Batman and Bush: Both Begin With the Letter "B" Drew Grant | Bio

You guys remember when The Dark Knight came out two weeks ago and everyone was like, "Oooh, this film is going to be the best film because of Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker?" But then it turned out that all your friends were only half right, because the new the Batman was the best the Batman film ever because *SPOILER ALERT* it was Conservative Hollywood's break-out attempt to cash in on the whole Bush-apologist craze that's so big these days? Yeah, good times, good times.

When Andrew Klavan from The Wall Street Journal and I went to the midnight screening of The Dark Knight: Secrets of The Batman, we were skeptical that this film wouldn't be as pro-"current administration policy" as last year's The 300 (which was totes an allegory because when that Spartan was all like "Tonight we dine in hell!" he obviously meant Afghanistan). But imagine our surprise when instead of some sort of leftist commentary on the moral gray area we all must face inside ourselves, we found ourselves watching the most incredible movie in the history of comic book franchises, and confronted by the truth: that George W. Bush is the Batman. I told this to my buddy during the end credits, and then Andrew went home and wrote out what I said, verbatim:

When our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised--then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.

That's not to say this film is perfect in any way, because it's not. If the Batman was supposed to be George Bush, and the Joker was Osama bin Laden, then where were the comparisons to the current electoral race? At first I mistakenly assumed that Aaron Eckhart's turn as the charismatic, upstanding D.A., Harvey Dent, who eventually succumbs to a poor image control, was a remarkable stand-in for Barack Obama. But then I realized that Aaron Eckhart is like, really white, so that doesn't work. Tim Burton was closer when he cast Dent as Billy Dee. So I guess that means the only person Obama could be is Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman. But that doesn't make much sense either, since Batman and Lucius are friends! Really confusing. John McCain was a little bit easier since he's obviously Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gorden, an aging "everyman" who heroically appears dead for half the film. But as I mentioned to Andrew, there is absolutely no chance that real life is going to deviate at all from a blockbuster based on a cartoon based on a comic book:

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.