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Arts and Culture

WSJ: Bush Is Just Like Batman

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Posted on Jul 25, 2008
Dark Knight
wbcn.com

W, is that you?: “The Dark Knight” looms large in this promotional poster for the film.

Right, so it was clear that things were going to change a bit at The Wall Street Journal when it became a part of the Murdochian Empire, but this is a little much: In this somewhat startling essay, Andrew Klavan sees a “W” where others see Batman’s bat symbol in “The Dark Knight” and believes the film is a “paean of praise” to President Bush.


The Wall Street Journal:

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a “W.”

There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society—in which people sometimes make the wrong choices—and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

“The Dark Knight,” then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year’s “300,” “The Dark Knight” is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

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By Morgue, April 3, 2012 at 1:35 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

All I can say to this is LOL, you tard.

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By cyrena, August 4, 2008 at 8:44 am Link to this comment

Well, I’m only just getting around to reading this, seeing as how I’m really not into batman. (although I do see several excellent comments here).

Anyway, based on the comments, this seems as good a place as any to post these video links. I stumbled across them after linking to several from the Sy Hersh piece, and one thing just led to another. I’d never seen these videos before.

I admit that I’m a bit skeptical of the first one. NOT because I wouldn’t expect this from him, (I would) but just because I can’t imagine how it could ever have fallen into ‘unauthorized hands’ or made it onto youtube.

The other two are definitely the real thing.

Rare (Banned) Bush Speech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fws4RxWtnOg

The BEST Speech (ever) From George W Bush. It’s great! smile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjmLE7paJU8&feature=related

He’s Drunk Here…AGAIN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaDtbO9BimM

Meantime, one thing I *DID* notice here in the article that fits the W profile.. At the top there, it says “World Without Rules”. That’s W alright.

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By Ga, August 2, 2008 at 7:51 pm Link to this comment

It is not surprising that some dumb right-wing nut makes the “Batman” connection to Dubya. Batman is entirely fiction, make believe, fantasy, not real. Dubya and Cheney et. al. personify the fantasy world that the Right Wing lives in.

Right Wingers always are pointing to movies that they do not like as examples of the degrdation of society, and point to movies they do like as examples of their correctness. Funny isn’t it, how they seem to like dark movies in which many people get killed…

More funny is that movies that bring up things like justice and integrity and honor and love are always denounced by them.

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By thebeerdoctor, August 2, 2008 at 9:33 am Link to this comment

Chris Hedges recent lament about the decline of newspapers did not mention what has happened to the Wall Street Journal. There was a time when there was a separation wall between news and the editorial page. It was from the WSJ I first learned that Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton when they using slave labor for a pipeline in Burma. In fact, some of the best journalism could be found there, but no more. Rupert, the ex-Australian media pirate has destroyed it. Another fine example of Gresham’s law.

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By djinni, August 1, 2008 at 2:17 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I haven’t seen the movie, but based on the fact that both are known to make jokes over the deaths of people (on a small scale (I.E. Karla Faye Tucker) or a large scale (Iraqi WMD)), I see more resemblance between Bush and the Joker. (Which would make the media (at least the guests at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner) his henchpeople…)

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By robertr, August 1, 2008 at 9:05 am Link to this comment

I just saw the movie last night and it certainly doesn’t hold up as a right-wing defense of Bush, as Klavan would have us believe. I would define the film’s position, if it has one, as equivocal or conflicted, like Batman himself, on the issue of taking the law into one’s own hands and of employing extralegal means to fight criminality. Batman, of course, is a vigilante and always has been. He is also a character in a comic book and in films based on a comic book. Bush, alas, is not, although he sometimes seems to be. I have to agree with Klavan on one point, however. I saw “300” and thought it was a thinly-disguised defense of the invasion of Iraq, although I have been known to make too much of things. One other point: In “The Dark Knight,” Batman beats the crap out of The Joker to get information out of him about two characters who have been kidnapped. The Joker gives him the information, but based on the result I wouldn’t say it was a successful interrogation. The movie and life are a little more complicated than Klavan would have us believe. Perhaps he should see the movie again (or once, because I’m not sure he has seen it at all)and rethink his position.

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By GW=MCHammered, August 1, 2008 at 8:14 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Batman’s fiction. Bush is why America’s going out of business!

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By Mary, July 31, 2008 at 3:48 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Andy boy,
Either you drank the Koolaid or you are preparing to write another book.  Either way, stop scaring children and leave batman alone. 
There are so many lies in this world that truth no longer exists and all we have left is the idea of truth from the experience of our elders such as Gandhi as evidenced in his autobiography “My experiments with truth”.  I suggest you read it and maybe some clarity will come to you as far as who George W. Bush really is (a creep)and who all his followers are (more creeps)that destroyed this country along with many others (Iraq, etc…) Why don’t you do something productive like work on impeaching W?
Mary

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By Muscleboy, July 31, 2008 at 12:34 am Link to this comment

Yes Bush is exactly just like Batman.  He comes into office trying from day one to fabricate a reason to invade Afghanistan and Iraq—works with his neocon cohorts to devise the 9/11 fraud and then goes onto invade Afghanistan and Iraq based upon the fraud and fabricated threat evidence all of which was publicly denied by all the intelligence services of the USA including the CIA which publicly said Iraq was no threat to the US.

Then he goes in sacrificing our young bright soldiers for these frauds and steals vast amounts of money from the US treasury in so doing.  Aside from mass murdering millions of Iraqis and destroying Iraq he has also done massive damage to the US image and it’s economy by not only stealing from the treasury but stealing from the future with massive deficit spending.

Oh and picking up largely innocent Islamic peoples and subjecting them to methods of torture which were designed to solicit false confessions… e.g. confessions supporting his fraud…. Yes he’s exactly like Batman… How ridiculous. 

The Wall Street Journal is now officially a scum rag.

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By Wayno, July 30, 2008 at 11:32 am Link to this comment

Klavan may have a point here…but he has the wrong caped crusader…W should be 60’s TV’s campy Batman, Adam West…clunky graphics, primitive special effects…in other words, not reality-based.

Of course, an argument could be made for Bush as Frank Gorshin’s 60’s TV’s Joker character, because as we all know, every clown has a “W” in it.

As a matter of fact, how do we know the author isn’t Cheer’s Cliff Klavan, kind of a know-it-all without the “know…”

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By Wayno, July 30, 2008 at 11:18 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I can see Klavan’s logic here, but he has the wrong Batman…W is Adam West of 60’s TV Batman fame…with the hokey sound effects and campy freeze motion visuals…In other words, not reality based.

Of course he could also be the 60’s TV Joker.
After all, every clown has a W in the middle.

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By Louise Labarre, July 29, 2008 at 1:07 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

“Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth?” The answer is that conservatives are deluded in thinking they know THE TRUTH. Living in a fantasy world, they can only make their vices appear as virtues in fantasy movies, and in its closely related genre: Murdoch news media.

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By Allan Scheer, July 29, 2008 at 5:38 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Great article.

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By rowdy, July 28, 2008 at 9:35 pm Link to this comment

laughed my ass off reading this shit.i seem to recall hitler loved puppies and believed he was doing good works too.

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By peter pintacura, July 28, 2008 at 9:33 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

what a maroon

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By VietnamVet, July 28, 2008 at 11:15 am Link to this comment

The unfortunate thing here is Batman is in a world of make believe, while Bush is in OUR world of reality. Bush is a disgrace to this great Nation and has been every since he was elevated to that high office. What he has done TO this great nation makes Nixon look like a real statesman! It will take decades to rectify the damage he has heaped on the nation. He will go down in history as, without any doubt whatsoever, the worst president this nation has had to suffer through.

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By roadkill, July 28, 2008 at 5:50 am Link to this comment

well it has certainly been a long, “dark night” for the rest of us. . .

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By Allan J Krueger, July 27, 2008 at 5:36 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

I won’t appreciate much until THE DECIDER and the rest of his gang, are on trial for war crimes! This putz is delusional - good thing there is no “W” in that sentence!

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By Eric L. Prentis, July 27, 2008 at 3:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

In reality, rather than WSJ Republican fantasy, the question is whether President Bush is a batty man or has bats in his belfry.

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By BobZ, July 27, 2008 at 3:16 pm Link to this comment

WSJ for the most part can be safely ignored - it will not lend any insights other than to promote Bush White House talking points and Republican party ideology. If you want to know where the Republican Party is coming from, you can pick up most of these business rags and get a good laugh or two. Recently Businessweek ran an article on how hard it was to get by on $ 250,000 a year, in response to Obama saying he would raise taxes on those making over that amount. The writers of this tripe live in a different universe than the rest of us.

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By jackpine savage, July 27, 2008 at 6:12 am Link to this comment

It doesn’t look like a damned W, it looks like a bat.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  But fascists have a deep, Freudian need for symbolism.

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By Fathoms, July 27, 2008 at 3:47 am Link to this comment

The notion that George W. Bush is some sort of a doppelganger for Batman would be a hoot if it weren’t so pathetic.
The proper answer to, “What character from Batman does GWB most resemble?” would be The Joker if Bush were smarter and didn’t lie so much.

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By ALM, July 26, 2008 at 6:42 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Mr. Klavan apparently saw the flaming bat on the movie poster and ignored the rest of the movie—in fact, Batman does not sink to the level of the criminals he confronts. In the end, he rejects the Joker’s cynical (and perhaps more realistic) assessment of humanity, and refrains from killing a homicidal psychopath. He even, at one point, puts away his Batsuit, convinced he cannot compete with the criminals while remaining above their tactics. George W. Bush has filled most Americans with deep disquiet and many with outright shame. He is nothing like Batman: he lost his claim to the moral high-ground Batman manages to cling to, however tenuously, when he authorized the use of torture and the violation of numerous international human rights. The minute they could, people in the current Administration threw aside the rule book and turned to methods that are not only unconscionable, but patently and demonstrably useless. If torture actually helped us fight terrorism, maybe more people would get behind abominations like Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. But, as history and current jurisprudence have shown us time and again, a man will confess to anything under torture.

This is an appalling and bizarre editorial from a member of a previously reasonable and respected newspaper. What are they thinking???

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By KPinSEA, July 26, 2008 at 2:54 pm Link to this comment

Mr. Klavan seems determined to prove that the Joker, compared to some, is a rational guy.

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By Political Insurgent, July 26, 2008 at 2:49 pm Link to this comment

Holy Ludicrousness, Batman! But I actually kinda see some truth in it. “The Caped CRUSADER”, dubya, I mean, does seem to fancy himself to be carrying the White Man’s Burden, I suppose, “civilizing” all the little savage, barbarous natives of far-away oil rich lands by taking their resources away from them and spreading the White Man’s Culture and Religion. Yes, I actually see what Mr. Klavan is saying. 

Holy New World Order, Batman! Who cares about morals and justice and social order when there are hundreds of little dusty people with turbans in the desert, just waiting to sink their fangs into the White Man’s civilization? These people can’t govern themselves, so why don’t WE govern them ALL?!?!?

Holy Collapsing Economy, Batman! The Arab war-machine is out to get us and they must be vanquished. Quickly, let us sink zillions into war and make the Middle East a smoking crater before they catch on to the fact that we’re trying to systemically take over their land and destroy their culture! And let’s pay off all the corporate debts while we’re at it. Don’t worry about the whining masses of unemployed and homeless American citizens. They’ll thank us later.

EE-HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEEEE!!

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By webbedouin, July 26, 2008 at 2:40 pm Link to this comment

HEY ROBERT!!!

Did’ja miss this???

Murdock strikes again…

Ex-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan exposed Fox News as a propaganda tool for the White House on Chris Mathews Hardball.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-OpIXfXKO8

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By purplewolf, July 26, 2008 at 11:13 am Link to this comment

Just noticed at the top of the poster:

  “WELCOME TO A WORLD WITHOUT RULES”

Yep, that sounds like Lord Bush. Constantly making and changing the rules of the game until he comes out on top. In other words, he cheats.

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By purplewolf, July 26, 2008 at 11:01 am Link to this comment

Louise, they are also short on integrity and insight.

nrobi, you forgot the National Enquirer, Star and the rest of the scandal rags out there for the entertainment of the masses.

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By Louise, July 26, 2008 at 8:23 am Link to this comment

W can be found everywhere, that’s one of the fun things about being able to read.

Wee-wee, whine, worthless, white, wimpy, wealth, war ...

Likewise, there’s no shortage of words starting with I. However, in the right-wing press, Intelligence is in short supply. As so clearly demonstrated by the really strange fellow who wrote this article.

Of course Batman, in fact the whole concept of super hero’s doesn’t work in the real world, and there’s only one reason. It’s not about moral versus amoral. It’s not about right versus wrong [Wrong, another W word, by the way] It’s not even about the limits placed on production by the budget. It’s simply this ... 6 billion people and their associate problems can not be addressed by one single person ... super or not.

Not even that ‘w’ who suffers from the pathetic illness that tells him he can do no wrong. No not even THAT ‘w’ can grasp the wide ranging complexities that lead to violence. If he could, that silly little dubya, never would have started a war he couldn’t finish.

So who reads the Wall Street Journal?

Well for starters, those wealthy repubs, who daily check to see how much more of their bottom line has disappeared? Thanks in no small measure to the policies in the whacky world of W! smile

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By tp, July 26, 2008 at 5:01 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Yea.
I haven’t seen this film and now I doubt I will. The image of Bush’s imagination working overtime on his megalomaniac inner batman is horrifying. The world trembles because he has his finger on that little red button now. I hope he don’t see the movie untill he is at least “”“"removed”“” from office.
And I agree with NROBI that WSJ has sunk to the tabloid level of insider trading.
tp

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By nrobi, July 26, 2008 at 4:24 am Link to this comment

Is this the level of opinion and paeans of praise that we can now expect of the WSJ? 
I am horrified that this most honored and well thought of paper has now sunk to the level of depravity of the New York Post. For this opinion, rightly belongs in that rag of a “newspaper” the New York Post.
Yet here is this piece of drivel, written not for the discerning and excellent minds that have read the Wall Street Journal for many years, but an “opinion” that cannot even claim to belong in such an honored paper.
I, can see that the WSJ is now going to be something that will not be worth the powder to blow it up with.  The WSJ will now be known as nothing more than apologists for the administration of the shrub and the self-aggrandizing lives of those who think that the powers of a “war-time” president, can and do include the suspension of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
For many years, even though the WSJ, was certainly a conservative mouthpiece, I would read it not only for the financial news but for the insightful opinions that were from time to time slipped through into their opinion section. Now, no more! 
I can see that the WSJ has been corrupted to the point that they are nothing more than the NY Post wrapped in an honorable and old tradition of real news. This is frightening in the most meaningful way, Rupert Murdoch, has taken a once great newspaper and made it nothing more than Fox News Lite. 
Without doubt, it will be a long time, if ever, that I read the WSJ again.

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By webbedouin, July 25, 2008 at 10:05 pm Link to this comment

Yeah and Rupert Murdock is Robin…

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By purplewolf, July 25, 2008 at 8:01 pm Link to this comment

I know these old rich guys wrecking the country are delusional, but this is quite a stretch to see a “W” in the batman symbol. It is clearly the letter “V”. What did you get an American education, can’t tell the difference between a W and a V.

And since when did Bush have any moral anything, let alone courage?

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By BlueEagle, July 25, 2008 at 6:23 pm Link to this comment

Silly rabbit… Bush is the Joker… they both have the same evil laugh - he he he.

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