prolonged contact because it lasted a while, and after a moment he joined in, and being the overly enthusiastic boy that he was, there was way too much tongue. It was awkward, watching that.

And when she pulled away, he’s pitching a tent in his tights. She turned red; I didn’t know before that through the chlorophyll skin she still could, but she turned red, or maybe a darker shade of green with just a hint of crimson. She said, “Now I feel dirty about this. I think I have to go.” And she just left. I mean she had us dead to rights, held captive by her Venus mantraps, and in the middle of her crime, she just walks away, because being Mrs. Robinson creeped her out too much.

Dick was pretty embarrassed. So to try and relieve some of the tension, I asked if he thought we might be able to get the same reaction from the Joker. And he said, “Not worth it if I have to tongue kiss him.”

ID: I have, in my prurient personal moments, wondered about that. The women in your world seem to wear rather… tight clothes when they deign to wear anything at all. And be otherwise in the kind of physical condition Olympic swimmers and gymnasts are envious of. And your clothes don’t seem to leave any place for, uh, discretion.

B: It’s weird all of a sudden you being the discrete one.

ID: I get awkward around discussion of adolescent boners.

B: But remember the crotch padding I talked about in my costume? Excellent for keeping that kind of thing in check. It was because Robin was constantly growing that his suit on that particular night didn’t have the padding; in fact, I think he was wearing an older suit while Alfred let out his current one, so it was even a little extra tight.

And Ivy’s usually such a fan of growth.

ID: Thank you and good night.

You Don’t Know Dick

2011-12-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

ID: Your first adopted son is Batman. I’m not the first person to say this. It’s been making the rounds for a few weeks, now, primarily from a Lex News report. But when we talked about him previously this news wasn’t out in the open, so you had to be taciturn. Because you had to wall off an entire clump of who he was and is to you. I tacitly agreed to that, by not asking the obvious questions. So we’re going to take a spade to that unplumbed depth. When did you decide to take Dick Grayson on as an understudy?

B: Well, it was an evolution. At first, I didn’t think he’d even want a part of my, mission, I guess. It had always been such a specific, personal thing to me up until that point, so it didn’t really even occur to me that Dick would want it.

But he was a gymnast, and I had a lot of gymnastic and acrobatic equipment and facilities in the cave. So at first, he’d just train with me. And then he’d see me doing my katas, or doing strength training, and he’d join me in those things. Honestly, at the time, I thought we were just exercising together, in a way that was helping him to get past what had happened to his parents.

And then one day he showed up in the cave when it was time for me to go out for my patrols, and he’s in costume, and wants to go along. At first I told him no, in no uncertain terms. And he threw a little bit of a fit, and stormed up to his room. Of course, Alfred overhead the whole thing, and said, “Would you have listened?” And we both knew the answer to that; it was a long series of me not listenings that led me to being Batman.

So I had Alfred design him a costume, with maximum armor without limiting mobility. And it was dark, blacks and crimsons.

ID: That’s always bugged me. Your costume’s black and gray, fairly camouflagey. Your sidekick, his costume looks like the 1980s threw up on someone.

B: You’re going to wish you hadn’t said that. See, the costume he was wearing that night was basically a slightly altered version of the one he and his parents performed in. He wanted to wear it to keep their memory alive.

ID: I’ve always wondered what my foot tasted like; fishy, but with earthy overtones.

B: That might be something that warrants a doctor’s visit. But we fought about it. Like crazy. I forbid him from going out, because I thought, like you’ve said, that his costume made him a flashing light for gunfire, and even just attention can be deadly, you know, when you’re swinging from rooftops, because somebody hurls a brick, or just makes a loud noise, anything that screws with your concentration can be a problem.

But he was able to break into the Batcave without even really trying. There wasn’t anything we could do, at least nothing that wouldn’t count as child endangerment, to keep him locked up. And we tried. About the only true success we had was duct tape, Alfred used about five rolls to really make sure he wouldn’t get out of it. And he still did. Took him hours of wriggling, and later I figured out he’d pulled a Houdini, made sure to keep his muscles tensed up while Alfred was taping him, so that he had a little room to maneuver. He got out and tracked me down for about the last hour of my patrol.

And we’d all but given up when he stopped. He was asleep in his room when I left for my patrols, and still asleep when I’d get back. He shadowed me for almost a week before I realized he was still following me on my patrols. So I trained him to stay in the shadows, keep his distance. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have someone watching from above, who could tell me if, say, a car full of armed thugs was emptying at the end of an alley while I was preoccupied fighting.

And I was fooling myself the whole time. Dick wasn’t going to stay out of the fight any more than I would have. Any time I got into trouble, he was there to bail me out. But what I really quickly realized, is in doing so, he usually put himself in even more danger, having to act quickly and recklessly. So I grounded him. For two months. And told him that if he followed my every instruction, to the letter, to the detail, for that time period, I would let him patrol with me for real.

I put him through Hell. ‘Bruce Wayne’ took a ski vacation through Europe- a body double I’ve used before- and I spent eighteen hours a day preparing him. I kind of thought he’d lose interest after a week or two. But on top of that, Alfred and I were pretty inventive with stupid requests; he scrubbed every single toilet in Wayne Manor with a toothbrush, and didn’t complain. Okay, he complained a couple of times when I wasn’t in the room, but I can’t fault him for not finding the recording devices then; it was still pretty early in his training.

ID: You had recording devices in your young ward’s room?

B: Just audio. And, you know, we didn’t listen if he was doing any of those things young boys do that their parents don’t want to think about.

ID: Like voting Democrat?

B: Among others.

But he didn’t give up. We assigned him some crazy tasks, absolutely designed to break him. The best example was the last thing we did, his final test.

Dick’s family were part of a traveling circus; they didn’t even own a car, so he knew nothing about cars. Alfred and I placed an ‘explosive’ device inside my car, and told him he’d have to find it and disarm it while I dealt with a threat outside the cave.

I told him that to get at the device without setting it off he’d have to pull the car apart- entirely apart. And of course, since it was a bomb, and we didn’t know how long we had before it went off, he couldn’t rest in the meantime.

This was really before the internet was big. The computer in the cave had a lot of references filed, so there were diagrams and guides. But you know if the Chilton’s guide didn’t do it for you, you were out of luck.

Needless to say, there was a lot of trial and error, there, a couple of times where, as a parent, I was terrified he was going to drop the engine on himself or something. He was up for forty some hours, and Alfred and I took turns watching on the monitors to make sure he didn’t cheat- or worse, do something that would have been unsafe if there actually had been a bomb in the car.

I gave him strict instructions about how to handle the bomb once he found it. I had a bomb disposal robot, one of the early prototypes, and he used that to remotely take the bomb into a vault that we had, and locked it in. I told him I’d help him with it when I got back. He followed my instructions entirely. I told him to signal me when he got that far, so I could come and help him, and in the meantime to start putting the car back together.

Reassembly never takes as long, but it was still hours he was working on that car. And there was one time he sat down, and we thought he might quit and take a nap, so I’d radio in to tell him that something came up, but I really needed the car ready when I got back. So he went back to work, and the moment he got it started I ran around to the front of the house where I had my bike and drove back around to the cave.

I made a big show of talking him into the proper bomb disposal gear, then walking him through safely entering the vault, and cautiously approaching the bomb. Then I told him all it would take to disarm it was twisting it at the hinge. Inside, rather than an explosive, he found a key.

And I told him at the back of the vault there was a case, that the key would fit into. And inside it he found the costume that Alfred had designed for him, but redone in his family’s costume colors. He hugged me and cried. I’m sure some of that was the sleep deprivation.

ID: Then what’s your excuse?

B: I don’t get a lot of chances to reminisce about being a dad. And I guess it’s easy, going from one life crisis to another, to overlook how special the little moments were. But now my son’s Batman. How much prouder could a father get?

[NOTE: this interview ran overlong, so I’ll be running it over two weeks instead of one]

Revelations

2011-12-03T06:34:00.000-08:00

ID: I want to thank you for coming back. After last week, I wasn’t sure you would. But you’ve made me out to be an ass. And a homophobe.

B: You usually do a fine job of doing both on your own, actually.

ID: See, I talked to Dick. And I’d been under the assumption that your AIDS nee HIV came from unprotected sex, quite possibly of the homosexual variety.

B: Which is a pretty homophobic assumption to make, honestly.

ID: But you did nothing to dissuade that notion. At all.

B: Force of habit. It can be useful to have people underestimate, or in your case, misunderstand, you.

ID: Okay. Well enough of that. I want to understand. And frankly, you owe it to our audience to help them understand. Because your illness is not a product of unprotected sex, period.

B: And it’s not from needles, not even venom injections.

ID: Or a transfusion. That ticks the usual boxes. So are we done dancing around the subject?

B: It’s a strange circumstance. But I’ll start at the beginning. Keep the suspense up a little longer- I know how much you love that.

I was on a patrol. This was before the cataclysmic earthquake, so before all of the buildings were seismically retrofitted. And do you know the old Gotham National Bank building?

ID: No.

B: Had a lot of personality, that building. Art deco architecture, some gothic gargoyles. I was perched on top of one of those, when the building buckled underneath me. I’ve been involved in enough building destroying events to recognize when a building’s supports are going beneath me. There was a large fire across town, so most of the emergency services were tied up there.

The only person in the building was a little old lady who cleaned up the offices on the upper floors. She brought her cat into the office with her, and didn’t want to leave it, but the cat wouldn’t come out from behind the cabinets. In retrospect, if we’d made it into the stairwell, the way the building came down, we probably would have died- so in a strange way that cat probably saved my life. But I was still standing in her in this file room when the building started to fall. I grabbed the woman and leapt out the window, and this cat clambers up my leg, claws out, like I’m a pine tree.

I managed to get a line wrapped around one of the gargoyles, which broke our fall, but about half the top floor came down on us. The three of us were basically all right, but cut up all to hell.

And that’s when I saw the boy. A street walker, I knew from the clothes. He hadn’t been so lucky, and the building collapse had seriously messed him up. I managed to get him clear of the rubble, but he wasn’t breathing.

But he was sick. I recognized Kaposi’s sarcoma, and I knew what that meant. But there was no one else there. I was cut up all to hell, and even the usual gloves and breathing barriers I carry with me were perforated. I knew what I would do to myself if I resuscitated him, the consequences that could have for my life, for my mission.

But he was Dick’s age. Under the bruising, the swelling, the blood, he could have looked like Dick. I couldn’t look at him and not see Dick, not see my son dying on the sidewalk at my feet.

There wasn’t even a decision- that made it for me. It took forty five minutes for paramedics to arrive; by then my lungs burned, and I could barely keep up compressions. I mean, I’d had a building fall on me. But before I let them take over for me, I told them, “He’s positive.”

And they were shocked. The paramedics tried to shove me in the back of the ambulance to start disinfecting me. But I wasn’t even thinking clearly any more. I’d been operating beyond my limitations since the building collapsed; keeping that boy alive had become everything in those moments, and I pushed them back, and said, “Him first.” And I think that brought all of us back to our senses. They gave me the antiseptics they had in the ambulance and took him away.

I went straight home after that, and bathed in alcohol. I started antiretrovirals immediately. I had my blood tested, every week, knowing it was only a matter of time before it came back positive. And eventually it did. It was almost… almost a relief. It’s amazing how psychotically the brain will cling to hope. But knowing… it let me get back to my life. Not living in anticipation of its end.

ID: That’s… shit.

B: Don’t look at me like that. I did what I’ve always done, what I’ve always said I was willing to do. And I just happened to be the man who was there, that day, to do it. I have no doubt that in the same circumstances, the Flash, a Green Lantern, most of the people in the League wouldn’t hesitate to do the same. And those who wouldn’t, I don’t fault them. That job already asks a lot. I can’t fault them for drawing that line.

ID: But… shit.

B: You need to be a prick to me. It’s part of your process- part ours. You need to be a prick so you can challenge what I say, challenge me. So quite with the puppy dog eyes.

ID: But… shit.

B: Okay. Maybe I have to keep the ball rolling this time. And in this spirit of openness, I hear you got outed by Lex News yourself.

ID: Yeah, um, as in outed as the reporter concealing his identity to conserve the integrity of this interview, not in the sex with dudes kind of outing. So you can breathe easy, mom.

B: But your name, specifically, has been linked up to your nom de plume. And in this Google age, that means it’s out. Period.

ID: Right. I’m Nic Wilson. Way back when, I wrote for a culture and arts magazine called Dangerous Ink, before it went tits up, and I liked that those initials reversed garnered ID, short for identification, and I thought it was clever, in an interview about Superman’s secret identity, that that would be my handle. That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.

B: But doesn’t it feel good to get that out in the open?

ID: Not really. I don’t like being the subject. It feels icky.

B: Yep. Pretty much.

ID: Kind of makes me rethink that whole wanting to be notable thing. But how do you like sitting on the other side of the table? Being the bad guy, or at least playing devil’s advocate?

B: It’s kind of fun.

ID: I’ve created a monster, haven’t I?

Caught Red-Hooded

2011-11-26T02:24:00.000-08:00

ID: Your year’s almost up. If you’re still planning on kicking you’d better hurry up.

B: I never planned on dying before the 52 interviews were over. In fact, I think I’m sticking around for a while, yet.

ID: As in not dying, or as in more interviews?

B: Both, probably. I can’t see me shutting up any time too soon, can you?

ID: Not unless parts of Harvey’s anatomy were used to damn up your dike of a mouth.

B: Wow.

ID: Too far?

B: So far.

ID: Good. Because I wanted you distracted for a moment, because you’re not going to like this topic.

B: Christ.

ID: So you’ve figured it out.

B: Based on that? No. You just usually don’t warn me and it’s usually pretty bad, so if you’re warning me…

ID: I want to talk about Red Hood. Not just the urban legend. But the time you nearly caught him.

B: How much do you know?

ID: Enough to know if you’re lying. And if you lie, I’ll tell it my way, and the light will be as unflattering as my exceptional skills of deprecation can make it.

B: Like you said, the Red Hood was an urban legend. But because of that, criminals started using a red hood and cape get up to perpetuate it. And any time I caught somebody in a red hood and cape, well, they just said they were a decoy, and the real Red Hood was still out there. Convenient, right?

ID: So lots of Saddam body doubles.

B: Essentially. But this particular night, there was a break-in at Ajax chemicals. Some low-rent thugs. But they had along a novice, wearing the red hood and cape. I showed up, chased the thugs off.

But the Red Hood runs up rather than away. I took that as a savvy escape plan, and I chased after him. In retrospect, he was just panicked, trying like hell to figure out a way to get distance between me and him. But I pursued him, doggedly. He trips, over a guard rail over a large vat of chemicals, a lot of byproducts that were being cooked down so they could be disposed of. Ajax was doing something fairly illegal, though, because they were highly reactive, and the area where they were dumping the chemicals were supposed to be rendered inert.

The Red Hood manages to catch the rail, but he’s sweating profusely. And I get there, and as I’m about to grab him to haul him up, he freaks out, somehow believing that I’m worse than whatever’s below him- and from up there the smoke coming off it is burning my eyes and my lungs, making my nose run.

ID: Criminals are a stupid, cowardly lot. And you stupid and cowarded this guy to death.

B: He let go. But he didn’t die. Of course, you know that.

ID: And who was he?

B: He’s systematically stolen, burned or altered all of his records. I’ve never been able to ascertain who he was before the accident.

ID: You’ve been doing so well; this isn’t the time to get shy. What name would the public know this disfigured if jolly man as?

B: The Joker.

ID: The audience gasps. So you created the Joker.

B: No. I failed to save him. I terrified him, made him anxious and clumsy, and then when he fell into that vat of roiling chemicals, I failed to catch him. But I didn’t create him.

ID: Okay, I can see the distinction you want to make; you didn’t bake the crazy cake, but you certainly had a hand in stirring the batter. Cracked a few of the insane eggs, if you will. And that certainly explains some of his obsession with you.

B: I think mostly that comes from his belief that we’re alike, mirrored images, changed only slightly by the viewing angle. He honestly thinks he’s teaching me about the world, that he’s helping prepare me for its harsh realities- when he wouldn’t know reality

ID: If it were baked into a pie and thrown at him.

B: Something like that. But why now? Where’d this blackmailable information come from?

ID: Anonymous note from a Mr. White. Three guesses to who that is, and the first two don’t count.

B: Joker. Bastard.

ID: And it feels kind of crappy to be used by somebody like him, but I’m a journalist. And dollars to donuts he wasn’t going to just send this to me. This way, your version of events gets to be the lead.

B: Justify however you like. We both know what you are.

ID: All we’re arguing over is the price? It’s a bad economy all around, but it’s a worse one for journalists. You might have the luxury of principals. But mine isn’t an industry that’s ever had that luxury. It’s expensive enough trying to stick to the truth.

Besides, the difference I see between you and the Joker- the fundamental difference- is that he hides from reality, behind his delusions and his humor. You don’t.

B: That’s convenient.

ID: Sometimes the truth is. Sometimes it isn’t. I’m not an arbiter of fairness; I just want to get at wants honest, and human, and real. You do, too- because you think it’s important for people to see where who you are came from- or you wouldn’t be here.

B: But what if I’ve decided I don’t like where ‘here’ is getting me?

Hush

2011-11-19T01:47:00.000-08:00

ID: You mentioned a while back that Hush seemed to have inserted himself into your life in a very peculiar way. I’d like to talk about him, today, if that’s all right. You met him as a boy.

B: His parents were friends of my parents. Wealthy, influential, socialite types, you know, running in those kinds of circles. Tommy was a, well, he was just another kid trapped in that particular glass bottle of wealth.

ID: Sounds horrible.

B: It’s not, and I know it’s not. But there are obstacles that come from that kind of affluence, the expectations that come along with it. Both of our parents, they pushed us, put a lot of pressure on us. We were expected to succeed, in a way few other people really are.

I think overall we benefited from the pressure. Although…

ID: What?

B: I dress up as a bat and he murders people. So I can’t objectively say that it was the best way to parent.

ID: Are you actually questioning your parents?

B: No. Because I don’t know how things would have happened for me. I think the persona I built Bruce Wayne into, the foppish, vain, shallow playboy, I think he was in part who I was afraid I was going to become. I mean, if my parents hadn’t died, it’s entirely possible that would be me. I think having to pretend to be that, reminding myself of what I very nearly became, it kept me grounded.

But if my parents hadn’t been murdered, I don’t know. My upbringing wasn’t much different from Tommy’s. I wasn’t abused, and that might be the salient factor; I’m not saying rich people’s children are likely to become murderous Machiavellians. But that’s just the direction that Tommy’s dysfunction grew- it’s entirely possible I would have been just as dysfunctional in a likely less criminal and violent direction.

ID: I think we’re wandering. Um. What happened between your family and Tommy’s?

B: I think when we were born, our families were on a relatively even keel. But as we grew, I think his dad did worse. I think it was just in the industries where Tommy’s dad had most of his money, they were doing poorly, whereas my dad and his tech and industry holdings just kept increasing in value.

I think that’s why Tommy’s dad started hitting his wife and child. He and my dad, they were friendly, but also rivals. And at almost the same time he had to put up his home for sale, dad put a whole new wing on the manor. I mean, dad actually bought Tommy’s house and gave it right back to them- but that only strained their friendship further. And he actually got arrested that time, he beat Tommy and his mom so badly.

That same night, my dad bailed Tommy’s dad out. And he tried to talk to him, to understand what had happened. And it went very badly. Tommy’s dad took a swing at him. And I came upon my dad, in his study, a few hours later. It was one of the few times I got to see my father, as a man. He was shaken. He couldn’t understand that kind of mindless violence, against his own wife and child, from a man he’d loved as his brother. He had a scotch in his hand, but he wasn’t drunk, and I remember what he said to me, because he’d been pondering it for a while, but he said, “Sometimes the only thing a man can do is admit that he doesn’t know what to do.”

Let that sink in. It’s profound. Because it, for me it made it okay not to know an answer. I mean, for me, the implied second clause became that it’s also a man’s duty to do everything he can to figure it out. But I spent a lot of nights like that one with my father, puzzling over what to do to help people- people who maybe didn’t think they wanted my help.

Not much time passed after that before Tommy’s parents died. At the time everybody thought it was an accident; even I did, until later. My parents offered to take Tommy in, but he was shipped off, along with his family’s fortune, to Europe, where he trained to be a surgeon.

A few years ago, Tommy came back into my life. I got myself pretty badly injured, and he fixed me up. His timing was impeccable. I think I was just glad to have him back in my life, because I didn’t question that at first.

But then Hush entered the picture. He set in motion a series of events that nearly killed me, and succeeded in killing several other people. What was strange is at first the two were diametrically opposed. Hush was manipulating and murdering. But Tommy was being friendly, and helpful. He even volunteered to try and fix Harvey’s face- and succeeded.

And in the end, that act of kindness proved to be his downfall. Harvey had been seeing therapists for a while, anyway, so he’d made a lot of progress, but having his face fixed, it solidified for him something that he’d been struggling with. He missed being one of the good guys. And it was Harvey, when Hush had me, dead to rights, who saved me. He shot Hush twice.

ID: All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

B: But he saved me instead. And evil limped away with a couple of fresh bullet wounds.

ID: Is that when you fell in love with Harvey?

B: I think it’s hard to track exactly where a friendship ends and a romance begins. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had relationships that started as friendships. And I’m sure there was… flirtation. Suggestion. But at the same time, there’s a gray area in there, where it’s not romance but it’s progressed beyond a friendship. I think for me what that moment was was notice. It made me take stock of Harvey, and ask myself if he was the same unbalanced guy I’d been worrying over for years. And I remember thinking, maybe this was the new Harvey, that he was going to be an asset like he’d been back when he was district attorney.

ID: And is it safe to assume you wouldn’t be with Harvey if he hadn’t had his surgery?

B: I don’t think that’s fair. On several levels. Would Harvey be attracted to me if I didn’t look like this? If the mafia had been convinced I was the Holiday killer and was the one with horrible scarring because of it, I imagine most of my adult relationships would have gone differently. Attraction is a big part of relationships; I think we’ve been socialized in such a way that it plays perhaps an unhealthily outsized role. But I’m not going to apologize for being attracted to beautiful people, that’s an asinine insinuation.

ID: So, I’m going to consider that a yes, preachiness to the side. So in a very real way, you owe your relationship with Harvey to Hush.

B: Accidentally, perhaps.

ID: Of course, he stole Selina away from you. So at best that would put you even, and- no offense to Harvey- but he’s no Ms. Kyle, at a minimum in the pulling off a cat suit category.

B: He does look quite smart in a suit, though. But comparing them isn’t really fair or even sensical. People aren’t trading cards; you can’t compare their stats on the back to see who’s better. They’re different. And Harvey’s who I’m with right now.

But I do feel bad about how things went with Selina. Me, and people I care about, we’ve been paying for the things Tommy’s dad did forty years ago, the proverbial sins of the father.

Sleeping with the Enemy

2011-11-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

ID: It’s been a while since we talked about Harvey. I know it’s still a young relationship; this isn’t Clark and Lois, so I think putting it under a microscope could hurt it, and that’s not what I want. But I’ve been thinking of calling this segment, “Sleeping with the Enemy.”

B: He has a hard enough time without people focusing in on his past.

ID: Or maybe Bi-Curious.

B: You’re just going to keep being an ass until I start dishing, aren’t you?

ID: I’ll probably be an ass even after.

B: Well, I appreciate your candor.

ID: But you don’t cotton to him being called “the Enemy.”

B: Because he isn’t. Every crime he’s been convicted of, he’s paid his debt for.

ID: To be fair, most of those debts included the insanity defense, which basically meant that the moment he wasn’t crazy he could walk away free and clear.

B: With the caveat that if he stayed crazy, he stayed locked up. But as far as the courts are concerned, Harvey’s a free man.

And that’s why I balk at your characterization. Because what Harvey needs now, more than anything, is normalization. Getting his life back into a place where he can feel safe, and secure, sane, and just normal.

ID: Um, I hate to play to type and be an ass, but is living with a Bat man normal?

B: Relationships complicate things. That’s why we’re taking ours slow. And we aren’t living together.

ID: Okay, so screwing… around with a Bat man, then.

B: I’ll try not to take umbrage at that. I think overall I’m pretty normal, actually. Harvey and I have, colorful, pasts, but I think that brings us closer. We’ve both seen things that are different, and would be different, for other, perhaps more ‘normal’ people to understand.

And so far he’s been good for me. I’m not going into the office every day, not going to the League meetings. My normal routine has been pretty much disrupted, too. So I think it helps, having someone to experience the odd cabin fever of costumed retirement with.

ID: But you’re not Walter Mathau, and he’s no Jack Lemon; this isn’t Grumpy Old Men… We’re talking about a supervillain and a superhero knocking their garish boots together.

B: Few points. Neither of us were all that super, unless you count trauma as a superpower. And, um, whatever you might think of any of the, and I’ll stress this, functional footwear I wore over the years, Harvey had pretty impeccable taste, very nice Italian loafers, most of the time. Certainly not garish.

But Harvey hasn’t been that person for a long time. It’s been a while, so I think people have forgotten, but I left Gotham for several months with Robin and Nightwing. I left Harvey in charge of protecting the city, and he did an exceptional job of keeping it in one piece. I think he was subtler than me in doing it- he never set up a Harvey signal- and maybe that’s why he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. But he had my every confidence, then, and he’s shown himself worthy of it since.

I think Harvey’s braver than I am. I’ve tried to dissociate him from his past; you might have even recognized it, but when I’ve talked about the bad he did, I’ve emphasized Two Face, and the Two Face persona. But he corrects me. He can’t blame it all on psychosis. Because he wasn’t paralyzed. He wasn’t helpless. Weak, maybe, but he was always there, always aware and able to influence their behavior. So the things that Two Face did, he feels the guilt of that. He told me, “Bruce, I need to be honest with myself about the depth of what I owe, how out of kilter the karmic balance is because of me.”

I think, as part of trying to get away from looking at life in black and white, he’s been trying to take a more holistic approach to things, and his doctors have encouraged that. Karma, being an example; he’s become quite interested in the yin yang, the concept of complementary opposites.

He’s still compelled by duality, and pairs. You know, I can tell when he’s having a bad morning, because instead of fixing himself a bowl of cereal, he’ll pour two.

ID: And what cereal keeps a former sociopath going through the morning.

B: Frosted Mini-Wheats.

ID: I should have known.

B: But the other morning, over cereal, we were talking. For a while he was hanging around with two ‘henchwomen,’ and I’m putting that in air quotes because I don’t think either actually did any henching, and they may have in fact been prostitutes. I don’t know how it came up, but we were talking about being with two women at the same time. And he said he didn’t do that, because that would make it a threesome. Then he gave me this sly smile, and said, “Of course, it’s only a threesome if they’re allowed to touch each other,” and punctuated it by taking a bite of his cereal.

ID: So you’re in the domestic bliss phase of the relationship, then.

B: I guess so.

I think it helps, that we’ve both had real, long-standing relationships with women. It puts us on even footing, and I think makes it easier for us to relate to each other.

The other day. He said he was glad he was my 2nd choice. I couldn’t get him to elaborate, but he’s been happy. And so am I. I think that’s all I really need right now.

Tim

2011-11-04T02:48:00.000-07:00

ID: I feel a little bad for saying this, especially as cliché as it really is, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about Tim. At least right now. I mean, Dick was your first adopted son, so there’s interest in that. Damian is your first bio-son, so that’s interesting, too. But Tim, is, well, the middle child. And like most middle children, I almost overlooked him.

B: Yeah, and Tim hasn’t been my son that very long. It’s certainly been a strange experience. Dick I met through tragedy. But Tim I knew. I’d known Tim for years, through his father. His dad was a neighbor, but after he was injured in a botched kidnapping, he wasn’t the same. Tim’s mom died at that same time, when his father was put into a wheelchair. But even before then, he spent a lot of time just hanging out in the mansion.

B: Getting a real Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch vibe here about your manor.

ID: Don’t be an ass.

By that point Dick had moved out, got his own place, his own trajectory. I think he was in school, then. And having Tim there, it reminded me of happier times. And being at home, well, his father was still a mess over what happened to him and his wife, so I think he just wanted to be away from that some of the time.

ID: Still getting the Neverland Ranch sensation.

B: Haven’t you ever had an older male friend before? Somebody who had a kind of pseudo-fatherly quality to them?

ID: Yeah, I guess, an ex girlfriend’s dad, for a while. So I can see it.

B: His dad was still around, but… Jack blamed himself for what happened to his wife. He tortured himself over it. And Tim needed sometimes to be someplace else. And I think it was mutually beneficial, because through Tim, I got the cautionary tale of Jack, you know, how far guilt and regret can twist you up inside. There’ve been a lot of things, I think that I could have gone in that direction over.

Things changed a little bit, when Jack and Shondra got kidnapped. This was right after Bane broke my back. Tim moved into the mansion, with Alfred, and started spending time with Dick, while I went to find his father and our doctor. I managed to save Jack, but Shondra…

Jack, loved Shondra, too. So we commiserated over her… injury. She was a wonderful woman, and the world’s poorer without her in it. I mean, she’s still alive, in a literal sense, but she doesn’t speak, doesn’t respond. For all intents and purposes, she died stopping her brother.

ID: But how did Tim come to live with you?

B: A few years later, Jack was killed in a home invasion. The sick part is it was a game to the woman who did it. She sent Jack a gun, and me a message that it was going to happen. And I couldn’t get there fast enough. Jack shot his attacker, but…

After he died, Tim moved in.

ID: Okay. You’ve told us a lot about the circumstances, but not about the boy. So tell me about Tim. You hung out. What’d you do?

B: He’s a kid. He does kid stuff. And I was his surrogate father figure. Oftentimes we weren’t even doing much together, honestly. I’d watch TV, and he’d play his DS on the couch. I’d be researching the sewer system because I suspected Scarecrow was there and he’d study- he spent and spends a lot of time in the library. Tim’s a really bright kid. Academically, I’ve always been impressed- even at a young age there weren’t a lot of conversations he couldn’t keep up with.

Sometimes we’d play chess. Mostly we’d just talk. Him losing his mom, and half-losing his dad, only to lose him the rest of the way. One of the first things he asked me, after he’d been coming around a lot, was if it ever got easier.

And it took me a while to really wrap myself around the question. But yeah. It does. It never stops hurting, never completely goes away. But it doesn’t sting quite so acutely, doesn’t get quite so thoroughly into your face.

ID: When did you decide to take him in?

B: The night his father died. Like I said, I got there too late. Tim was there, in the kitchen, crying his eyes out. And the moment I came into the room he latched onto me like a terrified baby chimp. And it was just the most crushing thing, because that moment, that was exactly the moment I’d spent my entire life trying to prevent. And I’d failed. Failed this bright kid who lived right next to me. It doesn’t get closer to home than that.

And at the same time, it was just like the night I first met Dick. Where it felt like there was such a thing as fate, that I was there, at that moment, because I understood his pain, had lived through it and come out, well, decently okay. I mean, I’m a lousy consolation prize, but at least I could be there for him. At least he didn’t have to be alone.

And, you know, in Dick he gained an older brother, someone to confide in once I became too much like a real dad, and an actual authority figure. And they’ve been really good for each other. That darkness I always talk about having, Dick doesn’t have, and Tim has only some. I think Dick keeps Tim optimistic, and I think Tim helped Dick understand me. I think we’re a much stronger family for his inclusion. So even if you hadn’t talked about him, he’s still very much in my thoughts. He’s one of my sons. And I love him.

Deadbeat Bat

2011-11-04T02:38:00.000-07:00

ID: I want to talk to you about your son.

B: You’ll have to be more specific.

ID: Your bio-son. How long have you known about him?

B: Not long.

ID: And you’re not just saying that to dodge child support payments or back-alimony?

B: No. I’m more than comfortable, and his mother is quite wealthy herself. But I’m going to assume you haven’t been able to find much on Damian- and after our conversation about Dick you’re more curious about my home life than previously.

ID: Actually, I was always curious about the home life, I just… it hadn’t crossed my mind that you were a father. I mean, on paper you’ve adopted two boys- the bio-son I keep forgetting about, since I don’t think he was in the picture when we first started- so I had no research about him.

B: Damian’s grandfather is a bastard- the ecoterrorist Ra’s al Ghul. What I told you before about his conception, and his mother, is true. But I actually have a little more background than before. You know, sometimes you accept things, take them for granted, until you’re talking to someone about it. And the question came up when we were talking about Talia, and I put it to her. And she didn’t know what happened to Damian, either.

When she got rid of me, she planned to get rid of him, too.

ID: Abortion?

B: No. She worried about his safety- she reasoned both of our lives were too dangerous to introduce children into. So she left him at an orphanage. But her father knew, and intercepted Damian. He spent the next ten years being raised by the League of Assassins.

ID: And what does that mean?

B: It meant survival of the fittest. It meant he didn’t live in a nursery as a baby. From the time he could crawl, he lived in a kennel. They’d give him and the dogs enough food for all but one of them. So as a matter of survival, they had to kill one of their own, every week. The only reason he walked away was he was the last one alive.

His entire childhood was that, tests designed to make him selfish, cold, sadistic, to turn him into an assassin, not merely as a vocation, but purely, as the essence of his being.

ID: I don’t want to peel away too much- I mean, Damian’s living with you, right? And I assume he’s going to a public school, and could very well have social consequences for anything you might say. But I’m curious, of all the things that were done to him, what was the worst?

B: I’m glad you bring that up. I don’t mind saying it, because I think you phrase it right: these weren’t things Damian did, these were things that were done to him. They aren’t things that he needs to feel ashamed for or about. No child should be forced to choose between his own survival and doing violence to someone or even something else. It’s unconscionable. And as a father… I hope someone stronger than me is there next time I see Ra’s, to keep me from murdering him. Because otherwise, I don’t know that I can do that myself.

But the worst thing involved deception. Damian was introduced to a girl, a local girl. They spent time together. He fell in love. He was a boy, not even ten years old.

Ra’s asked him to poison the girl. She was a spy, he said, there to harm everyone he knew, the people he’d come to see as his family. She had to die. But he loved her, so he tried to help her escape. Instead she led him into an ambush. Ra’s was there, and in front of the entire League, all of his peers, she mocked him. Said every cruel thing a boy that age thinks and hopes isn’t true. That night, Ra’s came to him again, and said that she had gone too far, that she was supposed to be a test, but she had no right to mock his heir in that fashion. He told him to poison her again. He was still so upset that he did it, and once his pain had subsided, he hated himself for it.

It was later, that Damian observed Ra’s giving her parents money. She had been hired for that exact purpose, to die, and humiliate him into doing it if need be. When she died, her parents were just bought off.

But it was months, he’d been with me for months before he told me about it. Alfred was bringing him soup, because he hadn’t been feeling well, and had hardly touched his dinner. And without thinking, Damian attacked him, punched him in the throat. And even when he realized it was Alfred, he was leery. He’d been brought up in such a constant state of fear and readiness, it was hard for him to understand that simple human kindness, someone bringing a sick friend soup. Because he was weak then; it was when he felt the most in danger. He told Alfred to drink some of the soup, convinced it was poisoned, and when Alfred didn’t hesitate, drank and said, “It’s just soup,” he started to cry.

I was already heading that direction, having heard the commotion. But he jumped into my arms. And he cried for a very long time before he was able to tell me all that. No ten year old should have to carry that burden; no child should be coaxed into murder like that.

ID: You sound pretty upset.

B: I am. I think… Dick, Tim, myself, we’ve all experienced tragedy. But Damian’s was different. His came from a place where he should have been safe: his tragedy came from his family. It was a betrayal of the most personal kind. It’s made him… less able to trust. But he wants to.

He wants to be normal. Not to worry about killers outside his bedroom. Or whether or not the girl he looks at at lunch has been hired to humiliate him, and to manipulate him into doing horrible things.

ID: But if he wants to be normal, isn’t his dad broadcasting his murdering past a little counter-productive.

B: I hope not; I would hate to feel like I’m betraying his trust.

But I don’t think so. Damian’s different. I think it’ll be a long time before he gets all the way to normal. I think his upbringing left marks, on his soul, that will take a long time to scab over, let alone heal. And I think his darkness shows, and people treat him differently for it.

But I think if people could understand him, and what was done to him, they’ll see already how far he’s come, how hard he’s trying, to do right, and be right in this world. It’s remarkable, to me, that he can function on any level. But he isn’t just functional, he’s impressive, and I can say with certainty my son will do great things. That’s every father’s hope. But his trajectory, he’s not just capable of greatness, he going to accomplish it.

My son’s extraordinary. I’m not surprised. His mother’s extraordinary, too. But I’m… blown away by his resilience. I don’t know if I could have withstood it; a weaker person wouldn’t have survived his childhood, emotionally even if they got by physically. But he’s bounced back. I love him. And I’m proud of him. What more could any father ask for?

Why So Serious?

2011-10-21T04:33:00.000-07:00

ID: Are you depressed?

B: I’ve been told I brood too much. Even as a child. My mother teased me for being too serious. I frowned a lot- particularly in pictures.

ID: Your mother teased you? That didn’t bode well. But even pre-orphaning, you were serious.

B: As a heart attack, or at least as a Perry Mason wrap-up.

ID: I don’t know, I laughed a lot watching his closing speeches- especially when the detective with the lazy eye was there. I think it was because the show was so impeccably cast, and everyone so impeccably groomed, that that one, off-kilter aspect just undermined everything.

But you just seem so… depressive. In talking about your children, in talking about Zatanna, one thing keeps coming up: how optimistic they are, how bright, sunny, happy. How much they help you leave your personal darkness behind, put it away and remember what it’s like to be alive. So I’m wondering if it isn’t just moodiness, but depression.

B: Clinically? You aren’t the first person to suggest it. Basically, major depressive disorder is characterized by low mood,

ID: Check.

B: low self-esteem,

ID: Uh, check? Maybe?

B: Losing interest in all pleasurable activities. And for that, well, there’s one thing I never stop enjoying.

ID: Kicking bad guys in the scrotum?

B: I would have put it more tactfully, but in a nutshell.

ID: Oh my god, a testicle joke. I’m so proud of you. But I kind of stumbled on self-esteem, and you did not give me anything to go on by way of reaction. You can’t possibly have low self-esteem; really, you and men like you give me my low self-esteem.

B: I’m an Olympic level athlete. I always score in the 99th percentile in aptitude tests.

ID: You always score.

B: I’m successful, socially and otherwise, and wealthy. I’d say, with all due humility I’m easy on the eyes. Any feelings of inadequacy given that starting point would qualify as low self-esteem- though I’d put that at intermittent. So maybe one and a half checks.

ID: But attachment theory, John Bowlby’s baby, says that experiencing early loss or separation from parents or caregivers can lead to insecure working models.

B: So you’re skipping the diagnostic criteria and going right for the anecdotal drive-by hackery, huh?

ID: Hey, if you want the diagnosis, all you had to do was ask. Remember at the beginning, when we did the Hamilton rating scale for depression worksheet? About the only thing you didn’t score a 2 in was psychomotor retardation; you’re high functioning.

B: I also wasn’t fidgety.

ID: Not physically, no; but your mind was twitchy as hell. And it isn’t helped by the fact that, physically, you’re impossible to read. Between the AIDS, the medication for the AIDS, and the fact that you still bullishly exercise, it’s kind of hard to tell what fatigue is normal fatigue and what might be depression fatigue. But, I tallied your responses, or made things up when you weren’t helpfully responsive, and you’re depressed.

B: One last point: Hamilton himself said his scale shouldn’t be used as a diagnostic criteria.

ID: Really? I guess that makes my “finding” anticlimactic, then.

B: Kind of.

ID: All right, well, social cognitive theory asserts that depressed individuals internalize guilt but rarely acknowledge positive outcomes. I’ve known you for a while, and you do seem to be a personal blame magnet.

B: Guilt can be a useful tool, if it drives progression, revision, critical examination. Internalizing guilt merely for self-flagellation is counter-productive. And I prefer Maslow, who believed depression came from individuals unable to reach their full potential.

ID: Have you?

B: I’m not sure what more you think I should have accomplished.

ID: Actually, my question is less focused on what more, as what you might have been able to do otherwise. You’re brilliant. Handsome. And capable of doing great things. Instead you’ve run around in a bat-shaped unitard kicking people. From that description, you sound like the slow kid in my first grade class who kept getting into trouble for running around in just his underpants, sniffing glue and stomping on people’s toes.

B: That’s… harsh. And insensitive to the challenged. But if your point is that my life has at times been self-indulgent and not always maximizing. You’re right. I haven’t always been the best man I could be. I spent years probably selfishly training, for a very personal quest. Maybe I should have been doing more charity, more philanthropy. Maybe I should have gone into politics.

But as Batman, I helped save the world. More than once. Maybe the League could have done that without me. Maybe they couldn’t have. If you examine every possible outcome of every choice in your life, and assume the best possible outcome, of course you’ll be found wanting.

But I don’t have any shame about who I am, the life I’ve lived. In fact, I’m damn proud of the things I’ve accomplished. I’ve sweat, I’ve bled, and when I go, I think the world will be better for having had me in it. Everything else, those details… they’re just that.

And I guess, ultimately, it’s a dark, and sometimes unforgiving world. There are mainly two methods for dealing with that. One, was Clark’s, and Zatanna’s, and Dick’s, and that’s meeting that darkness with light. With happiness, and optimism, and charity.

And as much as I love them, and much as I wish I could be them sometimes, I’m not. So I confront that darkness with darkness. I melt into a world that isn’t perfect and isn’t always fair, that can harsh, and even brutal. I became a creature of that world. I thrive in that world by being a part of it. It’s taken its toll- but seeing Clark, Dick and Zatanna, I can say being a bright light in this dark world takes its toll, too. The only difference, I think, is that they enjoyed it more. They were happier for it.

Sometimes, I think I was able to do things they weren’t, see sides to problems they couldn’t. Maybe I’m just rationalizing it. Maybe I’m trying to find a way for it not to have been a flaw, or at least for something good to have come out of my misery.

But for better or for ill, I don’t think I would have survived it, without people like those three. And I don’t think I can honestly say the reverse is true. In fact, sometimes I wonder if their lives would have been happier without my darkness.

ID: Wait… are you talking about suicidal ideation?
B: … No. I wasn’t ever thinking of killing myself. I don’t know what me not surviving would have looked like; if psychologically, or emotionally, I would have withered up and blew away, or if the ravages of that internal hollowing would have destroyed me physically. But they saved my life, in ways I can’t explain; but I know it, more intimately than I know anything else.

The Love of My Life

2011-10-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

ID: Okay, I think the title of this one is going to be unintentionally more salacious than even I want- especially in light of the Harvey revelation last week- but I'll start out by saying you cheated. Um, no, not on you, Harv- though I wonder what his policy on two-timing would be...

No, when we started talking about the loves of your life, you cheated. Right out of the gate. And I want our audience to know that I poked, prodded- strictly platonically, of course- and cajoled, caroused, and I'll check my thesaurus later for some more words like that, but I did what I could to get a, if you'll pardon the pun, straighter answer out of you. But no, the love of your life, you said, was your adopted son, Dick.

B: You never said it had to be a romantic love.

ID: I think it was implied. But whatever. So you outsmarted me, kinda. You still spilled most of the more sensitive beans I was hoping for along the way, even if you never put all your money on Black Canary. So that's the important thing.

And besides, it opened up a new avenue for discussion. So tell us about Dick- big D, not, you know, the other kind I'm reasonably sure you're fond of.

B: Good lord. When I met Dick, I was alone. The support net, Alfred, Leslie, my uncle Phil, the people who saw me through my childhood, had become an emotional liability. I was fighting for my life, every night, and during the day, well, I avoided the people who kept me sane after my parents died.

That changed that night. Dick was a child gymnast. I watched his parents perform. But something went wrong, and they fell to their deaths, as Dick watched from the eaves. At first it was tragic, and then I saw him, and I saw him fall to his knees, tears streaming down his expressionless face. It was like looking at myself fifteen years earlier. It broke my heart, seeing it happen to someone else; it was worse than having it happen to me, because that level of horror numbs you, you lose all sense of time and place, just drift along on the pain. But watching second-hand, but knowing how hollowing an experience it was, without the numbness…

But even with that, I noticed something. It hadn't been a normal equipment failure; it hadn't even been made to look like one. The ropes on his parent's trapeze had been sliced to the point where they broke clean away the moment the Grayson's weight was on it. This was a message- and a murder.

I spent the better part of the night talking to Dick. The police ended up having to interview everyone- though no one really told them anything. It was hard for me; I wanted to put on my costume, find the people responsible, and hurt them. But it was so much more important for me to stay there, and make awkward conversation with a boy who kept bursting into tears every few minutes, largely unprovoked. And I think, I think it was the first time in several years where I hugged someone; don't get me wrong, I get hugged all the time, but it was the first time I really hugged back, where I wanted the person to know I was there for them, not just physically present, but emotionally available to them.

And it broke my heart again when the police took him away. Because I think he was starting to get comfortable with me, to find some semblance of a footing- but he’d gone a full fifteen minutes without crying, talking about hot chocolate and playing in the snow- and then he was taken away from that, and put in the back of a squad car, it tore the wound clear open again.

Dick didn't have any relatives in the area. At the time, Dr. Thompkins, Leslie, was running a child welfare shelter as an addition to her clinic, and I called her and made arrangements for her to be there receive Dick; otherwise he would have had to stay the night at the police station.

And I made sure I arrived just after they left. Leslie was surprised to see me, though, “Not that surprised.” I gave money to the shelter, and sometimes volunteered there, but I always gave them advanced notice, and came when they needed me- not in the middle of the night. Dick was sleeping; she'd given him something to help him sleep.

She'd talked to him for a few moments, and it sounded like he didn't even know any of his family. His parents' careers, as traveling performers, had alienated any relations who might have otherwise taken him in. So I asked to take him home. It wasn't procedure, or protocol. At a minimum, there were hoops I was supposed to go through.

But Leslie was one of the people who had raised me when my parents died. So she knew that any examination of my eligibility wasn't going to turn up any skeletons. Still, she wanted to make sure we did what was right for Dick.

I said, “Leslie, you know me. Better than anyone, I know what he's going through.” She told me maybe I wasn't done dealing with my parent's death, that commiserating might be good for me, but was it the best thing for him? But she didn’t try to prevent me from taking him, and ultimately, I think she just wanted me to ponder the question. The foster system can be brutal even under the best of circumstances, but then?

She fudged some paperwork, and Alfred drove us home. Leslie sent us with a few changes of clothes for him.

He woke up in his new bed. I think it helped, him being in a new situation. It was a distraction. He didn't have to sit curled up on a cot crying; instead he was wandering around the Manor, or the grounds; he cried, too, but I gave him excuses to do something besides that.

He found the cave within a week; I guess he must have moonlighted with a magician or something, because he had to pick several locks to get there. I found him exercising on the cave's equipment. I wanted to scold him, especially since he was doing quite dangerous things, but the way he moved- he was so at home in the air that he flew- it was a joy to watch. I understood why people flocked to see him, and his parents, understood the weightless joy of his movements.

Then he fell. And I wasn’t nearly the gymnast he was, but I knew he hadn’t fallen because of any mistake; he was crying even before he hit the mat. That’s when I went to him. And I thought about playing the heavy- I was in costume, after all- but he barely even looked up at me. And I saw in that moment that the thing he loved most in the world- with the likely exception of his parents- had turned into something that reminded him only of tragedy. He was a Flying Grayson, but the bastards who killed his parents had clipped his wings.

I knelt down, and put my hand on his head. “I lost my parents, too.” He latched onto me, so fast and so strong that he knocked the air from of my lungs. He spent a long time crying. When he stopped, he looked up at me, and smiled at my clothes.

“We wore costumes, too,” he said. He took my hand, and we went up into the manor and had hot chocolate. It was kind of strange, drinking hot chocolate in costume, but it seemed to make him happier. When he was asleep, I set to work finding his parent’s killers. I found them easily. I hurt them. Badly.

I might have killed them with my hands, but I thought back to Dick, sitting in my dad’s old wingback chair, sipping hot cocoa. I knew already I wanted him to live with me, to grow up there. And I couldn’t go back to his home with blood on my hands. I mean, technically, there was a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not what I meant.

I was still young, then. This was before I tried to confront Joe Chill years later. This was more visceral, and raw. My rage was still enough that I might have killed those men accidentally. But I didn’t. And I shudder to think of the path that would have set me on.

Dick saved my life. And not just the one time. By being my son, sometimes just by needing me, he made me come back from that precipice.

I think that's why I can look past the thing that Harvey was. Because I know, without people like my son in my life, that could have been me. I dressed up like a goddamned bat. My grasp on reality was always pretty tenuous. But Dick gave me a reason- no, he made it a necessity- for me to come back from the brink. Every night.

My parent’s death, it changed me. And that’s why Dick is stronger than I am, because losing his parents didn’t change him. He was sad, and he grieved for them, but he never forgot how to live, either. How to be happy. How to find things to be joyful about. He brought optimism back into my world- when I let him.

And that was something I needed. Something the people who got me through my tragedy couldn’t give, maybe because they’d seen me, and seen things, at their darkest, maybe they’d lost their faith as I had, too. Or maybe in my mind they were just tainted by their association with my tragedy. Maybe they couldn’t be that for me because I wouldn’t let them.

But you know, I don’t want to infantilize Dick too much, either. Because he didn’t stay a child. He grew up, and he grew into a man I’m happy to call my friend. He’s forged a life of his own. He's gone to school. He served as one of Gotham's finest. And now that I’m retiring, he's taken over aspects of my companies, and someday, he's going to fully control them. I trust him to do that. And I don't trust easy. He's earned that trust- that respect- sometimes grudgingly. But I couldn't be prouder of him, or have more faith in him. I trust him to carry on the good work I’ve done, through my company, through my charities. And nothing could be more important than that.

Love(s) of My Life 2: Both Ways

2011-10-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

ID: I told you we were going to talk about Hush today, who’s a surgeon. Somewhat related, I sent you a link to a news story on Herbet Chavez, a 35 year old Fillipino who’s been undergoing plastic surgery to look like Superman. As someone who knew the man, knew him well, I think, how do you think he’d feel about that?

B: I think what Clark would say to him, if he were here, was that he should be his own man, his own super man. Because Clark was just a man. Like you, or I. He was better, I think, because of the effort he put in, to being better. To being kinder. More caring. To helping people, in the little ways I myself don’t always have the patience for.

As far as Herbert goes, I think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But Clark never wanted to be anybody’s hero. He wanted to be the best possible person he could. It was a byproduct of that that people loved him, wanted to honor him, worshipped him- and I don’t just mean his little cult. If he really wants to be like Clark- if he wants to feel like Clark- all he has to do is be better. We all have weak moments, where we fail to do the little things it takes to make the world a better place- and these are sometimes as inconsequential as listening to someobody’s problems.

That’s why Clark was my hero; because no matter how tired, and stressed, and raw he was, he found ways to make things easier for the rest of us. A lot of the time he didn’t even want us to know it; you know, he could move faster than we could see, dressing wounds, making coffee, just little things, that after a long day of evil, superintelligent gorillas kicking me in the spine, or giant robot spiders punching me in the face, or all the less ludicrous and honestly more sinister things we dealt with, made it easier to keep going, to fight the good fight another day.

ID: What if he just wants to be powerful, because he feels like he isn’t?

B: That’s harder. But essentially the answer is the same, though I’d say, as humbly as possible, the model is more myself. If you want to be powerful, it takes training. Strength training, martial arts training, education. I don’t know that I ever stood toe to toe with Clark, but there was more than once when I had his back, where I got to feel a little of that magic because I got to be a part of the things he did. So if he really wants power, he should seek it. I felt powerless, when I lost my parents. I can’t imagine living a whole life like that; I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

ID: That’s a nice sentiment. I feel a little bad about that; when I told you we were going to talk about Hush, well, we will, but he’s not the focus. I don’t feel as bad, though, because you lied to me. You said you were single.

B: No. You asked me if I was dating anyone, and I asked why, which you took to be a no. I didn’t volunteer it, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t started seeing someone.

ID: That’s okay. Because I already know the answer to the question we’ve been pursuing for several weeks in our countdown to the love of your life, which unless I’ve lost track of someone, we should be revealing next week. So you can’t tap dance around it. Though you might want to make sure the new boyfriend isn’t reading the interview.

B: Too late. In fact, that’s how we met. He’s a lawyer who’s worked with me- and against me, as a matter of fact. But he came across the interview where I was outed, and decided to ask me out for a drink. It was weird, being the, uh

ID: The woman?

B: The receptive.

ID: I just want to make sure I heard you right and you weren’t mumbling ‘receptacle.’

B: Don’t be crass.

ID: I was just making sure you weren’t. This is a PG interview. Maybe PG-13.

But this here is where I dazzle you with my journalistic, um, entrepreneurialshipedness. After much research, and some dumpster diving, and more than a little snooping, I now know for a fact that your lawyer boyfriend- your beauyer, I’ve been calling him- is someone we should all be familiar with. Former District Attorney of Gotham City.

B: Don’t.

ID: One Harvey Dent.

B: Shit.

ID: Formerly the villain Two Face; in retrospect, it shouldn’t be surprising, given his obsession with duality, that Two Face is bisexual. But he isn’t Two Face anymore. He hasn’t been, since his scarring was fixed by a plastic surgeon whose name given name is escaping me at the moment.

B: Tom Elliot.

ID: The villain known as Hush. Incestuous.

B: Well, at the time, I thought Tommy was a friend. But all that Tommy did was erase the outward manifestation of Two Face. It was Harvey, with the help of his doctors, that finally turned the monster away.

ID: So he’s cured?

B: I think that’s the wrong way of looking at it. Harvey has a dissociative identity disorder. He’s a survivor of childhood abuse, as is common with that diagnosis. His father beat him, nightly. The abuse caused him to dissociate; he couldn’t handle a father who beat him every day, so he shoved those experiences into his subconscious, which manufactured a personality that could cope with the experience. Two Face became the person who got him through difficult times.

Ironically, it was their shared history of abuse that first drew Tommy to Harvey- it was why he agreed to try to help him. But unlike Tommy, Harvey had always wanted to do right. Tried to. The Two Face identity was usually in control, but he fought it, too. It was ultimately Harvey who saved me from Tommy; he shot him, twice.

ID: Okay, so he’s taken a heroic turn, and he was never really the same kind of violent murderer that the Joker was. At worst he was a Mafioso, but even that’s probably a stretch. For the sake of completeness, explain Two Face to the crowd.

B: Two Face came about, as a manifestation, because of a gang war. And I put extra pressure on the mob when I started being Batman. At the same time, the Holiday Killer was murdering people, most of them mobbed up. Carmine Falcone believed it was Harvey, doing with a gun what he couldn’t with an indictment. That’s why he was attacked with acid. The physical scarring accomplished what a lifetime of abuse hadn’t: it finally broke him.

ID: So you… feel responsible for what happened, to Harvey?

B: No. But it’s hard to say, if I hadn’t made Batman, say if I’d died with parents, it’s hard to say Harvey wouldn’t have gotten through those events unscathed. He’d probably still be district attorney, if not the State AG, maybe even the Attorney General of the country.

ID: So, not responsible, but guilty. You feel guilty about it.

B: A little.

ID: And is that a good basis for a relationship?

B: It isn’t. And it isn’t. Harvey and I were always friends. Even when Two Face was in control, I often saw Harvey try to assert himself, and I can think of more than one occasion where his coin said I should die, and Harvey said, “No.” I think he’s the only one who’s ever had me at that kind of disadvantage, whose own rules allowed him to harm me, who showed mercy like that.

But I do think it helps me understand him. I think my parents’ death helps me understand him. We were both of us born of tragedy. And we both dissociated. The difference was, there were still people I could turn to and, because of that I never fell quite so deeply into the darkness as Harvey did.

ID: Is it love?

B: I don't know. But I hope so.

ID: Want to flip a coin?

B: If you put one on the table, I'll feed it to you.

Love(s) of My Life: Diana

2011-10-01T07:55:00.000-07:00

ID: Let’s talk about the other big costumed temptation from your past: Wonder Woman. We’ve saved her in part because I think we’ve casually mentioned her a lot in the past, and if I’d had to put money on it, when we started, my money would have been on her being your ‘the one’- though I still think I might be right about that.

But I’m less interested in how you met, since I’m sure it was punching people over some kind of fashion-related crime- possibly your own. But how did you two kids get together?

B: I know you’re going to criticize, because there’s a pattern, here, similar to the pattern of journalists I’ve dated. But I “work” nights; and consequently, I don’t get out much. So a great deal of my socializing happens at fund-raisers and things.

I think it was a cancer benefit- breast and prostate. She was hosting, and mingling with people. Some jerk goes off about AIDS funding for Africa. And at first she let it slide; it was a fund-raiser, not a debate. But the guy, he either had too much champagne or a too big a mouth, because he kept it up, and when nobody punched him he got more belligerent and loud about it. And even then, I think maybe Diana would have just nicely escorted him out, but she saw a look in my eye- cause I really wanted to deck the prick- and I think she got protective of me.

ID: I imagine AIDS funding is a touchy subject for you.

B: If you consider there to be an actual fight against AIDS, the front-line is unquestionably in Africa. If we don’t stop it there, continued globalization will ensure that it doesn’t stay Africa’s problem. To use an easier to understand metaphor, Africa are our neighbors, but if the flood waters overtake their land then ours will be flooded, too; so it makes sense to help them with the sandbags- even in purely selfish terms it makes sense.

But I think in a lot of ways AIDS, like lung cancer, is a disease we blame people for. We look at them and say, you know, “You made a lousy life decision so you deserve to be there.” Which I think is complete and utter horse crap. I absolutely agree that people shouldn’t smoke, have unprotected sex or share needles; you’ll get no argument out of me that those are problems, and invite consequences. But, and maybe it’s just the religion my mother taught me bubbling up, but, “You made your choice now die in the gutter,” doesn’t seem at all like a reasonable response.

But moral outrage is beside the point, because who hasn’t had unprotected sex? Maybe in the context of a monogamous relationship, even a marriage, but who goes an entire life without doing that at least once? You?

ID: God no. I’m pretty sure I started having unsafe sex. In a monogamous relationship, like you said, but even that first time I think I went bareback.

B: Don’t get me wrong, I completely advocate for safety- everyone should be aware of the danger and risk when they have sex- particularly because even condoms aren’t a completely safe alternative. But this finger-waggling, it’s the blind hypocrisy of abstinence-only sex ed applied to an entire culture- a whole continent, after the fact.

But there are still parts of Africa where “No,” doesn’t mean “No” in the same sense that it does, here- I mean, a woman’s right to say “No” doesn’t carry the same weight.

ID: Then maybe we should just give AIDS funding for women.

B: I suppose that’s an argument. But this isn’t a problem we should be trying to treat, it’s one we should be trying to annihilate. Because giving a woman expensive drugs to stay alive is a losing battle. Even trying to eliminate rape- something we’ve failed to do even over here- is a pipe dream- and I swear to God I will punch you in the throat if you turn that into a laying pipe dream joke.

ID: Wouldn’t dream of it.

B: Many women in Africa get AIDS from their husbands who’ve slept around, and I would be shocked if the same doesn’t happen to men, too. What we need to do is to tackle a culture that doesn’t treat AIDS with the proper gravity. There are still parts of the continent where AIDS misinformation is rampant. Getting people to understand that they’re taking their lives into their own hands, that’s how you win this fight. By educating people, and then giving them the tools, like condoms, to protect themselves.

ID: So is it not okay to question AIDS funding in Africa?

B: No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s important- imperative- that we question our government and keep them accountable. But my problem with that particular guy was the way he argued his point- not to mention the venue, which was completely unrelated. To my mind, AIDS funding is justifiable because it is trying to fight the disease before it can get to us. I think if we don’t spend this money today, we’ll end up spending exponentially more to fight it once it reaches our shores.

ID: Okay, we’ve been completely derailed on that one. Um, you and Diana were at a fund raiser.

B: She’d finally had enough with this guy, so she confronted him. She tried logic, reason, compassion. She ran through all the reasons why he was ignorant, and by the end not even subtly racist, I mean shouting epithets. Diana’s usually a pretty peaceful person, but I think since she entered into the fight on what she presumed was my behalf, she took the things he said more personally than she normally would have. I could see where things were headed when she balled her fists, and I intervened.

“You’ll punch right through his head,” I told her, “and ruin a very pretty dress.” She laughed, and that defused the situation. And I turned around and told the man he needed to leave.

He wanted me to make him. By that point I’d calmed down, so I just applied a simple arm hold- a painful one- and escorted him to the door. When I got back everybody applauded. It turned out to be one of the most successful fund raisers we’ve ever had. Nothing makes rich white people feel guiltier than hearing one of their own articulate the case against compassion. Were I a more cynical man I’d hire men to come to charity events to be jerks just to juice the contributions.

ID: I’ve been known to be an exceptionally belligerent jackass.

B: Sorry, we’re not hiring.

ID: Okay, but it seems like… I see A, I see C, but I don’t see B or how we got from A to C.

B: Diana was a little colder the rest of the night. She very rarely loses her cool, and when she does, I think… it worries her. An angry Amazon can do a lot of damage, and she’s supposed to be an ambassador of peace- I believe that’s a part of her official title.

It was sweet of her to defend my honor, I guess, but I think it made her ask herself why. And she was social, and fun and funny, and did a great job entertaining the rest of the night, but I recognized that she was more thoughtful than usual.

I let it lie. I didn’t know what was going on, but when Diana wants to talk, she does. And she did, after everyone had left. Eventually. She spent a lot of time looking off, at the city lights- this must have been in New York, because that’s the skyline I remember. But when she spoke she asked me if I really liked the dress.

I told her I didn’t know if it was the dress, but she looked stunning tonight. It was amazing that guy had been able to pick his jaw off the floor long enough to argue with her. And we’ve… we flirted before. I guess I never really thought about it, but I’m more dashing, debonair, at these kinds of events, than when I’m wearing the pointy ears. So we spent a lot more of our time bantering at functions. But I think that was the first time I’d ever seen her self-conscious, in an awkward way.

Diana is one of the most self-aware people I know, but I think she really wanted me to like the dress. I think she liked defending me. And liked that I could handle that. Some men can’t; and Diana is a strong woman, stronger than just about anybody. If you can’t handle the idea that a woman could toss you into the sun, then she just isn’t for you.

But she liked the intimacy of it. She knew my secrets, and not that many people did. She knew how fragile I was, but I didn’t balk at the idea of her knowing that. I think for her it was that right combination of vulnerability and strength.

She was intrigued, and for the first time I think she started to think about me in that way.

ID: That way? What are you, six?

B: I don’t mean sexually. Women think of me sexually often. Men, too. You, just now- it’s a human reflex. Like if I told you not to picture your grandmother naked.

ID: Ah! Damn you!

B: See. But I mean romantically. She started to wonder if we were romantically compatible.

ID: And what about you?

B: I was already there; I always had been. The first few minutes you spend with Diana, all you think about is her, how completely goddamn lovely she is. I challenge any man to spend five minutes with her and not think of her that way. But after that, it’s strange, but she’s such a stunning person, that you start to want to be with her, not just sexually, but completely. She’s not just beautiful, but brilliant, compassionate. I know Clark gets the messianic treatment a lot, but if Jesus were a woman you couldn’t take yours eyes off- but also capable and willing to punch an intergalactic genocidal maniac in the eyes to save lives- you’d be approaching Diana.

ID: So to take this that extra blasphemous step, you worship her?

B: Close, I suppose. Admire. Adore. Love, beyond a capacity I ever thought possible.

ID: And all this after the break-up.

B: I don’t know if we were every actually together, honestly, to call us broken up. We wanted to be. Danced around the issue. And we certainly saw each other for a while. But there was always a distance.

I remember more than one cancelled date, where I had to leave to deal with a costumed psychopath and she came with me in costume. I remember specifically this one night the Joker was doing cabaret in front of an audience, and it was a Speed kind of thing, where they had dynamite attached to their seats and if they stopped laughing they would blow up. I jumped down behind him onstage, and the audience started clapping. Then Diana lands right in front of him, and he actually pissed himself. I think he was just taking the joke that far, but he did, he pissed himself, and it was a long piss, too, twenty seconds easy. It had started to pool at his feet and flow downstage by the time he stopped.

And the look on her face was priceless, because she was trying to still stay scary, but she was also disgusted, and a little bemused. And she said, “I’m not carrying him out.” He turned back and looked at me, wiggled his eyebrows, and from the look I assumed he was going to chase her around soaking in piss, and I almost lost it, almost burst into laughter right there at the thought of the Joker chasing Wonder Woman around in his pissed-in drawers- but I knew that would not make her happy so I chucked a batarang at his head and conked him out.

ID: Sounds like a pretty weird date.

B: It was actually a pretty good one. We managed to salvage the evening by swinging by this little cheesecake shop that’s open late and going home to watch a movie. It was nice because… with Diana I didn’t have to be two people. Bruce and Batman were the same guy, and Diana was the same woman in the outfit or out it, and it gave the night a continuity I’m not used to.

I don’t think most people get to be loved, completely. We all have little parts of ourselves, our work selves, for instance, that are segmented off from the people we care about. But with Diana I was all of those men, and she loved all of them.

Which seems strange, now that I say it out loud, because Diana is the same. The Diana who is ambassador, who is a heroine, who I spoon-fed cheesecake to, they’re all the exact, same woman. Which isn’t to say that she’s not a complicated and multifaceted woman- only that all of her facets are always exposed- and if you turn that into a joke about her costume I’ll throw my coffee at your crotch-

ID: That’s an idle threat: you’re coffee’s cold.

B: It’s still wet, and could stain. But she’s… like a diamond that’s been cut in such a way that you can see every inch of it, its imperfections and flaws but also all the myriad things that make it beautiful.

ID: Okay. You’re still completely in love with her, and I’m still saying she should have been your number one, were you not a cheating bastard. But why did it end?

B: Like I was saying: I don’t think it ever began. I think we still care about each other, deeply. But that night I told you about was indicative of our time together. Duty called, incessantly, constantly. I was either having to jet off to Singapore to make sure a business deal didn’t fall through, or she was off to Washington to make sure a diplomatic flap didn’t flare into violence.

And that’s before you introduce the nutjobs in costume and the megalomaniacal world-destroyers. So one of those nights, where we were trying to have a date, I got a call, Clayface was doing some damage in the diamond district. And we were trying to wrap the night up- she had an early meeting at the embassy or she would have come with- when she got a call of a problem in New York.

I was about halfway into my costume when I got a call. Nightwing and Robin had taken care of Clayface. I called Diana, to see if she wanted some help with her New York problem, but she answered from the entrance to the cave. Apparently one of the Flashes had run through New York and taken care of it for her.

But standing in the cave, half in a suit and half in a batsuit, I think the message was clear. I could see it in her eyes, and when I looked down at myself, I knew it, too. I asked her what kind of a life that was. If we would ever be able to settle down. Have kids. Have a life to ourselves. And I think I would have kept asking questions like that, but she put her finger to my lips, kissed my cheek, and said, “I love you.” And I said, “Me, too.” And that was it.

I think in a better world, we’d have stayed together. A world with fewer madmen, fewer monsters. But for us, duty was a higher call. I have a bit more free time these days. But in part because of that, Diana has less.

And I’m not at my physical peak anymore. I get tired more easily. I certainly couldn’t go round after round with her like I used to. Sparring, I meant- so you can take remove that grin.

ID: I can’t, actually. The entendre was too fun. But do you think that matters? That you aren’t at your peak anymore? To her?

B: She was always physically my better. And I know I’ve aged. And she hasn’t. I think if there is such a person that could overlook that gap, it would be her. Maybe I’m just a self-conscious old man.

ID: But can’t she retire? I mean, at least her ambassadorship, let the Amazons send somebody else out to put out the political fires.

B: Not while there’s still good she can do. No matter who they sent, they wouldn’t be her. There’d be a learning curve, there’d be mistakes. And there’d be the fact that whoever it was, it wasn’t Diana. You can’t fill those shoes; there would always be a shadow over whoever replaced her, because of the mythic reputation she’s forged.

And I can’t fault her for that, without being a hypocrite- which I’d gladly do to have her. And perversely, her willingness to set what we had aside only makes me love her more. She’s selfless.

To an extent- somewhat selfish, somewhat empathic- I hope it’s something she can get over. Because she deserves to be happy. Even if it’s not with me. Even if it happens years after I’m dead. You can’t fix everything wrong with the world, and you can’t save it alone. And if you try to go it alone, eventually, you will fail. Because everyone, even Diana, needs people. And I don’t necessarily mean romantically, but there’ll come a time when she’ll people to keep her strong. And I hope by then she has them.

ID: So… is the reason you’re gay Diana? You can’t have the woman you want, so you’re barking up another tree?

B: I’ve never thought of it in those terms. Could be a factor. But does it matter? It’s who I am, today.

ID: But what if she flew through that window right now and said she’d found a way to transfer her powers to someone else, and she’s going to retire and be with you? What would you do?

B: I don’t know. But I do know that’s not going to happen- certainly not right now. Because right now, it’s a world without a Superman, with a greener Batman than it’s had in years. Right now, people need Wonder Woman more than they ever have before- and as much as it pains me to say, even more than me. And there is absolutely no chance Diana would let them down.

Love(s) of My Life: Barbara

2011-09-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

ID: Which in a round-about way brings us to Barbara Gordon- the commissioner’s daughter, and all of the naughty naughtiness that implies.

B: Barbara was a friend. I knew Jim socially, though not personally- at least not personally outside of the costume. But Barbara, Barbara made Bane look like a primate. She figured out who I was without really trying. Just one day figured it out on her way to classes.

She wanted to help me, in my crusade. She saw how tortured her father was, how the bureaucracy made it almost impossible for him to protect people the way he wanted. So I guess she also wanted to help him, too.

I turned her away. It was too dangerous a life. And she was just a happy policeman’s daughter. She wanted to help, but… she should have been out volunteering for the homeless, or working at women’s shelters, or doing that kind of thing. Not swinging from rooftops or

ID: That seems like rather flimsy logic. I mean, you already had Robin running around in tights. Were you just afraid of a strong woman back then?

B: She was strong. She took martial arts classes and mastered several different disciplines. She graduated years ahead of time, I think she had just turned nineteen. If I had been recruiting, she would have been top of the list. But I wasn’t. I hadn’t really been recruiting when I found Robin, either, truth be told.

But at least with Robin, I had been able to keep him in check, keep him off the streets long enough for me to train him, to make sure he wasn’t going to get himself killed. I think my main worry was one of quality over quantity; I worried I might not be able to keep them both trained up and safe- or at least as safe as you can make someone whose running around in a cape punching violent criminals armed with guns.

ID: So you were being paternalistic- not technically sexist.

B: You continue to astound me with how big an ass you always manage to be.

ID: It’s a gift; maybe even a superpower. Maybe I could join the League as The Gigantic Ass.

B: I’m horrified at the costume possibilities.

ID: But for all of your good intentions in trying to keep Barbara Gordon out of harm’s way, harm managed to find her anyway, in the form of the Joker.

B: He was there primarily for her father, whom he was trying to drive insane. But he shot her, through the spine.

I still wonder… if I shouldn’t have killed him for that.

ID: What?

B: For all of my moralizing, all of the things I do honestly believe about my parents, and their legacy, and their memory. I don’t know if they would want him alive. If, for a moment, they weren’t dead, and I could ask them, should I kill him to keep people, people like Barbara Gordon, and like Jason Todd, safe, I don’t know if they’d say I shouldn’t.

And Barbara… that’s one of those moments, where I don’t know. I don’t know how I got through it without murdering him.

To her credit, Barbara doesn’t waver. She hates him, don’t get me wrong. But she’s a more forgiving person than I am. Maybe that’s just because… if I’d murdered him, I think her father would have gone insane. And if I’d murdered him, the Joker would have won; her injury would have been a part of his sick triumph, rather than a tragic happenstance. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to get into Barbara’s head.

ID: That’s okay. I’m more interested in how you got into her pants.

B: Careful.

ID: Sorry, it was just too perfect a segue. But you’d just joined the roller brigade.

B: Yeah. In less than the space of a year, I went from being able to bench 600 lbs., to not being able to use my legs. And I was dangerously close to becoming a hugely self-important ass; I wanted to feel sorry for myself. The thing I’d spent my life working towards was slipping through my fingers, and I felt like I’d failed, and that I couldn’t not fail, from that moment on.

And then Barbara rolls into my bedroom. She’d been researching, not just Bane, but what he’d done, the criminals he’d loosed. She was already starting to formulate a plan, contingencies for Nightwing, Robin and the new Batman.

I was hostile. Even mean. But she bullied her way through, anyway, and all the time I barely looked at her. Then she asked if I’d been outside, since the accident. And I hadn’t. She said, “Let’s go for a walk.” And before I thought about it, I glowered at her. And then I realized, well, duh, she can’t literally walk, either. And I felt suddenly very silly, and also ashamed.

But she was there because she wasn’t going to let me wallow; she’d been there, and she knew where wallowing got you, or maybe she knew how dangerous the almost desire to wallow can be.

I had a chair of my own, but I hadn’t used it. I glanced towards it, but I had no idea how to get into it without sending it flying across the room. And she noticed. She taught me how to get into my chair. And I know that sounds small, but it was the first triumph I got after being paralyzed. She got me back on my feet- or at least, out of bed.

I was happy for a second, exhilarated; it seems silly now, but for an instant things seemed possible again, and there were reasons to be hopeful. And I kissed her. And she got really red in the face, but then she brushed it off, and I realized she was more mature than I’d been giving her credit for.

And, I think she always had kind of a schoolgirl crush on me. I think that’s part of where her wanting to run around with me in tights came from. But she hadn’t really been a girl for years by that point- she was a woman, completely. Which was something I don’t think I’d paid attention to.

ID: Because she’d been in a wheelchair?

B: I don’t think so. I think I… I got used to brushing her to the side. Because she was younger than me, young enough that it kind of weirded me out.

ID: Like in the early seasons of Buffy, where she’s completely hot but it’s still skeevy for Angel to date her.

B: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

ID: Liar.

B: Anyway, it started out pretty innocuously. She took me outside. And my home is very nice, but if you want to be depressive, and shut all the curtains, it can actually be a pretty cold and unhappy place. But outside, in the sun, with birds, and a clear sky. It was a different world than the one I’d convinced myself I would be stuck in.

And I think that encapsulates what I had with Barbara. She showed me different sides of the city, different sides of being alive. She was integral to my spiritual rehabilitation.

ID: Okay, but did you have sex with that woman?

B: I’m quite capable of hurting you.

ID: I find ‘no comment’ is more succinct, but I get your point. But it ended. How, and why?

B: Barbara was good for me, emotionally. Psychologically. But physically, I still had a lot of healing to do. And I think… some of the shine had come off. I was part of a white knight fantasy of hers. Even if I hadn’t been in the chair- the fantasy equivalent of trading my white horse for a donkey cart- even ignoring that aspect, I wasn’t, I couldn’t, ever live up to who she wanted me to be, or thought I was. Nobody can.

Every relationship has that point, where your preconceptions, and assumptions, and everything else, have all been peeled away, and you’re left with who they actually are day to day. And I think we liked each other, but that didn’t mean we wanted to pursue more.

And I remember we were in the Gotham Zoo, and we stopped by the tropical birds. She had hold of my hand, and she told me, “I love you, but I don’t know that I love you like this.” And I knew exactly what she meant. I think it was something I’d been thinking about, too. But I was glad she broached the subject- I’ve been known to womanize, and I didn’t- I didn’t want what we had to just be another example of that.

We decided to take a break. I was scheduled for some intensive physical therapy, and was going to be largely unavailable anyway. We decided to spend time apart, and if we really missed what we’d had, then we could go back to it, and if not, it was a pretty clean place to leave it.

And a lot happened in the interim, I’ll admit. But when we again had some time, I had her go first. She said she’d missed me, but because she missed spending time with me, not romantically. To emphasize the point she kissed me and said, “See, nothing there, right?”

I said, “You’re right on the merits, but you shouldn’t do that. You’re still a very beautiful woman, and I’m”

She interrupted me and said, “A dog?” Which, yeah. Pretty much. And we’re still excellent friends. And I wouldn’t trade that.

ID: I know there’s a ‘but’ in there- named Shondra.

B: Right. Well, she was part of that interim. But Shondra was my trauma therapist. She was more than that- in that she had some special healing powers. She’s the only reason I can walk, today, in fact.

ID: But I don’t care about that. See, it’s the other part of your relationship with Shondra that has me asking about her.

B: Fine. But shut up, and let me tell it my way.

We’d been working together for a few weeks. She was also working with Jack Drake at the time, who had also been paralyzed.

ID: That’s the bio-dad of Tim Drake, your second adopted son.

B: Right. Jack was a neighbor. And it was through him that I met Shondra. He was making a miraculous recovery. Doctors hadn’t thought he’d ever walk again, but instead he was wiggling his toes, he could even bend his leg from the knee down- you know, just a couple seconds at a time, but it was a faster recovery than anyone expected.

So I hired Shondra. And she was a miracle worker, no question. But then she was taken, along with Jack. Kidnapped by her brother. Eventually I tracked her to England and was able to free both of them, but like with what Barbara had suggested, suddenly not having Shondra, I realized what I had lost. And it was more than just a healer. I’d started to love her.

ID: So your road to recovery was paved with the bodies of compassionate, nubile women?

B: That’s not fair.

ID: You ran right from Barbara to the arms of your physical therapist; that summation sounds kind. Have you ever wondered if you’re just clinically co-dependent?

B: I get accused of being too much of a loner, most of the time. So co-dependent? I appreciate women. Greatly. They might be the only thing in life I really enjoy in anything approaching a normal capacity.

But, too, I think there was a, I’m sure there’s a clinical term that’s escaping me, but I was vulnerable. And for the first time in I think my life I was forced to slow down. Take stock of things. And sit around. Be with and near people in less of a utility-minded fashion. In both cases, I think it might have been more about appreciating them trying to help me than love.

ID: So you think these relationships were confusing care for love?

B: I think caring for someone is a large part of love. I think it’s almost impossible to care for someone, physically, and not also feel for them emotionally. There’s just too much overlap between the two. So I don’t think it’s confusion, per se. I just think it’s easy to take people for granted, until you can’t anymore. And when you really need people, that’s when you notice who stays, who’s really there for you. And you appreciate them more.

But it’s not uncommon. Jack, as an example, married his long term care nurse, Dana, for I think similar reasons. That, and I don’t want you to succeed in stripping these relationships of their meaning. Because they were important, and are. I loved Shondra, and Barbara. They put me back together when I was broken. I will forever be in their debts for that.

ID: But I think it’s fair to ask if it was love.

B: It was, in both cases, but I think it sprung from different places. Barbara I’d known for years. I had an older brother/girl next door affection for her

ID: That combination is fairly disturbing, on account of the incest.

B: But you know what I mean. I loved her in a platonic way for half of her life. But she was there for me, in a way I don’t think anyone else could have been, when I was really down, and really vulnerable. That’s overwhelming. And I don’t think it takes anything away from what we had to say that it was temporary and situational. I loved her in part because she was there for me, and she loved me because she could be. And sometimes I think it’s too bad that it didn’t translate into a longer-term relationship, but those end, usually with acrimony. And that would have cost me one of my most important friendships.

ID: And Shondra?

B: That ended tragically. Her brother tried to use her gift, pervert it, to hurt people. She was able to stop him, but the damage he tried to make her to do to others, she absorbed it. It cost her her mind. She’s been all but catatonic since.

ID: So you rescued her, but in the doing she was turned into a shell. ‘

B: Yes.

ID: That sucks.

B: Yeah.

Broken

2011-09-20T07:39:00.000-07:00

ID: I’d like to talk to you about Barbara Gordon.

B: That could be tricky.

ID: I know. But I like a challenge. But to get to Barbara, there’s a back-story.

B: Careful…

ID: Well, the two of you ended up getting intimate because you shared something. Don’t try to be menacing; you’ve yet to actually hurt me in any way, so it’s really losing its edge.

B: I’m more patient when I’m not wearing a quarter of my weight in body armor. And that doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you.

ID: Relax. Take deep, calming breaths. Because the thing you two had in common isn’t much of a secret: you were in wheel chairs. You look relieved. What, were you afraid I’d found out something dark and sinister?

B: I don’t think Barbara has anything dark or sinister in her past; having something approaching affection for me at one point is probably as low as it goes.

ID: Fair enough. But Barbara ended up in a chair because of the Joker. You landed in yours because of Bane- and that’s why there’s so much back-story. So start us off at the beginning- your crippling, to be specific.

B: Bane was a genius. He deduced my identity, even before the Riddler. But unlike Edward, he used that information to try to destroy me. He staged an elaborate break from Arkham, freeing nearly every inmate at the same time.

I did what I could to stem the tide of insanity, but there were too many. I was reaching my breaking point, physically and mentally. And that’s when he attacked me in the cave. I barely put up a fight, I was just so… I was already broken. What he did to me really only made me physically into what I was psychologically.

ID: Though specifically he broke your back.

B: Correct.

ID: And how did that feel?

B: Nice therapist tone. It was devastating. It wasn’t that long since I’d had my own dalliance with venom, and failure, but this took failure to a whole new level. I wasn’t just butting up against the natural limits of being human, I was destroyed.

ID: You might want to be careful, lest the disabilities lobby tear you a batcave.

B: I don’t think I’m saying anything that hasn’t been said before. I felt like less than a man- less than a person. I was catatonic. Alfred tells me it was exactly like what happened when I lost my parents, that the same dread and despair descended over him. Because he couldn’t be sure I’d ever snap out of it.

Even after the medications worked their way through me, and the painkillers wore off, it was days before I spoke. The people I cared about were gathered around, waiting outside my bedroom. They wanted to know what to do. They wanted revenge, and to get me better, but there was not really a clear path towards either.

I think it was even scarier, because Clark had just died- and I mean the first time, when Doomsday killed him. And I was being looked at to fill the void he left, and suddenly I was out of the picture, too. I’m not blaming Clark, or trying to escape culpability, but I know that weighed on me, too. Made things harder. The deaths, and the violence, everything that went wrong because of the mistake I made, that’s on my head.

But the first thing I did after Bane was to name a successor. Nightwing was there, but I didn’t- he wasn’t the first person I spoke to. There was a vigilante known as Azreal. He was violent, but I’d been working with him, and I thought he’d become someone I could rely on. I knew Bane was still out there. And I didn’t want him approached; he was too dangerous. I didn’t want whoever became Batman in my stead to pursue him, but I knew Bane would seek a new Batman out, so they were going to have to run.

And if I’m really honest, and self-critical, I think maybe I knew Nightwing couldn’t do that. Bane hurt me. And he’d challenged everything Nightwing had built towards his whole life. If I’d made him Batman then, he would have gone straight for Bane. He still might have, if I hadn’t made him swear to me he wouldn’t. Which maybe have saved his life. Or maybe I just prevented him from finally becoming the man he is, today, for just a little while.

ID: Because now Nightwing is Batman. So I take it you’d trust him to take on Bane today?

B: I have no doubt that he’d beat the hell out of Bane in record time. And the deaths, and the violence, everything that went wrong because I put the wrong man in charge trying to shelter him, that’s on my head.

[Continued Friday, or earlier.]

Love(s) of My Life: Baby Mama

2011-09-17T03:59:00.000-07:00

ID: I’m going to be uncharacteristically provocative and just drop this research bombshell: you have a bastard son.

B: I suppose that’s technically true.

ID: And I know who the baby mama is. Daughter of the infamous ecoterrorist and founder of the League of Assassins, Ra’s al Ghul. Wait. He’s her father. The baby mama is Talia, his daughter.

B: That’s… less accurate, on account of a questionable legal technicality.

ID: Meaning?

B: We were married at the time of his conception. Technically.

ID: Okay, there’s a story, there.

B: I was captured by the League of Assassins, and drugged. It’s called ‘groom kidnapping,’ colloquially Pakaruah shaadi. A form of nonconsensual marriage.

ID: Wait, isn’t that an Indian thing?

B: We were in India at the time.

But the first time I met Talia was during a power struggle within Ra’s organization; she saved my life, then. We had a connection. Maybe that’s just because we both grew up in the shadow of determined, successful men, and spent our childhood training, our entire lives in preparation. We were both intelligent, capable, beautiful- mostly I mean her, on that last one.

The fact that she was Ra’s daughter added a whole Romeo and Juliet angle that I think just made it

ID: Hotter?

B: Forbidden. Taboo. Which made it hotter, I guess. It created tension, even more tension on top of the fact that… I’m trying to figure out how to say this without coming off as a complete douche bag, but… I could kill you in a moment with my bare hands. I can outsmart most people- even those with enhanced minds. Back in the day I could bench over 600 lbs.

ID: Jesus.

B: And Talia is basically my female equivalent. And if you’re talking psychological damage, she might even be more than my equal.

ID: Sounds kind of like a dig.

B: It isn’t. When you get a certain level of damaged, you stop being able to really relate to people who haven’t suffered traumatically. The people I know the best, the ones I really relate to, all have personal, familial tragedies. I think it helps you put your own experiences into perspective. So finding a woman with problems comparable to mine, was nice.

We had a longstanding flirtation. In fact, India wasn’t the first time we hooked up. But that time, we were, like I said, technically married. Which made me less cautious than I might have otherwise been. And I knocked her up.

For a long time, Ra’s had been trying to make me his successor, which meant taking over his League of Assassins and also marrying his daughter. And I wasn’t happy, when I found out I’d been forcibly married. But I also… I loved Talia. Her father was cruel, and manipulative, maybe even evil, but the moments I had with her were so perfect. And I’d never even really thought about being a father, and finding out I was going to be… it was probably the happiest day of my life. Because it was something that wasn’t part of the plan, part of my obsessive quest to protect others. It was something selfish, something that was just mine. And maybe it was even a way out for me.

By that point, my first Robin was all grown up, and I thought maybe it would be okay for me to retire. Maybe the world could make it with a different man running around in a pointy-eared cowl. And there was a part of me that thought I could use the League of Assassins. They were already heavily trained martial artists highly skilled in stealth. I thought it might be a viable start to an organization of international batmans, a Batman, Inc., if you will.

But I wasn’t the only one vying for Ra’s mantle. Unbeknownst to me, I had a rival in the League. He attacked me- attacked both of us- at dinner. I fought him, but he would have killed me had Talia not shot him. And as a result of the attack, Talia had a miscarriage.

We mourned together, and it was the closest I’d ever been to those moments after my parents’ death- only I wasn’t alone, this time. And I probably would have stayed with her- not in India, obviously, but with her. But she had a change of heart. She told me I wasn’t the same man when I was married to her. I wasn’t going to survive the life her father wanted for us- and I was no good to her dead. So we dissolved the marriage.

ID: But, that isn’t the end of the story, of course. Because little Damian didn’t die.

B: No. I wonder if that was her father’s doing or not. Maybe that was how he planned to get his successor- not to use me, as I was, but to mix my genes with his family’s.

Maybe Talia simply had second thoughts. Maybe she wanted to let me go, because she didn’t want me if it had to come from her father’s goons dragging me to her.

Whatever the case, I suspect she didn’t know about Damian, either. Because I don’t think she would have chosen to raise him in the League of Assassins. And if she had, I guarantee you, he would have learned compassion much more thoroughly. But that’s the story of how I lost Damian. His mother, on the other hand, never went far.

Because her father’s ambition never stopped. And so she and I had lots of opportunities to bump into each other

ID: ’s uglies. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

B: I don’t suppose you could. But I think ours became a love that was unrequited out of necessity. To be with her, I was going to have to stop being Batman. And for her to be with me, she was going to have to abandon her father. And I don’t think either of us was prepared for that.

But years later, after the earthquake, I lost hope. I was a man in a bat costume. The world was in chaos, and all I could do was hurl batarangs at it. That’s why I went to Washington to ask for help. The things I usually did to tackle a problem, weren’t going to work. So I tried to do something else- possibly something more grown up. But because of Luthor’s grip on the political conversation at that point, nothing came of it.

So I went away empty-handed, without a plan of action. And for me, not to have a plan- I was rudderless. Talia found me, in my hotel room. I was drunk- actually drunk. And she sobered me up, and convinced me to go back to Gotham. In retrospect, she was working with Luthor by that point, and probably knew something was afoot. But the important thing was she found me, in a moment of weakness, and helped me get back up.

ID: So wait, Talia finally had a chance to have you to herself, when you’d already lost the taste for being Batman, and she pushed you back into the costume?

B: Yeah. I think she knew that she could have me, but that what she’d have was a shell. I couldn’t be happy having failed Gotham; I couldn’t retire then. I had to be standing, on my feet, first. Maybe it was just her same MO: letting me go, and hoping I’d return to her in my own time.

ID: Well, you’re not Batman anymore. So why haven’t you gone back to her?

B: Not to cheapen our relationship, but that feels a little like asking a man why he ordered the steak and not the lamb.

ID: Actually, given your more recent proclivities, it’s like asking a man why he’s ordered the salad after being offered the steak and the lamb.

B: Cute. But I think it comes down to the fact that I used Bruce Wayne as a distraction and a deflection. By being boring, and shallow, and vapid, in my “personal” life, only people who read gossip columns cared, and even then, only superficially. But coming out- even only half out- that would have led to all kinds of questions, and increased scrutiny. I’ve always been, curious, I guess might be the worried, about the same sex. I’ve experimented, sure- it’s not like these are my first forays- but for the first time I feel freed up to test those other waters, without endangering the people I care about.

Which isn’t to say that I’m going to never eat meat again

ID: I can’t but feel that our metaphor was accidentally backwards.

B: Just that right now I’m feeling more like a salad. Maybe, as in noneuphemistic dinners, it’s just an appetizer, but right now that’s what I’m craving.

ID: Okay, to get back to Talia for a second, here’s something: you had unprotected sex with her.

B: She was my wife.

ID: Not my point. Presumably, back then, you weren’t HIV positive, or riddled with the AIDS. But since your love life, using very vague timelines in my head, crossed over that threshold, there must have come a point when you had to stop her and demand that you use protection.

B: I’m Batman. I always use protection

ID: Nice PSA

B: outside the context of monogamous, long-term relationships- and since Talia wasn’t usually either of those things, pretty much all the time. But it did come up. Because I think there’s a responsibility, there, to be forthright, and honest, and just extra cautious. We were kissing, and she reached for my utility belt, and I just stopped her, and said, “I’m HIV positive.”

And she said, “I know,” and went back to kissing me. Which made sense. I told you, she’s as close to me having a ‘my other half’ as I’ve ever been. And I would have known if she’d tested positive.

ID: Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a violation?

B: It might be. I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve always been an information junky. Because information is what’s kept me alive, doing dangerous and potentially stupid things, for most of my life. I rarely stop and consider the morality behind it. I think there are probably still people in my life who would be offended by that. But it’s who I am. I’m not trying to justify it, rationalize or say that that makes it okay. If you’re offended you’re offended. But that’s just who I am. I don’t think I could change it, even if I felt I needed to. It’s a compulsion to know, to be prepared.

ID: And yet they used to call Clark the Big Blue Boyscout.

B: As far as preparedness goes, Clark never had a thing on me- though he did wear more blue.

Love(s) of My Life: Selina

2011-09-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

ID: Okay, I've been hoping for an opportunity like this one.

B: I shudder to think.

ID: Both as background, and anticipating we might end up using it as a sidebar, I tried to contact the subject of this week's interview: Selina Kyle.

B: She turned you down.

ID: She's a slippery minx- though I've had much worse; people who agree to an interview then duck, dodge and weave around every attempt to actually set it up. At least Selina never gave me more than a maybe- and even then, it was a vague maybe. But enough about my inability to catch the Catwoman, tell me how you did.

B: We met at a fundraiser for an animal rights group... it wasn't PETA, but the specific charity is escaping me at the moment. Anyway, my assistant had caved, and agreed for me to meet Ms. Kyle. I knew her by reputation, and was more than happy to donate to her cause, but less thrilled about actually talking to her.

ID: So she had a reputation?

B: Yeah. Actually, the reputation wasn't bad; she was an activist, and very quick. I guess, in retrospect, she had kind of a Michael Moore ability to ambush businesspeople with questions about their companies, usually aspects they weren't aware of, to shame them into donating small fortunes. And Bruce Wayne was supposed to be the dull flack, not a lightning rod. So I spent most of the night at this fundraiser avoiding her.

And I did what I thought was an admirable job keeping her at a distance, until a presentation. A beautiful woman stood up and, it was about jungle cats and their shrinking habitat. And she spoke so eloquently, that it was difficult to remember that we were talking about animals and not human beings. She moved quite a few people in the audience to tears.

And when she finished speaking, she fixed me this look, and it was just like the look in those jungle cat's eyes in her presentation- stunning, emerald eyes. I asked my assistant, a little breathless, “Who is that?” Meanwhile, the woman starts to stalk towards me, and my heart starts to race, and I thought that must be how rabbits feel, or maybe how the criminals I hunt feel. My assistant was nose deep in her planner, and the mystery woman had closed half the distance before she looked up and said, “Oh, that’s Ms. Kyle.”

Of course, my first thought was, “Oh sh-”

ID: “it.”

B: My second was, “You know, I think I'd let her embarrass me in front of a room full of rich people.” So I let her catch me. And maybe my company was a little better than the average; maybe she took pity on my

ID: Because of the lantern jaw and the piercing blue eyes?

B: Or because she saw that the better way to my wallet was with a softer touch. But she did give me a hard time for running from her all night. Let me see, I said, “If I had any idea how stunning you were, I'd have found you.”

“So now I'm the prey?” she asked. And, Selina was fun. And wild. A little unpredictable. I had more champagne than I think I'd ever had up to that point in my life- I was actually a little tipsy. I offered to give her a ride home- with Alfred driving, of course- but she said she'd rather walk. We got about a mile from her home before she kicked off her heels, and said, “I'll race you to my apartment.” And I thought I had her, since I was still wearing semi-functional shoes. But she was fast, and kept just ahead of me. But once we got to her apartment, she bounded up the stairs, leaping majestically up several flights of stairs while barely touching down. She was graceful, athletic.

ID: You're getting awfully worked up; you sure you're not at least still bi?

B: Nobody's that gay. Selina is easily- easily- the most sexual woman alive. Just saying her name aloud makes my heart race a little. But you're derailing.

She beat me to her door by so much that by the time I got there she was already inside, looking out at me through a crack. I pushed on the door, thinking she was just holding it for me, but she held it mostly shut. And she said, “I hope you didn't think I was inviting you in. Silly man. I'm not that easy to catch.” Now, it was a little frustrating, but there was something in the way she said it, and the way she smiled at me, that little glint in her eye, I smiled, and went away happy.

I ran into her later that night. Only this time we were both dressed differently. She was in the condo of a wealthy industrialist, one with a lousy environmental record, particularly as it concerned wildlife. He had put in a silent alarm just before he went on vacation- it was new, which is probably the only reason she hadn't known about it. She was removing jewelry from a wall safe when I arrived. I snuck up on her, and grabbed her wrist.

I think we were both still worked up from earlier, because she whirled around and kissed me before she said anything. Then she blushed, and said, “Purrfect.”

ID: That is so weird hearing you trill like that.

B: And I was definitely still worked up, because then I kissed her, and let go of her wrist entirely. Which was great, until she shivved me with some claws in the side and got away. She was more careful after that. I played a lot of catch up, but it was some time before I saw her again in costume.

But what's strange is, even though Selina and I, in our normal lives, dated for a while, it wasn't until we had sex that I realized they were the same person. They kissed differently. But when she was deep in the throes of passion, then, suddenly, she kissed like the Catwoman. And my mind was fairly blown. It probably should have been obvious- just from the amount of time I spent staring at both women, but I suspect, like Lois with Clark, that I really didn't want to know. I wanted to have them, have both of them. Which doesn't even touch the idea that if- or when- I caught her, I was going to lose them both.

And I struggled with it, for a while. I really, really wanted to just leave her be. The fact that there was a cat burglar in the city, that didn't need to be my business. I mean, I cared about keeping families from being torn apart by violence, not industrial profiteers losing small fractions of their ill-gotten wealth. But I knew I was rationalizing, too. Having Catwoman emboldened others- and not all of them were going to keep to her basically nonviolent code. So I watched her for a couple of weeks. She was keeping her scores in several different hiding spots. I made sure I knew where all of them were. Then I emptied them. I left safe deposit keys or other identifying hallmarks in a small pile on her coffee table, with a note that read, “It stops or I stop it,” and a little bat symbol.

She sent a card to the Manor, and all it said was, “Thanks, Bruce.” It was the first inkling I had that she knew, too. She disappeared, and I didn't see her for a while. The next time I did, she was operating in more morally gray territory, sabotaging animal experiments, exposing exploitation. And when I saw her in costume, we flirted like we always had, but when I saw her socially, she was different. I think she was hurt, by the fact that I hadn't trusted her enough to come to her as Bruce, to tell her who I was since I knew who she was. I wonder... that might have been the breaking point, actually. I loved her. About as deeply as I ever have loved anyone. And I think, if I hadn't hidden behind Batman, I think she would have married me.

ID: So you asked?

B: Not then. No. Because after that she was distant.

It changed after the earthquake. She really stepped up. When people needed help, she put aside her pet cause, and saved lives. And I think from there, it was inevitable. We always had an affection for one another. I'd never formally told her I was Bruce, and one night, when we'd just kind of bumped into one another patrolling, I gave her a lift in the Batmobile. We passed her street, and she caught herself almost objecting. I drove her to the cave, and once we were there I took off my mask and kissed her. She told me she'd been waiting for years for that. I told her I was scared; I didn't want to put her in even more danger. She said she could handle herself, and that she wasn't willing to give me the choice this time.

ID: Okay. But it ended. So why?

B: Because I was scared. I think that's always been, and always will be, the problem with Selina. She doesn't have fear. She'll leap off a moving train to save a single tiger, or a building to get away from me. But I'm afraid. I was afraid to tell her who I really was- which I think will always be a point of contention. And I'll always be afraid that I've put her in greater danger, caused her more harm and pain.

ID: Okay, that's the background, but get specific. You two were a hot item, and then maybe cooled off, but what was the catalyst, the final straw.

B: Hush cut out her heart.

ID: Seriously?

B: Yeah. He had some help, cryogenically, from Mr. Freeze. I wonder if I have Victor to thank for her surviving- since I imagine he'd have seen a kinship with someone else whose love was frozen.

ID: But he cut out her heart?

B: He was a surgeon. And it was entirely to get at me. If she'd bumped into him on a patrol, or whatever, it might be different. But he targetted her, to get at me. It was the realization of my fear. And I couldn't be afraid. Batman can't be afraid. He has to be able to trust the people he works with to keep themselves safe. And with her, I couldn't. Which isn't entirely fair to her, I know- and I don't know if she'll ever forgive me for it. But that's how it is.

ID: That's... sad. But... you're not Batman anymore. Why not track her down and give her some When Harry Met Sally speech?

B: I wouldn't say never. But I will say that, right now, I don't think Selina's interested. Once bitten, twice shy; but that's twice now she's been bitten. I couldn't blame her if she was just through with me.

Love(s) of My Life: Zatanna

2011-09-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

B: But getting back to our look at the women I’ve loved, I thought we’d talk about Zatanna. Because she’s a magician.

ID: I would have gone with the obvious, “Wonder Woman called me this morning,” but whatever, it’s your dime.

B: But in honor of Zatanna, I figured I’d use a bit of misdirection.

ID: Clever.

B: Zatanna might have been my first real crush.

I remember the first time I met her. My dad put together a big event for the local children's shelter. I think it was a Christmas thing, though he shied away from doing too much Christmas-y, that year, because he found out Gotham actually has a goodly sized Jewish population, too. So he had a petting zoo, and magic.

Zatanna’s father was a stage magician named John Zatara, and he came on stage with a flash of light and smoke. And out from behind him stepped a cute girl about my age, with dark hair, and big dark eyes, and a smile that made even the most down-trodden orphan smile with her. And I told my mom, “He's got a lovely assistant,” and she smiled down at me the way mothers do.

There was a little flower shop a couple of doors down from the shelter, and I got my allowance from my mom and bought her some roses, and handed them to her when she and her father were taking their bows, and she smiled. And she was at that age where she had a mouthful of mismatched, oversized teeth. I was so smitten I still thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen- not that I guess I had too active a social life back then.

We palled around for the rest of the night, but she and her father were nomads- they travelled around the country performing. So when I asked if I could see her, maybe for dinner or a show, she told me she would be gone to Metropolis the next day. And in New York the day after. Then elsewhere. But she promised, next time she and her father were in Gotham, we would.

That’s probably where it would have ended, just a silly little night of crushing; I don’t know if she would have taken me up on dinner or a movie. But my parents died. After I emerged from my stupor, I started to form a plan, the very rough outlines of what the Batman would become. And the very first person I sought out for that plan was Zatanna and her father.

I think John was important in my grieving process. It was more than just a desire to learn about illusion and misdirection. I wanted to disappear. And not just in a puff of smoke. Training with John let me get away from my parents' friends, and everyone who wanted to coddle me and swaddle me. It let me stop being the boy with the murdered parents, or even the Wayne heir; it let me be just Bruce for a while, when I really needed to be Bruce. So did Zatanna.

We dated, if anything kids that young do can be called dating. I don’t know if she cared for me, or if she just grieved with me.

ID: How did it end?

B: I finished my training. But I still stayed, months longer than I planned, than I needed. I told myself I was honing my skills, perfecting them before moving on to the next phase. But eventually I couldn't lie to myself anymore. Her dad had nothing left to teach me- at least nothing left I could learn without a talent for real magic.

ID: Real magic?

B: Magic exists. I think it was part of the reason I went to John in the first place. I… thought about bringing my family back. John… helped me see that I shouldn’t. There are a lot of challenges, and potential consequences, but it was the psychology of it that he focused on. Loss is a part of life. I needed to cope with that fact. He helped me see that. And Zatanna helped me survive it.

ID: But that’s not the end of the story, is it? You two reconnected.

B: She lost her father, during a crises several years ago. I flew in for the funeral.

ID: And that made you two even closer?

B: It could have. Except that she didn’t take it the way I had. Because for a while, my parent’s death murdered me. I wandered around in a daze, unable to think or to feel. I would have simply starved, if Alfred hadn’t fed me, with a spoon, like I was a baby. I had to relearn how to be alive after that. Even after I learned to function, it’s something that is with me, daily. It’s a conscious decision, now, but from a very young age, it was my purpose and my motivation, keeping other people from that kind of trauma.

Maybe it was because she was at that point already an adult, but Zatanna reacted differently. Maybe, in part, it’s because her father died a hero, fighting for something he believed in. Maybe she really is just a sunnier person than I am. And she was sad- heartbroken, even; she loved her father more than any other person in the world. But she was still a happy person. Hopeful. Optimistic. I love that about her. I love it enough, in fact, that I told her no.

This was years later, after the pain of her father’s death had passed- at least as much as it ever could. She reasoned I still owed her a movie, or dinner. And we went out. And she was wonderful. And beautiful. Sexy- if you’ve never seen her in civilian clothes, you have no idea how incredibly sexy she can look even without the revealing tuxedo. And she told me she loved me, and that she always had, since we were kids. I had, too, actually. And she wanted to see more of me. See if there was still anything there- or rather, whether there was something adult there, on top of a mutual childhood affection. And I said no.

ID: But, but she’s leggy. And, and adorable.

B: I know. And it was hard to tell her no, believe me on that. But it’s right for her.

ID: Isn’t that a bit… paternalistic.

B: I don’t think she views me as a father figure. But no. She’s my friend- one of my favorite people in the world. Her happiness is very important to me.

Too important, I’d say, to risk on a very unsure bet. Because the women I’ve been with… well, I don’ always remain friendly with them afterwards. They end up damaged and unhappy- and that’s not counting the ones who end up getting truly hurt- like Vesper. I don’t know if there’s a single woman whose ever been happier for having known me, and for most of them they leave with even more baggage. And I couldn’t do that to her, I couldn’t be responsible for making Zatanna brood, not even for an evening. It’s a selfish decision, I know, but I need people like her in my life far more than I do in my bed.

But on the subject, I think, at the end of my life, I’d like to disappear. I don’t want what Clark had, a year or more of people looking at him with pity. Treating every whatever like it’s my last, whether it’s Thanksgiving, or my sons’ birthdays. I’d like to be able to slip away in the night, without anyone having to expend any of that extra energy, just suddenly being gone, in a cloud of smoke.

ID: Okay. But because I'd like to do a fishnets thing, howsabout Black Canary?

B: Kissed her a few times, though Ollie, her new husband but longtime hanger-on, can rest easy, it never progressed past there.

ID: That's disappointing. You're making it difficult to live vicariously through you.

B: Really? You might be the first person to complain that I haven't been promiscuous enough. Particularly in light of the AIDS.

ID: Low blow. We were bantering, and you had to go and bring up life-threatening STDs. Now I'm depressed. Quickly, to the Baskin-Robbins-mobile!

B: All right, but you’re buying.

Disappearing Act

2011-08-30T08:03:00.001-07:00

B: Diana called me this morning.

ID: I smell a segue.

B: She wanted me to remember that today is the Day of the Disappeared; it’s actually the first, although the UN has had a working group monitoring the issue since 1980. Specifically, the disappeared are people who have been taken by governments.

ID: It’s hard to see where anyone could take issue with that. Oh. Wait. Isn’t that basically a veiled criticism of Guantanamo Bay?

B: Please don’t knee-jerk about this. This is so much bigger than our extraordinary rendition program. It’s so much larger than our one nation.

ID: Okay, that wasn’t a bad side-step. But now I’m asking you, flat out, what you think of Guantanamo and the black sites. Do people in those facilities qualify as the disappeared?

B: This isn’t about our government. It’s about all governments. It’s about all people, everywhere. It’s about all of us, deserving due process.

ID: So basically it’s a way for you to blow the one world government while giving the finger to our anti-terror programs, at the same time.

B: All right, I can see you’re like a puppy with a bone.

ID: Is that some kind of autofellatio joke?

B: I’m ignoring you so I can answer your slightly less obnoxious question, about Guantanamo. Speaking as an American, I think the most important thing is to try and live by our ideals. That means trials, even for terrorists. That means not torturing, and not quibbling over the definition of what that is. It means making sure the people we have are actually guilty of the crimes we’re holding them for.

But as the Batman… it’s grayer. Through that lens, I have one, overarching goal, making innocent people safer. I’ve captured the Joker a dozen times- but I haven’t always had enough evidence for a solid conviction. Thankfully, with someone like him, having him involuntarily committed is simple enough- and the handful of convictions we have gotten on him are enough to ensure that he’ll be locked in Arkham the rest of his natural life.

ID: Provided they can hold him.

B: Which is a side issue. Terrorists… we may not have enough to convict them. And they’re people arguably as dangerous as the Joker. It’s possible that people like that need to be a separate, special case, that maybe the existing criminal justice system can’t work in that situation. And for the first year, or two, after 9/11, you could make the case that we didn’t have a process in place, that we were caught unawares and we had to improvise with the laws we had on the books at the time.

But it took five years before the Military Commissions Act was passed- and only then because the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfield ruled military tribunals unconstitutional. Even then, the Act’s suspension of the writ of habeus corpus was struck down as unconstitutional- because it very specifically contradicted what the suspension clause is all about. The founders had escaped a monarch who abused the court system to stamp out his dissenters; the writ is about challenging that kind of detention.

ID: So you take issue that the government operated extralegally? Isn’t that fundamentally hypocritical, from a man who went outside the law to fight crime. From a man who broke the law, and did some of the things you’re criticizing? Torture, unlawful kidnapping and detention.

B: Maybe. It could be. Ben Franklin, one of the founders, said consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, after all. But I think not. I think that what I did was different. I think that what I did, I did to enhance the law- to help it do the things it couldn’t. Maybe there are areas where the government shouldn’t operate, but private citizens should.

But the difference I see is Gitmo and the black sites are the opposite of what I did. They epitomize the concept of government refusing to work within its own rules; maybe that’s the salient difference. I was working outside someone else’s rules; while the government was breaking its own. And if we can’t keep the government from breaking its own rules, then we’ve opened the door to dictatorship.

So we were disturbingly close to being one of those unaccountable governments who do disappear people in the night- maybe for a while we were. But I think this is one of those things that validates the American experiment. Our executive branch overstepped, and the judiciary shot them down. The legislative branch overstepped, and the judiciary shot parts of that down. But at the end of the day, with all three branches weighing in, I think we reached an imperfect but workable compromise. I’m still not happy about Guantanamo, but I don’t think it’s a black hole we toss our enemies anymore, either.

But all of this is a side issue. There are still thousands of people internationally unaccounted for. And that’s the ones we suspect have been taken by governments- not at all touching the issues of human trafficking, slavery. Diana’s right, that this is important. We may not have a forum with millions of listeners, but it’s the forum we have. This is absolutely worth paying attention to, worth donating, to the UN, to Amnesty, to the Red Cross. Aside from making a sizeable donation myself, I’ve been consulting with the UN OHCHR,

ID: Were you having a seizure there, or was that an acronym?

B: Acryonym. The Human Rights Council, who have jurisdiction over the disappeared. I have some experience man-hunting- even internationally. I’ve got some experience as a detective and a forensic tech. Unfortunately, a lot of the disappeared are dead, but it’s rewarding work. And it lets me stretch my mental legs.

But finally segueing back to our look at the women I’ve loved, I thought we’d talk about Zatanna. Because she’s a magician- you know, who disappears.

ID: I would have gone with the obvious, “Wonder Woman called me this morning,” but whatever, it’s your dime.

B: But in honor of Zatanna, I figured I’d use a bit of misdirection.

ID: Clever.

[ed. note: I’m carving this up into two segments due to length and girth, and posting the second part Saturday, or earlier, if I feel like it]

Love(s) of My Life: Journalists

2011-08-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

[Ed. Note: Continuing from last week’s interview about the Loves of Bruce’s Life]

ID: But thankfully, you have a type. Specifically, journalists. Why do you think that is?

B: Because in my lines of work, I meet a very specific subset of women: businesswomen, lawyers, heroines, and reporters. Lawyers and businesspeople tend to be too... neurotic. Women in costume, well, they tend to be complicated

ID: As complicated as yourself?

B: Maybe even more so- and I’m complicated enough for several relationships. And of the four, reporters were the ones who I was obligated to actually sit down and have real conversations with.

ID: So you don't think it had anything to do with your search for the truth, about yourself, about your motives- things they were likely to root around for? Don't you wonder if it was just a hidden desire of yours to be unmasked, to be seen for the person you are, rather than the persona you pretended to be?

B: Maybe.

ID: That sounds like a yes, to me, but tell me about Vicki Vale.

B: She was a reporter, too, originally a social gossip columnist; she took her own photos, too. That's how we met. That was a fluff piece. What I liked about her, intially, was that Vicki wasn't complicated. Unlike Lois, she seemed to be happy with a superficial love affair. And I think at that time it was exactly what I needed.

But it wasn't where we went. I think it was foolish of me to think that that stage of a relationship could persist- though thankfully by the time our relationship evolved, I was a fairly different man. About that time, Vicki started investigating the Batman. I had saved her, accidentally, really, while she was investigating one of the criminal organizations- I think it was the Ventriloquist's group. She became obsessed with Batman; from the way she talked about him I think she loved him- and hated that, too. She hated feeling like a damsel in distress, hated that there were aspects of her affection that rewarded that kind of paternalistic behavior.

ID: So you were your own rival?

B: It sounds more glamorous than it was. She was being torn in different directions by her affections for different men. And I know because of it both of me were going to lose her; I thought seriously about telling her the truth. Ultimately, I didn't. And I did lose her.

ID: You sound like you regret that.

B: I wonder what would have happened. Would we have stayed together? Would I have retired earlier? Would it have put her in danger? It asks so many questions, so many possibilities… Ultimately, she’s alive, and happy, and so am I. I doubt the world would be better for the change.

ID: So she’s happy?

B: When the Luthor’s cataclysmic earthquake decimated Gotham, Vicki stayed in the city, documented the tragedy. Her photography won her the Pulitzer. She spent the next several years traveling to war zones and documenting the evil that men do. She found a purpose that I don’t think she would have if she stayed with me.

ID: Because if she’d stayed with you she would have put away her camera for an apron? It sounds like she made her career in Gotham. What would have changed?

B: I don’t think she would have left. I think she would have won a Pulitzer for her work in Gotham. But I don’t think she would have spent time in Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia.

ID: I presume at last some of this gallivanting is on a Wayne Foundation grant?

B: Occasionally. I'm proud of the work she does, and happy to be even that small part of it.

ID: And what ever happened to her investigation into you?

B: I suspect she eventually found me out- and then decided not to print it.

ID: How sweet. And the last journalist whose ink you dipped your pen into

B: Classy

ID: I'd wanted to do something with a printing press, but it was just too unwieldy. Anyway, Vesper Fairchild. We know it ended in tragedy, but how did you meet?

B: Vesper was a late night radio host. I don’t even remember the topic of our conversation anymore. But I remember she wore these stupid, hipster glasses, but they were really worn; by the end of the conversation, I started to believe she didn't wear them because they were trendy, but because she’d always worn glasses like that.

I think that’s a suitable metaphor for Vesper: if you saw her, she seemed like a journalist, hipster stereotype, but underneath that was a compassionate, thoughtful, intelligent, incisive woman. When the earthquake hit Gotham, she left the city with me. She tried to use her contacts in the journalistic world to spread news of just how bad the disaster was.

When I came back to the city, she stayed away, because that was where she could do the most good. It was because of that that we drifted apart. And even after she got back to the city, there was always a distance between us. We tried picking up where we left off, but… I think she knew something was wrong. Maybe she even knew I was Batman, but she started looking into him. And that put a tension between us, even before…

ID: Before she was murdered, and the assassin, David Cain, made it look like you were her killer.

B: At the behest of Lex Luthor, yes.

ID: I know you humiliated Luthor. I mean, you took away all his companies, his assets, and sent him to Federal take it in the pooper prison. Directly because of your efforts- obviously with Clark’s help- he went from being the President of the United States to the most recent inmate admitted into the Stonegate infirmary for unremitting rectal bleeding. How does that feel?

B: Like it was too little, far too late. Vesper’s dead. There’s nothing I could do to Lex to make up for that.

ID: But I assume you haven’t stopped trying.

B: Meaning?

ID: I mean I have this report- okay, a facsimile of this report, which makes me feel incredibly old school. It's from the first week he was in prison. Lex had just gotten back from the infirmary after his first altercation with some prisoners. And he shows back up again the next morning. He was found after lock-down with multiple complex fractures. The prison doctor was surprised, and I’ll quote here from the report, “at the precise, methodical nature of the wounds, designed to inflict maximal pain and damage, and ensure the longest possible recovery time, while presenting the least likelihood of lethality.” Half the bones in his body were broken, some of the muscles torn away from them. This was some serious vengeance- and that sure as hell sounds like your modus operandi.

You’re not going to confirm or deny this, are you? But that looked like, almost, the hint of a smile, as I read the quote- I mean, trying to read behind all the rage you obviously feel for Luthor, and probably for me for asking the question or bringing him up. I can’t imagine.

B: No. You really can’t.

ID: But I am sorry. For your loss. And for Vesper. Truly.

B: I know. I just… I hate that she died because of me. Luthor's plot. It was just to get at me, to frame Bruce Wayne.

ID: I don't know if that's true. You said that she went with you to Washington, when you tried to get Federal and national support after the earthquake, right? And you going up against Luthor, that's why he tried to frame you, right? Well, if Vesper was there, working with you against him, it would make sense that he'd hold a grudge against her, too. What I'm saying is, maybe it wasn't your fault. Maybe she was killed for standing up for something that was right, that she believed in.

And that should make you feel, okay, maybe not better. But I hope you can feel a little less guilty. God knows you're already carrying enough of that around.

Love(s) of My Life

2011-08-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

ID: I’ve been editing the old interviews with Clark for a collected edition. I think the fact that he was dying, the fact that he was married and had a very specific life worked out, gave his interviews an urgency, and a clarity, that ours have sometimes lacked.

B: I’m sorry I’m not dying faster.

ID: You should be. Nearly two years worth of on and off-again interviewing ruined. So I’ve decided to poison you. Or to ask you a question. An important one. I assume you’re not dating anyone at the moment.

B: Why?

ID: Because it might interfere. And as a journalist, that’s basically a no, by the way. I want to know about the love of your life. Clark had Lois. Madonna had Sean Penn. I want to know who Bruce Wayne had. Now I’m going to turn off the tape recorder for a second, because I have an idea.

[click]

ID: We’re back, and see, now I know. But the thing is, we’re not going to come out and say it; we’re going to make it like a game show count down, where we talk about the various, um, we’ll call them lesser loves, as we count down to the love of your life.

Now, we're going to go for the low-hanging fruit, someone who you've talked about before, and who, I think obviously, is not your soul mate: Lois Lane. How did you two meet?

B: I was in Metropolis. I'd just started working as Batman, just started operating my businesses myself. Ostensibly I was there looking into some acquisitions. Metropolis has always been a center of high tech industry. I was actually looking into acquiring S.T.A.R., or at least luring away some of their top talent- though eventually we just ended up partnering our Wayne Tech divisions with them instead on a project by project basis. It's funny, but at the time Lex Luthor's businesses were fledgling enough that I was also considering a buy out of him, too- not that Lex was entertaining such a bid.

And I had also only been in the cowl a few months at that point. Every time a new, colorful person in a costume popped up, bad things happened. So I wanted to get out ahead of whatever threat Clark might have presented. Alternately, there weren't a lot of people in costume, and everything I'd heard about Clark pointed to him being on the right side of things, generally speaking, but powerful. I was curious about the prospect of, like I was doing then with my companies, harnassing his power to greater purpose.

And, like I said, I was new to the CEO position. My secretary set up an interview with the local daily, which was supposed to be a puff piece. Instead, it got handed to Lois, who was anything but fluffy; she's actually quite sharp-edged- which is not a joke about her being boney.

The interview was one of my first, and certainly the most incisive, and invasive. Lois was everything in her professional persona that I wanted Batman to be: relentless, but righteous, tough, but incredibly fair-handed. I actually asked her out three times.

The first came about twenty minutes into the interview; she told me it would be unprofessional for her to agree in the middle of an interview. I asked again at the interview's conclusion, and she said it would be unprofessional before she finished her write-up. And I asked her again after the story went to print, and she said yes.

What I liked the most about Lois was she made me think. She asked me questions that made me question things I'd always taken at face value, and just presumed. Um, I'm trying to think of an example. She asked me, after appetizers arrived during our first date, why now, after spending years gallivanting across parts of Europe and Asia, had I decided to come back to the US to take control of my family's empire.

And it was a question I hadn't thought about. I mean, I was back in the country because I'd finished my training, which did include at least some education in business. But why hadn't I just put on my cowl and let the business continue to be run by the men my father had had on his board?

ID: And the answer was...

B: I think the same as the reason why I was doing what I was doing in a cape. There was still more good to be done. My companies were good places to work, that churned out American manufactured products at reasonable enough prices. But there was a vast gulf between the empire I owned and the potential of my family's wealth. There was still so much more good I could do by taking over.

But that's to the side of the point. Lois challenged me. I think just as Clark said, that she challenged me to be a better man. She wanted me to be a better man. I think part of the problem was, back then, I wasn't.

ID: What do you mean?

B: I mean I wasn't Clark. Clark always wanted to be a better man. I was... more focused than that. I wanted to end crime. Sometimes that meant fighting poverty, which I did with my companies. And sometimes that meant scaring the hell out of criminals until they pissed themselves; occasionally it meant putting a killer in a wheelchair. It's a subtle difference, I think, but at the end of the day, her sharp edges to the side, Lois really is a sunny-eyed optimist. She wants the best out of and for people. And sometimes I just wanted to scare the hell out of people until they behaved themselves; I don’t always see the good in people.

ID: Okay. I don't know if Lois is quite enough fodder. But thankfully, you have a type. Specifically, journalists. [Ed. Note: continued next update]

Crime and Punishment

2011-08-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

ID: We’ve talked about revenge before, at great length. So I imagine you want nothing more than to fly to Norway and punch Anders Behring Breivik. Repeatedly.

B: I want to beat him to death, resuscitate him, and do it again, for every single child he murdered.

ID: Ladies and gentlemen, your Batman, star of your children’s video games, lunch boxes and SpaghettiOs.

B: You didn’t let me finish. I think it’s completely natural for that to be your first reaction. Children, in a very real sense, are our future. Genetically, we’re predisposed to protecting them, whatever the costs. And our instincts even push us to protect one another- an instinct society reinforces. So an eye for an eye, it makes sense, as a gut reaction.

ID: And that’s why I wanted to talk about this specific case. Because the Norwegian justice system leans entirely in the other direction. Under current law, Breivik could only be sentenced to 21 years in prison. That’s mostly because sentences don’t compound.

B: Though there is a possibility he could be tried against a “crimes against humanity” statute passed in 2008 which would put him away for thirty.

ID: But thirty years… that doesn’t seem like enough. I mean, [Timothy] McVeigh, even if he hadn’t been put to death, would have spent several lifetimes in jail. It’s probably long enough to keep him from committing more terrorism when he gets out- I mean, he’ll be 62, not many 62 year old terrorists.

B: Except in leadership. But outside of the Middle East, most terrorist groups remain pretty small, and there are fewer old men involved.

And I think you’re right. 21 years, 30 years, 100 years- I don’t think there’s a number high enough that it would feel all right. I don’t think we could put him to death and get the kind of closure we want, either; killing one man who killed 69, that’s not a trade I can happily make. In some respects, particularly given that he’s a violent and disturbed individual, I’d say perhaps the criminal justice system isn’t the answer for him, anyway. Keeping him away from the public, where he can be treated, might make more sense- terrorism’s a special case, I think. But I think the question needs to not be what will make us feel better- that justice has been done- and what’s going to stop those kinds of things from happening- that’s why terrorism is maybe a separate issue.

Generally speaking, I think Norway’s criminal justice system has a lot to teach us. The country has 10% of our per capita prison population, and their recidivism rate is a third of ours. Counter-intuitive as it might seem, their whole open society could be one answer.

But I think it’s dangerous to oversimplify. Overall, I think the Norwegians know what they’re doing. But their solution is also uniquely Norwegian; I don’t know if you could lift that system out of Norway, drop it in another country, and achieve the same or even similar results. But I do think it’s worth looking at.

Just like it’s worth looking at the Japanese system; their recidivism rate is similarly low, and their per capita prison population is even lower than Norway’s.

DI: And Japan has that 99% conviction rate?

B: That’s actually a little misleading- though true. A study found that Japanese conviction rates are high because of understaffed and overworked prosecutor offices. Because of that, prosecutors only pursue their strongest cases- the ones where they’re most likely to achieve a conviction. Another facet was that until 2009, trials were conducted in front of before a judicial panels, not a jury, but the important point is the statistic in isolation is meaningless. It doesn’t mean more criminals are brought to justice in Japan- just that a higher percentage of those charged are found guilty.

DI: So just because we know their batting average doesn’t tell us whether or not they’re going to hit us any home runs or bat in any runs?

B: Basically. And while we’re on Japan, I’d like to mention something in parallel. Japanese culture has a history of accepting what I think we could safely call more extreme forms of pornography than western countries; fictional portrayals of rape, incest, pedophilia. At first I was pretty disgusted, but if you look at the statistics, the incidence of actual sex crimes in Japan is tiny by comparison.

And for several years now there’s been correlation between the availability of high speed internet and a decline in sexual assault in the US.

DI: But correlation is not causation.

B: Of course it isn’t. But wouldn’t the burden of proving the contrary then fall on those who argue for a closed society.

DI: But what about the children? Won’t somebody think of the children.

B: I think people have been lamenting the downfall of society since the first society. People predicted comics would ruin our children, then rock and roll, and now video games, or pornography.

And on the subject of violence- whatever the media- I’ve seen far more compelling research concluding that people with a predilection for violence gravitate towards violent media. It’s true, video games can lead to heightened emotional response and aggression, but that’s because they tap into primitive parts of the human mind, the fight or flight aspects. And this effect has only proven to last between 15 and 30 minutes. You’d see the exact same thing coming from athletes in competitive sports.

Mostly what I’m advocating is honest study and debate. There are countries that do better than we do at controlling criminals. We should be asking why, because we have the world’s largest prison population, and it costs us about $70 billion dollars a year to operate our prisons. There are 2.5 million people in prison, where they aren’t contributing to the economy, aren’t paying taxes.

And we’re just talking about sentencing; one reason why the Japanese and Norwegian systems might be more effective, is because they focus on rehabilitation. That can mean a lot of things, GED programs, apprenticeships, counseling, but most importantly, a greater focus on rehabilitation has proven to cut 10% off of our recidivism rate. That’s huge.

About half the people in our prison right now are repeat offenders. So 10% of that is more than 100,000 people- $2.5 billion dollars. And even if it cost us the full $2.5 billion to make our rehabilitation programs work, that’s 100,000 fewer victims.

ID: But if you’re so enamored of cost saving, what about private prisons?

B: The largest issue with private prisons is that they cut corners. Their main goal is making money, not protecting its staff or the general public. So they’ve become notorious for hiring fewer or less well trained staff. This leads to a 50% increase in violence, both to the staff and inmates. Private prisons have also inflated their ability to cut costs by refusing more expensive inmates.

I think there’s also a question of legitimacy. I think on some level, inmates believe that in a state run facility they’re being treated as fairly as possible with taxpayer dollars. I think in a for-profit prison, they feel like any short-comings of the prison are coming at their expense, so someone can make money off them.

And finally, private prisons have so far been more expensive. In Arizona, $1,600 more per inmate. Right now, private prisons don’t work.

I’m obviously not a libertarian- I don’t think the government should get the hell out of our business whatever the circumstances- far from it. And I have an agenda, in this discussion, a very specific one. I don’t want people murdered in the streets. I don’t want children orphaned. I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else, ever again. And the evidence suggests that there are things we can do better to make our country safer. There’s absolutely no explanation for why we aren’t even trying.

ID: But aren’t private prisons potentially like charter schools, little laboratories where new ideas can be tested out?

B: They could have been, and maybe they could be still. But they haven’t. They’ve been focused on trying to make money off our penal system. I’d welcome a prison that was experimenting, and trying to bring down our appalling recidivism rates- even if it were being run for profit- but it’s foolish not to acknowledge the conflicting interests at play there.

And I think prisons are only a part of the equation. Our prison population is as high as it is because of longer sentences. Some of that is a consequence of minimum sentencing guidelines and the war on terror- which is a side issue- but overall, it’s a justice issue as much as a penal one.

ID: Heheh, you said penal.

B: Thanks for keeping the conversation on a high road.

Hostage Crisis

2011-07-30T06:34:00.000-07:00

[note: this image made more sense with the original title, “America Pulls a Boehner,” and it's still too good not to keep; courtesy of superdickery, though I'm sure owned by DC]

DI: Last year, Obama used the metaphor of a hostage crisis for the Republican negotiation over the Bush tax cuts. He ended up relenting, because he wasn’t willing to let them hurt the hostage, when the hostage was the American people. But you’ve dealt with some real-world hostage situations, so I’d like to get your opinion on this latest negotiation.

B: I don’t negotiate hostage crises; I end them.

DI: Probably by breaking through a hostage taker’s skylight then kicking them until they go to prison.

B: In a nutshell.

DI: Do you provide the nutshell, or do Gotham’s hostage-takers provide their own?

B: Clever.

DI: I have my moments.

B: But there have been circumstances where I’ve had to negotiate. It’s a favorite tactic of the Riddler, making sure he and his victims are hidden somewhere, so I have to deal with him remotely. It’s the only way he could ever get me to play his games at first.

DI: At first?

B: We came to an understanding about ten years ago: he stopped kidnapping people and I agreed to solve one of his riddles a month.

DI: So you enabled his lunacy. Wonderful.

B: The Riddler’s obsessive and compulsive, but not violently insane in the same way as someone like the Joker. All he really cared about was his puzzles, and one time, as I was taking him to the police, frustrated, I asked, “Next time can’t we just skip to the part that you care about?” And he laughed. But then he thought about it, and asked if I was offering what it sounded like I was offering. And I hadn’t been, but now that we were both thinking about it, it made a weird kind of sense.

Because he’d been terrorizing innocent people needlessly. He didn’t want a ransom. And he never actually hurt his hostages. He just wanted to play the game.

DI: But given that you negotiated with terrorists

B: Actually, you’ll note that I negotiated an end to the terrorism.

DI: But at the time he was a terrorist and you negotiated- and that makes President Bush cry- so what would you say of the current stalemate?

B: Well, first, looking back at the first hostage negotiation, Obama was being stupid. I think his metaphor fails, in that we weren’t talking about really hurting the American people, just whether or not some of them paid marginally higher taxes- at the rate they paid them under Clinton. Regardless, he did the worst thing possible: he caved- which only encourages more hostage-taking.

By contrast, I think the current debt ceiling negotiations, and maybe to a lesser extent the budget fight earlier this year, are closer to hostage negotiations. Because the debt ceiling allows us to pay for services that really will hurt Americans who lose them. And unlike taxes, which have a large lobby constantly agitating against them, those Americans tend not to have powerful political allies. So damage done to those Americans could well end up permanent.

DI: Then what do you think of the debt ceiling bill Boehner got passed in the House?

B: I liked Jonathan Chait’s description of the Boehner ‘deal’: “it's like a kidnapper demanding for the release of your child $100,000 and your other child.” Because Boehner’s deal extracts cuts without revenue, but then ensures that there will be another debt ceiling standoff in six months’ time.

This may be the reason that, according to CNN, the House plan championed by Speaker Boehner would likely lead to a downgrade of US credit from Standard and Poor’s, while the Senate plan championed by Harry Reid wouldn’t. [note: the Reid plan offers a ceiling extension that should see us to 2013]. We’ll see, I suppose, in the next few days, if that does anything to change the debate. I suspect not. John Boehner’s been painted into a corner. I suspect he’s not long for this political world; he was barely able to craft a bill that mustered Republican support in the House, but it’ll never make it through the Democratic Senate. His options now seem to be to throw his speakership under the bus to vote with the Democrats, or to try to preserve his speakership by tacking right, which means not voting for whatever compromise comes out of the Senate, and means the Republicans get hammered for the consequences and probably lose their majority and the speakership anyway.

Not that I’ll lament his loss. In attempting to sell his bill to the House, Boehner called the other options default or giving Obama a blank check. Now, I hate to go against Hanlon’s razor, but I can’t believe that the Speaker of the House misunderstands government so badly. The President doesn’t spend money- he executes the laws as passed by the Congress. Spending- the power of the purse- that’s Congress. The Congress, one half of which Boehner “leads,” set spending levels. Which makes it either blatant propaganda or criminal stupidity.

DI: You’ve placed a lot of people under citizen’s arrest in your time. Ever for stupidity?

B: I’ve caught a lot of people because of stupidity, but that was never the charge.

DI: You’ve been a pretty passionate proponent for raising the debt ceiling, even when a majority of Americans were against it.

B: I think most Americans are busy. They don’t want government to be a major thing in their lives- because they’d rather do something else, work, spend time with friends, family, just screwing around. So most Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to politics until it’s something important, something that gets in their face and demands attention. So the fact that most people didn’t understand what the debt ceiling was, I think accounts for most of the change in polls. But selling the increase - explaining why I’ve favored it, beyond what could go wrong- is a different thing. And I’ve said it before, but it’s about a different vision of the country.

Let me ask you a question: do you like our country? Right now, looking around, at the state of our roads, at the state of our national parks, at the state of our national security apparatus. Do you like this country, and want it to be able to continue at this level?

DI: Generally speaking, yeah. At least at this level.

B: Okay, these are the things our government spends money on. But how about the things you may not like, that the government isn’t doing as well with: the state of our schools, our crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment, the fact that seniors are edging closer to poverty as a group- these are all things that will require more spending in the future. Not unlimited spending- in some cases, like infrastructure, just a down payment- but increases over what we spend now.

I think most Americans are fairly happy with the country today. So I don’t understand that zealousness on the part of conservatives to take apart something we value.

DI: But you’re a dangerous socialist.

B: I’m a liberal. And maybe in the Europe I’d be a social democrat. I’ve never tried to hide that. And yes, personally, I’d favor robust government spending, to put us back on top of the world in education and technology, which is quite honestly where we belong. We’re the richest country in the world, and we still have an opportunity to cement our place at the head of that table; to me, that’s an America to dream about. It would require higher taxes- but if we made serious efforts to make the tax code fair- and I’m talking about treating all income equally, not the Orwellianly named ‘fair’ tax- it wouldn’t require a lot of sacrifice, either. To the average American, it would be more than worth it, to know that Medicare and Social Security were going to be there for them, and their kids.

But let me be clear: that’s not what I’m advocating here. I’m saying that, at a minimum, we should be trying to keep America strong. We don’t have to be the best. But we shouldn’t be willing to watch our nation slide further and further away from being the center of innovation, growth and prosperity. We’re still about as rich as the EU, but every day we fall further behind on the education and technology curves- and the further we fall back, the harder it is to regain position.

We should be looking for ways to ensure our nation’s stability and prosperity going into the future. We shouldn’t be looking to cut benefits for the elderly, while maintaining tax cuts for the oil industry. Those kinds of trade offs just don’t make sense.

DI: So how do you feel about the Reid plan?

B: The Reid plan isn’t wonderful. It has its flaws, namely a pretty large reduction in the government’s ability to protect its citizens. It does attack the deficit, and on that front it’s remarkably like the Beohner plan, both in how much gets cut and how quickly. So it tries to have the least effect during the downturn, which is a plus.

DI: So what’s so bad about the Boehner plan, then?

B: To get it out of the House, Boehner had to make the ceiling increase, or a second one, since he cuts a Reid sized increase in two, contingent upon passage of a balanced budget amendment. We’ve discussed how pointless such an amendment is, and this provision guaranteed that it could never even be considered by the Senate.

The thrust of the problem with a balanced budget amendment is it’s unenforceable, so it’s a rule which would only keep honest politicians honest.

DI: So the same way that, say, gun control only keeps honest gun owners honest?

B: One can of worms at a time.

And maybe I’m being cynical here, but I think Democrats have learned from pay as you go rules that they will try to live within the system, but Republicans won’t. Republicans, you’ll recall, got rid of pay as you go rules as soon as they took the House, and replaced them with cut as you go rules. The irony of which is that the party now obsessed with debt and deficits changed the rules to make it even easier to increase both.

But the other problem with Boehner’s plan we already mentioned. It’s the reason I think S & P has talked about downgrading our credit even if we pass the Boehner plan: it sets this whole hostage crisis back up again in six months. And even if we managed to talk the crazy people off the ledge this time, that doesn’t mean that next time we’ll be so lucky. In fact, since they’re likely to view this as a loss, and I speak from a long history with vengeful crazy people, they’re likely to be crazier, and more likely to throw us all off the ledge next time.

Unbalanced

2011-07-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

B: I can tell you think you’re being clever. So out with it.

DI: I have two topics I’d like to talk about with you; unfortunately I’ve been having trouble coming up with an overarching theme, but they are Michele Bachmann and the budget.

B: And I’ll take a wild guess and assume you’re going to title the piece, ‘unbalanced.’

DI: On the nosey. We’ll start with the one that’s the furthest out of whack.

B: Michele Bachmann?

DI: Correct. Michele Bachmann really first came to prominent national attention when she called Barack Obama anti-American. Most notably because he was palling around with Bill Ayers, a member of the Weathermen, a group that bombed several government buildings in the 70s, and was friendly with Obama.

B: Obama served on a charity board with Ayers, and lived in the same neighborhood. I was friends with Harvey Dent- I actually cooked for him, in my home, once. I gave to his campaign when he was running for DA. By that standard, Michele Bachmann would believe that I condone any and everything Harvey’s ever done.

Which is stupid if not unbelievably cynical. Harvey was one of my best friends. When his… issues broke him, it was hard on me. But that never stopped me from beating the hell out of him every single time he put innocent people in danger. I don’t condone his actions; I despise them. I hate what Harvey became- and it’s all the sadder knowing where he came from, and who he could have been.

DI: But is that fair? Obama knew Ayers after he’d been in the Weathermen.

B: Okay. Say that Harvey reformed- which he’s tried, several times. Let’s say this time he makes it, and like Ayers he’s an honest, normal citizen for twenty years. Let’s say he gets his law license back, somehow, and runs for DA. I’d donate to his campaign all over again.

DI: I’m just going to lay my cards on the table, here, and just quote from Wikipedia: following comments by China proposing adoption of a global reserve currency, Bachmann introduced a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to bar the dollar from being replaced by a foreign currency.

B: I have no words. (pause) You’re not going to say anything else until I respond, are you?

DI: Nope.

B: It’s just… lunacy. The existence of a global reserve currency would have nothing to do with the US. All China is saying is that it doesn’t like being tied to US policy. They don’t like the idea that all the wealth they’ve generated is denominated in dollars, because they could lose their shirts if we were to do something stupid, like, say, reneg on our debts by refusing to lift the debt ceiling. So they’d rather have a currency that wasn’t related to any single country- sort of a gold standard without tying the reserve currency necessarily to any particular commodity.

DI: She also made headlines when she fretted publically about the census.

B: Which was ironic, given her self-proclaimed love for the Constitution- because that’s where the Census comes from. Every ten years the government performs a count and accounting of the citizenry- largely for the allocation of representatives for the house, but also the distribution of funds.

DI: And during the health care debate, she read an article by the notorious Betsy McCaughey on the floor of the House.

B: It’s unclear how much Bachmann’s persona is cynical shtick and how much of it is actual, diagnosable paranoia. But I can’t, looking at the evidence, believes it’s all an act; she went on record saying she wanted to “wean” people off Social Security and Medicare. She was talking about keeping people in the system there, and making sure people who wouldn’t get it had time to prepare- similar in spirit to the Ryan budget, but also throwing Social Security under the same bus- but that’s an incredibly unpopular mindset to have in this country. Frankly, I’m surprised she’s getting any traction at all.

DI: In 2004, Bachmann said, “We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders”

B: Given my long career in dealing with people with mental dysfunctions and identity disorders, I can tell you I have profound compassion for people like Bachmann, surpassed only by my compassion for the poor people of Minnesota she represents.

DI: That was catty. You’re getting catty in your old age.

B: Maybe I’ve been spending too much time around Selina. Kitten has claws.

DI: But conveniently, Bachmann has been at least on the outskirts of the skirmish over the debt ceiling. She tends to make wacky sounding demands- actually, I imagine that’s your wheelhouse, since you’ve been involved in hostage negotiations with the Joker.

B: To be fair, Bachmann isn’t going to kill anyone; she’s just threatening to hurt the country and its interests. Both dire, I admit; but I want to make sure we don’t step too far into hyperbole, here. Bachmann isn’t a murderer, and while I’d question her ability to properly grasp reality, she’s far from the Joker in that regard.

DI: Noted; also, aren’t I supposed to be the grown-up, here?

B: That’s what I keep asking.

DI: But what I was trying to say about Bachmann’s demands; she has, if I’m remembering this right, demanded at one point a balanced budget amendment, and at another, repeal of the ACA.

B: It’s hard to watch. I don’t know how many people were reading you and Clark’s discussions, but I can’t help but feel the ACA- it’s a part of Clark’s legacy. It’s a part I think he was proud of, even though he didn’t get to see its final passage. But so often, he, and I’m in a similar position, we get to help people in a way that’s immediate, and visceral.

But after you’ve saved someone from the burning building, you set them back down on the sidewalk and you fly away. And the circumstances that had them living in that poorly built building that wasn’t up to code, with the badly functioning smoke detectors that they couldn’t afford to replace- those all stay like they were. So it’s hard to feel like you saved them, really- you just postponed the inevitable.

I’m in a more unique position, in that I can afford and have the resources to come back later, and try to help out. There were a lot of times, especially when I was starting out, that I’d say to people: “Batman told me you could use a hand.” And little kids, I mean, the first thing they’d say is, “You know Batman?” And their eyes would light up; and it always felt like the answer was “only slightly.” Because he’s a part of me, but he’s not a part of me I have access to when I’m out with people like that. He’s as much an enigma to me, at those moments, as he is to everyone else.

But the point I was trying to get at, that I think I’ve wandered away from, is that at least in my mind, the ACA is something he advocated for, at the end. The last hurrah in his campaign for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. And I remember, when the debate over the bill got really nasty, he called me, depressed. Because he couldn’t understand how people could question the patriotism of the idea that everyone should have medical coverage. He asked me, “What’s more American than all of us, together, helping every American succeed, and prosper? Is there anything more American than that?”

At the time I didn’t say anything. It was rhetorical, but beyond that he had a way about him- even when he said something corny, something I wanted to laugh about- I couldn’t. He made you want to believe silly things. I don’t think the ACA is actually silly- but I believe it’s aimed to make the world better, in a way that sometimes I want to dismiss as hopelessly and romantically idealistic. But I also think it’ll save more lives than Clark or I ever did. And I know that’s what Clark hoped, too.

DI: That’s all well and good, but don’t you hate freedom?

B: I once punched Captain America in a comic book- but I don’t think that counts. I’ll cop to the fact that Bachmann and I don’t see eye to eye on the purpose of government. But I also believe that in a democracy you actually have to govern, that means voting for budgets on time, it means funding agencies even if you may not like the way they work; it means doing the business of the American people like a professional.

As to the budget, itself, I think it’s silly to attempt to balance the budget immediately. Aside from the fact that taking billions if not trillions out of the economy in the midst of the recession is a bad idea, I think it’s unfair and irresponsible to the people who have come to rely on certain government programs to suddenly do without. You’ll note, this is the exact same logic Bachmann wants to use for Social Security and Medicare, and at least as a methodology I can agree with it. Weaning people off of government funding is better than suddenly slamming the door shut and saying no more. You’d be dealing a huge blow to the economy, and just as important, really hurting a lot of people.

I agree, that over the long term we have to make up the difference between revenue and spending; reasonable people can disagree on the balance, there- and I’m hopeful that more reasonable people are elected in 2012 to make it a more adult conversation.

DI: So you don’t like the current state of the negotiations?

B: It’s difficult to know what the current state is, actually. But last I heard, Obama was pushing for $3.5 trillion in spending cuts, against about $1.2 trillion in additional revenue. To people who look at the debt the last couple of years, that might sound great. But to anyone paying attention to the long-term it’s a kick in the crotch.

$3.5 trillion is slightly less than what the Bush tax cuts cost every decade. Raising revenues by $1.2 trillion might sound like a good idea, but $.8 trillion of that comes off letting the Bush cuts for those earning more than $250,000 expire. Why that’s a crappy deal is it’s basically asking for the least investment in the country from the wealthy, and asking for the most pain endurable by everyone else. If you like the idea of the elderly staying above the poverty line, if you like the idea that the US might remain a well-educated country, these are not the kinds of cuts you want to see.

Which isn’t to say that this isn’t necessary. It’s possible that we really are spending so far beyond our means that we have to cut $350 billion out of our budget every year- which is around 10%. But I don’t like that we’re being forced to cut our budget by that much this quickly; the appropriate time to examine your finances is not while your house is on fire.

And I think if we’re going to ‘tighten our belts’ that it shouldn’t come on the backs of the poor and the vulnerable. There are a trillion dollars being basically wasted every decade through these so-called ‘tax expenditures.’ You can argue whether or not this is spending or it’s a tax cut, but that’s semantic; at the end of the day, it’s the government picking winners and losers. Giving some people preferential treatment through the tax code is, most of the time, a bad idea. It distorts markets, which can make it harder for certain businesses to compete.

After that trillion, I would say rescinding all the Bush tax cuts makes sense. If we really, really can’t afford our government, we should start things back at zero- because before those cuts was when we had a balanced budget. And from there we can have the sober discussion of how high we think taxes should be, versus the things we think the government should do.

And maybe the conclusion would eventually be, well, we want to pay fewer taxes even if that means a smaller military and smaller Social Security checks and maybe some rationing in Medicare. I don’t claim to speak for the American people on this. But I think we should start the conversation there- after we’ve put out most of the fires.

And personally, since I imagine you’re soliciting my economic expertise as a kind of poor man’s Warren Buffet, I’d suggest backloading the cuts. Because whenever you cut spending it’s going to take money out of the economy. If you aim it properly, some of it will be replaced by private investment- but that’s a matter of timing it so that it happens after the recovery actually gets stronger- no more of this see-sawing.

DI: Give yourself a little credit. You’re almost exactly like Warren Buffet, only you have a more interesting personal life- by which I mean your fetish gear fashion sense. And also your sex life.

B: Thanks for that.

Making Amend(ment)s

2011-07-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

DI: We had an animated conversation the other day, and I’d like to talk about something similar: Republicans in the House have been saying they want a balanced budget amendment; in fact, they’re refusing to vote on the debt ceiling without it being tied to a balanced budget amendment. And you told me that was the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard.

B: The problem with a balanced budget amendment is it’s pointless. Because even if a congress were to violate the amendment- even if Congress decided to go completely off the deep end and stop collecting any taxes while also double all spending, an amendment would be powerless to stop them.

DI: And why’s that?

B: There are a couple of issues tied up here, both having to do with enforcement. The first hurdle has to do with the mechanism of enforcement. How do you write an amendment that guarantees that the budget be balanced? The most creative method I heard came from Warren Buffet, who suggested the amendment state that sitting congresspersons could not be reelected if there was a deficit. But even the budget hawks probably wouldn’t go for that- since even the most ambitious budgets won’t achieve balance for several years. And realistically, putting a revolving door into the Congress would likely increase spending, rather than decrease it. I mean, if you’re not going to have to be accountable to the voters at all, why not? Even assuming you could come up with language for an amendment that would be able to get through the constitutional process- which takes years and comes with no guarantees- you come up against the second issue.

When there’s a contention, rather than if, it’s ultimately the courts who are responsible for enforcing the Constitution. But the courts have refused to hear the case in similar circumstances. The courts have argued that plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue, even a case where congresspeople argued that their ability to carry out their constitutional prerogatives was being thwarted.

DI: And for those of us who have thusfar avoided being the targets of lawsuits, what’s standing?

B: Standing basically says that you personally were hurt by an action. For better or worse, the current court tends to favor executive power. So these suits get thrown out for lack of standing if there are any shades of gray.

But even if you assume for a moment that a court- any court- decides to set aside the concept of standing. Maybe they’re mad as hell, too, and want to see if anything can be done about it. They hear the case, and decide that indeed Congress is exceeding it’s authority by spending more than they’re bringing in. What then?

The court can’t decide on its own which spending is improper- they don’t have a line item veto: there’s nothing approaching that in the court’s authority. The court would then be left with the choice of either declaring the entire government unconstitutional, or admitting that it couldn’t do anything to change it. And even if a judiciary so vastly overstepped that it declared the US government illegitimate, what then? Does the Congress just turn in their parking passes and go home. Or do they flip the Court the bird and keep on trucking?

I want to be clear, here: I want a balanced budget, and sooner is certainly better than later. But this slash it now now NOW attitude pervading the conservatives in Congress- especially when coupled with intransigence on taxes- is purely political. It has nothing, zero, to do with the long term health and viability of the government or the country- and even less to do with the well-being of its citizens. Republicans are using the current budget issues as an excuse to try and dismantle the social programs they have never particularly liked.

Ironically, the largest drivers of our current financial woes, were enacted by Republicans who had gotten rid of pay as you go rules and scoffed at the idea that they should have to pay for their agenda. Congressional Republicans are playing chicken with the global economy, and what they claim to be holding out for is this amendment. But it’s pointless and toothless.

DI: I read in the Washington Post that Michelle Bachman has said that she will not vote for a debt ceiling increase. The reporter said that placed her to the right of some other conservatives.

B: But it’s not ideologic, it’s just idiotic.

This is unprecedented. Never in the history of this country have we defaulted. That’s why we have good credit. Seriously, this would be like the head of a household declaring to his family, “We’re just not going to pay the credit card bill.” Years of good credit history would disappear, and borrowing rates, for the car, the kid’s student loans, the home, would all go way up. And even delaying payments a month would make the interest rates on any existing debt skyrocket. There is absolutely no good reason to do this. It borders upon insane.

DI: But don’t we have to cut spending?

B: Sure. Absolutely. And there are ways to do that that don’t put the financial future of the country at risk, that don’t put the global economy at risk. The sane thing to do would be to pass a clean debt ceiling hike today. The ambitious but still not crazy thing might be to push for, not some empty amendment, but a binding budget agreement that says that budgets over the next ten years we need to cut 10% of the deficit annually. As an enforcement mechanism, the law could automatically cut budgets across the board at the decade mark to make up for whatever deficit was left. Add in that repeal of this law takes a three quarters majority of both houses and you have a balanced budget law that’s even stronger than pay as you go rules the Democrats used to operate under.

DI: But isn’t that undemocratic?

B: So’s a balanced budget amendment. But just maybe to be responsible, we can’t be all that democratic. To make it fair, though, you could make sure the law can’t take effect without three quarters of both houses voting for it- so it takes an equal amount to pass it as repeal it.

Alternatively, you could reinstate the old pay as you go rules, with the change that you don’t just have to pay for changes, but pay a ‘surcharge’ on changes, of say 10%, so every time Congress made adjustments to programs they would have to find savings or revenue to cover the difference, plus ten percent. There are lots of ways to get us back in the black- and the vast majority are simple math problems that don’t require destroying Medicare or gutting Social Security or even telling the poor that we’re okay with them dying.

But the amendment, and especially tying an amendment or budget cuts, to the debt ceiling? That’s playing with fire. And it’s all of us that are going to get burned.

DI: You feel better? Farther away from a coronary than when we started? I hope so, because to make amends to our readership for your crazy polemics- I’m kidding; please don’t hit me- you know what time it is?

B: Where were we?

DI: Diana had just been to Cale Pharmaceuticals with the Gotham Police to investigate Danielle’s story, and came up empty.

B: Okay, we’re back in the embassy, then.

Wellys:
Diana, I swear to you, it should have been there.

Diana:
Start at the beginning.

Wellys:
I thought we'd hit a dead end in our research. We'd missed all of our milestones. When Veronica called me in, I thought it was because we were going to have all of our funding pulled. But she said she'd found a benefactor, one that was going to keep funding our project, and had some... ideas about getting over our hurdles.

DI:

Diana:
What hurdles?

B:
Wellys:
The human body doesn’t like tech. Whether it’s an artificial hip or nanites, we tend to react pretty violently to a foreign object implanted in the body- hence anti-rejection meds. The project, we were calling it “Silver Swan” to keep it secret, involved nanotec cosmetics. The idea was to stop putting makeup on the body, and start making the body itself beautiful. But all of our subjects were getting sick. Several of them developed tumors. It was a mess. This new investor brought in a truckload of cash and some kind of know-how. Within 72 hours all of our problems were gone. At first I was thrilled- I’ve been working on this project for six years, practically my entire professional life- and finally it was getting somewhere. Then I saw what they used it for. And it just, I knew they were taking shortcuts. Because that kind of a breakthrough, from where we were, it wasn’t possible.

Diana:
That's because it wasn’t science. It was magic. And I know someone with plenty of it.

DI: I think I know where you’re going with this. CUT TO poolside, a beautiful woman in a bikini, with long purple hair, is lounging beside the pool.

B: She sets her drink down on a tray held up by a male waiter who is dressed like a Chippendales dancer. He takes the drink away, and as he’s going, she wiggles her fingers, and his trunks become loose and nearly fall off before he catches them, giving us the hint of an untanned but firm butt.

DI: Thanks for that.

B: Somebody needs to help keep the ratio of T & A to man candy equitable. Besides, Circe really is man crazy. Circe lays back down, relaxing. A shadow looms over her, and she assumes for the moment it’s the waiter as she sits up to speak.

Circe
A little more salt on the rim this time if you- oh. It’s you.

DI:

Diana
Cale Pharmaceuticals. I have reason to believe that someone’s been trying to magic up some miracle make up.

B:

Circe
And you’re tired of trying to conceal those crow’s feet? Wish I could help you, Diana, really I do. But have you forgotten what happened last week?

Circe pushes down her sunglasses to reveal a black eye.

DI:

Diana
Oh, right. I punch a lot of people. Sometimes I forget who.

B:

Circe
I haven't had time, or frankly the perspicacity, to engage in another endeavor. Give me another week, maybe two, at poolside and perhaps I'll have something fun we can get up to, but today, I'm only lounging at the pool. But did you try Ares? Of course not. You came here hoping it was me. Because you don't enjoy the prospect of locking horns with the god of war- though as a lady I'd be happy to lock his horn any day of the week.

DI:

Danielle
Lady might be a bit of a stretch.

B:

Circe
Meow. Kitten’s got claws.

Diana
But if you're lounging around here, who's tending to your flock?

Circe
We witches call it a coven. And I forget the young man's name, but he looks excellent without a shirt on.

DI:

Diana
At least you remember the important details.

B:
Circe
I note you're chirlishly disapproving tone, Diana. But if L. Ron Hubbard can have his own clan of religious zealots, why can't I? Speaking of clans of zealots, how are the Amazons?

Diana
That's right. I hit you because you were trying to turn every Amazon on Themiscyra into a pig.

Circe
I've been in the market for another island- and I am a sucker for the classics.

Performance Enhancement

2011-07-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

DI: Roger Clemens is in the news at the moment because he lied to Congress- which is a pretty hilarious thing in and of itself, given that politicians are probably the most consistently untruthful people on the planet.

B: It’s true that politicians lie. But I think it’s fair to ask why. And fundamentally, I think it comes down to the fact that the electorate doesn’t like consistency.

Look at the current Republican Presidential nominees. They’re vilified for taking what, at the time, weren’t even controversial stances on issues: Romney on health care, Pawlenty on cap and trade, even Gingrich on the Ryan budget. So they’ve largely denied ever taking those stances, or at least walked them back.

Note that I’m not condoning the behavior. I think if those three men, longtime party members with broad appeal and respect, stood up and together said that the politics of immolation can’t continue- that they took stands they believed in, and wouldn’t retreat just because something they liked was polling well- it would go a long way to changing things.

DI: But isn’t that a fairly undemocratic idea?

B: Let me explain. I have some socialist leanings- anyone who likes Medicare or Social Security does, frankly- but I’d go a step beyond. I’d like to see a higher minimum wage. I’d even support a maximum wage. If I were given the keys to the kingdom tomorrow, and told to remake the US to make it the best country I could, I’d push for more social democratic programs, similar to what exists in Europe, socialized medicine, for a start. But on the other hand, if I were running for or elected President, that’s a different story. Elected leaders aren’t chosen to represent their own ideas and interests, they’re there to represent the people. On a lot of issues I’ve been disappointed with Obama, but in that regard, I really feel he’s tried to be President not just of blue states but of all the states. You might not know it from all of the Nazi/Socialist rhetoric, but he’s a fairly centrist President; I’d say he’s not even as far left as Bush was right.

DI: Okay, but what I wanted to talk about was why Clemens is in the hot seat. He lied. Specifically about using performance enhancers. Or at least that’s the contention. And I know we touched on it briefly, I think around last Halloween- so I’ll try and keep us from rehashing. But I want to know, as a former performance enhancer, how you feel about performance enhancement.

B: Why do I shudder to think what you’ll name this blog entry? But it’s a tough question, and there’s a lot of nuance to it, so I’ll start at the general and we’ll get more specific from there. I think we’re living on the cusp of a new evolution in humanity. Some heroes are aliens, some have magical assistance, but some- I’d say most- of them truly represent what we’re doing or will do to ourselves as a species. Cyborg is a pretty good example. He’s part man and part machine. Call it post, trans, or metahumanity, but we’re changing, evolving; I doubt we’ll recognize the human race in 50 years.

And there are all sorts of mechanisms. Cybernetics, gene therapy, chemicals, nanotech. I don’t know how we’re going to get there, but I think it’s clear from what’s happened in the hero community that we’re changing. I think the people who put on spandex and fight crime- or commit it- are just the precursor.

Which is why I see what’s happening in our sports as a choice. If we decide, as seems to be the overriding thought of the day, that sports ought to be a throwback to what humans can do without technological aid, then so be it. So long as those are the rules. I think the reason there’s been so much trouble is that the rules were technically that performance enhancement was wrong, but in reality everyone was looking the other way. So honest athletes were put at a severe, perhaps even crippling disadvantage. Which is wrong.

Now what the capitalist in me imagines for sports is that we’ll eventually end up with two of everything- a natural and an enhanced version. People or athletes who for whatever reason want to see the pinnacle of human achievement without certain kinds of technology, we have the Olympics and equivalent associations. For those who want to see a man kick a football as far as he can by whatever means, you’d have sports leagues that allow enhancements.

And whichever people pay to watch on TV, whichever people buy merchandising for, that’s what will determine which brands survive. And maybe it’ll be a case, like the NCAA and the NBA, where there’s an audience for both that overlaps. I don’t know.

DI: That was a fairly obvious caveat where you mentioned ‘certain kinds’ of technology being prohibited in the Olympics.

B: Well, there’s a reason why Olympic world records today tend to outstrip records from fifty years ago: the world changed. Nutrition, and sports medicine, equipment and training have all come a long way since then. And it’s only going to get more complicated. Taking your vitamins is okay; but what about eating a genetically modified fruit that secretes small amounts of human growth hormone? That’s probably a silly, and obvious, example, but there’s a lot of nuance that’s going to continue to complicate things. But what about a macrobiotic diet that includes bacteria designed to secrete small amounts of pain killers?

DI: Okay, so continuing to regulate the line between natural and not is complicated. But won’t somebody think of the children? Isn’t telling our youth that it’s all right to trade their health and longevity for success damaging?

B: That’s what sports already do. Even athletes that don’t take performance enhancing drugs are putting their bodies through tough exercise regimens with constant stress on them, and frequent injuries. Even sidestepping the amount of people football grinds up and spits out, athletes tend to trade time off their life for their sport. As someone who kept himself in peak physical condition for nearly thirty years, and engaged in some of the most demanding and damaging activities you can find, I can tell you, it took its toll. I took Venom less than a year, so the side effects I’ve suffered were fairly minimal from that. But there are days I have so much pain I can’t get out of bed- at least not until I get some pain relief. And that’s the reality of modern athletics.

DI: Okay, but do you regret using drugs- as someone who is frequently held up as a role model for children?

B: But I’m not a role model for children. I wasn’t plastering myself on the sides of cereal boxes or putting toys into happy meals, I was trying to help people. Even the merchandising, that was all done for charity- and I think even most children can understand the difference between the cartoon caricature and me doing what I’ve done.

But on the record, I regret my use of Venom. But that’s because it made me irrationally aggressive, even violent- not because it was wrong on the morals. If I had to trade time off my life to save that little girl, to just save that one little girl I failed to save- I’d do it. In a heartbeat. And I wouldn’t feel bad about it.

DI: So the take-away from you is that there should be a decision at the organizational level to use performance enhancers or not in sports, right?

B: Generally, yeah.

DI: And do you know of any heroes currently operating who take performance enhancing substances?

B: No- even among people who don’t believe there’s anything wrong with enhancers, there’s still a stigma about it. But I’d be surprised if I was the only one who ever did.

DI: And given what we’ve been discussing, do you think that’s wrong?

B: I think if it’s an issue of vanity, either to look bigger, or to perform better, purely as a function of ego, that’s wrong, or at least counterproductive. I think steroids and other current enhancers often have nasty side effects, and that having compulsory, de facto steroid use in sports is wrong, too. It’s a choice, not just for the commissioners, but for each player to make, too. There may come a day when players are forced to choose between enhancement and not playing the game anymore- which is unfortunate, but could be the reality.

But as for our League, I’d say that I think anyone who puts their own health at risk to try and help people- whether it’s through enhancement or just walking into a burning building- that’s the definition of a hero. And I’m proud that I know so many people who fit that description.

The Poor Man’s Economic Argument

2011-06-18T06:39:00.001-07:00

B: I’m a businessman, but only in the loosest of meanings of the word. I don’t spend my nights hovering over financials. I don’t personally oversee hiring, firing, buying- I’m a businessman in the most abstract of terms.

At my level, I speak in generalities. Because when you’re making multi-billion dollar decisions, spreadsheets don’t win people over. You still need those, because other people operating at this level had their own accountants who want to make sure the numbers add up, but to win over the bosses, you have to be able to craft a story.

And I think I finally have one for this economy.

Imagine our economy is a poor man. He works hard, but he doesn’t make enough to pay all his bills. So he’s deeply in debt.

Then he becomes ill. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s that kind of long, lingering illness that will stay with you for weeks, perhaps months, if untreated. He manages to go to work, but his productivity plummets, and his piece-rate wage dips.

So now he’s ill, and having even more difficulty making his bills. He’s worried that perhaps his credit can’t take the hit.

He’s not sure what to do. Medicine, and good food, could help him get healthy faster. It would also mean going deeper into debt. But there’s the chance that if he gets healthy faster, his productivity might go back up fast enough to make up for whatever extra debt he took on. He could even come out of it ahead.

It’s essentially the same argument I’ve been making, and it’s the same one Paul Krugman has, as well- though this is certainly closer to a parable.

DI: But the nutshell, basically, is that austerity during a fiscal crisis might be counterproductive.

B: Exactly. If the economy were healthy, telling the man in our scenario to do more to live within his means would be completely appropriate. But with a frail economy, it is harder to see how doubling-down on shrinking the economy is a good idea.

DI: Okay, you lost me.

B: Government spending doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It goes to contractors and workers who then filter that money to other parts of the economy. If that money suddenly disappears, then it takes money out of the economy. Put another way, a highway construction worker who eats a cheeseburger every day for lunch who gets laid off is no longer buying that cheeseburger. Worse, you’re only partially defraying the costs, since he’s likely to go on unemployment, so you’re still paying for some of his work, only with none of his productivity.

There’s nothing wrong with asking how large a government we should have, what functions it should provide, and how much we’re willing to pay for it. But I’m worried that the spending cuts we’re looking at now, they aren’t helpful, and they may even be like ancient physicians trying to bleed a patient back to health.

DI: I want to come back to your specific formulation, there. You were very deliberate in saying “how much we’re willing to pay” for government. Why was that?

B: Because it’s unfair to say, “this is how much I want to pay” for something. Ideally, government would be free. In a perfect world, food and shelter would be free, too. And when I stop at a burger place, I don’t want to pay seven bucks for a burger- but that’s how much it costs, after paying for the ingredients, the rent, the staff, and a reasonable margin of profit for the owners.

And government exists largely within the same constraints. I don’t want to pay $1300 per person for Medicare, but that’s how expensive it is- and those costs are 40% cheaper than private insurance would be.

There’s tension, between how much we want government to be able to do for us, and how much of that we’re willing to pay for. And that’s certainly a discussion we should be having, on a continual basis that we aren’t.

I see similar problems in discussions of the debt ceiling. A majority of Americans favor not raising the debt ceiling.

I understand those poll results, in the context that people conflate the debt with the budget. But the ceiling isn’t the budget. The ceiling is the credit card bill. These are things that previous Congresses approved, laws already enacted, spending already carried out. This is money owed, money that other people are expecting to come in- that individuals and businesses and potentially entire economies are counting on.

Part of the reason the financial crisis had such reverberations is that people who were responsible, who shouldn’t have been in trouble, suddenly weren’t being paid for services rendered. But the government is several times larger than any failed company- and the splash its default would make is tough to even comprehend.

But the worst problem is that even when the ceiling gets its eventual raise, this grandstanding about not raising the debt limit could drop our credit rating.

DI: Crap. And then our rates go up. And we enter the debt death-spiral basically anyone whose ever been poor or in college is familiar with- and that includes journalists who paid their way through school. But can’t not fixing our debt problems also destroy our credit?

B: This is definitely a danger. But what markets want is long-term sustainability. They want to see that the government is going to be able to keep paying it’s bills. One way to do that is to stop using the heat in the house. The other is to bring home more revenue.

And there’s nothing- save for the Republican leadership- saying we can’t try a combination of both. My preference has always been for finding ways that the government can be leaner, without destroying its ability to help its citizens. And frankly there are a lot of people out there who don’t pay their fair share of the taxes- largely because of a disparity of lobbying power.

DI: Okay, I think we’ve filled out space quota. But you know what happens whenever you rant politically, don’t you? We live-write some more Wonder Woman pilot. The last bit was here, but why don’t you give us a quick, “Last time one Wonder Woman” synopsis.

B: Last time, on Wonder Woman, she punched me through a window to safeguard a woman wanted in connection with a murder investigation. We open on Cale Pharmaceuticals, specifically their Gotham research facility. Diana is dressed in smart business attire, with her hair up in a bun.

DI: Sounds very naughty librarian.

B: She’s only there to observe. She’s with Detective Bullock, overweight and overbearing, with a cadre of uniformed officers. They’re investigating the claims about Kapatellis.

DI: You’re telling, not showing.

B: Diana watches as Veronica Cale, who flew there in her helicopter, argues with Bullock about the validity of his warrant. Her lawyer gave up minutes ago, but she’s still staring angrily at Bullock.

Bullock:
Amanda Waller, Department of Metahuman Affairs. She’s the person you’ll have to take that up with. The ambassador is here as a courtesy; the information for our warrant came from her embassy. Everything else, including the thousand dollar words and the ten-thousand dollar mouthpiece, are above my paygrade. Now if you’ll allow me through, I’d hate to have to charge you with obstruction.

Her lawyer nods, and Cale steps out of the way. Diana and Cale exchange an icy stare, but Diana plays her cards close to the vest. She believes Cale is up to something, but isn’t ready to stake her name and reputation on it. Yet.

We cut to cops looking through lab material. And cut again, to the cops leaving, tails between their legs. Cale is triumphant. Bullock is talking to Diana.

Bullock.
Nuthin.

Diana:
Nothing?

Bullock:
No Kapatellis, none of the equipment you expect to find, either. Looks clean.

Cale:
You were expecting, what? Frankenstein monsters and imprisoned orphans? This is a pharmaceutical company in Gotham, not the Liberal conception of a third world sweat shop. Now if you’re done, I have a business to run.

Bullock tips his hat at Cale.

Bullock:
Ma’am.

Are you going to join in anytime soon?

DI: Sorry. I was transfixed by that accent you were doing for Bullock.

B:

Lawyer:
Unless you require anything further, I can start drafting a harassment complaint against the Amazon.

She waves him away with her hand. The solid wall behind her shimmers, and a man, handsome and tall, steps through where it had been.

DI: Behind him, we can see indeed a grotesque menagerie of scientific and surgical apparatuses. Bathed largely in shadow is the face of a young woman.

Doctor:
They only saw what we wanted them to see.

B:

Cale:
Thank you, Edgar.

DI: We zoom in on that face in the background, as the woman eye opens wide, panicked and afraid. Cut to black.

B: And a commercial break?

DI: You aren’t that lucky. We’re back on the sidewalk. Diana exits the building. We see a black limousine parked on the curb.

B: Don’t.

DI: We here a man’s voice from offscreen, behind Diana.

Bruce:
Diana. I didn’t expect to see you back in Gotham so soon.

DI: She recognizes the voice, and smiles as she turns to see Bruce Wayne.

B:

Diana:
Bruce, how are the ribs?

Bruce:
Fine.

Diana:
You’re breathing heavily.

DI:

Bruce:
You have that effect on men.

B: I hate you.

Diana:
I’m sorry.

DI: He can’t let it go that easily. But then he smiles, wide, because they’re not alone anymore.

Bruce:
Always a pleasure, Madame Ambassador. And I’ll have my office get in touch with yours about that fundraiser.

You shake hands, and yours lingers, just a moment. There’s a lot in that handshake.

And now we mercifully go to commercial.

I Can See Your Underpants

2011-06-11T07:44:00.001-07:00

DI: Okay, now I have something to ask you. You’re usually a pretty practical guy. So I assume that even when you do something strange, you do it for a reason. So why did you where your underwear outside your pants.

B: You’ll have to be more specific. But if you’re talking about last New Years, I’d have to say liquor.

DI: Cute. But no, I’m talking about your costume. Black or blue underpants on the outside? Were you just trying to copy Clark, or what?

B: He has the excuse of it being a Kryptonian design. I, well, I needed extra support. And protection. The earliest costume I wore, which didn’t last long, was basically just a black unitard. That got replaced quite early on, because I kept getting hit in the balls. Even untrained criminals know to aim for the weak points, apparently. Even the costume that followed was basically still a unitard, only with several sheets of Kevlar sewn into the chest. The crotch padding was difficult, though, because without having the suit custom-sewn, it was going to cause a really odd crotch bulge. Alfred had the bright idea of making the padding part of a design that looked almost like underpants- I was afraid it would make me look like I was wearing a diaper, but it had the effect of leading the eyes away from the bulge. After I adopted a sleaker, more armored design to the costumes, it was pretty simple to conceal the padding, but at that point the design had become a part of the persona, and it kind of stuck. I’ve used hundred of different costumes through the years, so not all of them had the underpants design- but there it is. Mystery solved.

DI: But on that note, DC Comics, the subsidiary to Warner whom you and the League lease your license rights to for the sake of charity, are relaunching most of their books. And there’s apparently an editorial edict, one demanding that all of the female characters cover up their legs. Notably, this has effected characters like Zatanna- known popularly for her magical feats and fishnet leggings- though not necessarily in that order.

B: That’s a travesty.

DI: You say, as someone quite familiar with Zatanna and her leggings.

B: Careful.

DI: I don’t meant to imply anything by it. Just that you’re at the very least friendly with her. Colleagues. And I’m sure, as a connoisseur of the female form, you’ve at least taken in the sight.

B: She’s a friend. And we’ve worked together, extensively. She’s a hell of a magician- and she’s got some excellent legs- a fact I know she’s proud of.

DI: Really?

B: Of course. You can’t magic up legs like that. She works out. She shows them off because she’s proud of them. There’s also an element of distraction to it, too, but that isn’t all of it.

DI: Hmm. Because of a fairly recent change to her costume, at least in comics, Wonder Woman isn’t being affected. In fact, her costume change seems to be a precursor. What did you think about that, when it happened?

B: I agree with Gloria Steinem’s reaction, actually- which extends to the entire line. Making it so superheroes have to wear pants make it seem like only pants are powerful. Which is of course blatantly untrue. She cited the ancient Greeks, who basically wore armored skirts into battle, and sumo wrestlers. What’s more insidious, I think, is that it takes away choice from the equation. I think Diana said something similar, in her response about the MAC make-up collection she endorsed, but feminism should be about choice.

DC having the standard heroine costume be skimpy is sexist. Dictating that heroines cover-up, almost burqa-like, is just as sexist. It might make it harder to objectify them, but it’s no less sexist. And more to the point, the new costumes are still skin-tight, the art used on them still ridiculously over-accentuates the female form. There are lots of things DC could do to make their heroines both more realistic and healthier representations of femininity, but forcing all of them into pants is not one of them.

Speaking of Diana specifically, her usual outfit, the one-piece bathing suit, is the casual version. Her actual costume looks a lot like Greek armor- the one-piece is what she wears under all the leather armor. But unless she’s planning on being smacked around with a sword and a shield, wearing around the armor everywhere is impractical- not to mention uncomfortable. And she sweats in it. A lot.

DI: And nobody wants to buy BO Wonder Woman action figures.

B: No. And I know how that feels. I’ve got some armor that’s basically everything-proof; anything short of someone drop a Sherman tank on my head wouldn’t hurt. But my entire body smells like the inside of a marching boot for a week after wearing it.

DI: And is your opinion maybe the least bit biased by having spent time with women in phenomenal shape who seem to have a collective aversion to fabric.

B: Of course. I am an unapologetic admirer of the female body. Always have been. But I’m pretty sure that’s a biologic necessity- not something to feel ashamed of.

DI: Even though you came out?

B: Just because I’m no longer looking to buy a new sports car doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate ones that drive down the street.

DI: I can’t tell if you’re ironically objectifying women.

B: I’d say it’s more accurately categorized as a metaphor. Women are of course people, with thoughts, feelings, desires and the right to be treated with respect. But that doesn’t mean men can’t or shouldn’t appreciate the way they look, or how the way they look makes us feel. And vice versa. We’re all of us human beings, and our sexuality is very much a part of the experience of being human. It doesn’t make sense to deny that part of ourselves.

Batman is a Dick

2011-06-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

DI: You’re a dick.

B: And you’re stupid. What are we doing here?

DI: You’re insulting me, apparently.

B: Oh, and you’re ugly.

DI: Quit it. My point was you’ve developed a reputation for being… strident.

B: You just called me a dick. Why are you trying to walk it back now?

DI: I’m not, it’s just that I bought a thesaurus and want to justify my purchase through the gratuitous use of synonyms.

B: I don’t know if ‘strident’ is quite right.

DI: My thesaurus had no suggestions for ‘bite me.’ But you’ve got a habit of being frank.

B: Only when I get tired of being Bruce.

DI: So the one time I actually want to talk about you being a jerk, you’re doing shtick? Which I guess is pretty dicky. Kudos. But that kind of forthrightness, before I knew you were Bruce Wayne, I always figured it was from social ineptitude. But see, in your day to day, you’re witty, charming, personable- you know how to socialize, you just don’t like to. So where did that come from?

B: Well, when I first started out, it wasn’t a thing to put on a costume and punch people- I mean, outside of specific brothels that catered to that sort of thing in Amsterdam, anyway.

DI: Wait, are you saying you’ve frequented S & M clubs in Amsterdam?

B: Just that I’m familiar with them. Personally I’ve never had the time. Being the CEO of a multibillion multinational company, plus my preference for staying close to Gotham-

DI: Talk about that.

B: My parents were killed because of crime. My alter ego we’ll call him, was created to fight crime, to cut the odds of that ever happening to another little boy or girl. Every night that I stay outside of Gotham, is an opportunity for that to happen again. I can’t stop every crime- but if I was out there, on the streets, then I did my best. But if I wasn’t there because I was doing whatever in Holland- it’s just not even a choice for me.

DI: Okay. But as you were saying.

B: Right. When I first started training, there weren’t really superheroes- outside of the pulp stories, you know, the Phantom, the Shadow, Zorro. I think by the time Alfred had finished sewing my first costume Clark was flying around in that garish unitard, but he and I were the first on the scene- at least, the first we knew about. Later we met some of the older, retired heroes, your Jay Garricks and your Alan Scotts- the ones who came and went before our time.

DI: Should you be using their real names?

B: Well, the funny story there is, they were the original Flash and Green Lanterns. But later on, others took up their monikers. But they continued being personalities, particularly in the campaign for elderly rights, working with the AARP and the Justice Society, under their real names.

But Clark and I were the first in a masked man renaissance. Pretty shortly after we met Diana. And it wasn’t too long before we formed the Justice League, which I know Clark has talked about at length.

DI: And which we’ll have to, at some point.

B: But most of the people we met, they weren’t like Clark or Diana. They made me nervous, because they were both so powerful, yet so inexperienced. But they had carriage; almost from the start I always assumed they would both remain on the up and up.

But that didn’t go for all of the others we met. I don’t like shaming people I worked with, but Plastic Man is an idiot. He knows it. And despite any and all my efforts to get him to mature, just a little, he’ll probably always be an idiot. And I don’t suffer fools lightly. It might have been a game to people who suddenly found themselves with the power to alter matter, but for me, I was a normal person, easily damaged, as were most of the people we were working to help.

Or maybe it’s just that I watched my parents bleed out on a sidewalk. I was as intimate with the consequences of failing at our task as anyone could be. Even the idea that I might be made responsible for that happening to someone else made me see red. I still get a little pissy about it, honestly. It’s not a burden required of any of us, but once we took it up, we owed it to those we were trying to save to be professional and do what we could.
DI: So you were like the drill sergeant whose harsh, but only because he really cares?

B: I don’t know if I’d characterize it exactly like that.

DI: Okay, here’s your chance to define yourself, then. Do you think you’re a dick?

B: I think sometimes it makes sense to be terse. I think sometimes it’s helpful to have someone willing to make an unpopular decision.

DI: So you are a Dick- in the vein, no pun intended, of Dick Cheney!

B: I think the difference between me and the former Vice President is that I don’t relish it. I don’t go out of my way looking for reasons to be a dick.

Working in the league, there were a lot of people who didn’t have a military or police background, people who would have benefited from some formal training. Sometimes I had to come down on them, hard, before they managed to screw up in a catastrophic way, in public.

DI: So you’d say you lean more towards Darth Vader, then. Without the child-murdering, back-stabbing and general evil, obviously.

B: Then what’s left? My penchant for wearing black?

DI: And the heavy breathing. Kidding. Though you do have an almost James Earl Jonesy voice when you’re pissed off. Say, “Come to the dark side.”

B: No.

DI: How about, “Simba, you must bite your uncle.” Damn- I thought I’d remember something more specific from the Lion King.

B: If I admit to wishing I could force-choke people on occasion will you stop?

DI: Yes. Maybe.

B: I find your lack of clarity disturbing.

DI: Awesome. Chills. And goose bumps. Want to feel them?

B: No.

DI: Fair enough.

Budgeting for Time

2011-05-28T07:35:00.001-07:00

B: I know you hate it when I talk politics

DI: Personally, I’m fascinated- it’s just that I can hear the torrent of readers clicking away in either boredom or outright political hostility

B: But now that 40 Senate Republicans have voted in favor of it, it’s long past time we talk about the Ryan budget.

DI: Okay. But as compensation for the good folks for putting up with you, we add in another scene in our Wonder Woman pilot script.

B: Fine.

DI: But first, because not everyone spends as much time plugged into the political debate as you, give us the basics of what the Ryan budget is.

B: In a nutshell, what this plan does, is carve about 3 trillion dollars out of Medicare and Medicaid, and hand out about 3 trillion dollars to corporations and the rich in tax cuts. It’s practically a straight swap.

There are vague murmurs in the plan to do things to offset the tax cuts, namely ending tax breaks, but given the general hostility to those measures in the past, anything that isn’t carved in stone and signed in blood is about as believable as the promise of a unicorn pony for your birthday.

DI: So you’re saying because it’s harder to do, it just won’t get done?

B: I’m stating that by not even listing which tax breaks he wants to end, Ryan is signaling, discreetly, that he doesn’t really want to end any of them. But what’s shocking is that this isn’t coming from some lone nut- it isn’t one of those Ron Paul ideas. Paul Ryan is the guy they put in charge of the House Budget Committee. Under the auspices of the Republican party, he drafted this budget, and 235 out of 239 Republicans in the House voted for this budget; and now 40 Republican Senators. If the party had their way, this would be our country.

Now, you can make the argument that maybe they didn’t read the bill, that they were just following orders, but is that really a better outcome? Either those representatives are incompetent, or they’re vicious, bordering upon evil.

DI: There aren’t any supervillains in this debate to punch- but I seem to remember you mentioning something else; your background is in business, so as a businessman, how does this look to you?

B: As a budget, the absolute worst portion is the fact that it caps revenue. Capping at a historical average doesn’t make sense. The cost of our military, and of our healthcare, and of so many functions of our government, have gone up. And more than anything, it’s the cost of health care that’s expected to cause future budgetary issues. We do have a revenue issue- caused in large part by the Bush Tax cuts. I’d like to share a graph, here.

DI: Okay. But you said yourself earlier in the year that everyone was going to have to sacrifice. Isn’t the Ryan plan what sacrifice looks like?

B: For the poor and elderly, yes. And if our budget were that dire, maybe everyone would have to suffer to that extent. But this is America, and we’re still the richest country in the world. By miles. Our economy is almost 3 times the size of China’s, and is about the size of the economies of the entire European Union.

It’s entirely within our grasp to balance our budget without cutting these programs to the bone. The Progressive Caucus in the House put out a plan that balances the budget in a decade. During that time, it would cut the debt by 10%. I don’t want to belabor this too much, but it goes far beyond just. I’m not even making a case for this specific budget- merely that this budget is far more logical and centrist than the Ryan budget plan, and that we needn’t behave like we’re going from a first world to a third world nation.

This argument is about a different view of America. The Progressive budget attempts to keep the country’s position as a leader, not just financially, but as a leader in technology and ideas. It’s about securing our place in this century, comparable to our place in the last. I have sons- adopted, yes- but I love them enough that I don’t want to give them a diminished America. The Progressive budget proves we don’t have to- certainly not to the extent Ryan wishes.

Look, I don’t care if people don’t think the same way I do, I don’t care if they come to different conclusions. But we need to think these things through. We need to know what it is we’re endorsing when we vote. The fate of our nation is very much at stake, here.

DI: All right, monkey, you’ve had your say, now dance for the people.

B: Uh, where were we?

DI: We’d just gotten through that first opening moment with the interviewer, and Diana’s impassioned defense of force.

B: Right.

DI: Interviewer
I’d like to switch gears. You wear a lot of hats- most of them tiaras- but how do you balance your roles?

B: Diana considers.

Diana
It’s mostly a question of need, and of impact. Sometimes it means I have to make difficult decisions. But thankfully, most diplomatic meetings can be rescheduled, whereas interventions can’t. I really feel bad for Etta; she’s the one who gets yelled at by foreign secretaries while I’m out saving people.

DI: Interviewer
Well, the reason I ask this is because recently you were involved in an incident. The so-called Wellys Affair. If the reports are to be believed, this even put you at odds with the vigilante knows as Batman. Would you like to tell us more about that?

We cut to daytime. Her punching you through that second floor window in the embassy- I’m sure you remember the picture, the one that was on the front page of USA Today, starting our story in media res.

B: Thanks for that. We see Diana look out the hole where the window used to be. She’s full of fury, in that instant after she threw that punch that cracked a few of my ribs. She takes a breath, and she’s suddenly calm again. She steps through the hole, and floats gracefully down to the sidewalk where I landed. A pedestrian, several of whom have gathered, helps me up. We stay in my POV, because we want me not to be the story. Her expression is pained.

Diana
I’m sorry for that. But the embassy is my home. I won’t let anyone remove a political asylum seeker from Themiscyran sole- not even you.

DI: But you can’t help yourself, can you? You choke out:

Bruce
She’s a murderer.

B: I hope you enjoyed putting words in my mouth.

Diana
She’s under my protection. That’s all you need to know.

It becomes clear that the crowd isn’t just pedestrians, as several of the people begin asking Diana questions, and one of them starts taking pictures. One voice, a reporter we’re both familiar with, breaks through the crowd.

Lois
Lois Lane, Daily Planet. Diana. Are you saying, point of factly, that you are prepared to defend a murder suspect from justice, including other members of the League such as

Lois turns to gesture to me, but I’m grappling away. She turns back to Diana, hoping for an answer, but she’s already flying back inside the embassy.

DI: Wow. Now I’d buy that for a nickel. You think we’ve made enough story progression for a commercial break? After all, Wonder Woman is bound to sell mountains of tampons and panty hose. Do they still advertise panty-hose on TV? Am I dating myself with that?

B: We follow Diana back into the embassy. A young girl, Danielle Wellys, is terrified.

DI: You do have that effect on people.

B: Wellys
Is he gone?

DI: Diana
He won’t stay away. He can’t. I can’t protect you here indefinitely.

B: Not exactly what she said- but not a terrible guess, either.

Diana (cont’d)
So you need to tell me everything you can about Cale Pharmaceuticals.

DI: No way. Veronica Cale’s company?

B: You forgot, so far this is all based around something that happened- so we can use her name. And Cale Pharmaceuticals is just a tiny portion of Cale’s empire. But it was her first- her baby- and she takes its flagging business personally. She sees Diana’s successes as easy, and her own failures as tragic. In many ways, Veronica is the Lex Luthor to Diana’s Superman; but I feel for Veronica. Maybe because she hasn’t, to this date, committed massive atrocities against civilian populations. Though what she did to Kapatelis was a step in that direction.

DI: You’re getting ahead of yourself- and possibly spoiling things.
B: Sorry. Now we cut to a commercial break.

DI: All that build-up, to cut to a commercial?

B: Always leave the people wanting more, remember?

DI: Crap, that was supposed to be my line.

Sir Charles

2011-05-21T07:37:00.001-07:00

DI: Just to avoid any undue confusion from casual surfers with this title, I’m not looking to talk about the recent royal wedding; I wanted to bring up Charles Barkley (and the Round Mound of Rebound sounded a bit too dirty, to me).

B: I shudder to know why.

DI: Because he was quoted by the Washington Post, specifically talking about gays in the locker room. It was itself a reaction to Rick Welts, the President and CEO of the Phoenix Suns, coming out in a New York Times story.

B: Yeah, I know Rick. Socially, though- not personally.

DI: But, and given the general abrasiveness of Barkley’s persona, maybe this will come as a shock, but he didn’t really care about it. He even said he knew at least two of the three teams he played for had homosexual players, and still had excellent chemistry, excellent morale and played decently well enough. Barkley specifically said he was less critical of good gay players than he was of bad straight ones.

B: That’s very enlightened.

DI: He also mentions that he gets irritated when ESPN says that players can’t come out, that there would be open hostility to gay players in the lockers rooms. And that he doesn’t like being told how he thinks or feels. He knew there were gay players. And it’s unfair, maybe even stupid, to assume that most athletes couldn’t handle that reality.

B: You know, there’s something to that. In the League, some of the guys you’d think would be the most sensitive to the subject- or even the most hostile- were the ones who’d say, “So?” I think it’s just one of those things, where the first time someone showers in the same room as a gay person, there can be tension, and they’re a little leery, but as time goes on and nothing untoward happens, they get used to it. It becomes less of a thing.

DI: They acclimate.

B: Right.

DI: Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt so much as acceptance.

B: Exactly. Even understanding. I remember, and I won’t say his name, but a member of our League had a very outspoken reaction to one of our colleagues coming out. So outspoken, that he was almost sanctioned for it.

DI: Sanctioned? What would that have entailed?

B: Basically we told him that if he couldn’t at a minimum keep what amounted nearly to hate speech in check, he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the League.

And we kept him away from any of the known homosexuals, anytime we had missions. It’s one thing to ask someone to be civil, another entirely to put him into positions where he wasn’t comfortable. But on some of our bigger disaster responses, there’s no way to keep teams or individuals separate. So he ended up working with homosexual heroes in the field.

And last year, he ended up in an altercation, where a group of men were harassing a gay hero. And he intervened- loudly- on his behalf. He was very passionate. He’s got an explosive temper, so that’s maybe not surprising, but just being around gay people had helped him see that there wasn’t anything to hate there. And I’ve seen the same with Muslims, Jews- even women, actually, if you can believe that, in this day and age. People are uncomfortable with the unknown- until they get to know it. Then it becomes part of their experience, and mundane.

DI: To get back to Barkley just a moment, I think it all comes down to the locker room question, whether or not people feel comfortable showering around someone who thinks of them as a viable romantic candidate. Surely you’ve dealt with that in the League.

B: But that question itself is problematic, because inherently it implies that homosexuals are more promiscuous, to the point of pouncing on straight people without regard for the inappropriateness of a locker room come-on.

DI: But aren’t homosexuals more promiscuous? I mean, you’re probably a bad example, because when you were dating women you were a man-whore, and it seems now you’re more reserved, but in general, or maybe statistically.

B: But the statistics aren’t really the issue. Even if, and I don’t know that I’ve seen an untainted study to that effect, homosexuals are more promiscuous, that isn’t the same as being inappropriately sexually aggressive. And promiscuity likely comes, in part, from lacking the same kinds of social norms. Straight people are raised with the idyllic fairy tale of the picket-fenced house, the family with two and a half kids, and the virginal wedding. Gay people can’t have those things- though there are some available facsimiles like civil unions and adoption. But we’re still in the process of building the gay American dream.

But even beyond that, promiscuity isn’t the same as hitting on people in the restroom, or the showers, or the changing room, at work. And while we’re on the subject of inappropriate sexual expression, promiscuity and homosexuality are not the same as pedophelia, either.

DI: Whoa. I might play devil’s advocate, but I wasn’t-

B: You might not have been, and you’re likely smart enough not to, but the conflation can and does happen- far too frequently for it to be just a mistake. But for clarity, I’m going to say it again: being gay, even being gay and promiscuous, is not the same as inappropriate sexual expression. I understand that some people disagree with homosexuality, and might even consider it divergent, but even to them, it shouldn’t be hard to see the difference between divergent sex between consenting adults on the one hand and sexual molestation and harassment on the other.

DI: Trawling TNR, I came across more coverage of Barkley. I didn’t know he’s been mulling a Gubernatorial run in Alabama. He’s colorful, but I was actually a little surprised, I know, stereotyping athletes, but surprised at how wide and varied his ideas about politics are.

B: Yeah. Charles is an interesting and articulate guy.

DI: Throw in bright and clean and you can be just as offensive as the Vice President.

B: Please. Biden’s word-choice was problematic, but there wasn’t racial coding there.

DI: So one old white guy wants to give another old white guy a pass?

B: And the young white guy wants to get his ass kicked by an old white guy? If you give Biden reasonable doubt, that the meaning of clean was supposed to either imply clean-cut or to not have the baggage of a Jesse Jackson, then no, I don’t think it was racial coding. Joe doesn’t come from 1950s Mississippi, he’s from Delaware.

And what I’ve always taken away from the statement was him saying that Obama was a different kind of African American candidate- as opposed to Jackson or Sharpton- who wasn’t just running on a civil rights background; I think that was always the inherent issue with their candidacies- and by extension the candidacy of any mostly single-issue candidate.

DI: Though civil rights and race is more a point of view about issues than a single issue itself- but if you’re running as the African American candidate, who has fought for civil rights in your community, it does make it harder to win over voters outside of that group- especially when other groups often view civil rights as a zero sum game, where advancement for one group is at cost of another.

B: In that same ballpark, I assumed, back in 2007, I think it was, that Obama was sunk after people started openly questioning whether he was black enough.

DI: So do you think he is?

B: I think it’s an unbelievably stupid question. For one, any kind of a reductionist litmus test is absurd; it places a positive value on adhering to a stereotype. Am I rich enough? White enough? Gay enough? All pretty ludicrous questions.

DI: Then why were you concerned that the question was being asked about Obama?

B: Well, at the time he was still a relative unknown, politically. He’d only been on the national stage for three years. He’s a gifted speaker, and seemed like a smart enough guy. But if he couldn’t even solidify support amongst African Americans- a stronger voting bloc for the Democrats there isn’t, and who in the primary at least would have been more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt- I didn’t think he would be able to overcome Clinton. Of course, I now realize that was naïve. I was still giving the media more credit than it deserved for being relevant.

DI: So you’re saying the media isn’t relevant anymore?

B: I’m saying that its old position as a gatekeeper of information is no longer relevant- and that particularly today they aren’t even very good at it, anymore. The media has two basic goals in reportage: to inform and entertain. Both can get you ratings, though I think it’s fair to say entertainment value is king. But increasingly, media outlets chase entertainment like greyhounds after an electronic rabbit- and information is largely left to fend for itself. So the fact that a few people questioned Obama’s blackness- it was anecdotal, and in no way indicative of the general mood of African American voters- which meant it was even less relevant as a gauge of American voters in general.

DI: I want to go back, because as a journalist it’s always fun to accuse somebody of racism in the form of a question [with all due serendipitous apology to both David Gregory and Newt Gingrich]: why would you think African American voters would have a biased affinity for a black candidate?

B: Because statistics don’t lie: voters want to vote for people like themselves. This is true of race. Of gender. Of class. Even personality, to an extent. If Al Gore had been as personable as George W. Bush, he would have been President- way beyond the margin of a few hundred contested votes from Florida.

It’s not the only factor. Policies matter. Experience matters. Name recognition matters. But if a voter can connect themselves with a candidate, everything else is easier. And for African Americans, the pulled up by his bootstraps Obama from relative poverty and obscurity is certainly more relatable than the white-privileged Southern lawyer who stuck by her cheating President husband. Demographically, if Obama couldn’t win over African Americans, he could never have beaten Clinton, and would have fared even worse in the general. Not because African American votes are that large a bloc, but because if he can’t connect with those most likely to relate to him, then the chances of his relating to anyone are lower.

DI: And that’s not racist?

B: No, it’s evolutionary. We like people like us because those like us were more likely to help us survive. Those who didn’t group together fared poorer; those who grouped well thrived. But the easiest grouping, the most comfortable, is the familiar. You can trust them because they’re like you, and from nearby, and want similar things. It’s just a look back into man’s evolutionary history. Perhaps it’s a little… vestigial, at this point, but it doesn’t make it any less real.

And at the same time, in this country, it’s impossible to recognize that there are differences to growing up black in this country as opposed to white. It’s still fair to say there’s a black experience that, at least generally, differs from the white experience in America.

DI: But isn’t a lot of that the same kind of liberal apologia that you hear about African American crime rates?

B: There are no excuses. None. For going into crime. But it’s short-sighted and foolish not to look at the circumstances that create crime, and try to mitigate them. Because fighting crime is a losing battle. I’ve done it for years, and barely made a dent. But the work I’ve done with the poor, with youth centers and charities, with organizations that provide scholarships and educational resources- that work has done more actual, measurable good than all of my costumed exploits. Eight years ago I actually ahd Oracle start tracking the statistics, so I can say this is a fact: depriving crime the fertile soil of poverty in which to grow is the best way to stop it. Period. Whenever there’s need, there’s going to be crime.

DI: But also wherever there’s greed.

B: That’s true. But greed’s a tougher thing to stamp out; and ironically, greed is often what creates need in the first place. And greed is something for law enforcement to cope with; need is something we can all impact.

Pilot Error

2011-05-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

DI: So you might be happy to hear that the Wonder Woman pilot was scrapped.

B: I’d heard rumblings. But of the many issues I had with the show, I think one of the most important aspects should be why she signed off on it in the first place.

DI: And why do you think that was?

B: You forget, I know her. And she told me. She’s unintentionally built up this persona, this almost allegation in the public sphere, for perfection. She chided me for perpetuating, it, actually. But she isn’t perfect.

She has thoughts. And fears. And even inconsistencies. She wanted people to be able to see what and who she’s really like. Because I think there’s a perception out there, either that she’s the Venus de Milo, perfection in stone, or that she’s just “superhero Barbie.” Even her activism is treated with the same derision that movie stars speaking about politics is.

DI: Hmm. I think I want to try something different. Between the two of us, I’m a writer, and you’re intimately familiar with her. So let’s give writing her pilot a shot. Right now. In real time.

The framing device, because I’m a uncreative journalist, is an interview setting. It creates an easy context for us to get viewers into Diana’s head without cheesy voice-overs or even cheesier girls-night-outing.

But we open on Diana, sleeping.

B: She’s mussed, but still oddly beautiful. Even asleep.

DI: Overlaid, we hear the voice of another woman:

Interviewer
Walk us through your typical day.

Diana’s eyes flutter open.

B: Diana
I wake up around 7 am.

DI: Cut to the interviewer, in smart business attire, sitting in Diana’s office, comfortable and even welcoming, but with an aura of respectability- after all, it’s also an embassy.

Interviewer
So you do sleep?

B: Diana laughs.

Diana
Five or six hours a night.

DI: We cut back to Diana, rising from bed.

B: Diana (voice-over)
I used to exercise in the morning, jog through Central Park. But these days, I jump right into business. My morning secretary, Etta, has been up since five, and she briefs me on my day’s activities, and anything that happened overnight.

DI: Etta enters, and they converse, unheard.

B: Diana (voice-over)
We eat breakfast together, usually something light, bagels and sliced fruit.

DI: We see the things you’re describing happen, so I don’t have to keep interrupting.

B: Diana (VO)
Usually by nine there’s important embassy work, meeting with dignitaries.

DI: We cut back for a moment to the interview.

B: Diana
My position as an ambassador means I get to help solve world problems. It’s gratifying, but it’s also necessary; that’s why it comes at the beginning of my day- it’s where I have the least give.

DI: Cut back to her day.

B: Diana (VO)
From there, I usually proceed to fundraisers or events. I usually spend the bulk of my daylight hours volunteering. Broken up occasionally by having to intervene in a situation.

DI: Cut back.

Interviewer
You mean fight crime.

B: Cut to Diana in costume, hoisting a gunman’s hands over his head, using her lasso thrown over a fire escape as a fulcrum, as a gray-haired woman he was mugging acts surprised.

Diana (VO)
Some might call it that.

The sounds of the interview fade away, and the background sounds of New York City fade in.

DI: I didn’t realize she operates out of New York.

B: She’s an ambassador to the UN. Where else would she be?

DI: Good point.

B: But we see Diana talking to the gunman, who is young, and nods his head. The sound fades in on Diana speaking. She’s soft, and intense a moment later.

Diana
Life is a gift. I love life- and I hate taking its gift away.

The gunman by this point is remorseful- and just the tiniest bit afraid.

Diana
So tell me: have you seen the error in your ways?

The moment is tense, and when he finally speaks, he’s nearly crying.

Gunman
Yes.

Her lasso, still around his wrists, glows brighter. She loosens it, and lets him go.

Diana
Go.

DI: The old woman is still there. She’s less happy about the escaping hoodlum.

Bitty
You should have punched his damn head off.

B: Diana isn’t surprised by the reaction. She walks with the old woman a moment.

Diana
Revenge is an easy answer. But it leaves part of the question nagging- to be asked again. I pray your safety and health.

DI: Wait- does that actually work?

B: Shockingly enough, it does. It wouldn’t, for me. I would have knocked his fool head off. But Diana, she has a presence. A certain quality that when she says things like that, people listen. Really just sit up and take notice. I’m actually referring to something I saw one day. And at the time I was pissed at her. I thought she let a mugger go free only to stick a gun in somebody else’s face. And given my history, that pushed buttons. So I tracked the guy. On his way home, he pawned the gun. From his address, I got his name, and kept track of him. He works for the sanitation department now, not so much as a parking ticket since.

Her approach works. New York has recidivism rates as high as 65%. Educational programs like the one at Rikers can cut that by ten percent. But Diana, less than a third of the people she talks to recidivate. She isn’t perfect. But you can see it in everything about her, that she tries. She’s an example for people to strive for. She makes you really want to be better.

DI: But don’t you think that in a way she’s an unachievable goal? I mean, she isn’t technically human, even.

B: Maybe. But I would place her more in the category with Michael Phelps, people who are extraordinary, and beyond the reach of normal people- but should still be held up as goals, achievable or otherwise. But you’re derailing our pilot: we cut back to the interview.

Diana
By this point Etta has gone home for the day, and my evening secretary, Mala, takes over for her.

Interviewer
Mala- she’s Amazonian, like yourself, right?

Diana
Yes. Officially, she’s deputy ambassador. But effectively, she helps me with the day to day; she’s usually the person in the chair at the UN. But my evenings are largely taken up by charity and awareness dinners. It sounds more fantastic than it is: squeezing into a dress to shake hands with dignitaries or wealthy socialites.

DI: Interviewer
Like Bruce Wayne?

B: Diana
Bruce and I are friends.

DI: Interviewer
That isn’t what US Weekly said.

B: Diana
He’s a humanitarian and a philanthropist. And we’ve known each other for years. But we aren’t together.

DI: Interviewer
So that means US Weekly was wrong, and both you and Bruce are on the market.

B: Diana
I won’t speak for Bruce, but I don’t really have the time. For every charity event I attend, there were three I couldn’t because they conflicted. And with all the preventable suffering in the world, looking for love just isn’t a priority.

DI: Interviewer
Apparently not- if even a billionaire playboy doesn’t catch your eye. Er. Sorry. But it sounds like you have a very busy schedule. But what does Wonder Woman do for fun?

B: Diana pauses a moment to think, then smiles.

Diana
This. I enjoy spending time with people. When I get free time, I like to read, the classics, poetry. I have a soft spot for Aristophanes- my mother read me Lysistrata when I was a girl.

DI: Interview
Seems a little crass for children’s literature.

B: Diana
But it was informative. Themyscira was founded by women looking for a different way. The Amazons co-existed with men for centuries, but left, when Amazons decided that men would always seek war and conflict. My ambassadorship is the reverse, trying to reach out the olive branch we learned to live by.

DI: Interview
By hitting people in the face?

B: Diana
Sometimes force is the only way to achieve justice, and justice is the only way to achieve peace.

DI: Interviewer
When liberty comes with her hands dabbled in blood, it is hard to shake hands with her.

B: Diana
I agree. My methods are imperfect, and often imprecise. But they are a match for our imperfect world- one I hope to make better.

DI: I actually got a little goose-bumpy, there. And I know you weren’t speaking in your own voice, you were, for lack of a better word, channeling Diana.

B: Diana is what Robert Fulghum was talking about when he said, “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” That’s what Kelley missed.

DI: This was fun. We might even have to do it again.

Holy Terror

2011-05-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

DI: Did you ever seriously consider going after bin Laden?

Bruce: Honestly? New York is in my backyard. I was surprised, frankly, when they got hit and we didn’t back in ’01. Like every other American, I wanted to find him. Unlike most Americans, there was a fantasy in my head that I actually could.

DI: Well, you are the goddamned Batman. I mean, if you don’t have the skills and resources to track down a man like that, who would?

B: But I don’t. I’ve had some training in manhunting. And I had enough wealth. But there are other kinds of resources. The annual intelligence budget for the US is about $50 billion dollars. But beyond their superior monetary resources, which admittedly are spread in a lot of directions, not all thrown at bin Laden, they have thousands upon thousands of people working every day to make contacts, and build networks. Now I’m very proud of the people I’ve worked with in Gotham, and a lot of them have placed themselves in far greater peril than I ever did, to stop criminals. But it took me a third of a lifetime to build that coalition. Starting from scratch to hunt bin Laden across Asia would have taken more lifetimes than I had left, and I knew that- at least after a few moments of contemplation.

DI: Fair enough. But as someone who’s spoken out against the death penalty, and even refuses to use lethal apprehension tech, how do you feel about his death, particularly the way it’s being celebrated in the US and other places? Do you think it has any parallels to the public response in the Middle East to the 9/11 attacks?

B: I think, for the most part, the reaction has been more restrained. For a decade, bin Laden has been the devil. Now the devil’s dead. It’s asking too much for us not to have a visceral reaction to that. But the difference is, people are happy to not have that sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, they aren’t happy that a human being is dead- they’re relieved, that a long, tragic nightmare for our country is over. Which is an admittedly naïve thought, but also an infectious one. I’ve felt it. I slept a little better the night I heard the news- I won’t lie.

As to the lethality of his apprehension, my methods were a choice, a personal one. Every time I went out, I was choosing to trade optimal stopping power for minimal lethality, and I was risking my life for a principle. It wouldn’t be right to ask, let alone expect, others in the same position to choose the same.

And while we don’t know at this point whether he died according to the rules of engagement, I’m more than inclined to give the soldiers on the ground the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of what television and films tell us, war is hell. When shots are being fired, when your life and the lives of people you care about protecting hang in the balance, you don’t always react the same way you would discussing it over stale coffee. Barring evidence that he was executed after being taken into custody, I’m willing to assume the soldiers acted in good faith.

DI: I’ll admit it, I’ve been kind of surprised at how it played out. I expected, especially after news that he’d been buried at sea, that al Qaeda would claim he hadn’t died, that we were full of crap. A denial would have stolen a feather out of Obama’s cap, and I think given ammunition to conservatives- especially those who see nefarious motives behind any government action.

B: I think for a while al Qaeda benefited from posturing against conservatives. You remember in ’04, when conservatives said that the terrorists wanted liberals to win because they would be soft on terrorism- similar to the usual smear about crime. Well I think in truth it was the opposite: terrorists liked have conservatives as a foil.

DI: You’re saying that the terrorists wanted conservatives to win? That’s… awfully inflammatory.

B: I’m not saying they agreed with their politics- I’m saying I think it helped them achieve their goals. Conservatives are linked with the religious right, and I think al Qaeda benefited from a philosophic war with Christianity. It let make it not about a petty political squabble, but link it back to the Crusades, and a Muslim’s holy duty- I can’t think of a more effective recruitment campaign, frankly. What they didn’t benefit from was an international pissing contest with a Christian cowboy. I think their not denying bin Laden’s death is in part a reversal of this policy, and an acknowledgement that they overplayed their hand.

DI: So you think Bush dealt with the terrorists well?

B: I’m not saying that. I’m saying that his response hurt them. The question that’s important is whether or not the damage we did to them was worth what it’s cost us, in terms of blood, in terms of treasure, in terms of prestige. And no, I obviously don’t think that the ends justify his particular means.

DI: So you don’t think we should ever have been in Afghanistan?

B: No- I’m saying we should have gone into Afghanistan, smashed the Taliban, salted the earth so it could never grow again, decimated any al Qaeda there, and seized bin Laden at Tora Bora. I’m saying the years of dithering, and the distraction of Iraq, were the issue, not the initial decision to join that conflict.

DI: Damn. I was hoping I’d caught you in a contradiction. We journalists live for the kind of stuff. But I was reading a BBC article about this, because it’s always fascinating to me to hear a voice outside of our influence sphere, about the Pakistani reactions to news of bin Laden’s death. And one Taliban fighter said near the end of the article, "Let them rejoice now - soon they will feel fear again."

B: It makes me think- terrorists are a superstitious and cowardly lot. If I were twenty years younger- and healthy- well, that’s wishful thinking, I suppose. But their own religion speaks to justice, and justice will find them. Sooner or later. And bin Laden’s demise is just further proof of that.

The American Way

2011-04-29T07:40:00.001-07:00

The American Way

DI: Superman just renounced his citizenship, allegedly because he’s tired of being conflated with the “American Way.”

Batman/Bruce: Huh?

DI: In the comics, obviously; would be a trick to do posthumously. What are your thoughts?

B: Honestly? It’s a stunt. Written by people who don’t understand the man. Just like you, asking me to comment on it, is a stunt. Shameless self-promotion, that’s the real American way.

DI: You speak of Clark in, and people familiar with you would know you don’t glow often, but glowing terms. Did you love him?

B: As a brother. As a friend. As family.

DI: But as a lover? Since you’ve come out, there’s all this metaness to your relationship.

B: He wasn’t my type.

DI: Because he was straight.

B: That certainly didn’t hurt. But we met when I identified more as a straight man. And our friendship was never anything more than platonic. I admired him; he was one of the best people I’ve ever known. Another’s Nelson Mandela, though nobody ever assumes I wanted to have sex with him.

DI: Do you? Or did you ever?

B: No, and no. Though I guess I can at least appreciate your consistency.

DI: There have been rumblings that since Superman was an alien and quasi-illegal anyway, him renouncing his citizenship is no big thing. But if you renounce your citizenship, then we have a problem. So how close are you to renouncing your citizenship?

B: Look, if I didn’t renounce my citizenship when Lex Luthor was President, I can’t imagine what could make me do it now. I’m a man of means. Whatever may happen in this country, I can weather the storm. That’s not true of everyone in the community. There are some older, retired heroes who actually do depend on Social Security and Medicare to get by.

DI: I feel like you’re shifting topics on me.

B: We haven’t talked in a while. I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to comment on the Ryan budget.

DI: The one he’s been booed over by seniors in his own district?

B: The same. It’s a bad budget. The only concrete numbers speak to two things: cutting entitlements and cutting taxes on the wealthy. It’s almost a straight-up exchange, Medicare for tax cuts. And I have to tell you, I don’t need another tax cut. I didn’t need the Bush tax cut. But the members of the Justice Society, they need their benefits.

DI: I remember hearing about them; loosely affiliated with the AARP, and also the League.

B: Yeah. We pay our members a pension. And we offered to pay the Society one, too, but they declined. They served their country, they said, and they trusted their country to take care of them- and if it couldn’t, then they would serve it again, as an example.

DI: So they’ve taken a vow of poverty, of a sort?

B: Kind of. They hope to forestall that, obviously. Elderly poverty is a real and consequential issue; it’s an issue at current rates of Medicare and Social Security. But cutting the programs, especially cutting them so very deeply as Representative Ryan has proposed, would cause more damage. And the reason, and I think quite intelligently, that if the image of the first Flash or Green Lantern, Atom, or even Mr. Terrific, underweight because they can’t afford enough food, would terrify even the most austere politician.

DI: Mr. Terrific? Oh God, the guy who wore the jacket with “Fair Play” stitched on the front in giant letters. Was our country really ever that young?

B: I don’t think anybody but Terrific was ever that naïve.

And I’ve said it before, and I’m happy to repeat myself. Cutting the government now hurts spending, which hurts employment. Low employment hurts the economy not just of the moment, but of tomorrow, and hurts revenues of tomorrow, which increases the debt. Austerity right now is cutting off our nose to spite our face. The long-term budget must be balanced. But slamming on the breaks right now could do as much damage as if government debt hit a brick wall- something which most economists think is still a ways off.

DI: What about Standard and Poors?

B: I’m not sure they’re even relevant. Because look at bond traders, the people who would be directly effected by problems with the government repaying its debt. They didn’t care about the S & P downgrade. The people with the most to lose or gain, with more skin in the game than anyone, did not care.

DI: So you’re saying don’t panic?

B: I’m saying now is the time for us to make smart decisions for the future. At some point in the future, if we don’t act responsibly, the bond market will start to care. And then the decision will be out of our hands.

War

2011-03-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

ID: Unilateral interventionist. It’s a word that’s come up a lot when people talk about Libya, and specifically interceding against Muamar Gaddafi’s air strikes. And I think you, being both a man who unilaterally intervened to fight crime in Gotham, and who helped found the multilateral Justice League, I think you’re bound to have some interesting insight into it.

B: I don’t know if that’s true, actually. I think my decisions reflect mostly my personal evolution. The first decision, to stop crime in Gotham when no one seemed to be willing or able to, was made fairly early on in my life. I didn’t think multilateralism was even possible- which was something that I learned was wrong. Jim Gordon, my Robins, Batgirls and women, Nightwing, Huntress- I could probably continue for an hour. But people who wanted to make a better world found me, and we did it together.

So I think the League formed out of that knowledge, in part. And also the knowledge that I couldn’t do everything on my own. I’m smart, resourceful, and wealthy, but any time I’ve needed to stop Darkseid I don’t hesitate to call someone who hits harder. And I think when you’re looking at what I usually call “real world” problems, most of those can’t be handled by one guy, no matter how great he may be. Or she, for that matter.

ID: So you’re definitely an interventionist. And it sounds like you’re a multilateralist at heart, but you’re willing to go it alone if need be.

B: Yeah.

ID: So what about Libya? For a while there it was looking like Gaddafi was going to roll through Benghazi and raze the place. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you’re President. What do you do?

B: I call Hal Jordan- himself a pilot- tell him the situation, and to break any Libyan airplane that takes off in half. I’m sure he’d set the pilots down gently on the ground afterwards. But how many planes do you have to lose before you recognize that a Green Lantern trumps an aging fighter jet- an aging air force, even?

ID: Okay. That was cheating. Let’s say you’re Barrack Obama, not Bruce Wayne, still President. And the Justice League, down to Booster Gold, isn’t taking your phone calls. Maybe they’re on Apokolips, maybe they just don’t agree with your Libya policy. What do you do?

B: Day one I start talking to the UN Security Council. I push hard for sanctions, which we got pretty quickly, and keep pushing for intervention. At the same time I’d be talking to the African Union and the Arab League, trying to get a peacekeeping force and a demilitarized zone set up so that relatively local peacekeepers can be on the ground, to sidestep accusations of conquest and also because it’s cheaper and local peacekeepers are likely to be more culturally aware.

ID: And all of that fails. The Arab League tells you to go fly a kite. The AU is still busy with Sudan, or at least that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Britain and France are sympathetic, but won’t act without a Security Council resolution, which is blocked by the Chinese and Russia, who want to keep up their lucrative trade with Libya.

B: I got to war with Libya. It starts as an air war, with a no fly zone and a DMZ beneath it. But I couple it with an ultimatum, that Gaddafi end proactive attacks on civilians. When he defies it, which I assume is more a matter of when, I cripple his military infrastructure, bases, manufacturing. And every day, I send a missile for him, wherever our best intel says he’s likely to be.

ID: You’re still embroiled in a couple of wars. You can drop those conflicts, if that makes your decision different, maybe easier.

B: Actually, I believe we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan because, despite what were poor decisions and poor tactical planning respectively, those countries need to be stabilized before we leave- because their current relative instability is something we caused. It’s the right thing to do.

As far as Libya, I can’t help but color it with my own perspective. Of course, the research of Felitti and Anda says that childhood trauma can have deep, even determinative, effects- so that’s not atypical. But to frame it in terms of my experience, if there had been someone out in Gotham, fighting back against crime, the night my parents were shot… what if they wouldn’t have died? Gaddafi wanted to turn Benghazi, maybe his whole country, into Crime Alley. And you’re telling me, before hand, that I have a chance to shut him down. I take it. In a heartbeat.

ID: Is that reckless?

B: The decision itself, given that I’m not privy to what the President is, given that I don’t know the situation beyond what’s in the papers, that’s it’s based around my own emotional history, yes. Will it resolve poorly? I don’t know. I’d like to think that if we save people, or really in this instance when, that it’s worth it. I’ve dedicated my life to interceding in dangerous events to help people. For me it’s an easy call to make- but I’ve never really been responsible for putting more than a few hundred people at risk- and they were all free to go if they wanted. So it’s not perfectly analogous.

ID: I thought about making a devil’s advocate argument, that you wouldn’t be on the frontline, but it’s moot, because you have. I’m a lounge chair general, so I admit I don’t know what it’s like to risk my life for other people in that way. But you do. Why do you think that is?

B: I think we’ve mentioned it before, so forgive me anyone if we’re rehashing, but part of it, at least initially, I think came from a faltering self-worth. I failed to save my parents, so I was worthless- I was worth less so it didn’t matter as much when I put myself at risk to save other people. And at the same time, every time I did save somebody, I felt like I was worth a little more, but my self esteem became so intertwined with the idea of self-sacrifice, that I couldn’t not keep it up. It was who I became. And if I wanted to stay worthwhile, rather than revert to the worthless boy who let his parents die, it was who I had to be.

Put another way, I’ve interceded thousands of times to help people. Sometimes I was ineffectual, and a few times I was even hurt in the process of being ineffectual. Were those specific times worthwhile? No. But on balance, taking into account my failures and what they cost, it was better for me to be out in the world than in my mansion wringing my hands.

ID: But you have a much better track record than our government has at navigating military conflicts.

B: Then that’s an argument that our government needs to be smarter and better, not that we should sit by while madmen kill innocent people. That’s the call I would make. And it’s the call our President has made. I truly hope it’s the right call to have made. None of us want another Iraq; but none of us want the knowledge that we let another Rwanda happen, either. Sometimes, all you can do in a situation is what you think is right, and hope that it turns out for the best.

ID: I do.

Busting Chops

2011-02-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

DI: I was hoping to bring you into a discussion on what’s happen in Wisconsin, or Madison’s Cairo moment, to paraphrase Paul Ryan. Oh, and to reward anyone who sits through this whole potentially stale policy conversation, I’m going to have you tell a story about punching people.

B: Well, I think to get the complete picture of my feelings you’d have to go back to my dad, and his strategy with the unions, because that’s informed a lot of how I approach them.

My dad was a strange guy. When most men in his class were out trying to undermine the unions working in their industries, he was participating in his. He actually funded the union up front- he paid his worker’s union dues for the first five years. He told his workers and the union, “I’m cutting a check right now, for the full five years- and it covers not just the employees we have now, but our expected growth. Because this is our company. I founded it, and I may steer it, but you are the engines that move it forward. And I want you all to have a say in where we go.”

He actually ended up cutting another check after only two years- because the company started growing at such a pace that they’d already burned through all five years of dues he paid. And we’ve continued that tradition forward.

DI: But doesn’t having a company-funded union undercut the union’s credibility? Don’t you become the hand that feeds it?

B: Not really; it isn’t a company union. We simply pay our employees’ union dues, as an additional perk. If you’d rather think about it this way, it’s about $35 that the employee would receive in addition to their base pay every month, that instead goes to pay for something for them. It’s no different really than the money we put towards our employees’ insurance, or the withholding for taxes. The actual costs of employees are a good deal higher than their wages alone.

DI: But overall, your father’s precedent of passive cooperation aside, how do you feel about unions?

B: Unions get a lousy rap. There are corrupt unions. There are lazy unions. But unions are basically the leadership of workers. You can look at it as an analog for our Congress, if you like. And for all intents and purposes, a business’s management are a foreign country. But they’re partners, too, just like England is an economic partner of ours. Management can’t function without the employees, and the employees require the infrastructure fostered by management. Having a union allows employees representation, a voice in the process they wouldn’t otherwise have.

And the reason unions get busted on so much is that they’re bad for business- but let me qualify that. A company’s goal, when you strip back all pretensions, is making money. Paying their workers more, providing benefits, creating a safe work environment- all of those things cost money, which cuts into a company’s bottom line. Some of those things can yield dividends, too; by offering higher wages and better benefits, we often get better quality employees, which can lead to higher and more efficient production, which can lead to a net gain.

But unions are representatives. They’ll fight bad change, but in my experience good unions are willing to take a hit for the team. Look at the UAW, which accepted pretty substantial cuts when the auto industry was failing. At the end of the day it was worth more to them to keep their members’ jobs than to keep hard-won benefits that might have cost those jobs or destroyed the industry. But having representation meant that the auto workers had a say in that process, and got to negotiate for the best position they could stake out.

DI: So what do you think about unions spending their members’ dues on political campaigning.

B: I don’t like the idea of anyone buying elections. So I’m against every kind of spending, even personal. I could buy myself a seat in the senate, maybe a governorship, because I have enough money to absolutely bury just about anyone I might run against. And I say that as someone who’s fairly liberal, who’s come out of the closet, and who spent years of his life breaking the law as a vigilante. I could probably beat Barack Obama in the democratic primary in 2012- not because I’m a better speaker, a better leader, or a better politician, or even a better man or better qualified, but simply because I could spend 100 times more money than he could ever raise. And that isn’t right.

But having said all that, I think a union’s function is acting as a check and a balance on business, for the workers. So with that caveat, I’d rather have unions spending to counter corporate spending, than have a world where business contribute to elections but unions can’t.

I’ll take a particularly loathsome example. Lex Luthor has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress specifically against OSHA standards. He wants to be able to make his workers less safe. His accountants and lawyers have crunched the numbers and discovered that even the small chance that he can get Congress to pass unsafe regulations, which would save him an order of magnitude more money, and that, to him, makes it worth spending millions of dollars.

Some of his workers are unionized, and I know that union spent a few hundred thousand dollars lobbying the opposite side of that issue. It’s a bad system, and I won’t defend it, but unions unilaterally disarming would be even more irresponsible. Because it would leave workers even more vulnerable to exploitation. And our laws shouldn’t be up for bid, they should be written in such a way to maximize the benefit to society.

DI: I’m a fan of hyperbole, so I’ll take that idea to its extreme: are you saying that you’re comfortable with re-legalizing slavery?

B: Slavery actually was a very maximizing system; parts of society were exploited so everyone else could prosper. But slavery also had the numbers wrong. The number of slaves in the south was greater than the number of slave owners- so what you actually had was more people suffering for the enrichment of the few.

We have, at least in principle, a similar system today. Wage growth has remained stagnant for a decade for most people, but the rich have only gotten richer, while the very rich have gotten richer even still. We’re getting to a point where most of society is being exploited, to at least some extent, to enrich the wealthy.

DI: Okay, but the real reason we brought this up is pretty simple: you have an interesting example.

B: That’s right. I don’t want to name names, because the prosecution is ongoing. But basically, several corporations in the city began hiring organized crime to undermine the unions in their companies. Everything from intimidation, subversion, to kidnapping, and murder.

DI: Of course, Gotham’s organized crime is a little more… colorful than say, New York’s.

B: Right. The most powerful crime figures in the city are Penguin, Two Face and Black Mask. A reporter put together a story detailing how all of the union agitation, and the subsequent intrigue, had happened at these three specific corporations that had various business ties to one another.

To hide that telling coincidence, they stirred up a rumor at some of my plants that we were planning on going back on agreements with the union, to slash benefits. There was a protest, and I insinuated myself into the midst of it. I caught out a man who was about to throw a brick at Lucius Fox, who, if you’ve ever met the man, is one of the least brickable people on the planet. Before that, he’d been shouting lots of very strange and inflammatory things, really riling up the crowd.

Well I carried him out of the crowd, and he’s quacking the whole way through. We’ve talked about my recall, and I didn’t recognize the man. There were a few policemen there, so I handed him over, explained that he’d attempted to assault someone, then went back to the protest. I told them who I was, and that I wasn’t afraid to stand amongst them and talk, because none of what they’d heard was true.

Meanwhile, the police checked the man’s fingerprints. He was one of the Penguin’s lackies, which explained the quacking. The larger scheme, which eventually unraveled, was about muscling out the unions to cut benefits and wages and increase profit margins. Penguin’s game in that was he planned on eventually pushing out the owners after he had gotten rid of the unions; he’s got a particular distate for unions, for reasons that have to do with a story I’ll tell in a minute.

DI: But Wisconsin’s a bit different. Because this isn’t shady businessmen dealing with shady criminals to break the law. This is about the governor of a state trying to pass a law.

B: That’s true. Wisconsin, like a lot of the states, isn’t bringing in enough money because of the weak economy. Reasonable people agree that this means everyone has to face potential cuts. But the Governor, Scott Walker, isn’t asking for concessions, which the union has voiced support for, he’s trying to cut the union off at the knees. There are two important issues here. One, is that state employees may, as part of a general belt-tightening, have to accept less compensation. And, while painful, I think they’re willing to do that. The second, and what this law is really trying to do, is end unionization.

The law doesn’t touch balancing the budget- which Walker, who just passed even greater tax cuts despite the state’s deficit, isn’t serious about anyway. It’s about forbidding unions from bargaining for benefits. Worse, it’s about keeping unions from bargaining for wages above the consumer price index- basically the union would have to fight for wages to stay even with inflation, and since that’s the maximum, it’s likely wages would stay below inflation. It is, de facto, ending the ability of unions to function, period. If this were a private company doing this, and not a state government, I have no doubt it would be illegal.

This kind of legislation, and even a lot of complaints about unions, is about putting political pressure on unions. The fact that people want to destroy unions shows how valuable they are. If unions were ineffective, if they didn’t win concessions for their employees, they wouldn’t exist. Because if they weren’t effective unionized workers would kick them out. But it should be the worker’s option to unionize or not. The absolute last thing we want is for government to take away our right to organize. And what we’re seeing is very much a step in that direction.

DI: Now that we’ve put a bowtie on that, your punching story.

B: Since we brought up the Penguin’s union busting, we’ll talk about him. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic that’s unmatched really in Gotham’s underworld. Two Face has his obsession with duality, and the Joker with… gaggery, but Penguin took it to an art form. Or maybe, he’s just had more opportunities with bird and fish related businesses and imagery in the city.

This was several years ago, before the earthquake. The Penguin made a power play for the city docks. Operating out of there are a lot of lucrative shipping and fishing businesses, but specifically there was a company called Silverfish Shipping and Cannery. The Antarctic silverfish make up the bulk of the Emperor Penguin’s diet, so of course he couldn’t keep his flippers off.

But Silverfish was an employee-owned cooperative. Years before, during a period of economic distress, several of the companies on the dock were having trouble paying the bills. The employees worked out a trade, whereby they were given a controlling interest in a new umbrella company if they agreed to work for decreased pay.

The Penguin’s been involved in organized crime most of his life, so shaking down the owner/operator’s was right up his alley. He bought their share for a song- no pun intended. But he didn’t have a controlling interest- to be able to do anything he needed the approval of the voting employees. He tried to get there by intimidating the dockworkers, but if you’ve ever tried to intimidate a longshoreman you know it isn’t an easy task- particularly for an overweight, five foot man in a top hat with a compulsive quacking tic.

DI: Sorry to interrupt, but you called it a quacking “tic.” Are you saying Penguin has Tourette’s?

B: Not Tourette’s specifically, because that involves motor as well as phonic tics, but a tic disorder, a chronic one.

But by buying out the owner operators he had the opposite of what he actually wanted: he had all the responsibility of running the businesses, but none of the decision-making authority, and because of the profit-sharing scheme, a minority of the profits, as well. So he devised a scheme to scare them, or at first, to terrorize those who were dependent upon the fishing trades; I can only assume he had a phase 2 to handle the shipping side of things.

I talked to several ornithologists who he consulted in the area, only to be told that no breed of Penguin could survive in Gotham long-term. So his plan B was to import several top predators, including different species of shark and barracuda, to decimate the local fish populations. I’m not entirely sure what his plan actually was, because it would have killed the fishing trade out of Gotham Harbor and maybe further up and down the coast, maybe permanently. I suspect it was largely a plan grown out of a tantrum. Oswald Cobblepot doesn’t appreciate being laughed at, which does make you wonder why he’d go by “Penguin” in the first place.

But I tracked him, and his collection of invasive species, to the cannery owned by Silverfish. He had most of the predators in separate tanks, lest they feast on one another. He had a couple of his goons he was goading into feeding the barracuda, whose tank was open. I kicked them into the open tank and closed the lid, which left breathing room, behind them.

DI: Wasn’t that dangerous?

B: Well… barracudas don’t really kill people. There’s a death attributed to them once a decade, maybe, but they don’t even predate upon humans. When they do attack, it’s usually because there’s a watch, or a ring, that catches a glint of light and makes the fish think they’re attacking prey. And even when they do it’s usually a few lacerations. If I recall correctly they might have needed some stitches afterwards- but that’s hardly a first for me.

But that left the Penguin. He made a waddling run for it, but it was half-hearted. I think the entire operation hadn’t gone to plan, and he was a little relieved to have an out, honestly. But for anyone who hasn’t seen it, he has a supremely punchable face. You want to hit him. And what’s more, it’s the perfect face to hit. A little bit of padding from the fat, but it’s almost perfectly contoured to a fist. I hit him, once, and he was out. I’d planned on dangling him over the shark tank, but I heard sirens approaching, and he was unconscious anyway so there didn’t seem to be much point.

But his face swelled up really good. I suspect I broke his jaw, but never had any proof of it. He turned bright purple, and bloated up like a puffer fish- quite a feat, since he’s naturally so round already.

He had violated all kinds of laws bringing the various predators into the state, not to mention running afoul some exotic animal cruelty regulations. And in the ensuing investigation, all of the Penguin’s illegal activities and intimidation came to light, and he was forced to surrender his portion of the company.

DI: (snickering) Afowl?

B: Really? Just as I was starting to like you.

DI: Really?

B: No. Not really.

Birthright

2011-02-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

DI: I understand you’ve got your panties in a bunch- presumably the ones you always used to wear on the outside of your tights.

B: Funny. A just released Public Policy Polling survey gives the chilling impression that 51% of likely Republican primary voters believe Obama is not a citizen. There’s a lot of qualifiers, there, but basically it means the party faithful, who are more likely to vote in a primary, believe in a bare majority that he is not legally President.

And that’s astonishing. I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept, frankly. His birth certificate is on record in Hawaii. The short-form version, which is a legal document, has been released, and the long-form has been seen by the relevant officials in the state. There are two contemporary birth announcements in Hawaiian papers. As a legal matter, Obama is a citizen. The case couldn’t be clearer.

I mean, if you want to believe that Obama was secretly born in Kenya, or in a KGB test tube, that’s up to the individual, but I don’t really understand what kind of a purpose it might serve.

I want to be careful how I put this, because I’m not playing the race card, here, I’m saying that believing that someone with different ideas than you must not be a true American, that they must be the metaphorical “other,” dances very close upon the brink of racism. The same fundamental ideas are at play, there. And it’s dangerous. I worry for my country, and my countrymen.

Because there aren’t facts in dispute; I welcome facts. But these are shadowy, whispered, McCarthyesque aspersions cast casually, as if treason should become a part of one’s daily vocabulary. It’s depressing enough when people misuse and abuse words like fascism and Nazism, and even socialism, but this takes it to another level.

And I think, I believe, that this is a case where the sane elements, in the party and the country, aren’t doing enough. It’s that old adage, that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And it concerns me that this rancor, this distrust, of our fellow citizens has become so prevalent. And it’s up to all of us to stand up to ignorance, and fear, where we find it. I think in part we’re seeing a failure of the Republican party to do that, and while ideologically they may not be my brethren, at the end of debate, we’re all still Americans. We share this country. It is not us or them. It’s we the people.

DI: Are you sufficiently unbunched?

B: I feel a little better.

DI: Since you brought up the subject of birth, I’d like to talk to you about yours.

B: It was messy.

DI: Succinct. I like it. We can call it a day. I think we might still make happy hour at Scores…. kidding. No, I want to talk about how your birth placed you in society.

B: It’s funny you should use the word “society,” because that’s where my birth put me. My parents were frequently in the society pages of the paper. They bumped elbows at society parties and functions. It’s a different world.

I’ve fostered some children who came up in poorer circumstances since then, and the contrast is really night and day. My servants had more education than their parents. And that’s no knock to anyone at all, just insight into that discrepancy.

Not that I remember much of it. I remember flashes, like my mom putting me into a miniature tuxedo, and her leaning over me to tie my bowtie. I remember being bored, and kicking around a dance floor holding her hand, waiting while dad pressed flesh, trying to get more donors for whatever charity he was organizing for. I think we arrived by carriage, once.

And eventually, Alfred retaught me the things I’d been too young to learn about that life. He trained me to be a man in my father’s mold. For better or worse, my birthright came with that responsibility, one my parents shepherded well during their lives.

DI: But what about Batman? Was he a part of your birthright?

B: I think I was lucky in other regards. My parents gave me an exceptional genetic baseline, and with all humility I was born with physical prowess and mental acuity a lot of people aren’t privy to. And that, along with my fortune, did open doors, some of which led to Batman. But there was years of training and focus that I wouldn’t have had, at least not in that direction, had circumstance not intervened- in the death of my parents. So I wouldn’t call it a birthright.

Clark had a birthright, one I think he exceeded. Diana was born a princess, but I think her actions since have made her who she is, and more than who she started as. My birthright was an empire. And I’ve used that to do a lot of what I hope was good. Employed a lot of people. Impacted quite a few lives. I still have a very old world view of corporations, that they’re a trust, between the private sector and the public, to do right and do good by them. At least, that’s how I run my companies.

DI: I did notice one thing, which interested me, about the PPP polling. Those who think Obama is or at least might be a citizen prefer Romney for President. But like most high-profile members of his party, he’s sort of infamously tip-toed around the whole birtherism concept. And I saw a wonderfully demented question in TNR about that: “is a sane person who feigns madness because he wants to live in an asylum crazy or is he sane?”

B: I think that’s more a logic puzzle, than anything. I think, for Romney, just acknowledging the reality as outlined by that poll, he’s stuck in the madhouse. And in that case your options are to act like a guard and try to restore order, or to act like a crazy person and rule in hell, so to speak. And while I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison, between Arkham and the Republican party, but a lot of guards have fallen trying to restore order in Arkham; self-preservation might be the sane choice, after all.

Made Up

2011-02-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

DI: Okay. I’m going to let a genie out of the bottle, here. You and I had spoken before. We were planning, after I’d made arrangements for a year’s worth of interviews with Bruce, for a year with you, too. Then there was a lot of shuffling, financial crises and, actually, I’m not entirely sure what all has contributed to our slowdowns. But rather than starting in January of this year, you’re waiting patiently. I’ve heard a lot about you, from two men who I feel it’s safe to say are great admirers of yours.

But you’ve been in the news a lot, lately. There’s the David E. Kelley script floating around [note: that has apparently been picked up for production]. And then there’s a new MAC make-up set. I know there’s been a sort of a mini controversy about the products, along a lot of familiar lines. People accusing you of selling out, of hocking products and an image that aren’t appropriate for young girls, who are some of your biggest fans.

I’m not sure how to introduce you, exactly, I guess if we’d had more time before deciding to do this while Bruce is out of the country, that’s one of the things we’d have talked about. But I’m speaking with Wonder Woman, Diana, Ambassador and Princess of Themiscyra.

WW: You bring up a lot of points, so I’ll parse it out and speak to them, one at a time. First off, I’m not “selling out.” In the context of a live person, I’m not sure how you do that, how that accusation even makes sense, but no. My portion of proceeds, from any of these endeavors, will be going to charity. Second, there’s a very good reason why I’ve agreed to these projects, and why now.

With Clark gone, there’s been a vacuum in the world. And, quite frankly, I want to take advantage of that. Clark was always very conscious of not wanting to have a message when he was alive. But I have a message. A very clear message, I think, distilling the wisdom of my people, a lot of which will be news to a great many people.

But before I can, I have to brand myself a little more clearly. A lot of people looked to the similar color schemes in my armor and Clark’s over the years and just assumed we were married, and that, as is traditional, that I was weaker and subordinated to him.

Even when I explained to people that my armor is traditional, going back thousands of years, most people roll their eyes. Because people look at Greek and Roman sculpture and think it was a very muted culture, all classy but bland white and dark colors. But the Parthenon was as gaudy as Vegas in its day, painted in vivid and evocative colors. My armor is very much a part of that tradition.

Unfortunately, the colors inherent in that tradition were the same as Clark inherited from his family. So I had the choice of honoring my heritage and being called Clark in a swimsuit, or turning my back on my culture just to make a few people who didn’t know better think better of me. So I have what they call a branding problem. And all of this is to explain, more clearly, to the public who and what I am and represent.

DI: By selling make up with your face on it?

WW: It seemed a little silly to me, too. But that’s marketing. In the sphere of marketing, Lady Gaga reigns supreme. Don’t expect me to go to those lengths, but that’s the world I’m trying to reach, the same one where Lady Gaga is probably the most popular musician alive.

But to your point about make up, and whether it’s harmful to girls, it’s a complicated issue. The idea that women need to represent some point of physical and aesthetic perfection is inherently wrong. Expecting women to spend more time on their appearances, the objectification of women, these are still very much a part of the culture. And I think it can be easy to fall into that trap, where you become part of the population de facto requiring women to hold themselves to these standards.

DI: Let me interrupt you for a second to ask: how much make up are you wearing, right now?

WW: Very little, actually.

DI: Please tell me you’re lying.

WW: I have a little bit of rouge on my cheek, and a nude pink lipstick.

DI: No foundation, no, uh, concealer?

WW: You’re out of your depth, aren’t you?

DI: Drowning. But is the make up cruelty free?

WW: Yes, actually.

But to me, feminism is about choice. Forcing women to conform to an unrealistic standard of beauty is immoral.

DI: But by popularizing yourself, aren’t you, in fact, holding yourself up as an ideal candidate for that unrealistic beauty standard?

WW: I think your point would be a fair one if I underwent plastic surgery. Or allowed Photoshopping on any photos of me. But I don’t; I don’t sign a release for photos without a guarantee that I will not altered in any way. I’ve been criticized before in the past for all of these things, and the Photoshop rule is a reaction to that, but I’ve never had any kind of work done. I’m not augmented. I don’t think I should hide or apologize for the way I look.

And I think that’s the heart of the issue. I’m fortunate, in that I’m coming from the positive end of that spectrum, but it isn’t fair to penalize women for the way they look. Instead, women should be free, or at least as free as men, to be comfortable with their appearance. In this day and age, a man can grow his hair or his beard long or shave it all off without much stigma. But women are scrutinized.

What it comes down, to, or should, is that women should have the same options as men. And I’d argue, there are options that should be opened to men, as well. If a man wants to wear foundation, or eyeliner, or paint his nails, there should be no problem. People should be free to make decisions about their own bodies. It’s somewhat analogous to the African American community retaking the word “nigger.”

DI: Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white woman say that word with such force, and, help me out here, confidence, without it sounding, well, racist. I guess, technically, your skin’s maybe a little olive, so “white” might be inaccurate, but you know what I mean.

WW: I do. But that’s my point. Anything that gives other people power over us is wrong.

DI: I want to be careful how I say this, because it’s a sensitive issue. But some people complain that in particular with that word, it then becomes “their” word and only okay for them to say. In a way, you’re excluding white people to make sure they can’t exclude black people. There’s certainly some tension in that idea.

WW: I think there’s a transition, there, where an outgroup can’t use something the ingroup does without being seen as an oppressor. But the goal, eventually, is for the old meaning to die entirely, become extinct. So that no one can use it for oppression. Once you’ve passed that threshold, the word opens back up for everyone. I think gay has mostly made that transition; fag and queer are lagging only slightly behind it.

DI: You’re less intimidating than I thought you’d be. I kind of worried I was going to get punched out a window, with some of the questions I wanted to ask. I’m not sure how closely you’re involved with David E. Kelley’s show featuring you.

WW: I’ve purposely distanced myself from it. I don’t want to stand over his shoulder and dictate a biographical and accurate portrayal of my life. That would be boring, and at the same time invasive. So I’ve stayed as far away from it as I can.

DI: But Bruce specifically questioned the Sex in the Cityness of the script. I don’t think he meant to imply that you don’t girl-talk, just that it didn’t feel right for you.

WW: I think I’m dishier than Bruce might know. He’s never really been privy to the girl-talk.

DI: You sure about that? He is a sneaky guy.

WW: That’s… creepy. But no. I think he could have spied on us. But he wouldn’t. For all of the seedier aspects of his life, at least from an outward appearance-

DI: The “bachelor” who constantly has a revolving door of children staying in his home a la Michael Jackson, the brooding billionaire in fetish gear, his reputation for general dickishness-

WW: Yes, all that, he really is a perfect gentleman. Respectful. Honest. Surprisingly caring.

DI: Surprising that he cares?

WW: Surprising by its depth.

DI: Okay, I think that’s probably a good place to end it. But I’m really glad that we’ve got more conversations coming up, because I think I have more questions than answers written down, now.

WW: I look forward to it.

Wondering

2011-02-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

DI: I’ve heard David E. Kelley, whose work I’m a general fan of, is working on a Wonder Woman project. I’ve heard there are some issues with his script, and I’d like to talk about the idea of a series based off of Diana.

B: First off, I haven’t read the script, so I’m not passing judgment, so much as reacting to some of the things I’ve read that are in it. And let me say first that Diana’s tough to nail down. Because she’s a very nuanced human being.

DI: But is she even human?

B: Technically, maybe not, but neither was Clark. And if you set me, a genuine human being, beside the two of them, I’m the one who looks inhuman.

DI: But you’re one of the world’s most prominent philanthropists; even setting aside your costumed work, you’ve done a lot of good in the world. Aren’t you being a little overly critical of yourself?

B: No, but I’m not down on myself. I think I have a reasonable perspective on my humanity. And some of that, I think, is me compensating for being a cold bastard- and some because it’s what my parents would have wanted. On balance I’m not saying I’m a bad person- just that there’s no comparison.

I get frustrated. I get angry. If you surveyed the League I’m sure you’d find I can be pretty damn mean. And Clark, and Diana, they can be frustrated, and angry, but they’ve always been decent. Not just to me, but to everyone, probably everyone they ever met. Clark and Diana represent what the rest of us should want to be.

DI: But aren’t you a fairly impressive specimen of our species? And aren’t the things you describe, don’t those make them not more human, but superhuman?

B: Maybe. I think it would probably be unfair to hold anybody to that yardstick, and when found wanting declare that they’d failed, but I think that’s the goal we should set, the bar we should reach for.

And that’s the part of the script that rings hollow for me. Clark Kent was Superman, but really all Superman was was Clark with a spit-curl, no glasses and a stoic expression. Diana doesn’t have a Clark Kent. Diana is Diana. Wonder Woman is like the suit and tie I wear to the office. I’m the same man in the suit as I am at home in my bathrobe, I just look more authoritative, more professional.

And I know you’ve made jokes about her uniform, before, but there are strong customs and traditions behind it, going back centuries. But Wonder Woman is just an artifice; Diana is always Diana.

DI: But isn’t it true that for a while she did have an alter ego similar to the Kent persona.

B: When she first arrived in “the patriarch’s world” she did adopt the name “Diana Prince.” But she did so as part of a fact-finding portion to her mission. She’s always been an ambassador, but she was also her nation’s first contact with the outside world. So before she opened her home to the world, she wanted to know what kind of world she was opening up to.

And I think, for a while, having that small, quiet, meek person to retreat into helped her. It’s easy to forget that Diana was still very young when she left Themiscyra. She needed a place, emotionally, to call her own. But it’s been a very long time since she’s made peace with the fact that she is both a representative of her people and a very strong personality in her own right.

DI: Okay, but what about the Sex in the Cityness of the script? Presumably she has female friends, but…

B: Diana has female friends; it’s hard for anyone who meets her not to be friendly with her. And I know she’s spent a good deal of time with female League members. I think she’s very conscious of the fact that the League, at least under normal circumstances, can be a bit of a boy’s club. It’s not really anyone’s fault, there; there’s just a gender bias in the costumed community. It’s been a while since I had Oracle do a head count, but last I checked we had the same ratio of women in the League as there are on the streets. But my point was I know she’s organized ladies nights. On Huntress’s first night on the Watchtower they had a sleepover.

DI: You don’t smile often, but for the record, that was a smile, there.

B: I smile when I feel like it. I’m just not that emotive a person.

DI: Fair enough. But ladies nights, sleepovers- how is that not Sex in the City?

B: Well, the thrust of that is that Diana’s a woman. Sometimes she does talk about men- and more often she listens while other women talk about men. But she also talks about other things. She’s a fan of talking shop, fighting styles, tactics. She’s also very cognizant of things like human rights, current events like the protests in Egypt or the Southern Sudan independence referendum.

DI: So she’s very political, then.

B: Right. I would have thought her work through the UN would have made that common knowledge.

DI: Yeah, but so did Ginger Spice, so that’s hardly a barometer.

B: Touché, though I don’t think that’s particularly fair to Geri.

DI: Geri? No way. You’re not going to confirm or deny that, are you, just leaving it hanging there. I hate you.

B: I know, and I treasure that. But Diana’s worked very extendedly with the UN, particularly on women’s and children’s initiatives. I think it concerns her greatly that outside of the Western world women and children don’t have the same status as men.

I hope Kelley can stay on the project. I think, once some of these early trajectory issues are solved, he could really find her voice. He’s very good at getting to the heart of difficult political issues, asking hard questions without imposing moral truisms. I think he could capture her complexity well.

DI: Let me see, here, there’s also been mention that Kelley’s Wonder Woman will be a CEO, and I think you took issue with that.

B: Diana herself doesn’t run any companies. Not because she couldn’t, but because the entire concept of capitalism is repugnant to her. She comes from a fairly close-knit society, where resources are pooled, a fairly egalitarian structure to it. So the idea of elevating herself in any way over “subordinates” is revolting. And that’s largely what capitalism is- it’s saying that certain people are better at utilizing resources, and so for the benefit of society we should give them greater resources to maximize our collective potential.

Philosophically she disagrees with that model. It’s an argument I’ve had with her before; capitalism, when it’s used properly, can ensure that the world gets better for everyone. But she takes a very harsh approach to the subject, and usually draws the line at the point where in practice capitalism often uses people as an exhaustible resource, as if they were a lump of coal. I’ve went round and round with her on the subject, because the best way to pull people up out of poverty is capitalism- albeit capitalism that has certain restraints. Regulations that make sure we treat the working class fairly, that make sure we don’t put strains on the environment that ultimately have the greatest impact on the poorest people.

And I don’t want to sound like I’m splitting hairs because she does operate nonprofit organizations under her Wonderment Foundation.

DI: Which you helped fund in its infancy.

B: I provided seed money, and I donate, occasionally. It was a tough sell to the Amazons.

But the idea of Diana running a company in the way that I do is silly; she directs the broad strokes of what the various NGOs she oversees are doing at any moment. But she also concedes that the day to day operations of charity, relief and advocacy organizations are beyond her purview. She doesn’t have the experience or expertise to do those things- which is no sleight against her. I think it takes a certain strength of character to admit skills you don’t have, and to recognize that finding people who have those skills to supplement you is the best course of action.

DI: And I think, just from a few pulled quotes we’ve read, that it sounds like Kelley hasn’t quite “got” Diana yet. How so?

B: She’s strong, unbelievably so, and I don’t merely mean physically. She may be the most emotionally resilient person I know. But there’s a tenderness to her, a femininity that neither betrays nor contradicts her strength.

DI: She’s soft?

B: To the touch, to the soul. She has a calming influence, a peaceful aura. I’ve spent cumulatively months of my life meditating with some of the world’s deepest thinkers, but none of that can rival a moment in her presence. It’s almost magical- and I’ve dealt with enough actually magical things that I wonder if there’s something in her, another gift from the gods, as it were, that gives her that effect on people.

But she’s passionate, too. Intense. We’ve nearly come to blows several times.

I think we agree more than we disagree, but there are some areas, economics, martial law, where we differ. And I think sometimes it’s just a matter of perspective, our divergent origins and how those shape our worldviews. I mean, I’m rich. I’m male. I’m white. I’m getting older. I’m a fairly easy stand-in for the class that controls a lot of the political and economic fate of the world at this moment. I think, and I would say she would mostly agree, that I use that position of power for good as much as I can. But I think it’s fair to say she doesn’t like that I, or anyone, is in a position of so much power. And from her perspective, my power comes at the expense of the powers of others.

DI: So she has a bit of that old feminist rage, then?

B: I don’t think rage is the right word, though. She’s passionate. Because her ideas, and her ideals, are things she believes strongly about. But despite her upbringing, which I would be tempted to describe in impolite terms, I think she’s worked hard not to be a zealot. I think she takes new ideas and information in, and she has been known to reevaluate her position.

We just don’t always agree. And sometimes things can get a little heated.

DI: Back up just a little there: come to blows? So you’re admitting to hitting a woman?

B: First, that’s a fairly sexist idea you’re implying, that it’s acceptable to strike a man and not a woman. Second, violence is never something to undertake lightly, but I’ve hit many women in my lifetime. Hopefully always in a context where the benefits, usually stopping them from committing some larger harm, justified it. But no, domestically I’ve never thrown the first punch.

DI: But you’ve hit back.

B: I have defended myself against attacks before. Proportionally.

DI: Against Diana?

B: Hitting Diana is a bit like punching a tree. I wouldn’t advise it, so no. I find with her jujitsu, or other martial arts designed to counter strength and reroute momentum are best. But I don’t think we’ve ever actually thrown punches at each other outside sparring. There’ve just been a few discussions I think I was lucky to walk away from with my head still on my shoulders.

DI: And on a final note, I’d like to mention that Kelley is married to Michelle Pfeiffer, who portrayed Catwoman in that Burton Batman.

B: Michelle is a lovely, intelligent woman. But she’s no Selina Kyle- though in fairness to her, there’s only one of those.

DI: Unless you count Anne Hathaway. Me-ow.

Risky Business

2011-01-27T07:03:00.000-08:00

B: Let me be clear about one thing: as a businessman, I don’t care about creating jobs. I do not. No businessman in his right mind cares about creating jobs. Even people who work in staffing don’t create jobs, they fill positions.

But business isn’t in the job-creation business. Business is about providing a good or a service for a fee. The reason businesses hire is because they want to be able to provide more of their goods or services for an increased fee. None of this should be surprising yet.

Negative outcomes, in particular a business operating at a loss, are referred to as risk. Businesses look for favorable circumstances to make sure they minimize risk. The easiest way to do that is to ensure that operating costs, the money it takes to keep a business going, remain low.

There are a lot of factors. Taxes, including corporate taxes- which is the main reason most US corporations were incorporated in New Jersey and pay taxes there. I happen to live there, so it’s simply coincidental that my companies are based there. Local cost of living, which affects wages. You can pay someone significantly lower in Idaho than you can in New York, and maintain a competitive standard of living.

But the single biggest factor is the health of that business’ sector of the economy. The HD TV market is booming, despite the recession; it isn’t like Sony is going to lay off people who build TVs just because the newspaper industry is dying. And by health I mean a strong amount of demand for the product. Recession-proof industries, as they’re sometimes called, usually have to do with fantasy and escape, TV, movies, comics. People spend as much or even more on their entertainment because it helps keep them from wallowing in the fear and uncertainty that exists in other parts of their lives.

But the entire reason for a business to exist is to make money. If creating jobs can help that business make more money, or more accurately, when, that’s when jobs will be created. Corporate profits are near an all-time high, corporate stockpiles of cash are at an all-time high. The only thing missing, really, is confidence, and that’s building. When businesses are confident that their spending won’t create products without sufficient demand, the business cycle will resume. With great haste.

DI: What about the minimum wage? There’s criticism that that has adversely impacted job creation.

B: If you want to purely create jobs numerically, yes, you could cut the minimum wage. You could also change the way that labor laws work, making it more cost-effective to employ more part-time workers as opposed to full-time employees. You could “create” a lot of jobs that way. But the jobs wouldn’t pay a living wage. They wouldn’t provide full-time employment. And they would externalize costs, such as healthcare, onto the community. It’s important, when thinking about jobs, to remember that quantity and quality are distinct, here.

The effect of the minimum wage on businesses is it slightly raises the bar for new hiring. An employer who might be able to profitably employ someone at less than minimum wage will have to wait until their profit margin increases enough to pay the minimum wage instead.

But I’d like to address the accusation, now ridiculously part of the name of a law that’s passed the House, that the healthcare bill is “job-killing.” You know what kills jobs? Not knowing if you’ll be able to keep offering employees healthcare. Because that’s a really big deal, and it’s here where that word uncertainty crops up again. Let’s say you hire on three new workers, and in one year, or five, if healthcare costs continue to rise, you’re suddenly faced with either cutting your workforce or cutting healthcare. Firing workers cuts profit, but getting rid of healthcare is likely to lose you your best people, which will not only shrink your workforce but ensure that the remaining workforce is less efficient. In the long run that could cost you more.

Healthcare reform was an attempt to bend the cost curve. Basically, healthcare has been getting more expensive for a long time, so the law was an attempt to shrink the size of that expansion. And this wasn’t just a dewy-eyed liberal social program, either. When you look at budget projections, the single factor that threatens our nation’s financial stability more than any other is healthcare costs- mostly for seniors. The law is working to push down costs. And keeping costs down makes hiring more attractive.

And the law that passed isn’t perfect, but no law ever is. The best path forward is usually to make amendments, to change the things that don’t work well while preserving the things that do. But if Republicans came up with a good, common-sense plan, if they found the common ground that I think exists on healthcare and offered to replace the PPACA with it, I have no doubt the Democrats would jump at the chance. But I suspect their preference is, as has typically been the case, for no regulation at all, that they’d like to get rid of reform and go back to the status quo, which isn’t sustainable.

It’s funny, because Republicans demonized the healthcare law for including death panels which didn’t exist, but their push to destroy the law could easily put us into a position where insurance company bureaucrats do sit on death panels, deciding who is worth saving. And I don’t mean to fear monger, there; at some point I think saving a human life becomes too expensive. And to be realistic, medicine is an exhaustible good in a lot of respects. So deciding how best to allocate those resources is an important question. But I think it’s a question that we as Americans, that we as consumers and premium payers, deserve to be a part of answering.

Fear Itself

2011-01-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

DI: It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about fear, but in view of what happened in Arizona, namely the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the discussions that have followed, I’d like to talk to you about using fear as a tactic, and how you feel about it.

B: I think we always run into trouble when we try to compare what I did, which wasn’t unlike urban warfare, with politics. Politics is supposed to be about finding the best solutions to problems. What I do, or did, was find ways to solve problems that didn’t respond to normal means. Crime isn’t something you’ll ever entirely legislate away; nor is violence.

And that’s why use of fear as a weapon in both cases is different. Fear in the realm of politics goes from Glenn Beck’s bunker mentality to full-fledged terrorism. Both ends of that spectrum are bad, because they’re necessarily anti-reason; rather than seek an amicable solution, they seek to prevent solutions and outcomes that aren’t favorable to them- even if that means preventing all solutions.

And I’ll admit it: I’ve used fear as a weapon, a bludgeon, even. But I’m willing to stand up and defend it, because I was using fear for the greater good against an uncommon evil.

DI: But don’t you think the same argument could be made? Don’t you think that people who really are pushing scary rhetoric feel like the world needs them to say those things?

B: Absolutely not.

Politicians, and I’m lumping in anyone who’s trying to join their voices into the political conversation, and I’d include the both of us in there, as well, can and should argue reason, logic, facts. It isn’t that they can’t argue based on those things, it’s that they often believe, perhaps even fear, that they can’t win arguments on the merits- and not to take too much of a dig, but given the merits they’re arguing on I’m not surprised.

Just to take a moment, here, arguing for unaffordable lower taxes for the wealthy, arguing to keep the unsustainable medical status quo, these aren’t popular ideas, and they’re not even fiscally responsible ones. I’m not even sure they’re coherent, frankly.

But by way of contrast I believed, when I started, that criminals were scared. No, that’s not right; I told myself they were scared. Because I was. I was terrified. I lived in a world where my parents, the very essence of what safety and security are supposed to be, could be taken. In an instant. Without warning. The world was so terrifying and mean and vicious that it could snatch us out of the night on a whim.

So I told myself that if I was this scared, criminals had to be, too. So what I had to become was that fear, that uncertainty.

DI: It’s funny that you mention “uncertainty.” Because uncertainty is making a comeback, as an argument against Democratic policies.

B: Uncertainty is just another club to use against programs conservatives don’t like. And I know some people roll their eyes and call me a partisan when I say things like that, but I don’t want that to be true. I want the people I disagree with to have a frank, adult discussion about how to fix things. I want an opposition who bargains in good faith, and argues in good faith. The absolute last thing that I want is to have to tell myself, again and again, that there are people who can’t be trusted, not even to agree to demonstrable facts, and that our collective destiny is still tethered to them.

But what I mean when I say that it’s just a bludgeon, it’s because uncertainty has nothing to do with the Democrats. Uncertainty has everything to do with change. Businesses want to know what the political landscape is going to look like in ten years, and anything that makes it harder to know that future makes them nervous. So when Republicans talk about repealing the health care law, which a lot of companies have already started spending money to implement, that makes businesspeople nervous. When we’re told that taxes might change, that programs might be cut- that makes us nervous. What business really, truly wants, is for things to stay the same as they are right now. And the same can be said of a lot of Americans, too. Unfortunately, that’s neither fiscally nor politically possible. In the long run, we can’t afford business as usual. And in the short term, the Republicans are making a lot of noise about cuts- though I suspect, as has already happened, the number they expect to cut will continue to shrink [Note: Their initial goal was to cut $100 billion, but that’s already been cut in half].

DI: Sorry, I think I derailed. You were scared, and so criminals had to be, too.

B: Right. I told myself they were cowards, in the same way bullies ridicule their victims for flaws they often hate in themselves. It was a coping mechanism, in the beginning, though one I wasn’t equipped to recognize at the time.

But I think innately I recognized that fear, given how effective it was against me, how crippling, could be used as a weapon. So I looked for what really terrorized me, and it was a single childhood incident with bats. And there are certain animals, and insects, arachnids, that make people anxious.

I didn’t want to dress up in a full-on bat costume, that would have turned me into a Scooby Doo villain, but I wanted to take the things that make bats scary and use them. The wings, that make them appear larger than they are. The mystique; most people think nearly all bats are vampiric and prey on humans. But ultimately, the most troubling thing about bats is they set off people’s sense that they’re in danger. I had to look, sound, move, in a dangerous way. From there the rest came together.

And what was strange is how much of the danger became built up. I never killed anyone; though I’ve put a few men in wheel chairs and worse. But the legends have my body count into the hundreds, at least.

DI: Don’t you worry that saying that, while there’s a new Batman active, might undercut him?

B: This isn’t the first time there’s been a replacement for me, though it’s likely the most permanent. And not all Batmen have been non-lethal. I have my preference, and I’ve made that preference known to those I’ve worked with, but frankly I don’t outright employ the people I work with- and I certainly can’t dictate terms.

DI: But Clark told me last year- or is it two years ago, now- that you actually pay salaries and insurance for the League.

B: That’s true, but that doesn’t mean I employ them. I compensate them as best I can for the service they render, but I don’t employ them. I don’t endorse what they do, or take credit for it. I’ve been blessed with means, so I try and see that people who do good work can continue to. That’s it. I think it would ruin the spirit of the gesture if I ever attempted to assert the ability to control others.

DI: Like Diana.

B: That’s overly simplistic. Diana killed Maxwell Lord because she didn’t have a choice. It was unfortunate that it played out on live television, but Lord was controlling Clark. She fought like a hellcat, but Clark was killing her, slowly. She did what she had to to survive, and to stop Lord from using Clark against the rest of us. I’m certain the choice she made saved my life, and probably a lot of other lives.

And I also don’t pay her. Sure, she gets the same check from the League fund as Clark did and I do. And all three of us donate ours to charity. I have more money than I could ever need, Diana has the Amazon ambassadorial stipend, but I never understood Clark. He told me, “It’s not like we need a bigger apartment… just don’t tell Lois.” Oops. She knew, of course. He couldn’t keep a thing from her. Hell of a reporter, hell of a woman.

DI: You speak like she’s dead.

B: Not dead. We’re still friends. But there’s a part of her that’s dead to me. I laughed when he made me promise not to date her, when he was dying. We went out a long time ago- but it ended long before they ever became serious. So that part of Lois has been dead to me for a very long time.

But obviously there’s a line there, somewhere. We’ve had a few of our friends turn violent, start hurting innocent people. I remember the day we officially stripped Hal Jordan of his membership. It wasn’t a pleasant day. But I always figured the League had high enough standards. If someone could make it in the League, then I wasn’t going to micromanage their behavior.

DI: On that note, actually, I’m aware of one specific League member who you sponsored, and then personally fired for about what we’re talking about.

B: And I’ll assume she sent you an “anonymous” email signed with an “H.” Huntress came from Gotham. She had a similar life to mine. I presumed a kinship with her. I helped train her, and when she showed promise, and maturity, I sponsored her membership in the League. And for a time she performed admirably. Until we were attacked by a hit team sponsored by Lex Luthor.

DI: My lawyer’s advised me against us using Luthor’s name specifically unless we have proof of criminal malfeasance.

B: I have his big bald head on the Watchtower’s security cameras. I put his scowl from a different angle on a Christmas card I send to him every year.

Anyway, Luthor’s team included a man code-named Prometheus. He’s extremely dangerous, to the point where he briefly took control of the tower from us that last time he’d been there. I managed to subdue him. A short time later, I discovered Huntress about to kill him. Mind you, he was incapacitated and in custody. She was about to murder someone on the Watchtower, in our headquarters. I’d never liked calling it a “Justice” League, but killing someone like that, there, was antithetical to everything we stood for.

That might have been the end of it, a small reprimand, a stern warning. But she argued the point with me. She couldn’t even understand why we would allow someone so dangerous to live. And I realized she never would. So she didn’t belong in the League. Ultimately, there’s a world of difference between using lethal means in the heat of battle, and executing someone because you’re afraid of them when you have power over them.

DI: Do you think there’s anything to the fact that the execution would have been similar to the way your parents were killed?

B: Hmm. Perhaps. Maybe I just don’t like to see people murdered.

DI: But Prometheus was a bad guy. He’s since gone on to kill innocent people. Do you think she’s wrong to have wanted him dead?

B: I’m not sure. I certainly haven’t tried to stop her career, and we still work together on occasion. I simply disagreed with her on that point, and felt strongly enough that I removed my sponsorship. I didn’t want her actions to reflect upon me, or to encourage similar behavior in other League members. For better or worse people looked up to us. It was a part of our pact with the public that we try and live up to that.

DI: Okay. Let’s end with: do you think you or Huntress was more feared during your tenure as Batman?

B: I was. For a lot of reasons. I was older, more established. Taller, thicker, just more physically imposing. I think there was a sense, after I’d been in Gotham for a long time, that vigilantes cropping up were operating in my shadow, often under my tutelage- whether it was true or not. Besides which, I don’t think Huntress ever really cared about being subtle, or even frightening. She was more impetuous and forceful. Not to stretch our metaphors too far, but our politics could probably use a lot more of her, and a lot less of me.

Though when I mentioned that there have been several fill-in Batmen- she was one of them, during the earthquake, and she did a fine job. I’ve never held Batman has to be a man.

We're All Mad Here

2011-01-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

DI: I understand you feel strongly about the Tucson shooting.

B: It makes me want to go out and punch somebody in the face.

DI: Someone who deserves it, presumably.

B: Preferably… but senseless gun violence, it strikes a nerve. I think punching anyone would make me feel better, at this point.

DI: Do you miss it, then? Being able to walk out onto the street and vent that frustration? Find a bastard and punish him.

(pause)

B: Yes.

DI: As someone who’s been the object of your seething gaze, have you ever considered that you might have anger issues?

B: Yes.

DI: Yes as in you’ve thought about it or yes that you’ve concluded that you do.

B: I do. Occasionally.

But most of that is explainable, between my childhood, and exposure to crime and to warlike circumstances, I think anyone would have rage issues. So given those facts, I think my anger is larger within range.

DI: Sounds like you’ve seen a professional about this.

B: Dated a few.

DI: Professionals?

B: Doctors. Wiseass.

And I think it doesn’t take too many run-ins with genuine sociopaths to make you wonder about your own sanity.

DI: And that’s been a recurring theme in the Tucson shooting. Jared Loughner was apparently a very disturbed man, and there have been some who believe that the state of mental health care in the country lags behind even that of our lagging health care system. You’ve been in Arkham Asylum more times than most, what are your thoughts?

B: I’ve been to, and indeed inside Arkham, but never as a client- I want to be clear about that. There are enough rumors about me being crazy without you starting one about me being committed.

DI: Not to mention that Arkham isn’t your average mental health facility. It’s the Mayo Clinic for crazies- you’ve got to be somebody to reserve a padded cell there.

B: But Arkham is a mess. It’s a sinkhole for money. Most of the inmates don’t have insurance or assets. It’s funded almost entirely by a local charity group that matches donations and money budgeted from state and local government.

DI: I don’t want you to be alarmed by me actually doing a little research, but you fund that organization, don’t you?

B: Yeah. But what I mean to say is that there isn’t a lot of money to be had to pay for the genuinely mentally ill; that goes double for the dangerous, criminal mentally ill. Ronald Reagan gets a lot of the blame, though in truth he’s mostly responsible for California, where he was Governor at the time. He signed a bill changing the standards for involuntary commitment, and at the same time cut funding and staffing of state-run institutions. The idea was to shift the unstable into community facilities, but those facilities were almost all either underfunded or nonexistent. California’s just the most famous example of what happened across the country, seen mostly as a movement to strengthen patient rights. Its unintended consequence was closing down a lot of options for care for people who didn’t have a lot of alternatives. Arkham is just the most egregious example I’m aware of. That’s why I give money to it- like my parents before me.

DI: I’d like to spend a moment discussing what some have called the revolving door nature of Arkham.

B: I know a lot of people look at supercriminals elsewhere, who are capable of growing to the size of buildings, or causing earthquakes, and wonder why Arkham can’t handle its more human-sized inmates. But the Joker, on an average year, takes in over $60 million dollars from his various criminal enterprises. About 70% of that ends up being confiscated, most of it ending up in state coffers or being returned to his victims, but he is far from the most successful criminal in this city. This is a huge cottage industry. You simply can’t pay guards a quarter of a million dollars and expect that none of them will be swayed by paydays that large.

DI: Wait, did you just say you pay the guards a quarter mill a year?

B: Most of them are ex-Special Forces. Would you really expect anyone else to either be willing to take the job or be qualified for it? Arkham is a special case, with some of the most dangerous, unstable individuals on Earth, and the people who deal with them have to be properly compensated. And the same goes for the rest of the staff, from contractors to doctors to the custodians. They’re all comparably well paid, but between threats of violence and bribes, I’m not surprised at the number of escapes per year. About half of the people who are repeat offenders are genius-level intellects with peculiar and esoteric knowledge and skill sets.

DI: But given the recidivism, are you still against the death penalty?

B: If it’s through the courts, if it’s done properly… well, I’ll never be for the death penalty, but I’m not completely against it, either. At some point, the lives they take matter more than any principles we might want to uphold. And I mean any. And it’s acknowledging things like that that makes me glad to be out of that game, where that kind of decision was in my hands.

DI: And I hear that one reason why most of your gallery of rogues don’t get the chair, or at least put in sane people prison, is the constant use of the insanity defense. And I know you’re more in the apprehension side of things, but I understand you’ve sat in on enough insanity defense cases to have an idea of how that works. I know outside Gotham it’s still a fairly infrequent defense.

B: Right. But after John Hinckley got off after shooting Reagan, it picked up here. There are several tests involved with an insanity plea. The first is the M’Naghten rule, which most people know but have never heard by name. Basically, for someone to be not guilty by reason of insanity you have to prove that they don’t have the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. There’s a modifier to M’Naghten, that someone can’t be guilty if an impulse to commit an admittedly wrong act was “irresistible,” though that’s often considered too vague and broad.

But what’s probably had the most impact on these kinds of cases is that the burden of proof in New Jersey is on the state. So the state has to prove that the Joker was sane at the moment he commits a crime, and prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.

DI: Wow. This has been thoroughly depressing. But I seem to recall you having an amusing Joker anecdote to play us out.

B: Right. I once apprehended the Joker in Idaho. He was attempting, through food-tampering and theft on a wide scale to cause what he called, “The Great American Poh-tah-toe Famine.” He was giddy, like he always is- he even seems to like getting caught- until I told him that Idaho doesn’t have an insanity defense. They abolished it. He was going to go to real prison, and given the size of his crime spree, wasn’t likely to survive his sentence. He stared blankly for a moment, then said, “Poe-tay-toe, poh-tah-toe, let’s call the whole thing off.” Unfortunately, Idaho allowed extradition to Gotham, where he was wanted on more serious charges, and the cycle started over again. Every time he gets caught, I lobby the state to send him back to Idaho for his crimes, but so far there haven’t been any takers. Still, for a few months he had to contemplate spending the rest of his life in a real Idaho jail cell. I don’t think he found that funny.

Conspiratorial

2010-12-31T02:53:00.001-08:00

[Note: This interview was taped before the Christmas interview, but my transcription time being limited, I posted the time-sensitive one first- so pardon any detriment to timeliness]

B: I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said, both on our record and off, and I think you’re right. I’ve been focusing too much on policy and politics, and not being a politician, neither is my forte- or very insightful.

But I do have a unique place in at least two worlds our readers may not have a full grasp on, the spandex set and as a highly placed member of the business community. So what I’d like to do, then, is share my unique experiences, and how I feel they bear on what we’re talking about. In the spirit of that, you’ve at least given me the broad strokes of the conversation topics, so I can be somewhat prepared.

DI: Yep. Nice sum up and disclosure- though I can’t help but feel, since we’re talking about disclosure today, that you might have been inspired. But I want to discuss with you Wikileaks, though given that you’ve spent about a third of your life behind a mask, I have an inkling of where you fall on the issue of secrecy.

B: I think a few years ago, you might have been right. There was a time in my life when secrecy was everything to me. I kept my life compartmentalized; even the people who knew I was Batman didn’t know everything.

But I also don’t knee-jerk. I wouldn’t have lived long if I simply categorized the Joker as another sociopath and tried to walk up and punch him in the face. I’ve seen supposed journalists, your peers, refer to Julian Assange as an anarchist, and its possible somewhere in the breadth of his writings that he’s asserted such, but he doesn’t to my admittedly limited reading strike me as a let it burn kind of person. He’s not against government, he’s against the conspiratorial nature of current governments.

DI: And you agree with his assessment?

B: In the broad strokes it’s virtually impossible not to. I’ll get you a link for my references, but a full fifth of the defense budget is classified. That means if these black operations were all done concurrently, we wouldn’t know what the military was doing for ten weeks out of the year. And that’s expenditures. I don’t think it harms our military readiness for anyone to know what we spent on a bomber, or even the rough estimates of what we spend on infrastructure. Given that our military is conducting policy in our names, and on our dimes, I’d balk at the idea of not knowing about a fifth of their operations- at least after the fact- and this is just budgets we’re talking about.

At the very least, I think earlier declassification dates should exist; sensitive information like details of spending on sensitive research and development can have its classification renewed, but say, the procurement budget from 2006 wouldn’t be. That would let the American people know what that 16.6 billion dollars in the budget bought them, and whether or not they thought the money was well spent.

During the mid-nineties, the US classified about 150,000 documents annually. We’ve been cutting back from a high in 2004 of 350,000 documents, but we’re still well above the 90s level, and even that I would say is probably too high.

And in the broad strokes, that’s where I agree with Assange: that the people have a right, and even a necessity to know what’s going on. And that’s why the comparison to my time as Batman isn’t apt, either; I wasn’t spending anyone else’s money, I wasn’t risking anyone else’s lives or interests. I was making decisions, backed by people who agreed enough with me to put their eggs in my basket, so to speak.

Or if you prefer, I think Assange is worried about the same interests that Eisenhower warned against in his famous speech when he said: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

And I think it was because Eisenhower was a man of war, as well as being a sign of his times, that he saw the military aspect of business as the main threat to liberty, but I don’t think he was unmindful of the creep of other economic interests in the corridors of power. I think Assange, again, at least in the broad strokes, just wants to create the right atmosphere for that “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” to exist.

And I think on the opposite side the reaction by some politicians has been downright scary: speaking publicly about assassination and execution. The man could pretty fairly be described as a journalist- and that’s the first time I can remember US public figures calling for the death of journalists. But if you’re looking for a comparable experience I’ve had, and not just my opinions on it, I’d point to Luthor and his political ambitions.

DI: You did ideological battle with Lex Luthor during his term as President.

B: Not just ideological. No.

He unleashed a 7.6 earthquake on Gotham City. He lobbied the government, specifically FEMA, to declare the city a “no man’s land,” cut off from federal authority and assistance. The city descended into violent chaos, and apparently, it was all part of some long-con he had planned, to buy up real estate and corporations based in the city at pennies on the dollar. He perpetrated mass murder through technology to make a quick buck.

He tried to destroy me- not Batman, but Bruce Wayne- and very nearly succeeded. After he became President, he killed someone I cared about, and framed me for it. I briefly considered ‘killing’ Bruce Wayne and just becoming Batman full time.

And we waged economic war, pitting his vast empire against mine, at the conclusion of which I took control of all of his companies.

DI: It’s funny. Superman being from Metropolis, having a long, personal history with Luthor, you’d expect him to hate the man, but he didn’t. He was saddened, by what I think he saw as the loss of all the good Luthor could have potentially done. You, on the other hand, are a few seconds away from popping that throbbing vein in your forehead.

B: If Luthor shot Lois, and Maggie Sawyer, Clark might have the reasons I do.

DI: Uh…

B: Luthor hired David Cain to kill Vesper Fairchild, a reporter I’d been seeing- a woman I think I loved. And while he might not have shot Commissioner [James] Gordon’s wife himself, he all but put [Sarah] Essen in that room with the Joker.

DI: But then shouldn’t the blame for her murder fall to the Joker?

B: It does, and it doesn’t. If you put a rattlesnake in bed with an infant, do you blame the snake?

DI: I suppose not- or at least, there’s more to it than just the snake.

B: Exactly. But my overarching point isn’t just that Luthor’s corporation functioned easily as a criminal organization, but that it fit seamlessly in with the government of the United States. There wasn’t even a learning curve for him. Corporate interests are so embedded in the mindset of Washington that what’s good for business is often seen as what’s good for the country.

There is a little truth to that idea. Business creates jobs, which create prosperity for individuals. But when businesses, as they have been doing at least on the macroeconomic level for thirty years now, continue to siphon wealth from the lower classes, without sharing any of the increased productivity of the American people with those on whose back that productivity was gained- that’s when the idea that what’s good for business is good for the country becomes hollow.

DI: It sounds like Luthor shook your trust in government.

B: Trust, yes.

Most people assume their political leaders are criminals, morally if not technically. But I knew it. I could all but prove Luthor murdered Vesper… David Cain admitted as much to me. And all the while his poll numbers remained high.

I don’t expect the government to do what’s right just because it’s right- I don’t think I was ever that naïve. But I still think there’s a place for government. After all, Luthor didn’t become corrupt the day he was sworn in- he was corrupt long before. The only thing that changed was the scale of his corruption.

Government is like any organization. It has to be held accountable. If we want our government to do what’s right, if we want them to pursue our best interests, as a nation, rather than the best interests only of those with money and influence, we have to pay attention, and make noise when people do wrong.

DI: But you were a vigilante- the least kind of accountable.

B: I was. And maybe in that I was wrong. But I also don’t think I’d have been able to have the same impact working within the system, either. There are limits to what the system can do. So if you’re asking do I advocate non-governmental organizations, including businesses, to work towards the common good? Absolutely. That’s why I run a philanthropic organization that’s bigger than most companies. But I also believe the everyone has to work together. I worked with the police, and as far as possible I obeyed the rules of law.

The government, at least at the conceptual level, is we the people. We guide and shape our collective destiny. At its best, it gives us all an environment in which to thrive and prosper. The dangers of government are that it stops listening to us, that it begins to serve other masters, or worst of all, itself. The purpose of Wikileaks, then, is to make it harder to serve secretive agendas, and increases the cost of doing clandestine business. The more difficult it is to use government as a weapon, the less frequently it can happen.

I’m still not entirely sure Assange’s is the right approach. It’s a risky strategy, and I can see how it could have negative consequences. But ultimately he seems to want a government that can’t have its own priorities- that has to do the people’s work. And that at least is an idea I can get behind.

For The Man Who Has Everything

2010-12-22T06:56:00.000-08:00

DI: Okay, you brood too much.

B: So I’ve been told.

B: Well, to hopefully get you to stop brooding, I want you to tell me about your best Christmas.

B: No. Because there’s three that are important to me, for varying reasons, and at different times. So depending on what I’m missing in my life at that moment, each is special.

DI: Okay- I will not look in the mouth of this gifted horse.

B: The first Christmas I’d like to talk about happened when I was very young, before I’d even started school. My father said it had been a rough year at his practice, and an even rougher year for the family’s companies, that we’d have no money for Christmas presents. And at first I was devastated. A child that age, on Christmas, with no gifts. But my dad said he had something that was almost as good. “Cookies?” I asked. He shook his head. “Candy?”

“We’re going to help people,” he said. And I thought he’d lost his mind. But we took the family car down to a homeless shelter. Well, technically my father dropped my mother and I off, then walked across the street to a free clinic operated by dad’s colleague, Leslie Thompkins, that dad funded. And at first I was really pouty, and bratty, and I didn’t want to cut carrots or stir the stew, but my mother was a gentle woman, and she had a way about her, that even when I didn’t want to behave, I couldn’t cause her too much trouble, either.

And what I started to see, and realize, as I dished out the kind of questionable looking food, was just how grateful people were. They thanked me for every ladleful I spooned out, and wished me a merry Christmas. And when children ate their fill, and wanted seconds, their parents stopped them, so there would be enough for everyone, and instead fed their children from their own plates.

Spending time with people who had so little, but were so willing to share what they had, and to sacrifice, even as a small child I felt foolish for my selfishness. And I remember when it looked like we might run out of food demanding, rather self-righteously, that my mother buy more. I insisted she must have some money, as, “I’m owed an allowance.” Sure enough, she produced some bills, and sent Alfred and I to the store.

A little while later, I recognized my father beneath a fake white beard in a red suit handing out gifts to children at the shelter. I was still kid enough that everything in me wanted to ask him for one of the presents, but I’d learned a lot of humility that day, and I could see that Santa’s sack couldn’t have enough presents for everyone.

But, at the end of the day, presents were waiting for us back at our home. “It must have been Santa,” my father said, smiling beneath his moustache. I think I knew the truth, even then. But it started a tradition for us. Every year, on Christmas day, we worked with the poor, cooking meals, handing out presents. My father was a philanthropist, spending money all year long to help people, but giving, really giving back in person, it was different.

And it continued until the year my parents died. It was winter, snowing, I remember that. A lot of time had passed without me even knowing it. I didn’t even realize it was near Christmas, even though Alfred had put up a tree, until he shook me one morning and said, “Master Bruce, it’s Christmas, and they’re expecting us at the shelter.” I might have spent the rest of my life in that haze if it weren’t for Alfred. But getting back out into the world like that, seeing people, all the people who still needed help, whose lives hadn’t stopped with my parents’. That’s when I decided I needed to continue on my father’s work, and try and make sure no one ever lost their parents the way I lost mine.

DI: … You were a brat.

B: I was spoiled, but I like to think I learned. Maybe.

But I remember one Christmas, Clark, Diana and I decided to exchange gifts. I suspect it was Clark’s idea, believing as he did that I lacked companionship, and that Diana, being newly away from her sisters, so we could all use the company.

I brought Clark a new species of rose called the Krypton. Diana brought a crystal replica of a Kryptonian city fashioned by Themiscyra’s finest gem smiths. We met at his Fortress of Solitude. Diana was flying that invisible jet of hers, and Robin and I raced her in one of my batplanes. And won.

But inside the Fortress, Clark was catatonic. Attached to his chest was a writhing purple-hued thing, like a sea anemone. Are you at all familiar with Mongul?

DI: Er… big dude? Coast City…

B: Yeah. Large alien. Tough as hell. He was responsible for the destruction of Coast City, killing seven million people. On his worst day he was as powerful as Clark. And he was there.

I’ve never enjoyed feeling helpless, but against him, I was. And I was too much a fool to admit it. I reached for my utility belt, for the strongest explosives I carried. I would have thrown it at him, and probably been crushed into a paste by the first retaliatory punch he threw, but Robin grabbed my arm, and Diana launched herself at him.

She knew she was no match for Mongul, but with a single glance she told me that I had to get that thing off Clark or were all dead.

At first I tried everything I had with me, plastique, acids, even a flesh-eating bacterium, but the Black Mercy, as we came to learn it was called, healed too rapidly. Diana was losing her fight with Mongul. The sounds of bone on flesh are disturbing, but the two of them were so strong, so powerful, that while they’re the same sounds, they’re so much louder. I think Clark could hear them, even in the dream world he was in. And his eyes flicked open.

The Black Mercy gives a person their heart’s desire. Just that year Clark had found out about his Kryptonian parents, so more than anything he wanted to be back with them, to live out his life on Krypton. He was married in this dream, had a son. But the sounds of Diana’s pain, of violence, polluted his fantasy world. The planetary cataclysm that hadn’t destroyed Krypton began anew, he started fighting with his wife, and father. Even his people became embroiled in a war.

I don’t know how successful I was, but I talked to him, tried to reason him towards understanding where and how he was trapped, and how to break free. But I know, somehow, he did, and I’ll never forget the cry he let out as he tore the Black Mercy off his chest. Then he was gone.

When he wanted to be, when he needed to be, Clark could move faster than the human eye could perceive. In an instant he set upon Mongul. The violence of that first blow sent a shockwave through the Fortress that knocked me off my feet.

Unfortunately, I fell into the grip of the Black Mercy. And suddenly, I was there, the night my parents died. Every hair on my body stood up; I knew the moment so well, knew that it was seconds before my parents would die. Joe Chill was holding a gun, pointed at my parents, and then- my father slugged him, right across the jaw. Chill dropped the gun, but he gave him another anyway. He hit him, again and again, until Chill collapsed. It was the kind of savage, bloodless victory that happens in adventure movies and I thrilled at it.

And a whole, happy life flashed before my eyes, watching my parents grow old, have another son. They attended my graduation, and eventually, my wedding… and the birth of my son.

DI: Wait, who was the wife and mother?

B: Batwoman.

DI: But isn’t Batwoman a lesbian?

B: I didn’t know that at the time. And, you didn’t just out her, did you?

DI: I think she was pretty well outed when Us Weekly snapped pictures of her making out with the Question in the back of her car while they were on a stakeout.

B: My slightly convoluted fantasy of the moment aside, Robin talked me out of it, just as I’d done with Clark. As I emerged from the dream, I found myself back in that moment, before my parents’ murder, and as I pulled the Mercy loose, I had to watch, in slow motion, as the bullets tore through them.

And I watched as my dad, riddled with holes, rolled mom over and started to perform CPR, watched helplessly as Chill slunk up behind him, put the revolver to my dad’s head. He felt it there, I knew it, I saw it in his eyes, but he couldn’t stop trying to keep mom alive- until another bullet killed him. I don’t know if that ever happened, or if the Mercy elaborated it into the memory, but I froze there a moment, unable to look away, unable to think of anything but their death as it happened again before my eyes.

And by the time I’d come to, Clark and Diana were fighting Mongul in the armory. I ran there as fast as I could. I understood Clark’s rage, and I took up a pair of gauntlets. I hopped onto Mongul’s back and just started pummeling him. I nearly broke both my hands on his face. I was crying-

DI: Ooh, like that scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie beats the crap out of Scott Farkus.

B: Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I’ve never been more conflicted in my entire life. I saw my life as it could have been, and got to be with my parents again. But removing the Mercy from my chest killed them again- in my mind, if only for a moment, I murdered my own parents to be free. The Black Mercy’s vision was a gift, both horrible and beautiful.

Of course, this was Mongul, so no matter how hard I hit him, even in those Kryptonian gloves, he laughed it off. Mongul may have killed us all, except Robin managed to fling the Mercy onto him. He stopped moving, and a smile crept over his face as he dreamed of interplanetary genocide.

DI: That’s… creepy.

B: After that we sat down to dinner, and exchanged gifts.

DI: Just out of curiosity, what did you get for Wonder Woman?

B: I donated a substantial amount of money to a charity fund for her. She’s proven to be an excellent philanthropist.

DI: So you gave her money to give to other people? That’s…

B: The only thing Diana could ever want. Her stipend, as ambassador from the Amazons, more than covers her needs. But the one thing she can never have enough of us helping people. It’s the reason we were easy friends, and I think the most important point of mutual attraction.

DI: That is a story you will one day have to tell.

B: But not today. Today we’re talking about Christmas, and the last is actually last Christmas. This was after I’d finally decided to stop being Batman. I sat down to dinner with Alfred, and my two adopted sons, Dick and Tim. Try as I might, I couldn’t convince Alfred to hire a caterer or even go out to dinner, so he cooked, and when he wasn’t looking we’d try to help, which he said meant dinner took twice as long because he had to redo many, many things.

But sitting down to dinner, with the three of them, it was the first time, I think that we all celebrated Christmas together, though maybe it wasn’t. Regardless, it was the first time I really felt that, since my parents died, my family was complete.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a broken home

DI: Don’t patronize me; you know everything from my instep to my credit score.

B: Okay, your parents divorced, I know that. But not all divorced homes are broken. I didn’t want to presume. But you know the old adage, that you can’t go home again? It’s largely true. But that doesn’t mean you have to be alone, and I wasn’t anymore.

DI: Okay, by my count that’s three and a half Christmases, or maybe two whole ones and then some chunks of other Christmases, but I appreciate you sharing.

B: It’s a time of the year I genuinely enjoy. A chance to spend time with people you care for, and an excuse to make the world a little better. We could use more of those.

Death and Taxes

2010-12-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

DI: I’m still trying to find a good balance for these interviews, so I’d like to talk to you about two things, one personal, one political, both inevitable: death and taxes. What do you think of the new compromise reached by the President and the Republican leadership?

B: It’s… not as bad as I expected.

DI: Damnit. I was hoping for a “No, sir, I don’t like it” Ren and Stimpy quote. You know, the horse who tests out cat litter? Don’t stare at me like I’ve just escaped Arkham Asylum. Explain your response a little more fully.

B: Well, I think they do some things right. A temporary extension of the tax cuts, to help stimulate the economy is not a terrible idea- though as Krugman notes the multiplier isn’t great there. The unemployment benefit extension is good- though how they could trade two years of tax cuts for a thirteen week extension is beyond me- someone isn’t very good at math. And they managed a payroll tax holiday, which I had pretty much given up on. Practically speaking, it’s a stealth stimulus, put on the nation’s tab- only this time you won’t hear Republicans screaming about it because it gets them their precious upper-income tax cuts.

DI: You don’t sound particularly enthusiastic- particularly for someone who’s just been told they’re getting millions of extra dollars next year.

B: I’m not. It’s a stimulus, sort of, but it’s not a particularly well designed or implemented one. The unemployment benefits, easily the best part of the package, won’t last long enough to get the job done, and the rest of it is largely money spent that shouldn’t have been. Even the payroll tax holiday isn’t big enough at 2 percent. It could have been 3. It should have been 5, or even the whole 6.2 percent. That’s money the American people would notice- and spend. Median household income is $50,000, so ballpark a week’s wages at $1,000. A 2 percent payroll tax holiday is $20 bucks more a week; 5 percent would have been $50.

DI: Okay, cool, now shut up about politics. We’re on to death: you have AIDS. We’ve mostly been sidetracked for a long time, but I wanted to get that back into the fore. You’re dying. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But sooner than maybe otherwise. Have you read White Noise?

B: Yes. Have you?

DI: I… perused the SparkNotes.

B: It’s not particularly applicable. I don’t really fear death- at least um, I’m not preoccupied with it the way that that novel is, or DeLilo, or Becker, whom the author relies upon heavily.

DI: Because not all of us went to Harvard, or wherever-

B: You ooze journalistic integrity-

DI: could you sum up for us Becker.

B: He’s most famous for The Denial of Death. It was a book theorizing that society is largely based around an attempt to refute our mortality. It’s sort of the polar opposite of the Freudian obsession with procreation, and by extension, the creation of life. Both have some points that they make, and I think both are a useful study in fixations- because I don’t think being too focused on life or death is helpful when there’s work to be done.

DI: But your work, and I’ll include your time in the underpants brigade as well as your philanthropy, isn’t that a way of combating death? I mean, you’ve discussed how your parents died pointlessly in an alley. That’s got to be one of the more brutal confrontations with mortality that exists.

B: That’s true. When I was young, my parents’ death weighed heavily on me. Life was fleeting- and the fragility of it made life at the same time more and less valuable to me. That’s why I was willing to put my own life in danger to protect other people. And at the same time, I think having that purpose gave my own life more value.

DI: And most importantly, you were cheating death.

B: Only slightly. There’s only a handful of times where I’d say I cheated death. Mostly, I studied death, came to know it intimately, and learned how to skirt the edges of its territory without trespassing.

DI: That sounds awfully purple.

B: Maybe. But what I’m getting at is that it isn’t cheating death knowing that an untrained criminal with a gun will panic and fire wildly, that the slightest distractions and misdirection can turn a decent threat into a quivering puddle. I played the percentages, that’s all. There were a few times where, say, a ricochet took an ear off my cowl, instances like that, where the devil may have been due, but cheating, no.

DI: But philosophically. Every life you saved, was a life snatched away from death, added to your tally, added to your mythos. You could be hit by a truck tomorrow- probably the least climactic death possible- and the world would remember you for years.

B: I hope not. I’m leaving my fortune to my sons, Tim and Dick. I’m leaving my costumed legacy in the hands of others, who I think in time are capable of so fully eclipsing my accomplishments that I’ll be lost to time. At least, that’s what I hope.

I’ve fought death, I think you can say that. But I’ve also always known you can’t win. Just this last year, losing Clark, that became that much truer in my eyes. If even Superman can’t escape death, what chance would I have?

But like you said. I’m not dying today. I’m not dying tomorrow. I may not even die from this- there’s a very real possibility that I’ll live long enough for a substantive medical breakthrough, or at least to be killed by something more conventional. Like a clot from any number of old bone breaks dislodging and catching in my brain or heart. Or a plane crash.

I think for me death was always an adversary, from the day my parents died, always on the opposite side of a chess board. And I relished every time I could take away one of his pawns, and I mourned my every failure. But I think I’ve always known that at the end of the game, no matter how well I did, death and I were walking away together.

DI: Do you think in death you’ll be reunited with your parents?

B: I don’t know; I don’t think I think so. But I hope so.

Movies

2010-12-02T07:37:00.000-08:00

DI: First off, I want to say holy crap, we've actually been keeping this up regularly. I was beginning to think we didn't have it in us- and by we I mostly mean you, since I did this last year without issue.

But you and I have had this bad habit of focusing, almost myopically, on political stuff. It’s Lex Luthor, really impacting the world kind of stuff, I know, but man, sometimes it’s just the worst combination of depressive and boring. I was talking to Lois the other day- don’t give me that look, I know it’s weird that we keep in touch, but it’s entirely journalistic courtesy, I’m not looking to poach widows- though I suppose I should be flattered you think I could even attempt to compete.

B: Don’t be. You couldn’t.

DI: Harsh. But expected.

Anyway, I was speaking with Lois the other day, deep background kind of thing

B: Doesn’t that mean you’re not supposed to tell me your information is from her?

DI: Well… your bat ears are stupid.

B: Touché.

DI: But she mentioned that you used to tease Clark because, well, your movies did better than his.

B: Yeah, though only because, for whatever reason, it seemed to matter to him. I think it had to do with the odd messiah complex people try to build around him. Clark just wanted to help people, simple as that. He could, so he did. Nothing complex or psychological about it.

DI: So the fact that his planet was destroyed and there was nothing he could do about it, and the fact that as an adult on Earth he had the ability to save his adopted homeworld- nothing Freudian there at all?

B: Perhaps it influenced him, but that was in the background. Losing his planet, losing his parents, when he did, it barely affected him; he was a baby. His parents for most of his life were just the ones living in Kansas. By the time he found out about his birth parents, it was comparable to finding out he’d had grandparents he didn’t remember, who he used to stay with, who held him. I don’t mean to minimize the tragedy- just it’s place in his… psychology isn’t as grand as your framing would have it.

DI: Or, in other words, the death of his parents didn’t have the same kind of impact as yours.

B: Maybe; I know it didn’t have the same impact as losing his adopted father did. Clark absolutely missed and loved his birth parents. But it was an old, healed loss by the time he recognized it was there.

DI: But wasn’t that one of the things you and he bonded over through the years?

B: Not really, for the same reasons I’ve just mentioned. For Clark, his parents were in Kansas. For me, my parents are in the ground. His having a set of dead back-up parents didn’t really square that circle.

Some of it comes from the way he was raised, but honestly, having spent some time with his parents, having seen where their philosophies and his clashed, I can say pretty certainly that it’s just who Clark was. In a better world, he would have spent all that extra energy just helping little old ladies cross the street; in the damaged world we have, populated by the damaged people we have, being Superman was the equivalent.

DI: Damnit, I’m the journalist, I’m supposed to be keeping us on track. We were talking about your movies. So, batarang to your head, who’s the better director, Chris Nolan or Bryan Singer?

B: You know, they’ve both got their talents, their wheelhouses. I think Nolan’s a very solid filmmaker, and that in and of itself is a rare thing. But Singer’s no slouch, either. I think, really, their varied success came from divergent ideas, or maybe converging ideas from different perspectives.

Nolan took me, a normal man without powers, and pretends I’m more powerful than I am to emphasize my humanity. Singer took Clark, a normal man whose powers are godly, and tried to make him more human. I think the problem was in Singer’s initial assessment: that Clark’s abilities somehow made him more “other” than human. I’ve said it before, but Clark was, bar no one I’ve ever met, the most human person I’ve ever known.

I think if Clark had ever met him, he’d probably have recognized that right away. So I guess, the main point of distinction that I’d make is that while both men judged us oddly, Nolan was closer enough to the mark that his version of me was at least a little less disjointed. Singer’s construction of Clark as a messianic deadbeat dad, which I think is mixing your Christ and deic metaphors, was just odd.

DI: Have you had any input into Nolan’s movies?

B: Honestly, I stay the hell away from Chris Nolan. I don’t want a thing to do with his movies.

DI: So you’re not flattered, or whatever.

B: I just don’t want to have a part in them. On the one hand, playing an advisory role, say, would give them greater weight than they deserve. Because I’m not, contrary occasionally to my own musings, that important. There are literally hundreds of people who do what I do. And I might be a little older than most, I may have beaten most of them to the punch, but I don’t feel like I’m any more extraordinary or deserving than they are.

DI: But don’t you think telling a good story could help humanize them? Maybe get people to recognize and better appreciate the sacrifices that people have given for the greater good?

B: If I thought, for an instant, that a movie about me was going to do that, sure. But I think that idea is a contradiction in terms. A movie about me, or about Batman, misses the point. A movie about the League, I think, would be closer to telling a story, true or otherwise, about the people who really keep the world safe, and how collectively they’re able to accomplish far more than a man in black skulking in an alley alone.

DI: I get, from you and from Clark, the same kind of reverence for your fellow Leaguers as most people have for military service people.

B: They’re absolutely comparable. We come to these lifestyles from a lot of divergent paths, but the bottom line is that each and every one of us is willing to put ourselves between harm and innocent people. I can’t begin to describe how noble I consider those who have served with the League to be.

And not to speak ill of the dead, but the less like Superman they were, the more I respect them. Clark could stand in front of a bullet train without fear, but a good portion of our members are as human as you or I. They’re exceptionally well trained, skilled, and smart- but mortal. They accept mortal peril on a daily basis. They absolutely deserve the same kind of respect soldiers deserve.

Balancing Act

2010-11-25T07:20:00.000-08:00

DI: Okay, you emailed me this, but I’ll let you introduce it however you want. So go nuts.

B: Some people have called me a deficit hawk, and I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think my business experience has taught me that the books need to be balanced, but I’m also schooled enough in economics to know that governments don’t operate the way a business does, they actually operate more like an individual. What I mean by that is that most people go through phases in their spending, where they’ll spend more than they make and go into debt, or make more than they spend and squirrel some of it away. The only real difference is that when our government takes in more than it spends there’s this odd urge to give the money back to the taxpayers. If we had already paid down the debt, and it looked like we could safely reduce revenues to a lower level commensurate with spending, that makes sense, but giving back money when we still have this large debt would be like Visa handing you back your monthly payment and saying, “no, you spend it on something else- we’ll just keep charging the interest.”

But the whole reason I even mention any of this is I got a chance to balance the budget. No, the Obama administration wasn’t offering me a job; the New York Times put together a little game that illustrates the deficit. You have to make budget decisions, and it explains to you the impacts of the cuts you’re making. And it’s really kind of agonizing, some of the decisions you end up making, because there are all kinds of things that in a perfect world we wouldn’t be looking at cutting, but that in the context of trying to balance the budget may be necessary. I’m probably underselling how amazing this actually is, but I would entreat everyone to give it a try:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?hp

Though I should emphasize that tightening our belts, right this second, is probably a bad idea. Our economy is actually recovering right now, but the impact of government cuts that have already taken place have made it almost a zero sum game. Further cuts may very well cripple an economy that’s still hobbling.

DI: Very nice. And it is enlightening- and a little depressing, too. But I have journalistic things. And I really do hate to ask- because I hate to give Glenn Beck’s existence any acknowledgement whatsoever- but just a few weeks ago you distanced yourself from George Soros, and Beck seems to have taken an eager swipe at the man.

B: Yeah. Chills my blood to be even in the same neighborhood as Beck, but I’ll try and explain myself. Geoge, and I think I’ve known him long enough to call him George, is a great guy. He’s a fighter, going back decades. He’s spent billions of dollars funding anti-Communist efforts in the Soviet bloc, in large part because his family survived first the Nazis and then the Russians. He has a visceral dislike of authoritarian governments, and unlike some he really puts his money where his passion is. And I have a lot of respect for George, I really do. But he’s been associated with liberal causes for a long time and for that he gets written off, as if he does these things without deep and contemplative thought. He doesn’t- and I was saying I don’t want to be written off as a knee-jerk liberal, either.

I believe in a strong government that does certain things well for its citizens, and that if we’re going to have that government we’ll have to pay for it through taxes. Some people want a weaker government, or smaller, if you prefer that terminology- and that’s a possibility, too. The size and mission of the government is something we have to compromise on, because we can’t all get what we want, obviously. I think I’m realistic in that, not ideological. And I don’t want people to write me off because I know we need to have those conversations, in order to forge those compromises; otherwise we all suffer.

DI: I particularly liked the New Yorker takedown of Beck’s comments- the New Yorker being appropriate, since it was quotes from an old New Yorker piece that Beck repeatedly misrepresented- not that I regularly read the New Yorker, as I’m no effete East Coast liberal.

B: Careful- I am an effete East Coast liberal.

DI: Who would have given Bruce Lee a run for his money in his day.

B: No- not even close. Lady Shiva might have, on one of her better days. But what people forget about Bruce Lee is the man spent hours every day training. I’m in excellent shape, but I spent as much or more of my time on studies, on running my companies, on so many other things. Bruce Lee would have beat the holy hell out of me- though I think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar might be in my wheelhouse.

DI: So you’ve fought freakishly tall and long-limbed martial artists?

B: On occasion. I’d cheat, mind you. A fair fight with someone like that is just asking to get a size 16 foot in the eye.

DI: Oh my God- I’m going to Google that later, but did you just pull the man’s shoe size out of thin air?

B: I have a mind for details- not quite a photographic memory, but about 93% recall.

DI: Hmm. Damnit. I meant to steer the conversation away from politics; I know that’s a lot of where your mind is, these days- I think because you’ve had to step back from the chief way you tried to impact the world, and now you’re groping for new ways to be useful.

But I’m as much if not more interested in you and your past exploits. I think it’s a balancing act, there- and so far I’ve been failing. Next week, though, we’ll be back and hopefully better at it.

Fear

2010-11-18T07:21:00.001-08:00

DI: Okay, it’s Halloween, or it was, at this point. What did you go as?

B: Rainbow Batman.

DI: Little on the nose, don’t you think?

B: Only if I was being serious.

DI: Fair enough. But given the season, I wanted to know, given a life of doing dangerous, reckless and occasionally heroic things involving lunatics, what was your scariest moment?

B: Hmm. There’s been a lot of them, like you say. Crazy and horrifying well describe my world for the last thirty years.

And for the same reason that people say that most shrinks got into the field to understand themselves or the crazy people in their lives, I think crazy people, really truly violent psychotics I mean, have an obsession with abnormal psychology, too.

Examples litter my career, like the Joker trying to prove to Commissioner Gordon that the world wasn’t sane by driving him clinically insane. And I’ve been trapped, by various means, in dream worlds where everything was how I thought I wanted it, only to have it fall apart.

But the one that got the deepest under my skin I think was largely accidental. Jonathan Crane, who you may know better under the alias of the Scarecrow, was a psychologist. He specialized in phobias, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t trained in all aspects of the clinical practice.

And he became obsessively convinced that Batman and by extension the man beneath the cowl had to be crazy. I don’t know entirely if I’d argue the point- particularly not at the time.

But he put together an old failing of mine. A girl was kidnapped, and the ransom paid, but as often happens with kidnappings, they had no intention of letting the girl go. I tracked her into the sewers, where she was trapped. The water in the tunnel was rising. There was a boulder preventing me from freeing her, at least 300 pounds of dead weight. And I couldn’t move it; I couldn’t even budge it. I had to watch as this girl, five years old, drown.

I didn’t take that… failure, lightly. I embarked on a pretty brutal training regimen- but I still couldn’t build enough bulk. Faced with the possibility- really probability- that something like that would happen again, I started taking a performance enhancing drug called Venom-

DI: The same stuff that makes Bane into the meat mountain he is [ed. note: “meat mountain” does indeed sound like a porno- it isn’t just you].

B: Right, only this was years before Bane showed up. Anyway, like steroids, there were consequences to taking the drug, including rages. I’ve got anger issues on my best day, but I became truly frightening- and eventually I realized I was terrified of what I might do- that there was very real potential that on Venom I would be capable of doing far worse than what I might fail to do without the drug- and quit. Crane pieced together that situation, or at least enough of it, and used it.

He set a trap for me, captured me. I woke up in the old meatpacking plant, in one of the freezers. He told me he’d captured both me and Robin; this was also after the death of my second Robin- after I nearly beat the Joker to death for it. So I was keenly aware of their potential mortality.

I was drugged, hypnotized; later analysis showed the cocktail he used included hallucinogens, Venom, and a mix of drugs designed to make a patient more pliant. Crane told me there was a woman on the floor with me, and that if I didn’t kill her, he had henchmen in a second room watching via teleconference who would shoot Robin.

For hours he beat me, and taunted me, and threatened; every five minutes he’d start a timer and tell me at the end that if I hadn’t killed her that he’d give the order for them to shoot Robin, and just as the timer was about to go off he’d wind it back. The drugs probably kept me from recognizing his bluff, and every single time I thought it was going to happen- several times I watched it all unfold in slow motion, the gun firing, and I’d flash back to my parents and I was that same scared kid, and I’d watch the bullet fly through the air and tear through Robin’s face and skull- only to realize I was hallucinating. I wanted more than anything to murder the girl, then Crane, and then his stooges if they’d hurt Robin- and maybe even if they hadn’t- and anyone else I needed to protect people I cared about. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Eventually I passed out.

When I woke up I managed to head butt Crane as he was trying to put me back into a hypnotic state. I crawled over the floor to where the woman was. The hallucinogens had worn off enough that I could see her for what she really was: a bloodhound in an evening gown and a wig.

A gunshot rang out, and I ran out of the freezer and fumbled my way through the Scarecrow’s henchmen- they were rent-a-thugs, or I might have been in serious trouble. They’d been in a freezer next to me the entire time, and it’s door was open. “Robin” was a Raggedy Andy in a bad Halloween costume; the colors weren’t even right.

I stalked back into the other freezer, sobering with every step, and I realized I’d overcome what had terrified me before: the idea that I was so crippled by a fear of failure that there was no limit on what I might be capable of. I picked Crane up off the floor by his collar. “You’re going to hit me, aren’t you?” he asked sullenly.

But I hugged him. It was such a relief, of such a great burden. I couldn’t even express how wonderful it was not to have it hanging over my head anymore. Then I punched him for a while. Some of that might have been the drugs.

DI: Just so we’re clear, here, you were celebrating your ability to ignore the violent murder of a teenager. That might be the scariest thing about that story.

B: You know you have an uncanny ability to cut through whatever emotions have built up by being a dick. I think you’re beginning to grow on me.

DI: I want you to know, if you’re making an erection joke I’ll have to bleep it out.

Losers

2010-11-11T07:49:00.000-08:00

Losers

DI: You lost.

B: The Democrats lost. I’m a liberal, and it’s certainly a blow to hopes for any kind of a liberal agenda, but honestly the liberal agenda in this country’s been a little haphazard.

I see a potential for hope- or maybe it’s just a silver lining I’m picking out of a cloudy sky. But the country needs two things; there are a lot of things we want and that we’d like, but for the country to continue to exist and thrive, it needs two things. In the short term, we need a stronger economy; in the long term, we need fiscal solvency.

Being a Keynesian, I think spending is the answer.

What’s strange about that is that cutting taxes without trimming spending is actually another form of government spending- it’s in fact raising future taxes. We can argue over the best ways to spend, but I think economic modeling pretty effectively shows where this kind of spending is most effective.

Lower income people are largely more likely to spend new money, because their immediate needs are likely more salient. If the government cuts me a check for a quarter of a million dollars, it goes right into my piggy bank, because I’ve already bought basically everything I want or need, and you can generalize this, statistically. The top 10% of earners take home 50% of the money, but account for only 20% of consumption.

I think a payroll tax holiday is the best of all possible solutions. And because of our trickle up economy, the wealthy will gain too, because their companies will sell more products, their stocks will do better; even property values will rebound somewhat.

I think now is the best possible time for it. Congress could pass the holiday in time for the holiday splurges; the fact that it’s passing out of a Democratically controlled Congress would marginally benefit them, but the recovery would largely happen with a divided government- and Republicans being the superior salespeople, I have no doubt they’d get at least their fair share of the kudos.

But that’s why I think it has the best chance of getting passed, and that’s only one factor. I also think that it has the best chance of having long-term benefits, too.

As an alternative, I think Jon Stewart had an excellent idea. Basically, if people are overly concerned with the proportion of their debt, the federal government can bail out the American people. Basically, figure out the average debt per person, and cut everybody a check. If you’ve overspent, you can regain peace of mind which would help the economy by both injecting further capital into the banks and rejoining the consuming portion of the economy. If you don’t have any debts, then you get a big wad of cash for a down payment on a car or a home or to throw into the stock market. The only two caveats, really, are that you’d want to prohibit people from squirreling away more than 10% of it in savings, and that it’s complicated enough as to be virtually unfeasible. But it’s still an interesting idea.

DI: But we’d be federalizing debt, and basically borrowing from ourselves in the future.

B: But that’s what debt always does. Except this time we’d all benefit, and in this particular case, it’s important to include in your calculus the fact that our economy is depressed. A depressed economy is less productive- so we’re losing out on all the productivity that our economy is not making use of. So even though such a measure would certainly cost money, as long as the effects on the economy were positive enough that our economy recovered faster, there’s a good chance we’d make up whatever it cost for those stimulating funds in the first place. Last year tax revenue was a full $600 billion dollars short of what it would have been without the recession. If another stimulus cost us say $1.8 trillion, but we got back to booming three years earlier, then the net cost of the stimulus would be zero. And right now our recession resembles the Japanese recession, which lasted a full decade, so the odds of us coming out ahead on such a transaction are pretty good.

And even if our government ended up losing a little money in the long run, isn’t it worth it to get unemployment down? Obviously the degree is important. $1 trillion for a .1% decline in unemployment isn’t acceptable, but there’s a sweet spot where the cost of intervention is justified.

DI: We’ve talked about Paul Krugman a bit, off the record, but there was an item in his blog I wanted to ask about. Republicans have stated their intention to put global warming science, and particularly the recent “scandals” through the testimonial ringer. Thoughts?

B: I imagine they won’t. Because what most climate deniers, at least in the professional arena, know but don’t want their constituents to know is that they’re full of crap. The science is about as tight as any other science right now. The supposed scandals involve, at best, professional secrecy, and the reasoning for it is pretty understandable. You know how people say that statistics can mean almost anything? It doesn’t mean that truth is fungible, or that there aren’t any abstract, measurable facts, but that through statistics you can obscure the truth. The scientists involved were reticent to disclose all of their raw data because raw data can be misused by people with an economic or philosophical agenda. That’s it. Nothing sinister about it.

DI: And we would be remiss if we didn’t at least mention the Deficit Commission.

B: God. I can’t imagine why the commission was staffed the way it is. Its co-chairs are a small-government Republican and a Wall Street executive; predictably the commission’s suggestions consist almost exclusively of tax cuts for wealthy and corporate interests, and spending cuts for everyone else, including cuts in Social Security, Medicare and even defense. Deficit reduction is absolutely an important and serious issue, but if we’re going to pay back our debt, we all have to share the burden. It might mean the rich pay more in taxes, it might mean that some people see a reduction in benefits, but we can’t, as responsible citizens, expect somebody else to bear the brunt.

My taxes should increase. As a multibillionaire, I have a lower effective tax rate than anyone in my entire company; even the custodial staff pay a higher proportional tax rate than I do. That’s because everyone pays about a 15% tax rate for Social Security and Medicare only on the first $100,000. I pay 37% in federal income taxes from my salary, which is modest for a CEO, and only 15% from capital gains, which is where most of my income comes from. Even if the capital gains tax goes back to 28%, I’d still have an effective tax rate equal to someone earning $80,000 a year. And that’s stupid. I can afford higher tax rates because of my affluence. Someone earning that much is certainly better off than someone earning $25,000 or even $50,000, and their tax bracket should reflect that, but when I bring home degrees of magnitude more money annually it doesn’t make sense that I would be paying a lower tax rate.

DI: What do you think about the proposed increase in the retirement age?

B: Apparently, since the 70s, life expectancy for most workers has increased by a year, and if everyone is living a year longer, then delaying Social Security benefits by a year makes a certain degree of sense- especially if it helps stave off benefit cuts. It’s all a delicate balancing act. To create a responsible budget, it’s highly likely that we’ll have to endure some pain, but hopefully when we get to the light at the end of the tunnel we can do better; sharing our triumphs as well as our torments is what makes us a society- it’s what keeps us human.