Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/04/batmans-message-to-america.html
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I guess Batman is fake news.
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Trump supporters only listen to Frank Miller’s Batman
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Yeah, I was thinking how stupid it was that Frank Miller would attempt to adapt this character into a blatantly anti-Islam propaganda storyline.
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The closest I’ve come to reading a modern batman comic was Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey. Which Batman is DC publishing these days, Miller-style sexist, racist, tea party Batman or PSA-style hippie liberal batman who preaches equality and tolerance?
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In my mind liberal hippie Batman will always be the One True Batman.
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You’d think Trump would listen to him, considering Bruce Wayne is a millionaire.
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Granted, one of his closest associates is an illegal alien who works for the media.
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Key words there are “Remember our American Heritage of Freedom and Equality.” Together, but free and equal, right? Celebrating our historical togetherness as Americans. That image of the great melting pot (as I was taught in school around the same time as this comic) has been replaced with Celebrating Diversity, which presents us not united as Americans, but instead as many different small groups who have to live alongside each other. This is an important distinction, one which I believe has served to divide America. Identity politics, putting people in cubbyholes to be celebrated as different, is by it’s very nature divisive. We can recognize the differences, and ensure that those same differences do not preclude someone from having rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But too much emphasis on our differences, well, divides us.
I know the metaphor of The Melting Pot is a little strong, I’m taking suggestions for a new one. After all, people here from around the world are never completely transformed into a homogeneous mass, nor should they/we be. Maybe it’s more like ingredients in a soup, you can see the different vegetables floating around in there and they are cooked down a little to contribute to the whole, just as one needs to give a little to become “American”. But that’s clearly still a potato, a carrot, etc. That’s one reason ESL is taught in public schools, right? To help kids better assimilate? But we are not demanding that they erase all knowledge of their first language, just helping them get on board with living in America.
My point is we need to spend less time emphasizing how “diverse/different” we all are, and more time emphasizing what makes us the similar/same.
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Some see us as “different groups who have to live alongside each other.”
I see us as “different groups who GET to live alongside each other.”
Screw the “you must conform to my preconceptions of what an ‘American’ looks like” bullshit. Diversity really IS our strength.
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More proof of the leftist Nazi agenda to corrupt our children. Look—it even says “National Social Welfare” at the bottom!
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Naturalized american under foundling laws. Those that need to know who he is and he is vetted as well as having demonstrated a willingness to protect american lives. Also he is a man of faith.
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Show us the Earth certificate!
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So kind of like all those Iraqi translators who put their lives and their families’ safety on the line to American troops only to get their visas revoked by Executive Order.
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Precisely so!
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I don’t really think Batman works as a spokesman for tolerance. Superman, yeah sure, but not Batman. Say what you want about Frank Miller’s interpretation, but I think he simply is more honest about what is ugly about the character – Batman’s a rich guy who thinks he’s above the law and beats up the mentally ill and deformed for a hobby.
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Depends on what incarnation we’re talking. John Byrne decided he was “born” out of an artificial womb seconds after he landed on Earth. So, an anchor baby. Fortunately for the purity of America’s gene pool, all his relatives perished while he was en route, so his citizenship status can never be used to bring in a batch of pagan Rao-ist foreigners.
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Differences only feel divisive to those who disapprove of them. To me, the expression and celebration of diversity is an affirmation of my right to be an individual, regardless of whether I belong to any of the identity groups in question. What unites us—or should unite us—is the mutual respect we afford one another to live our lives as we please.
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