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.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Fear Itself
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.
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.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
We're All Mad Here
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.
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.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Conspiratorial
[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.
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.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
For The Man Who Has Everything
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.
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.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Death and Taxes
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.
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.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Movies
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.
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.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Balancing Act
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.
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.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Fear
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.
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.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Losers
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.
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.
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