Exposed: Batman's liberal bias and Mitt Romney's anticapitalism

[bemildred]

Time for another instalment in an occasional series. It's a longstanding strangeness of American political commentary that the nation's most prominent pundits, day after day, fill their columns and airtime with questions to which the answers are – to any non-pundit human – really rather obvious. It is this blog's mission to help bridge the chasm of partisanship by providing answers to these queries as they arise.

Question: "Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie [The Dark Knight Rises] is named Bane?" (Rush Limbaugh, 17 July)

Answer: Yes. It's well known that Limbaugh, as a responsible commentator, is at pains to avoid promulgating brain-bendingly stupid conspiracy theories designed solely to further the cause of conservatism, so I know he'll be grateful for the following three pointers. First, Bane as a Batman character first appeared in a storyline in 1993, before Mitt Romney ever ran for elected office.

Second, "bane" is a fairly common English word meaning "killer", "poison" or "a source of harm or ruin", so it's actually quite surprising that it was as recently as 1993 that someone finally decided to use it as a name for a villain in a superhero series. Third, Bane's creator describes himself as a "staunch conservative" and a "life-long rightwing extremist", further reducing the likelihood that Bane is part of an anti-Romney plot involving time-travelling liberals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/19/batman-liberal-bias-mitt-romney-anticapitalism?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fmedia%2Frss+%28Media%29

[LongTomH]

1. Of course, most superheroes are Liberals!

They go around doing good for other people, not themselves. Superman for example. He's been described as being "a champion of the oppressed," whose "values were solidly New Deal." In his career, he's taken on slumlords, arms dealers, even the Ku Klux Klan.

Add in the fact that he was created by two poor Jewish boys: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. His Kryptonian name, Kal-el has strong Judaic roots.

A Jewish friend of mine believes Superman was created to counteract the Nazi myth of the Aryan superman (ubermensch), which of course the Nazis borrowed from Nietzsche.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

2. Yesterday, Limbaugh tried to deny having said it

Since even conservatives were laughing at Limbaugh for this stupidity, Limbaugh is trying to pretend that liberals are lying about him saying it. Of course, he did say it, and is now lying about having said it.