tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85212900603150521472024-02-06T19:52:14.369-08:00Batman Comes OutOut of the cave. Out of the cowl. Out of the closet.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-25420000526096061662011-12-17T06:52:00.000-08:002011-12-17T06:55:46.805-08:00You Still Don't Know DickID: You’ve previously waxed poetic about Dick’s positive effect on your life. What’s the worst moment he helped pull you back from?<br /><br />B: When the Joker murdered his replacement, things got pretty dark for me. I felt like I’d failed him, that if I’d only trained him better… I wanted to murder the Joker, and then quit.<br /><br />And I might have done it. By then Dick was Nightwing, and we’d had a pretty big fight about his replacement; he wasn’t living in the Manor anymore, and I wasn’t going to find him to talk it over. But he found me. He tracked me down- despite the fact that I didn’t want to be found. <br /><br />And he told me that we were all mortal. That he and I, we’d survived for two reasons: the first was that I’d put us through Hell, a training regimen that burnt the imperfections off of us. And the second was luck. Dumb, stupid, thoughtless luck. That we were alive only because chance hadn’t claimed us yet, because we were always only one lousy ricochet or one missed landing away from death. <br /><br />And I’m not explaining it well. Let me see if I can remember the part that really got me. He said, “We’re in a war. We fight every day for a better world, one where children don’t lose their parents. And when we fail, we mourn our losses, and we fight the next day harder for them.”<br /><br />He gives a hell of a speech. I was never good at those, not like he is; you have to love people to really reach them the way he does, in a way I’ve never been good at. I care but… love is a vulnerability I’ve rarely allowed myself. It’s one of the many reasons I tell people my son is a far better man than me. Because he isn’t scared to love people knowing what it could cost him. It makes him a better leader. And it also means that he feels his losses even deeper than I feel mine. And I knew if he could do it, if he could look past the reasons we’d been fighting, if he could look at the world with optimism for everything we’d seen, then I could keep going, too. <br /><br />ID: Fighting the good fight?<br /><br />B: And doing it the right way. Joker had to be brought to justice. Though I’ll admit, since then I hit him a hell of a lot more than I used to. Not that that’ll ever even things out. I could keep him tied to a chair in the Batcave, and beat him until my fists bled, every damn day, and even if he lived to a natural old age, he could never live through that long enough. <br /><br />ID: Yeah. I wanted to know about what I think is probably the most controversial Dick-related decision in your life. This is actually the second time you’ve retired. Last time, you passed over Dick to take over for you, in favor of a sociopathic brainwashed zealot. Why?<br /><br />B: Because Dick Grayson was Nightwing, who by simple right of having done the job longer than anybody else, should have been given the job- at least offered it. But Dick Grayson was also my son. And I was afraid of Bane. He destroyed me, almost completely. If it hadn’t been for Barbara, at least at first, and later the rest of my family and friends, he would have succeeded. And I couldn’t bear having that happen to Dick; I couldn’t stand the possibility. <br /><br />My first successor- whose name isn’t among those leaked by Lex News, so I won’t be dropping it here- wasn’t Dick. I mean no disrespect, but he couldn’t be. Dick had been doing this his entire life, from a boy. My replacement… he was prepared to do it most of his life, but it was a different system. It wasn’t experience. It wasn’t living years of his life on the streets. <br /><br />But there was a… ferocity in him. If, no, when, Bane was provoked by the appearance of a new Batman, I thought he stood a better chance of surviving the encounter. Or maybe I was scared of him, too, and I just hoped my two fears could cancel one another out.<br /><br />ID: Like kill each other?<br /><br />B: Nothing like that. If I’d really thought my replacement was still capable… he tried to reform. Looking back, I think he had a similar upbringing to Damian, and like my son, he tried to combat the horrors done to him in his childhood. But unlike Damian, he wasn’t quite so adept at conquering his demons. I don’t blame him. I think, on some level, I knew he wasn’t ready, wasn’t tested. I <em>hoped</em> he would gain what he needed on the job, but… the mistake is mine. The failure was mine. <br /><br />ID: And the deaths that occurred on his watch?<br /><br />B: Are regrettable. But, I weigh it against the lives that would have been lost if he hadn’t been in the cowl. And <em>maybe</em>… it’s actually the fulfillment of an old fear of mine; I always worried being close to people, loving them, would make me make poor decisions, and I think my fears drove me towards this one. But my replacement did take down Bane, at the height of his powers. And I don’t know if that’s something Dick could have done, then. Now, I have no doubt, but then? I’d still be loathe to push it. <br /><br />ID: I fear we’re getting a little too dour for our own good. What was your funniest Dick in costume moment?<br /><br />B: There have been a few. Probably the funniest stretch was when he was going through puberty. And like most teenagers, he was gawky, had acne, and his voice broke. And there are few things more comical than a bunch of hardened criminals running away in a panic from a small boy whose voice is cracking as he yells for them to stop. <br /><br />But I think the funniest in costume moment, and he’s going to hate that I’m telling this story, but it was the first time he was dealing with Poison Ivy <br /><br />ID: That’s plant-lady doctor, Pamela Isley. <br /><br />B: But it was their first encounter after he became a man. <br /><br />ID: Mazel tov. <br /><br />B: Ivy doesn’t wear a lot of clothes, and she uses pheromones to manipulate men, um, sexually. Well, she had us caught, but she figured since we were who we were, it wouldn’t last for long, so she had this concentrated form of the pheromone that she’d made into a lipstick, that she said would turn us permanently into her slaves. She kissed Dick first. And I guess it must have required prolonged contact because it lasted a while, and after a moment he joined in, and being the overly enthusiastic boy that he was, there was way too much tongue. It was awkward, watching that.<br /><br />And when she pulled away, he’s pitching a tent in his tights. She turned red; I didn’t know before that through the chlorophyll skin she still could, but she turned red, or maybe a darker shade of green with just a hint of crimson. She said, “Now I feel dirty about this. I think I have to go.” And she just left. I mean she had us dead to rights, held captive by her Venus mantraps, and in the middle of her crime, she just walks away, because being Mrs. Robinson creeped her out too much. <br /><br />Dick was pretty embarrassed. So to try and relieve some of the tension, I asked if he thought we might be able to get the same reaction from the Joker. And he said, “Not worth it if I have to tongue kiss him.” <br /><br />ID: I have, in my prurient personal moments, wondered about that. The women in your world seem to wear rather… tight clothes when they deign to wear anything at all. And be otherwise in the kind of physical condition Olympic swimmers and gymnasts are envious of. And your clothes don’t seem to leave any place for, uh, discretion. <br /><br />B: It’s weird all of a sudden you being the discrete one. <br /><br />ID: I get awkward around discussion of adolescent boners. <br /><br />B: But remember the crotch padding I talked about in my costume? Excellent for keeping that kind of thing in check. It was because Robin was constantly growing that his suit on that particular night didn’t have the padding; in fact, I think he was wearing an older suit while Alfred let out his current one, so it was even a little extra tight. <br /><br />And Ivy’s usually such a fan of growth. <br /><br />ID: Thank you and good night.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-34750903745654561372011-12-10T01:17:00.000-08:002011-12-10T04:48:43.280-08:00You Don’t Know DickID: Your first adopted son is Batman. I’m not the first person to say this. It’s been making the rounds for a few weeks, now, primarily from a Lex News report. But when we talked about him previously this news wasn’t out in the open, so you had to be taciturn. Because you had to wall off an entire clump of who he was and is to you. I tacitly agreed to that, by not asking the obvious questions. So we’re going to take a spade to that unplumbed depth. When did you decide to take Dick Grayson on as an understudy? <br /><br />B: Well, it was an evolution. At first, I didn’t think he’d even want a part of my, mission, I guess. It had always been such a specific, personal thing to me up until that point, so it didn’t really even occur to me that Dick would want it. <br /><br />But he was a gymnast, and I had a lot of gymnastic and acrobatic equipment and facilities in the cave. So at first, he’d just train with me. And then he’d see me doing my katas, or doing strength training, and he’d join me in those things. Honestly, at the time, I thought we were just exercising together, in a way that was helping him to get past what had happened to his parents. <br /><br />And then one day he showed up in the cave when it was time for me to go out for my patrols, and he’s in costume, and wants to go along. At first I told him no, in no uncertain terms. And he threw a little bit of a fit, and stormed up to his room. Of course, Alfred overhead the whole thing, and said, “Would you have listened?” And we both knew the answer to that; it was a long series of me not listenings that led me to being Batman. <br /><br />So I had Alfred design him a costume, with maximum armor without limiting mobility. And it was dark, blacks and crimsons. <br /><br />ID: That’s always bugged me. Your costume’s black and gray, fairly camouflagey. Your sidekick, his costume looks like the 1980s threw up on someone. <br /><br />B: You’re going to wish you hadn’t said that. See, the costume he was wearing that night was basically a slightly altered version of the one he and his parents performed in. He wanted to wear it to keep their memory alive. <br /><br />ID: I’ve always wondered what my foot tasted like; fishy, but with earthy overtones. <br /><br />B: That might be something that warrants a doctor’s visit. But we fought about it. Like crazy. I forbid him from going out, because I thought, like you’ve said, that his costume made him a flashing light for gunfire, and even just attention can be deadly, you know, when you’re swinging from rooftops, because somebody hurls a brick, or just makes a loud noise, anything that screws with your concentration can be a problem.<br /><br />But he was able to break into the Batcave without even really trying. There wasn’t anything we could do, at least nothing that wouldn’t count as child endangerment, to keep him locked up. And we tried. About the only <em>true</em> success we had was duct tape, Alfred used about five rolls to <em>really</em> make sure he wouldn’t get out of it. And he still did. Took him <em>hours</em> of wriggling, and later I figured out he’d pulled a Houdini, made sure to keep his muscles tensed up while Alfred was taping him, so that he had a little room to maneuver. He got out and tracked me down for about the last hour of my patrol.<br /><br />And we’d all but given up when he stopped. He was asleep in his room when I left for my patrols, and still asleep when I’d get back. He shadowed me for almost a week before I realized he was <em>still</em> following me on my patrols. So I trained him to stay in the shadows, keep his distance. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have someone watching from above, who could tell me if, say, a car full of armed thugs was emptying at the end of an alley while I was preoccupied fighting. <br /><br />And I was fooling myself the whole time. Dick wasn’t going to stay out of the fight any more than I would have. Any time I got into trouble, he was there to bail me out. But what I really quickly realized, is in doing so, he usually put himself in even more danger, having to act quickly and recklessly. So I grounded him. For two months. And told him that if he followed my every instruction, to the letter, to the detail, for that time period, I would let him patrol with me for real. <br /><br />I put him through <em>Hell</em>. ‘Bruce Wayne’ took a ski vacation through Europe- a body double I’ve used before- and I spent eighteen hours a day preparing him. I kind of thought he’d lose interest after a week or two. But on top of that, Alfred and I were pretty inventive with stupid requests; he scrubbed every single toilet in Wayne Manor with a toothbrush, and didn’t complain. Okay, he complained a couple of times when I wasn’t in the room, but I can’t fault him for not finding the recording devices then; it was still pretty early in his training. <br /><br />ID: You had recording devices in your young ward’s room?<br /><br />B: Just audio. And, you know, we didn’t listen if he was doing any of those things young boys do that their parents don’t want to think about.<br /><br />ID: Like voting Democrat?<br /><br />B: Among others. <br /><br />But he didn’t give up. We assigned him some crazy tasks, absolutely <em>designed</em> to break him. The best example was the last thing we did, his final test. <br /><br />Dick’s family were part of a traveling circus; they didn’t even own a car, so he knew <em>nothing</em> about cars. Alfred and I placed an ‘explosive’ device inside my car, and told him he’d have to find it and disarm it while I dealt with a threat outside the cave. <br /><br />I told him that to get at the device without setting it off he’d have to pull the car apart- entirely apart. And of course, since it was a bomb, and we didn’t know how long we had before it went off, he couldn’t rest in the meantime. <br /><br />This was really before the internet was big. The computer in the cave had a lot of references filed, so there were diagrams and guides. But you know if the Chilton’s guide didn’t do it for you, you were out of luck. <br /><br />Needless to say, there was a lot of trial and error, there, a couple of times where, as a parent, I was <em>terrified</em> he was going to drop the engine on himself or something. He was up for forty some hours, and Alfred and I took turns watching on the monitors to make sure he didn’t cheat- or worse, do something that would have been unsafe if there actually <em>had</em> been a bomb in the car. <br /><br />I gave him strict instructions about how to handle the bomb once he found it. I had a bomb disposal robot, one of the early prototypes, and he used that to remotely take the bomb into a vault that we had, and locked it in. I told him I’d help him with it when I got back. He followed my instructions entirely. I told him to signal me when he got that far, so I could come and help him, and in the meantime to start putting the car back together. <br /><br />Reassembly never takes as long, but it was still hours he was working on that car. And there was one time he sat down, and we thought he might quit and take a nap, so I’d radio in to tell him that something came up, but I <em>really</em> needed the car ready when I got back. So he went back to work, and the moment he got it started I ran around to the front of the house where I had my bike and drove back around to the cave. <br /><br />I made a big show of talking him into the proper bomb disposal gear, then walking him through safely entering the vault, and cautiously approaching the bomb. Then I told him all it would take to disarm it was twisting it at the hinge. Inside, rather than an explosive, he found a key. <br /><br />And I told him at the back of the vault there was a case, that the key would fit into. And inside it he found the costume that Alfred had designed for him, but redone in his family’s costume colors. He hugged me and cried. I’m sure some of that was the sleep deprivation. <br /><br />ID: Then what’s your excuse?<br /><br />B: I don’t get a lot of chances to reminisce about being a dad. And I guess it’s easy, going from one life crisis to another, to overlook how special the little moments were. But now my son’s Batman. How much prouder could a father get? <br /><br />[NOTE: this interview ran overlong, so I’ll be running it over two weeks instead of one]IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-70337622713109562392011-12-03T06:34:00.000-08:002011-12-03T06:46:43.225-08:00RevelationsID: I want to thank you for coming back. After last week, I wasn’t sure you would. But you’ve made me out to be an ass. And a homophobe. <br /><br />B: You usually do a fine job of doing both on your own, actually. <br /><br />ID: See, I talked to Dick. And I’d been under the assumption that your AIDS nee HIV came from unprotected sex, quite possibly of the homosexual variety.<br /><br />B: Which <em>is</em> a pretty homophobic assumption to make, honestly. <br /><br />ID: But you did nothing to dissuade that notion. At all. <br /><br />B: Force of habit. It can be useful to have people underestimate, or in your case, misunderstand, you. <br /><br />ID: Okay. Well enough of that. I want to understand. And frankly, you owe it to our audience to help them understand. Because your illness is <em>not</em> a product of unprotected sex, period. <br /><br />B: And it’s not from needles, not even venom injections.<br /><br />ID: Or a transfusion. That ticks the usual boxes. So are we done dancing around the subject?<br /><br />B: It’s a strange circumstance. But I’ll start at the beginning. Keep the suspense up a little longer- I know how much you love that.<br /><br />I was on a patrol. This was before the cataclysmic earthquake, so before all of the buildings were seismically retrofitted. And do you know the old Gotham National Bank building? <br /><br />ID: No.<br /><br />B: Had a lot of personality, that building. Art deco architecture, some gothic gargoyles. I was perched on top of one of those, when the building buckled underneath me. I’ve been involved in enough building destroying events to recognize when a building’s supports are going beneath me. There was a large fire across town, so most of the emergency services were tied up there. <br /><br />The only person in the building was a little old lady who cleaned up the offices on the upper floors. She brought her cat into the office with her, and didn’t want to leave it, but the cat wouldn’t come out from behind the cabinets. In retrospect, if we’d made it into the stairwell, the way the building came down, we probably would have died- so in a strange way that cat probably saved my life. But I was still standing in her in this file room when the building started to fall. I grabbed the woman and leapt out the window, and this cat clambers up my leg, claws out, like I’m a pine tree. <br /><br />I managed to get a line wrapped around one of the gargoyles, which broke our fall, but about half the top floor came down on us. The three of us were basically all right, but cut up all to hell. <br /><br />And that’s when I saw the boy. A street walker, I knew from the clothes. He hadn’t been so lucky, and the building collapse had seriously messed him up. I managed to get him clear of the rubble, but he wasn’t breathing. <br /><br />But he was sick. I recognized Kaposi’s sarcoma, and I knew what that meant. But there was no one else there. I was cut up all to hell, and even the usual gloves and breathing barriers I carry with me were perforated. I knew what I would do to myself if I resuscitated him, the consequences that could have for my life, for my mission. <br /><br />But he was Dick’s age. Under the bruising, the swelling, the blood, he could have looked like Dick. I couldn’t look at him and not see Dick, not see my son dying on the sidewalk at my feet. <br /><br />There wasn’t even a decision- <em>that</em> made it for me. It took forty five minutes for paramedics to arrive; by then my lungs burned, and I could barely keep up compressions. I mean, I’d had a building fall on me. But before I let them take over for me, I told them, “He’s positive.” <br /><br />And they were shocked. The paramedics tried to shove <em>me</em> in the back of the ambulance to start disinfecting me. But I wasn’t even thinking clearly any more. I’d been operating <em>beyond</em> my limitations since the building collapsed; keeping that boy alive had become <em>everything</em> in those moments, and I pushed them back, and said, “Him first.” And I think that brought all of us back to our senses. They gave me the antiseptics they had in the ambulance and took him away.<br /><br />I went straight home after that, and <em>bathed</em> in alcohol. I started antiretrovirals immediately. I had my blood tested, every week, knowing it was only a matter of time before it came back positive. And eventually it did. It was almost… almost a relief. It’s amazing how psychotically the brain will cling to hope. But knowing… it let me get back to my life. Not living in anticipation of its end. <br /><br />ID: That’s… shit. <br /><br />B: Don’t look at me like that. I did what I’ve always done, what I’ve always said I was willing to do. And I just happened to be the man who was there, that day, to do it. I have no doubt that in the same circumstances, the Flash, a Green Lantern, most of the people in the League wouldn’t hesitate to do the same. And those who wouldn’t, I don’t fault them. That job already asks a lot. I can’t fault them for drawing that line.<br /><br />ID: But… shit. <br /><br />B: You need to be a prick to me. It’s part of your process- part ours. You need to be a prick so you can challenge what I say, challenge me. So quite with the puppy dog eyes. <br /><br />ID: But… shit.<br /><br />B: Okay. Maybe I have to keep the ball rolling this time. And in this spirit of openness, I hear you got outed by Lex News yourself. <br /><br />ID: Yeah, um, as in outed as the reporter concealing his identity to conserve the integrity of this interview, not in the sex with dudes kind of outing. So you can breathe easy, mom. <br /><br />B: But your name, specifically, has been linked up to your nom de plume. And in this Google age, that means it’s out. Period. <br /><br />ID: Right. I’m <a href="http://www.nicolaswilson.com/">Nic Wilson</a>. Way back when, I wrote for a culture and arts magazine called Dangerous Ink, before it went tits up, and I liked that those initials reversed garnered ID, short for identification, and I thought it was clever, in an interview about Superman’s secret identity, that that would be my handle. That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell. <br /><br />B: But doesn’t it feel good to get that out in the open?<br /><br />ID: Not really. I don’t like being the subject. It feels icky. <br /><br />B: Yep. Pretty much. <br /><br />ID: Kind of makes me rethink that whole wanting to be notable thing. But how do you like sitting on the other side of the table? Being the bad guy, or at least playing devil’s advocate?<br /><br />B: It’s kind of fun. <br /><br />ID: I’ve created a monster, haven’t I?IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-13411210270780923402011-11-26T02:24:00.000-08:002011-11-26T02:41:19.044-08:00Caught Red-HoodedID: Your year’s almost up. If you’re still planning on kicking you’d better hurry up. <br /><br />B: I never planned on dying before the 52 interviews were over. In fact, I think I’m sticking around for a while, yet. <br /><br />ID: As in not dying, or as in more interviews?<br /><br />B: Both, probably. I can’t see me shutting up any time too soon, can you? <br /><br />ID: Not unless parts of Harvey’s anatomy were used to damn up your dike of a mouth. <br /><br />B: Wow. <br /><br />ID: Too far?<br /><br />B: So far. <br /><br />ID: Good. Because I wanted you distracted for a moment, because you’re not going to like this topic.<br /><br />B: Christ. <br /><br />ID: So you’ve figured it out. <br /><br />B: Based on that? No. You just usually don’t warn me and it’s usually pretty bad, so if you’re warning me… <br /><br />ID: I want to talk about Red Hood. Not just the urban legend. But the time you nearly caught him. <br /><br />B: How much do you know?<br /><br />ID: Enough to know if you’re lying. And if you lie, I’ll tell it my way, and the light will be as unflattering as my exceptional skills of deprecation can make it. <br /><br />B: Like you said, the Red Hood was an urban legend. But because of that, criminals started using a red hood and cape get up to perpetuate it. And any time I caught somebody in a red hood and cape, well, they just said they were a decoy, and the real Red Hood was still out there. Convenient, right?<br /><br />ID: So lots of Saddam body doubles. <br /><br />B: Essentially. But this particular night, there was a break-in at Ajax chemicals. Some low-rent thugs. But they had along a novice, wearing the red hood and cape. I showed up, chased the thugs off. <br /><br />But the Red Hood runs up rather than away. I took that as a savvy escape plan, and I chased after him. In retrospect, he was just panicked, trying like hell to figure out a way to get distance between me and him. But I pursued him, doggedly. He trips, over a guard rail over a large vat of chemicals, a lot of byproducts that were being cooked down so they could be disposed of. Ajax was doing something fairly illegal, though, because they were <em>highly</em> reactive, and the area where they were dumping the chemicals were supposed to be rendered inert. <br /><br />The Red Hood manages to catch the rail, but he’s sweating profusely. And I get there, and as I’m about to grab him to haul him up, he freaks out, somehow believing that I’m worse than whatever’s below him- and from up there the smoke coming off it is burning my eyes and my lungs, making my nose run.<br /><br />ID: Criminals are a stupid, cowardly lot. And you stupid and cowarded this guy to death. <br /><br />B: He let go. But he didn’t die. Of course, you know that.<br /><br />ID: And who was he?<br /><br />B: He’s systematically stolen, burned or altered all of his records. I’ve never been able to ascertain who he was before the accident. <br /><br />ID: You’ve been doing so well; this isn’t the time to get shy. What name would the public know this disfigured if jolly man as?<br /><br />B: The Joker. <br /><br />ID: The audience gasps. So you created the Joker.<br /><br />B: No. I failed to save him. I terrified him, made him anxious and clumsy, and then when he fell into that vat of roiling chemicals, I failed to catch him. But I didn’t create him. <br /><br />ID: Okay, I can see the distinction you want to make; you didn’t bake the crazy cake, but you certainly had a hand in stirring the batter. Cracked a few of the insane eggs, if you will. And that certainly explains <em>some</em> of his obsession with you. <br /><br />B: I think mostly that comes from his belief that we’re alike, mirrored images, changed only slightly by the viewing angle. He honestly thinks he’s teaching me about the world, that he’s helping prepare me for its harsh realities- when he wouldn’t know reality<br /><br />ID: If it were baked into a pie and thrown at him. <br /><br />B: Something like that. But why now? Where’d this blackmailable information come from?<br /><br />ID: Anonymous note from a Mr. White. Three guesses to who that is, and the first two don’t count. <br /><br />B: Joker. Bastard. <br /><br />ID: And it feels kind of crappy to be used by somebody like him, but I’m a journalist. And dollars to donuts he wasn’t going to <em>just</em> send this to me. This way, your version of events gets to be the lead. <br /><br />B: Justify however you like. We both know what you are. <br /><br />ID: All we’re arguing over is the price? It’s a bad economy all around, but it’s a worse one for journalists. You might have the luxury of principals. But mine isn’t an industry that’s ever had that luxury. It’s expensive enough trying to stick to the truth. <br /><br />Besides, the difference I see between you and the Joker- the fundamental difference- is that he hides from reality, behind his delusions and his humor. You don’t. <br /><br />B: That’s convenient. <br /><br />ID: Sometimes the truth is. Sometimes it isn’t. I’m not an arbiter of fairness; I just want to get at wants honest, and human, and real. You do, too- because you think it’s important for people to see where who you are came from- or you wouldn’t be here.<br /><br />B: But what if I’ve decided I don’t like where ‘here’ is getting me?IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-16170967868833033912011-11-19T01:47:00.000-08:002011-11-19T01:54:49.231-08:00HushID: You mentioned a while back that Hush seemed to have inserted himself into your life in a very peculiar way. I’d like to talk about him, today, if that’s all right. You met him as a boy. <br /><br />B: His parents were friends of my parents. Wealthy, influential, socialite types, you know, running in those kinds of circles. Tommy was a, well, he was just another kid trapped in that particular glass bottle of wealth. <br /><br />ID: Sounds horrible.<br /><br />B: It’s not, and I know it’s not. But there are obstacles that come from that kind of affluence, the expectations that come along with it. Both of our parents, they pushed us, put a lot of pressure on us. We were expected to succeed, in a way few other people really are. <br /><br />I think overall we benefited from the pressure. Although… <br /><br />ID: What?<br /><br />B: I dress up as a bat and he murders people. So I can’t objectively say that it was the best way to parent. <br /><br />ID: Are you actually questioning your parents?<br /><br />B: No. Because I don’t know how things would have happened for me. I think the persona I built Bruce Wayne into, the foppish, vain, shallow playboy, I think he was in part who I was afraid I was going to become. I mean, if my parents hadn’t died, it’s entirely possible <em>that </em>would be me. I think having to pretend to be that, reminding myself of what I very nearly became, it kept me grounded. <br /><br />But if my parents hadn’t been murdered, I don’t know. My upbringing wasn’t<em> much </em>different from Tommy’s. I wasn’t abused, and that might be the salient factor; I’m not saying rich people’s children are <em>likely </em>to become murderous Machiavellians. But that’s just the direction that Tommy’s dysfunction grew- it’s entirely possible I would have been just as dysfunctional in a likely less criminal and violent direction. <br /><br />ID: I think we’re wandering. Um. What happened between your family and Tommy’s?<br /><br />B: I think when we were born, our families were on a relatively even keel. But as we grew, I think his dad did worse. I think it was just in the industries where Tommy’s dad had most of his money, they were doing poorly, whereas my dad and his tech and industry holdings just kept increasing in value. <br /><br />I think that’s why Tommy’s dad started hitting his wife and child. He and my dad, they were friendly, but also rivals. And at almost the same time he had to put up his home for sale, dad put a whole new wing on the manor. I mean, dad actually bought Tommy’s house and gave it right back to them- but that only strained their friendship further. And he actually got arrested that time, he beat Tommy and his mom so badly. <br /><br />That same night, my dad bailed Tommy’s dad out. And he tried to talk to him, to understand what had happened. And it went very badly. Tommy’s dad took a swing at him. And I came upon my dad, in his study, a few hours later. It was one of the few times I got to see my father, as a man. He was shaken. He couldn’t understand that kind of mindless violence, against his own wife and child, from a man he’d loved as his brother. He had a scotch in his hand, but he wasn’t drunk, and I remember what he said to me, because he’d been pondering it for a while, but he said, “Sometimes the only thing a man can do is admit that he doesn’t know what to do.” <br /><br />Let that sink in. It’s profound. Because it, for me it made it okay not to know an answer. I mean, for me, the implied second clause became that it’s also a man’s duty to do everything he can to figure it out. But I spent a lot of nights like that one with my father, puzzling over what to do to help people- people who maybe didn’t think they wanted my help. <br /><br />Not much time passed after that before Tommy’s parents died. At the time everybody thought it was an accident; even I did, until later. My parents offered to take Tommy in, but he was shipped off, along with his family’s fortune, to Europe, where he trained to be a surgeon. <br /><br />A few years ago, Tommy came back into my life. I got myself pretty badly injured, and he fixed me up. His timing was impeccable. I think I was just glad to have him back in my life, because I didn’t question <em>that</em> at first. <br /><br />But then Hush entered the picture. He set in motion a series of events that nearly killed me, and succeeded in killing several other people. What was strange is at first the two were diametrically opposed. Hush was manipulating and murdering. But Tommy was being friendly, and helpful. He even volunteered to try and fix Harvey’s face- and succeeded. <br /><br />And in the end, that act of kindness proved to be his downfall. Harvey had been seeing therapists for a while, anyway, so he’d made a lot of progress, but having his face fixed, it solidified for him something that he’d been struggling with. He missed being one of the good guys. And it was Harvey, when Hush had me, dead to rights, who saved me. He shot Hush twice. <br /><br />ID: All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.<br /><br />B: But he saved me instead. And evil limped away with a couple of fresh bullet wounds. <br /><br />ID: Is that when you fell in love with Harvey?<br /><br />B: I think it’s hard to track exactly where a friendship ends and a romance begins. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had relationships that started as friendships. And I’m sure there was… flirtation. Suggestion. But at the same time, there’s a gray area in there, where it’s not romance but it’s progressed beyond a friendship. I think for me what that moment was was notice. It made me take stock of Harvey, and ask myself if he was the same unbalanced guy I’d been worrying over for years. And I remember thinking, maybe this was the new Harvey, that he was going to be an asset like he’d been back when he was district attorney. <br /><br />ID: And is it safe to assume you <em>wouldn’t</em> be with Harvey if he hadn’t had his surgery?<br /><br />B: I don’t think that’s fair. On several levels. Would Harvey be attracted to me if I didn’t look like this? If the mafia had been convinced <em>I</em> was the Holiday killer and was the one with horrible scarring because of it, I imagine <em>most</em> of my adult relationships would have gone differently. Attraction is a big part of relationships; I think we’ve been socialized in such a way that it plays perhaps an unhealthily outsized role. But I’m not going to apologize for being attracted to beautiful people, that’s an asinine insinuation. <br /><br />ID: So, I’m going to consider that a yes, preachiness to the side. So in a very real way, you owe your relationship with Harvey to Hush. <br /><br />B: Accidentally, perhaps. <br /><br />ID: Of course, he stole Selina away from you. So at <em>best</em> that would put you even, and- no offense to Harvey- but he’s no Ms. Kyle, at a minimum in the pulling off a cat suit category.<br /><br />B: He does look quite smart in a suit, though. But comparing them isn’t really fair or even sensical. People aren’t trading cards; you can’t compare their stats on the back to see who’s better. They’re different. And Harvey’s who I’m with right now. <br /><br />But I do feel bad about how things went with Selina. Me, and people I care about, we’ve been paying for the things Tommy’s dad did forty years ago, the proverbial sins of the father.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-21158747948773319152011-11-12T07:45:00.000-08:002011-11-12T07:48:53.408-08:00Sleeping with the EnemyID: It’s been a while since we talked about Harvey. I know it’s still a young relationship; this isn’t Clark and Lois, so I think putting it under a microscope could hurt it, and that’s not what I want. But I’ve been thinking of calling this segment, “Sleeping with the Enemy.” <br /><br />B: He has a hard enough time without people focusing in on his past. <br /><br />ID: Or maybe Bi-Curious. <br /><br />B: You’re just going to keep being an ass until I start dishing, aren’t you?<br /><br />ID: I’ll probably be an ass even after. <br /><br />B: Well, I appreciate your candor. <br /><br />ID: But you don’t cotton to him being called “the Enemy.” <br /><br />B: Because he isn’t. Every crime he’s been convicted of, he’s paid his debt for.<br /><br />ID: To be fair, most of those debts included the insanity defense, which basically meant that the moment he wasn’t crazy he could walk away free and clear. <br /><br />B: With the caveat that if he stayed crazy, he stayed locked up. But as far as the courts are concerned, Harvey’s a free man. <br /><br />And that’s why I balk at your characterization. Because what Harvey needs now, more than anything, is normalization. Getting his life back into a place where he can feel safe, and secure, sane, and just normal. <br /><br />ID: Um, I hate to play to type and be an ass, but is living with a Bat man normal? <br /><br />B: Relationships complicate things. That’s why we’re taking ours slow. And we <em>aren’t</em> living together. <br /><br />ID: Okay, so screwing… around with a Bat man, then. <br /><br />B: I’ll try not to take umbrage at that. I think overall I’m pretty normal, actually. Harvey and I have, colorful, pasts, but I think that brings us closer. We’ve both seen things that are different, and would be different, for other, perhaps more ‘normal’ people to understand. <br /><br />And so far he’s been good for me. I’m not going into the office every day, not going to the League meetings. <em>My</em> normal routine has been pretty much disrupted, too. So I think it helps, having someone to experience the odd cabin fever of costumed retirement with. <br /><br />ID: But you’re not Walter Mathau, and he’s no Jack Lemon; this isn’t Grumpy Old Men… We’re talking about a supervillain and a superhero knocking their garish boots together. <br /><br />B: Few points. Neither of us were all that super, unless you count trauma as a superpower. And, um, whatever you might think of any of the, and I’ll stress this, functional footwear I wore over the years, Harvey had pretty impeccable taste, very nice Italian loafers, most of the time. Certainly not garish. <br /><br />But Harvey hasn’t been that person for a long time. It’s been a while, so I think people have forgotten, but I left Gotham for several months with Robin and Nightwing. I left Harvey in charge of protecting the city, and he did an exceptional job of keeping it in one piece. I think he was subtler than me in doing it- he never set up a Harvey signal- and maybe that’s why he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. But he had my every confidence, then, and he’s shown himself worthy of it since. <br /><br />I think Harvey’s braver than I am. I’ve tried to dissociate him from his past; you might have even recognized it, but when I’ve talked about the bad he did, I’ve emphasized Two Face, and the Two Face persona. But he corrects me. He can’t blame it all on psychosis. Because he wasn’t paralyzed. He wasn’t helpless. Weak, maybe, but he was always there, always aware and able to influence their behavior. So the things that Two Face did, he feels the guilt of that. He told me, “Bruce, I need to be honest with myself about the depth of what I owe, how out of kilter the karmic balance is because of me.” <br /><br />I think, as part of trying to get away from looking at life in black and white, he’s been trying to take a more holistic approach to things, and his doctors have encouraged that. Karma, being an example; he’s become quite interested in the yin yang, the concept of complementary opposites. <br /><br />He’s still compelled by duality, and pairs. You know, I can tell when he’s having a bad morning, because instead of fixing himself a bowl of cereal, he’ll pour two. <br /><br />ID: And what cereal keeps a former sociopath going through the morning. <br /><br />B: Frosted Mini-Wheats. <br /><br />ID: I should have known. <br /><br />B: But the other morning, over cereal, we were talking. For a while he was hanging around with two ‘henchwomen,’ and I’m putting that in air quotes because I don’t think either actually did any henching, and they may have in fact been prostitutes. I don’t know how it came up, but we were talking about being with two women at the same time. And he said he didn’t do that, because that would make it a threesome. Then he gave me this sly smile, and said, “Of course, it’s only a threesome if they’re allowed to touch each other,” and punctuated it by taking a bite of his cereal. <br /><br />ID: So you’re in the domestic bliss phase of the relationship, then.<br /><br />B: I guess so. <br /><br />I think it helps, that we’ve both had real, long-standing relationships with women. It puts us on even footing, and I think makes it easier for us to relate to each other. <br /><br />The other day. He said he was glad he was my 2nd choice. I couldn’t get him to elaborate, but he’s been happy. And so am I. I think that’s all I really need right now.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-45335644912743439252011-11-04T02:48:00.000-07:002011-11-04T02:50:06.904-07:00TimID: I feel a little bad for saying this, especially as cliché as it really is, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about Tim. At least right now. I mean, Dick was your first adopted son, so there’s interest in that. Damian is your first bio-son, so that’s interesting, too. But Tim, is, well, the middle child. And like most middle children, I almost overlooked him. <br /><br />B: Yeah, and Tim hasn’t been my son that very long. It’s certainly been a strange experience. Dick I met through tragedy. But Tim I knew. I’d known Tim for years, through his father. His dad was a neighbor, but after he was injured in a botched kidnapping, he wasn’t the same. Tim’s mom died at that same time, when his father was put into a wheelchair. But even before then, he spent a lot of time just hanging out in the mansion. <br /><br />B: Getting a real Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch vibe here about your manor. <br /><br />ID: Don’t be an ass. <br /><br />By that point Dick had moved out, got his own place, his own trajectory. I think he was in school, then. And having Tim there, it reminded me of happier times. And being at home, well, his father was still a mess over what happened to him and his wife, so I think he just wanted to be away from that some of the time. <br /><br />ID: Still getting the Neverland Ranch sensation. <br /><br />B: Haven’t you ever had an older male friend before? Somebody who had a kind of pseudo-fatherly quality to them?<br /><br />ID: Yeah, I guess, an ex girlfriend’s dad, for a while. So I can see it. <br /><br />B: His dad was still around, but… Jack blamed himself for what happened to his wife. He tortured himself over it. And Tim needed sometimes to be someplace else. And I think it was mutually beneficial, because through Tim, I got the cautionary tale of Jack, you know, how far guilt and regret can twist you up inside. There’ve been a lot of things, I think that I could have gone in that direction over. <br /><br />Things changed a little bit, when Jack and Shondra got kidnapped. This was right after Bane broke my back. Tim moved into the mansion, with Alfred, and started spending time with Dick, while I went to find his father and our doctor. I managed to save Jack, but Shondra… <br /><br />Jack, loved Shondra, too. So we commiserated over her… injury. She was a wonderful woman, and the world’s poorer without her in it. I mean, she’s still alive, in a literal sense, but she doesn’t speak, doesn’t respond. For all intents and purposes, she died stopping her brother. <br /><br />ID: But how did Tim come to live with you? <br /><br />B: A few years later, Jack was killed in a home invasion. The sick part is it was a game to the woman who did it. She sent Jack a gun, and me a message that it was going to happen. And I couldn’t get there fast enough. Jack shot his attacker, but… <br /><br />After he died, Tim moved in. <br /><br />ID: Okay. You’ve told us a lot about the circumstances, but not about the boy. So tell me about Tim. You hung out. What’d you do?<br /><br />B: He’s a kid. He does kid stuff. And I was his surrogate father figure. Oftentimes we weren’t even doing much together, honestly. I’d watch TV, and he’d play his DS on the couch. I’d be researching the sewer system because I suspected Scarecrow was there and he’d study- he spent and spends a lot of time in the library. Tim’s a really bright kid. Academically, I’ve always been impressed- even at a young age there weren’t a lot of conversations he couldn’t keep up with. <br /><br />Sometimes we’d play chess. Mostly we’d just talk. Him losing his mom, and half-losing his dad, only to lose him the rest of the way. One of the first things he asked me, after he’d been coming around a lot, was if it ever got easier. <br /><br />And it took me a while to really wrap myself around the question. But yeah. It does. It never stops hurting, never completely goes away. But it doesn’t sting quite so acutely, doesn’t get quite so thoroughly into your face. <br /><br />ID: When did you decide to take him in?<br /><br />B: The night his father died. Like I said, I got there too late. Tim was there, in the kitchen, crying his eyes out. And the moment I came into the room he latched onto me like a terrified baby chimp. And it was just the most crushing thing, because that moment, that was <em>exactly</em> the moment I’d spent my entire life trying to prevent. And I’d failed. Failed this bright kid who lived right next to me. It doesn’t get closer to home than that. <br /><br />And at the same time, it was just like the night I first met Dick. Where it felt like there was such a thing as fate, that I was there, at that moment, because I understood his pain, had lived through it and come out, well, decently okay. I mean, I’m a lousy consolation prize, but at least I could be there for him. At least he didn’t have to be alone. <br /><br />And, you know, in Dick he gained an older brother, someone to confide in once I became too much like a real dad, and an actual authority figure. And they’ve been really good for each other. That darkness I always talk about having, Dick doesn’t have, and Tim has only some. I think Dick keeps Tim optimistic, and I think Tim helped Dick understand me. I think we’re a much stronger family for his inclusion. So even if you hadn’t talked about him, he’s still very much in my thoughts. He’s one of my sons. And I love him.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-8246975588468356432011-11-04T02:38:00.000-07:002011-11-04T02:39:58.974-07:00Deadbeat BatID: I want to talk to you about your son. <br /><br />B: You’ll have to be more specific. <br /><br />ID: Your bio-son. How long have you known about him?<br /><br />B: Not long. <br /><br />ID: And you’re not just saying that to dodge child support payments or back-alimony?<br /><br />B: No. I’m more than comfortable, and his mother is quite wealthy herself. But I’m going to assume you haven’t been able to find <em>much</em> on Damian- and after our conversation about Dick you’re more curious about my home life than previously. <br /><br />ID: Actually, I was always curious about the home life, I just… it hadn’t crossed my mind that you were a father. I mean, on paper you’ve adopted two boys- the bio-son I keep forgetting about, since I don’t think he was in the picture when we first started- so I had <em>no</em> research about him. <br /><br />B: Damian’s grandfather is a bastard- the ecoterrorist Ra’s al Ghul. What I told you before about his conception, and his mother, is true. But I actually have a little more background than before. You know, sometimes you accept things, take them for granted, until you’re talking to someone about it. And the question came up when we were talking about Talia, and I put it to her. And she didn’t know what happened to Damian, either. <br /><br />When she got rid of me, she planned to get rid of him, too. <br /><br />ID: Abortion?<br /><br />B: No. She worried about his safety- she reasoned both of our lives were too dangerous to introduce children into. So she left him at an orphanage. But her father knew, and intercepted Damian. He spent the next ten years being raised by the League of Assassins. <br /><br />ID: And what does that mean?<br /><br />B: It meant survival of the fittest. It meant he didn’t live in a nursery as a baby. From the time he could crawl, he lived in a kennel. They’d give him and the dogs enough food for all but one of them. So as a matter of survival, they had to kill one of their own, every week. The only reason he walked away was he was the last one alive. <br /><br />His entire childhood was that, tests designed to make him selfish, cold, sadistic, to turn him into an assassin, not merely as a vocation, but purely, as the essence of his being. <br /><br />ID: I don’t want to peel away too much- I mean, Damian’s living with you, right? And I assume he’s going to a public school, and could very well have social consequences for anything you might say. But I’m curious, of all the things that were done to him, what was the worst?<br /><br />B: I’m glad you bring that up. I don’t mind saying it, because I think you phrase it right: these weren’t things Damian <em>did</em>, these were things that were done to him. They aren’t things that he needs to feel ashamed for or about. No child should be forced to choose between his own survival and doing violence to someone or even some<em>thing</em> else. It’s unconscionable. And as a father… I hope someone stronger than me is there next time I see Ra’s, to keep me from murdering him. Because otherwise, I don’t know that I can do that myself. <br /><br />But the worst thing involved deception. Damian was introduced to a girl, a local girl. They spent time together. He fell in love. He was a boy, not even ten years old.<br /><br />Ra’s asked him to poison the girl. She was a spy, he said, there to harm everyone he knew, the people he’d come to see as his family. She had to die. But he loved her, so he tried to help her escape. Instead she led him into an ambush. Ra’s was there, and in front of the entire League, all of his peers, she mocked him. Said every cruel thing a boy that age thinks and hopes isn’t true. That night, Ra’s came to him again, and said that she had gone too far, that she was supposed to be a test, but she had no right to mock his heir in that fashion. He told him to poison her again. He was still so upset that he did it, and once his pain had subsided, he hated himself for it. <br /><br />It was later, that Damian observed Ra’s giving her parents money. She had been hired for that exact purpose, to die, and humiliate him into doing it if need be. When she died, her parents were just bought off. <br /><br />But it was months, he’d been with me for months before he told me about it. Alfred was bringing him soup, because he hadn’t been feeling well, and had hardly touched his dinner. And without thinking, Damian attacked him, punched him in the throat. And even when he realized it was Alfred, he was leery. He’d been brought up in such a constant state of fear and readiness, it was hard for him to understand that simple human kindness, someone bringing a sick friend soup. Because he was weak then; it was when he felt the most in danger. He told Alfred to drink some of the soup, convinced it was poisoned, and when Alfred didn’t hesitate, drank and said, “It’s just soup,” he started to cry. <br /><br />I was already heading that direction, having heard the commotion. But he jumped into my arms. And he cried for a very long time before he was able to tell me all that. No ten year old should have to carry that burden; no child should be coaxed into murder like that. <br /><br />ID: You sound pretty upset. <br /><br />B: I am. I think… Dick, Tim, myself, we’ve all experienced tragedy. But Damian’s was different. His came from a place where he should have been safe: his tragedy came from his family. It was a betrayal of the most personal kind. It’s made him… less able to trust. But he wants to. <br /><br />He wants to be normal. Not to worry about killers outside his bedroom. Or whether or not the girl he looks at at lunch has been hired to humiliate him, and to manipulate him into doing horrible things. <br /><br />ID: But if he wants to be normal, isn’t his dad broadcasting his murdering past a little counter-productive. <br /><br />B: I hope not; I would hate to feel like I’m betraying his trust. <br /><br />But I don’t think so. Damian’s different. I think it’ll be a long time before he gets all the way to normal. I think his upbringing left marks, on his soul, that will take a long time to scab over, let alone heal. And I think his darkness shows, and people treat him differently for it. <br /><br />But I think if people could understand him, and what was done to him, they’ll see already how far he’s come, how hard he’s trying, to do right, and be right in this world. It’s remarkable, to me, that he can function on any level. But he isn’t just functional, he’s impressive, and I can say with certainty my son will do great things. That’s every father’s hope. But his trajectory, he’s not just capable of greatness, he going to accomplish it.<br /><br />My son’s extraordinary. I’m not surprised. His mother’s extraordinary, too. But I’m… blown away by his resilience. I don’t know if I could have withstood it; a weaker person wouldn’t have survived his childhood, emotionally even if they got by physically. But he’s bounced back. I love him. And I’m proud of him. What more could any father ask for?<em></em>IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-9282060591590963902011-10-21T04:33:00.000-07:002011-10-21T04:42:02.842-07:00Why So Serious?ID: Are you depressed?<br /><br />B: I’ve been told I brood too much. Even as a child. My mother teased me for being too serious. I frowned a lot- particularly in pictures.<br /><br />ID: Your mother teased you? That didn’t bode well. But even pre-orphaning, you were serious.<br /><br />B: As a heart attack, or at least as a Perry Mason wrap-up.<br /><br />ID: I don’t know, I laughed <em>a lot</em> watching his closing speeches- especially when the detective with the lazy eye was there. I think it was because the show was so impeccably cast, and everyone so impeccably groomed, that that one, off-kilter aspect just undermined <em>everything</em>.<br /><br />But you just seem so… depressive. In talking about your children, in talking about Zatanna, one thing keeps coming up: how optimistic they are, how bright, sunny, happy. How much they help you leave your personal darkness behind, put it away and remember what it’s like to be alive. So I’m wondering if it isn’t just moodiness, but depression.<br /><br />B: Clinically? You aren’t the first person to suggest it. Basically, major depressive disorder is characterized by low mood,<br /><br />ID: Check.<br /><br />B: low self-esteem,<br /><br />ID: Uh, check? Maybe?<br /><br />B: Losing interest in all pleasurable activities. And for that, well, there’s one thing I never stop enjoying.<br /><br />ID: Kicking bad guys in the scrotum?<br /><br />B: I would have put it more tactfully, but in a nutshell.<br /><br />ID: Oh my god, a testicle joke. I’m so proud of you. But I kind of stumbled on self-esteem, and you did not give me anything to go on by way of reaction. You <em>can’t</em> possibly have low self-esteem; really, you and men like you give me my low self-esteem.<br /><br />B: I’m an Olympic level athlete. I always score in the 99th percentile in aptitude tests.<br /><br />ID: You always <em>score</em>.<br /><br />B: I’m successful, socially and otherwise, and wealthy. I’d say, with all due humility I’m easy on the eyes. Any feelings of inadequacy given that starting point would qualify as low self-esteem- though I’d put that at intermittent. So maybe one and a half checks.<br /><br />ID: But attachment theory, John Bowlby’s baby, says that experiencing early loss or separation from parents or caregivers can lead to insecure working models.<br /><br />B: So you’re skipping the diagnostic criteria and going right for the anecdotal drive-by hackery, huh?<br /><br />ID: Hey, if you want the diagnosis, all you had to do was ask. Remember at the beginning, when we did the Hamilton rating scale for depression worksheet? About the only thing you didn’t score a 2 in was psychomotor retardation; you’re high functioning.<br /><br />B: I also wasn’t fidgety.<br /><br />ID: Not physically, no; but your mind was twitchy as hell. And it isn’t helped by the fact that, physically, you’re impossible to read. Between the AIDS, the medication for the AIDS, and the fact that you still bullishly exercise, it’s kind of hard to tell what fatigue is normal fatigue and what might be depression fatigue. But, I tallied your responses, or made things up when you weren’t helpfully responsive, and you’re depressed.<br /><br />B: One last point: Hamilton himself said his scale shouldn’t be used as a diagnostic criteria.<br /><br />ID: Really? I guess that makes my “finding” anticlimactic, then.<br /><br />B: Kind of.<br /><br />ID: All right, well, social cognitive theory asserts that depressed individuals internalize guilt but rarely acknowledge positive outcomes. I’ve known you for a while, and you do seem to be a personal blame magnet.<br /><br />B: Guilt can be a useful tool, if it drives progression, revision, critical examination. Internalizing guilt merely for self-flagellation is counter-productive. And I prefer Maslow, who believed depression came from individuals unable to reach their full potential.<br /><br />ID: Have you?<br /><br />B: I’m not sure what more you think I should have accomplished.<br /><br />ID: Actually, my question is less focused on what more, as what you might have been able to do otherwise. You’re brilliant. Handsome. And capable of doing great things. Instead you’ve run around in a bat-shaped unitard kicking people. From that description, you sound like the slow kid in my first grade class who kept getting into trouble for running around in just his underpants, sniffing glue and stomping on people’s toes.<br /><br />B: That’s… harsh. And insensitive to the challenged. But if your point is that my life has at times been self-indulgent and not always maximizing. You’re right. I haven’t always been the best man I could be. I spent years probably selfishly training, for a very personal quest. Maybe I should have been doing more charity, more philanthropy. Maybe I should have gone into politics.<br /><br />But as Batman, I helped save the world. More than once. Maybe the League could have done that without me. Maybe they couldn’t have. If you examine every possible outcome of every choice in your life, and assume the best possible outcome, of course you’ll be found wanting.<br /><br />But I don’t have any shame about who I am, the life I’ve lived. In fact, I’m damn proud of the things I’ve accomplished. I’ve sweat, I’ve bled, and when I go, I think the world will be better for having had me in it. Everything else, those details… they’re just that.<br /><br />And I guess, ultimately, it’s a dark, and sometimes unforgiving world. There are mainly two methods for dealing with that. One, was Clark’s, and Zatanna’s, and Dick’s, and that’s meeting that darkness with light. With happiness, and optimism, and charity.<br /><br />And as much as I love them, and much as I wish I could be them sometimes, I’m not. So I confront that darkness with darkness. I melt into a world that isn’t perfect and isn’t always fair, that can harsh, and even brutal. I became a creature of that world. I thrive in that world by being a part of it. It’s taken its toll- but seeing Clark, Dick and Zatanna, I can say being a bright light in this dark world takes its toll, too. The only difference, I think, is that they enjoyed it more. They were happier for it.<br /><br />Sometimes, I think I was able to do things they weren’t, see sides to problems they couldn’t. Maybe I’m just rationalizing it. Maybe I’m trying to find a way for it not to have been a flaw, or at least for something good to have come out of my misery.<br /><br />But for better or for ill, I don’t think I would have survived it, without people like those three. And I don’t think I can honestly say the reverse is true. In fact, sometimes I wonder if their lives would have been happier without my darkness.<br /><br />ID: Wait… are you talking about suicidal ideation?<br />B: … No. I wasn’t ever thinking of killing myself. I don’t know what me not surviving would have looked like; if psychologically, or emotionally, I would have withered up and blew away, or if the ravages of that internal hollowing would have destroyed me physically. But they saved my life, in ways I can’t explain; but I know it, more intimately than I know anything else.<br /><br /><br /><div></div>IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-76445817475810543332011-10-21T04:19:00.000-07:002011-10-21T04:33:28.932-07:00The Love of My LifeID: Okay, I think the title of this one is going to be unintentionally more salacious than even I want- especially in light of the Harvey revelation last week- but I'll start out by saying you cheated. Um, no, not on you, Harv- though I wonder what his policy on two-timing would be...<br /><br />No, when we started talking about the loves of your life, you cheated. Right out of the gate. And I want our audience to know that I poked, prodded- strictly platonically, of course- and cajoled, caroused, and I'll check my thesaurus later for some more words like that, but I did what I could to get a, if you'll pardon the pun, straighter answer out of you. But no, the love of your life, you said, was your adopted son, Dick.<br /><br />B: You never said it had to be a romantic love.<br /><br />ID: I think it was implied. But whatever. So you outsmarted me, kinda. You still spilled most of the more sensitive beans I was hoping for along the way, even if you never put all your money on Black Canary. So that's the important thing.<br /><br />And besides, it opened up a new avenue for discussion. So tell us about Dick- big D, not, you know, the other kind I'm reasonably sure you're fond of.<br /><br />B: Good lord. When I met Dick, I was alone. The support net, Alfred, Leslie, my uncle Phil, the people who saw me through my childhood, had become an emotional liability. I was fighting for my life, every night, and during the day, well, I avoided the people who kept me sane after my parents died.<br /><br />That changed that night. Dick was a child gymnast. I watched his parents perform. But something went wrong, and they fell to their deaths, as Dick watched from the eaves. At first it was tragic, and then I saw him, and I saw him fall to his knees, tears streaming down his expressionless face. It was like looking at myself fifteen years earlier. It broke my heart, seeing it happen to someone else; it was <em>worse</em> than having it happen to me, because that level of horror numbs you, you lose all sense of time and place, just drift along on the pain. But watching second-hand, but knowing how hollowing an experience it was, without the numbness…<br /><br />But even with that, I noticed something. It hadn't been a normal equipment failure; it hadn't even been made to look like one. The ropes on his parent's trapeze had been sliced to the point where they broke clean away the moment the Grayson's weight was on it. This was a message- and a murder.<br /><br />I spent the better part of the night talking to Dick. The police ended up having to interview <em>everyone</em>- though no one really told them anything. It was hard for me; I wanted to put on my costume, find the people responsible, and hurt them. But it was so much more important for me to stay there, and make awkward conversation with a boy who kept bursting into tears every few minutes, largely unprovoked. And I think, I think it was the first time in several years where I hugged someone; don't get me wrong, I get hugged all the time, but it was the first time I really hugged back, where I wanted the person to know I was there for them, not just physically present, but emotionally available to them.<br /><br />And it broke my heart again when the police took him away. Because I think he was starting to get comfortable with me, to find some semblance of a footing- but he’d gone a full fifteen minutes without crying, talking about hot chocolate and playing in the snow- and then he was taken away from that, and put in the back of a squad car, it tore the wound clear open again.<br /><br />Dick didn't have any relatives in the area. At the time, Dr. Thompkins, Leslie, was running a child welfare shelter as an addition to her clinic, and I called her and made arrangements for her to be there receive Dick; otherwise he would have had to stay the night at the police station.<br /><br />And I made sure I arrived just after they left. Leslie was surprised to see me, though, “Not that surprised.” I gave money to the shelter, and sometimes volunteered there, but I always gave them advanced notice, and came when they needed me- not in the middle of the night. Dick was sleeping; she'd given him something to help him sleep.<br /><br />She'd talked to him for a few moments, and it sounded like he didn't even know any of his family. His parents' careers, as traveling performers, had alienated any relations who might have otherwise taken him in. So I asked to take him home. It wasn't procedure, or protocol. At a minimum, there were hoops I was supposed to go through.<br /><br />But Leslie was one of the people who had raised me when my parents died. So she knew that any examination of my eligibility wasn't going to turn up any skeletons. Still, she wanted to make sure we did what was right for Dick.<br /><br />I said, “Leslie, you know me. Better than anyone, I know what he's going through.” She told me maybe I wasn't done dealing with my parent's death, that commiserating might be good for me, but was it the best thing for him? But she didn’t try to prevent me from taking him, and ultimately, I think she just wanted me to ponder the question. The foster system can be brutal even under the best of circumstances, but then?<br /><br />She fudged some paperwork, and Alfred drove us home. Leslie sent us with a few changes of clothes for him.<br /><br />He woke up in his new bed. I think it helped, him being in a new situation. It was a distraction. He didn't have to sit curled up on a cot crying; instead he was wandering around the Manor, or the grounds; he cried, too, but I gave him excuses to do something besides that.<br /><br />He found the cave within a week; I guess he must have moonlighted with a magician or something, because he had to pick several locks to get there. I found him exercising on the cave's equipment. I wanted to scold him, especially since he was doing quite dangerous things, but the way he moved- he was so at home in the air that he flew- it was a joy to watch. I understood why people flocked to see him, and his parents, understood the weightless joy of his movements.<br /><br />Then he fell. And I wasn’t nearly the gymnast he was, but I <em>knew</em> he hadn’t fallen because of any mistake; he was crying even before he hit the mat. That’s when I went to him. And I thought about playing the heavy- I was in costume, after all- but he barely even looked up at me. And I saw in that moment that the thing he loved most in the world- with the likely exception of his parents- had turned into something that reminded him only of tragedy. He was a Flying Grayson, but the bastards who killed his parents had clipped his wings.<br /><br />I knelt down, and put my hand on his head. “I lost my parents, too.” He latched onto me, so fast and so strong that he knocked the air from of my lungs. He spent a long time crying. When he stopped, he looked up at me, and smiled at my clothes.<br /><br />“We wore costumes, too,” he said. He took my hand, and we went up into the manor and had hot chocolate. It was kind of strange, drinking hot chocolate in costume, but it seemed to make him happier. When he was asleep, I set to work finding his parent’s killers. I found them easily. I hurt them. Badly.<br /><br />I might have killed them with my hands, but I thought back to Dick, sitting in my dad’s old wingback chair, sipping hot cocoa. I knew already I wanted him to live with me, to grow up there. And I couldn’t go back to his home with blood on my hands. I mean, technically, there was <em>a lot</em> of blood on my hands, but that’s not what I meant.<br /><br />I was still young, then. This was before I tried to confront Joe Chill years later. This was more visceral, and raw. My rage was still enough that I might have killed those men accidentally. But I didn’t. And I shudder to think of the path that would have set me on.<br /><br />Dick saved my life. And not just the one time. By being my son, sometimes just by needing me, he <em>made</em> me come back from that precipice.<br /><br />I think that's why I can look past the thing that Harvey was. Because I know, without people like my son in my life, that could have been me. I dressed up like a goddamned bat. My grasp on reality was always pretty tenuous. But Dick gave me a reason- no, he made it a necessity- for me to come back from the brink. Every night.<br /><br />My parent’s death, it changed me. And that’s why Dick is stronger than I am, because losing his parents didn’t change him. He was sad, and he grieved for them, but he never forgot how to live, either. How to be happy. How to find things to be joyful about. He brought optimism back into my world- when I let him.<br /><br />And that was something I needed. Something the people who got me through my tragedy couldn’t give, maybe because they’d seen me, and seen things, at their darkest, maybe they’d lost their faith as I had, too. Or maybe in my mind they were just tainted by their association with my tragedy. Maybe they couldn’t be that for me because I wouldn’t let them. <br /><br />But you know, I don’t want to infantilize Dick too much, either. Because he didn’t stay a child. He grew up, and he grew into a man I’m happy to call my friend. He’s forged a life of his own. He's gone to school. He served as one of Gotham's finest. And now that I’m retiring, he's taken over aspects of my companies, and someday, he's going to fully control them. I trust him to do that. And I don't trust easy. He's earned that trust- that respect- sometimes grudgingly. But I couldn't be prouder of him, or have more faith in him. I trust him to carry on the good work I’ve done, through my company, through my charities. And nothing could be more important than that.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-85875726510817807772011-10-08T06:10:00.000-07:002011-10-08T06:16:29.026-07:00Love(s) of My Life 2: Both WaysID: I told you we were going to talk about Hush today, who’s a surgeon. Somewhat related, I sent you a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/superman-plastic-surgery-_n_998020.html?ref=mostpopular">link</a> to a <a href="http://www.realself.com/blog/plastic-surgery-like-superman">news</a> story on Herbet Chavez, a 35 year old Fillipino who’s been undergoing plastic surgery to look like Superman. As someone who knew the man, knew him well, I think, how do you think he’d feel about that?<br /><br />B: I think what Clark would say to him, if he were here, was that he should be his own man, his own super man. Because Clark was just a man. Like you, or I. He was better, I think, because of the effort he put in, to being better. To being kinder. More caring. To helping people, in the little ways I myself don’t always have the patience for.<br /><br />As far as Herbert goes, I think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But Clark never wanted to be anybody’s hero. He wanted to be the best possible person he could. It was a byproduct of that that people loved him, wanted to honor him, worshipped him- and I don’t just mean his little cult. If he really wants to be like Clark- if he wants to <em>feel</em> like Clark- all he has to do is be better. We all have weak moments, where we fail to do the little things it takes to make the world a better place- and these are sometimes as inconsequential as listening to someobody’s problems.<br /><br />That’s why Clark was <em>my</em> hero; because no matter how tired, and stressed, and raw he was, he found ways to make things easier for the rest of us. A lot of the time he didn’t even want us to know it; you know, he could move faster than we could see, dressing wounds, making coffee, just little things, that after a long day of evil, superintelligent gorillas kicking me in the spine, or giant robot spiders punching me in the face, or all the less ludicrous and honestly more sinister things we dealt with, made it easier to keep going, to fight the good fight another day. <br /><br />ID: What if he just wants to be powerful, because he feels like he isn’t?<br /><br />B: That’s harder. But essentially the answer is the same, though I’d say, as humbly as possible, the model is more myself. If you want to be powerful, it takes training. Strength training, martial arts training, education. I don’t know that I ever stood toe to toe with Clark, but there was more than once when I had his back, where I got to feel a little of that magic because I got to be a part of the things he did. So if he <em>really</em> wants power, he should seek it. I felt powerless, when I lost my parents. I can’t imagine living a whole life like that; I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.<br /><br />ID: That’s a nice sentiment. I feel a little bad about that; when I told you we were going to talk about Hush, well, we will, but he’s not the focus. I don’t feel as bad, though, because you lied to me. You said you were single.<br /><br />B: No. You asked me if I was dating anyone, and I asked why, which you took to be a no. I didn’t volunteer it, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t started seeing someone.<br /><br />ID: That’s okay. Because I already know the answer to the question we’ve been pursuing for several weeks in our countdown to the love of your life, which unless I’ve lost track of someone, we should be revealing next week. So you can’t tap dance around it. Though you might want to make sure the new boyfriend isn’t reading the interview.<br /><br />B: Too late. In fact, that’s how we met. He’s a lawyer who’s worked with me- and against me, as a matter of fact. But he came across the interview where I was outed, and decided to ask me out for a drink. It was weird, being the, uh<br /><br />ID: The woman?<br /><br />B: The receptive. <br /><br />ID: I just want to make sure I heard you right and you weren’t mumbling ‘receptacle.’<br /><br />B: Don’t be crass.<br /><br />ID: I was just making sure you weren’t. This is a PG interview. Maybe PG-13.<br /><br />But this here is where I dazzle you with my journalistic, um, entrepreneurialshipedness. After much research, and some dumpster diving, and more than a little snooping, I now know for a fact that your lawyer boyfriend- your beauyer, I’ve been calling him- is someone we should all be familiar with. Former District Attorney of Gotham City.<br /><br />B: Don’t.<br /><br />ID: One Harvey Dent.<br /><br />B: Shit.<br /><br />ID: Formerly the villain Two Face; in retrospect, it shouldn’t be surprising, given his obsession with duality, that Two Face is bisexual. But he isn’t Two Face anymore. He hasn’t been, since his scarring was fixed by a plastic surgeon whose name given name is escaping me at the moment.<br /><br />B: Tom Elliot.<br /><br />ID: The villain known as Hush. Incestuous.<br /><br />B: Well, at the time, I thought Tommy was a friend. But all that Tommy did was erase the outward manifestation of Two Face. It was Harvey, with the help of his doctors, that finally turned the monster away.<br /><br />ID: So he’s cured?<br /><br />B: I think that’s the wrong way of looking at it. Harvey has a dissociative identity disorder. He’s a survivor of childhood abuse, as is common with that diagnosis. His father beat him, nightly. The abuse caused him to dissociate; he couldn’t handle a father who beat him every day, so he shoved those experiences into his subconscious, which manufactured a personality that <em>could</em> cope with the experience. Two Face became the person who got him through difficult times.<br /><br />Ironically, it was their shared history of abuse that first drew Tommy to Harvey- it was why he agreed to try to help him. But unlike Tommy, Harvey had always wanted to do right. Tried to. The Two Face identity was usually in control, but he fought it, too. It was ultimately Harvey who saved me from Tommy; he shot him, twice.<br /><br />ID: Okay, so he’s taken a heroic turn, and he was never really the same kind of violent murderer that the Joker was. At <em>worst</em> he was a Mafioso, but even that’s probably a stretch. For the sake of completeness, explain Two Face to the crowd.<br /><br />B: Two Face came about, as a manifestation, because of a gang war. And I put extra pressure on the mob when I started being Batman. At the same time, the Holiday Killer was murdering people, most of them mobbed up. Carmine Falcone believed it was Harvey, doing with a gun what he couldn’t with an indictment. That’s why he was attacked with acid. The physical scarring accomplished what a lifetime of abuse hadn’t: it finally broke him. <br /><br />ID: So you… feel responsible for what happened, to Harvey?<br /><br />B: No. But it’s hard to say, if I hadn’t made Batman, say if I’d died with parents, it’s hard to say Harvey wouldn’t have gotten through those events unscathed. He’d probably still be district attorney, if not the State AG, maybe even the Attorney General of the country.<br /><br />ID: So, not responsible, but guilty. You feel guilty about it.<br /><br />B: A little.<br /><br />ID: And is that a good basis for a relationship?<br /><br />B: It isn’t. And it isn’t. Harvey and I were always friends. Even when Two Face was in control, I often saw Harvey try to assert himself, and I can think of more than one occasion where his coin said I should die, and Harvey said, “No.” I think he’s the only one who’s ever had me at that kind of disadvantage, whose own rules allowed him to harm me, who showed mercy like that.<br /><br />But I do think it helps me understand him. I think my parents’ death helps me understand him. We were both of us born of tragedy. And we both dissociated. The difference was, there were still people I could turn to and, because of that I never fell quite so deeply into the darkness as Harvey did. <br /><br />ID: Is it love?<br /><br />B: I don't know. But I hope so.<br /><br />ID: Want to flip a coin?<br /><br />B: If you put one on the table, I'll feed it to you.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-70790138875247877892011-10-01T07:55:00.000-07:002011-10-01T07:59:37.151-07:00Love(s) of My Life: DianaID: Let’s talk about the other big costumed temptation from your past: Wonder Woman. We’ve saved her in part because I think we’ve casually mentioned her a lot in the past, and if I’d had to put money on it, when we started, my money would have been on her being your ‘the one’- though I still think I might be right about that.<br /><br />But I’m less interested in how you met, since I’m sure it was punching people over some kind of fashion-related crime- possibly your own. But how did you two kids get together?<br /><br />B: I know you’re going to criticize, because there’s a pattern, here, similar to the pattern of journalists I’ve dated. But I “work” nights; and consequently, I don’t get out much. So a great deal of my socializing happens at fund-raisers and things.<br /><br />I think it was a cancer benefit- breast and prostate. She was hosting, and mingling with people. Some jerk goes off about AIDS funding for Africa. And at first she let it slide; it was a fund-raiser, not a debate. But the guy, he either had too much champagne or a too big a mouth, because he kept it up, and when nobody punched him he got more belligerent and loud about it. And even then, I think maybe Diana would have just nicely escorted him out, but she saw a look in my eye- cause I really wanted to deck the prick- and I think she got protective of me. <br /><br />ID: I imagine AIDS funding is a touchy subject for you.<br /><br />B: If you consider there to be an actual fight against AIDS, the front-line is unquestionably in Africa. If we don’t stop it there, continued globalization will ensure that it doesn’t stay Africa’s problem. To use an easier to understand metaphor, Africa are our neighbors, but if the flood waters overtake their land then ours will be flooded, too; so it makes sense to help them with the sandbags- even in purely selfish terms it makes sense. <br /><br />But I think in a lot of ways AIDS, like lung cancer, is a disease we blame people for. We look at them and say, you know, “You made a lousy life decision so you deserve to be there.” Which I think is complete and utter horse crap. I absolutely agree that people shouldn’t smoke, have unprotected sex or share needles; you’ll get no argument out of me that those are problems, and invite consequences. But, and maybe it’s just the religion my mother taught me bubbling up, but, “You made your choice now die in the gutter,” doesn’t seem at all like a reasonable response.<br /><br />But moral outrage is beside the point, because who hasn’t had unprotected sex? Maybe in the context of a monogamous relationship, even a marriage, but who goes an entire life without doing that at least once? You?<br /><br />ID: God no. I’m pretty sure I started having unsafe sex. In a monogamous relationship, like you said, but even that first time I think I went bareback.<br /><br />B: Don’t get me wrong, I completely advocate for safety- everyone should be aware of the danger and risk when they have sex- particularly because even condoms aren’t a completely safe alternative. But this finger-waggling, it’s the blind hypocrisy of abstinence-only sex ed applied to an entire culture- a whole continent, after the fact.<br /><br />But there are still parts of Africa where “No,” doesn’t mean “No” in the same sense that it does, here- I mean, a woman’s right to say “No” doesn’t carry the same weight.<br /><br />ID: Then maybe we should just give AIDS funding for women.<br /><br />B: I suppose that’s an argument. But this isn’t a problem we should be trying to treat, it’s one we should be trying to annihilate. Because giving a woman expensive drugs to stay alive is a losing battle. Even trying to eliminate rape- something we’ve failed to do even over here- is a pipe dream- and I swear to God I will punch you in the throat if you turn that into a laying pipe dream joke.<br /><br />ID: Wouldn’t dream of it.<br /><br />B: Many women in Africa get AIDS from their husbands who’ve slept around, and I would be shocked if the same doesn’t happen to men, too. What we need to do is to tackle a culture that doesn’t treat AIDS with the proper gravity. There are still parts of the continent where AIDS misinformation is rampant. Getting people to understand that they’re taking their lives into their own hands, that’s how you win this fight. By educating people, and then giving them the tools, like condoms, to protect themselves. <br /><br />ID: So is it not okay to question AIDS funding in Africa?<br /><br />B: No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s important- imperative- that we question our government and keep them accountable. But my problem with that particular guy was the way he argued his point- not to mention the venue, which was completely unrelated. To my mind, AIDS funding is justifiable because it is trying to fight the disease before it can get to us. I think if we don’t spend this money today, we’ll end up spending exponentially more to fight it once it reaches our shores.<br /><br />ID: Okay, we’ve been completely derailed on that one. Um, you and Diana were at a fund raiser.<br /><br />B: She’d finally had enough with this guy, so she confronted him. She tried logic, reason, compassion. She ran through all the reasons why he was ignorant, and by the end not even subtly racist, I mean shouting epithets. Diana’s usually a pretty peaceful person, but I think since she entered into the fight on what she presumed was my behalf, she took the things he said more personally than she normally would have. I could see where things were headed when she balled her fists, and I intervened.<br /><br />“You’ll punch right through his head,” I told her, “and ruin a very pretty dress.” She laughed, and that defused the situation. And I turned around and told the man he needed to leave.<br /><br />He wanted me to make him. By that point I’d calmed down, so I just applied a simple arm hold- a painful one- and escorted him to the door. When I got back everybody applauded. It turned out to be one of the most successful fund raisers we’ve ever had. Nothing makes rich white people feel guiltier than hearing one of their own articulate the case against compassion. Were I a more cynical man I’d hire men to come to charity events to be jerks just to juice the contributions.<br /><br />ID: I’ve been known to be an exceptionally belligerent jackass.<br /><br />B: Sorry, we’re not hiring.<br /><br />ID: Okay, but it seems like… I see A, I see C, but I don’t see B or how we got from A to C.<br /><br />B: Diana was a little colder the rest of the night. She very rarely loses her cool, and when she does, I think… it worries her. An angry Amazon can do a lot of damage, and she’s supposed to be an ambassador of peace- I believe that’s a part of her official title.<br /><br />It was sweet of her to defend my honor, I guess, but I think it made her ask herself why. And she was social, and fun and funny, and did a great job entertaining the rest of the night, but I recognized that she was more thoughtful than usual. <br /><br />I let it lie. I didn’t know what was going on, but when Diana wants to talk, she does. And she did, after everyone had left. Eventually. She spent a lot of time looking off, at the city lights- this must have been in New York, because that’s the skyline I remember. But when she spoke she asked me if I really liked the dress.<br /><br />I told her I didn’t know if it was the dress, but she looked stunning tonight. It was amazing that guy had been able to pick his jaw off the floor long enough to argue with her. And we’ve… we flirted before. I guess I never really thought about it, but I’m more dashing, debonair, at these kinds of events, than when I’m wearing the pointy ears. So we spent a lot more of our time bantering at functions. But I think that was the first time I’d ever seen her self-conscious, in an awkward way.<br /><br />Diana is one of the most self-aware people I know, but I think she really wanted me to like the dress. I think she liked defending me. And liked that I could handle that. Some men can’t; and Diana is a strong woman, stronger than just about anybody. If you can’t handle the idea that a woman could toss you into the sun, then she just isn’t for you.<br /><br />But she liked the intimacy of it. She knew my secrets, and not that many people did. She knew how fragile I was, but I didn’t balk at the idea of her knowing that. I think for her it was that right combination of vulnerability and strength.<br /><br />She was intrigued, and for the first time I think she started to think about me in that way.<br /><br />ID: That way? What are you, six?<br /><br />B: I don’t mean sexually. Women think of me sexually often. Men, too. You, just now- it’s a human reflex. Like if I told you not to picture your grandmother naked.<br /><br />ID: Ah! Damn you!<br /><br />B: See. But I mean romantically. She started to wonder if we were romantically compatible.<br /><br />ID: And what about you?<br /><br />B: I was already there; I always had been. The first few minutes you spend with Diana, all you think about is her, how completely goddamn lovely she is. I challenge any man to spend five minutes with her and not think of her that way. But after that, it’s strange, but she’s such a stunning person, that you start to want to be with her, not just sexually, but completely. She’s not just beautiful, but brilliant, compassionate. I know Clark gets the messianic treatment a lot, but if Jesus were a woman you couldn’t take yours eyes off- but also capable and willing to punch an intergalactic genocidal maniac in the eyes to save lives- you’d be approaching Diana.<br /><br />ID: So to take this that extra blasphemous step, you worship her?<br /><br />B: Close, I suppose. Admire. Adore. Love, beyond a capacity I ever thought possible.<br /><br />ID: And all this after the break-up.<br /><br />B: I don’t know if we were every actually together, honestly, to call us broken up. We wanted to be. Danced around the issue. And we certainly saw each other for a while. But there was always a distance.<br /><br />I remember more than one cancelled date, where I had to leave to deal with a costumed psychopath and she came with me in costume. I remember specifically this one night the Joker was doing cabaret in front of an audience, and it was a Speed kind of thing, where they had dynamite attached to their seats and if they stopped laughing they would blow up. I jumped down behind him onstage, and the audience started clapping. Then Diana lands right in front of him, and he actually pissed himself. I think he was just taking the joke that far, but he did, he pissed himself, and it was a long piss, too, twenty seconds easy. It had started to pool at his feet and flow downstage by the time he stopped.<br /><br />And the look on her face was priceless, because she was trying to still stay scary, but she was also disgusted, and a little bemused. And she said, “I’m not carrying him out.” He turned back and looked at me, wiggled his eyebrows, and from the look I assumed he was going to chase her around soaking in piss, and I almost lost it, almost burst into laughter right there at the thought of the Joker chasing Wonder Woman around in his pissed-in drawers- but I knew that would not make her happy so I chucked a batarang at his head and conked him out.<br /><br />ID: Sounds like a pretty weird date.<br /><br />B: It was actually a pretty good one. We managed to salvage the evening by swinging by this little cheesecake shop that’s open late and going home to watch a movie. It was nice because… with Diana I didn’t have to be two people. Bruce and Batman were the same guy, and Diana was the same woman in the outfit or out it, and it gave the night a continuity I’m not used to.<br /><br />I don’t think most people get to be loved, completely. We all have little parts of ourselves, our work selves, for instance, that are segmented off from the people we care about. But with Diana I was all of those men, and she loved all of them.<br /><br />Which seems strange, now that I say it out loud, because Diana is the same. The Diana who is ambassador, who is a heroine, who I spoon-fed cheesecake to, they’re all the exact, same woman. Which isn’t to say that she’s not a complicated and multifaceted woman- only that all of her facets are always exposed- and if you turn that into a joke about her costume I’ll throw my coffee at your crotch-<br /><br />ID: That’s an idle threat: you’re coffee’s cold.<br /><br />B: It’s still wet, and could stain. But she’s… like a diamond that’s been cut in such a way that you can see every inch of it, its imperfections and flaws but also all the myriad things that make it beautiful.<br /><br />ID: Okay. You’re still completely in love with her, and I’m still saying she should have been your number one, were you not a cheating bastard. But why did it end?<br /><br />B: Like I was saying: I don’t think it ever began. I think we still care about each other, deeply. But that night I told you about was indicative of our time together. Duty called, incessantly, constantly. I was either having to jet off to Singapore to make sure a business deal didn’t fall through, or she was off to Washington to make sure a diplomatic flap didn’t flare into violence.<br /><br />And that’s before you introduce the nutjobs in costume and the megalomaniacal world-destroyers. So one of those nights, where we were trying to have a date, I got a call, Clayface was doing some damage in the diamond district. And we were trying to wrap the night up- she had an early meeting at the embassy or she would have come with- when she got a call of a problem in New York.<br /><br />I was about halfway into my costume when I got a call. Nightwing and Robin had taken care of Clayface. I called Diana, to see if she wanted some help with her New York problem, but she answered from the entrance to the cave. Apparently one of the Flashes had run through New York and taken care of it for her.<br /><br />But standing in the cave, half in a suit and half in a batsuit, I think the message was clear. I could see it in her eyes, and when I looked down at myself, I knew it, too. I asked her what kind of a life that was. If we would ever be able to settle down. Have kids. Have a life to ourselves. And I think I would have kept asking questions like that, but she put her finger to my lips, kissed my cheek, and said, “I love you.” And I said, “Me, too.” And that was it.<br /><br />I think in a better world, we’d have stayed together. A world with fewer madmen, fewer monsters. But for us, duty was a higher call. I have a bit more free time these days. But in part because of that, Diana has less.<br /><br />And I’m not at my physical peak anymore. I get tired more easily. I certainly couldn’t go round after round with her like I used to. Sparring, I meant- so you can take remove that grin.<br /><br />ID: I can’t, actually. The entendre was too fun. But do you think that matters? That you aren’t at your peak anymore? To her?<br /><br />B: She was always physically my better. And I know I’ve aged. And she hasn’t. I think if there is such a person that could overlook that gap, it would be her. Maybe I’m just a self-conscious old man.<br /><br />ID: But can’t she retire? I mean, at least her ambassadorship, let the Amazons send somebody else out to put out the political fires.<br /><br />B: Not while there’s still good she can do. No matter who they sent, they wouldn’t be her. There’d be a learning curve, there’d be mistakes. And there’d be the fact that whoever it was, it wasn’t Diana. You can’t fill those shoes; there would always be a shadow over whoever replaced her, because of the mythic reputation she’s forged.<br /><br />And I can’t fault her for that, without being a hypocrite- which I’d gladly do to have her. And perversely, her willingness to set what we had aside only makes me love her more. She’s selfless.<br /><br />To an extent- somewhat selfish, somewhat empathic- I hope it’s something she can get over. Because she deserves to be happy. Even if it’s not with me. Even if it happens years after I’m dead. You can’t fix everything wrong with the world, and you can’t save it alone. And if you try to go it alone, eventually, you will fail. Because everyone, even Diana, needs people. And I don’t necessarily mean romantically, but there’ll come a time when she’ll people to keep her strong. And I hope by then she has them.<br /><br />ID: So… is the reason you’re gay Diana? You can’t have the woman you want, so you’re barking up another tree?<br /><br />B: I’ve never thought of it in those terms. Could be a factor. But does it matter? It’s who I am, today.<br /><br />ID: But what if she flew through that window right now and said she’d found a way to transfer her powers to someone else, and she’s going to retire and be with you? What would you do?<br /><br />B: I don’t know. But I do know that’s not going to happen- certainly not right now. Because right now, it’s a world without a Superman, with a greener Batman than it’s had in years. Right now, people need Wonder Woman more than they ever have before- and as much as it pains me to say, even more than me. And there is absolutely no chance Diana would let them down.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-21421803482796414012011-09-28T12:35:00.000-07:002011-09-28T12:36:40.488-07:00Love(s) of My Life: BarbaraID: Which in a round-about way brings us to Barbara Gordon- the commissioner’s daughter, and all of the naughty naughtiness that implies.<br /><br />B: Barbara was a friend. I knew Jim socially, though not personally- at least not personally outside of the costume. But Barbara, Barbara made Bane look like a primate. She figured out who I was without really trying. Just one day figured it out on her way to classes.<br /><br />She wanted to help me, in my crusade. She saw how tortured her father was, how the bureaucracy made it almost impossible for him to protect people the way he wanted. So I guess she also wanted to help him, too.<br /><br />I turned her away. It was too dangerous a life. And she was just a happy policeman’s daughter. She wanted to help, but… she should have been out volunteering for the homeless, or working at women’s shelters, or doing that kind of thing. Not swinging from rooftops or<br /><br />ID: That seems like rather flimsy logic. I mean, you already had Robin running around in tights. Were you just afraid of a strong woman back then?<br /><br />B: She was strong. She took martial arts classes and mastered several different disciplines. She graduated years ahead of time, I think she had just turned nineteen. If I had been recruiting, she would have been top of the list. But I wasn’t. I hadn’t really been recruiting when I found Robin, either, truth be told.<br /><br />But at least with Robin, I had been able to keep him in check, keep him off the streets long enough for me to train him, to make sure he wasn’t going to get himself killed. I think my main worry was one of quality over quantity; I worried I might not be able to keep them both trained up and safe- or at least as safe as you can make someone whose running around in a cape punching violent criminals armed with guns.<br /><br />ID: So you were being paternalistic- not technically sexist.<br /><br />B: You continue to astound me with how big an ass you always manage to be.<br /><br />ID: It’s a gift; maybe even a superpower. Maybe I could join the League as The Gigantic Ass.<br /><br />B: I’m horrified at the costume possibilities.<br /><br />ID: But for all of your good intentions in trying to keep Barbara Gordon out of harm’s way, harm managed to find her anyway, in the form of the Joker.<br /><br />B: He was there primarily for her father, whom he was trying to drive insane. But he shot her, through the spine.<br /><br />I still wonder… if I shouldn’t have killed him for that.<br /><br />ID: What?<br /><br />B: For all of my moralizing, all of the things I do honestly believe about my parents, and their legacy, and their memory. I don’t know if they would want him alive. If, for a moment, they weren’t dead, and I could ask them, should I kill him to keep people, people like Barbara Gordon, and like Jason Todd, safe, I don’t know if they’d say I shouldn’t.<br /><br />And Barbara… that’s one of those moments, where I don’t know. I don’t know how I got through it without murdering him.<br /><br />To her credit, Barbara doesn’t waver. She hates him, don’t get me wrong. But she’s a more forgiving person than I am. Maybe that’s just because… if I’d murdered him, I think her father would have gone insane. And if I’d murdered him, the Joker would have won; her injury would have been a part of his sick triumph, rather than a tragic happenstance. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to get into Barbara’s head.<br /><br />ID: That’s okay. I’m more interested in how you got into her pants.<br /><br />B: Careful.<br /><br />ID: Sorry, it was just too perfect a segue. But you’d just joined the roller brigade.<br /><br />B: Yeah. In less than the space of a year, I went from being able to bench 600 lbs., to not being able to use my legs. And I was dangerously close to becoming a hugely self-important ass; I wanted to feel sorry for myself. The thing I’d spent my life working towards was slipping through my fingers, and I felt like I’d failed, and that I couldn’t not fail, from that moment on.<br /><br />And then Barbara rolls into my bedroom. She’d been researching, not just Bane, but what he’d done, the criminals he’d loosed. She was already starting to formulate a plan, contingencies for Nightwing, Robin and the new Batman.<br /><br />I was hostile. Even mean. But she bullied her way through, anyway, and all the time I barely looked at her. Then she asked if I’d been outside, since the accident. And I hadn’t. She said, “Let’s go for a walk.” And before I thought about it, I glowered at her. And then I realized, well, duh, she can’t literally walk, either. And I felt suddenly very silly, and also ashamed.<br /><br />But she was there because she wasn’t going to let me wallow; she’d been there, and she knew where wallowing got you, or maybe she knew how dangerous the almost desire to wallow can be.<br /><br />I had a chair of my own, but I hadn’t used it. I glanced towards it, but I had no idea how to get into it without sending it flying across the room. And she noticed. She taught me how to get into my chair. And I know that sounds small, but it was the first triumph I got after being paralyzed. She got me back on my feet- or at least, out of bed.<br /><br />I was happy for a second, exhilarated; it seems silly now, but for an instant things seemed possible again, and there were reasons to be hopeful. And I kissed her. And she got really red in the face, but then she brushed it off, and I realized she was more mature than I’d been giving her credit for. <br /><br />And, I think she always had kind of a schoolgirl crush on me. I think that’s part of where her wanting to run around with me in tights came from. But she hadn’t really been a girl for years by that point- she was a woman, completely. Which was something I don’t think I’d paid attention to.<br /><br />ID: Because she’d been in a wheelchair?<br /><br />B: I don’t think so. I think I… I got used to brushing her to the side. Because she was younger than me, young enough that it kind of weirded me out.<br /><br />ID: Like in the early seasons of Buffy, where she’s completely hot but it’s still skeevy for Angel to date her.<br /><br />B: I have no idea what you’re talking about.<br /><br />ID: Liar.<br /><br />B: Anyway, it started out pretty innocuously. She took me outside. And my home is very nice, but if you want to be depressive, and shut all the curtains, it can actually be a pretty cold and unhappy place. But outside, in the sun, with birds, and a clear sky. It was a different world than the one I’d convinced myself I would be stuck in.<br /><br />And I think that encapsulates what I had with Barbara. She showed me different sides of the city, different sides of being alive. She was integral to my spiritual rehabilitation.<br /><br />ID: Okay, but did you have sex with that woman?<br /><br />B: I’m quite capable of hurting you.<br /><br />ID: I find ‘no comment’ is more succinct, but I get your point. But it ended. How, and why?<br /><br />B: Barbara was good for me, emotionally. Psychologically. But physically, I still had a lot of healing to do. And I think… some of the shine had come off. I was part of a white knight fantasy of hers. Even if I hadn’t been in the chair- the fantasy equivalent of trading my white horse for a donkey cart- even ignoring that aspect, I wasn’t, I couldn’t, ever live up to who she wanted me to be, or thought I was. Nobody can.<br /><br />Every relationship has that point, where your preconceptions, and assumptions, and everything else, have all been peeled away, and you’re left with who they actually are day to day. And I think we liked each other, but that didn’t mean we wanted to pursue more.<br /><br />And I remember we were in the Gotham Zoo, and we stopped by the tropical birds. She had hold of my hand, and she told me, “I love you, but I don’t know that I love you like this.” And I knew exactly what she meant. I think it was something I’d been thinking about, too. But I was glad she broached the subject- I’ve been known to womanize, and I didn’t- I didn’t want what we had to just be another example of that.<br /><br />We decided to take a break. I was scheduled for some intensive physical therapy, and was going to be largely unavailable anyway. We decided to spend time apart, and if we really missed what we’d had, then we could go back to it, and if not, it was a pretty clean place to leave it.<br /><br />And a lot happened in the interim, I’ll admit. But when we again had some time, I had her go first. She said she’d missed me, but because she missed spending time with me, not romantically. To emphasize the point she kissed me and said, “See, nothing there, right?”<br /><br />I said, “You’re right on the merits, but you shouldn’t do that. You’re still a very beautiful woman, and I’m”<br /><br />She interrupted me and said, “A dog?” Which, yeah. Pretty much. And we’re still excellent friends. And I wouldn’t trade that.<br /><br />ID: I know there’s a ‘but’ in there- named Shondra.<br /><br />B: Right. Well, she was part of that interim. But Shondra was my trauma therapist. She was more than that- in that she had some special healing powers. She’s the only reason I can walk, today, in fact.<br /><br />ID: But I don’t care about that. See, it’s the other part of your relationship with Shondra that has me asking about her.<br /><br />B: Fine. But shut up, and let me tell it my way.<br /><br />We’d been working together for a few weeks. She was also working with Jack Drake at the time, who had also been paralyzed.<br /><br />ID: That’s the bio-dad of Tim Drake, your second adopted son.<br /><br />B: Right. Jack was a neighbor. And it was through him that I met Shondra. He was making a miraculous recovery. Doctors hadn’t thought he’d ever walk again, but instead he was wiggling his toes, he could even bend his leg from the knee down- you know, just a couple seconds at a time, but it was a faster recovery than anyone expected.<br /><br />So I hired Shondra. And she was a miracle worker, no question. But then she was taken, along with Jack. Kidnapped by her brother. Eventually I tracked her to England and was able to free both of them, but like with what Barbara had suggested, suddenly not having Shondra, I realized what I had lost. And it was more than just a healer. I’d started to love her.<br /><br />ID: So your road to recovery was paved with the bodies of compassionate, nubile women?<br /><br />B: That’s not fair.<br /><br />ID: You ran right from Barbara to the arms of your physical therapist; that summation sounds kind. Have you ever wondered if you’re just clinically co-dependent?<br /><br />B: I get accused of being too much of a loner, most of the time. So co-dependent? I appreciate women. Greatly. They might be the only thing in life I really enjoy in anything approaching a normal capacity.<br /><br />But, too, I think there was a, I’m sure there’s a clinical term that’s escaping me, but I was vulnerable. And for the first time in I think my life I was forced to slow down. Take stock of things. And sit around. Be with and near people in less of a utility-minded fashion. In both cases, I think it might have been more about appreciating them trying to help me than love.<br /><br />ID: So you think these relationships were confusing care for love?<br /><br />B: I think caring for someone is a large part of love. I think it’s almost impossible to care for someone, physically, and not also feel for them emotionally. There’s just too much overlap between the two. So I don’t think it’s confusion, per se. I just think it’s easy to take people for granted, until you can’t anymore. And when you really need people, that’s when you notice who stays, who’s really there for you. And you appreciate them more.<br /><br />But it’s not uncommon. Jack, as an example, married his long term care nurse, Dana, for I think similar reasons. That, and I don’t want you to succeed in stripping these relationships of their meaning. Because they were important, and are. I loved Shondra, and Barbara. They put me back together when I was broken. I will forever be in their debts for that.<br /><br />ID: But I think it’s fair to ask if it was love.<br /><br />B: It was, in both cases, but I think it sprung from different places. Barbara I’d known for years. I had an older brother/girl next door affection for her<br /><br />ID: That combination is fairly disturbing, on account of the incest.<br /><br />B: But you know what I mean. I loved her in a platonic way for half of her life. But she was there for me, in a way I don’t think anyone else could have been, when I was really down, and really vulnerable. That’s overwhelming. And I don’t think it takes anything away from what we had to say that it was temporary and situational. I loved her in part because she was there for me, and she loved me because she could be. And sometimes I think it’s too bad that it didn’t translate into a longer-term relationship, but those end, usually with acrimony. And that would have cost me one of my most important friendships.<br /><br />ID: And Shondra?<br /><br />B: That ended tragically. Her brother tried to use her gift, pervert it, to hurt people. She was able to stop him, but the damage he tried to make her to do to others, she absorbed it. It cost her her mind. She’s been all but catatonic since.<br /><br />ID: So you rescued her, but in the doing she was turned into a shell. ‘<br /><br />B: Yes.<br /><br />ID: That sucks.<br /><br />B: Yeah.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-38305544422302469162011-09-20T07:39:00.000-07:002011-09-20T07:42:31.830-07:00BrokenID: I’d like to talk to you about Barbara Gordon. <br /><br />B: That could be tricky. <br /><br />ID: I know. But I like a challenge. But to get to Barbara, there’s a back-story. <br /><br />B: Careful…<br /><br />ID: Well, the two of you ended up getting intimate because you shared something. Don’t try to be menacing; you’ve yet to <em>actually</em> hurt me in any way, so it’s really losing its edge. <br /><br />B: I’m more patient when I’m not wearing a quarter of my weight in body armor. And that doesn’t mean I <em>won’t</em> hurt you. <br /><br />ID: Relax. Take deep, calming breaths. Because the thing you two had in common isn’t much of a secret: you were in wheel chairs. You look relieved. What, were you afraid I’d found out something dark and sinister?<br /><br />B: I don’t think Barbara has <em>anything</em> dark or sinister in her past; having something approaching affection for me at one point is probably as low as it goes. <br /><br />ID: Fair enough. But Barbara ended up in a chair because of the Joker. You landed in yours because of Bane- and that’s why there’s so much back-story. So start us off at the beginning- your crippling, to be specific. <br /><br />B: Bane was a genius. He deduced my identity, even before the Riddler. But unlike Edward, he used that information to try to destroy me. He staged an elaborate break from Arkham, freeing nearly every inmate at the same time. <br /><br />I did what I could to stem the tide of insanity, but there were too many. I was reaching my breaking point, physically and mentally. And that’s when he attacked me in the cave. I barely put up a fight, I was just so… I was already broken. What he did to me really only made me physically into what I was psychologically. <br /><br />ID: Though specifically he broke your back. <br /><br />B: Correct. <br /><br />ID: And how did that <em>feel</em>?<br /><br />B: Nice therapist tone. It was <em>devastating</em>. It wasn’t that long since I’d had my own dalliance with venom, and failure, but this took failure to a whole new level. I wasn’t just butting up against the natural limits of being human, I was destroyed.<br /><br />ID: You might want to be careful, lest the disabilities lobby tear you a batcave.<br /><br />B: I don’t think I’m saying anything that hasn’t been said before. I felt like less than a man- less than a person. I was catatonic. Alfred tells me it was exactly like what happened when I lost my parents, that the same dread and despair descended over him. Because he couldn’t be sure I’d ever snap out of it. <br /><br />Even after the medications worked their way through me, and the painkillers wore off, it was days before I spoke. The people I cared about were gathered around, waiting outside my bedroom. They wanted to know what to do. They wanted revenge, and to get me better, but there was not really a clear path towards either. <br /><br />I think it was even scarier, because Clark had just died- and I mean the first time, when Doomsday killed him. And I was being looked at to fill the void he left, and suddenly I was out of the picture, too. I’m not blaming Clark, or trying to escape culpability, but I know that weighed on me, too. Made things harder. The deaths, and the violence, everything that went wrong because of the mistake I made, that’s on my head.<br /><br />But the first thing I did after Bane was to name a successor. Nightwing was there, but I didn’t- he wasn’t the first person I spoke to. There was a vigilante known as Azreal. He was violent, but I’d been working with him, and I <em>thought</em> he’d become someone I could rely on. I knew Bane was still out there. And I didn’t want him approached; he was too dangerous. I didn’t want whoever became Batman in my stead to pursue him, but I knew Bane would seek a new Batman out, so they were going to have to <em>run</em>. <br /><br />And if I’m <em>really</em> honest, and self-critical, I think maybe I <em>knew</em> Nightwing couldn’t do that. Bane hurt me. And he’d challenged everything Nightwing had built towards his whole life. If I’d made him Batman then, he would have gone straight for Bane. He still might have, if I hadn’t made him swear to me he wouldn’t. Which <em>maybe</em> have saved his life. Or maybe I just prevented him from finally becoming the man he is, today, for just a little while. <br /><br />ID: Because <em>now</em> Nightwing is Batman. So I take it you’d trust him to take on Bane today?<br /><br />B: I have no doubt that he’d beat the hell out of Bane in record time. And the deaths, and the violence, everything that went wrong because I put the wrong man in charge trying to shelter him, that’s on my head.<br /><br />[Continued Friday, or earlier.]IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-16089533546786407492011-09-17T03:59:00.000-07:002011-09-17T04:04:55.846-07:00Love(s) of My Life: Baby MamaID: I’m going to be uncharacteristically provocative and just drop this research bombshell: you have a bastard son. <br /><br />B: I suppose that’s technically true. <br /><br />ID: And I know who the baby mama is. Daughter of the infamous ecoterrorist and founder of the League of Assassins, Ra’s al Ghul. Wait. He’s her father. The baby mama is Talia, his daughter. <br /><br />B: That’s… less accurate, on account of a questionable legal technicality. <br /><br />ID: Meaning?<br /><br />B: We were married at the time of his conception. Technically. <br /><br />ID: Okay, there’s a story, there. <br /><br />B: I was captured by the League of Assassins, and drugged. It’s called ‘groom kidnapping,’ colloquially Pakaruah shaadi. A form of nonconsensual marriage. <br /><br />ID: Wait, isn’t that an Indian thing?<br /><br />B: We were in India at the time. <br /><br />But the first time I met Talia was during a power struggle within Ra’s organization; she saved my life, then. We had a connection. Maybe that’s just because we both grew up in the shadow of determined, successful men, and spent our childhood training, our entire lives in preparation. We were both intelligent, capable, beautiful- mostly I mean her, on that last one. <br /><br />The fact that she was Ra’s daughter added a whole Romeo and Juliet angle that I think just made it<br /><br />ID: Hotter?<br /><br />B: Forbidden. Taboo. Which made it hotter, I guess. It created tension, even more tension on top of the fact that… I’m trying to figure out how to say this without coming off as a complete douche bag, but… I could kill you in a moment with my bare hands. I can outsmart most people- even those with enhanced minds. Back in the day I could bench over 600 lbs.<br /><br />ID: Jesus. <br /><br />B: And Talia is basically my female equivalent. And if you’re talking psychological damage, she might even be more than my equal. <br /><br />ID: Sounds kind of like a dig. <br /><br />B: It isn’t. When you get a certain level of damaged, you stop being able to really relate to people who haven’t suffered traumatically. The people I know the best, the ones I really relate to, all have personal, familial tragedies. I think it helps you put your own experiences into perspective. So finding a woman with problems comparable to mine, was nice. <br /><br />We had a longstanding flirtation. In fact, India wasn’t the first time we hooked up. But that time, we were, like I said, technically married. Which made me less cautious than I might have otherwise been. And I knocked her up. <br /><br />For a long time, Ra’s had been trying to make me his successor, which meant taking over his League of Assassins and also marrying his daughter. And I wasn’t <em>happy</em>, when I found out I’d been forcibly married. But I also… I loved Talia. Her father was cruel, and manipulative, maybe even evil, but the moments I had with her were so perfect. And I’d never even really thought about being a father, and finding out I was going to be… it was probably the happiest day of my life. Because it was something that wasn’t part of the plan, part of my obsessive quest to protect others. It was something selfish, something that was just <em>mine</em>. And maybe it was even a way out for me. <br /><br />By that point, my first Robin was all grown up, and I thought maybe it would be okay for me to retire. Maybe the world could make it with a different man running around in a pointy-eared cowl. And there was a part of me that thought I could use the League of Assassins. They were already heavily trained martial artists highly skilled in stealth. I thought it might be a viable start to an organization of international batmans, a Batman, Inc., if you will. <br /><br />But I wasn’t the only one vying for Ra’s mantle. Unbeknownst to me, I had a rival in the League. He attacked me- attacked both of us- at dinner. I fought him, but he would have killed me had Talia not shot him. And as a result of the attack, Talia had a miscarriage. <br /><br />We mourned together, and it was the closest I’d ever been to those moments after my parents’ death- only I wasn’t alone, this time. And I probably would have stayed with her- not in India, obviously, but with her. But she had a change of heart. She told me I wasn’t the same man when I was married to her. I wasn’t going to survive the life her father wanted for us- and I was no good to her dead. So we dissolved the marriage. <br /><br />ID: But, that isn’t the end of the story, of course. Because little Damian didn’t die. <br /><br />B: No. I wonder if that was her father’s doing or not. Maybe that was how he planned to get his successor- not to use me, as I was, but to mix my genes with his family’s. <br /><br />Maybe Talia simply had second thoughts. Maybe she wanted to let me go, because she didn’t want me if it had to come from her father’s goons dragging me to her. <br /><br />Whatever the case, I suspect she didn’t know about Damian, either. Because I don’t think she would have chosen to raise him in the League of Assassins. And if she had, I guarantee you, he would have learned compassion much more thoroughly. But that’s the story of how I lost Damian. His mother, on the other hand, never went far. <br /><br />Because her father’s ambition never stopped. And so she and I had lots of opportunities to bump into each other<br /><br />ID: ’s uglies. Sorry, couldn’t resist. <br /><br />B: I don’t suppose you could. But I think ours became a love that was unrequited out of necessity. To be with her, I was going to have to stop being Batman. And for her to be with me, she was going to have to abandon her father. And I don’t think either of us was prepared for that. <br /><br />But years later, after the earthquake, I lost hope. I was a man in a bat costume. The world was in chaos, and all I could do was hurl batarangs at it. That’s why I went to Washington to ask for help. The things I usually did to tackle a problem, weren’t going to work. So I tried to do something else- possibly something more grown up. But because of Luthor’s grip on the political conversation at that point, nothing came of it. <br /><br />So I went away empty-handed, without a plan of action. And for me, not to have a plan- I was rudderless. Talia found me, in my hotel room. I was drunk- <em>actually</em> drunk. And she sobered me up, and convinced me to go back to Gotham. In retrospect, she was working with Luthor by that point, and probably knew something was afoot. But the important thing was she found me, in a moment of weakness, and helped me get back up. <br /><br />ID: So wait, Talia <em>finally</em> had a chance to have you to herself, when you’d already lost the taste for being Batman, and she pushed you back into the costume?<br /><br />B: Yeah. I think she knew that she could have me, but that what she’d have was a shell. I couldn’t be happy having failed Gotham; I couldn’t retire then. I had to be standing, on my feet, first. Maybe it was just her same MO: letting me go, and hoping I’d return to her in my own time. <br /><br />ID: Well, you’re not Batman anymore. So why haven’t you gone back to her? <br /><br />B: Not to cheapen our relationship, but that feels a little like asking a man why he ordered the steak and not the lamb. <br /><br />ID: Actually, given your more recent proclivities, it’s like asking a man why he’s ordered the salad after being offered the steak and the lamb. <br /><br />B: Cute. But I think it comes down to the fact that I used Bruce Wayne as a distraction and a deflection. By being boring, and shallow, and vapid, in my “personal” life, only people who read gossip columns cared, and even then, only superficially. But coming out- even only half out- that would have led to all kinds of questions, and increased scrutiny. I’ve always been, curious, I guess might be the worried, about the same sex. I’ve experimented, sure- it’s not like these are my first forays- but for the first time I feel freed up to test those other waters, without endangering the people I care about. <br /><br />Which isn’t to say that I’m going to never eat meat again<br /><br />ID: I can’t but feel that our metaphor was accidentally backwards.<br /><br />B: Just that right now I’m feeling more like a salad. Maybe, as in noneuphemistic dinners, it’s just an appetizer, but right now that’s what I’m craving. <br /><br />ID: Okay, to get back to Talia for a second, here’s something: you had unprotected sex with her.<br /><br />B: She was my wife. <br /><br />ID: Not my point. Presumably, back then, you weren’t HIV positive, or riddled with the AIDS. But since your love life, using very vague timelines in my head, crossed over that threshold, there must have come a point when you had to stop her and demand that you use protection. <br /><br />B: I’m Batman. I <em>always</em> use protection<br /><br />ID: Nice PSA<br /><br />B: outside the context of monogamous, long-term relationships- and since Talia wasn’t usually either of those things, pretty much all the time. But it did come up. Because I think there’s a responsibility, there, to be forthright, and honest, and just extra cautious. We were kissing, and she reached for my utility belt, and I just stopped her, and said, “I’m HIV positive.”<br /><br />And she said, “I know,” and went back to kissing me. Which made sense. I told you, she’s as close to me having a ‘my other half’ as I’ve ever been. And I would have known if she’d tested positive. <br /><br />ID: Doesn’t that strike you as a bit of a violation? <br /><br />B: It might be. I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve always been an information junky. Because information is what’s kept me alive, doing dangerous and potentially stupid things, for most of my life. I rarely stop and consider the morality behind it. I think there are probably still people in my life who would be offended by that. But it’s who I am. I’m not trying to justify it, rationalize or say that that makes it okay. If you’re offended you’re offended. But that’s just who I am. I don’t think I <em>could</em> change it, even if I felt I needed to. It’s a compulsion to know, to be prepared. <br /><br />ID: And yet they used to call Clark the Big Blue Boyscout.<br /><br />B: As far as preparedness goes, Clark never had a thing on me- though he did wear more blue.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-56683300287406327002011-09-10T06:09:00.000-07:002011-09-10T06:22:09.845-07:00Love(s) of My Life: SelinaID: Okay, I've been hoping for an opportunity like this one. <br /><br />B: I shudder to think.<br /><br />ID: Both as background, and anticipating we might end up using it as a sidebar, I tried to contact the subject of this week's interview: Selina Kyle. <br /><br />B: She turned you down. <br /><br />ID: She's a slippery minx- though I've had much worse; people who agree to an interview then duck, dodge and weave around every attempt to actually set it up. At least Selina never gave me more than a maybe- and even then, it was a vague maybe. But enough about my inability to catch the Catwoman, tell me how you did. <br /><br />B: We met at a fundraiser for an animal rights group... it wasn't PETA, but the specific charity is escaping me at the moment. Anyway, my assistant had caved, and agreed for me to meet Ms. Kyle. I knew her by reputation, and was more than happy to donate to her cause, but less thrilled about actually talking to her. <br /><br />ID: So she had a reputation?<br /><br />B: Yeah. Actually, the reputation wasn't <em>bad</em>; she was an activist, and <em>very quick</em>. I guess, in retrospect, she had kind of a Michael Moore ability to ambush businesspeople with questions about their companies, usually aspects they weren't aware of, to shame them into donating small fortunes. And Bruce Wayne was supposed to be the dull flack, not a lightning rod. So I spent most of the night at this fundraiser avoiding her. <br /><br />And I did what I thought was an admirable job keeping her at a distance, until a presentation. A beautiful woman stood up and, it was about jungle cats and their shrinking habitat. And she spoke so eloquently, that it was difficult to remember that we were talking about animals and not human beings. She moved quite a few people in the audience to tears. <br /><br />And when she finished speaking, she fixed me this look, and it was just like the look in those jungle cat's eyes in her presentation- stunning, emerald eyes. I asked my assistant, a little breathless, “Who <em>is</em> that?” Meanwhile, the woman starts to stalk towards me, and my heart starts to race, and I thought that must be how rabbits feel, or maybe how the criminals I hunt feel. My assistant was nose deep in her planner, and the mystery woman had closed half the distance before she looked up and said, “Oh, that’s Ms. Kyle.” <br /><br />Of course, my first thought was, “Oh sh-”<br /><br />ID: “it.”<br /><br />B: My second was, “You know, I think I'd let her embarrass me in front of a room full of rich people.” So I let her catch me. And maybe my company was a little better than the average; maybe she took pity on my<br /><br />ID: Because of the lantern jaw and the piercing blue eyes?<br /><br />B: Or because she saw that the better way to my wallet was with a softer touch. But she did give me a hard time for running from her all night. Let me see, I said, “If I had any idea how stunning you were, I'd have found you.” <br /><br />“So now I'm the prey?” she asked. And, Selina was fun. And wild. A little unpredictable. I had more champagne than I think I'd ever had up to that point in my life- I was actually a little tipsy. I offered to give her a ride home- with Alfred driving, of course- but she said she'd rather walk. We got about a mile from her home before she kicked off her heels, and said, “I'll race you to my apartment.” And I thought I had her, since I was still wearing semi-functional shoes. But she was fast, and kept just ahead of me. But once we got to her apartment, she bounded up the stairs, leaping majestically up several flights of stairs while barely touching down. She was graceful, athletic.<br /><br />ID: You're getting awfully worked up; you sure you're not at least still bi?<br /><br />B: Nobody's that gay. Selina is easily- <em>easily</em>- the most sexual woman alive. Just saying her name aloud makes my heart race a little. But you're derailing. <br /><br />She beat me to her door by so much that by the time I got there she was already inside, looking out at me through a crack. I pushed on the door, thinking she was just holding it for me, but she held it mostly shut. And she said, “I hope you didn't think I was inviting you in. Silly man. I'm not that easy to catch.” Now, it was a little frustrating, but there was something in the way she said it, and the way she smiled at me, that little glint in her eye, I smiled, and went away happy. <br /><br />I ran into her later that night. Only this time we were both dressed differently. She was in the condo of a wealthy industrialist, one with a lousy environmental record, particularly as it concerned wildlife. He had put in a silent alarm just before he went on vacation- it was new, which is probably the only reason she hadn't known about it. She was removing jewelry from a wall safe when I arrived. I snuck up on her, and grabbed her wrist. <br /><br />I think we were both still worked up from earlier, because she whirled around and kissed me before she said anything. Then she blushed, and said, “Purrfect.” <br /><br />ID: That is so weird hearing you trill like that. <br /><br />B: And I was definitely still worked up, because then I kissed her, and let go of her wrist entirely. Which was great, until she shivved me with some claws in the side and got away. She was more careful after that. I played a lot of catch up, but it was some time before I saw her again in costume. <br /><br />But what's strange is, even though Selina and I, in our normal lives, dated for a while, it wasn't until we had sex that I realized they were the same person. They kissed differently. But when she was deep in the throes of passion, then, suddenly, she kissed like the Catwoman. And my mind was fairly blown. It probably should have been obvious- just from the amount of time I spent staring at both women, but I suspect, like Lois with Clark, that I really didn't want to know. I wanted to have them, have both of them. Which doesn't even touch the idea that if- or when- I caught her, I was going to lose them both.<br /><br />And I struggled with it, for a while. I really, <em>really</em> wanted to just leave her be. The fact that there was a cat burglar in the city, that didn't need to be my business. I mean, I cared about keeping families from being torn apart by violence, not industrial profiteers losing small fractions of their ill-gotten wealth. But I knew I was rationalizing, too. Having Catwoman emboldened others- and not all of them were going to keep to her basically nonviolent code. So I watched her for a couple of weeks. She was keeping her scores in several different hiding spots. I made sure I knew where all of them were. Then I emptied them. I left safe deposit keys or other identifying hallmarks in a small pile on her coffee table, with a note that read, “It stops or I stop it,” and a little bat symbol. <br /><br />She sent a card to the Manor, and all it said was, “Thanks, Bruce.” It was the first inkling I had that she knew, too. She disappeared, and I didn't see her for a while. The next time I did, she was operating in more morally gray territory, sabotaging animal experiments, exposing exploitation. And when I saw her in costume, we flirted like we always had, but when I saw her socially, she was different. I think she was hurt, by the fact that I hadn't trusted her enough to come to her as Bruce, to tell her who I was since I knew who she was. I wonder... that might have been the breaking point, actually. I loved her. About as deeply as I ever have loved anyone. And I think, if I hadn't hidden behind Batman, I think she would have married me. <br /><br />ID: So you asked?<br /><br />B: Not then. No. Because after that she was distant. <br /><br />It changed after the earthquake. She really stepped up. When people needed help, she put aside her pet cause, and saved lives. And I think from there, it was inevitable. We always had an affection for one another. I'd never formally told her I was Bruce, and one night, when we'd just kind of bumped into one another patrolling, I gave her a lift in the Batmobile. We passed her street, and she caught herself almost objecting. I drove her to the cave, and once we were there I took off my mask and kissed her. She told me she'd been waiting for years for that. I told her I was scared; I didn't want to put her in even more danger. She said she could handle herself, and that she wasn't willing to give me the choice this time. <br /><br />ID: Okay. But it ended. So why?<br /><br />B: Because I was scared. I think that's always been, and always will be, the problem with Selina. She doesn't have fear. She'll leap off a moving train to save a single tiger, or a building to get away from me. But I'm afraid. I was afraid to tell her who I really was- which I think will always be a point of contention. And I'll always be afraid that I've put her in greater danger, caused her more harm and pain. <br /><br />ID: Okay, that's the background, but get specific. You two were a hot item, and then maybe cooled off, but what was the catalyst, the final straw. <br /><br />B: Hush cut out her heart. <br /><br />ID: Seriously? <br /><br />B: Yeah. He had some help, cryogenically, from Mr. Freeze. I wonder if I have Victor to thank for her surviving- since I imagine he'd have seen a kinship with someone else whose love was frozen. <br /><br />ID: But he cut out her heart?<br /><br />B: He was a surgeon. And it was entirely to get at me. If she'd bumped into him on a patrol, or whatever, it might be different. But he targetted her, to get at me. It was the realization of my fear. And I couldn't be afraid. Batman can't be afraid. He has to be able to trust the people he works with to keep themselves safe. And with her, I couldn't. Which isn't entirely fair to her, I know- and I don't know if she'll ever forgive me for it. But that's how it is. <br /><br />ID: That's... sad. But... you're not Batman anymore. Why not track her down and give her some When Harry Met Sally speech? <br /><br />B: I wouldn't say never. But I will say that, right now, I don't think Selina's interested. Once bitten, twice shy; but that's twice now she's been bitten. I couldn't blame her if she was just through with me.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-91790117757984869952011-09-03T07:50:00.000-07:002011-09-03T07:57:09.325-07:00Love(s) of My Life: ZatannaB: But getting back to our look at the women I’ve loved, I thought we’d talk about Zatanna. Because she’s a magician.
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<br />ID: I would have gone with the obvious, “Wonder Woman called me this morning,” but whatever, it’s your dime.
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<br />B: But in honor of Zatanna, I figured I’d use a bit of misdirection.
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<br />ID: Clever.
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<br />B: Zatanna might have been my first real crush.
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<br />I remember the first time I met her. My dad put together a big event for the local children's shelter. I think it was a Christmas thing, though he shied away from doing too much Christmas-y, that year, because he found out Gotham actually has a goodly sized Jewish population, too. So he had a petting zoo, and magic.
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<br />Zatanna’s father was a stage magician named John Zatara, and he came on stage with a flash of light and smoke. And out from behind him stepped a cute girl about my age, with dark hair, and big dark eyes, and a smile that made even the most down-trodden orphan smile with her. And I told my mom, “He's got a lovely assistant,” and she smiled down at me the way mothers do.
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<br />There was a little flower shop a couple of doors down from the shelter, and I got my allowance from my mom and bought her some roses, and handed them to her when she and her father were taking their bows, and she smiled. And she was at that age where she had a mouthful of mismatched, oversized teeth. I was so smitten I still thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen- not that I guess I had too active a social life back then.
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<br />We palled around for the rest of the night, but she and her father were nomads- they travelled around the country performing. So when I asked if I could see her, maybe for dinner or a show, she told me she would be gone to Metropolis the next day. And in New York the day after. Then elsewhere. But she promised, next time she and her father were in Gotham, we would.
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<br />That’s probably where it would have ended, just a silly little night of crushing; I don’t know if she would have taken me up on dinner or a movie. But my parents died. After I emerged from my stupor, I started to form a plan, the very rough outlines of what the Batman would become. And the very first person I sought out for that plan was Zatanna and her father.
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<br />I think John was important in my grieving process. It was more than just a desire to learn about illusion and misdirection. I wanted to disappear. And not just in a puff of smoke. Training with John let me get away from my parents' friends, and everyone who wanted to coddle me and swaddle me. It let me stop being the boy with the murdered parents, or even the Wayne heir; it let me be just Bruce for a while, when I really needed to be Bruce. So did Zatanna.
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<br />We dated, if anything kids that young do can be called dating. I don’t know if she cared for me, or if she just grieved with me.
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<br />ID: How did it end?
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<br />B: I finished my training. But I still stayed, months longer than I planned, than I needed. I told myself I was honing my skills, perfecting them before moving on to the next phase. But eventually I couldn't lie to myself anymore. Her dad had nothing left to teach me- at least nothing left I could learn without a talent for real magic.
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<br />ID: Real magic?
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<br />B: Magic exists. I think it was part of the reason I went to John in the first place. I… thought about bringing my family back. John… helped me see that I shouldn’t. There are a lot of challenges, and potential consequences, but it was the psychology of it that he focused on. Loss is a part of life. I needed to cope with that fact. He helped me see that. And Zatanna helped me survive it.
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<br />ID: But that’s not the end of the story, is it? You two reconnected.
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<br />B: She lost her father, during a crises several years ago. I flew in for the funeral.
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<br />ID: And that made you two even closer?
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<br />B: It could have. Except that she didn’t take it the way I had. Because for a while, my parent’s death murdered me. I wandered around in a daze, unable to think or to feel. I would have simply starved, if Alfred hadn’t fed me, with a spoon, like I was a baby. I had to relearn how to be alive after that. Even after I learned to function, it’s something that is with me, daily. It’s a conscious decision, now, but from a very young age, it was my purpose and my motivation, keeping other people from that kind of trauma.
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<br />Maybe it was because she was at that point already an adult, but Zatanna reacted differently. Maybe, in part, it’s because her father died a hero, fighting for something he believed in. Maybe she really is just a sunnier person than I am. And she was sad- heartbroken, even; she loved her father more than any other person in the world. But she was still a happy person. Hopeful. Optimistic. I love that about her. I love it enough, in fact, that I told her no.
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<br />This was years later, after the pain of her father’s death had passed- at least as much as it ever could. She reasoned I still owed her a movie, or dinner. And we went out. And she was wonderful. And beautiful. Sexy- if you’ve never seen her in civilian clothes, you have no idea how incredibly sexy she can look even without the revealing tuxedo. And she told me she loved me, and that she always had, since we were kids. I had, too, actually. And she wanted to see more of me. See if there was still anything there- or rather, whether there was something adult there, on top of a mutual childhood affection. And I said no.
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<br />ID: But, but she’s leggy. And, and adorable.
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<br />B: I know. And it was hard to tell her no, believe me on that. But it’s right for her.
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<br />ID: Isn’t that a bit… paternalistic.
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<br />B: I don’t think she views me as a father figure. But no. She’s my friend- one of my favorite people in the world. Her happiness is very important to me.
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<br />Too important, I’d say, to risk on a very unsure bet. Because the women I’ve been with… well, I don’ always remain friendly with them afterwards. They end up damaged and unhappy- and that’s not counting the ones who end up getting truly hurt- like Vesper. I don’t know if there’s a single woman whose ever been happier for having known me, and for most of them they leave with even more baggage. And I couldn’t do that to her, I couldn’t be responsible for making Zatanna brood, not even for an evening. It’s a selfish decision, I know, but I need people like her in my life far more than I do in my bed.
<br />
<br />But on the subject, I think, at the end of my life, I’d like to disappear. I don’t want what Clark had, a year or more of people looking at him with pity. Treating every whatever like it’s my last, whether it’s Thanksgiving, or my sons’ birthdays. I’d like to be able to slip away in the night, without anyone having to expend any of that extra energy, just suddenly being gone, in a cloud of smoke.
<br />
<br />ID: Okay. But because I'd like to do a fishnets thing, howsabout Black Canary?
<br />
<br />B: Kissed her a few times, though Ollie, her new husband but longtime hanger-on, can rest easy, it never progressed past there.
<br />
<br />ID: That's disappointing. You're making it difficult to live vicariously through you.
<br />
<br />B: Really? You might be the first person to complain that I haven't been promiscuous enough. Particularly in light of the AIDS.
<br />
<br />ID: Low blow. We were bantering, and you had to go and bring up life-threatening STDs. Now I'm depressed. Quickly, to the Baskin-Robbins-mobile!
<br />
<br />B: All right, but you’re buying. IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-29927802713809950682011-08-30T08:03:00.001-07:002011-08-31T05:11:08.404-07:00Disappearing ActB: Diana called me this morning.
<br />
<br />ID: I smell a segue.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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?
<br />
<br />B: Please don’t knee-jerk about this. This is so much bigger than our extraordinary rendition program. It’s so much <em>larger</em> than our one nation.
<br />
<br />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?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />B: All right, I can see you’re like a puppy with a bone.
<br />
<br />ID: Is that some kind of autofellatio joke?
<br />
<br />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 <em>try</em> 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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: Provided they can hold him.
<br />
<br />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 <em>that</em> 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.
<br />
<br />But it took five years before the Military Commissions Act was passed- and only then because the Supreme Court decision in <em>Hamdan v. Rumsfield</em> ruled military tribunals unconstitutional. Even then, the Act’s suspension of the writ of habeus corpus was struck down as unconstitutional- because it very <em>specifically</em> 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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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 <em>enhance</em> 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.
<br />
<br />But the difference I see is Gitmo and the black sites are the opposite of what I did. They epitomize the concept of government <em>refusing</em> 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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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,
<br />
<br />ID: Were you having a seizure there, or was that an acronym?
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<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: I would have gone with the obvious, “Wonder Woman called me this morning,” but whatever, it’s your dime.
<br />
<br />B: But in honor of Zatanna, I figured I’d use a bit of misdirection.
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<br />ID: Clever.
<br />
<br />[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]
<br />IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-85420415632589579472011-08-27T07:24:00.000-07:002011-08-27T07:26:45.628-07:00Love(s) of My Life: Journalists[Ed. Note: Continuing from last week’s interview about the Loves of Bruce’s Life]
<br />
<br />ID: But thankfully, you have a type. Specifically, journalists. Why do you think that is?
<br />
<br />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
<br />
<br />ID: As complicated as yourself?
<br />
<br />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.
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<br />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?
<br />
<br />B: Maybe.
<br />
<br />ID: That sounds like a yes, to me, but tell me about Vicki Vale.
<br />
<br />B: She was a reporter, too, originally a social gossip columnist; she took her own photos, too. That's how we met. <em>That</em> 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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: So you were your own rival?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: You sound like you regret that.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: So she’s happy?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: I presume at last some of this gallivanting is on a Wayne Foundation grant?
<br />
<br />B: Occasionally. I'm proud of the work she does, and happy to be even that small part of it.
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<br />ID: And what ever happened to her investigation into you?
<br />
<br />B: I suspect she eventually found me out- and then decided not to print it.
<br />
<br />ID: How sweet. And the last journalist whose ink you dipped your pen into
<br />
<br />B: Classy
<br />
<br />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?
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<br />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.
<br />
<br />I think that’s a suitable metaphor for Vesper: if you saw her, she <em>seemed</em> 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.
<br />
<br />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…
<br />
<br />ID: Before she was murdered, and the assassin, David Cain, made it look like you were her killer.
<br />
<br />B: At the behest of Lex Luthor, yes.
<br />
<br />ID: I know you <em>humiliated</em> Luthor. I mean, you took away <em>all</em> 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?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: But I assume you haven’t stopped trying.
<br />
<br />B: Meaning?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />B: No. You really can’t.
<br />
<br />ID: But I am sorry. For your loss. And for Vesper. Truly.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
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<br />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. IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-67784427818032277412011-08-25T07:47:00.000-07:002011-08-25T07:56:23.272-07:00Love(s) of My LifeID: 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.
<br />
<br />B: I’m sorry I’m not dying faster.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />B: Why?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />[click]
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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?
<br />
<br />ID: And the answer was...
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />ID: What do you mean?
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />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]IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-71192236869899600962011-08-06T07:05:00.000-07:002011-08-06T07:11:43.338-07:00Crime and PunishmentID: 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. <br /><br />B: I want to beat him to death, resuscitate him, and do it again, for every single child he murdered. <br /><br />ID: Ladies and gentlemen, your Batman, star of your children’s video games, lunch boxes and SpaghettiOs. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />B: Except in leadership. But outside of the Middle East, most terrorist groups remain pretty small, and there are fewer old men involved. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />DI: And Japan has that 99% conviction rate? <br /><br />B: That’s actually a little misleading- though true. A <a href="http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwple/9907001.html">study</a> 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. <br /><br />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? <br /><br />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. <br /><br />And for several <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/porn-sexual-violence_n_918874.html">years</a> now there’s been correlation between the availability of high speed internet and a decline in sexual assault in the US. <br /><br />DI: But correlation is not causation. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />DI: But what about the children? Won’t somebody think of the children. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />And we’re just talking about sentencing; one reason why the Japanese and Norwegian systems <em>might</em> 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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />ID: But if you’re so enamored of cost saving, what about private prisons? <br /><br />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. <br /><br />I think there’s also a question of <a href="http://www.whatsuppub.com/showArticle.asp?articleId=6934">legitimacy</a>. 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. <br /><br />And finally, private prisons have so far been <em>more</em> expensive. In Arizona, $1,600 more per inmate. Right now, private prisons don’t work. <br /><br />I’m obviously <em>not</em> 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. <br /><br />ID: But aren’t private prisons potentially like charter schools, little laboratories where new ideas can be tested out? <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />ID: Heheh, you said penal. <br /><br />B: Thanks for keeping the conversation on a high road.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-47111973272334544052011-07-30T06:34:00.000-07:002011-07-30T07:19:48.543-07:00Hostage Crisis<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOOEeYEmsDeinXCwCp50RQoCGzxOLwQHEh97EL2yeiBklNNKtK9hvEgKCfZXV-jxKfs8C8nWTce6PKV6XmPsTVIhaTDvETIlX6_IJUAhS2D5NmLKGZfQ-BEki7ohtlQzvnkt93t2Awik/s1600/batman06.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 231px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsOOEeYEmsDeinXCwCp50RQoCGzxOLwQHEh97EL2yeiBklNNKtK9hvEgKCfZXV-jxKfs8C8nWTce6PKV6XmPsTVIhaTDvETIlX6_IJUAhS2D5NmLKGZfQ-BEki7ohtlQzvnkt93t2Awik/s320/batman06.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635139935494201154" /></a><br /><br />[note: this image made more sense with the original title, “America Pulls a Boehner,” and it's still too good not to keep; courtesy of <a href="http://superdickery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=32:seduction-index&id=303:batmans-boner&Itemid=36’">superdickery</a>, though I'm sure owned by DC]<br /><br />DI: Last year, Obama used the metaphor of a hostage crisis for the Republican negotiation over the Bush tax cuts. He ended up relenting, because he wasn’t willing to let them hurt the hostage, when the hostage was the American people. But you’ve dealt with some real-world hostage situations, so I’d like to get your opinion on this latest negotiation. <br /><br />B: I don’t negotiate hostage crises; I end them. <br /><br />DI: Probably by breaking through a hostage taker’s skylight then kicking them until they go to prison. <br /><br />B: In a nutshell. <br /><br />DI: Do you provide the nutshell, or do Gotham’s hostage-takers provide their own?<br /><br />B: Clever. <br /><br />DI: I have my moments. <br /><br />B: But there have been circumstances where I’ve had to negotiate. It’s a favorite tactic of the Riddler, making sure he and his victims are hidden somewhere, so I have to deal with him remotely. It’s the only way he could ever get me to play his games at first. <br /><br />DI: At first? <br /><br />B: We came to an understanding about ten years ago: he stopped kidnapping people and I agreed to solve one of his riddles a month. <br /><br />DI: So you enabled his lunacy. Wonderful. <br /><br />B: The Riddler’s obsessive and compulsive, but not violently insane in the same way as someone like the Joker. All he really cared about was his puzzles, and one time, as I was taking him to the police, frustrated, I asked, “Next time can’t we just skip to the part that you care about?” And he laughed. But then he thought about it, and asked if I was offering what it sounded like I was offering. And I hadn’t been, but now that we were both thinking about it, it made a weird kind of sense. <br /><br />Because he’d been terrorizing innocent people needlessly. He didn’t want a ransom. And he never actually hurt his hostages. He just wanted to play the game. <br /><br />DI: But given that <em>you</em> negotiated with terrorists<br /><br />B: Actually, you’ll note that I negotiated an end to the terrorism.<br /><br />DI: But at the time he was a terrorist and you negotiated- and that makes President Bush cry- so what would you say of the current stalemate?<br /><br />B: Well, first, looking back at the first hostage negotiation, Obama was being stupid. I think his metaphor fails, in that we weren’t talking about <em>really</em> hurting the American people, just whether or not some of them paid marginally higher taxes- at the rate they paid them under Clinton. Regardless, he did the worst thing possible: he caved- which only encourages more hostage-taking. <br /><br />By contrast, I think the current debt ceiling negotiations, and maybe to a lesser extent the budget fight earlier this year, are closer to hostage negotiations. Because the debt ceiling allows us to pay for services that really will hurt Americans who lose them. And unlike taxes, which have a large lobby constantly agitating against them, those Americans tend not to have powerful political allies. So damage done to those Americans could well end up permanent. <br /><br />DI: Then what do you think of the debt ceiling bill Boehner got passed in the House?<br /><br />B: I liked Jonathan Chait’s description of the Boehner ‘deal’: “it's like a kidnapper demanding for the release of your child $100,000 and your other child.” Because Boehner’s deal extracts cuts without revenue, but then ensures that there will be <em>another</em> debt ceiling standoff in six months’ time. <br /><br />This may be the reason that, according to CNN, the House plan championed by Speaker Boehner would likely lead to a downgrade of US credit from Standard and Poor’s, while the Senate plan championed by Harry Reid wouldn’t. [note: the Reid plan offers a ceiling extension that should see us to 2013]. We’ll see, I suppose, in the next few days, if that does <em>anything</em> to change the debate. I suspect not. John Boehner’s been painted into a corner. I suspect he’s not long for this political world; he was <em>barely</em> able to craft a bill that mustered Republican support in the House, but it’ll never make it through the Democratic Senate. His options now seem to be to throw his speakership under the bus to vote with the Democrats, or to try to preserve his speakership by tacking right, which means not voting for whatever compromise comes out of the Senate, and means the Republicans get hammered for the consequences and probably lose their majority and the speakership anyway. <br /><br />Not that I’ll lament his loss. In attempting to sell his bill to the House, Boehner called the other options default or giving Obama a blank check. Now, I hate to go against Hanlon’s razor, but I can’t believe that the Speaker of the House misunderstands government so badly. The President doesn’t spend money- he executes the laws as passed by the Congress. Spending- the power of the purse- that’s Congress. The Congress, one half of which Boehner “leads,” set spending levels. Which makes it either blatant propaganda or criminal stupidity. <br /><br />DI: You’ve placed a lot of people under citizen’s arrest in your time. Ever for stupidity?<br /><br />B: I’ve caught a lot of people because of stupidity, but that was never the charge. <br /><br />DI: You’ve been a pretty passionate proponent for raising the debt ceiling, even when a majority of Americans were against it. <br /><br />B: I think most Americans are busy. They don’t want government to be a major thing in their lives- because they’d rather do something else, work, spend time with friends, family, just screwing around. So most Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to politics until it’s something important, something that gets in their face and demands attention. So the fact that most people didn’t understand what the debt ceiling was, I think accounts for most of the change in polls. But selling the increase - explaining <em>why</em> I’ve favored it, beyond what could go wrong- is a different thing. And I’ve said it before, but it’s about a different vision of the country. <br /><br />Let me ask you a question: do you like our country? Right now, looking around, at the state of our roads, at the state of our national parks, at the state of our national security apparatus. Do you like this country, and want it to be able to continue at this level?<br /><br />DI: Generally speaking, yeah. At least at this level. <br /><br />B: Okay, these are the things our government spends money on. But how about the things you may not like, that the government isn’t doing as well with: the state of our schools, our crumbling infrastructure, high unemployment, the fact that seniors are edging closer to poverty as a group- these are all things that will require more spending in the future. Not unlimited spending- in some cases, like infrastructure, just a down payment- but increases over what we spend now. <br /><br />I think most Americans are fairly happy with the country <em>today</em>. So I don’t understand that zealousness on the part of conservatives to take apart something we value. <br /><br />DI: But you’re a dangerous socialist.<br /><br />B: I’m a liberal. And maybe in the Europe I’d be a social democrat. I’ve never tried to hide that. And yes, personally, I’d favor robust government spending, to put us back on top of the world in education and technology, which is quite honestly where we belong. We’re the richest country in the world, and we still have an opportunity to cement our place at the head of that table; to me, that’s an America to dream about. It <em>would</em> require higher taxes- but if we made serious efforts to make the tax code fair- and I’m talking about treating all income equally, not the Orwellianly named ‘fair’ tax- it wouldn’t require a lot of sacrifice, either. To the average American, it would be more than worth it, to know that Medicare and Social Security were going to be there for them, and their kids.<br /><br />But let me be clear: that’s not what I’m advocating here. I’m saying that, at a minimum, we should be trying to keep America strong. We don’t have to be the best. But we shouldn’t be willing to watch our nation slide further and further away from being the center of innovation, growth and prosperity. We’re still about as rich as the EU, but every day we fall further behind on the education and technology curves- and the further we fall back, the harder it is to regain position. <br /><br />We should be looking for ways to ensure our nation’s stability and prosperity going into the future. We shouldn’t be looking to cut benefits for the elderly, while maintaining tax cuts for the oil industry. Those kinds of trade offs just don’t make sense. <br /><br />DI: So how do you feel about the Reid plan?<br /><br />B: The Reid plan isn’t wonderful. It has its flaws, namely a pretty large reduction in the government’s ability to protect its citizens. It does attack the deficit, and on that front it’s remarkably like the Beohner plan, both in how much gets cut and how quickly. So it tries to have the least effect during the downturn, which is a plus. <br /><br />DI: So what’s so bad about the Boehner plan, then?<br /><br />B: To get it out of the House, Boehner had to make the ceiling increase, or a second one, since he cuts a Reid sized increase in two, contingent upon passage of a balanced budget amendment. We’ve discussed how pointless such an amendment is, and this provision guaranteed that it could never even be considered by the Senate. <br /><br />The thrust of the problem with a balanced budget amendment is it’s unenforceable, so it’s a rule which would only keep honest politicians honest. <br /><br />DI: So the same way that, say, gun control only keeps honest gun owners honest?<br /><br />B: One can of worms at a time. <br /><br />And maybe I’m being cynical here, but I think Democrats have learned from pay as you go rules that they will try to live within the system, but Republicans won’t. Republicans, you’ll recall, got rid of pay as you go rules as soon as they took the House, and replaced them with cut as you go rules. The irony of which is that the party now obsessed with debt and deficits changed the rules to make it even easier to increase both. <br /><br />But the other problem with Boehner’s plan we already mentioned. It’s the reason I think S & P has talked about downgrading our credit even if we pass the Boehner plan: it sets this whole hostage crisis back up again in six months. And even if we managed to talk the crazy people off the ledge this time, that doesn’t mean that next time we’ll be so lucky. In fact, since they’re likely to view this as a loss, and I speak from a long history with vengeful crazy people, they’re likely to be crazier, and more likely to throw us all off the ledge next time.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-28046473940103700322011-07-23T07:50:00.000-07:002011-07-23T07:55:05.491-07:00UnbalancedB: I can tell you think you’re being clever. So out with it. <br /><br />DI: I have two topics I’d like to talk about with you; unfortunately I’ve been having trouble coming up with an overarching theme, but they are Michele Bachmann and the budget. <br /><br />B: And I’ll take a wild guess and assume you’re going to title the piece, ‘unbalanced.’ <br /><br />DI: On the nosey. We’ll start with the one that’s the furthest out of whack. <br /><br />B: Michele Bachmann?<br /><br />DI: Correct. Michele Bachmann really first came to prominent national attention when she called Barack Obama anti-American. Most notably because he was palling around with Bill Ayers, a member of the Weathermen, a group that bombed several government buildings in the 70s, and was <em>friendly</em> with Obama. <br /><br />B: Obama served on a charity board with Ayers, and lived in the same neighborhood. I was <em>friends</em> with Harvey Dent- I actually cooked for him, in my home, once. I gave to his campaign when he was running for DA. By that standard, Michele Bachmann would believe that I condone any and everything Harvey’s ever done. <br /><br />Which is stupid if not unbelievably cynical. Harvey was one of my best friends. When his… issues broke him, it was hard on me. But that never stopped me from beating the hell out of him every single time he put innocent people in danger. I don’t condone his actions; I <em>despise</em> them. I <em>hate</em> what Harvey became- and it’s all the sadder knowing where he came from, and who he could have been. <br /><br />DI: But is that fair? Obama knew Ayers <em>after</em> he’d been in the Weathermen. <br /><br />B: Okay. Say that Harvey reformed- which he’s tried, several times. Let’s say this time he makes it, and like Ayers he’s an honest, normal citizen for twenty years. Let’s say he gets his law license back, somehow, and runs for DA. I’d donate to his campaign all over again. <br /><br />DI: I’m just going to lay my cards on the table, here, and just quote from Wikipedia: following comments by China proposing adoption of a global reserve currency, Bachmann introduced a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to bar the dollar from being replaced by a foreign currency.<br /><br />B: I have no words. (pause) You’re not going to say anything else until I respond, are you?<br /><br />DI: Nope.<br /><br />B: It’s just… lunacy. The existence of a global reserve currency would have nothing to do with the US. All China is saying is that it doesn’t like being tied to US policy. They don’t like the idea that all the wealth they’ve generated is denominated in dollars, because they could lose their shirts if we were to do something stupid, like, say, reneg on our debts by refusing to lift the debt ceiling. So they’d rather have a currency that wasn’t related to any single country- sort of a gold standard without tying the reserve currency necessarily to any particular commodity. <br /><br />DI: She also made headlines when she fretted publically about the census. <br /><br />B: Which was ironic, given her self-proclaimed love for the Constitution- because that’s where the Census comes from. Every ten years the government performs a count and accounting of the citizenry- largely for the allocation of representatives for the house, but also the distribution of funds. <br /><br />DI: And during the health care debate, she read an article by the notorious Betsy McCaughey on the floor of the House. <br /><br />B: It’s unclear how much Bachmann’s persona is cynical shtick and how much of it is actual, diagnosable paranoia. But I can’t, looking at the evidence, believes it’s all an act; she went on record saying she wanted to “wean” people off Social Security and Medicare. She was talking about keeping people in the system there, and making sure people who wouldn’t get it had time to prepare- similar in spirit to the Ryan budget, but also throwing Social Security under the same bus- but that’s an incredibly unpopular mindset to have in this country. Frankly, I’m surprised she’s getting any traction at all. <br /><br />DI: In 2004, Bachmann said, “We need to have profound compassion for people who are dealing with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life and sexual identity disorders”<br /><br />B: Given my long career in dealing with people with mental dysfunctions and identity disorders, I can tell you I have profound compassion for people like Bachmann, surpassed only by my compassion for the poor people of Minnesota she represents. <br /><br />DI: That was catty. You’re getting catty in your old age.<br /><br />B: Maybe I’ve been spending too much time around Selina. Kitten has <em>claws</em>. <br /><br />DI: But conveniently, Bachmann has been at least on the outskirts of the skirmish over the debt ceiling. She tends to make wacky sounding demands- actually, I imagine that’s your wheelhouse, since you’ve been involved in hostage negotiations with the Joker. <br /><br />B: To be fair, Bachmann isn’t going to kill anyone; she’s just threatening to hurt the country and its interests. Both dire, I admit; but I want to make sure we don’t step too far into hyperbole, here. Bachmann isn’t a murderer, and while I’d question her ability to properly grasp reality, she’s far from the Joker in that regard. <br /><br />DI: Noted; also, aren’t I supposed to be the grown-up, here? <br /><br />B: That’s what I keep asking. <br /><br />DI: But what I was trying to say about Bachmann’s demands; she has, if I’m remembering this right, demanded at one point a balanced budget amendment, and at another, repeal of the ACA. <br /><br />B: It’s hard to watch. I don’t know how many people were reading you and Clark’s discussions, but I can’t help but feel the ACA- it’s a part of Clark’s legacy. It’s a part I think he was proud of, even though he didn’t get to see its final passage. But so often, he, and I’m in a similar position, we get to help people in a way that’s immediate, and visceral. <br /><br />But after you’ve saved someone from the burning building, you set them back down on the sidewalk and you fly away. And the circumstances that had them living in that poorly built building that wasn’t up to code, with the badly functioning smoke detectors that they couldn’t afford to replace- those all stay like they were. So it’s hard to feel like you <em>saved</em> them, really- you just postponed the inevitable. <br /><br />I’m in a more unique position, in that I can afford and have the resources to come back later, and try to help out. There were a lot of times, especially when I was starting out, that I’d say to people: “Batman told me you could use a hand.” And little kids, I mean, the first thing they’d say is, “You know Batman?” And their eyes would light up; and it always felt like the answer was “only slightly.” Because he’s a part of me, but he’s not a part of me I have access to when I’m out with people like that. He’s as much an enigma to me, at those moments, as he is to everyone else. <br /><br />But the point I was trying to get at, that I think I’ve wandered away from, is that at least in my mind, the ACA is something he advocated for, at the end. The last hurrah in his campaign for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. And I remember, when the debate over the bill got really nasty, he called me, depressed. Because he couldn’t understand how people could question the patriotism of the idea that everyone should have medical coverage. He asked me, “What’s more American than all of us, together, helping <em>every</em> American succeed, and prosper? Is there anything more American than that?”<br /><br />At the time I didn’t say anything. It was rhetorical, but beyond that he had a way about him- even when he said something corny, something I <em>wanted</em> to laugh about- I couldn’t. He made you want to believe silly things. I don’t think the ACA is actually silly- but I believe it’s aimed to make the world better, in a way that sometimes I want to dismiss as hopelessly and romantically idealistic. But I also think it’ll save more lives than Clark or I ever did. And I know that’s what Clark hoped, too. <br /><br />DI: That’s all well and good, but don’t you hate freedom? <br /><br />B: I once punched Captain America in a comic book- but I don’t think that counts. I’ll cop to the fact that Bachmann and I don’t see eye to eye on the purpose of government. But I also believe that in a democracy you actually have to govern, that means voting for budgets on time, it means funding agencies even if you may not like the way they work; it means doing the business of the American people like a professional.<br /><br />As to the budget, itself, I think it’s silly to attempt to balance the budget immediately. Aside from the fact that taking billions if not trillions out of the economy in the midst of the recession is a bad idea, I think it’s unfair and irresponsible to the people who have come to rely on certain government programs to suddenly do without. You’ll note, this is the <em>exact same</em> logic Bachmann wants to use for Social Security and Medicare, and at least as a methodology I can agree with it. Weaning people off of government funding is better than suddenly slamming the door shut and saying no more. You’d be dealing a huge blow to the economy, and just as important, really hurting a lot of people. <br /><br />I agree, that over the long term we have to make up the difference between revenue and spending; reasonable people can disagree on the balance, there- and I’m hopeful that more reasonable people are elected in 2012 to make it a more adult conversation. <br /><br />DI: So you don’t like the current state of the negotiations?<br /><br />B: It’s difficult to know what the current state is, actually. But last I heard, Obama was pushing for $3.5 trillion in spending cuts, against about $1.2 trillion in additional revenue. To people who look at the debt the last couple of years, that might sound great. But to anyone paying attention to the long-term it’s a kick in the crotch. <br /><br />$3.5 trillion is slightly less than what the Bush tax cuts cost every decade. Raising revenues by $1.2 trillion might sound like a good idea, but $.8 trillion of that comes off letting the Bush cuts for those earning more than $250,000 expire. Why that’s a crappy deal is it’s basically asking for the least investment in the country from the wealthy, and asking for the most pain endurable by everyone else. If you like the idea of the elderly staying above the poverty line, if you like the idea that the US might remain a well-educated country, these are not the kinds of cuts you want to see. <br /><br />Which isn’t to say that this isn’t necessary. It’s <em>possible</em> that we really are spending so far beyond our means that we have to cut $350 billion out of our budget every year- which is around 10%. But I don’t like that we’re being forced to cut our budget by that much this quickly; the appropriate time to examine your finances is not while your house is on fire.<br /><br />And I think if we’re going to ‘tighten our belts’ that it shouldn’t come on the backs of the poor and the vulnerable. There are a trillion dollars being basically wasted every decade through these so-called ‘tax expenditures.’ You can argue whether or not this is spending or it’s a tax cut, but that’s semantic; at the end of the day, it’s the government picking winners and losers. Giving some people preferential treatment through the tax code is, most of the time, a bad idea. It distorts markets, which can make it harder for certain businesses to compete. <br /><br />After that trillion, I would say rescinding <em>all</em> the Bush tax cuts makes sense. If we really, <em>really</em> can’t afford our government, we should start things back at zero- because before those cuts was when we had a balanced budget. And from there we can have the sober discussion of how high we think taxes should be, versus the things we think the government should do. <br /><br />And maybe the conclusion would eventually be, well, we want to pay fewer taxes even if that means a smaller military and smaller Social Security checks and maybe some rationing in Medicare. I don’t claim to speak for the American people on this. But I think we should start the conversation there- after we’ve put out most of the fires. <br /><br />And personally, since I imagine you’re soliciting my economic expertise as a kind of poor man’s Warren Buffet, I’d suggest backloading the cuts. Because whenever you cut spending it’s going to take money out of the economy. If you aim it properly, some of it will be replaced by private investment- but that’s a matter of timing it so that it happens <em>after</em> the recovery actually gets stronger- no more of this see-sawing. <br /><br />DI: Give yourself a little credit. You’re almost exactly like Warren Buffet, only you have a more interesting personal life- by which I mean your fetish gear fashion sense. And also your sex life. <br /><br />B: Thanks for that.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-43515216577876077132011-07-19T01:04:00.000-07:002011-07-19T01:05:34.320-07:00Making Amend(ment)sDI: We had an animated conversation the other day, and I’d like to talk about something similar: Republicans in the House have been saying they want a balanced budget amendment; in fact, they’re refusing to vote on the debt ceiling without it being tied to a balanced budget amendment. And you told me that was the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard.<br /><br />B: The problem with a balanced budget amendment is it’s pointless. Because even if a congress were to violate the amendment- even if Congress decided to go completely off the deep end and stop collecting any taxes while also double all spending, an amendment would be powerless to stop them.<br /><br />DI: And why’s that?<br /><br />B: There are a couple of issues tied up here, both having to do with enforcement. The first hurdle has to do with the mechanism of enforcement. How do you write an amendment that guarantees that the budget be balanced? The most creative method I heard came from Warren Buffet, who suggested the amendment state that sitting congresspersons could not be reelected if there was a deficit. But even the budget hawks probably wouldn’t go for that- since even the most ambitious budgets won’t achieve balance for several years. And realistically, putting a revolving door into the Congress would likely increase spending, rather than decrease it. I mean, if you’re not going to have to be accountable to the voters at all, why not? Even assuming you could come up with language for an amendment that would be able to get through the constitutional process- which takes years and comes with no guarantees- you come up against the second issue. <br /><br />When there’s a contention, rather than if, it’s ultimately the courts who are responsible for enforcing the Constitution. But the courts have refused to hear the case in similar circumstances. The courts have argued that plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue, even a case where congresspeople argued that their ability to carry out their constitutional prerogatives was being thwarted. <br /><br />DI: And for those of us who have thusfar avoided being the targets of lawsuits, what’s standing?<br /><br />B: Standing basically says that you personally were hurt by an action. For better or worse, the current court tends to favor executive power. So these suits get thrown out for lack of standing if there are any shades of gray.<br /><br />But even if you assume for a moment that a court- any court- decides to set aside the concept of standing. Maybe they’re mad as hell, too, and want to see if anything can be done about it. They hear the case, and decide that indeed Congress is exceeding it’s authority by spending more than they’re bringing in. What then?<br /><br />The court can’t decide on its own which spending is improper- they don’t have a line item veto: there’s nothing approaching that in the court’s authority. The court would then be left with the choice of either declaring the entire government unconstitutional, or admitting that it couldn’t do anything to change it. And even if a judiciary so vastly overstepped that it declared the US government illegitimate, what then? Does the Congress just turn in their parking passes and go home. Or do they flip the Court the bird and keep on trucking?<br /><br />I want to be clear, here: I want a balanced budget, and sooner is certainly better than later. But this slash it now now NOW attitude pervading the conservatives in Congress- especially when coupled with intransigence on taxes- is purely political. It has nothing, zero, to do with the long term health and viability of the government or the country- and even less to do with the well-being of its citizens. Republicans are using the current budget issues as an excuse to try and dismantle the social programs they have never particularly liked.<br /><br />Ironically, the largest drivers of our current financial woes, were enacted by Republicans who had gotten rid of pay as you go rules and scoffed at the idea that they should have to pay for their agenda. Congressional Republicans are playing chicken with the global economy, and what they claim to be holding out for is this amendment. But it’s pointless and toothless.<br /><br />DI: I read in the Washington Post that Michelle Bachman has said that she will not vote for a debt ceiling increase. The reporter said that placed her to the right of some other conservatives.<br /><br />B: But it’s not ideologic, it’s just idiotic.<br /><br />This is unprecedented. Never in the history of this country have we defaulted. That’s why we have good credit. Seriously, this would be like the head of a household declaring to his family, “We’re just not going to pay the credit card bill.” Years of good credit history would disappear, and borrowing rates, for the car, the kid’s student loans, the home, would all go way up. And even delaying payments a month would make the interest rates on any existing debt skyrocket. There is absolutely no good reason to do this. It borders upon insane.<br /><br />DI: But don’t we have to cut spending?<br /><br />B: Sure. Absolutely. And there are ways to do that that don’t put the financial future of the country at risk, that don’t put the global economy at risk. The sane thing to do would be to pass a clean debt ceiling hike today. The ambitious but still not crazy thing might be to push for, not some empty amendment, but a binding budget agreement that says that budgets over the next ten years we need to cut 10% of the deficit annually. As an enforcement mechanism, the law could automatically cut budgets across the board at the decade mark to make up for whatever deficit was left. Add in that repeal of this law takes a three quarters majority of both houses and you have a balanced budget law that’s even stronger than pay as you go rules the Democrats used to operate under.<br /><br />DI: But isn’t that undemocratic?<br /><br />B: So’s a balanced budget amendment. But just maybe to be responsible, we can’t be all that democratic. To make it fair, though, you could make sure the law can’t take effect without three quarters of both houses voting for it- so it takes an equal amount to pass it as repeal it.<br /><br />Alternatively, you could reinstate the old pay as you go rules, with the change that you don’t just have to pay for changes, but pay a ‘surcharge’ on changes, of say 10%, so every time Congress made adjustments to programs they would have to find savings or revenue to cover the difference, plus ten percent. There are lots of ways to get us back in the black- and the vast majority are simple math problems that don’t require destroying Medicare or gutting Social Security or even telling the poor that we’re okay with them dying.<br /><br />But the amendment, and especially tying an amendment or budget cuts, to the debt ceiling? That’s playing with fire. And it’s all of us that are going to get burned.<br /><br />DI: You feel better? Farther away from a coronary than when we started? I hope so, because to make amends to our readership for your crazy polemics- I’m kidding; please don’t hit me- you know what time it is?<br /><br />B: Where were we?<br /><br />DI: Diana had just been to Cale Pharmaceuticals with the Gotham Police to investigate Danielle’s story, and came up empty.<br /><br />B: Okay, we’re back in the embassy, then.<br /><br />Wellys:<br />Diana, I swear to you, it should have been there.<br /><br />Diana:<br />Start at the beginning.<br /><br />Wellys:<br />I thought we'd hit a dead end in our research. We'd missed all of our milestones. When Veronica called me in, I thought it was because we were going to have all of our funding pulled. But she said she'd found a benefactor, one that was going to keep funding our project, and had some... ideas about getting over our hurdles.<br /><br />DI:<br /><br />Diana:<br />What hurdles?<br /><br />B:<br />Wellys:<br />The human body doesn’t like tech. Whether it’s an artificial hip or nanites, we tend to react pretty violently to a foreign object implanted in the body- hence anti-rejection meds. The project, we were calling it “Silver Swan” to keep it secret, involved nanotec cosmetics. The idea was to stop putting makeup on the body, and start making the body itself beautiful. But all of our subjects were getting sick. Several of them developed tumors. It was a mess. This new investor brought in a truckload of cash and some kind of know-how. Within 72 hours all of our problems were gone. At first I was thrilled- I’ve been working on this project for six years, practically my entire professional life- and finally it was getting somewhere. Then I saw what they used it for. And it just, I knew they were taking shortcuts. Because that kind of a breakthrough, from where we were, it wasn’t possible.<br /><br />Diana:<br />That's because it wasn’t science. It was magic. And I know someone with plenty of it.<br /><br />DI: I think I know where you’re going with this. CUT TO poolside, a beautiful woman in a bikini, with long purple hair, is lounging beside the pool.<br /><br />B: She sets her drink down on a tray held up by a male waiter who is dressed like a Chippendales dancer. He takes the drink away, and as he’s going, she wiggles her fingers, and his trunks become loose and nearly fall off before he catches them, giving us the hint of an untanned but firm butt.<br /><br />DI: Thanks for that.<br /><br />B: Somebody needs to help keep the ratio of T & A to man candy equitable. Besides, Circe really is man crazy. Circe lays back down, relaxing. A shadow looms over her, and she assumes for the moment it’s the waiter as she sits up to speak.<br /><br />Circe<br />A little more salt on the rim this time if you- oh. It’s you.<br /><br />DI:<br /><br />Diana<br />Cale Pharmaceuticals. I have reason to believe that someone’s been trying to magic up some miracle make up.<br /><br />B:<br /><br />Circe<br />And you’re tired of trying to conceal those crow’s feet? Wish I could help you, Diana, really I do. But have you forgotten what happened last week?<br /><br />Circe pushes down her sunglasses to reveal a black eye.<br /><br />DI:<br /><br />Diana<br />Oh, right. I punch a lot of people. Sometimes I forget who.<br /><br />B:<br /><br />Circe<br />I haven't had time, or frankly the perspicacity, to engage in another endeavor. Give me another week, maybe two, at poolside and perhaps I'll have something fun we can get up to, but today, I'm only lounging at the pool. But did you try Ares? Of course not. You came here hoping it was me. Because you don't enjoy the prospect of locking horns with the god of war- though as a lady I'd be happy to lock his horn any day of the week.<br /><br />DI:<br /><br />Danielle<br />Lady might be a bit of a stretch.<br /><br />B:<br /><br />Circe<br />Meow. Kitten’s got claws.<br /><br />Diana<br />But if you're lounging around here, who's tending to your flock?<br /><br />Circe<br />We witches call it a coven. And I forget the young man's name, but he looks excellent without a shirt on.<br /><br />DI:<br /><br />Diana<br />At least you remember the important details.<br /><br />B:<br />Circe<br />I note you're chirlishly disapproving tone, Diana. But if L. Ron Hubbard can have his own clan of religious zealots, why can't I? Speaking of clans of zealots, how are the Amazons?<br /><br />Diana<br />That's right. I hit you because you were trying to turn every Amazon on Themiscyra into a pig.<br /><br />Circe<br />I've been in the market for another island- and I am a sucker for the classics.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8521290060315052147.post-32208678941423284942011-07-07T06:16:00.000-07:002011-07-07T06:37:56.277-07:00Performance EnhancementDI: Roger Clemens is in the news at the moment because he lied to Congress- which is a pretty hilarious thing in and of itself, given that politicians are probably the most consistently untruthful people on the planet.<br /><br />B: It’s true that politicians lie. But I think it’s fair to ask why. And fundamentally, I think it comes down to the fact that the electorate doesn’t like consistency.<br /><br />Look at the current Republican Presidential nominees. They’re vilified for taking what, at the time, weren’t even controversial stances on issues: Romney on health care, Pawlenty on cap and trade, even Gingrich on the Ryan budget. So they’ve largely denied ever taking those stances, or at least walked them back.<br /><br />Note that I’m not condoning the behavior. I think if those three men, longtime party members with broad appeal and respect, stood up and together said that the politics of immolation can’t continue- that they took stands they believed in, and wouldn’t retreat just because something they liked was polling well- it would go a long way to changing things.<br /><br />DI: But isn’t that a fairly undemocratic idea?<br /><br />B: Let me explain. I have some socialist leanings- anyone who likes Medicare or Social Security does, frankly- but I’d go a step beyond. I’d like to see a higher minimum wage. I’d even support a maximum wage. If I were given the keys to the kingdom tomorrow, and told to remake the US to make it the best country I could, I’d push for more social democratic programs, similar to what exists in Europe, socialized medicine, for a start. But on the other hand, if I were running for or elected President, that’s a different story. Elected leaders aren’t chosen to represent their own ideas and interests, they’re there to represent the people. On a lot of issues I’ve been disappointed with Obama, but in that regard, I really feel he’s tried to be President not just of blue states but of all the states. You might not know it from all of the Nazi/Socialist rhetoric, but he’s a fairly centrist President; I’d say he’s not even as far left as Bush was right.<br /><br />DI: Okay, but what I wanted to talk about was why Clemens is in the hot seat. He lied. Specifically about using performance enhancers. Or at least that’s the contention. And I know we touched on it briefly, I think around last Halloween- so I’ll try and keep us from rehashing. But I want to know, as a former performance enhancer, how you feel about performance enhancement.<br /><br />B: Why do I shudder to think what you’ll name this blog entry? But it’s a tough question, and there’s a lot of nuance to it, so I’ll start at the general and we’ll get more specific from there. I think we’re living on the cusp of a new evolution in humanity. Some heroes are aliens, some have magical assistance, but some- I’d say most- of them truly represent what we’re doing or will do to ourselves as a species. Cyborg is a pretty good example. He’s part man and part machine. Call it post, trans, or metahumanity, but we’re changing, evolving; I doubt we’ll recognize the human race in 50 years.<br /><br />And there are all sorts of mechanisms. Cybernetics, gene therapy, chemicals, nanotech. I don’t know how we’re going to get there, but I think it’s clear from what’s happened in the hero community that we’re changing. I think the people who put on spandex and fight crime- or commit it- are just the precursor.<br /><br />Which is why I see what’s happening in our sports as a choice. If we decide, as seems to be the overriding thought of the day, that sports ought to be a throwback to what humans can do without technological aid, then so be it. So long as those are the rules. I think the reason there’s been so much trouble is that the rules were technically that performance enhancement was wrong, but in reality everyone was looking the other way. So honest athletes were put at a severe, perhaps even crippling disadvantage. Which is wrong.<br /><br />Now what the capitalist in me imagines for sports is that we’ll eventually end up with two of everything- a natural and an enhanced version. People or athletes who for whatever reason want to see the pinnacle of human achievement without certain kinds of technology, we have the Olympics and equivalent associations. For those who want to see a man kick a football as far as he can by whatever means, you’d have sports leagues that allow enhancements.<br /><br />And whichever people pay to watch on TV, whichever people buy merchandising for, that’s what will determine which brands survive. And maybe it’ll be a case, like the NCAA and the NBA, where there’s an audience for both that overlaps. I don’t know.<br /><br />DI: That was a fairly obvious caveat where you mentioned ‘certain kinds’ of technology being prohibited in the Olympics.<br /><br />B: Well, there’s a reason why Olympic world records today tend to outstrip records from fifty years ago: the world changed. Nutrition, and sports medicine, equipment and training have all come a long way since then. And it’s only going to get more complicated. Taking your vitamins is okay; but what about eating a genetically modified fruit that secretes small amounts of human growth hormone? That’s probably a silly, and obvious, example, but there’s a lot of nuance that’s going to continue to complicate things. But what about a macrobiotic diet that includes bacteria designed to secrete small amounts of pain killers?<br /><br />DI: Okay, so continuing to regulate the line between natural and not is complicated. But won’t somebody think of the children? Isn’t telling our youth that it’s all right to trade their health and longevity for success damaging?<br /><br />B: That’s what sports already do. Even athletes that don’t take performance enhancing drugs are putting their bodies through tough exercise regimens with constant stress on them, and frequent injuries. Even sidestepping the amount of people football grinds up and spits out, athletes tend to trade time off their life for their sport. As someone who kept himself in peak physical condition for nearly thirty years, and engaged in some of the most demanding and damaging activities you can find, I can tell you, it took its toll. I took Venom less than a year, so the side effects I’ve suffered were fairly minimal from that. But there are days I have so much pain I can’t get out of bed- at least not until I get some pain relief. And that’s the reality of modern athletics.<br /><br />DI: Okay, but do you regret using drugs- as someone who is frequently held up as a role model for children?<br /><br />B: But I’m not a role model for children. I wasn’t plastering myself on the sides of cereal boxes or putting toys into happy meals, I was trying to help people. Even the merchandising, that was all done for charity- and I think even most children can understand the difference between the cartoon caricature and me doing what I’ve done.<br /><br />But on the record, I regret my use of Venom. But that’s because it made me irrationally aggressive, even violent- not because it was wrong on the morals. If I had to trade time off my life to save that little girl, to just save that one little girl I failed to save- I’d do it. In a heartbeat. And I wouldn’t feel bad about it.<br /><br />DI: So the take-away from you is that there should be a decision at the organizational level to use performance enhancers or not in sports, right?<br /><br />B: Generally, yeah.<br /><br />DI: And do you know of any heroes currently operating who take performance enhancing substances?<br /><br />B: No- even among people who don’t believe there’s anything wrong with enhancers, there’s still a stigma about it. But I’d be surprised if I was the only one who ever did.<br /><br />DI: And given what we’ve been discussing, do you think that’s wrong?<br /><br />B: I think if it’s an issue of vanity, either to look bigger, or to perform better, purely as a function of ego, that’s wrong, or at least counterproductive. I think steroids and other current enhancers often have nasty side effects, and that having compulsory, de facto steroid use in sports is wrong, too. It’s a choice, not just for the commissioners, but for each player to make, too. There may come a day when players are forced to choose between enhancement and not playing the game anymore- which is unfortunate, but could be the reality.<br /><br />But as for our League, I’d say that I think anyone who puts their own health at risk to try and help people- whether it’s through enhancement or just walking into a burning building- that’s the definition of a hero. And I’m proud that I know so many people who fit that description.IDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07275323791127220985noreply@blogger.com0