What's more important?

Any so-called Hillary "supporter" who won't vote for Obama or who will vote for McCain is a traitor--not just to party but to country. They aren't really supporting anything but four more years of insanity, a perpetuation of the worst presidency in American history. Voting for McCain out of a heartfelt belief that he's better for the country is bad enough, but to do so out of spite--Spite?!--is absolutely beyond the pale. Not only does it devalue politics--a depreciated asset already--it devalues their entire belief system to the point that there are no beliefs remaining, just bile.

George W. Batman?

There was a lot of talk in the couple of weeks after the opening of The Dark Knight about how Batman represents George W. Bush. The talk was based on Batman's "rendition" of one of the bad guys and his use of technology to locate the Joker--by spying on everyone's cell phone.

A couple of ideas occurred to me as I thought about that after finally getting to see the film Friday night. First, we like our fictional heroes to be like Batman, or even Jack Bauer, heroes who will do anything to achieve their noble objective of protecting the vast ignorant citizenry. That includes me. I like Jack Bauer, and I like Batman, but I think I'm like a lot of Americans in being able to distinguish fact from fiction, and knowing that a fictional hero who can take out the bad guys without being held to standards of the law isn't the same as a president who operates as if he was above the law. At least, I hope so.

The second idea I had was how people like to take ideas from fiction and portray them as fact. There was a similar development following The Incredibles, which some took as a parable of present-day political correctness in the educational system. In it, the protagonists have to submerge their special abilities in order to fit into "normal" society, because their extra-ordinariness was considered a danger to regular folks--until a greater danger arose.

But as parables, movies don't always work. The person who sees a call for elitism in The Incredibles is missing the call for acceptance of difference as we witness the struggles of people outside the norm to fit in. The person who sees George W. Bush in Batman completely misunderstands the character He excuses the crimes of a troubled fictional character in order to excuse the crimes of a troubling real person.

History Detectives

I really like the History Detectives show on PBS, but I really think they should hire a historian. Currently, they have two appraisers (one of whom has a Ph.D. in Anthropology), a Sociologist, and an Art Historian. They do a great job and the stories are really interesting--I wish I could find some interesting artifact that would be worthy of the show in my father's attic, but he'd have to have an attic first--but the show is, paradoxically, a traveling version of the antiques "road show." As a historians, I deal with documents more often than with artifacts, but I think a deeper historical context would make this show more interesting.