Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Disappearing Act

B: Diana called me this morning.

ID: I smell a segue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ID: Is that some kind of autofellatio joke?

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

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

ID: Provided they can hold him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ID: Clever.

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

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Love(s) of My Life: Journalists

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

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

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

ID: As complicated as yourself?

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

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

B: Maybe.

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

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

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

ID: So you were your own rival?

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

ID: You sound like you regret that.

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

ID: So she’s happy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B: Classy

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

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

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

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

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

B: At the behest of Lex Luthor, yes.

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

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

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

B: Meaning?

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

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

B: No. You really can’t.

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

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

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

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

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Love(s) of My Life

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

B: I’m sorry I’m not dying faster.

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

B: Why?

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

[click]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ID: And the answer was...

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

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

ID: What do you mean?

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

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

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Crime and Punishment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DI: And Japan has that 99% conviction rate?

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

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

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

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

DI: But correlation is not causation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ID: Heheh, you said penal.

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