Rush Limbaugh apparently thinks it is not a coincidence that the main villain of the new Batman movie will be Bane, homonymous with the name of Mitt Romney’s former company:

So, anyway, this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there’s now a discussion out there as to whether or not this is purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. It’s gonna have a lot of people. This movie, the audience is gonna be huge. A lot of people are gonna see the movie, and it’s a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd, and they’re gonna hear Bane in the movie and they’re gonna associate Bain. The thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, Romney and Bain, that these people will think back to the Batman movie, “Oh, yeah, I know who that is.” (laughing) There are some people who think it’ll work. Others think you’re really underestimating the American people to think that will work.

As others have pointed out, the character predates this election by nearly twenty years. A little more interestingly, there are comparatively few conservative comic book writers out there, but it just so happens that Bane was created by one of them: Chuck Dixon.

Not to defend Limbaugh, because he clearly has no idea what he’s talking about and seems largely uninterested except in the phonetic angle, it’s theoretically possible that that Bane and Bain are connected. They might have, for instance, chosen to use Bane as the villain of the upcoming movie as a partisan potshot. Early on, the villain was actually slated to be a guy named Black Mask. Then it became Bane. Coincidence? To be perfectly honest, I don’t expect much different from Hollywood. The problem is that it falls apart after even a little inspection.

The truth is, if they were willing to sacrifice their art for the sake of partisanship, Black Mask would have been the way to go. Black Mask was born Roman Sionis, the scion of a wealthy Gotham family who could never live up to his family name. He has a fixation with masks. It would be remarkably easy to make a movie featuring Black Mask as a marquee villain and make him look a lot like Mitt Romney. It would require leading the movie to go somewhere other than where it appears to be going (Bane appears to be down with the 99%). But hey, what’s a plot when you can score political potshots? (At least, that’s what Limbaugh is implying.)

The choosing of Bane as a villain isn’t air-tight, though. First, they stripped him of his origin, more or less. One of the few minority villains out there (Bane is Latin American) and they remade him British. That’s a disappointment, not just for the sake of diversity, but because I’m sick of villains with British accents (even muffled ones). The only think that comic book Bane and movie Bane appear to have in common is their name and a propensity for strategic thinking. This is the opposite of Bane from the previous franchise, who had the origin and appearance (more or less), but was disappointingly a drooling idiot. Even with all of this in mind, though, if you need a mastermind with brute force, Bane is a pretty natural selection.

In any event, this turns out not to be the first time that Limbaugh has taken aim at fellow conservative Chuck Dixon. A long while back, Dixon had a character named Link Rambeau that was clearly patterned on Rush. Apparently Rush got wind of it and condemned it, without regard to the context of Rambeau’s appearance. The plotline involved a ridiculously liberal psychologist making the rounds on talk shows. The psychologist was clearly an idiot (he was trying to say that the Joker was merely misunderstood) and Rambeau opposed this train of logic. In other words, Rambeau was right and the characterization not really unflattering in any meaningful sense.


Category: Theater

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12 Responses to Bane, Bain, Link Rambeau, Rush Limbaugh

  1. Abel Keogh says:

    While your correct that Limbaugh doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Bane, what you didn’t mention was that it was the Obama campaign that first tired to make the connection from Bane and Bain. The only reason Limbaugh is talking about it is because the Obama campaign tried to make hay out of it. Limbaugh may be ignorant when it comes to Batman and Bane but he wasn’t the one who came up with the idea.

  2. trumwill says:

    The Democrats came up with a connection. Limbaugh came up with a conspiracy. The former is goofy, the latter is… irritating.

  3. SFG says:

    There aren’t enough nerds on the Republican side to get what you’re saying, I’m afraid.

  4. trumwill says:

    Thinking it over, “conspiracy” is too harsh. Not the right word. Rather, Limbaugh suggested it was a deliberate effort to influence the election. The Democrats appear to mostly be suggesting that it’s serendipitous.

  5. Scarlet Knight says:

    And in other news, there was a shooting at a showing of this movie.

    So not only did a lot of people die, they were all batman fanboys/girls. I should go play the lottery tonight.

  6. Kirk says:

    The entire political philosophy of the movie rests on “The Dent Act.” It’s supposed to be an oppressive law, and is used as the rationale/excuse for the actions of Bane and his minions.

    The only problem is, the act’s not really described in the movie. Though it’s the reason some jail in Gotham is filled, the inmates there are depicted as being sociopaths anyway so that’s hardly an indictment of the act.

    If this were ten years ago I’d say the Dent Act was really the Patriot Act, but there’s nothing now that it could possibly stand for. TARP? The Dream Act? Cash for Clunkers? Is “The League of Shadows” really Sallie Mae?

    I really enjoyed the movie, and highly recommend it, but it’s really just eye and ear candy. Sure, you’ll get swept up in it (I even teared up at a few points) but after a few hours you’ll start to wonder what the hell all the fighting was about.

  7. Kirk says:

    So not only did a lot of people die, they were all batman fanboys/girls. I should go play the lottery tonight.

    Um…okay.

  8. trumwill says:

    I didn’t end up catching the movie this weekend. Will comment further once I have.

  9. Scarlet Knight says:

    BTW, our own Sheila is on fire over at HalfSigma regarding the shooter.

  10. trumwill says:

    Quite so! She’s doing us proud. Holmes’s behavior since the arrest has been consistent with what she’s been saying.

    I don’t follow Siggy as close as I used to, but when I heard about the shooting, I of course had to go see what he had to say about it. Actually, I didn’t, cause I already knew.

  11. Ω says:

    Along those same lines, Whiskey’s thoughts on such matters are always an interesting read. But I think Sheila T.’s explanation is more likely correct in this case, and I bear both isolated loner omega status and (non-psychiatry) medical credentials in support.

  12. trumwill says:

    We’ll see what comes up from it. Whiskey can have some good insights, sometimes, but I think there is a threshold of abnormal psychology wherein it makes more sense to attribute the psychology to the loneliness rather than the loneliness to the psychology.

    By most accounts, Holmes was relatively normal until recently. I think that, even given that, he may have been giving off certain warning signs. Not of psychopathy, but of “don’t trust this guy.”

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