B: I’m a businessman, but only in the loosest of meanings of the word. I don’t spend my nights hovering over financials. I don’t personally oversee hiring, firing, buying- I’m a businessman in the most abstract of terms.
At my level, I speak in generalities. Because when you’re making multi-billion dollar decisions, spreadsheets don’t win people over. You still need those, because other people operating at this level had their own accountants who want to make sure the numbers add up, but to win over the bosses, you have to be able to craft a story.
And I think I finally have one for this economy.
Imagine our economy is a poor man. He works hard, but he doesn’t make enough to pay all his bills. So he’s deeply in debt.
Then he becomes ill. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s that kind of long, lingering illness that will stay with you for weeks, perhaps months, if untreated. He manages to go to work, but his productivity plummets, and his piece-rate wage dips.
So now he’s ill, and having even more difficulty making his bills. He’s worried that perhaps his credit can’t take the hit.
He’s not sure what to do. Medicine, and good food, could help him get healthy faster. It would also mean going deeper into debt. But there’s the chance that if he gets healthy faster, his productivity might go back up fast enough to make up for whatever extra debt he took on. He could even come out of it ahead.
It’s essentially the same argument I’ve been making, and it’s the same one Paul Krugman has, as well- though this is certainly closer to a parable.
DI: But the nutshell, basically, is that austerity during a fiscal crisis might be counterproductive.
B: Exactly. If the economy were healthy, telling the man in our scenario to do more to live within his means would be completely appropriate. But with a frail economy, it is harder to see how doubling-down on shrinking the economy is a good idea.
DI: Okay, you lost me.
B: Government spending doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It goes to contractors and workers who then filter that money to other parts of the economy. If that money suddenly disappears, then it takes money out of the economy. Put another way, a highway construction worker who eats a cheeseburger every day for lunch who gets laid off is no longer buying that cheeseburger. Worse, you’re only partially defraying the costs, since he’s likely to go on unemployment, so you’re still paying for some of his work, only with none of his productivity.
There’s nothing wrong with asking how large a government we should have, what functions it should provide, and how much we’re willing to pay for it. But I’m worried that the spending cuts we’re looking at now, they aren’t helpful, and they may even be like ancient physicians trying to bleed a patient back to health.
DI: I want to come back to your specific formulation, there. You were very deliberate in saying “how much we’re willing to pay” for government. Why was that?
B: Because it’s unfair to say, “this is how much I want to pay” for something. Ideally, government would be free. In a perfect world, food and shelter would be free, too. And when I stop at a burger place, I don’t want to pay seven bucks for a burger- but that’s how much it costs, after paying for the ingredients, the rent, the staff, and a reasonable margin of profit for the owners.
And government exists largely within the same constraints. I don’t want to pay $1300 per person for Medicare, but that’s how expensive it is- and those costs are 40% cheaper than private insurance would be.
There’s tension, between how much we want government to be able to do for us, and how much of that we’re willing to pay for. And that’s certainly a discussion we should be having, on a continual basis that we aren’t.
I see similar problems in discussions of the debt ceiling. A majority of Americans favor not raising the debt ceiling.
I understand those poll results, in the context that people conflate the debt with the budget. But the ceiling isn’t the budget. The ceiling is the credit card bill. These are things that previous Congresses approved, laws already enacted, spending already carried out. This is money owed, money that other people are expecting to come in- that individuals and businesses and potentially entire economies are counting on.
Part of the reason the financial crisis had such reverberations is that people who were responsible, who shouldn’t have been in trouble, suddenly weren’t being paid for services rendered. But the government is several times larger than any failed company- and the splash its default would make is tough to even comprehend.
But the worst problem is that even when the ceiling gets its eventual raise, this grandstanding about not raising the debt limit could drop our credit rating.
DI: Crap. And then our rates go up. And we enter the debt death-spiral basically anyone whose ever been poor or in college is familiar with- and that includes journalists who paid their way through school. But can’t not fixing our debt problems also destroy our credit?
B: This is definitely a danger. But what markets want is long-term sustainability. They want to see that the government is going to be able to keep paying it’s bills. One way to do that is to stop using the heat in the house. The other is to bring home more revenue.
And there’s nothing- save for the Republican leadership- saying we can’t try a combination of both. My preference has always been for finding ways that the government can be leaner, without destroying its ability to help its citizens. And frankly there are a lot of people out there who don’t pay their fair share of the taxes- largely because of a disparity of lobbying power.
DI: Okay, I think we’ve filled out space quota. But you know what happens whenever you rant politically, don’t you? We live-write some more Wonder Woman pilot. The last bit was here, but why don’t you give us a quick, “Last time one Wonder Woman” synopsis.
B: Last time, on Wonder Woman, she punched me through a window to safeguard a woman wanted in connection with a murder investigation. We open on Cale Pharmaceuticals, specifically their Gotham research facility. Diana is dressed in smart business attire, with her hair up in a bun.
DI: Sounds very naughty librarian.
B: She’s only there to observe. She’s with Detective Bullock, overweight and overbearing, with a cadre of uniformed officers. They’re investigating the claims about Kapatellis.
DI: You’re telling, not showing.
B: Diana watches as Veronica Cale, who flew there in her helicopter, argues with Bullock about the validity of his warrant. Her lawyer gave up minutes ago, but she’s still staring angrily at Bullock.
Bullock:
Amanda Waller, Department of Metahuman Affairs. She’s the person you’ll have to take that up with. The ambassador is here as a courtesy; the information for our warrant came from her embassy. Everything else, including the thousand dollar words and the ten-thousand dollar mouthpiece, are above my paygrade. Now if you’ll allow me through, I’d hate to have to charge you with obstruction.
Her lawyer nods, and Cale steps out of the way. Diana and Cale exchange an icy stare, but Diana plays her cards close to the vest. She believes Cale is up to something, but isn’t ready to stake her name and reputation on it. Yet.
We cut to cops looking through lab material. And cut again, to the cops leaving, tails between their legs. Cale is triumphant. Bullock is talking to Diana.
Bullock.
Nuthin.
Diana:
Nothing?
Bullock:
No Kapatellis, none of the equipment you expect to find, either. Looks clean.
Cale:
You were expecting, what? Frankenstein monsters and imprisoned orphans? This is a pharmaceutical company in Gotham, not the Liberal conception of a third world sweat shop. Now if you’re done, I have a business to run.
Bullock tips his hat at Cale.
Bullock:
Ma’am.
Are you going to join in anytime soon?
DI: Sorry. I was transfixed by that accent you were doing for Bullock.
B:
Lawyer:
Unless you require anything further, I can start drafting a harassment complaint against the Amazon.
She waves him away with her hand. The solid wall behind her shimmers, and a man, handsome and tall, steps through where it had been.
DI: Behind him, we can see indeed a grotesque menagerie of scientific and surgical apparatuses. Bathed largely in shadow is the face of a young woman.
Doctor:
They only saw what we wanted them to see.
B:
Cale:
Thank you, Edgar.
DI: We zoom in on that face in the background, as the woman eye opens wide, panicked and afraid. Cut to black.
B: And a commercial break?
DI: You aren’t that lucky. We’re back on the sidewalk. Diana exits the building. We see a black limousine parked on the curb.
B: Don’t.
DI: We here a man’s voice from offscreen, behind Diana.
Bruce:
Diana. I didn’t expect to see you back in Gotham so soon.
DI: She recognizes the voice, and smiles as she turns to see Bruce Wayne.
B:
Diana:
Bruce, how are the ribs?
Bruce:
Fine.
Diana:
You’re breathing heavily.
DI:
Bruce:
You have that effect on men.
B: I hate you.
Diana:
I’m sorry.
DI: He can’t let it go that easily. But then he smiles, wide, because they’re not alone anymore.
Bruce:
Always a pleasure, Madame Ambassador. And I’ll have my office get in touch with yours about that fundraiser.
You shake hands, and yours lingers, just a moment. There’s a lot in that handshake.
And now we mercifully go to commercial.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
I Can See Your Underpants
DI: Okay, now I have something to ask you. You’re usually a pretty practical guy. So I assume that even when you do something strange, you do it for a reason. So why did you where your underwear outside your pants.
B: You’ll have to be more specific. But if you’re talking about last New Years, I’d have to say liquor.
DI: Cute. But no, I’m talking about your costume. Black or blue underpants on the outside? Were you just trying to copy Clark, or what?
B: He has the excuse of it being a Kryptonian design. I, well, I needed extra support. And protection. The earliest costume I wore, which didn’t last long, was basically just a black unitard. That got replaced quite early on, because I kept getting hit in the balls. Even untrained criminals know to aim for the weak points, apparently. Even the costume that followed was basically still a unitard, only with several sheets of Kevlar sewn into the chest. The crotch padding was difficult, though, because without having the suit custom-sewn, it was going to cause a really odd crotch bulge. Alfred had the bright idea of making the padding part of a design that looked almost like underpants- I was afraid it would make me look like I was wearing a diaper, but it had the effect of leading the eyes away from the bulge. After I adopted a sleaker, more armored design to the costumes, it was pretty simple to conceal the padding, but at that point the design had become a part of the persona, and it kind of stuck. I’ve used hundred of different costumes through the years, so not all of them had the underpants design- but there it is. Mystery solved.
DI: But on that note, DC Comics, the subsidiary to Warner whom you and the League lease your license rights to for the sake of charity, are relaunching most of their books. And there’s apparently an editorial edict, one demanding that all of the female characters cover up their legs. Notably, this has effected characters like Zatanna- known popularly for her magical feats and fishnet leggings- though not necessarily in that order.
B: That’s a travesty.
DI: You say, as someone quite familiar with Zatanna and her leggings.
B: Careful.
DI: I don’t meant to imply anything by it. Just that you’re at the very least friendly with her. Colleagues. And I’m sure, as a connoisseur of the female form, you’ve at least taken in the sight.
B: She’s a friend. And we’ve worked together, extensively. She’s a hell of a magician- and she’s got some excellent legs- a fact I know she’s proud of.
DI: Really?
B: Of course. You can’t magic up legs like that. She works out. She shows them off because she’s proud of them. There’s also an element of distraction to it, too, but that isn’t all of it.
DI: Hmm. Because of a fairly recent change to her costume, at least in comics, Wonder Woman isn’t being affected. In fact, her costume change seems to be a precursor. What did you think about that, when it happened?
B: I agree with Gloria Steinem’s reaction, actually- which extends to the entire line. Making it so superheroes have to wear pants make it seem like only pants are powerful. Which is of course blatantly untrue. She cited the ancient Greeks, who basically wore armored skirts into battle, and sumo wrestlers. What’s more insidious, I think, is that it takes away choice from the equation. I think Diana said something similar, in her response about the MAC make-up collection she endorsed, but feminism should be about choice.
DC having the standard heroine costume be skimpy is sexist. Dictating that heroines cover-up, almost burqa-like, is just as sexist. It might make it harder to objectify them, but it’s no less sexist. And more to the point, the new costumes are still skin-tight, the art used on them still ridiculously over-accentuates the female form. There are lots of things DC could do to make their heroines both more realistic and healthier representations of femininity, but forcing all of them into pants is not one of them.
Speaking of Diana specifically, her usual outfit, the one-piece bathing suit, is the casual version. Her actual costume looks a lot like Greek armor- the one-piece is what she wears under all the leather armor. But unless she’s planning on being smacked around with a sword and a shield, wearing around the armor everywhere is impractical- not to mention uncomfortable. And she sweats in it. A lot.
DI: And nobody wants to buy BO Wonder Woman action figures.
B: No. And I know how that feels. I’ve got some armor that’s basically everything-proof; anything short of someone drop a Sherman tank on my head wouldn’t hurt. But my entire body smells like the inside of a marching boot for a week after wearing it.
DI: And is your opinion maybe the least bit biased by having spent time with women in phenomenal shape who seem to have a collective aversion to fabric.
B: Of course. I am an unapologetic admirer of the female body. Always have been. But I’m pretty sure that’s a biologic necessity- not something to feel ashamed of.
DI: Even though you came out?
B: Just because I’m no longer looking to buy a new sports car doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate ones that drive down the street.
DI: I can’t tell if you’re ironically objectifying women.
B: I’d say it’s more accurately categorized as a metaphor. Women are of course people, with thoughts, feelings, desires and the right to be treated with respect. But that doesn’t mean men can’t or shouldn’t appreciate the way they look, or how the way they look makes us feel. And vice versa. We’re all of us human beings, and our sexuality is very much a part of the experience of being human. It doesn’t make sense to deny that part of ourselves.
B: You’ll have to be more specific. But if you’re talking about last New Years, I’d have to say liquor.
DI: Cute. But no, I’m talking about your costume. Black or blue underpants on the outside? Were you just trying to copy Clark, or what?
B: He has the excuse of it being a Kryptonian design. I, well, I needed extra support. And protection. The earliest costume I wore, which didn’t last long, was basically just a black unitard. That got replaced quite early on, because I kept getting hit in the balls. Even untrained criminals know to aim for the weak points, apparently. Even the costume that followed was basically still a unitard, only with several sheets of Kevlar sewn into the chest. The crotch padding was difficult, though, because without having the suit custom-sewn, it was going to cause a really odd crotch bulge. Alfred had the bright idea of making the padding part of a design that looked almost like underpants- I was afraid it would make me look like I was wearing a diaper, but it had the effect of leading the eyes away from the bulge. After I adopted a sleaker, more armored design to the costumes, it was pretty simple to conceal the padding, but at that point the design had become a part of the persona, and it kind of stuck. I’ve used hundred of different costumes through the years, so not all of them had the underpants design- but there it is. Mystery solved.
DI: But on that note, DC Comics, the subsidiary to Warner whom you and the League lease your license rights to for the sake of charity, are relaunching most of their books. And there’s apparently an editorial edict, one demanding that all of the female characters cover up their legs. Notably, this has effected characters like Zatanna- known popularly for her magical feats and fishnet leggings- though not necessarily in that order.
B: That’s a travesty.
DI: You say, as someone quite familiar with Zatanna and her leggings.
B: Careful.
DI: I don’t meant to imply anything by it. Just that you’re at the very least friendly with her. Colleagues. And I’m sure, as a connoisseur of the female form, you’ve at least taken in the sight.
B: She’s a friend. And we’ve worked together, extensively. She’s a hell of a magician- and she’s got some excellent legs- a fact I know she’s proud of.
DI: Really?
B: Of course. You can’t magic up legs like that. She works out. She shows them off because she’s proud of them. There’s also an element of distraction to it, too, but that isn’t all of it.
DI: Hmm. Because of a fairly recent change to her costume, at least in comics, Wonder Woman isn’t being affected. In fact, her costume change seems to be a precursor. What did you think about that, when it happened?
B: I agree with Gloria Steinem’s reaction, actually- which extends to the entire line. Making it so superheroes have to wear pants make it seem like only pants are powerful. Which is of course blatantly untrue. She cited the ancient Greeks, who basically wore armored skirts into battle, and sumo wrestlers. What’s more insidious, I think, is that it takes away choice from the equation. I think Diana said something similar, in her response about the MAC make-up collection she endorsed, but feminism should be about choice.
DC having the standard heroine costume be skimpy is sexist. Dictating that heroines cover-up, almost burqa-like, is just as sexist. It might make it harder to objectify them, but it’s no less sexist. And more to the point, the new costumes are still skin-tight, the art used on them still ridiculously over-accentuates the female form. There are lots of things DC could do to make their heroines both more realistic and healthier representations of femininity, but forcing all of them into pants is not one of them.
Speaking of Diana specifically, her usual outfit, the one-piece bathing suit, is the casual version. Her actual costume looks a lot like Greek armor- the one-piece is what she wears under all the leather armor. But unless she’s planning on being smacked around with a sword and a shield, wearing around the armor everywhere is impractical- not to mention uncomfortable. And she sweats in it. A lot.
DI: And nobody wants to buy BO Wonder Woman action figures.
B: No. And I know how that feels. I’ve got some armor that’s basically everything-proof; anything short of someone drop a Sherman tank on my head wouldn’t hurt. But my entire body smells like the inside of a marching boot for a week after wearing it.
DI: And is your opinion maybe the least bit biased by having spent time with women in phenomenal shape who seem to have a collective aversion to fabric.
B: Of course. I am an unapologetic admirer of the female body. Always have been. But I’m pretty sure that’s a biologic necessity- not something to feel ashamed of.
DI: Even though you came out?
B: Just because I’m no longer looking to buy a new sports car doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate ones that drive down the street.
DI: I can’t tell if you’re ironically objectifying women.
B: I’d say it’s more accurately categorized as a metaphor. Women are of course people, with thoughts, feelings, desires and the right to be treated with respect. But that doesn’t mean men can’t or shouldn’t appreciate the way they look, or how the way they look makes us feel. And vice versa. We’re all of us human beings, and our sexuality is very much a part of the experience of being human. It doesn’t make sense to deny that part of ourselves.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Batman is a Dick
DI: You’re a dick.
B: And you’re stupid. What are we doing here?
DI: You’re insulting me, apparently.
B: Oh, and you’re ugly.
DI: Quit it. My point was you’ve developed a reputation for being… strident.
B: You just called me a dick. Why are you trying to walk it back now?
DI: I’m not, it’s just that I bought a thesaurus and want to justify my purchase through the gratuitous use of synonyms.
B: I don’t know if ‘strident’ is quite right.
DI: My thesaurus had no suggestions for ‘bite me.’ But you’ve got a habit of being frank.
B: Only when I get tired of being Bruce.
DI: So the one time I actually want to talk about you being a jerk, you’re doing shtick? Which I guess is pretty dicky. Kudos. But that kind of forthrightness, before I knew you were Bruce Wayne, I always figured it was from social ineptitude. But see, in your day to day, you’re witty, charming, personable- you know how to socialize, you just don’t like to. So where did that come from?
B: Well, when I first started out, it wasn’t a thing to put on a costume and punch people- I mean, outside of specific brothels that catered to that sort of thing in Amsterdam, anyway.
DI: Wait, are you saying you’ve frequented S & M clubs in Amsterdam?
B: Just that I’m familiar with them. Personally I’ve never had the time. Being the CEO of a multibillion multinational company, plus my preference for staying close to Gotham-
DI: Talk about that.
B: My parents were killed because of crime. My alter ego we’ll call him, was created to fight crime, to cut the odds of that ever happening to another little boy or girl. Every night that I stay outside of Gotham, is an opportunity for that to happen again. I can’t stop every crime- but if I was out there, on the streets, then I did my best. But if I wasn’t there because I was doing whatever in Holland- it’s just not even a choice for me.
DI: Okay. But as you were saying.
B: Right. When I first started training, there weren’t really superheroes- outside of the pulp stories, you know, the Phantom, the Shadow, Zorro. I think by the time Alfred had finished sewing my first costume Clark was flying around in that garish unitard, but he and I were the first on the scene- at least, the first we knew about. Later we met some of the older, retired heroes, your Jay Garricks and your Alan Scotts- the ones who came and went before our time.
DI: Should you be using their real names?
B: Well, the funny story there is, they were the original Flash and Green Lanterns. But later on, others took up their monikers. But they continued being personalities, particularly in the campaign for elderly rights, working with the AARP and the Justice Society, under their real names.
But Clark and I were the first in a masked man renaissance. Pretty shortly after we met Diana. And it wasn’t too long before we formed the Justice League, which I know Clark has talked about at length.
DI: And which we’ll have to, at some point.
B: But most of the people we met, they weren’t like Clark or Diana. They made me nervous, because they were both so powerful, yet so inexperienced. But they had carriage; almost from the start I always assumed they would both remain on the up and up.
But that didn’t go for all of the others we met. I don’t like shaming people I worked with, but Plastic Man is an idiot. He knows it. And despite any and all my efforts to get him to mature, just a little, he’ll probably always be an idiot. And I don’t suffer fools lightly. It might have been a game to people who suddenly found themselves with the power to alter matter, but for me, I was a normal person, easily damaged, as were most of the people we were working to help.
Or maybe it’s just that I watched my parents bleed out on a sidewalk. I was as intimate with the consequences of failing at our task as anyone could be. Even the idea that I might be made responsible for that happening to someone else made me see red. I still get a little pissy about it, honestly. It’s not a burden required of any of us, but once we took it up, we owed it to those we were trying to save to be professional and do what we could.
DI: So you were like the drill sergeant whose harsh, but only because he really cares?
B: I don’t know if I’d characterize it exactly like that.
DI: Okay, here’s your chance to define yourself, then. Do you think you’re a dick?
B: I think sometimes it makes sense to be terse. I think sometimes it’s helpful to have someone willing to make an unpopular decision.
DI: So you are a Dick- in the vein, no pun intended, of Dick Cheney!
B: I think the difference between me and the former Vice President is that I don’t relish it. I don’t go out of my way looking for reasons to be a dick.
Working in the league, there were a lot of people who didn’t have a military or police background, people who would have benefited from some formal training. Sometimes I had to come down on them, hard, before they managed to screw up in a catastrophic way, in public.
DI: So you’d say you lean more towards Darth Vader, then. Without the child-murdering, back-stabbing and general evil, obviously.
B: Then what’s left? My penchant for wearing black?
DI: And the heavy breathing. Kidding. Though you do have an almost James Earl Jonesy voice when you’re pissed off. Say, “Come to the dark side.”
B: No.
DI: How about, “Simba, you must bite your uncle.” Damn- I thought I’d remember something more specific from the Lion King.
B: If I admit to wishing I could force-choke people on occasion will you stop?
DI: Yes. Maybe.
B: I find your lack of clarity disturbing.
DI: Awesome. Chills. And goose bumps. Want to feel them?
B: No.
DI: Fair enough.
B: And you’re stupid. What are we doing here?
DI: You’re insulting me, apparently.
B: Oh, and you’re ugly.
DI: Quit it. My point was you’ve developed a reputation for being… strident.
B: You just called me a dick. Why are you trying to walk it back now?
DI: I’m not, it’s just that I bought a thesaurus and want to justify my purchase through the gratuitous use of synonyms.
B: I don’t know if ‘strident’ is quite right.
DI: My thesaurus had no suggestions for ‘bite me.’ But you’ve got a habit of being frank.
B: Only when I get tired of being Bruce.
DI: So the one time I actually want to talk about you being a jerk, you’re doing shtick? Which I guess is pretty dicky. Kudos. But that kind of forthrightness, before I knew you were Bruce Wayne, I always figured it was from social ineptitude. But see, in your day to day, you’re witty, charming, personable- you know how to socialize, you just don’t like to. So where did that come from?
B: Well, when I first started out, it wasn’t a thing to put on a costume and punch people- I mean, outside of specific brothels that catered to that sort of thing in Amsterdam, anyway.
DI: Wait, are you saying you’ve frequented S & M clubs in Amsterdam?
B: Just that I’m familiar with them. Personally I’ve never had the time. Being the CEO of a multibillion multinational company, plus my preference for staying close to Gotham-
DI: Talk about that.
B: My parents were killed because of crime. My alter ego we’ll call him, was created to fight crime, to cut the odds of that ever happening to another little boy or girl. Every night that I stay outside of Gotham, is an opportunity for that to happen again. I can’t stop every crime- but if I was out there, on the streets, then I did my best. But if I wasn’t there because I was doing whatever in Holland- it’s just not even a choice for me.
DI: Okay. But as you were saying.
B: Right. When I first started training, there weren’t really superheroes- outside of the pulp stories, you know, the Phantom, the Shadow, Zorro. I think by the time Alfred had finished sewing my first costume Clark was flying around in that garish unitard, but he and I were the first on the scene- at least, the first we knew about. Later we met some of the older, retired heroes, your Jay Garricks and your Alan Scotts- the ones who came and went before our time.
DI: Should you be using their real names?
B: Well, the funny story there is, they were the original Flash and Green Lanterns. But later on, others took up their monikers. But they continued being personalities, particularly in the campaign for elderly rights, working with the AARP and the Justice Society, under their real names.
But Clark and I were the first in a masked man renaissance. Pretty shortly after we met Diana. And it wasn’t too long before we formed the Justice League, which I know Clark has talked about at length.
DI: And which we’ll have to, at some point.
B: But most of the people we met, they weren’t like Clark or Diana. They made me nervous, because they were both so powerful, yet so inexperienced. But they had carriage; almost from the start I always assumed they would both remain on the up and up.
But that didn’t go for all of the others we met. I don’t like shaming people I worked with, but Plastic Man is an idiot. He knows it. And despite any and all my efforts to get him to mature, just a little, he’ll probably always be an idiot. And I don’t suffer fools lightly. It might have been a game to people who suddenly found themselves with the power to alter matter, but for me, I was a normal person, easily damaged, as were most of the people we were working to help.
Or maybe it’s just that I watched my parents bleed out on a sidewalk. I was as intimate with the consequences of failing at our task as anyone could be. Even the idea that I might be made responsible for that happening to someone else made me see red. I still get a little pissy about it, honestly. It’s not a burden required of any of us, but once we took it up, we owed it to those we were trying to save to be professional and do what we could.
DI: So you were like the drill sergeant whose harsh, but only because he really cares?
B: I don’t know if I’d characterize it exactly like that.
DI: Okay, here’s your chance to define yourself, then. Do you think you’re a dick?
B: I think sometimes it makes sense to be terse. I think sometimes it’s helpful to have someone willing to make an unpopular decision.
DI: So you are a Dick- in the vein, no pun intended, of Dick Cheney!
B: I think the difference between me and the former Vice President is that I don’t relish it. I don’t go out of my way looking for reasons to be a dick.
Working in the league, there were a lot of people who didn’t have a military or police background, people who would have benefited from some formal training. Sometimes I had to come down on them, hard, before they managed to screw up in a catastrophic way, in public.
DI: So you’d say you lean more towards Darth Vader, then. Without the child-murdering, back-stabbing and general evil, obviously.
B: Then what’s left? My penchant for wearing black?
DI: And the heavy breathing. Kidding. Though you do have an almost James Earl Jonesy voice when you’re pissed off. Say, “Come to the dark side.”
B: No.
DI: How about, “Simba, you must bite your uncle.” Damn- I thought I’d remember something more specific from the Lion King.
B: If I admit to wishing I could force-choke people on occasion will you stop?
DI: Yes. Maybe.
B: I find your lack of clarity disturbing.
DI: Awesome. Chills. And goose bumps. Want to feel them?
B: No.
DI: Fair enough.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Budgeting for Time
B: I know you hate it when I talk politics
DI: Personally, I’m fascinated- it’s just that I can hear the torrent of readers clicking away in either boredom or outright political hostility
B: But now that 40 Senate Republicans have voted in favor of it, it’s long past time we talk about the Ryan budget.
DI: Okay. But as compensation for the good folks for putting up with you, we add in another scene in our Wonder Woman pilot script.
B: Fine.
DI: But first, because not everyone spends as much time plugged into the political debate as you, give us the basics of what the Ryan budget is.
B: In a nutshell, what this plan does, is carve about 3 trillion dollars out of Medicare and Medicaid, and hand out about 3 trillion dollars to corporations and the rich in tax cuts. It’s practically a straight swap.
There are vague murmurs in the plan to do things to offset the tax cuts, namely ending tax breaks, but given the general hostility to those measures in the past, anything that isn’t carved in stone and signed in blood is about as believable as the promise of a unicorn pony for your birthday.
DI: So you’re saying because it’s harder to do, it just won’t get done?
B: I’m stating that by not even listing which tax breaks he wants to end, Ryan is signaling, discreetly, that he doesn’t really want to end any of them. But what’s shocking is that this isn’t coming from some lone nut- it isn’t one of those Ron Paul ideas. Paul Ryan is the guy they put in charge of the House Budget Committee. Under the auspices of the Republican party, he drafted this budget, and 235 out of 239 Republicans in the House voted for this budget; and now 40 Republican Senators. If the party had their way, this would be our country.
Now, you can make the argument that maybe they didn’t read the bill, that they were just following orders, but is that really a better outcome? Either those representatives are incompetent, or they’re vicious, bordering upon evil.
DI: There aren’t any supervillains in this debate to punch- but I seem to remember you mentioning something else; your background is in business, so as a businessman, how does this look to you?
B: As a budget, the absolute worst portion is the fact that it caps revenue. Capping at a historical average doesn’t make sense. The cost of our military, and of our healthcare, and of so many functions of our government, have gone up. And more than anything, it’s the cost of health care that’s expected to cause future budgetary issues. We do have a revenue issue- caused in large part by the Bush Tax cuts. I’d like to share a graph, here.
DI: Okay. But you said yourself earlier in the year that everyone was going to have to sacrifice. Isn’t the Ryan plan what sacrifice looks like?
B: For the poor and elderly, yes. And if our budget were that dire, maybe everyone would have to suffer to that extent. But this is America, and we’re still the richest country in the world. By miles. Our economy is almost 3 times the size of China’s, and is about the size of the economies of the entire European Union.
It’s entirely within our grasp to balance our budget without cutting these programs to the bone. The Progressive Caucus in the House put out a plan that balances the budget in a decade. During that time, it would cut the debt by 10%. I don’t want to belabor this too much, but it goes far beyond just. I’m not even making a case for this specific budget- merely that this budget is far more logical and centrist than the Ryan budget plan, and that we needn’t behave like we’re going from a first world to a third world nation.
This argument is about a different view of America. The Progressive budget attempts to keep the country’s position as a leader, not just financially, but as a leader in technology and ideas. It’s about securing our place in this century, comparable to our place in the last. I have sons- adopted, yes- but I love them enough that I don’t want to give them a diminished America. The Progressive budget proves we don’t have to- certainly not to the extent Ryan wishes.
Look, I don’t care if people don’t think the same way I do, I don’t care if they come to different conclusions. But we need to think these things through. We need to know what it is we’re endorsing when we vote. The fate of our nation is very much at stake, here.
DI: All right, monkey, you’ve had your say, now dance for the people.
B: Uh, where were we?
DI: We’d just gotten through that first opening moment with the interviewer, and Diana’s impassioned defense of force.
B: Right.
DI: Interviewer
I’d like to switch gears. You wear a lot of hats- most of them tiaras- but how do you balance your roles?
B: Diana considers.
Diana
It’s mostly a question of need, and of impact. Sometimes it means I have to make difficult decisions. But thankfully, most diplomatic meetings can be rescheduled, whereas interventions can’t. I really feel bad for Etta; she’s the one who gets yelled at by foreign secretaries while I’m out saving people.
DI: Interviewer
Well, the reason I ask this is because recently you were involved in an incident. The so-called Wellys Affair. If the reports are to be believed, this even put you at odds with the vigilante knows as Batman. Would you like to tell us more about that?
We cut to daytime. Her punching you through that second floor window in the embassy- I’m sure you remember the picture, the one that was on the front page of USA Today, starting our story in media res.
B: Thanks for that. We see Diana look out the hole where the window used to be. She’s full of fury, in that instant after she threw that punch that cracked a few of my ribs. She takes a breath, and she’s suddenly calm again. She steps through the hole, and floats gracefully down to the sidewalk where I landed. A pedestrian, several of whom have gathered, helps me up. We stay in my POV, because we want me not to be the story. Her expression is pained.
Diana
I’m sorry for that. But the embassy is my home. I won’t let anyone remove a political asylum seeker from Themiscyran sole- not even you.
DI: But you can’t help yourself, can you? You choke out:
Bruce
She’s a murderer.
B: I hope you enjoyed putting words in my mouth.
Diana
She’s under my protection. That’s all you need to know.
It becomes clear that the crowd isn’t just pedestrians, as several of the people begin asking Diana questions, and one of them starts taking pictures. One voice, a reporter we’re both familiar with, breaks through the crowd.
Lois
Lois Lane, Daily Planet. Diana. Are you saying, point of factly, that you are prepared to defend a murder suspect from justice, including other members of the League such as
Lois turns to gesture to me, but I’m grappling away. She turns back to Diana, hoping for an answer, but she’s already flying back inside the embassy.
DI: Wow. Now I’d buy that for a nickel. You think we’ve made enough story progression for a commercial break? After all, Wonder Woman is bound to sell mountains of tampons and panty hose. Do they still advertise panty-hose on TV? Am I dating myself with that?
B: We follow Diana back into the embassy. A young girl, Danielle Wellys, is terrified.
DI: You do have that effect on people.
B: Wellys
Is he gone?
DI: Diana
He won’t stay away. He can’t. I can’t protect you here indefinitely.
B: Not exactly what she said- but not a terrible guess, either.
Diana (cont’d)
So you need to tell me everything you can about Cale Pharmaceuticals.
DI: No way. Veronica Cale’s company?
B: You forgot, so far this is all based around something that happened- so we can use her name. And Cale Pharmaceuticals is just a tiny portion of Cale’s empire. But it was her first- her baby- and she takes its flagging business personally. She sees Diana’s successes as easy, and her own failures as tragic. In many ways, Veronica is the Lex Luthor to Diana’s Superman; but I feel for Veronica. Maybe because she hasn’t, to this date, committed massive atrocities against civilian populations. Though what she did to Kapatelis was a step in that direction.
DI: You’re getting ahead of yourself- and possibly spoiling things.
B: Sorry. Now we cut to a commercial break.
DI: All that build-up, to cut to a commercial?
B: Always leave the people wanting more, remember?
DI: Crap, that was supposed to be my line.
DI: Personally, I’m fascinated- it’s just that I can hear the torrent of readers clicking away in either boredom or outright political hostility
B: But now that 40 Senate Republicans have voted in favor of it, it’s long past time we talk about the Ryan budget.
DI: Okay. But as compensation for the good folks for putting up with you, we add in another scene in our Wonder Woman pilot script.
B: Fine.
DI: But first, because not everyone spends as much time plugged into the political debate as you, give us the basics of what the Ryan budget is.
B: In a nutshell, what this plan does, is carve about 3 trillion dollars out of Medicare and Medicaid, and hand out about 3 trillion dollars to corporations and the rich in tax cuts. It’s practically a straight swap.
There are vague murmurs in the plan to do things to offset the tax cuts, namely ending tax breaks, but given the general hostility to those measures in the past, anything that isn’t carved in stone and signed in blood is about as believable as the promise of a unicorn pony for your birthday.
DI: So you’re saying because it’s harder to do, it just won’t get done?
B: I’m stating that by not even listing which tax breaks he wants to end, Ryan is signaling, discreetly, that he doesn’t really want to end any of them. But what’s shocking is that this isn’t coming from some lone nut- it isn’t one of those Ron Paul ideas. Paul Ryan is the guy they put in charge of the House Budget Committee. Under the auspices of the Republican party, he drafted this budget, and 235 out of 239 Republicans in the House voted for this budget; and now 40 Republican Senators. If the party had their way, this would be our country.
Now, you can make the argument that maybe they didn’t read the bill, that they were just following orders, but is that really a better outcome? Either those representatives are incompetent, or they’re vicious, bordering upon evil.
DI: There aren’t any supervillains in this debate to punch- but I seem to remember you mentioning something else; your background is in business, so as a businessman, how does this look to you?
B: As a budget, the absolute worst portion is the fact that it caps revenue. Capping at a historical average doesn’t make sense. The cost of our military, and of our healthcare, and of so many functions of our government, have gone up. And more than anything, it’s the cost of health care that’s expected to cause future budgetary issues. We do have a revenue issue- caused in large part by the Bush Tax cuts. I’d like to share a graph, here.
DI: Okay. But you said yourself earlier in the year that everyone was going to have to sacrifice. Isn’t the Ryan plan what sacrifice looks like?
B: For the poor and elderly, yes. And if our budget were that dire, maybe everyone would have to suffer to that extent. But this is America, and we’re still the richest country in the world. By miles. Our economy is almost 3 times the size of China’s, and is about the size of the economies of the entire European Union.
It’s entirely within our grasp to balance our budget without cutting these programs to the bone. The Progressive Caucus in the House put out a plan that balances the budget in a decade. During that time, it would cut the debt by 10%. I don’t want to belabor this too much, but it goes far beyond just. I’m not even making a case for this specific budget- merely that this budget is far more logical and centrist than the Ryan budget plan, and that we needn’t behave like we’re going from a first world to a third world nation.
This argument is about a different view of America. The Progressive budget attempts to keep the country’s position as a leader, not just financially, but as a leader in technology and ideas. It’s about securing our place in this century, comparable to our place in the last. I have sons- adopted, yes- but I love them enough that I don’t want to give them a diminished America. The Progressive budget proves we don’t have to- certainly not to the extent Ryan wishes.
Look, I don’t care if people don’t think the same way I do, I don’t care if they come to different conclusions. But we need to think these things through. We need to know what it is we’re endorsing when we vote. The fate of our nation is very much at stake, here.
DI: All right, monkey, you’ve had your say, now dance for the people.
B: Uh, where were we?
DI: We’d just gotten through that first opening moment with the interviewer, and Diana’s impassioned defense of force.
B: Right.
DI: Interviewer
I’d like to switch gears. You wear a lot of hats- most of them tiaras- but how do you balance your roles?
B: Diana considers.
Diana
It’s mostly a question of need, and of impact. Sometimes it means I have to make difficult decisions. But thankfully, most diplomatic meetings can be rescheduled, whereas interventions can’t. I really feel bad for Etta; she’s the one who gets yelled at by foreign secretaries while I’m out saving people.
DI: Interviewer
Well, the reason I ask this is because recently you were involved in an incident. The so-called Wellys Affair. If the reports are to be believed, this even put you at odds with the vigilante knows as Batman. Would you like to tell us more about that?
We cut to daytime. Her punching you through that second floor window in the embassy- I’m sure you remember the picture, the one that was on the front page of USA Today, starting our story in media res.
B: Thanks for that. We see Diana look out the hole where the window used to be. She’s full of fury, in that instant after she threw that punch that cracked a few of my ribs. She takes a breath, and she’s suddenly calm again. She steps through the hole, and floats gracefully down to the sidewalk where I landed. A pedestrian, several of whom have gathered, helps me up. We stay in my POV, because we want me not to be the story. Her expression is pained.
Diana
I’m sorry for that. But the embassy is my home. I won’t let anyone remove a political asylum seeker from Themiscyran sole- not even you.
DI: But you can’t help yourself, can you? You choke out:
Bruce
She’s a murderer.
B: I hope you enjoyed putting words in my mouth.
Diana
She’s under my protection. That’s all you need to know.
It becomes clear that the crowd isn’t just pedestrians, as several of the people begin asking Diana questions, and one of them starts taking pictures. One voice, a reporter we’re both familiar with, breaks through the crowd.
Lois
Lois Lane, Daily Planet. Diana. Are you saying, point of factly, that you are prepared to defend a murder suspect from justice, including other members of the League such as
Lois turns to gesture to me, but I’m grappling away. She turns back to Diana, hoping for an answer, but she’s already flying back inside the embassy.
DI: Wow. Now I’d buy that for a nickel. You think we’ve made enough story progression for a commercial break? After all, Wonder Woman is bound to sell mountains of tampons and panty hose. Do they still advertise panty-hose on TV? Am I dating myself with that?
B: We follow Diana back into the embassy. A young girl, Danielle Wellys, is terrified.
DI: You do have that effect on people.
B: Wellys
Is he gone?
DI: Diana
He won’t stay away. He can’t. I can’t protect you here indefinitely.
B: Not exactly what she said- but not a terrible guess, either.
Diana (cont’d)
So you need to tell me everything you can about Cale Pharmaceuticals.
DI: No way. Veronica Cale’s company?
B: You forgot, so far this is all based around something that happened- so we can use her name. And Cale Pharmaceuticals is just a tiny portion of Cale’s empire. But it was her first- her baby- and she takes its flagging business personally. She sees Diana’s successes as easy, and her own failures as tragic. In many ways, Veronica is the Lex Luthor to Diana’s Superman; but I feel for Veronica. Maybe because she hasn’t, to this date, committed massive atrocities against civilian populations. Though what she did to Kapatelis was a step in that direction.
DI: You’re getting ahead of yourself- and possibly spoiling things.
B: Sorry. Now we cut to a commercial break.
DI: All that build-up, to cut to a commercial?
B: Always leave the people wanting more, remember?
DI: Crap, that was supposed to be my line.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Sir Charles
DI: Just to avoid any undue confusion from casual surfers with this title, I’m not looking to talk about the recent royal wedding; I wanted to bring up Charles Barkley (and the Round Mound of Rebound sounded a bit too dirty, to me).
B: I shudder to know why.
DI: Because he was quoted by the Washington Post, specifically talking about gays in the locker room. It was itself a reaction to Rick Welts, the President and CEO of the Phoenix Suns, coming out in a New York Times story.
B: Yeah, I know Rick. Socially, though- not personally.
DI: But, and given the general abrasiveness of Barkley’s persona, maybe this will come as a shock, but he didn’t really care about it. He even said he knew at least two of the three teams he played for had homosexual players, and still had excellent chemistry, excellent morale and played decently well enough. Barkley specifically said he was less critical of good gay players than he was of bad straight ones.
B: That’s very enlightened.
DI: He also mentions that he gets irritated when ESPN says that players can’t come out, that there would be open hostility to gay players in the lockers rooms. And that he doesn’t like being told how he thinks or feels. He knew there were gay players. And it’s unfair, maybe even stupid, to assume that most athletes couldn’t handle that reality.
B: You know, there’s something to that. In the League, some of the guys you’d think would be the most sensitive to the subject- or even the most hostile- were the ones who’d say, “So?” I think it’s just one of those things, where the first time someone showers in the same room as a gay person, there can be tension, and they’re a little leery, but as time goes on and nothing untoward happens, they get used to it. It becomes less of a thing.
DI: They acclimate.
B: Right.
DI: Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt so much as acceptance.
B: Exactly. Even understanding. I remember, and I won’t say his name, but a member of our League had a very outspoken reaction to one of our colleagues coming out. So outspoken, that he was almost sanctioned for it.
DI: Sanctioned? What would that have entailed?
B: Basically we told him that if he couldn’t at a minimum keep what amounted nearly to hate speech in check, he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the League.
And we kept him away from any of the known homosexuals, anytime we had missions. It’s one thing to ask someone to be civil, another entirely to put him into positions where he wasn’t comfortable. But on some of our bigger disaster responses, there’s no way to keep teams or individuals separate. So he ended up working with homosexual heroes in the field.
And last year, he ended up in an altercation, where a group of men were harassing a gay hero. And he intervened- loudly- on his behalf. He was very passionate. He’s got an explosive temper, so that’s maybe not surprising, but just being around gay people had helped him see that there wasn’t anything to hate there. And I’ve seen the same with Muslims, Jews- even women, actually, if you can believe that, in this day and age. People are uncomfortable with the unknown- until they get to know it. Then it becomes part of their experience, and mundane.
DI: To get back to Barkley just a moment, I think it all comes down to the locker room question, whether or not people feel comfortable showering around someone who thinks of them as a viable romantic candidate. Surely you’ve dealt with that in the League.
B: But that question itself is problematic, because inherently it implies that homosexuals are more promiscuous, to the point of pouncing on straight people without regard for the inappropriateness of a locker room come-on.
DI: But aren’t homosexuals more promiscuous? I mean, you’re probably a bad example, because when you were dating women you were a man-whore, and it seems now you’re more reserved, but in general, or maybe statistically.
B: But the statistics aren’t really the issue. Even if, and I don’t know that I’ve seen an untainted study to that effect, homosexuals are more promiscuous, that isn’t the same as being inappropriately sexually aggressive. And promiscuity likely comes, in part, from lacking the same kinds of social norms. Straight people are raised with the idyllic fairy tale of the picket-fenced house, the family with two and a half kids, and the virginal wedding. Gay people can’t have those things- though there are some available facsimiles like civil unions and adoption. But we’re still in the process of building the gay American dream.
But even beyond that, promiscuity isn’t the same as hitting on people in the restroom, or the showers, or the changing room, at work. And while we’re on the subject of inappropriate sexual expression, promiscuity and homosexuality are not the same as pedophelia, either.
DI: Whoa. I might play devil’s advocate, but I wasn’t-
B: You might not have been, and you’re likely smart enough not to, but the conflation can and does happen- far too frequently for it to be just a mistake. But for clarity, I’m going to say it again: being gay, even being gay and promiscuous, is not the same as inappropriate sexual expression. I understand that some people disagree with homosexuality, and might even consider it divergent, but even to them, it shouldn’t be hard to see the difference between divergent sex between consenting adults on the one hand and sexual molestation and harassment on the other.
DI: Trawling TNR, I came across more coverage of Barkley. I didn’t know he’s been mulling a Gubernatorial run in Alabama. He’s colorful, but I was actually a little surprised, I know, stereotyping athletes, but surprised at how wide and varied his ideas about politics are.
B: Yeah. Charles is an interesting and articulate guy.
DI: Throw in bright and clean and you can be just as offensive as the Vice President.
B: Please. Biden’s word-choice was problematic, but there wasn’t racial coding there.
DI: So one old white guy wants to give another old white guy a pass?
B: And the young white guy wants to get his ass kicked by an old white guy? If you give Biden reasonable doubt, that the meaning of clean was supposed to either imply clean-cut or to not have the baggage of a Jesse Jackson, then no, I don’t think it was racial coding. Joe doesn’t come from 1950s Mississippi, he’s from Delaware.
And what I’ve always taken away from the statement was him saying that Obama was a different kind of African American candidate- as opposed to Jackson or Sharpton- who wasn’t just running on a civil rights background; I think that was always the inherent issue with their candidacies- and by extension the candidacy of any mostly single-issue candidate.
DI: Though civil rights and race is more a point of view about issues than a single issue itself- but if you’re running as the African American candidate, who has fought for civil rights in your community, it does make it harder to win over voters outside of that group- especially when other groups often view civil rights as a zero sum game, where advancement for one group is at cost of another.
B: In that same ballpark, I assumed, back in 2007, I think it was, that Obama was sunk after people started openly questioning whether he was black enough.
DI: So do you think he is?
B: I think it’s an unbelievably stupid question. For one, any kind of a reductionist litmus test is absurd; it places a positive value on adhering to a stereotype. Am I rich enough? White enough? Gay enough? All pretty ludicrous questions.
DI: Then why were you concerned that the question was being asked about Obama?
B: Well, at the time he was still a relative unknown, politically. He’d only been on the national stage for three years. He’s a gifted speaker, and seemed like a smart enough guy. But if he couldn’t even solidify support amongst African Americans- a stronger voting bloc for the Democrats there isn’t, and who in the primary at least would have been more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt- I didn’t think he would be able to overcome Clinton. Of course, I now realize that was naïve. I was still giving the media more credit than it deserved for being relevant.
DI: So you’re saying the media isn’t relevant anymore?
B: I’m saying that its old position as a gatekeeper of information is no longer relevant- and that particularly today they aren’t even very good at it, anymore. The media has two basic goals in reportage: to inform and entertain. Both can get you ratings, though I think it’s fair to say entertainment value is king. But increasingly, media outlets chase entertainment like greyhounds after an electronic rabbit- and information is largely left to fend for itself. So the fact that a few people questioned Obama’s blackness- it was anecdotal, and in no way indicative of the general mood of African American voters- which meant it was even less relevant as a gauge of American voters in general.
DI: I want to go back, because as a journalist it’s always fun to accuse somebody of racism in the form of a question [with all due serendipitous apology to both David Gregory and Newt Gingrich]: why would you think African American voters would have a biased affinity for a black candidate?
B: Because statistics don’t lie: voters want to vote for people like themselves. This is true of race. Of gender. Of class. Even personality, to an extent. If Al Gore had been as personable as George W. Bush, he would have been President- way beyond the margin of a few hundred contested votes from Florida.
It’s not the only factor. Policies matter. Experience matters. Name recognition matters. But if a voter can connect themselves with a candidate, everything else is easier. And for African Americans, the pulled up by his bootstraps Obama from relative poverty and obscurity is certainly more relatable than the white-privileged Southern lawyer who stuck by her cheating President husband. Demographically, if Obama couldn’t win over African Americans, he could never have beaten Clinton, and would have fared even worse in the general. Not because African American votes are that large a bloc, but because if he can’t connect with those most likely to relate to him, then the chances of his relating to anyone are lower.
DI: And that’s not racist?
B: No, it’s evolutionary. We like people like us because those like us were more likely to help us survive. Those who didn’t group together fared poorer; those who grouped well thrived. But the easiest grouping, the most comfortable, is the familiar. You can trust them because they’re like you, and from nearby, and want similar things. It’s just a look back into man’s evolutionary history. Perhaps it’s a little… vestigial, at this point, but it doesn’t make it any less real.
And at the same time, in this country, it’s impossible to recognize that there are differences to growing up black in this country as opposed to white. It’s still fair to say there’s a black experience that, at least generally, differs from the white experience in America.
DI: But isn’t a lot of that the same kind of liberal apologia that you hear about African American crime rates?
B: There are no excuses. None. For going into crime. But it’s short-sighted and foolish not to look at the circumstances that create crime, and try to mitigate them. Because fighting crime is a losing battle. I’ve done it for years, and barely made a dent. But the work I’ve done with the poor, with youth centers and charities, with organizations that provide scholarships and educational resources- that work has done more actual, measurable good than all of my costumed exploits. Eight years ago I actually ahd Oracle start tracking the statistics, so I can say this is a fact: depriving crime the fertile soil of poverty in which to grow is the best way to stop it. Period. Whenever there’s need, there’s going to be crime.
DI: But also wherever there’s greed.
B: That’s true. But greed’s a tougher thing to stamp out; and ironically, greed is often what creates need in the first place. And greed is something for law enforcement to cope with; need is something we can all impact.
B: I shudder to know why.
DI: Because he was quoted by the Washington Post, specifically talking about gays in the locker room. It was itself a reaction to Rick Welts, the President and CEO of the Phoenix Suns, coming out in a New York Times story.
B: Yeah, I know Rick. Socially, though- not personally.
DI: But, and given the general abrasiveness of Barkley’s persona, maybe this will come as a shock, but he didn’t really care about it. He even said he knew at least two of the three teams he played for had homosexual players, and still had excellent chemistry, excellent morale and played decently well enough. Barkley specifically said he was less critical of good gay players than he was of bad straight ones.
B: That’s very enlightened.
DI: He also mentions that he gets irritated when ESPN says that players can’t come out, that there would be open hostility to gay players in the lockers rooms. And that he doesn’t like being told how he thinks or feels. He knew there were gay players. And it’s unfair, maybe even stupid, to assume that most athletes couldn’t handle that reality.
B: You know, there’s something to that. In the League, some of the guys you’d think would be the most sensitive to the subject- or even the most hostile- were the ones who’d say, “So?” I think it’s just one of those things, where the first time someone showers in the same room as a gay person, there can be tension, and they’re a little leery, but as time goes on and nothing untoward happens, they get used to it. It becomes less of a thing.
DI: They acclimate.
B: Right.
DI: Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt so much as acceptance.
B: Exactly. Even understanding. I remember, and I won’t say his name, but a member of our League had a very outspoken reaction to one of our colleagues coming out. So outspoken, that he was almost sanctioned for it.
DI: Sanctioned? What would that have entailed?
B: Basically we told him that if he couldn’t at a minimum keep what amounted nearly to hate speech in check, he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the League.
And we kept him away from any of the known homosexuals, anytime we had missions. It’s one thing to ask someone to be civil, another entirely to put him into positions where he wasn’t comfortable. But on some of our bigger disaster responses, there’s no way to keep teams or individuals separate. So he ended up working with homosexual heroes in the field.
And last year, he ended up in an altercation, where a group of men were harassing a gay hero. And he intervened- loudly- on his behalf. He was very passionate. He’s got an explosive temper, so that’s maybe not surprising, but just being around gay people had helped him see that there wasn’t anything to hate there. And I’ve seen the same with Muslims, Jews- even women, actually, if you can believe that, in this day and age. People are uncomfortable with the unknown- until they get to know it. Then it becomes part of their experience, and mundane.
DI: To get back to Barkley just a moment, I think it all comes down to the locker room question, whether or not people feel comfortable showering around someone who thinks of them as a viable romantic candidate. Surely you’ve dealt with that in the League.
B: But that question itself is problematic, because inherently it implies that homosexuals are more promiscuous, to the point of pouncing on straight people without regard for the inappropriateness of a locker room come-on.
DI: But aren’t homosexuals more promiscuous? I mean, you’re probably a bad example, because when you were dating women you were a man-whore, and it seems now you’re more reserved, but in general, or maybe statistically.
B: But the statistics aren’t really the issue. Even if, and I don’t know that I’ve seen an untainted study to that effect, homosexuals are more promiscuous, that isn’t the same as being inappropriately sexually aggressive. And promiscuity likely comes, in part, from lacking the same kinds of social norms. Straight people are raised with the idyllic fairy tale of the picket-fenced house, the family with two and a half kids, and the virginal wedding. Gay people can’t have those things- though there are some available facsimiles like civil unions and adoption. But we’re still in the process of building the gay American dream.
But even beyond that, promiscuity isn’t the same as hitting on people in the restroom, or the showers, or the changing room, at work. And while we’re on the subject of inappropriate sexual expression, promiscuity and homosexuality are not the same as pedophelia, either.
DI: Whoa. I might play devil’s advocate, but I wasn’t-
B: You might not have been, and you’re likely smart enough not to, but the conflation can and does happen- far too frequently for it to be just a mistake. But for clarity, I’m going to say it again: being gay, even being gay and promiscuous, is not the same as inappropriate sexual expression. I understand that some people disagree with homosexuality, and might even consider it divergent, but even to them, it shouldn’t be hard to see the difference between divergent sex between consenting adults on the one hand and sexual molestation and harassment on the other.
DI: Trawling TNR, I came across more coverage of Barkley. I didn’t know he’s been mulling a Gubernatorial run in Alabama. He’s colorful, but I was actually a little surprised, I know, stereotyping athletes, but surprised at how wide and varied his ideas about politics are.
B: Yeah. Charles is an interesting and articulate guy.
DI: Throw in bright and clean and you can be just as offensive as the Vice President.
B: Please. Biden’s word-choice was problematic, but there wasn’t racial coding there.
DI: So one old white guy wants to give another old white guy a pass?
B: And the young white guy wants to get his ass kicked by an old white guy? If you give Biden reasonable doubt, that the meaning of clean was supposed to either imply clean-cut or to not have the baggage of a Jesse Jackson, then no, I don’t think it was racial coding. Joe doesn’t come from 1950s Mississippi, he’s from Delaware.
And what I’ve always taken away from the statement was him saying that Obama was a different kind of African American candidate- as opposed to Jackson or Sharpton- who wasn’t just running on a civil rights background; I think that was always the inherent issue with their candidacies- and by extension the candidacy of any mostly single-issue candidate.
DI: Though civil rights and race is more a point of view about issues than a single issue itself- but if you’re running as the African American candidate, who has fought for civil rights in your community, it does make it harder to win over voters outside of that group- especially when other groups often view civil rights as a zero sum game, where advancement for one group is at cost of another.
B: In that same ballpark, I assumed, back in 2007, I think it was, that Obama was sunk after people started openly questioning whether he was black enough.
DI: So do you think he is?
B: I think it’s an unbelievably stupid question. For one, any kind of a reductionist litmus test is absurd; it places a positive value on adhering to a stereotype. Am I rich enough? White enough? Gay enough? All pretty ludicrous questions.
DI: Then why were you concerned that the question was being asked about Obama?
B: Well, at the time he was still a relative unknown, politically. He’d only been on the national stage for three years. He’s a gifted speaker, and seemed like a smart enough guy. But if he couldn’t even solidify support amongst African Americans- a stronger voting bloc for the Democrats there isn’t, and who in the primary at least would have been more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt- I didn’t think he would be able to overcome Clinton. Of course, I now realize that was naïve. I was still giving the media more credit than it deserved for being relevant.
DI: So you’re saying the media isn’t relevant anymore?
B: I’m saying that its old position as a gatekeeper of information is no longer relevant- and that particularly today they aren’t even very good at it, anymore. The media has two basic goals in reportage: to inform and entertain. Both can get you ratings, though I think it’s fair to say entertainment value is king. But increasingly, media outlets chase entertainment like greyhounds after an electronic rabbit- and information is largely left to fend for itself. So the fact that a few people questioned Obama’s blackness- it was anecdotal, and in no way indicative of the general mood of African American voters- which meant it was even less relevant as a gauge of American voters in general.
DI: I want to go back, because as a journalist it’s always fun to accuse somebody of racism in the form of a question [with all due serendipitous apology to both David Gregory and Newt Gingrich]: why would you think African American voters would have a biased affinity for a black candidate?
B: Because statistics don’t lie: voters want to vote for people like themselves. This is true of race. Of gender. Of class. Even personality, to an extent. If Al Gore had been as personable as George W. Bush, he would have been President- way beyond the margin of a few hundred contested votes from Florida.
It’s not the only factor. Policies matter. Experience matters. Name recognition matters. But if a voter can connect themselves with a candidate, everything else is easier. And for African Americans, the pulled up by his bootstraps Obama from relative poverty and obscurity is certainly more relatable than the white-privileged Southern lawyer who stuck by her cheating President husband. Demographically, if Obama couldn’t win over African Americans, he could never have beaten Clinton, and would have fared even worse in the general. Not because African American votes are that large a bloc, but because if he can’t connect with those most likely to relate to him, then the chances of his relating to anyone are lower.
DI: And that’s not racist?
B: No, it’s evolutionary. We like people like us because those like us were more likely to help us survive. Those who didn’t group together fared poorer; those who grouped well thrived. But the easiest grouping, the most comfortable, is the familiar. You can trust them because they’re like you, and from nearby, and want similar things. It’s just a look back into man’s evolutionary history. Perhaps it’s a little… vestigial, at this point, but it doesn’t make it any less real.
And at the same time, in this country, it’s impossible to recognize that there are differences to growing up black in this country as opposed to white. It’s still fair to say there’s a black experience that, at least generally, differs from the white experience in America.
DI: But isn’t a lot of that the same kind of liberal apologia that you hear about African American crime rates?
B: There are no excuses. None. For going into crime. But it’s short-sighted and foolish not to look at the circumstances that create crime, and try to mitigate them. Because fighting crime is a losing battle. I’ve done it for years, and barely made a dent. But the work I’ve done with the poor, with youth centers and charities, with organizations that provide scholarships and educational resources- that work has done more actual, measurable good than all of my costumed exploits. Eight years ago I actually ahd Oracle start tracking the statistics, so I can say this is a fact: depriving crime the fertile soil of poverty in which to grow is the best way to stop it. Period. Whenever there’s need, there’s going to be crime.
DI: But also wherever there’s greed.
B: That’s true. But greed’s a tougher thing to stamp out; and ironically, greed is often what creates need in the first place. And greed is something for law enforcement to cope with; need is something we can all impact.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Pilot Error
DI: So you might be happy to hear that the Wonder Woman pilot was scrapped.
B: I’d heard rumblings. But of the many issues I had with the show, I think one of the most important aspects should be why she signed off on it in the first place.
DI: And why do you think that was?
B: You forget, I know her. And she told me. She’s unintentionally built up this persona, this almost allegation in the public sphere, for perfection. She chided me for perpetuating, it, actually. But she isn’t perfect.
She has thoughts. And fears. And even inconsistencies. She wanted people to be able to see what and who she’s really like. Because I think there’s a perception out there, either that she’s the Venus de Milo, perfection in stone, or that she’s just “superhero Barbie.” Even her activism is treated with the same derision that movie stars speaking about politics is.
DI: Hmm. I think I want to try something different. Between the two of us, I’m a writer, and you’re intimately familiar with her. So let’s give writing her pilot a shot. Right now. In real time.
The framing device, because I’m a uncreative journalist, is an interview setting. It creates an easy context for us to get viewers into Diana’s head without cheesy voice-overs or even cheesier girls-night-outing.
But we open on Diana, sleeping.
B: She’s mussed, but still oddly beautiful. Even asleep.
DI: Overlaid, we hear the voice of another woman:
Interviewer
Walk us through your typical day.
Diana’s eyes flutter open.
B: Diana
I wake up around 7 am.
DI: Cut to the interviewer, in smart business attire, sitting in Diana’s office, comfortable and even welcoming, but with an aura of respectability- after all, it’s also an embassy.
Interviewer
So you do sleep?
B: Diana laughs.
Diana
Five or six hours a night.
DI: We cut back to Diana, rising from bed.
B: Diana (voice-over)
I used to exercise in the morning, jog through Central Park. But these days, I jump right into business. My morning secretary, Etta, has been up since five, and she briefs me on my day’s activities, and anything that happened overnight.
DI: Etta enters, and they converse, unheard.
B: Diana (voice-over)
We eat breakfast together, usually something light, bagels and sliced fruit.
DI: We see the things you’re describing happen, so I don’t have to keep interrupting.
B: Diana (VO)
Usually by nine there’s important embassy work, meeting with dignitaries.
DI: We cut back for a moment to the interview.
B: Diana
My position as an ambassador means I get to help solve world problems. It’s gratifying, but it’s also necessary; that’s why it comes at the beginning of my day- it’s where I have the least give.
DI: Cut back to her day.
B: Diana (VO)
From there, I usually proceed to fundraisers or events. I usually spend the bulk of my daylight hours volunteering. Broken up occasionally by having to intervene in a situation.
DI: Cut back.
Interviewer
You mean fight crime.
B: Cut to Diana in costume, hoisting a gunman’s hands over his head, using her lasso thrown over a fire escape as a fulcrum, as a gray-haired woman he was mugging acts surprised.
Diana (VO)
Some might call it that.
The sounds of the interview fade away, and the background sounds of New York City fade in.
DI: I didn’t realize she operates out of New York.
B: She’s an ambassador to the UN. Where else would she be?
DI: Good point.
B: But we see Diana talking to the gunman, who is young, and nods his head. The sound fades in on Diana speaking. She’s soft, and intense a moment later.
Diana
Life is a gift. I love life- and I hate taking its gift away.
The gunman by this point is remorseful- and just the tiniest bit afraid.
Diana
So tell me: have you seen the error in your ways?
The moment is tense, and when he finally speaks, he’s nearly crying.
Gunman
Yes.
Her lasso, still around his wrists, glows brighter. She loosens it, and lets him go.
Diana
Go.
DI: The old woman is still there. She’s less happy about the escaping hoodlum.
Bitty
You should have punched his damn head off.
B: Diana isn’t surprised by the reaction. She walks with the old woman a moment.
Diana
Revenge is an easy answer. But it leaves part of the question nagging- to be asked again. I pray your safety and health.
DI: Wait- does that actually work?
B: Shockingly enough, it does. It wouldn’t, for me. I would have knocked his fool head off. But Diana, she has a presence. A certain quality that when she says things like that, people listen. Really just sit up and take notice. I’m actually referring to something I saw one day. And at the time I was pissed at her. I thought she let a mugger go free only to stick a gun in somebody else’s face. And given my history, that pushed buttons. So I tracked the guy. On his way home, he pawned the gun. From his address, I got his name, and kept track of him. He works for the sanitation department now, not so much as a parking ticket since.
Her approach works. New York has recidivism rates as high as 65%. Educational programs like the one at Rikers can cut that by ten percent. But Diana, less than a third of the people she talks to recidivate. She isn’t perfect. But you can see it in everything about her, that she tries. She’s an example for people to strive for. She makes you really want to be better.
DI: But don’t you think that in a way she’s an unachievable goal? I mean, she isn’t technically human, even.
B: Maybe. But I would place her more in the category with Michael Phelps, people who are extraordinary, and beyond the reach of normal people- but should still be held up as goals, achievable or otherwise. But you’re derailing our pilot: we cut back to the interview.
Diana
By this point Etta has gone home for the day, and my evening secretary, Mala, takes over for her.
Interviewer
Mala- she’s Amazonian, like yourself, right?
Diana
Yes. Officially, she’s deputy ambassador. But effectively, she helps me with the day to day; she’s usually the person in the chair at the UN. But my evenings are largely taken up by charity and awareness dinners. It sounds more fantastic than it is: squeezing into a dress to shake hands with dignitaries or wealthy socialites.
DI: Interviewer
Like Bruce Wayne?
B: Diana
Bruce and I are friends.
DI: Interviewer
That isn’t what US Weekly said.
B: Diana
He’s a humanitarian and a philanthropist. And we’ve known each other for years. But we aren’t together.
DI: Interviewer
So that means US Weekly was wrong, and both you and Bruce are on the market.
B: Diana
I won’t speak for Bruce, but I don’t really have the time. For every charity event I attend, there were three I couldn’t because they conflicted. And with all the preventable suffering in the world, looking for love just isn’t a priority.
DI: Interviewer
Apparently not- if even a billionaire playboy doesn’t catch your eye. Er. Sorry. But it sounds like you have a very busy schedule. But what does Wonder Woman do for fun?
B: Diana pauses a moment to think, then smiles.
Diana
This. I enjoy spending time with people. When I get free time, I like to read, the classics, poetry. I have a soft spot for Aristophanes- my mother read me Lysistrata when I was a girl.
DI: Interview
Seems a little crass for children’s literature.
B: Diana
But it was informative. Themyscira was founded by women looking for a different way. The Amazons co-existed with men for centuries, but left, when Amazons decided that men would always seek war and conflict. My ambassadorship is the reverse, trying to reach out the olive branch we learned to live by.
DI: Interview
By hitting people in the face?
B: Diana
Sometimes force is the only way to achieve justice, and justice is the only way to achieve peace.
DI: Interviewer
When liberty comes with her hands dabbled in blood, it is hard to shake hands with her.
B: Diana
I agree. My methods are imperfect, and often imprecise. But they are a match for our imperfect world- one I hope to make better.
DI: I actually got a little goose-bumpy, there. And I know you weren’t speaking in your own voice, you were, for lack of a better word, channeling Diana.
B: Diana is what Robert Fulghum was talking about when he said, “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” That’s what Kelley missed.
DI: This was fun. We might even have to do it again.
B: I’d heard rumblings. But of the many issues I had with the show, I think one of the most important aspects should be why she signed off on it in the first place.
DI: And why do you think that was?
B: You forget, I know her. And she told me. She’s unintentionally built up this persona, this almost allegation in the public sphere, for perfection. She chided me for perpetuating, it, actually. But she isn’t perfect.
She has thoughts. And fears. And even inconsistencies. She wanted people to be able to see what and who she’s really like. Because I think there’s a perception out there, either that she’s the Venus de Milo, perfection in stone, or that she’s just “superhero Barbie.” Even her activism is treated with the same derision that movie stars speaking about politics is.
DI: Hmm. I think I want to try something different. Between the two of us, I’m a writer, and you’re intimately familiar with her. So let’s give writing her pilot a shot. Right now. In real time.
The framing device, because I’m a uncreative journalist, is an interview setting. It creates an easy context for us to get viewers into Diana’s head without cheesy voice-overs or even cheesier girls-night-outing.
But we open on Diana, sleeping.
B: She’s mussed, but still oddly beautiful. Even asleep.
DI: Overlaid, we hear the voice of another woman:
Interviewer
Walk us through your typical day.
Diana’s eyes flutter open.
B: Diana
I wake up around 7 am.
DI: Cut to the interviewer, in smart business attire, sitting in Diana’s office, comfortable and even welcoming, but with an aura of respectability- after all, it’s also an embassy.
Interviewer
So you do sleep?
B: Diana laughs.
Diana
Five or six hours a night.
DI: We cut back to Diana, rising from bed.
B: Diana (voice-over)
I used to exercise in the morning, jog through Central Park. But these days, I jump right into business. My morning secretary, Etta, has been up since five, and she briefs me on my day’s activities, and anything that happened overnight.
DI: Etta enters, and they converse, unheard.
B: Diana (voice-over)
We eat breakfast together, usually something light, bagels and sliced fruit.
DI: We see the things you’re describing happen, so I don’t have to keep interrupting.
B: Diana (VO)
Usually by nine there’s important embassy work, meeting with dignitaries.
DI: We cut back for a moment to the interview.
B: Diana
My position as an ambassador means I get to help solve world problems. It’s gratifying, but it’s also necessary; that’s why it comes at the beginning of my day- it’s where I have the least give.
DI: Cut back to her day.
B: Diana (VO)
From there, I usually proceed to fundraisers or events. I usually spend the bulk of my daylight hours volunteering. Broken up occasionally by having to intervene in a situation.
DI: Cut back.
Interviewer
You mean fight crime.
B: Cut to Diana in costume, hoisting a gunman’s hands over his head, using her lasso thrown over a fire escape as a fulcrum, as a gray-haired woman he was mugging acts surprised.
Diana (VO)
Some might call it that.
The sounds of the interview fade away, and the background sounds of New York City fade in.
DI: I didn’t realize she operates out of New York.
B: She’s an ambassador to the UN. Where else would she be?
DI: Good point.
B: But we see Diana talking to the gunman, who is young, and nods his head. The sound fades in on Diana speaking. She’s soft, and intense a moment later.
Diana
Life is a gift. I love life- and I hate taking its gift away.
The gunman by this point is remorseful- and just the tiniest bit afraid.
Diana
So tell me: have you seen the error in your ways?
The moment is tense, and when he finally speaks, he’s nearly crying.
Gunman
Yes.
Her lasso, still around his wrists, glows brighter. She loosens it, and lets him go.
Diana
Go.
DI: The old woman is still there. She’s less happy about the escaping hoodlum.
Bitty
You should have punched his damn head off.
B: Diana isn’t surprised by the reaction. She walks with the old woman a moment.
Diana
Revenge is an easy answer. But it leaves part of the question nagging- to be asked again. I pray your safety and health.
DI: Wait- does that actually work?
B: Shockingly enough, it does. It wouldn’t, for me. I would have knocked his fool head off. But Diana, she has a presence. A certain quality that when she says things like that, people listen. Really just sit up and take notice. I’m actually referring to something I saw one day. And at the time I was pissed at her. I thought she let a mugger go free only to stick a gun in somebody else’s face. And given my history, that pushed buttons. So I tracked the guy. On his way home, he pawned the gun. From his address, I got his name, and kept track of him. He works for the sanitation department now, not so much as a parking ticket since.
Her approach works. New York has recidivism rates as high as 65%. Educational programs like the one at Rikers can cut that by ten percent. But Diana, less than a third of the people she talks to recidivate. She isn’t perfect. But you can see it in everything about her, that she tries. She’s an example for people to strive for. She makes you really want to be better.
DI: But don’t you think that in a way she’s an unachievable goal? I mean, she isn’t technically human, even.
B: Maybe. But I would place her more in the category with Michael Phelps, people who are extraordinary, and beyond the reach of normal people- but should still be held up as goals, achievable or otherwise. But you’re derailing our pilot: we cut back to the interview.
Diana
By this point Etta has gone home for the day, and my evening secretary, Mala, takes over for her.
Interviewer
Mala- she’s Amazonian, like yourself, right?
Diana
Yes. Officially, she’s deputy ambassador. But effectively, she helps me with the day to day; she’s usually the person in the chair at the UN. But my evenings are largely taken up by charity and awareness dinners. It sounds more fantastic than it is: squeezing into a dress to shake hands with dignitaries or wealthy socialites.
DI: Interviewer
Like Bruce Wayne?
B: Diana
Bruce and I are friends.
DI: Interviewer
That isn’t what US Weekly said.
B: Diana
He’s a humanitarian and a philanthropist. And we’ve known each other for years. But we aren’t together.
DI: Interviewer
So that means US Weekly was wrong, and both you and Bruce are on the market.
B: Diana
I won’t speak for Bruce, but I don’t really have the time. For every charity event I attend, there were three I couldn’t because they conflicted. And with all the preventable suffering in the world, looking for love just isn’t a priority.
DI: Interviewer
Apparently not- if even a billionaire playboy doesn’t catch your eye. Er. Sorry. But it sounds like you have a very busy schedule. But what does Wonder Woman do for fun?
B: Diana pauses a moment to think, then smiles.
Diana
This. I enjoy spending time with people. When I get free time, I like to read, the classics, poetry. I have a soft spot for Aristophanes- my mother read me Lysistrata when I was a girl.
DI: Interview
Seems a little crass for children’s literature.
B: Diana
But it was informative. Themyscira was founded by women looking for a different way. The Amazons co-existed with men for centuries, but left, when Amazons decided that men would always seek war and conflict. My ambassadorship is the reverse, trying to reach out the olive branch we learned to live by.
DI: Interview
By hitting people in the face?
B: Diana
Sometimes force is the only way to achieve justice, and justice is the only way to achieve peace.
DI: Interviewer
When liberty comes with her hands dabbled in blood, it is hard to shake hands with her.
B: Diana
I agree. My methods are imperfect, and often imprecise. But they are a match for our imperfect world- one I hope to make better.
DI: I actually got a little goose-bumpy, there. And I know you weren’t speaking in your own voice, you were, for lack of a better word, channeling Diana.
B: Diana is what Robert Fulghum was talking about when he said, “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.” That’s what Kelley missed.
DI: This was fun. We might even have to do it again.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Holy Terror
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)