THE BEST OP-ED EVER!!!!! Posted by Michael Cohen

There is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that compares Batman to . .  wait for it . . . wait for it . . . George W Bush! I am not making this up:

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.

There are so many bat-shit crazy statements in this paragraph I could literally be blogging for hours, weeks, months even years. You would have to pry the laptop off my comatose, snark-emptied body. Suffice to say, I would like to introduce the gentlemen who wrote this piece, one Andrew Klavan, to a document he is likely quite unfamiliar with -- the U.S.Constitution. 

But here's the crazy part . . . it gets better!

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.

Just so there is no ambiguity here, Mr. Klavan actually penned the words "Batman understands" -- and the Wall Street Journal published it!

Oh, but there is more:

Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

"Bombed more spectacularly than Shock and Awe" - now THAT is some funny shit! LOL. Good times all around.

And you know, Mr. Klavan is right - when I saw "In the Valley of Elah" I literally went home and got out my white flag (which like every Democrat I keep in a prominent place in my home below the velvet painting of Osama Bin Laden and above the desecrated American flag that I walk on every morning as a I venture to my coffee machine to make a delicious cafe latte). I of course began waving it out my window, hoping that some Al Qaeda member would see me and immediately accept my surrender. But alas, none were available :(  So instead I found the nearest US soldier I could find and spit on him! Mission Accomplished!

Oh, but just when you thought Mr. Klavan hadn't hit every branch on the crazy tree - there is more!

Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.

Yes, it is a mystery! When did I ever learn that freedom was better than slavery? For years I thought cruelty was better than kindness and then one day, completely out of left field I suddenly realized that it was in fact wrong to waterboard kittens.

Finally, Mr. Klavan hits his coup de grace:

The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.

When heroes arise who take on those difficult duties themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve.

You know what's odd about this, I had this crazy, wacky, left-wing notion that we prosecute violent soldiers and cruel interrogators because they are . . . you know, violent and cruel. But reading the WSJ has diabused me of this notion; in fact I hate these cruel and violent people to cover up for some terrible inadequacy in my own life, like my silly notion that people should abide by the rule of law and treat everyone with respect and dignity. There it is again, the left wing media brainwashing me again . . . damn you Phil Donahue!

Thank you Andrew Klavan for setting me straight! Thank you Batman for standing up for truth, justice and the American Way. And thank you George W Bush for . . . for . . . I'm sorry DA readers; even I can't go there.

Comments

[Shannon]

Best Rant in Response to an Op-Ed EVER!

"And you know, Mr. Klavan is right - when I saw "In the Valley of Elah" I literally went home and got out my white flag (which like every Democrat I keep in a prominent place in my home below the velvet painting of Osama Bin Laden and above the desecrated American flag that I walk on every morning as a I venture to my coffee machine to make a delicious cafe latte). I of course began waving it out my window, hoping that some Al Qaeda member would see me and immediately accept my surrender. But alas, none were available :( So instead I found the nearest US soldier I could find and spit on him! Mission Accomplished!"

This was better than morning coffee. Bravo!

[Metame]

Rather than play off of peoples' fears, Batman relied on their better angels. Rather than destroying Joker with a giant bomb, he controlled his urge for revenge, isolated Joker and brought him to justice. Batman won by not sinking to Joker's level in some tit-for-tat game. If only W were so wise.

[mike]

Batman was a moral midget for not killing Joker when he could. W is serious about fighting evil. For Batman, it was a game.

[Adam]

If you want to laugh even harder at Klavan's idiocy (that's a tall order), I strongly advise you to check out this "open letter to Andrew Klavan": http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/an-open-letter-to

[Troy]

Maybe the cartoon character Batman. Pow! Zing! Zoom!

[paul]

"Batman won by not sinking to Joker's level in some tit-for-tat game. If only W were so wise.:"

Batman beat the snot out of Joker in the interrogation room. You would be calling for the head of any interrogator who did that to a real life terrorist.

[Rich Hudson]

If Batman was like Bush, he would have let the Joke get away and blamed the attacks on Clinton.

[Belarius]

Anyone who saw Batman and walked away thinking "we totally need some more of that" apparently missed the dominant subtext of the movie: "Die as the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." It's a movie about the creeping abuse of power; the challenge of drawing the line and then of not crossing it. Perhaps more than anything, the moral of the story is that when you break the rules in the name of justice, it leads to a self-destructive cycle of escalating violence. After all, one of the enduring themes of the Batman universe is that "Batman created the Joker."

As to Batman being "like W," let's not forget that Batman, despite his anonymity, has no pretense - everyone knows how he operates, and he never denies it. He doesn't want to inspire more vigilantes. In the end, Batman is the hero for taking the fall for a crime he didn't commit, and Bush is a villain for denying crimes he is ultimately responsible for.

[Gary B]

"I had this crazy, wacky, left-wing notion that we prosecute violent soldiers and cruel interrogators because they are . . . you know, violent and cruel."

Soldiers need to be violent to do their duty. Soldiers are required to be violent because wars are violent. The blindness of your "left-wing notions" come through when you equate as evil the cruelty of an interogator taking advantage of his power and ignoring the constitution illegally with that of a valiant soldier performing constituionally required acts of violence in carrying out his oath to defend the constitution and also to protect you and me.

[CO'D]

Andrew Klavan should get a job writing for The Onion...he would do well there.