The Goddamn Bushman

Eu bem queria dizer que era um primeiro sintoma da compra do Wall Street Journal pelo Rupert Murdoch (leia-se Fox News). Mas acontece que o WSJ sempre praticou uma separação bastante estrita entre suas páginas de noticiário - sempre tentando ser o mais corretas possíveis - e os editoriais e colunistas, que se mantém na fronteira mais longínqua do reacionarismo-tantã.

Mas mesmo sem ser sinal de nada, o artigo merece destaque, só pelo insólito da comparação. Bush, o vingador mascarado!

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."


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.

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.




O outro pedaço maravilhoso do artigo é esse:

Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?

The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?


Tipo, a visão conservadora do mundo é aquela encontrada em revistas de super-heróis e contos de fadas? E isso é uma defesa do conservadorismo? O_O