DI: Did you ever seriously consider going after bin Laden?
Bruce: Honestly? New York is in my backyard. I was surprised, frankly, when they got hit and we didn’t back in ’01. Like every other American, I wanted to find him. Unlike most Americans, there was a fantasy in my head that I actually could.
DI: Well, you are the goddamned Batman. I mean, if you don’t have the skills and resources to track down a man like that, who would?
B: But I don’t. I’ve had some training in manhunting. And I had enough wealth. But there are other kinds of resources. The annual intelligence budget for the US is about $50 billion dollars. But beyond their superior monetary resources, which admittedly are spread in a lot of directions, not all thrown at bin Laden, they have thousands upon thousands of people working every day to make contacts, and build networks. Now I’m very proud of the people I’ve worked with in Gotham, and a lot of them have placed themselves in far greater peril than I ever did, to stop criminals. But it took me a third of a lifetime to build that coalition. Starting from scratch to hunt bin Laden across Asia would have taken more lifetimes than I had left, and I knew that- at least after a few moments of contemplation.
DI: Fair enough. But as someone who’s spoken out against the death penalty, and even refuses to use lethal apprehension tech, how do you feel about his death, particularly the way it’s being celebrated in the US and other places? Do you think it has any parallels to the public response in the Middle East to the 9/11 attacks?
B: I think, for the most part, the reaction has been more restrained. For a decade, bin Laden has been the devil. Now the devil’s dead. It’s asking too much for us not to have a visceral reaction to that. But the difference is, people are happy to not have that sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, they aren’t happy that a human being is dead- they’re relieved, that a long, tragic nightmare for our country is over. Which is an admittedly naïve thought, but also an infectious one. I’ve felt it. I slept a little better the night I heard the news- I won’t lie.
As to the lethality of his apprehension, my methods were a choice, a personal one. Every time I went out, I was choosing to trade optimal stopping power for minimal lethality, and I was risking my life for a principle. It wouldn’t be right to ask, let alone expect, others in the same position to choose the same.
And while we don’t know at this point whether he died according to the rules of engagement, I’m more than inclined to give the soldiers on the ground the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of what television and films tell us, war is hell. When shots are being fired, when your life and the lives of people you care about protecting hang in the balance, you don’t always react the same way you would discussing it over stale coffee. Barring evidence that he was executed after being taken into custody, I’m willing to assume the soldiers acted in good faith.
DI: I’ll admit it, I’ve been kind of surprised at how it played out. I expected, especially after news that he’d been buried at sea, that al Qaeda would claim he hadn’t died, that we were full of crap. A denial would have stolen a feather out of Obama’s cap, and I think given ammunition to conservatives- especially those who see nefarious motives behind any government action.
B: I think for a while al Qaeda benefited from posturing against conservatives. You remember in ’04, when conservatives said that the terrorists wanted liberals to win because they would be soft on terrorism- similar to the usual smear about crime. Well I think in truth it was the opposite: terrorists liked have conservatives as a foil.
DI: You’re saying that the terrorists wanted conservatives to win? That’s… awfully inflammatory.
B: I’m not saying they agreed with their politics- I’m saying I think it helped them achieve their goals. Conservatives are linked with the religious right, and I think al Qaeda benefited from a philosophic war with Christianity. It let make it not about a petty political squabble, but link it back to the Crusades, and a Muslim’s holy duty- I can’t think of a more effective recruitment campaign, frankly. What they didn’t benefit from was an international pissing contest with a Christian cowboy. I think their not denying bin Laden’s death is in part a reversal of this policy, and an acknowledgement that they overplayed their hand.
DI: So you think Bush dealt with the terrorists well?
B: I’m not saying that. I’m saying that his response hurt them. The question that’s important is whether or not the damage we did to them was worth what it’s cost us, in terms of blood, in terms of treasure, in terms of prestige. And no, I obviously don’t think that the ends justify his particular means.
DI: So you don’t think we should ever have been in Afghanistan?
B: No- I’m saying we should have gone into Afghanistan, smashed the Taliban, salted the earth so it could never grow again, decimated any al Qaeda there, and seized bin Laden at Tora Bora. I’m saying the years of dithering, and the distraction of Iraq, were the issue, not the initial decision to join that conflict.
DI: Damn. I was hoping I’d caught you in a contradiction. We journalists live for the kind of stuff. But I was reading a BBC article about this, because it’s always fascinating to me to hear a voice outside of our influence sphere, about the Pakistani reactions to news of bin Laden’s death. And one Taliban fighter said near the end of the article, "Let them rejoice now - soon they will feel fear again."
B: It makes me think- terrorists are a superstitious and cowardly lot. If I were twenty years younger- and healthy- well, that’s wishful thinking, I suppose. But their own religion speaks to justice, and justice will find them. Sooner or later. And bin Laden’s demise is just further proof of that.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
The American Way
The American Way
DI: Superman just renounced his citizenship, allegedly because he’s tired of being conflated with the “American Way.”
Batman/Bruce: Huh?
DI: In the comics, obviously; would be a trick to do posthumously. What are your thoughts?
B: Honestly? It’s a stunt. Written by people who don’t understand the man. Just like you, asking me to comment on it, is a stunt. Shameless self-promotion, that’s the real American way.
DI: You speak of Clark in, and people familiar with you would know you don’t glow often, but glowing terms. Did you love him?
B: As a brother. As a friend. As family.
DI: But as a lover? Since you’ve come out, there’s all this metaness to your relationship.
B: He wasn’t my type.
DI: Because he was straight.
B: That certainly didn’t hurt. But we met when I identified more as a straight man. And our friendship was never anything more than platonic. I admired him; he was one of the best people I’ve ever known. Another’s Nelson Mandela, though nobody ever assumes I wanted to have sex with him.
DI: Do you? Or did you ever?
B: No, and no. Though I guess I can at least appreciate your consistency.
DI: There have been rumblings that since Superman was an alien and quasi-illegal anyway, him renouncing his citizenship is no big thing. But if you renounce your citizenship, then we have a problem. So how close are you to renouncing your citizenship?
B: Look, if I didn’t renounce my citizenship when Lex Luthor was President, I can’t imagine what could make me do it now. I’m a man of means. Whatever may happen in this country, I can weather the storm. That’s not true of everyone in the community. There are some older, retired heroes who actually do depend on Social Security and Medicare to get by.
DI: I feel like you’re shifting topics on me.
B: We haven’t talked in a while. I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to comment on the Ryan budget.
DI: The one he’s been booed over by seniors in his own district?
B: The same. It’s a bad budget. The only concrete numbers speak to two things: cutting entitlements and cutting taxes on the wealthy. It’s almost a straight-up exchange, Medicare for tax cuts. And I have to tell you, I don’t need another tax cut. I didn’t need the Bush tax cut. But the members of the Justice Society, they need their benefits.
DI: I remember hearing about them; loosely affiliated with the AARP, and also the League.
B: Yeah. We pay our members a pension. And we offered to pay the Society one, too, but they declined. They served their country, they said, and they trusted their country to take care of them- and if it couldn’t, then they would serve it again, as an example.
DI: So they’ve taken a vow of poverty, of a sort?
B: Kind of. They hope to forestall that, obviously. Elderly poverty is a real and consequential issue; it’s an issue at current rates of Medicare and Social Security. But cutting the programs, especially cutting them so very deeply as Representative Ryan has proposed, would cause more damage. And the reason, and I think quite intelligently, that if the image of the first Flash or Green Lantern, Atom, or even Mr. Terrific, underweight because they can’t afford enough food, would terrify even the most austere politician.
DI: Mr. Terrific? Oh God, the guy who wore the jacket with “Fair Play” stitched on the front in giant letters. Was our country really ever that young?
B: I don’t think anybody but Terrific was ever that naïve.
And I’ve said it before, and I’m happy to repeat myself. Cutting the government now hurts spending, which hurts employment. Low employment hurts the economy not just of the moment, but of tomorrow, and hurts revenues of tomorrow, which increases the debt. Austerity right now is cutting off our nose to spite our face. The long-term budget must be balanced. But slamming on the breaks right now could do as much damage as if government debt hit a brick wall- something which most economists think is still a ways off.
DI: What about Standard and Poors?
B: I’m not sure they’re even relevant. Because look at bond traders, the people who would be directly effected by problems with the government repaying its debt. They didn’t care about the S & P downgrade. The people with the most to lose or gain, with more skin in the game than anyone, did not care.
DI: So you’re saying don’t panic?
B: I’m saying now is the time for us to make smart decisions for the future. At some point in the future, if we don’t act responsibly, the bond market will start to care. And then the decision will be out of our hands.
DI: Superman just renounced his citizenship, allegedly because he’s tired of being conflated with the “American Way.”
Batman/Bruce: Huh?
DI: In the comics, obviously; would be a trick to do posthumously. What are your thoughts?
B: Honestly? It’s a stunt. Written by people who don’t understand the man. Just like you, asking me to comment on it, is a stunt. Shameless self-promotion, that’s the real American way.
DI: You speak of Clark in, and people familiar with you would know you don’t glow often, but glowing terms. Did you love him?
B: As a brother. As a friend. As family.
DI: But as a lover? Since you’ve come out, there’s all this metaness to your relationship.
B: He wasn’t my type.
DI: Because he was straight.
B: That certainly didn’t hurt. But we met when I identified more as a straight man. And our friendship was never anything more than platonic. I admired him; he was one of the best people I’ve ever known. Another’s Nelson Mandela, though nobody ever assumes I wanted to have sex with him.
DI: Do you? Or did you ever?
B: No, and no. Though I guess I can at least appreciate your consistency.
DI: There have been rumblings that since Superman was an alien and quasi-illegal anyway, him renouncing his citizenship is no big thing. But if you renounce your citizenship, then we have a problem. So how close are you to renouncing your citizenship?
B: Look, if I didn’t renounce my citizenship when Lex Luthor was President, I can’t imagine what could make me do it now. I’m a man of means. Whatever may happen in this country, I can weather the storm. That’s not true of everyone in the community. There are some older, retired heroes who actually do depend on Social Security and Medicare to get by.
DI: I feel like you’re shifting topics on me.
B: We haven’t talked in a while. I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to comment on the Ryan budget.
DI: The one he’s been booed over by seniors in his own district?
B: The same. It’s a bad budget. The only concrete numbers speak to two things: cutting entitlements and cutting taxes on the wealthy. It’s almost a straight-up exchange, Medicare for tax cuts. And I have to tell you, I don’t need another tax cut. I didn’t need the Bush tax cut. But the members of the Justice Society, they need their benefits.
DI: I remember hearing about them; loosely affiliated with the AARP, and also the League.
B: Yeah. We pay our members a pension. And we offered to pay the Society one, too, but they declined. They served their country, they said, and they trusted their country to take care of them- and if it couldn’t, then they would serve it again, as an example.
DI: So they’ve taken a vow of poverty, of a sort?
B: Kind of. They hope to forestall that, obviously. Elderly poverty is a real and consequential issue; it’s an issue at current rates of Medicare and Social Security. But cutting the programs, especially cutting them so very deeply as Representative Ryan has proposed, would cause more damage. And the reason, and I think quite intelligently, that if the image of the first Flash or Green Lantern, Atom, or even Mr. Terrific, underweight because they can’t afford enough food, would terrify even the most austere politician.
DI: Mr. Terrific? Oh God, the guy who wore the jacket with “Fair Play” stitched on the front in giant letters. Was our country really ever that young?
B: I don’t think anybody but Terrific was ever that naïve.
And I’ve said it before, and I’m happy to repeat myself. Cutting the government now hurts spending, which hurts employment. Low employment hurts the economy not just of the moment, but of tomorrow, and hurts revenues of tomorrow, which increases the debt. Austerity right now is cutting off our nose to spite our face. The long-term budget must be balanced. But slamming on the breaks right now could do as much damage as if government debt hit a brick wall- something which most economists think is still a ways off.
DI: What about Standard and Poors?
B: I’m not sure they’re even relevant. Because look at bond traders, the people who would be directly effected by problems with the government repaying its debt. They didn’t care about the S & P downgrade. The people with the most to lose or gain, with more skin in the game than anyone, did not care.
DI: So you’re saying don’t panic?
B: I’m saying now is the time for us to make smart decisions for the future. At some point in the future, if we don’t act responsibly, the bond market will start to care. And then the decision will be out of our hands.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
War
ID: Unilateral interventionist. It’s a word that’s come up a lot when people talk about Libya, and specifically interceding against Muamar Gaddafi’s air strikes. And I think you, being both a man who unilaterally intervened to fight crime in Gotham, and who helped found the multilateral Justice League, I think you’re bound to have some interesting insight into it.
B: I don’t know if that’s true, actually. I think my decisions reflect mostly my personal evolution. The first decision, to stop crime in Gotham when no one seemed to be willing or able to, was made fairly early on in my life. I didn’t think multilateralism was even possible- which was something that I learned was wrong. Jim Gordon, my Robins, Batgirls and women, Nightwing, Huntress- I could probably continue for an hour. But people who wanted to make a better world found me, and we did it together.
So I think the League formed out of that knowledge, in part. And also the knowledge that I couldn’t do everything on my own. I’m smart, resourceful, and wealthy, but any time I’ve needed to stop Darkseid I don’t hesitate to call someone who hits harder. And I think when you’re looking at what I usually call “real world” problems, most of those can’t be handled by one guy, no matter how great he may be. Or she, for that matter.
ID: So you’re definitely an interventionist. And it sounds like you’re a multilateralist at heart, but you’re willing to go it alone if need be.
B: Yeah.
ID: So what about Libya? For a while there it was looking like Gaddafi was going to roll through Benghazi and raze the place. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you’re President. What do you do?
B: I call Hal Jordan- himself a pilot- tell him the situation, and to break any Libyan airplane that takes off in half. I’m sure he’d set the pilots down gently on the ground afterwards. But how many planes do you have to lose before you recognize that a Green Lantern trumps an aging fighter jet- an aging air force, even?
ID: Okay. That was cheating. Let’s say you’re Barrack Obama, not Bruce Wayne, still President. And the Justice League, down to Booster Gold, isn’t taking your phone calls. Maybe they’re on Apokolips, maybe they just don’t agree with your Libya policy. What do you do?
B: Day one I start talking to the UN Security Council. I push hard for sanctions, which we got pretty quickly, and keep pushing for intervention. At the same time I’d be talking to the African Union and the Arab League, trying to get a peacekeeping force and a demilitarized zone set up so that relatively local peacekeepers can be on the ground, to sidestep accusations of conquest and also because it’s cheaper and local peacekeepers are likely to be more culturally aware.
ID: And all of that fails. The Arab League tells you to go fly a kite. The AU is still busy with Sudan, or at least that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Britain and France are sympathetic, but won’t act without a Security Council resolution, which is blocked by the Chinese and Russia, who want to keep up their lucrative trade with Libya.
B: I got to war with Libya. It starts as an air war, with a no fly zone and a DMZ beneath it. But I couple it with an ultimatum, that Gaddafi end proactive attacks on civilians. When he defies it, which I assume is more a matter of when, I cripple his military infrastructure, bases, manufacturing. And every day, I send a missile for him, wherever our best intel says he’s likely to be.
ID: You’re still embroiled in a couple of wars. You can drop those conflicts, if that makes your decision different, maybe easier.
B: Actually, I believe we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan because, despite what were poor decisions and poor tactical planning respectively, those countries need to be stabilized before we leave- because their current relative instability is something we caused. It’s the right thing to do.
As far as Libya, I can’t help but color it with my own perspective. Of course, the research of Felitti and Anda says that childhood trauma can have deep, even determinative, effects- so that’s not atypical. But to frame it in terms of my experience, if there had been someone out in Gotham, fighting back against crime, the night my parents were shot… what if they wouldn’t have died? Gaddafi wanted to turn Benghazi, maybe his whole country, into Crime Alley. And you’re telling me, before hand, that I have a chance to shut him down. I take it. In a heartbeat.
ID: Is that reckless?
B: The decision itself, given that I’m not privy to what the President is, given that I don’t know the situation beyond what’s in the papers, that’s it’s based around my own emotional history, yes. Will it resolve poorly? I don’t know. I’d like to think that if we save people, or really in this instance when, that it’s worth it. I’ve dedicated my life to interceding in dangerous events to help people. For me it’s an easy call to make- but I’ve never really been responsible for putting more than a few hundred people at risk- and they were all free to go if they wanted. So it’s not perfectly analogous.
ID: I thought about making a devil’s advocate argument, that you wouldn’t be on the frontline, but it’s moot, because you have. I’m a lounge chair general, so I admit I don’t know what it’s like to risk my life for other people in that way. But you do. Why do you think that is?
B: I think we’ve mentioned it before, so forgive me anyone if we’re rehashing, but part of it, at least initially, I think came from a faltering self-worth. I failed to save my parents, so I was worthless- I was worth less so it didn’t matter as much when I put myself at risk to save other people. And at the same time, every time I did save somebody, I felt like I was worth a little more, but my self esteem became so intertwined with the idea of self-sacrifice, that I couldn’t not keep it up. It was who I became. And if I wanted to stay worthwhile, rather than revert to the worthless boy who let his parents die, it was who I had to be.
Put another way, I’ve interceded thousands of times to help people. Sometimes I was ineffectual, and a few times I was even hurt in the process of being ineffectual. Were those specific times worthwhile? No. But on balance, taking into account my failures and what they cost, it was better for me to be out in the world than in my mansion wringing my hands.
ID: But you have a much better track record than our government has at navigating military conflicts.
B: Then that’s an argument that our government needs to be smarter and better, not that we should sit by while madmen kill innocent people. That’s the call I would make. And it’s the call our President has made. I truly hope it’s the right call to have made. None of us want another Iraq; but none of us want the knowledge that we let another Rwanda happen, either. Sometimes, all you can do in a situation is what you think is right, and hope that it turns out for the best.
ID: I do.
B: I don’t know if that’s true, actually. I think my decisions reflect mostly my personal evolution. The first decision, to stop crime in Gotham when no one seemed to be willing or able to, was made fairly early on in my life. I didn’t think multilateralism was even possible- which was something that I learned was wrong. Jim Gordon, my Robins, Batgirls and women, Nightwing, Huntress- I could probably continue for an hour. But people who wanted to make a better world found me, and we did it together.
So I think the League formed out of that knowledge, in part. And also the knowledge that I couldn’t do everything on my own. I’m smart, resourceful, and wealthy, but any time I’ve needed to stop Darkseid I don’t hesitate to call someone who hits harder. And I think when you’re looking at what I usually call “real world” problems, most of those can’t be handled by one guy, no matter how great he may be. Or she, for that matter.
ID: So you’re definitely an interventionist. And it sounds like you’re a multilateralist at heart, but you’re willing to go it alone if need be.
B: Yeah.
ID: So what about Libya? For a while there it was looking like Gaddafi was going to roll through Benghazi and raze the place. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that you’re President. What do you do?
B: I call Hal Jordan- himself a pilot- tell him the situation, and to break any Libyan airplane that takes off in half. I’m sure he’d set the pilots down gently on the ground afterwards. But how many planes do you have to lose before you recognize that a Green Lantern trumps an aging fighter jet- an aging air force, even?
ID: Okay. That was cheating. Let’s say you’re Barrack Obama, not Bruce Wayne, still President. And the Justice League, down to Booster Gold, isn’t taking your phone calls. Maybe they’re on Apokolips, maybe they just don’t agree with your Libya policy. What do you do?
B: Day one I start talking to the UN Security Council. I push hard for sanctions, which we got pretty quickly, and keep pushing for intervention. At the same time I’d be talking to the African Union and the Arab League, trying to get a peacekeeping force and a demilitarized zone set up so that relatively local peacekeepers can be on the ground, to sidestep accusations of conquest and also because it’s cheaper and local peacekeepers are likely to be more culturally aware.
ID: And all of that fails. The Arab League tells you to go fly a kite. The AU is still busy with Sudan, or at least that’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Britain and France are sympathetic, but won’t act without a Security Council resolution, which is blocked by the Chinese and Russia, who want to keep up their lucrative trade with Libya.
B: I got to war with Libya. It starts as an air war, with a no fly zone and a DMZ beneath it. But I couple it with an ultimatum, that Gaddafi end proactive attacks on civilians. When he defies it, which I assume is more a matter of when, I cripple his military infrastructure, bases, manufacturing. And every day, I send a missile for him, wherever our best intel says he’s likely to be.
ID: You’re still embroiled in a couple of wars. You can drop those conflicts, if that makes your decision different, maybe easier.
B: Actually, I believe we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan because, despite what were poor decisions and poor tactical planning respectively, those countries need to be stabilized before we leave- because their current relative instability is something we caused. It’s the right thing to do.
As far as Libya, I can’t help but color it with my own perspective. Of course, the research of Felitti and Anda says that childhood trauma can have deep, even determinative, effects- so that’s not atypical. But to frame it in terms of my experience, if there had been someone out in Gotham, fighting back against crime, the night my parents were shot… what if they wouldn’t have died? Gaddafi wanted to turn Benghazi, maybe his whole country, into Crime Alley. And you’re telling me, before hand, that I have a chance to shut him down. I take it. In a heartbeat.
ID: Is that reckless?
B: The decision itself, given that I’m not privy to what the President is, given that I don’t know the situation beyond what’s in the papers, that’s it’s based around my own emotional history, yes. Will it resolve poorly? I don’t know. I’d like to think that if we save people, or really in this instance when, that it’s worth it. I’ve dedicated my life to interceding in dangerous events to help people. For me it’s an easy call to make- but I’ve never really been responsible for putting more than a few hundred people at risk- and they were all free to go if they wanted. So it’s not perfectly analogous.
ID: I thought about making a devil’s advocate argument, that you wouldn’t be on the frontline, but it’s moot, because you have. I’m a lounge chair general, so I admit I don’t know what it’s like to risk my life for other people in that way. But you do. Why do you think that is?
B: I think we’ve mentioned it before, so forgive me anyone if we’re rehashing, but part of it, at least initially, I think came from a faltering self-worth. I failed to save my parents, so I was worthless- I was worth less so it didn’t matter as much when I put myself at risk to save other people. And at the same time, every time I did save somebody, I felt like I was worth a little more, but my self esteem became so intertwined with the idea of self-sacrifice, that I couldn’t not keep it up. It was who I became. And if I wanted to stay worthwhile, rather than revert to the worthless boy who let his parents die, it was who I had to be.
Put another way, I’ve interceded thousands of times to help people. Sometimes I was ineffectual, and a few times I was even hurt in the process of being ineffectual. Were those specific times worthwhile? No. But on balance, taking into account my failures and what they cost, it was better for me to be out in the world than in my mansion wringing my hands.
ID: But you have a much better track record than our government has at navigating military conflicts.
B: Then that’s an argument that our government needs to be smarter and better, not that we should sit by while madmen kill innocent people. That’s the call I would make. And it’s the call our President has made. I truly hope it’s the right call to have made. None of us want another Iraq; but none of us want the knowledge that we let another Rwanda happen, either. Sometimes, all you can do in a situation is what you think is right, and hope that it turns out for the best.
ID: I do.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Busting Chops
DI: I was hoping to bring you into a discussion on what’s happen in Wisconsin, or Madison’s Cairo moment, to paraphrase Paul Ryan. Oh, and to reward anyone who sits through this whole potentially stale policy conversation, I’m going to have you tell a story about punching people.
B: Well, I think to get the complete picture of my feelings you’d have to go back to my dad, and his strategy with the unions, because that’s informed a lot of how I approach them.
My dad was a strange guy. When most men in his class were out trying to undermine the unions working in their industries, he was participating in his. He actually funded the union up front- he paid his worker’s union dues for the first five years. He told his workers and the union, “I’m cutting a check right now, for the full five years- and it covers not just the employees we have now, but our expected growth. Because this is our company. I founded it, and I may steer it, but you are the engines that move it forward. And I want you all to have a say in where we go.”
He actually ended up cutting another check after only two years- because the company started growing at such a pace that they’d already burned through all five years of dues he paid. And we’ve continued that tradition forward.
DI: But doesn’t having a company-funded union undercut the union’s credibility? Don’t you become the hand that feeds it?
B: Not really; it isn’t a company union. We simply pay our employees’ union dues, as an additional perk. If you’d rather think about it this way, it’s about $35 that the employee would receive in addition to their base pay every month, that instead goes to pay for something for them. It’s no different really than the money we put towards our employees’ insurance, or the withholding for taxes. The actual costs of employees are a good deal higher than their wages alone.
DI: But overall, your father’s precedent of passive cooperation aside, how do you feel about unions?
B: Unions get a lousy rap. There are corrupt unions. There are lazy unions. But unions are basically the leadership of workers. You can look at it as an analog for our Congress, if you like. And for all intents and purposes, a business’s management are a foreign country. But they’re partners, too, just like England is an economic partner of ours. Management can’t function without the employees, and the employees require the infrastructure fostered by management. Having a union allows employees representation, a voice in the process they wouldn’t otherwise have.
And the reason unions get busted on so much is that they’re bad for business- but let me qualify that. A company’s goal, when you strip back all pretensions, is making money. Paying their workers more, providing benefits, creating a safe work environment- all of those things cost money, which cuts into a company’s bottom line. Some of those things can yield dividends, too; by offering higher wages and better benefits, we often get better quality employees, which can lead to higher and more efficient production, which can lead to a net gain.
But unions are representatives. They’ll fight bad change, but in my experience good unions are willing to take a hit for the team. Look at the UAW, which accepted pretty substantial cuts when the auto industry was failing. At the end of the day it was worth more to them to keep their members’ jobs than to keep hard-won benefits that might have cost those jobs or destroyed the industry. But having representation meant that the auto workers had a say in that process, and got to negotiate for the best position they could stake out.
DI: So what do you think about unions spending their members’ dues on political campaigning.
B: I don’t like the idea of anyone buying elections. So I’m against every kind of spending, even personal. I could buy myself a seat in the senate, maybe a governorship, because I have enough money to absolutely bury just about anyone I might run against. And I say that as someone who’s fairly liberal, who’s come out of the closet, and who spent years of his life breaking the law as a vigilante. I could probably beat Barack Obama in the democratic primary in 2012- not because I’m a better speaker, a better leader, or a better politician, or even a better man or better qualified, but simply because I could spend 100 times more money than he could ever raise. And that isn’t right.
But having said all that, I think a union’s function is acting as a check and a balance on business, for the workers. So with that caveat, I’d rather have unions spending to counter corporate spending, than have a world where business contribute to elections but unions can’t.
I’ll take a particularly loathsome example. Lex Luthor has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress specifically against OSHA standards. He wants to be able to make his workers less safe. His accountants and lawyers have crunched the numbers and discovered that even the small chance that he can get Congress to pass unsafe regulations, which would save him an order of magnitude more money, and that, to him, makes it worth spending millions of dollars.
Some of his workers are unionized, and I know that union spent a few hundred thousand dollars lobbying the opposite side of that issue. It’s a bad system, and I won’t defend it, but unions unilaterally disarming would be even more irresponsible. Because it would leave workers even more vulnerable to exploitation. And our laws shouldn’t be up for bid, they should be written in such a way to maximize the benefit to society.
DI: I’m a fan of hyperbole, so I’ll take that idea to its extreme: are you saying that you’re comfortable with re-legalizing slavery?
B: Slavery actually was a very maximizing system; parts of society were exploited so everyone else could prosper. But slavery also had the numbers wrong. The number of slaves in the south was greater than the number of slave owners- so what you actually had was more people suffering for the enrichment of the few.
We have, at least in principle, a similar system today. Wage growth has remained stagnant for a decade for most people, but the rich have only gotten richer, while the very rich have gotten richer even still. We’re getting to a point where most of society is being exploited, to at least some extent, to enrich the wealthy.
DI: Okay, but the real reason we brought this up is pretty simple: you have an interesting example.
B: That’s right. I don’t want to name names, because the prosecution is ongoing. But basically, several corporations in the city began hiring organized crime to undermine the unions in their companies. Everything from intimidation, subversion, to kidnapping, and murder.
DI: Of course, Gotham’s organized crime is a little more… colorful than say, New York’s.
B: Right. The most powerful crime figures in the city are Penguin, Two Face and Black Mask. A reporter put together a story detailing how all of the union agitation, and the subsequent intrigue, had happened at these three specific corporations that had various business ties to one another.
To hide that telling coincidence, they stirred up a rumor at some of my plants that we were planning on going back on agreements with the union, to slash benefits. There was a protest, and I insinuated myself into the midst of it. I caught out a man who was about to throw a brick at Lucius Fox, who, if you’ve ever met the man, is one of the least brickable people on the planet. Before that, he’d been shouting lots of very strange and inflammatory things, really riling up the crowd.
Well I carried him out of the crowd, and he’s quacking the whole way through. We’ve talked about my recall, and I didn’t recognize the man. There were a few policemen there, so I handed him over, explained that he’d attempted to assault someone, then went back to the protest. I told them who I was, and that I wasn’t afraid to stand amongst them and talk, because none of what they’d heard was true.
Meanwhile, the police checked the man’s fingerprints. He was one of the Penguin’s lackies, which explained the quacking. The larger scheme, which eventually unraveled, was about muscling out the unions to cut benefits and wages and increase profit margins. Penguin’s game in that was he planned on eventually pushing out the owners after he had gotten rid of the unions; he’s got a particular distate for unions, for reasons that have to do with a story I’ll tell in a minute.
DI: But Wisconsin’s a bit different. Because this isn’t shady businessmen dealing with shady criminals to break the law. This is about the governor of a state trying to pass a law.
B: That’s true. Wisconsin, like a lot of the states, isn’t bringing in enough money because of the weak economy. Reasonable people agree that this means everyone has to face potential cuts. But the Governor, Scott Walker, isn’t asking for concessions, which the union has voiced support for, he’s trying to cut the union off at the knees. There are two important issues here. One, is that state employees may, as part of a general belt-tightening, have to accept less compensation. And, while painful, I think they’re willing to do that. The second, and what this law is really trying to do, is end unionization.
The law doesn’t touch balancing the budget- which Walker, who just passed even greater tax cuts despite the state’s deficit, isn’t serious about anyway. It’s about forbidding unions from bargaining for benefits. Worse, it’s about keeping unions from bargaining for wages above the consumer price index- basically the union would have to fight for wages to stay even with inflation, and since that’s the maximum, it’s likely wages would stay below inflation. It is, de facto, ending the ability of unions to function, period. If this were a private company doing this, and not a state government, I have no doubt it would be illegal.
This kind of legislation, and even a lot of complaints about unions, is about putting political pressure on unions. The fact that people want to destroy unions shows how valuable they are. If unions were ineffective, if they didn’t win concessions for their employees, they wouldn’t exist. Because if they weren’t effective unionized workers would kick them out. But it should be the worker’s option to unionize or not. The absolute last thing we want is for government to take away our right to organize. And what we’re seeing is very much a step in that direction.
DI: Now that we’ve put a bowtie on that, your punching story.
B: Since we brought up the Penguin’s union busting, we’ll talk about him. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic that’s unmatched really in Gotham’s underworld. Two Face has his obsession with duality, and the Joker with… gaggery, but Penguin took it to an art form. Or maybe, he’s just had more opportunities with bird and fish related businesses and imagery in the city.
This was several years ago, before the earthquake. The Penguin made a power play for the city docks. Operating out of there are a lot of lucrative shipping and fishing businesses, but specifically there was a company called Silverfish Shipping and Cannery. The Antarctic silverfish make up the bulk of the Emperor Penguin’s diet, so of course he couldn’t keep his flippers off.
But Silverfish was an employee-owned cooperative. Years before, during a period of economic distress, several of the companies on the dock were having trouble paying the bills. The employees worked out a trade, whereby they were given a controlling interest in a new umbrella company if they agreed to work for decreased pay.
The Penguin’s been involved in organized crime most of his life, so shaking down the owner/operator’s was right up his alley. He bought their share for a song- no pun intended. But he didn’t have a controlling interest- to be able to do anything he needed the approval of the voting employees. He tried to get there by intimidating the dockworkers, but if you’ve ever tried to intimidate a longshoreman you know it isn’t an easy task- particularly for an overweight, five foot man in a top hat with a compulsive quacking tic.
DI: Sorry to interrupt, but you called it a quacking “tic.” Are you saying Penguin has Tourette’s?
B: Not Tourette’s specifically, because that involves motor as well as phonic tics, but a tic disorder, a chronic one.
But by buying out the owner operators he had the opposite of what he actually wanted: he had all the responsibility of running the businesses, but none of the decision-making authority, and because of the profit-sharing scheme, a minority of the profits, as well. So he devised a scheme to scare them, or at first, to terrorize those who were dependent upon the fishing trades; I can only assume he had a phase 2 to handle the shipping side of things.
I talked to several ornithologists who he consulted in the area, only to be told that no breed of Penguin could survive in Gotham long-term. So his plan B was to import several top predators, including different species of shark and barracuda, to decimate the local fish populations. I’m not entirely sure what his plan actually was, because it would have killed the fishing trade out of Gotham Harbor and maybe further up and down the coast, maybe permanently. I suspect it was largely a plan grown out of a tantrum. Oswald Cobblepot doesn’t appreciate being laughed at, which does make you wonder why he’d go by “Penguin” in the first place.
But I tracked him, and his collection of invasive species, to the cannery owned by Silverfish. He had most of the predators in separate tanks, lest they feast on one another. He had a couple of his goons he was goading into feeding the barracuda, whose tank was open. I kicked them into the open tank and closed the lid, which left breathing room, behind them.
DI: Wasn’t that dangerous?
B: Well… barracudas don’t really kill people. There’s a death attributed to them once a decade, maybe, but they don’t even predate upon humans. When they do attack, it’s usually because there’s a watch, or a ring, that catches a glint of light and makes the fish think they’re attacking prey. And even when they do it’s usually a few lacerations. If I recall correctly they might have needed some stitches afterwards- but that’s hardly a first for me.
But that left the Penguin. He made a waddling run for it, but it was half-hearted. I think the entire operation hadn’t gone to plan, and he was a little relieved to have an out, honestly. But for anyone who hasn’t seen it, he has a supremely punchable face. You want to hit him. And what’s more, it’s the perfect face to hit. A little bit of padding from the fat, but it’s almost perfectly contoured to a fist. I hit him, once, and he was out. I’d planned on dangling him over the shark tank, but I heard sirens approaching, and he was unconscious anyway so there didn’t seem to be much point.
But his face swelled up really good. I suspect I broke his jaw, but never had any proof of it. He turned bright purple, and bloated up like a puffer fish- quite a feat, since he’s naturally so round already.
He had violated all kinds of laws bringing the various predators into the state, not to mention running afoul some exotic animal cruelty regulations. And in the ensuing investigation, all of the Penguin’s illegal activities and intimidation came to light, and he was forced to surrender his portion of the company.
DI: (snickering) Afowl?
B: Really? Just as I was starting to like you.
DI: Really?
B: No. Not really.
B: Well, I think to get the complete picture of my feelings you’d have to go back to my dad, and his strategy with the unions, because that’s informed a lot of how I approach them.
My dad was a strange guy. When most men in his class were out trying to undermine the unions working in their industries, he was participating in his. He actually funded the union up front- he paid his worker’s union dues for the first five years. He told his workers and the union, “I’m cutting a check right now, for the full five years- and it covers not just the employees we have now, but our expected growth. Because this is our company. I founded it, and I may steer it, but you are the engines that move it forward. And I want you all to have a say in where we go.”
He actually ended up cutting another check after only two years- because the company started growing at such a pace that they’d already burned through all five years of dues he paid. And we’ve continued that tradition forward.
DI: But doesn’t having a company-funded union undercut the union’s credibility? Don’t you become the hand that feeds it?
B: Not really; it isn’t a company union. We simply pay our employees’ union dues, as an additional perk. If you’d rather think about it this way, it’s about $35 that the employee would receive in addition to their base pay every month, that instead goes to pay for something for them. It’s no different really than the money we put towards our employees’ insurance, or the withholding for taxes. The actual costs of employees are a good deal higher than their wages alone.
DI: But overall, your father’s precedent of passive cooperation aside, how do you feel about unions?
B: Unions get a lousy rap. There are corrupt unions. There are lazy unions. But unions are basically the leadership of workers. You can look at it as an analog for our Congress, if you like. And for all intents and purposes, a business’s management are a foreign country. But they’re partners, too, just like England is an economic partner of ours. Management can’t function without the employees, and the employees require the infrastructure fostered by management. Having a union allows employees representation, a voice in the process they wouldn’t otherwise have.
And the reason unions get busted on so much is that they’re bad for business- but let me qualify that. A company’s goal, when you strip back all pretensions, is making money. Paying their workers more, providing benefits, creating a safe work environment- all of those things cost money, which cuts into a company’s bottom line. Some of those things can yield dividends, too; by offering higher wages and better benefits, we often get better quality employees, which can lead to higher and more efficient production, which can lead to a net gain.
But unions are representatives. They’ll fight bad change, but in my experience good unions are willing to take a hit for the team. Look at the UAW, which accepted pretty substantial cuts when the auto industry was failing. At the end of the day it was worth more to them to keep their members’ jobs than to keep hard-won benefits that might have cost those jobs or destroyed the industry. But having representation meant that the auto workers had a say in that process, and got to negotiate for the best position they could stake out.
DI: So what do you think about unions spending their members’ dues on political campaigning.
B: I don’t like the idea of anyone buying elections. So I’m against every kind of spending, even personal. I could buy myself a seat in the senate, maybe a governorship, because I have enough money to absolutely bury just about anyone I might run against. And I say that as someone who’s fairly liberal, who’s come out of the closet, and who spent years of his life breaking the law as a vigilante. I could probably beat Barack Obama in the democratic primary in 2012- not because I’m a better speaker, a better leader, or a better politician, or even a better man or better qualified, but simply because I could spend 100 times more money than he could ever raise. And that isn’t right.
But having said all that, I think a union’s function is acting as a check and a balance on business, for the workers. So with that caveat, I’d rather have unions spending to counter corporate spending, than have a world where business contribute to elections but unions can’t.
I’ll take a particularly loathsome example. Lex Luthor has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress specifically against OSHA standards. He wants to be able to make his workers less safe. His accountants and lawyers have crunched the numbers and discovered that even the small chance that he can get Congress to pass unsafe regulations, which would save him an order of magnitude more money, and that, to him, makes it worth spending millions of dollars.
Some of his workers are unionized, and I know that union spent a few hundred thousand dollars lobbying the opposite side of that issue. It’s a bad system, and I won’t defend it, but unions unilaterally disarming would be even more irresponsible. Because it would leave workers even more vulnerable to exploitation. And our laws shouldn’t be up for bid, they should be written in such a way to maximize the benefit to society.
DI: I’m a fan of hyperbole, so I’ll take that idea to its extreme: are you saying that you’re comfortable with re-legalizing slavery?
B: Slavery actually was a very maximizing system; parts of society were exploited so everyone else could prosper. But slavery also had the numbers wrong. The number of slaves in the south was greater than the number of slave owners- so what you actually had was more people suffering for the enrichment of the few.
We have, at least in principle, a similar system today. Wage growth has remained stagnant for a decade for most people, but the rich have only gotten richer, while the very rich have gotten richer even still. We’re getting to a point where most of society is being exploited, to at least some extent, to enrich the wealthy.
DI: Okay, but the real reason we brought this up is pretty simple: you have an interesting example.
B: That’s right. I don’t want to name names, because the prosecution is ongoing. But basically, several corporations in the city began hiring organized crime to undermine the unions in their companies. Everything from intimidation, subversion, to kidnapping, and murder.
DI: Of course, Gotham’s organized crime is a little more… colorful than say, New York’s.
B: Right. The most powerful crime figures in the city are Penguin, Two Face and Black Mask. A reporter put together a story detailing how all of the union agitation, and the subsequent intrigue, had happened at these three specific corporations that had various business ties to one another.
To hide that telling coincidence, they stirred up a rumor at some of my plants that we were planning on going back on agreements with the union, to slash benefits. There was a protest, and I insinuated myself into the midst of it. I caught out a man who was about to throw a brick at Lucius Fox, who, if you’ve ever met the man, is one of the least brickable people on the planet. Before that, he’d been shouting lots of very strange and inflammatory things, really riling up the crowd.
Well I carried him out of the crowd, and he’s quacking the whole way through. We’ve talked about my recall, and I didn’t recognize the man. There were a few policemen there, so I handed him over, explained that he’d attempted to assault someone, then went back to the protest. I told them who I was, and that I wasn’t afraid to stand amongst them and talk, because none of what they’d heard was true.
Meanwhile, the police checked the man’s fingerprints. He was one of the Penguin’s lackies, which explained the quacking. The larger scheme, which eventually unraveled, was about muscling out the unions to cut benefits and wages and increase profit margins. Penguin’s game in that was he planned on eventually pushing out the owners after he had gotten rid of the unions; he’s got a particular distate for unions, for reasons that have to do with a story I’ll tell in a minute.
DI: But Wisconsin’s a bit different. Because this isn’t shady businessmen dealing with shady criminals to break the law. This is about the governor of a state trying to pass a law.
B: That’s true. Wisconsin, like a lot of the states, isn’t bringing in enough money because of the weak economy. Reasonable people agree that this means everyone has to face potential cuts. But the Governor, Scott Walker, isn’t asking for concessions, which the union has voiced support for, he’s trying to cut the union off at the knees. There are two important issues here. One, is that state employees may, as part of a general belt-tightening, have to accept less compensation. And, while painful, I think they’re willing to do that. The second, and what this law is really trying to do, is end unionization.
The law doesn’t touch balancing the budget- which Walker, who just passed even greater tax cuts despite the state’s deficit, isn’t serious about anyway. It’s about forbidding unions from bargaining for benefits. Worse, it’s about keeping unions from bargaining for wages above the consumer price index- basically the union would have to fight for wages to stay even with inflation, and since that’s the maximum, it’s likely wages would stay below inflation. It is, de facto, ending the ability of unions to function, period. If this were a private company doing this, and not a state government, I have no doubt it would be illegal.
This kind of legislation, and even a lot of complaints about unions, is about putting political pressure on unions. The fact that people want to destroy unions shows how valuable they are. If unions were ineffective, if they didn’t win concessions for their employees, they wouldn’t exist. Because if they weren’t effective unionized workers would kick them out. But it should be the worker’s option to unionize or not. The absolute last thing we want is for government to take away our right to organize. And what we’re seeing is very much a step in that direction.
DI: Now that we’ve put a bowtie on that, your punching story.
B: Since we brought up the Penguin’s union busting, we’ll talk about him. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic that’s unmatched really in Gotham’s underworld. Two Face has his obsession with duality, and the Joker with… gaggery, but Penguin took it to an art form. Or maybe, he’s just had more opportunities with bird and fish related businesses and imagery in the city.
This was several years ago, before the earthquake. The Penguin made a power play for the city docks. Operating out of there are a lot of lucrative shipping and fishing businesses, but specifically there was a company called Silverfish Shipping and Cannery. The Antarctic silverfish make up the bulk of the Emperor Penguin’s diet, so of course he couldn’t keep his flippers off.
But Silverfish was an employee-owned cooperative. Years before, during a period of economic distress, several of the companies on the dock were having trouble paying the bills. The employees worked out a trade, whereby they were given a controlling interest in a new umbrella company if they agreed to work for decreased pay.
The Penguin’s been involved in organized crime most of his life, so shaking down the owner/operator’s was right up his alley. He bought their share for a song- no pun intended. But he didn’t have a controlling interest- to be able to do anything he needed the approval of the voting employees. He tried to get there by intimidating the dockworkers, but if you’ve ever tried to intimidate a longshoreman you know it isn’t an easy task- particularly for an overweight, five foot man in a top hat with a compulsive quacking tic.
DI: Sorry to interrupt, but you called it a quacking “tic.” Are you saying Penguin has Tourette’s?
B: Not Tourette’s specifically, because that involves motor as well as phonic tics, but a tic disorder, a chronic one.
But by buying out the owner operators he had the opposite of what he actually wanted: he had all the responsibility of running the businesses, but none of the decision-making authority, and because of the profit-sharing scheme, a minority of the profits, as well. So he devised a scheme to scare them, or at first, to terrorize those who were dependent upon the fishing trades; I can only assume he had a phase 2 to handle the shipping side of things.
I talked to several ornithologists who he consulted in the area, only to be told that no breed of Penguin could survive in Gotham long-term. So his plan B was to import several top predators, including different species of shark and barracuda, to decimate the local fish populations. I’m not entirely sure what his plan actually was, because it would have killed the fishing trade out of Gotham Harbor and maybe further up and down the coast, maybe permanently. I suspect it was largely a plan grown out of a tantrum. Oswald Cobblepot doesn’t appreciate being laughed at, which does make you wonder why he’d go by “Penguin” in the first place.
But I tracked him, and his collection of invasive species, to the cannery owned by Silverfish. He had most of the predators in separate tanks, lest they feast on one another. He had a couple of his goons he was goading into feeding the barracuda, whose tank was open. I kicked them into the open tank and closed the lid, which left breathing room, behind them.
DI: Wasn’t that dangerous?
B: Well… barracudas don’t really kill people. There’s a death attributed to them once a decade, maybe, but they don’t even predate upon humans. When they do attack, it’s usually because there’s a watch, or a ring, that catches a glint of light and makes the fish think they’re attacking prey. And even when they do it’s usually a few lacerations. If I recall correctly they might have needed some stitches afterwards- but that’s hardly a first for me.
But that left the Penguin. He made a waddling run for it, but it was half-hearted. I think the entire operation hadn’t gone to plan, and he was a little relieved to have an out, honestly. But for anyone who hasn’t seen it, he has a supremely punchable face. You want to hit him. And what’s more, it’s the perfect face to hit. A little bit of padding from the fat, but it’s almost perfectly contoured to a fist. I hit him, once, and he was out. I’d planned on dangling him over the shark tank, but I heard sirens approaching, and he was unconscious anyway so there didn’t seem to be much point.
But his face swelled up really good. I suspect I broke his jaw, but never had any proof of it. He turned bright purple, and bloated up like a puffer fish- quite a feat, since he’s naturally so round already.
He had violated all kinds of laws bringing the various predators into the state, not to mention running afoul some exotic animal cruelty regulations. And in the ensuing investigation, all of the Penguin’s illegal activities and intimidation came to light, and he was forced to surrender his portion of the company.
DI: (snickering) Afowl?
B: Really? Just as I was starting to like you.
DI: Really?
B: No. Not really.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Birthright
DI: I understand you’ve got your panties in a bunch- presumably the ones you always used to wear on the outside of your tights.
B: Funny. A just released Public Policy Polling survey gives the chilling impression that 51% of likely Republican primary voters believe Obama is not a citizen. There’s a lot of qualifiers, there, but basically it means the party faithful, who are more likely to vote in a primary, believe in a bare majority that he is not legally President.
And that’s astonishing. I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept, frankly. His birth certificate is on record in Hawaii. The short-form version, which is a legal document, has been released, and the long-form has been seen by the relevant officials in the state. There are two contemporary birth announcements in Hawaiian papers. As a legal matter, Obama is a citizen. The case couldn’t be clearer.
I mean, if you want to believe that Obama was secretly born in Kenya, or in a KGB test tube, that’s up to the individual, but I don’t really understand what kind of a purpose it might serve.
I want to be careful how I put this, because I’m not playing the race card, here, I’m saying that believing that someone with different ideas than you must not be a true American, that they must be the metaphorical “other,” dances very close upon the brink of racism. The same fundamental ideas are at play, there. And it’s dangerous. I worry for my country, and my countrymen.
Because there aren’t facts in dispute; I welcome facts. But these are shadowy, whispered, McCarthyesque aspersions cast casually, as if treason should become a part of one’s daily vocabulary. It’s depressing enough when people misuse and abuse words like fascism and Nazism, and even socialism, but this takes it to another level.
And I think, I believe, that this is a case where the sane elements, in the party and the country, aren’t doing enough. It’s that old adage, that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And it concerns me that this rancor, this distrust, of our fellow citizens has become so prevalent. And it’s up to all of us to stand up to ignorance, and fear, where we find it. I think in part we’re seeing a failure of the Republican party to do that, and while ideologically they may not be my brethren, at the end of debate, we’re all still Americans. We share this country. It is not us or them. It’s we the people.
DI: Are you sufficiently unbunched?
B: I feel a little better.
DI: Since you brought up the subject of birth, I’d like to talk to you about yours.
B: It was messy.
DI: Succinct. I like it. We can call it a day. I think we might still make happy hour at Scores…. kidding. No, I want to talk about how your birth placed you in society.
B: It’s funny you should use the word “society,” because that’s where my birth put me. My parents were frequently in the society pages of the paper. They bumped elbows at society parties and functions. It’s a different world.
I’ve fostered some children who came up in poorer circumstances since then, and the contrast is really night and day. My servants had more education than their parents. And that’s no knock to anyone at all, just insight into that discrepancy.
Not that I remember much of it. I remember flashes, like my mom putting me into a miniature tuxedo, and her leaning over me to tie my bowtie. I remember being bored, and kicking around a dance floor holding her hand, waiting while dad pressed flesh, trying to get more donors for whatever charity he was organizing for. I think we arrived by carriage, once.
And eventually, Alfred retaught me the things I’d been too young to learn about that life. He trained me to be a man in my father’s mold. For better or worse, my birthright came with that responsibility, one my parents shepherded well during their lives.
DI: But what about Batman? Was he a part of your birthright?
B: I think I was lucky in other regards. My parents gave me an exceptional genetic baseline, and with all humility I was born with physical prowess and mental acuity a lot of people aren’t privy to. And that, along with my fortune, did open doors, some of which led to Batman. But there was years of training and focus that I wouldn’t have had, at least not in that direction, had circumstance not intervened- in the death of my parents. So I wouldn’t call it a birthright.
Clark had a birthright, one I think he exceeded. Diana was born a princess, but I think her actions since have made her who she is, and more than who she started as. My birthright was an empire. And I’ve used that to do a lot of what I hope was good. Employed a lot of people. Impacted quite a few lives. I still have a very old world view of corporations, that they’re a trust, between the private sector and the public, to do right and do good by them. At least, that’s how I run my companies.
DI: I did notice one thing, which interested me, about the PPP polling. Those who think Obama is or at least might be a citizen prefer Romney for President. But like most high-profile members of his party, he’s sort of infamously tip-toed around the whole birtherism concept. And I saw a wonderfully demented question in TNR about that: “is a sane person who feigns madness because he wants to live in an asylum crazy or is he sane?”
B: I think that’s more a logic puzzle, than anything. I think, for Romney, just acknowledging the reality as outlined by that poll, he’s stuck in the madhouse. And in that case your options are to act like a guard and try to restore order, or to act like a crazy person and rule in hell, so to speak. And while I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison, between Arkham and the Republican party, but a lot of guards have fallen trying to restore order in Arkham; self-preservation might be the sane choice, after all.
B: Funny. A just released Public Policy Polling survey gives the chilling impression that 51% of likely Republican primary voters believe Obama is not a citizen. There’s a lot of qualifiers, there, but basically it means the party faithful, who are more likely to vote in a primary, believe in a bare majority that he is not legally President.
And that’s astonishing. I have trouble wrapping my head around the concept, frankly. His birth certificate is on record in Hawaii. The short-form version, which is a legal document, has been released, and the long-form has been seen by the relevant officials in the state. There are two contemporary birth announcements in Hawaiian papers. As a legal matter, Obama is a citizen. The case couldn’t be clearer.
I mean, if you want to believe that Obama was secretly born in Kenya, or in a KGB test tube, that’s up to the individual, but I don’t really understand what kind of a purpose it might serve.
I want to be careful how I put this, because I’m not playing the race card, here, I’m saying that believing that someone with different ideas than you must not be a true American, that they must be the metaphorical “other,” dances very close upon the brink of racism. The same fundamental ideas are at play, there. And it’s dangerous. I worry for my country, and my countrymen.
Because there aren’t facts in dispute; I welcome facts. But these are shadowy, whispered, McCarthyesque aspersions cast casually, as if treason should become a part of one’s daily vocabulary. It’s depressing enough when people misuse and abuse words like fascism and Nazism, and even socialism, but this takes it to another level.
And I think, I believe, that this is a case where the sane elements, in the party and the country, aren’t doing enough. It’s that old adage, that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And it concerns me that this rancor, this distrust, of our fellow citizens has become so prevalent. And it’s up to all of us to stand up to ignorance, and fear, where we find it. I think in part we’re seeing a failure of the Republican party to do that, and while ideologically they may not be my brethren, at the end of debate, we’re all still Americans. We share this country. It is not us or them. It’s we the people.
DI: Are you sufficiently unbunched?
B: I feel a little better.
DI: Since you brought up the subject of birth, I’d like to talk to you about yours.
B: It was messy.
DI: Succinct. I like it. We can call it a day. I think we might still make happy hour at Scores…. kidding. No, I want to talk about how your birth placed you in society.
B: It’s funny you should use the word “society,” because that’s where my birth put me. My parents were frequently in the society pages of the paper. They bumped elbows at society parties and functions. It’s a different world.
I’ve fostered some children who came up in poorer circumstances since then, and the contrast is really night and day. My servants had more education than their parents. And that’s no knock to anyone at all, just insight into that discrepancy.
Not that I remember much of it. I remember flashes, like my mom putting me into a miniature tuxedo, and her leaning over me to tie my bowtie. I remember being bored, and kicking around a dance floor holding her hand, waiting while dad pressed flesh, trying to get more donors for whatever charity he was organizing for. I think we arrived by carriage, once.
And eventually, Alfred retaught me the things I’d been too young to learn about that life. He trained me to be a man in my father’s mold. For better or worse, my birthright came with that responsibility, one my parents shepherded well during their lives.
DI: But what about Batman? Was he a part of your birthright?
B: I think I was lucky in other regards. My parents gave me an exceptional genetic baseline, and with all humility I was born with physical prowess and mental acuity a lot of people aren’t privy to. And that, along with my fortune, did open doors, some of which led to Batman. But there was years of training and focus that I wouldn’t have had, at least not in that direction, had circumstance not intervened- in the death of my parents. So I wouldn’t call it a birthright.
Clark had a birthright, one I think he exceeded. Diana was born a princess, but I think her actions since have made her who she is, and more than who she started as. My birthright was an empire. And I’ve used that to do a lot of what I hope was good. Employed a lot of people. Impacted quite a few lives. I still have a very old world view of corporations, that they’re a trust, between the private sector and the public, to do right and do good by them. At least, that’s how I run my companies.
DI: I did notice one thing, which interested me, about the PPP polling. Those who think Obama is or at least might be a citizen prefer Romney for President. But like most high-profile members of his party, he’s sort of infamously tip-toed around the whole birtherism concept. And I saw a wonderfully demented question in TNR about that: “is a sane person who feigns madness because he wants to live in an asylum crazy or is he sane?”
B: I think that’s more a logic puzzle, than anything. I think, for Romney, just acknowledging the reality as outlined by that poll, he’s stuck in the madhouse. And in that case your options are to act like a guard and try to restore order, or to act like a crazy person and rule in hell, so to speak. And while I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison, between Arkham and the Republican party, but a lot of guards have fallen trying to restore order in Arkham; self-preservation might be the sane choice, after all.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Made Up
DI: Okay. I’m going to let a genie out of the bottle, here. You and I had spoken before. We were planning, after I’d made arrangements for a year’s worth of interviews with Bruce, for a year with you, too. Then there was a lot of shuffling, financial crises and, actually, I’m not entirely sure what all has contributed to our slowdowns. But rather than starting in January of this year, you’re waiting patiently. I’ve heard a lot about you, from two men who I feel it’s safe to say are great admirers of yours.
But you’ve been in the news a lot, lately. There’s the David E. Kelley script floating around [note: that has apparently been picked up for production]. And then there’s a new MAC make-up set. I know there’s been a sort of a mini controversy about the products, along a lot of familiar lines. People accusing you of selling out, of hocking products and an image that aren’t appropriate for young girls, who are some of your biggest fans.
I’m not sure how to introduce you, exactly, I guess if we’d had more time before deciding to do this while Bruce is out of the country, that’s one of the things we’d have talked about. But I’m speaking with Wonder Woman, Diana, Ambassador and Princess of Themiscyra.
WW: You bring up a lot of points, so I’ll parse it out and speak to them, one at a time. First off, I’m not “selling out.” In the context of a live person, I’m not sure how you do that, how that accusation even makes sense, but no. My portion of proceeds, from any of these endeavors, will be going to charity. Second, there’s a very good reason why I’ve agreed to these projects, and why now.
With Clark gone, there’s been a vacuum in the world. And, quite frankly, I want to take advantage of that. Clark was always very conscious of not wanting to have a message when he was alive. But I have a message. A very clear message, I think, distilling the wisdom of my people, a lot of which will be news to a great many people.
But before I can, I have to brand myself a little more clearly. A lot of people looked to the similar color schemes in my armor and Clark’s over the years and just assumed we were married, and that, as is traditional, that I was weaker and subordinated to him.
Even when I explained to people that my armor is traditional, going back thousands of years, most people roll their eyes. Because people look at Greek and Roman sculpture and think it was a very muted culture, all classy but bland white and dark colors. But the Parthenon was as gaudy as Vegas in its day, painted in vivid and evocative colors. My armor is very much a part of that tradition.
Unfortunately, the colors inherent in that tradition were the same as Clark inherited from his family. So I had the choice of honoring my heritage and being called Clark in a swimsuit, or turning my back on my culture just to make a few people who didn’t know better think better of me. So I have what they call a branding problem. And all of this is to explain, more clearly, to the public who and what I am and represent.
DI: By selling make up with your face on it?
WW: It seemed a little silly to me, too. But that’s marketing. In the sphere of marketing, Lady Gaga reigns supreme. Don’t expect me to go to those lengths, but that’s the world I’m trying to reach, the same one where Lady Gaga is probably the most popular musician alive.
But to your point about make up, and whether it’s harmful to girls, it’s a complicated issue. The idea that women need to represent some point of physical and aesthetic perfection is inherently wrong. Expecting women to spend more time on their appearances, the objectification of women, these are still very much a part of the culture. And I think it can be easy to fall into that trap, where you become part of the population de facto requiring women to hold themselves to these standards.
DI: Let me interrupt you for a second to ask: how much make up are you wearing, right now?
WW: Very little, actually.
DI: Please tell me you’re lying.
WW: I have a little bit of rouge on my cheek, and a nude pink lipstick.
DI: No foundation, no, uh, concealer?
WW: You’re out of your depth, aren’t you?
DI: Drowning. But is the make up cruelty free?
WW: Yes, actually.
But to me, feminism is about choice. Forcing women to conform to an unrealistic standard of beauty is immoral.
DI: But by popularizing yourself, aren’t you, in fact, holding yourself up as an ideal candidate for that unrealistic beauty standard?
WW: I think your point would be a fair one if I underwent plastic surgery. Or allowed Photoshopping on any photos of me. But I don’t; I don’t sign a release for photos without a guarantee that I will not altered in any way. I’ve been criticized before in the past for all of these things, and the Photoshop rule is a reaction to that, but I’ve never had any kind of work done. I’m not augmented. I don’t think I should hide or apologize for the way I look.
And I think that’s the heart of the issue. I’m fortunate, in that I’m coming from the positive end of that spectrum, but it isn’t fair to penalize women for the way they look. Instead, women should be free, or at least as free as men, to be comfortable with their appearance. In this day and age, a man can grow his hair or his beard long or shave it all off without much stigma. But women are scrutinized.
What it comes down, to, or should, is that women should have the same options as men. And I’d argue, there are options that should be opened to men, as well. If a man wants to wear foundation, or eyeliner, or paint his nails, there should be no problem. People should be free to make decisions about their own bodies. It’s somewhat analogous to the African American community retaking the word “nigger.”
DI: Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white woman say that word with such force, and, help me out here, confidence, without it sounding, well, racist. I guess, technically, your skin’s maybe a little olive, so “white” might be inaccurate, but you know what I mean.
WW: I do. But that’s my point. Anything that gives other people power over us is wrong.
DI: I want to be careful how I say this, because it’s a sensitive issue. But some people complain that in particular with that word, it then becomes “their” word and only okay for them to say. In a way, you’re excluding white people to make sure they can’t exclude black people. There’s certainly some tension in that idea.
WW: I think there’s a transition, there, where an outgroup can’t use something the ingroup does without being seen as an oppressor. But the goal, eventually, is for the old meaning to die entirely, become extinct. So that no one can use it for oppression. Once you’ve passed that threshold, the word opens back up for everyone. I think gay has mostly made that transition; fag and queer are lagging only slightly behind it.
DI: You’re less intimidating than I thought you’d be. I kind of worried I was going to get punched out a window, with some of the questions I wanted to ask. I’m not sure how closely you’re involved with David E. Kelley’s show featuring you.
WW: I’ve purposely distanced myself from it. I don’t want to stand over his shoulder and dictate a biographical and accurate portrayal of my life. That would be boring, and at the same time invasive. So I’ve stayed as far away from it as I can.
DI: But Bruce specifically questioned the Sex in the Cityness of the script. I don’t think he meant to imply that you don’t girl-talk, just that it didn’t feel right for you.
WW: I think I’m dishier than Bruce might know. He’s never really been privy to the girl-talk.
DI: You sure about that? He is a sneaky guy.
WW: That’s… creepy. But no. I think he could have spied on us. But he wouldn’t. For all of the seedier aspects of his life, at least from an outward appearance-
DI: The “bachelor” who constantly has a revolving door of children staying in his home a la Michael Jackson, the brooding billionaire in fetish gear, his reputation for general dickishness-
WW: Yes, all that, he really is a perfect gentleman. Respectful. Honest. Surprisingly caring.
DI: Surprising that he cares?
WW: Surprising by its depth.
DI: Okay, I think that’s probably a good place to end it. But I’m really glad that we’ve got more conversations coming up, because I think I have more questions than answers written down, now.
WW: I look forward to it.
But you’ve been in the news a lot, lately. There’s the David E. Kelley script floating around [note: that has apparently been picked up for production]. And then there’s a new MAC make-up set. I know there’s been a sort of a mini controversy about the products, along a lot of familiar lines. People accusing you of selling out, of hocking products and an image that aren’t appropriate for young girls, who are some of your biggest fans.
I’m not sure how to introduce you, exactly, I guess if we’d had more time before deciding to do this while Bruce is out of the country, that’s one of the things we’d have talked about. But I’m speaking with Wonder Woman, Diana, Ambassador and Princess of Themiscyra.
WW: You bring up a lot of points, so I’ll parse it out and speak to them, one at a time. First off, I’m not “selling out.” In the context of a live person, I’m not sure how you do that, how that accusation even makes sense, but no. My portion of proceeds, from any of these endeavors, will be going to charity. Second, there’s a very good reason why I’ve agreed to these projects, and why now.
With Clark gone, there’s been a vacuum in the world. And, quite frankly, I want to take advantage of that. Clark was always very conscious of not wanting to have a message when he was alive. But I have a message. A very clear message, I think, distilling the wisdom of my people, a lot of which will be news to a great many people.
But before I can, I have to brand myself a little more clearly. A lot of people looked to the similar color schemes in my armor and Clark’s over the years and just assumed we were married, and that, as is traditional, that I was weaker and subordinated to him.
Even when I explained to people that my armor is traditional, going back thousands of years, most people roll their eyes. Because people look at Greek and Roman sculpture and think it was a very muted culture, all classy but bland white and dark colors. But the Parthenon was as gaudy as Vegas in its day, painted in vivid and evocative colors. My armor is very much a part of that tradition.
Unfortunately, the colors inherent in that tradition were the same as Clark inherited from his family. So I had the choice of honoring my heritage and being called Clark in a swimsuit, or turning my back on my culture just to make a few people who didn’t know better think better of me. So I have what they call a branding problem. And all of this is to explain, more clearly, to the public who and what I am and represent.
DI: By selling make up with your face on it?
WW: It seemed a little silly to me, too. But that’s marketing. In the sphere of marketing, Lady Gaga reigns supreme. Don’t expect me to go to those lengths, but that’s the world I’m trying to reach, the same one where Lady Gaga is probably the most popular musician alive.
But to your point about make up, and whether it’s harmful to girls, it’s a complicated issue. The idea that women need to represent some point of physical and aesthetic perfection is inherently wrong. Expecting women to spend more time on their appearances, the objectification of women, these are still very much a part of the culture. And I think it can be easy to fall into that trap, where you become part of the population de facto requiring women to hold themselves to these standards.
DI: Let me interrupt you for a second to ask: how much make up are you wearing, right now?
WW: Very little, actually.
DI: Please tell me you’re lying.
WW: I have a little bit of rouge on my cheek, and a nude pink lipstick.
DI: No foundation, no, uh, concealer?
WW: You’re out of your depth, aren’t you?
DI: Drowning. But is the make up cruelty free?
WW: Yes, actually.
But to me, feminism is about choice. Forcing women to conform to an unrealistic standard of beauty is immoral.
DI: But by popularizing yourself, aren’t you, in fact, holding yourself up as an ideal candidate for that unrealistic beauty standard?
WW: I think your point would be a fair one if I underwent plastic surgery. Or allowed Photoshopping on any photos of me. But I don’t; I don’t sign a release for photos without a guarantee that I will not altered in any way. I’ve been criticized before in the past for all of these things, and the Photoshop rule is a reaction to that, but I’ve never had any kind of work done. I’m not augmented. I don’t think I should hide or apologize for the way I look.
And I think that’s the heart of the issue. I’m fortunate, in that I’m coming from the positive end of that spectrum, but it isn’t fair to penalize women for the way they look. Instead, women should be free, or at least as free as men, to be comfortable with their appearance. In this day and age, a man can grow his hair or his beard long or shave it all off without much stigma. But women are scrutinized.
What it comes down, to, or should, is that women should have the same options as men. And I’d argue, there are options that should be opened to men, as well. If a man wants to wear foundation, or eyeliner, or paint his nails, there should be no problem. People should be free to make decisions about their own bodies. It’s somewhat analogous to the African American community retaking the word “nigger.”
DI: Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white woman say that word with such force, and, help me out here, confidence, without it sounding, well, racist. I guess, technically, your skin’s maybe a little olive, so “white” might be inaccurate, but you know what I mean.
WW: I do. But that’s my point. Anything that gives other people power over us is wrong.
DI: I want to be careful how I say this, because it’s a sensitive issue. But some people complain that in particular with that word, it then becomes “their” word and only okay for them to say. In a way, you’re excluding white people to make sure they can’t exclude black people. There’s certainly some tension in that idea.
WW: I think there’s a transition, there, where an outgroup can’t use something the ingroup does without being seen as an oppressor. But the goal, eventually, is for the old meaning to die entirely, become extinct. So that no one can use it for oppression. Once you’ve passed that threshold, the word opens back up for everyone. I think gay has mostly made that transition; fag and queer are lagging only slightly behind it.
DI: You’re less intimidating than I thought you’d be. I kind of worried I was going to get punched out a window, with some of the questions I wanted to ask. I’m not sure how closely you’re involved with David E. Kelley’s show featuring you.
WW: I’ve purposely distanced myself from it. I don’t want to stand over his shoulder and dictate a biographical and accurate portrayal of my life. That would be boring, and at the same time invasive. So I’ve stayed as far away from it as I can.
DI: But Bruce specifically questioned the Sex in the Cityness of the script. I don’t think he meant to imply that you don’t girl-talk, just that it didn’t feel right for you.
WW: I think I’m dishier than Bruce might know. He’s never really been privy to the girl-talk.
DI: You sure about that? He is a sneaky guy.
WW: That’s… creepy. But no. I think he could have spied on us. But he wouldn’t. For all of the seedier aspects of his life, at least from an outward appearance-
DI: The “bachelor” who constantly has a revolving door of children staying in his home a la Michael Jackson, the brooding billionaire in fetish gear, his reputation for general dickishness-
WW: Yes, all that, he really is a perfect gentleman. Respectful. Honest. Surprisingly caring.
DI: Surprising that he cares?
WW: Surprising by its depth.
DI: Okay, I think that’s probably a good place to end it. But I’m really glad that we’ve got more conversations coming up, because I think I have more questions than answers written down, now.
WW: I look forward to it.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Wondering
DI: I’ve heard David E. Kelley, whose work I’m a general fan of, is working on a Wonder Woman project. I’ve heard there are some issues with his script, and I’d like to talk about the idea of a series based off of Diana.
B: First off, I haven’t read the script, so I’m not passing judgment, so much as reacting to some of the things I’ve read that are in it. And let me say first that Diana’s tough to nail down. Because she’s a very nuanced human being.
DI: But is she even human?
B: Technically, maybe not, but neither was Clark. And if you set me, a genuine human being, beside the two of them, I’m the one who looks inhuman.
DI: But you’re one of the world’s most prominent philanthropists; even setting aside your costumed work, you’ve done a lot of good in the world. Aren’t you being a little overly critical of yourself?
B: No, but I’m not down on myself. I think I have a reasonable perspective on my humanity. And some of that, I think, is me compensating for being a cold bastard- and some because it’s what my parents would have wanted. On balance I’m not saying I’m a bad person- just that there’s no comparison.
I get frustrated. I get angry. If you surveyed the League I’m sure you’d find I can be pretty damn mean. And Clark, and Diana, they can be frustrated, and angry, but they’ve always been decent. Not just to me, but to everyone, probably everyone they ever met. Clark and Diana represent what the rest of us should want to be.
DI: But aren’t you a fairly impressive specimen of our species? And aren’t the things you describe, don’t those make them not more human, but superhuman?
B: Maybe. I think it would probably be unfair to hold anybody to that yardstick, and when found wanting declare that they’d failed, but I think that’s the goal we should set, the bar we should reach for.
And that’s the part of the script that rings hollow for me. Clark Kent was Superman, but really all Superman was was Clark with a spit-curl, no glasses and a stoic expression. Diana doesn’t have a Clark Kent. Diana is Diana. Wonder Woman is like the suit and tie I wear to the office. I’m the same man in the suit as I am at home in my bathrobe, I just look more authoritative, more professional.
And I know you’ve made jokes about her uniform, before, but there are strong customs and traditions behind it, going back centuries. But Wonder Woman is just an artifice; Diana is always Diana.
DI: But isn’t it true that for a while she did have an alter ego similar to the Kent persona.
B: When she first arrived in “the patriarch’s world” she did adopt the name “Diana Prince.” But she did so as part of a fact-finding portion to her mission. She’s always been an ambassador, but she was also her nation’s first contact with the outside world. So before she opened her home to the world, she wanted to know what kind of world she was opening up to.
And I think, for a while, having that small, quiet, meek person to retreat into helped her. It’s easy to forget that Diana was still very young when she left Themiscyra. She needed a place, emotionally, to call her own. But it’s been a very long time since she’s made peace with the fact that she is both a representative of her people and a very strong personality in her own right.
DI: Okay, but what about the Sex in the Cityness of the script? Presumably she has female friends, but…
B: Diana has female friends; it’s hard for anyone who meets her not to be friendly with her. And I know she’s spent a good deal of time with female League members. I think she’s very conscious of the fact that the League, at least under normal circumstances, can be a bit of a boy’s club. It’s not really anyone’s fault, there; there’s just a gender bias in the costumed community. It’s been a while since I had Oracle do a head count, but last I checked we had the same ratio of women in the League as there are on the streets. But my point was I know she’s organized ladies nights. On Huntress’s first night on the Watchtower they had a sleepover.
DI: You don’t smile often, but for the record, that was a smile, there.
B: I smile when I feel like it. I’m just not that emotive a person.
DI: Fair enough. But ladies nights, sleepovers- how is that not Sex in the City?
B: Well, the thrust of that is that Diana’s a woman. Sometimes she does talk about men- and more often she listens while other women talk about men. But she also talks about other things. She’s a fan of talking shop, fighting styles, tactics. She’s also very cognizant of things like human rights, current events like the protests in Egypt or the Southern Sudan independence referendum.
DI: So she’s very political, then.
B: Right. I would have thought her work through the UN would have made that common knowledge.
DI: Yeah, but so did Ginger Spice, so that’s hardly a barometer.
B: Touché, though I don’t think that’s particularly fair to Geri.
DI: Geri? No way. You’re not going to confirm or deny that, are you, just leaving it hanging there. I hate you.
B: I know, and I treasure that. But Diana’s worked very extendedly with the UN, particularly on women’s and children’s initiatives. I think it concerns her greatly that outside of the Western world women and children don’t have the same status as men.
I hope Kelley can stay on the project. I think, once some of these early trajectory issues are solved, he could really find her voice. He’s very good at getting to the heart of difficult political issues, asking hard questions without imposing moral truisms. I think he could capture her complexity well.
DI: Let me see, here, there’s also been mention that Kelley’s Wonder Woman will be a CEO, and I think you took issue with that.
B: Diana herself doesn’t run any companies. Not because she couldn’t, but because the entire concept of capitalism is repugnant to her. She comes from a fairly close-knit society, where resources are pooled, a fairly egalitarian structure to it. So the idea of elevating herself in any way over “subordinates” is revolting. And that’s largely what capitalism is- it’s saying that certain people are better at utilizing resources, and so for the benefit of society we should give them greater resources to maximize our collective potential.
Philosophically she disagrees with that model. It’s an argument I’ve had with her before; capitalism, when it’s used properly, can ensure that the world gets better for everyone. But she takes a very harsh approach to the subject, and usually draws the line at the point where in practice capitalism often uses people as an exhaustible resource, as if they were a lump of coal. I’ve went round and round with her on the subject, because the best way to pull people up out of poverty is capitalism- albeit capitalism that has certain restraints. Regulations that make sure we treat the working class fairly, that make sure we don’t put strains on the environment that ultimately have the greatest impact on the poorest people.
And I don’t want to sound like I’m splitting hairs because she does operate nonprofit organizations under her Wonderment Foundation.
DI: Which you helped fund in its infancy.
B: I provided seed money, and I donate, occasionally. It was a tough sell to the Amazons.
But the idea of Diana running a company in the way that I do is silly; she directs the broad strokes of what the various NGOs she oversees are doing at any moment. But she also concedes that the day to day operations of charity, relief and advocacy organizations are beyond her purview. She doesn’t have the experience or expertise to do those things- which is no sleight against her. I think it takes a certain strength of character to admit skills you don’t have, and to recognize that finding people who have those skills to supplement you is the best course of action.
DI: And I think, just from a few pulled quotes we’ve read, that it sounds like Kelley hasn’t quite “got” Diana yet. How so?
B: She’s strong, unbelievably so, and I don’t merely mean physically. She may be the most emotionally resilient person I know. But there’s a tenderness to her, a femininity that neither betrays nor contradicts her strength.
DI: She’s soft?
B: To the touch, to the soul. She has a calming influence, a peaceful aura. I’ve spent cumulatively months of my life meditating with some of the world’s deepest thinkers, but none of that can rival a moment in her presence. It’s almost magical- and I’ve dealt with enough actually magical things that I wonder if there’s something in her, another gift from the gods, as it were, that gives her that effect on people.
But she’s passionate, too. Intense. We’ve nearly come to blows several times.
I think we agree more than we disagree, but there are some areas, economics, martial law, where we differ. And I think sometimes it’s just a matter of perspective, our divergent origins and how those shape our worldviews. I mean, I’m rich. I’m male. I’m white. I’m getting older. I’m a fairly easy stand-in for the class that controls a lot of the political and economic fate of the world at this moment. I think, and I would say she would mostly agree, that I use that position of power for good as much as I can. But I think it’s fair to say she doesn’t like that I, or anyone, is in a position of so much power. And from her perspective, my power comes at the expense of the powers of others.
DI: So she has a bit of that old feminist rage, then?
B: I don’t think rage is the right word, though. She’s passionate. Because her ideas, and her ideals, are things she believes strongly about. But despite her upbringing, which I would be tempted to describe in impolite terms, I think she’s worked hard not to be a zealot. I think she takes new ideas and information in, and she has been known to reevaluate her position.
We just don’t always agree. And sometimes things can get a little heated.
DI: Back up just a little there: come to blows? So you’re admitting to hitting a woman?
B: First, that’s a fairly sexist idea you’re implying, that it’s acceptable to strike a man and not a woman. Second, violence is never something to undertake lightly, but I’ve hit many women in my lifetime. Hopefully always in a context where the benefits, usually stopping them from committing some larger harm, justified it. But no, domestically I’ve never thrown the first punch.
DI: But you’ve hit back.
B: I have defended myself against attacks before. Proportionally.
DI: Against Diana?
B: Hitting Diana is a bit like punching a tree. I wouldn’t advise it, so no. I find with her jujitsu, or other martial arts designed to counter strength and reroute momentum are best. But I don’t think we’ve ever actually thrown punches at each other outside sparring. There’ve just been a few discussions I think I was lucky to walk away from with my head still on my shoulders.
DI: And on a final note, I’d like to mention that Kelley is married to Michelle Pfeiffer, who portrayed Catwoman in that Burton Batman.
B: Michelle is a lovely, intelligent woman. But she’s no Selina Kyle- though in fairness to her, there’s only one of those.
DI: Unless you count Anne Hathaway. Me-ow.
B: First off, I haven’t read the script, so I’m not passing judgment, so much as reacting to some of the things I’ve read that are in it. And let me say first that Diana’s tough to nail down. Because she’s a very nuanced human being.
DI: But is she even human?
B: Technically, maybe not, but neither was Clark. And if you set me, a genuine human being, beside the two of them, I’m the one who looks inhuman.
DI: But you’re one of the world’s most prominent philanthropists; even setting aside your costumed work, you’ve done a lot of good in the world. Aren’t you being a little overly critical of yourself?
B: No, but I’m not down on myself. I think I have a reasonable perspective on my humanity. And some of that, I think, is me compensating for being a cold bastard- and some because it’s what my parents would have wanted. On balance I’m not saying I’m a bad person- just that there’s no comparison.
I get frustrated. I get angry. If you surveyed the League I’m sure you’d find I can be pretty damn mean. And Clark, and Diana, they can be frustrated, and angry, but they’ve always been decent. Not just to me, but to everyone, probably everyone they ever met. Clark and Diana represent what the rest of us should want to be.
DI: But aren’t you a fairly impressive specimen of our species? And aren’t the things you describe, don’t those make them not more human, but superhuman?
B: Maybe. I think it would probably be unfair to hold anybody to that yardstick, and when found wanting declare that they’d failed, but I think that’s the goal we should set, the bar we should reach for.
And that’s the part of the script that rings hollow for me. Clark Kent was Superman, but really all Superman was was Clark with a spit-curl, no glasses and a stoic expression. Diana doesn’t have a Clark Kent. Diana is Diana. Wonder Woman is like the suit and tie I wear to the office. I’m the same man in the suit as I am at home in my bathrobe, I just look more authoritative, more professional.
And I know you’ve made jokes about her uniform, before, but there are strong customs and traditions behind it, going back centuries. But Wonder Woman is just an artifice; Diana is always Diana.
DI: But isn’t it true that for a while she did have an alter ego similar to the Kent persona.
B: When she first arrived in “the patriarch’s world” she did adopt the name “Diana Prince.” But she did so as part of a fact-finding portion to her mission. She’s always been an ambassador, but she was also her nation’s first contact with the outside world. So before she opened her home to the world, she wanted to know what kind of world she was opening up to.
And I think, for a while, having that small, quiet, meek person to retreat into helped her. It’s easy to forget that Diana was still very young when she left Themiscyra. She needed a place, emotionally, to call her own. But it’s been a very long time since she’s made peace with the fact that she is both a representative of her people and a very strong personality in her own right.
DI: Okay, but what about the Sex in the Cityness of the script? Presumably she has female friends, but…
B: Diana has female friends; it’s hard for anyone who meets her not to be friendly with her. And I know she’s spent a good deal of time with female League members. I think she’s very conscious of the fact that the League, at least under normal circumstances, can be a bit of a boy’s club. It’s not really anyone’s fault, there; there’s just a gender bias in the costumed community. It’s been a while since I had Oracle do a head count, but last I checked we had the same ratio of women in the League as there are on the streets. But my point was I know she’s organized ladies nights. On Huntress’s first night on the Watchtower they had a sleepover.
DI: You don’t smile often, but for the record, that was a smile, there.
B: I smile when I feel like it. I’m just not that emotive a person.
DI: Fair enough. But ladies nights, sleepovers- how is that not Sex in the City?
B: Well, the thrust of that is that Diana’s a woman. Sometimes she does talk about men- and more often she listens while other women talk about men. But she also talks about other things. She’s a fan of talking shop, fighting styles, tactics. She’s also very cognizant of things like human rights, current events like the protests in Egypt or the Southern Sudan independence referendum.
DI: So she’s very political, then.
B: Right. I would have thought her work through the UN would have made that common knowledge.
DI: Yeah, but so did Ginger Spice, so that’s hardly a barometer.
B: Touché, though I don’t think that’s particularly fair to Geri.
DI: Geri? No way. You’re not going to confirm or deny that, are you, just leaving it hanging there. I hate you.
B: I know, and I treasure that. But Diana’s worked very extendedly with the UN, particularly on women’s and children’s initiatives. I think it concerns her greatly that outside of the Western world women and children don’t have the same status as men.
I hope Kelley can stay on the project. I think, once some of these early trajectory issues are solved, he could really find her voice. He’s very good at getting to the heart of difficult political issues, asking hard questions without imposing moral truisms. I think he could capture her complexity well.
DI: Let me see, here, there’s also been mention that Kelley’s Wonder Woman will be a CEO, and I think you took issue with that.
B: Diana herself doesn’t run any companies. Not because she couldn’t, but because the entire concept of capitalism is repugnant to her. She comes from a fairly close-knit society, where resources are pooled, a fairly egalitarian structure to it. So the idea of elevating herself in any way over “subordinates” is revolting. And that’s largely what capitalism is- it’s saying that certain people are better at utilizing resources, and so for the benefit of society we should give them greater resources to maximize our collective potential.
Philosophically she disagrees with that model. It’s an argument I’ve had with her before; capitalism, when it’s used properly, can ensure that the world gets better for everyone. But she takes a very harsh approach to the subject, and usually draws the line at the point where in practice capitalism often uses people as an exhaustible resource, as if they were a lump of coal. I’ve went round and round with her on the subject, because the best way to pull people up out of poverty is capitalism- albeit capitalism that has certain restraints. Regulations that make sure we treat the working class fairly, that make sure we don’t put strains on the environment that ultimately have the greatest impact on the poorest people.
And I don’t want to sound like I’m splitting hairs because she does operate nonprofit organizations under her Wonderment Foundation.
DI: Which you helped fund in its infancy.
B: I provided seed money, and I donate, occasionally. It was a tough sell to the Amazons.
But the idea of Diana running a company in the way that I do is silly; she directs the broad strokes of what the various NGOs she oversees are doing at any moment. But she also concedes that the day to day operations of charity, relief and advocacy organizations are beyond her purview. She doesn’t have the experience or expertise to do those things- which is no sleight against her. I think it takes a certain strength of character to admit skills you don’t have, and to recognize that finding people who have those skills to supplement you is the best course of action.
DI: And I think, just from a few pulled quotes we’ve read, that it sounds like Kelley hasn’t quite “got” Diana yet. How so?
B: She’s strong, unbelievably so, and I don’t merely mean physically. She may be the most emotionally resilient person I know. But there’s a tenderness to her, a femininity that neither betrays nor contradicts her strength.
DI: She’s soft?
B: To the touch, to the soul. She has a calming influence, a peaceful aura. I’ve spent cumulatively months of my life meditating with some of the world’s deepest thinkers, but none of that can rival a moment in her presence. It’s almost magical- and I’ve dealt with enough actually magical things that I wonder if there’s something in her, another gift from the gods, as it were, that gives her that effect on people.
But she’s passionate, too. Intense. We’ve nearly come to blows several times.
I think we agree more than we disagree, but there are some areas, economics, martial law, where we differ. And I think sometimes it’s just a matter of perspective, our divergent origins and how those shape our worldviews. I mean, I’m rich. I’m male. I’m white. I’m getting older. I’m a fairly easy stand-in for the class that controls a lot of the political and economic fate of the world at this moment. I think, and I would say she would mostly agree, that I use that position of power for good as much as I can. But I think it’s fair to say she doesn’t like that I, or anyone, is in a position of so much power. And from her perspective, my power comes at the expense of the powers of others.
DI: So she has a bit of that old feminist rage, then?
B: I don’t think rage is the right word, though. She’s passionate. Because her ideas, and her ideals, are things she believes strongly about. But despite her upbringing, which I would be tempted to describe in impolite terms, I think she’s worked hard not to be a zealot. I think she takes new ideas and information in, and she has been known to reevaluate her position.
We just don’t always agree. And sometimes things can get a little heated.
DI: Back up just a little there: come to blows? So you’re admitting to hitting a woman?
B: First, that’s a fairly sexist idea you’re implying, that it’s acceptable to strike a man and not a woman. Second, violence is never something to undertake lightly, but I’ve hit many women in my lifetime. Hopefully always in a context where the benefits, usually stopping them from committing some larger harm, justified it. But no, domestically I’ve never thrown the first punch.
DI: But you’ve hit back.
B: I have defended myself against attacks before. Proportionally.
DI: Against Diana?
B: Hitting Diana is a bit like punching a tree. I wouldn’t advise it, so no. I find with her jujitsu, or other martial arts designed to counter strength and reroute momentum are best. But I don’t think we’ve ever actually thrown punches at each other outside sparring. There’ve just been a few discussions I think I was lucky to walk away from with my head still on my shoulders.
DI: And on a final note, I’d like to mention that Kelley is married to Michelle Pfeiffer, who portrayed Catwoman in that Burton Batman.
B: Michelle is a lovely, intelligent woman. But she’s no Selina Kyle- though in fairness to her, there’s only one of those.
DI: Unless you count Anne Hathaway. Me-ow.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Risky Business
B: Let me be clear about one thing: as a businessman, I don’t care about creating jobs. I do not. No businessman in his right mind cares about creating jobs. Even people who work in staffing don’t create jobs, they fill positions.
But business isn’t in the job-creation business. Business is about providing a good or a service for a fee. The reason businesses hire is because they want to be able to provide more of their goods or services for an increased fee. None of this should be surprising yet.
Negative outcomes, in particular a business operating at a loss, are referred to as risk. Businesses look for favorable circumstances to make sure they minimize risk. The easiest way to do that is to ensure that operating costs, the money it takes to keep a business going, remain low.
There are a lot of factors. Taxes, including corporate taxes- which is the main reason most US corporations were incorporated in New Jersey and pay taxes there. I happen to live there, so it’s simply coincidental that my companies are based there. Local cost of living, which affects wages. You can pay someone significantly lower in Idaho than you can in New York, and maintain a competitive standard of living.
But the single biggest factor is the health of that business’ sector of the economy. The HD TV market is booming, despite the recession; it isn’t like Sony is going to lay off people who build TVs just because the newspaper industry is dying. And by health I mean a strong amount of demand for the product. Recession-proof industries, as they’re sometimes called, usually have to do with fantasy and escape, TV, movies, comics. People spend as much or even more on their entertainment because it helps keep them from wallowing in the fear and uncertainty that exists in other parts of their lives.
But the entire reason for a business to exist is to make money. If creating jobs can help that business make more money, or more accurately, when, that’s when jobs will be created. Corporate profits are near an all-time high, corporate stockpiles of cash are at an all-time high. The only thing missing, really, is confidence, and that’s building. When businesses are confident that their spending won’t create products without sufficient demand, the business cycle will resume. With great haste.
DI: What about the minimum wage? There’s criticism that that has adversely impacted job creation.
B: If you want to purely create jobs numerically, yes, you could cut the minimum wage. You could also change the way that labor laws work, making it more cost-effective to employ more part-time workers as opposed to full-time employees. You could “create” a lot of jobs that way. But the jobs wouldn’t pay a living wage. They wouldn’t provide full-time employment. And they would externalize costs, such as healthcare, onto the community. It’s important, when thinking about jobs, to remember that quantity and quality are distinct, here.
The effect of the minimum wage on businesses is it slightly raises the bar for new hiring. An employer who might be able to profitably employ someone at less than minimum wage will have to wait until their profit margin increases enough to pay the minimum wage instead.
But I’d like to address the accusation, now ridiculously part of the name of a law that’s passed the House, that the healthcare bill is “job-killing.” You know what kills jobs? Not knowing if you’ll be able to keep offering employees healthcare. Because that’s a really big deal, and it’s here where that word uncertainty crops up again. Let’s say you hire on three new workers, and in one year, or five, if healthcare costs continue to rise, you’re suddenly faced with either cutting your workforce or cutting healthcare. Firing workers cuts profit, but getting rid of healthcare is likely to lose you your best people, which will not only shrink your workforce but ensure that the remaining workforce is less efficient. In the long run that could cost you more.
Healthcare reform was an attempt to bend the cost curve. Basically, healthcare has been getting more expensive for a long time, so the law was an attempt to shrink the size of that expansion. And this wasn’t just a dewy-eyed liberal social program, either. When you look at budget projections, the single factor that threatens our nation’s financial stability more than any other is healthcare costs- mostly for seniors. The law is working to push down costs. And keeping costs down makes hiring more attractive.
And the law that passed isn’t perfect, but no law ever is. The best path forward is usually to make amendments, to change the things that don’t work well while preserving the things that do. But if Republicans came up with a good, common-sense plan, if they found the common ground that I think exists on healthcare and offered to replace the PPACA with it, I have no doubt the Democrats would jump at the chance. But I suspect their preference is, as has typically been the case, for no regulation at all, that they’d like to get rid of reform and go back to the status quo, which isn’t sustainable.
It’s funny, because Republicans demonized the healthcare law for including death panels which didn’t exist, but their push to destroy the law could easily put us into a position where insurance company bureaucrats do sit on death panels, deciding who is worth saving. And I don’t mean to fear monger, there; at some point I think saving a human life becomes too expensive. And to be realistic, medicine is an exhaustible good in a lot of respects. So deciding how best to allocate those resources is an important question. But I think it’s a question that we as Americans, that we as consumers and premium payers, deserve to be a part of answering.
But business isn’t in the job-creation business. Business is about providing a good or a service for a fee. The reason businesses hire is because they want to be able to provide more of their goods or services for an increased fee. None of this should be surprising yet.
Negative outcomes, in particular a business operating at a loss, are referred to as risk. Businesses look for favorable circumstances to make sure they minimize risk. The easiest way to do that is to ensure that operating costs, the money it takes to keep a business going, remain low.
There are a lot of factors. Taxes, including corporate taxes- which is the main reason most US corporations were incorporated in New Jersey and pay taxes there. I happen to live there, so it’s simply coincidental that my companies are based there. Local cost of living, which affects wages. You can pay someone significantly lower in Idaho than you can in New York, and maintain a competitive standard of living.
But the single biggest factor is the health of that business’ sector of the economy. The HD TV market is booming, despite the recession; it isn’t like Sony is going to lay off people who build TVs just because the newspaper industry is dying. And by health I mean a strong amount of demand for the product. Recession-proof industries, as they’re sometimes called, usually have to do with fantasy and escape, TV, movies, comics. People spend as much or even more on their entertainment because it helps keep them from wallowing in the fear and uncertainty that exists in other parts of their lives.
But the entire reason for a business to exist is to make money. If creating jobs can help that business make more money, or more accurately, when, that’s when jobs will be created. Corporate profits are near an all-time high, corporate stockpiles of cash are at an all-time high. The only thing missing, really, is confidence, and that’s building. When businesses are confident that their spending won’t create products without sufficient demand, the business cycle will resume. With great haste.
DI: What about the minimum wage? There’s criticism that that has adversely impacted job creation.
B: If you want to purely create jobs numerically, yes, you could cut the minimum wage. You could also change the way that labor laws work, making it more cost-effective to employ more part-time workers as opposed to full-time employees. You could “create” a lot of jobs that way. But the jobs wouldn’t pay a living wage. They wouldn’t provide full-time employment. And they would externalize costs, such as healthcare, onto the community. It’s important, when thinking about jobs, to remember that quantity and quality are distinct, here.
The effect of the minimum wage on businesses is it slightly raises the bar for new hiring. An employer who might be able to profitably employ someone at less than minimum wage will have to wait until their profit margin increases enough to pay the minimum wage instead.
But I’d like to address the accusation, now ridiculously part of the name of a law that’s passed the House, that the healthcare bill is “job-killing.” You know what kills jobs? Not knowing if you’ll be able to keep offering employees healthcare. Because that’s a really big deal, and it’s here where that word uncertainty crops up again. Let’s say you hire on three new workers, and in one year, or five, if healthcare costs continue to rise, you’re suddenly faced with either cutting your workforce or cutting healthcare. Firing workers cuts profit, but getting rid of healthcare is likely to lose you your best people, which will not only shrink your workforce but ensure that the remaining workforce is less efficient. In the long run that could cost you more.
Healthcare reform was an attempt to bend the cost curve. Basically, healthcare has been getting more expensive for a long time, so the law was an attempt to shrink the size of that expansion. And this wasn’t just a dewy-eyed liberal social program, either. When you look at budget projections, the single factor that threatens our nation’s financial stability more than any other is healthcare costs- mostly for seniors. The law is working to push down costs. And keeping costs down makes hiring more attractive.
And the law that passed isn’t perfect, but no law ever is. The best path forward is usually to make amendments, to change the things that don’t work well while preserving the things that do. But if Republicans came up with a good, common-sense plan, if they found the common ground that I think exists on healthcare and offered to replace the PPACA with it, I have no doubt the Democrats would jump at the chance. But I suspect their preference is, as has typically been the case, for no regulation at all, that they’d like to get rid of reform and go back to the status quo, which isn’t sustainable.
It’s funny, because Republicans demonized the healthcare law for including death panels which didn’t exist, but their push to destroy the law could easily put us into a position where insurance company bureaucrats do sit on death panels, deciding who is worth saving. And I don’t mean to fear monger, there; at some point I think saving a human life becomes too expensive. And to be realistic, medicine is an exhaustible good in a lot of respects. So deciding how best to allocate those resources is an important question. But I think it’s a question that we as Americans, that we as consumers and premium payers, deserve to be a part of answering.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Fear Itself
DI: It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about fear, but in view of what happened in Arizona, namely the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the discussions that have followed, I’d like to talk to you about using fear as a tactic, and how you feel about it.
B: I think we always run into trouble when we try to compare what I did, which wasn’t unlike urban warfare, with politics. Politics is supposed to be about finding the best solutions to problems. What I do, or did, was find ways to solve problems that didn’t respond to normal means. Crime isn’t something you’ll ever entirely legislate away; nor is violence.
And that’s why use of fear as a weapon in both cases is different. Fear in the realm of politics goes from Glenn Beck’s bunker mentality to full-fledged terrorism. Both ends of that spectrum are bad, because they’re necessarily anti-reason; rather than seek an amicable solution, they seek to prevent solutions and outcomes that aren’t favorable to them- even if that means preventing all solutions.
And I’ll admit it: I’ve used fear as a weapon, a bludgeon, even. But I’m willing to stand up and defend it, because I was using fear for the greater good against an uncommon evil.
DI: But don’t you think the same argument could be made? Don’t you think that people who really are pushing scary rhetoric feel like the world needs them to say those things?
B: Absolutely not.
Politicians, and I’m lumping in anyone who’s trying to join their voices into the political conversation, and I’d include the both of us in there, as well, can and should argue reason, logic, facts. It isn’t that they can’t argue based on those things, it’s that they often believe, perhaps even fear, that they can’t win arguments on the merits- and not to take too much of a dig, but given the merits they’re arguing on I’m not surprised.
Just to take a moment, here, arguing for unaffordable lower taxes for the wealthy, arguing to keep the unsustainable medical status quo, these aren’t popular ideas, and they’re not even fiscally responsible ones. I’m not even sure they’re coherent, frankly.
But by way of contrast I believed, when I started, that criminals were scared. No, that’s not right; I told myself they were scared. Because I was. I was terrified. I lived in a world where my parents, the very essence of what safety and security are supposed to be, could be taken. In an instant. Without warning. The world was so terrifying and mean and vicious that it could snatch us out of the night on a whim.
So I told myself that if I was this scared, criminals had to be, too. So what I had to become was that fear, that uncertainty.
DI: It’s funny that you mention “uncertainty.” Because uncertainty is making a comeback, as an argument against Democratic policies.
B: Uncertainty is just another club to use against programs conservatives don’t like. And I know some people roll their eyes and call me a partisan when I say things like that, but I don’t want that to be true. I want the people I disagree with to have a frank, adult discussion about how to fix things. I want an opposition who bargains in good faith, and argues in good faith. The absolute last thing that I want is to have to tell myself, again and again, that there are people who can’t be trusted, not even to agree to demonstrable facts, and that our collective destiny is still tethered to them.
But what I mean when I say that it’s just a bludgeon, it’s because uncertainty has nothing to do with the Democrats. Uncertainty has everything to do with change. Businesses want to know what the political landscape is going to look like in ten years, and anything that makes it harder to know that future makes them nervous. So when Republicans talk about repealing the health care law, which a lot of companies have already started spending money to implement, that makes businesspeople nervous. When we’re told that taxes might change, that programs might be cut- that makes us nervous. What business really, truly wants, is for things to stay the same as they are right now. And the same can be said of a lot of Americans, too. Unfortunately, that’s neither fiscally nor politically possible. In the long run, we can’t afford business as usual. And in the short term, the Republicans are making a lot of noise about cuts- though I suspect, as has already happened, the number they expect to cut will continue to shrink [Note: Their initial goal was to cut $100 billion, but that’s already been cut in half].
DI: Sorry, I think I derailed. You were scared, and so criminals had to be, too.
B: Right. I told myself they were cowards, in the same way bullies ridicule their victims for flaws they often hate in themselves. It was a coping mechanism, in the beginning, though one I wasn’t equipped to recognize at the time.
But I think innately I recognized that fear, given how effective it was against me, how crippling, could be used as a weapon. So I looked for what really terrorized me, and it was a single childhood incident with bats. And there are certain animals, and insects, arachnids, that make people anxious.
I didn’t want to dress up in a full-on bat costume, that would have turned me into a Scooby Doo villain, but I wanted to take the things that make bats scary and use them. The wings, that make them appear larger than they are. The mystique; most people think nearly all bats are vampiric and prey on humans. But ultimately, the most troubling thing about bats is they set off people’s sense that they’re in danger. I had to look, sound, move, in a dangerous way. From there the rest came together.
And what was strange is how much of the danger became built up. I never killed anyone; though I’ve put a few men in wheel chairs and worse. But the legends have my body count into the hundreds, at least.
DI: Don’t you worry that saying that, while there’s a new Batman active, might undercut him?
B: This isn’t the first time there’s been a replacement for me, though it’s likely the most permanent. And not all Batmen have been non-lethal. I have my preference, and I’ve made that preference known to those I’ve worked with, but frankly I don’t outright employ the people I work with- and I certainly can’t dictate terms.
DI: But Clark told me last year- or is it two years ago, now- that you actually pay salaries and insurance for the League.
B: That’s true, but that doesn’t mean I employ them. I compensate them as best I can for the service they render, but I don’t employ them. I don’t endorse what they do, or take credit for it. I’ve been blessed with means, so I try and see that people who do good work can continue to. That’s it. I think it would ruin the spirit of the gesture if I ever attempted to assert the ability to control others.
DI: Like Diana.
B: That’s overly simplistic. Diana killed Maxwell Lord because she didn’t have a choice. It was unfortunate that it played out on live television, but Lord was controlling Clark. She fought like a hellcat, but Clark was killing her, slowly. She did what she had to to survive, and to stop Lord from using Clark against the rest of us. I’m certain the choice she made saved my life, and probably a lot of other lives.
And I also don’t pay her. Sure, she gets the same check from the League fund as Clark did and I do. And all three of us donate ours to charity. I have more money than I could ever need, Diana has the Amazon ambassadorial stipend, but I never understood Clark. He told me, “It’s not like we need a bigger apartment… just don’t tell Lois.” Oops. She knew, of course. He couldn’t keep a thing from her. Hell of a reporter, hell of a woman.
DI: You speak like she’s dead.
B: Not dead. We’re still friends. But there’s a part of her that’s dead to me. I laughed when he made me promise not to date her, when he was dying. We went out a long time ago- but it ended long before they ever became serious. So that part of Lois has been dead to me for a very long time.
But obviously there’s a line there, somewhere. We’ve had a few of our friends turn violent, start hurting innocent people. I remember the day we officially stripped Hal Jordan of his membership. It wasn’t a pleasant day. But I always figured the League had high enough standards. If someone could make it in the League, then I wasn’t going to micromanage their behavior.
DI: On that note, actually, I’m aware of one specific League member who you sponsored, and then personally fired for about what we’re talking about.
B: And I’ll assume she sent you an “anonymous” email signed with an “H.” Huntress came from Gotham. She had a similar life to mine. I presumed a kinship with her. I helped train her, and when she showed promise, and maturity, I sponsored her membership in the League. And for a time she performed admirably. Until we were attacked by a hit team sponsored by Lex Luthor.
DI: My lawyer’s advised me against us using Luthor’s name specifically unless we have proof of criminal malfeasance.
B: I have his big bald head on the Watchtower’s security cameras. I put his scowl from a different angle on a Christmas card I send to him every year.
Anyway, Luthor’s team included a man code-named Prometheus. He’s extremely dangerous, to the point where he briefly took control of the tower from us that last time he’d been there. I managed to subdue him. A short time later, I discovered Huntress about to kill him. Mind you, he was incapacitated and in custody. She was about to murder someone on the Watchtower, in our headquarters. I’d never liked calling it a “Justice” League, but killing someone like that, there, was antithetical to everything we stood for.
That might have been the end of it, a small reprimand, a stern warning. But she argued the point with me. She couldn’t even understand why we would allow someone so dangerous to live. And I realized she never would. So she didn’t belong in the League. Ultimately, there’s a world of difference between using lethal means in the heat of battle, and executing someone because you’re afraid of them when you have power over them.
DI: Do you think there’s anything to the fact that the execution would have been similar to the way your parents were killed?
B: Hmm. Perhaps. Maybe I just don’t like to see people murdered.
DI: But Prometheus was a bad guy. He’s since gone on to kill innocent people. Do you think she’s wrong to have wanted him dead?
B: I’m not sure. I certainly haven’t tried to stop her career, and we still work together on occasion. I simply disagreed with her on that point, and felt strongly enough that I removed my sponsorship. I didn’t want her actions to reflect upon me, or to encourage similar behavior in other League members. For better or worse people looked up to us. It was a part of our pact with the public that we try and live up to that.
DI: Okay. Let’s end with: do you think you or Huntress was more feared during your tenure as Batman?
B: I was. For a lot of reasons. I was older, more established. Taller, thicker, just more physically imposing. I think there was a sense, after I’d been in Gotham for a long time, that vigilantes cropping up were operating in my shadow, often under my tutelage- whether it was true or not. Besides which, I don’t think Huntress ever really cared about being subtle, or even frightening. She was more impetuous and forceful. Not to stretch our metaphors too far, but our politics could probably use a lot more of her, and a lot less of me.
Though when I mentioned that there have been several fill-in Batmen- she was one of them, during the earthquake, and she did a fine job. I’ve never held Batman has to be a man.
B: I think we always run into trouble when we try to compare what I did, which wasn’t unlike urban warfare, with politics. Politics is supposed to be about finding the best solutions to problems. What I do, or did, was find ways to solve problems that didn’t respond to normal means. Crime isn’t something you’ll ever entirely legislate away; nor is violence.
And that’s why use of fear as a weapon in both cases is different. Fear in the realm of politics goes from Glenn Beck’s bunker mentality to full-fledged terrorism. Both ends of that spectrum are bad, because they’re necessarily anti-reason; rather than seek an amicable solution, they seek to prevent solutions and outcomes that aren’t favorable to them- even if that means preventing all solutions.
And I’ll admit it: I’ve used fear as a weapon, a bludgeon, even. But I’m willing to stand up and defend it, because I was using fear for the greater good against an uncommon evil.
DI: But don’t you think the same argument could be made? Don’t you think that people who really are pushing scary rhetoric feel like the world needs them to say those things?
B: Absolutely not.
Politicians, and I’m lumping in anyone who’s trying to join their voices into the political conversation, and I’d include the both of us in there, as well, can and should argue reason, logic, facts. It isn’t that they can’t argue based on those things, it’s that they often believe, perhaps even fear, that they can’t win arguments on the merits- and not to take too much of a dig, but given the merits they’re arguing on I’m not surprised.
Just to take a moment, here, arguing for unaffordable lower taxes for the wealthy, arguing to keep the unsustainable medical status quo, these aren’t popular ideas, and they’re not even fiscally responsible ones. I’m not even sure they’re coherent, frankly.
But by way of contrast I believed, when I started, that criminals were scared. No, that’s not right; I told myself they were scared. Because I was. I was terrified. I lived in a world where my parents, the very essence of what safety and security are supposed to be, could be taken. In an instant. Without warning. The world was so terrifying and mean and vicious that it could snatch us out of the night on a whim.
So I told myself that if I was this scared, criminals had to be, too. So what I had to become was that fear, that uncertainty.
DI: It’s funny that you mention “uncertainty.” Because uncertainty is making a comeback, as an argument against Democratic policies.
B: Uncertainty is just another club to use against programs conservatives don’t like. And I know some people roll their eyes and call me a partisan when I say things like that, but I don’t want that to be true. I want the people I disagree with to have a frank, adult discussion about how to fix things. I want an opposition who bargains in good faith, and argues in good faith. The absolute last thing that I want is to have to tell myself, again and again, that there are people who can’t be trusted, not even to agree to demonstrable facts, and that our collective destiny is still tethered to them.
But what I mean when I say that it’s just a bludgeon, it’s because uncertainty has nothing to do with the Democrats. Uncertainty has everything to do with change. Businesses want to know what the political landscape is going to look like in ten years, and anything that makes it harder to know that future makes them nervous. So when Republicans talk about repealing the health care law, which a lot of companies have already started spending money to implement, that makes businesspeople nervous. When we’re told that taxes might change, that programs might be cut- that makes us nervous. What business really, truly wants, is for things to stay the same as they are right now. And the same can be said of a lot of Americans, too. Unfortunately, that’s neither fiscally nor politically possible. In the long run, we can’t afford business as usual. And in the short term, the Republicans are making a lot of noise about cuts- though I suspect, as has already happened, the number they expect to cut will continue to shrink [Note: Their initial goal was to cut $100 billion, but that’s already been cut in half].
DI: Sorry, I think I derailed. You were scared, and so criminals had to be, too.
B: Right. I told myself they were cowards, in the same way bullies ridicule their victims for flaws they often hate in themselves. It was a coping mechanism, in the beginning, though one I wasn’t equipped to recognize at the time.
But I think innately I recognized that fear, given how effective it was against me, how crippling, could be used as a weapon. So I looked for what really terrorized me, and it was a single childhood incident with bats. And there are certain animals, and insects, arachnids, that make people anxious.
I didn’t want to dress up in a full-on bat costume, that would have turned me into a Scooby Doo villain, but I wanted to take the things that make bats scary and use them. The wings, that make them appear larger than they are. The mystique; most people think nearly all bats are vampiric and prey on humans. But ultimately, the most troubling thing about bats is they set off people’s sense that they’re in danger. I had to look, sound, move, in a dangerous way. From there the rest came together.
And what was strange is how much of the danger became built up. I never killed anyone; though I’ve put a few men in wheel chairs and worse. But the legends have my body count into the hundreds, at least.
DI: Don’t you worry that saying that, while there’s a new Batman active, might undercut him?
B: This isn’t the first time there’s been a replacement for me, though it’s likely the most permanent. And not all Batmen have been non-lethal. I have my preference, and I’ve made that preference known to those I’ve worked with, but frankly I don’t outright employ the people I work with- and I certainly can’t dictate terms.
DI: But Clark told me last year- or is it two years ago, now- that you actually pay salaries and insurance for the League.
B: That’s true, but that doesn’t mean I employ them. I compensate them as best I can for the service they render, but I don’t employ them. I don’t endorse what they do, or take credit for it. I’ve been blessed with means, so I try and see that people who do good work can continue to. That’s it. I think it would ruin the spirit of the gesture if I ever attempted to assert the ability to control others.
DI: Like Diana.
B: That’s overly simplistic. Diana killed Maxwell Lord because she didn’t have a choice. It was unfortunate that it played out on live television, but Lord was controlling Clark. She fought like a hellcat, but Clark was killing her, slowly. She did what she had to to survive, and to stop Lord from using Clark against the rest of us. I’m certain the choice she made saved my life, and probably a lot of other lives.
And I also don’t pay her. Sure, she gets the same check from the League fund as Clark did and I do. And all three of us donate ours to charity. I have more money than I could ever need, Diana has the Amazon ambassadorial stipend, but I never understood Clark. He told me, “It’s not like we need a bigger apartment… just don’t tell Lois.” Oops. She knew, of course. He couldn’t keep a thing from her. Hell of a reporter, hell of a woman.
DI: You speak like she’s dead.
B: Not dead. We’re still friends. But there’s a part of her that’s dead to me. I laughed when he made me promise not to date her, when he was dying. We went out a long time ago- but it ended long before they ever became serious. So that part of Lois has been dead to me for a very long time.
But obviously there’s a line there, somewhere. We’ve had a few of our friends turn violent, start hurting innocent people. I remember the day we officially stripped Hal Jordan of his membership. It wasn’t a pleasant day. But I always figured the League had high enough standards. If someone could make it in the League, then I wasn’t going to micromanage their behavior.
DI: On that note, actually, I’m aware of one specific League member who you sponsored, and then personally fired for about what we’re talking about.
B: And I’ll assume she sent you an “anonymous” email signed with an “H.” Huntress came from Gotham. She had a similar life to mine. I presumed a kinship with her. I helped train her, and when she showed promise, and maturity, I sponsored her membership in the League. And for a time she performed admirably. Until we were attacked by a hit team sponsored by Lex Luthor.
DI: My lawyer’s advised me against us using Luthor’s name specifically unless we have proof of criminal malfeasance.
B: I have his big bald head on the Watchtower’s security cameras. I put his scowl from a different angle on a Christmas card I send to him every year.
Anyway, Luthor’s team included a man code-named Prometheus. He’s extremely dangerous, to the point where he briefly took control of the tower from us that last time he’d been there. I managed to subdue him. A short time later, I discovered Huntress about to kill him. Mind you, he was incapacitated and in custody. She was about to murder someone on the Watchtower, in our headquarters. I’d never liked calling it a “Justice” League, but killing someone like that, there, was antithetical to everything we stood for.
That might have been the end of it, a small reprimand, a stern warning. But she argued the point with me. She couldn’t even understand why we would allow someone so dangerous to live. And I realized she never would. So she didn’t belong in the League. Ultimately, there’s a world of difference between using lethal means in the heat of battle, and executing someone because you’re afraid of them when you have power over them.
DI: Do you think there’s anything to the fact that the execution would have been similar to the way your parents were killed?
B: Hmm. Perhaps. Maybe I just don’t like to see people murdered.
DI: But Prometheus was a bad guy. He’s since gone on to kill innocent people. Do you think she’s wrong to have wanted him dead?
B: I’m not sure. I certainly haven’t tried to stop her career, and we still work together on occasion. I simply disagreed with her on that point, and felt strongly enough that I removed my sponsorship. I didn’t want her actions to reflect upon me, or to encourage similar behavior in other League members. For better or worse people looked up to us. It was a part of our pact with the public that we try and live up to that.
DI: Okay. Let’s end with: do you think you or Huntress was more feared during your tenure as Batman?
B: I was. For a lot of reasons. I was older, more established. Taller, thicker, just more physically imposing. I think there was a sense, after I’d been in Gotham for a long time, that vigilantes cropping up were operating in my shadow, often under my tutelage- whether it was true or not. Besides which, I don’t think Huntress ever really cared about being subtle, or even frightening. She was more impetuous and forceful. Not to stretch our metaphors too far, but our politics could probably use a lot more of her, and a lot less of me.
Though when I mentioned that there have been several fill-in Batmen- she was one of them, during the earthquake, and she did a fine job. I’ve never held Batman has to be a man.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
We're All Mad Here
DI: I understand you feel strongly about the Tucson shooting.
B: It makes me want to go out and punch somebody in the face.
DI: Someone who deserves it, presumably.
B: Preferably… but senseless gun violence, it strikes a nerve. I think punching anyone would make me feel better, at this point.
DI: Do you miss it, then? Being able to walk out onto the street and vent that frustration? Find a bastard and punish him.
(pause)
B: Yes.
DI: As someone who’s been the object of your seething gaze, have you ever considered that you might have anger issues?
B: Yes.
DI: Yes as in you’ve thought about it or yes that you’ve concluded that you do.
B: I do. Occasionally.
But most of that is explainable, between my childhood, and exposure to crime and to warlike circumstances, I think anyone would have rage issues. So given those facts, I think my anger is larger within range.
DI: Sounds like you’ve seen a professional about this.
B: Dated a few.
DI: Professionals?
B: Doctors. Wiseass.
And I think it doesn’t take too many run-ins with genuine sociopaths to make you wonder about your own sanity.
DI: And that’s been a recurring theme in the Tucson shooting. Jared Loughner was apparently a very disturbed man, and there have been some who believe that the state of mental health care in the country lags behind even that of our lagging health care system. You’ve been in Arkham Asylum more times than most, what are your thoughts?
B: I’ve been to, and indeed inside Arkham, but never as a client- I want to be clear about that. There are enough rumors about me being crazy without you starting one about me being committed.
DI: Not to mention that Arkham isn’t your average mental health facility. It’s the Mayo Clinic for crazies- you’ve got to be somebody to reserve a padded cell there.
B: But Arkham is a mess. It’s a sinkhole for money. Most of the inmates don’t have insurance or assets. It’s funded almost entirely by a local charity group that matches donations and money budgeted from state and local government.
DI: I don’t want you to be alarmed by me actually doing a little research, but you fund that organization, don’t you?
B: Yeah. But what I mean to say is that there isn’t a lot of money to be had to pay for the genuinely mentally ill; that goes double for the dangerous, criminal mentally ill. Ronald Reagan gets a lot of the blame, though in truth he’s mostly responsible for California, where he was Governor at the time. He signed a bill changing the standards for involuntary commitment, and at the same time cut funding and staffing of state-run institutions. The idea was to shift the unstable into community facilities, but those facilities were almost all either underfunded or nonexistent. California’s just the most famous example of what happened across the country, seen mostly as a movement to strengthen patient rights. Its unintended consequence was closing down a lot of options for care for people who didn’t have a lot of alternatives. Arkham is just the most egregious example I’m aware of. That’s why I give money to it- like my parents before me.
DI: I’d like to spend a moment discussing what some have called the revolving door nature of Arkham.
B: I know a lot of people look at supercriminals elsewhere, who are capable of growing to the size of buildings, or causing earthquakes, and wonder why Arkham can’t handle its more human-sized inmates. But the Joker, on an average year, takes in over $60 million dollars from his various criminal enterprises. About 70% of that ends up being confiscated, most of it ending up in state coffers or being returned to his victims, but he is far from the most successful criminal in this city. This is a huge cottage industry. You simply can’t pay guards a quarter of a million dollars and expect that none of them will be swayed by paydays that large.
DI: Wait, did you just say you pay the guards a quarter mill a year?
B: Most of them are ex-Special Forces. Would you really expect anyone else to either be willing to take the job or be qualified for it? Arkham is a special case, with some of the most dangerous, unstable individuals on Earth, and the people who deal with them have to be properly compensated. And the same goes for the rest of the staff, from contractors to doctors to the custodians. They’re all comparably well paid, but between threats of violence and bribes, I’m not surprised at the number of escapes per year. About half of the people who are repeat offenders are genius-level intellects with peculiar and esoteric knowledge and skill sets.
DI: But given the recidivism, are you still against the death penalty?
B: If it’s through the courts, if it’s done properly… well, I’ll never be for the death penalty, but I’m not completely against it, either. At some point, the lives they take matter more than any principles we might want to uphold. And I mean any. And it’s acknowledging things like that that makes me glad to be out of that game, where that kind of decision was in my hands.
DI: And I hear that one reason why most of your gallery of rogues don’t get the chair, or at least put in sane people prison, is the constant use of the insanity defense. And I know you’re more in the apprehension side of things, but I understand you’ve sat in on enough insanity defense cases to have an idea of how that works. I know outside Gotham it’s still a fairly infrequent defense.
B: Right. But after John Hinckley got off after shooting Reagan, it picked up here. There are several tests involved with an insanity plea. The first is the M’Naghten rule, which most people know but have never heard by name. Basically, for someone to be not guilty by reason of insanity you have to prove that they don’t have the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. There’s a modifier to M’Naghten, that someone can’t be guilty if an impulse to commit an admittedly wrong act was “irresistible,” though that’s often considered too vague and broad.
But what’s probably had the most impact on these kinds of cases is that the burden of proof in New Jersey is on the state. So the state has to prove that the Joker was sane at the moment he commits a crime, and prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.
DI: Wow. This has been thoroughly depressing. But I seem to recall you having an amusing Joker anecdote to play us out.
B: Right. I once apprehended the Joker in Idaho. He was attempting, through food-tampering and theft on a wide scale to cause what he called, “The Great American Poh-tah-toe Famine.” He was giddy, like he always is- he even seems to like getting caught- until I told him that Idaho doesn’t have an insanity defense. They abolished it. He was going to go to real prison, and given the size of his crime spree, wasn’t likely to survive his sentence. He stared blankly for a moment, then said, “Poe-tay-toe, poh-tah-toe, let’s call the whole thing off.” Unfortunately, Idaho allowed extradition to Gotham, where he was wanted on more serious charges, and the cycle started over again. Every time he gets caught, I lobby the state to send him back to Idaho for his crimes, but so far there haven’t been any takers. Still, for a few months he had to contemplate spending the rest of his life in a real Idaho jail cell. I don’t think he found that funny.
B: It makes me want to go out and punch somebody in the face.
DI: Someone who deserves it, presumably.
B: Preferably… but senseless gun violence, it strikes a nerve. I think punching anyone would make me feel better, at this point.
DI: Do you miss it, then? Being able to walk out onto the street and vent that frustration? Find a bastard and punish him.
(pause)
B: Yes.
DI: As someone who’s been the object of your seething gaze, have you ever considered that you might have anger issues?
B: Yes.
DI: Yes as in you’ve thought about it or yes that you’ve concluded that you do.
B: I do. Occasionally.
But most of that is explainable, between my childhood, and exposure to crime and to warlike circumstances, I think anyone would have rage issues. So given those facts, I think my anger is larger within range.
DI: Sounds like you’ve seen a professional about this.
B: Dated a few.
DI: Professionals?
B: Doctors. Wiseass.
And I think it doesn’t take too many run-ins with genuine sociopaths to make you wonder about your own sanity.
DI: And that’s been a recurring theme in the Tucson shooting. Jared Loughner was apparently a very disturbed man, and there have been some who believe that the state of mental health care in the country lags behind even that of our lagging health care system. You’ve been in Arkham Asylum more times than most, what are your thoughts?
B: I’ve been to, and indeed inside Arkham, but never as a client- I want to be clear about that. There are enough rumors about me being crazy without you starting one about me being committed.
DI: Not to mention that Arkham isn’t your average mental health facility. It’s the Mayo Clinic for crazies- you’ve got to be somebody to reserve a padded cell there.
B: But Arkham is a mess. It’s a sinkhole for money. Most of the inmates don’t have insurance or assets. It’s funded almost entirely by a local charity group that matches donations and money budgeted from state and local government.
DI: I don’t want you to be alarmed by me actually doing a little research, but you fund that organization, don’t you?
B: Yeah. But what I mean to say is that there isn’t a lot of money to be had to pay for the genuinely mentally ill; that goes double for the dangerous, criminal mentally ill. Ronald Reagan gets a lot of the blame, though in truth he’s mostly responsible for California, where he was Governor at the time. He signed a bill changing the standards for involuntary commitment, and at the same time cut funding and staffing of state-run institutions. The idea was to shift the unstable into community facilities, but those facilities were almost all either underfunded or nonexistent. California’s just the most famous example of what happened across the country, seen mostly as a movement to strengthen patient rights. Its unintended consequence was closing down a lot of options for care for people who didn’t have a lot of alternatives. Arkham is just the most egregious example I’m aware of. That’s why I give money to it- like my parents before me.
DI: I’d like to spend a moment discussing what some have called the revolving door nature of Arkham.
B: I know a lot of people look at supercriminals elsewhere, who are capable of growing to the size of buildings, or causing earthquakes, and wonder why Arkham can’t handle its more human-sized inmates. But the Joker, on an average year, takes in over $60 million dollars from his various criminal enterprises. About 70% of that ends up being confiscated, most of it ending up in state coffers or being returned to his victims, but he is far from the most successful criminal in this city. This is a huge cottage industry. You simply can’t pay guards a quarter of a million dollars and expect that none of them will be swayed by paydays that large.
DI: Wait, did you just say you pay the guards a quarter mill a year?
B: Most of them are ex-Special Forces. Would you really expect anyone else to either be willing to take the job or be qualified for it? Arkham is a special case, with some of the most dangerous, unstable individuals on Earth, and the people who deal with them have to be properly compensated. And the same goes for the rest of the staff, from contractors to doctors to the custodians. They’re all comparably well paid, but between threats of violence and bribes, I’m not surprised at the number of escapes per year. About half of the people who are repeat offenders are genius-level intellects with peculiar and esoteric knowledge and skill sets.
DI: But given the recidivism, are you still against the death penalty?
B: If it’s through the courts, if it’s done properly… well, I’ll never be for the death penalty, but I’m not completely against it, either. At some point, the lives they take matter more than any principles we might want to uphold. And I mean any. And it’s acknowledging things like that that makes me glad to be out of that game, where that kind of decision was in my hands.
DI: And I hear that one reason why most of your gallery of rogues don’t get the chair, or at least put in sane people prison, is the constant use of the insanity defense. And I know you’re more in the apprehension side of things, but I understand you’ve sat in on enough insanity defense cases to have an idea of how that works. I know outside Gotham it’s still a fairly infrequent defense.
B: Right. But after John Hinckley got off after shooting Reagan, it picked up here. There are several tests involved with an insanity plea. The first is the M’Naghten rule, which most people know but have never heard by name. Basically, for someone to be not guilty by reason of insanity you have to prove that they don’t have the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. There’s a modifier to M’Naghten, that someone can’t be guilty if an impulse to commit an admittedly wrong act was “irresistible,” though that’s often considered too vague and broad.
But what’s probably had the most impact on these kinds of cases is that the burden of proof in New Jersey is on the state. So the state has to prove that the Joker was sane at the moment he commits a crime, and prove that beyond a reasonable doubt.
DI: Wow. This has been thoroughly depressing. But I seem to recall you having an amusing Joker anecdote to play us out.
B: Right. I once apprehended the Joker in Idaho. He was attempting, through food-tampering and theft on a wide scale to cause what he called, “The Great American Poh-tah-toe Famine.” He was giddy, like he always is- he even seems to like getting caught- until I told him that Idaho doesn’t have an insanity defense. They abolished it. He was going to go to real prison, and given the size of his crime spree, wasn’t likely to survive his sentence. He stared blankly for a moment, then said, “Poe-tay-toe, poh-tah-toe, let’s call the whole thing off.” Unfortunately, Idaho allowed extradition to Gotham, where he was wanted on more serious charges, and the cycle started over again. Every time he gets caught, I lobby the state to send him back to Idaho for his crimes, but so far there haven’t been any takers. Still, for a few months he had to contemplate spending the rest of his life in a real Idaho jail cell. I don’t think he found that funny.
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