Author: Mark

So I got a dad’s night out, a dad friend and I went out for a meal and to see a movie. So it wasn’t driven by the greatd esire to see anything rather just to have a pleasant time and see some fluff entertainment. The options weren’t great, Batman, Hancock, Pineapple Express and Swing Vote.

I admit I just couldn’t see Batman, I’m tired of angst ridden dark heroes beating the crap out of people. When I first did a Batman story, the editor said “Really, Batman ought to get laid , do some therapy and get over it”. Since then, even more, dark, macho posturing has overwhelmed Batman and superheroes. Most, it not all of it, driven by the intense fear the creators have of doing anything heroic in the real world themselves. Sure they can do stunts, shoot big guns in movies, or draw them in comics but when is the last time you heard of any creator actually putting anything on the line for someone other then themselves? Super hero creators are a bunch of moral cowards hiding behind capes and for the life of me I’m tired of it.

Because of timing, we ended up seeing Swing Vote, we should have seen Batman. Kevin Costner plays a drunk dad with an adorable little girl who gets him put into the position of being the one vote which truly determines the outcome of the election. We get some funny stuff as the President and the Democratic candidate find themselves wildly switching policies to get Costner’s vote. And then the drunk of course with the help of his daughter cleans up, the candidates find themselves and he goes off to vote. Arianna Huffington liked it and thought Costner’s final speech was important. So two bay Area left types out to get something out of this right?

At the end Costner’s character, a poor drunk, who works in an egg factory, in a little rinky-dink town that isn’t on the map, says “It’s his fault for the way the country has gone because he hasn’t been paying attention”. That’s right folks it’s the fault of all us nobodies who have made John McCain go negative, it’s us the nobodies who made Bush lie us into war. It’s us the nobodies who have almost outlawed unions so “nobodies” can’t have political power, it’s us, the nobodies who have re-distributed all the income to the top one percent. uUs nobodies underfunded the school system, Us nobodies who have not invested in alternative energy.

Bankers, stock brokers, movie stars, all the millionaires who benefit from this system they didn’t do a damn thing to make it the way it is. Yup those news broadcasters who protect and enable the system are not to blame, it’s us the working class schlubs who have made the system bad.

Costner’s lies are worse then the superhero creators, who at least know they are in la-la land.