Impending Demise: You’re in a hospital room, one your doctors don’t seem optimistic you’ll walk out of.
Superman: Yes.
ID: What happened? A few weeks ago you didn’t look- you’re a shell of the man you were even a month ago.
S: The League. We did what we always do, stepped up to a challenge with everything we had, with sometimes unorthodox methodology.
ID: Care to elaborate?
S: Kryptonite radiation therapy. The thinking was, if normal radiation didn’t work on the cancer cells, maybe the kind of radiation I’m vulnerable to would work like normal radiation on a human being. Apparently Bruce has been trying to set it up for six months, now, tracking down anyone with even a passing experience with kryptonite, Metallo, the Kryptonite Man. The missing link, though, the one they needed to piece everything together was Conduit. He is able to project kryptonite radiation, so he was the one who really held the key. But from what we gather Lex Luthor had the same notion, and had taken Conduit and put him into a kind of supervillian witness protection program. Bruce has been harrowing Lex and his interests ever since, including a few hostile takeovers of his assets- he’d been hoping to make revenge too expensive for Lex. But he was also coordinating one of the most sophisticated man-hunts in the history of the League, involving the Birds of Prey as they like to be called, and the Martian Manhunter, to name only a few.
Eventually Bruce tracked Conduit back to Kansas. And I hope I’m not uh talking out of school, but I say back to Kansas because he and I grew up in the same home town. His real name is Ken Braverman. His parents were actually driving to the hospital for his birth when my rocket from Krypton arrived. A chunk of the ship broke off entering the atmosphere and landed in the road in front of the Braverman’s car, and caused his dad to put the car into a ditch. Ken was born in the backseat, and their proximity to the piece of the rocket meant that he absorbed a lot of kryptonite radiation.
We were both pretty close to the same age. Because of the radiation Ken had a lot of health problems growing up: he was small, and frail, got sick a lot. Because of that people picked on him. I tried to stand up for him, but, sometimes when you don’t feel strong enough the last thing in the world you want is for someone else to fight your battles. I think if Ken hadn’t been dosed with radiation, if he hadn’t been sick, I think we probably would have been friends.
Anyway, by high school, Ken’s health had reversed track, and rather than being weaker than most everybody, he was stronger, and faster. But he had a hell of a chip on his shoulder, too. He remembered every single person who put him down, every single person who ever laughed at his frailty. And he remembered every perceived slight, every time he felt I’d put him down trying to stand up for him.
Only he was still having side effects from the radiation, and he was in an increasing amount of pain. He got into contact with the CIA, who were interested in studying him and the positive effects of the radiation, in exchange for curing the negative side effects. Well, cure can be a relative term. Somehow, Ken’s body had become wholly radioactive, and was in a constant state of decay. Growing up that wasn’t much of an issue, since there was a steady creation of new cells, but as he was reaching adulthood, his body was producing fewer and fewer cells, but the rate of decay was the same, and the only thing they could do was mitigate his suffering. They designed a suit to contain the radiation, with a built in pain-relief system.
When he wasn't of any scientific interest anymore, his abilities became his only bargaining chip, so he started working as an operative. But pain makes people do stupid things. On a mission in France, Ken nearly killed a government attaché when his cover was blown, and the CIA decided to cut him loose.
Ken needed expertise to keep his containment suit operational, but since he didn’t have any money, he had to pay his way in trade. And the only people with the expertise to work on that kind of tech who wanted the services of a spook in trade were not the kinds of people you wanted to be indebted to. But for Ken it was a godsend, because one of them had enough experience with nuclear reactors that he recognized that a partial solution to Ken’s problem might be venting. For me, and people who ran into Conduit, however, it was a little less pleasant.
But over the years Ken and I had developed a bit of a rivalry. Once he got healthy we competed in sports. He asked Lana to prom, though she eventually went with me. It was a lot of little things that built up, like his verbally abusive father, who for some damn reason would talk me up in the same breath he’d talk his own son down. And once he was operating in the open as Conduit, often out of Metropolis, we came into conflict again. And because we knew each other, he figured out who I was, where I’d come from, and even made a half-hearted attempt at killing people he knew I was close with. I’m not absolving him of responsibility, but really, I think pain makes you do stupid things, emotional pain doubly so.
That was the beauty and simplicity of Lex’s plan, hiding him in plain sight, as it were, in my home town, but nothing stays hidden from Bruce forever, and eventually he found him. But then there was the issue of convincing Ken to help, and I have to give credit where it’s due. Bruce has a lot of speeds, philanthropist, entrepreneur, the bad cop that is Batman, a lot of ways to convince or threaten or bribe someone to do what he wants. But he’d figured enough out about Ken to know he wouldn’t cave to any of those. So he told him I was dying, that he was my last hope, that at the very least he should look me in the eye and tell me his decision face to face. It was one last chance to gloat, if he wanted it, or a chance to be the better man if he chose that instead. And Ken took him up on it, and to my surprise, once Ken was in the room with me, he couldn’t be angry any more. He actually, actually hugged me. I think, that, there are some times when you think you have forever to let something play out, that the fight you had with your parents or your friend or whoever, will be resolved at some point. But being faced with a definite conclusion, I don’t think Ken wanted me to die, all these years, because when it came down to it, Ken Braverman tried to save my life. It wasn’t something I saw coming.
ID: Tried?
S: Yeah. It didn’t work. The cancer’s more resistant to kryptonite radiation than the rest of my cells. It actually did a fair amount of damage to me, while the cancer was hardly touched.
ID: I’m sorry.
S: Thank you.
ID: The prognosis isn't good.
S: No. But that symbol I wore on my chest all these years, my family crest, it represents hope. I don't think at this point that I'm hoping for my own survival, but I do hope that the world will still thrive when I'm gone.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Monday, December 21, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Snowfall
Superman: We had the first snow of the, well, I guess not year and not quite winter yet, but of this cold season; that doesn’t sound right, either, because it’s not that cold season, the illness kind, but the temperature one.
Irreconcilable Dictions: It snowed, we got it.
S: Right. But that point, the one I’m still groping for, is that I was cold. Not just that seeing your breath, maybe I should have put on a hoodie cold, but the feel it in your bones cold, the way my great aunt used to say she was cold, no matter how many blankets you put on her, she couldn’t stay warm, because the cold was in her bones.
I’m not, I’m not thinking clearly right now; I’ve had a headache the better part of the week, though it’s a bit more acute right now.
ID: So you decided to finally come record this week’s segment when you were at your absolute least useful.
S: Hmm. That actually annoys you. You put up a good front of affrontation, but very little actually irritates you. But this, you take this interview seriously, don’t you?
ID: All evidence to the contrary?
S: I know, now that I’ve called you on it, it’s natural to want to pull back, to become even more evasive and cold. I don’t think, you don’t just spend hours on end week after week talking and discussing with someone without growing attached to them. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t, I don’t know, friends might be much, since I have trouble seeing you holding my hand in a hospital room, but I think there’s some kind of a respect and affection there. Hell, I wouldn’t have approached you in the first place if I didn’t hold some respect for you on a professional level
ID: Respect which I have tried, systematically, to undermine since you introduced yourself to me.
S: You both have and you haven’t. I think for all the world you wanted to play it both ways, give me my Frost/Nixon grilling while giving me a forum to express myself; I think at times you willfully denigrated yourself, personally and professionally, to make sure I came out the cleaner of the two of us.
ID: To level with you? The work is important; this is, for parts of the public, your last will and testament. Given everything you’ve done in your life, it’s a responsibility for both of us to do this right.
And I never thought you’d go fishing for it, but of course I respect you- in the same vein I respect soldiers and firemen and police. I know you work and you sacrifice for the good of a lot of people. And I know that I’m a writer, that there’s some sacrifice but that mostly I’ve chosen to do what I love, and the fact that the stories I tell and the light I shed is a byproduct of that fairly selfish decision, it’s ancillary and even unintended.
So yes, coming into the interview, of course I respected you, and of course, by virtue of who you are, of course I bore some residual affection for you. But I think you give me too much of a pass, that I have a bit too much of that wholly American sense of iconoclasm: we love our stars, our celebrities, or heroes- but we love their destruction more.
And journalistically, I’ve never set out to treat you any differently than any of my other interview subjects. I have; I’m still objective enough to recognize my bias, at least some of the time, but I hope on balance that I’ve shot as straight down the middle as possible.
S: I notice you sidestepped the important point: namely, that over the course of this last year, I’ve grown fond of you. And you don’t have to say you reciprocate, and I wouldn’t take it personally if you didn’t.
You have been a pain, in my backside and elsewhere, a perpetual thorn in my palm and my side. But I’ll miss you.
ID: Do you think it’s time for that? Time to say goodbye?
S: It’s never too early to say goodbye. I just always hope that it’s not for the last time.
ID: And I’d like to end there, it’s, too pretty not to, but I have to ask, I have to know. Has something changed? A new test result, do you feel differently?
S: No. And I think that’s the problem. Nothing has changed. I continue to decline at a predictable rate. I’m cold. And I’m tired. And I don’t want my last thoughts to be about how my pride prevented me from saying goodbye one last time. So goodbye.
ID: Goodbye.
(pause)
Wait. I’ll see you next week.
S: I sincerely hope so.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Irreconcilable Dictions: It snowed, we got it.
S: Right. But that point, the one I’m still groping for, is that I was cold. Not just that seeing your breath, maybe I should have put on a hoodie cold, but the feel it in your bones cold, the way my great aunt used to say she was cold, no matter how many blankets you put on her, she couldn’t stay warm, because the cold was in her bones.
I’m not, I’m not thinking clearly right now; I’ve had a headache the better part of the week, though it’s a bit more acute right now.
ID: So you decided to finally come record this week’s segment when you were at your absolute least useful.
S: Hmm. That actually annoys you. You put up a good front of affrontation, but very little actually irritates you. But this, you take this interview seriously, don’t you?
ID: All evidence to the contrary?
S: I know, now that I’ve called you on it, it’s natural to want to pull back, to become even more evasive and cold. I don’t think, you don’t just spend hours on end week after week talking and discussing with someone without growing attached to them. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t, I don’t know, friends might be much, since I have trouble seeing you holding my hand in a hospital room, but I think there’s some kind of a respect and affection there. Hell, I wouldn’t have approached you in the first place if I didn’t hold some respect for you on a professional level
ID: Respect which I have tried, systematically, to undermine since you introduced yourself to me.
S: You both have and you haven’t. I think for all the world you wanted to play it both ways, give me my Frost/Nixon grilling while giving me a forum to express myself; I think at times you willfully denigrated yourself, personally and professionally, to make sure I came out the cleaner of the two of us.
ID: To level with you? The work is important; this is, for parts of the public, your last will and testament. Given everything you’ve done in your life, it’s a responsibility for both of us to do this right.
And I never thought you’d go fishing for it, but of course I respect you- in the same vein I respect soldiers and firemen and police. I know you work and you sacrifice for the good of a lot of people. And I know that I’m a writer, that there’s some sacrifice but that mostly I’ve chosen to do what I love, and the fact that the stories I tell and the light I shed is a byproduct of that fairly selfish decision, it’s ancillary and even unintended.
So yes, coming into the interview, of course I respected you, and of course, by virtue of who you are, of course I bore some residual affection for you. But I think you give me too much of a pass, that I have a bit too much of that wholly American sense of iconoclasm: we love our stars, our celebrities, or heroes- but we love their destruction more.
And journalistically, I’ve never set out to treat you any differently than any of my other interview subjects. I have; I’m still objective enough to recognize my bias, at least some of the time, but I hope on balance that I’ve shot as straight down the middle as possible.
S: I notice you sidestepped the important point: namely, that over the course of this last year, I’ve grown fond of you. And you don’t have to say you reciprocate, and I wouldn’t take it personally if you didn’t.
You have been a pain, in my backside and elsewhere, a perpetual thorn in my palm and my side. But I’ll miss you.
ID: Do you think it’s time for that? Time to say goodbye?
S: It’s never too early to say goodbye. I just always hope that it’s not for the last time.
ID: And I’d like to end there, it’s, too pretty not to, but I have to ask, I have to know. Has something changed? A new test result, do you feel differently?
S: No. And I think that’s the problem. Nothing has changed. I continue to decline at a predictable rate. I’m cold. And I’m tired. And I don’t want my last thoughts to be about how my pride prevented me from saying goodbye one last time. So goodbye.
ID: Goodbye.
(pause)
Wait. I’ll see you next week.
S: I sincerely hope so.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Liberal Bias
Superman: I’ve taken some flack after last week’s interview.
Ignoble Dignitary: Of course. Please tell me that doesn’t surprise you.
S: No, but what did surprise me is how many people seemed to think I crossed a line, when after rereading my comments I think I struck a good balance, frankly. I was pissed off, and it certainly showed, but I don’t think I said anything I’d regret saying to an elected official of either stripe. Republicans have been relying on fear-based politics since at least September 11th; Democrats seem to adhere to the idea of politics as a gentleman’s game that effectively castrates their ability to govern barring supermajorities.
To put it into terms I’m perhaps more expert in: I’ve read a lot of speculation about what motivates a vigilante. And I’ll admit it can all be hard to reconcile. The idea of going it your own way, bucking the system, including the government-operated police force, that’s a very conservative action; especially when you’re protecting the status quo. But when you then take that and do it for a large swath of people, sharing with people the strengths and abilities you possess when they may not have been able to help themselves out of the situation, that’s a very progressive action. Personally, I’ve never had any problem with these two sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary ideas, because I’m a moderate. But I also know liberal and conservative vigilantes as well, and I don’t think very many of them struggle with what is a background ideological question: they want to make a difference, and everything else is secondary.
But I think it also underscores an important dichotomy in this country, something that in the current polarized climate we lose. The struggle between certain aspects of our political poles is good. Our government and our nation works best when there’s a tug-of-war between big ideas and fiscal responsibility.
One of the big issues I take with the modern Republican party is they’re no longer for fiscal responsibility. They’ve become the party of tax cuts. If we want to pay less in taxes and have a smaller government, that’s a conversation we as a nation can have, but their plan lately has been to cut taxes without cutting expenses and let future generations pick up the tab. That’s why when they complain about a bailout they helped engineer, and a stimulus package they refused to participate in, both of which economists of all political stripes agree have helped soften the current economic crisis, I have trouble taking them seriously.
I have legitimate concerns about the way that the bailout and stimulus were carried out, but if Republicans wanted things done differently, they could have- no, they should have, participated in the process and done what they could to steer either in a direction they wanted.
ID: Like they’re doing with the health reform debate now?
S: No. I don’t mean screaming at the top of their lungs about half-truths and made-up concerns, nor making a half-hearted offer at an alternative bill, I mean actually legislating. Republicans say they’d rather have an incremental bill rather than the one Reid has written. If they were willing to bargain in good faith, they could very well get concessions from the Democratic majority; realistically, the Democrats don’t want to be hung out on a limb for this: it’s already slow to implement, and half of them could very well be out of office by the time Americans feel the effects of the bill. Of course, assuming the Republicans were willing to play ball, the problem with incrementalism is that tomorrow never comes.
ID: That was either deep or you were speaking like a politician.
S: Somewhere in between, I think. But just like cuts to Medicare doctors that are postponed every year by Congress without fail, painful but necessary reforms to the rest of healthcare could just be postponed indefinitely.
Um, on the subject of things I got chewed out over, there were also some women, my wife included, who took issue with me on the revised mammogram and pap smear guidelines. I wasn’t endorsing the findings, and I might even say we should get a second opinion, because I understand, as someone whose mother was diagnosed early with cervical cancer and survived, how important early screening can be; all I was trying to say is we don’t want politicians deciding who gets what treatment based on what criteria. That decision should be left to doctors and scientists who are experts in their fields, and use the best of their professional judgment to set guidelines; I don’t want to make that call any more than I think politicians should.
And I hate to turn this interview into a blog, but I have a quote I’d like to throw in there, from somebody who’s actually read the bill: “This year’s health reform legislation has often been criticized for being health insurance reform rather than health care reform, and for not doing enough to control the cost of health care. Those who offer these criticisms have obviously not read the bills or even tried to understand them.” And that’s my problem with the current Republican party in a nutshell: they criticize without understanding, to the sole purpose of elevating themselves.
And I want to clarify that I mean the Republican party leadership, and those who claim to speak for conservatives in the country. I don’t doubt the good will of a third of the American people, more if you count conservative-leaning independents; but their leadership have lost their way, or as I suspect, have forsaken their way for a road more politically advantageous.
I have no real love for the Democratic Party; the Democrats fail me as often as they make me happy, but at least sometimes they have the courage to stand up and say, often to people who would buy and pay for them, that there is an injustice that they want to right. I think healthcare reform is one of those fights, and I’m not endorsing every action they’ve taken, I’m not endorsing their outcome, but just the fact that they stood up to do something that matters for the American people, at the quite real cost of their power- that takes a kind of bravery. My disgust with some of the opposition’s rhetoric notwithstanding, supporting and applauding that bravery was the point I was trying to make.
ID: You claim to be a moderate, but everyone knows you’re a reporter. That makes you a socialist, by definition.
I assume you’re talking about the supposed liberal bias in the media. Look, I’ll admit I have a slight liberal leaning, and most reporters I know do, too. But we also have journalistic ethics, and believe in trying to tell the story the truest way possible. We take our role in society, that of informing our fellow citizens, very seriously. But for all of the talk of liberal bias, the fact of the matter is, most media owners and management have a conservative bias. The end result isn’t a perfect balance, but rather a mish-mash of competing biases and influences, self-censorship and subjects that never get fully fleshed out. But it’s wholly dishonest to say the media is liberally biased, because it’s much, much more complicated than that.
Besides, the most pervasive bias in the media has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with that other “P” word: profit. Media outlets usually have parent companies, and those parent companies don’t want their affiliates, or companies they work for, shown in a bad light. And since most of their competitors own media outlets, there’s the added worry of starting a media shooting war. And that says nothing of the dread of offending advertisers and sponsors. Bias in our media by reporters acting in good faith has much more to do with removing potentially offending reportage than adding controversial material.
Care to note any of those journalists not acting in good faith?
I wasn’t looking to, actually; I don’t want this to become a partisan eye-poking match. But the most recent example, and I don’t want to claim Sean Hannity is a journalist, because I think it’s fairly clear that he’s a commentator, but that’s the distinction. True bias usually comes from commentators, not journalists. But Hannity used several month old footage of a rally spliced in with footage of a rally that took place a few weeks ago, and claimed that 40,000 rather than 10,000 people showed up. That’s certainly an extreme example, but partisan reporting is very destructive, because it undermines trust, not just in the media, but in our fellow man. When we start doubting each other, we start devolving into paranoia.
That’s one of the reasons I really like NPR and Public Broadcasting. NPR is one of the more unbiased places to find information in the country. One of their smartest political analysts is Juan Williams, who also comments for Fox News, but you’d hardly know that from his reporting, because he’s a pretty consummate professional. I’m sure everyone at NPR has their own ideas, but NPR really does the best job I’ve seen of keeping its allegiances close to the vest.
Another useful news source is the BBC. They’re certainly a bit more liberally-biased than, say, CNN, but they’re also less US-biased, so you really get to see how the rest of the world looks at us. Not in the “Death to America” fanatical circles, but how steadfast but honest allies view the actions we take. I think it’s an important, indispensable perspective.
So you’re saying we should export all of our reporting jobs oversees, then?
Of course not. I’m saying that independent voices are invaluable. And in the current climate it’s difficult to have truly independent voices in a professional context. That’s why we’re on the internet now, and on an independent blog, because no matter where we went, whether it was Fox News or the Huggington Post, there were going to be editorial and advertising concerns trying to dictate content, and format, maybe even deciding what we could say and where.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Ignoble Dignitary: Of course. Please tell me that doesn’t surprise you.
S: No, but what did surprise me is how many people seemed to think I crossed a line, when after rereading my comments I think I struck a good balance, frankly. I was pissed off, and it certainly showed, but I don’t think I said anything I’d regret saying to an elected official of either stripe. Republicans have been relying on fear-based politics since at least September 11th; Democrats seem to adhere to the idea of politics as a gentleman’s game that effectively castrates their ability to govern barring supermajorities.
To put it into terms I’m perhaps more expert in: I’ve read a lot of speculation about what motivates a vigilante. And I’ll admit it can all be hard to reconcile. The idea of going it your own way, bucking the system, including the government-operated police force, that’s a very conservative action; especially when you’re protecting the status quo. But when you then take that and do it for a large swath of people, sharing with people the strengths and abilities you possess when they may not have been able to help themselves out of the situation, that’s a very progressive action. Personally, I’ve never had any problem with these two sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary ideas, because I’m a moderate. But I also know liberal and conservative vigilantes as well, and I don’t think very many of them struggle with what is a background ideological question: they want to make a difference, and everything else is secondary.
But I think it also underscores an important dichotomy in this country, something that in the current polarized climate we lose. The struggle between certain aspects of our political poles is good. Our government and our nation works best when there’s a tug-of-war between big ideas and fiscal responsibility.
One of the big issues I take with the modern Republican party is they’re no longer for fiscal responsibility. They’ve become the party of tax cuts. If we want to pay less in taxes and have a smaller government, that’s a conversation we as a nation can have, but their plan lately has been to cut taxes without cutting expenses and let future generations pick up the tab. That’s why when they complain about a bailout they helped engineer, and a stimulus package they refused to participate in, both of which economists of all political stripes agree have helped soften the current economic crisis, I have trouble taking them seriously.
I have legitimate concerns about the way that the bailout and stimulus were carried out, but if Republicans wanted things done differently, they could have- no, they should have, participated in the process and done what they could to steer either in a direction they wanted.
ID: Like they’re doing with the health reform debate now?
S: No. I don’t mean screaming at the top of their lungs about half-truths and made-up concerns, nor making a half-hearted offer at an alternative bill, I mean actually legislating. Republicans say they’d rather have an incremental bill rather than the one Reid has written. If they were willing to bargain in good faith, they could very well get concessions from the Democratic majority; realistically, the Democrats don’t want to be hung out on a limb for this: it’s already slow to implement, and half of them could very well be out of office by the time Americans feel the effects of the bill. Of course, assuming the Republicans were willing to play ball, the problem with incrementalism is that tomorrow never comes.
ID: That was either deep or you were speaking like a politician.
S: Somewhere in between, I think. But just like cuts to Medicare doctors that are postponed every year by Congress without fail, painful but necessary reforms to the rest of healthcare could just be postponed indefinitely.
Um, on the subject of things I got chewed out over, there were also some women, my wife included, who took issue with me on the revised mammogram and pap smear guidelines. I wasn’t endorsing the findings, and I might even say we should get a second opinion, because I understand, as someone whose mother was diagnosed early with cervical cancer and survived, how important early screening can be; all I was trying to say is we don’t want politicians deciding who gets what treatment based on what criteria. That decision should be left to doctors and scientists who are experts in their fields, and use the best of their professional judgment to set guidelines; I don’t want to make that call any more than I think politicians should.
And I hate to turn this interview into a blog, but I have a quote I’d like to throw in there, from somebody who’s actually read the bill: “This year’s health reform legislation has often been criticized for being health insurance reform rather than health care reform, and for not doing enough to control the cost of health care. Those who offer these criticisms have obviously not read the bills or even tried to understand them.” And that’s my problem with the current Republican party in a nutshell: they criticize without understanding, to the sole purpose of elevating themselves.
And I want to clarify that I mean the Republican party leadership, and those who claim to speak for conservatives in the country. I don’t doubt the good will of a third of the American people, more if you count conservative-leaning independents; but their leadership have lost their way, or as I suspect, have forsaken their way for a road more politically advantageous.
I have no real love for the Democratic Party; the Democrats fail me as often as they make me happy, but at least sometimes they have the courage to stand up and say, often to people who would buy and pay for them, that there is an injustice that they want to right. I think healthcare reform is one of those fights, and I’m not endorsing every action they’ve taken, I’m not endorsing their outcome, but just the fact that they stood up to do something that matters for the American people, at the quite real cost of their power- that takes a kind of bravery. My disgust with some of the opposition’s rhetoric notwithstanding, supporting and applauding that bravery was the point I was trying to make.
ID: You claim to be a moderate, but everyone knows you’re a reporter. That makes you a socialist, by definition.
I assume you’re talking about the supposed liberal bias in the media. Look, I’ll admit I have a slight liberal leaning, and most reporters I know do, too. But we also have journalistic ethics, and believe in trying to tell the story the truest way possible. We take our role in society, that of informing our fellow citizens, very seriously. But for all of the talk of liberal bias, the fact of the matter is, most media owners and management have a conservative bias. The end result isn’t a perfect balance, but rather a mish-mash of competing biases and influences, self-censorship and subjects that never get fully fleshed out. But it’s wholly dishonest to say the media is liberally biased, because it’s much, much more complicated than that.
Besides, the most pervasive bias in the media has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with that other “P” word: profit. Media outlets usually have parent companies, and those parent companies don’t want their affiliates, or companies they work for, shown in a bad light. And since most of their competitors own media outlets, there’s the added worry of starting a media shooting war. And that says nothing of the dread of offending advertisers and sponsors. Bias in our media by reporters acting in good faith has much more to do with removing potentially offending reportage than adding controversial material.
Care to note any of those journalists not acting in good faith?
I wasn’t looking to, actually; I don’t want this to become a partisan eye-poking match. But the most recent example, and I don’t want to claim Sean Hannity is a journalist, because I think it’s fairly clear that he’s a commentator, but that’s the distinction. True bias usually comes from commentators, not journalists. But Hannity used several month old footage of a rally spliced in with footage of a rally that took place a few weeks ago, and claimed that 40,000 rather than 10,000 people showed up. That’s certainly an extreme example, but partisan reporting is very destructive, because it undermines trust, not just in the media, but in our fellow man. When we start doubting each other, we start devolving into paranoia.
That’s one of the reasons I really like NPR and Public Broadcasting. NPR is one of the more unbiased places to find information in the country. One of their smartest political analysts is Juan Williams, who also comments for Fox News, but you’d hardly know that from his reporting, because he’s a pretty consummate professional. I’m sure everyone at NPR has their own ideas, but NPR really does the best job I’ve seen of keeping its allegiances close to the vest.
Another useful news source is the BBC. They’re certainly a bit more liberally-biased than, say, CNN, but they’re also less US-biased, so you really get to see how the rest of the world looks at us. Not in the “Death to America” fanatical circles, but how steadfast but honest allies view the actions we take. I think it’s an important, indispensable perspective.
So you’re saying we should export all of our reporting jobs oversees, then?
Of course not. I’m saying that independent voices are invaluable. And in the current climate it’s difficult to have truly independent voices in a professional context. That’s why we’re on the internet now, and on an independent blog, because no matter where we went, whether it was Fox News or the Huggington Post, there were going to be editorial and advertising concerns trying to dictate content, and format, maybe even deciding what we could say and where.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Boobs
Superman: I’m a Democrat.
Impractical Dirigibles: Usually I have to poke you with questions, badger and threaten and once blackmail, to get you to reveal potentially aliening information. What gives?
S: I’ve always tried to retain a balanced, independent view of American politics; even when that failed, I always tried not to let my own thoughts or even leanings leak out. I know that certain people respect me, but I didn’t want to try to capitalize on that. I think, and maybe this comes from my parents, but that America is at its strongest when all of its citizens are thinking clearly for themselves.
ID: Pretty. But might I point out that that’s never actually happened.
S: Maybe not. But I didn’t want to become a part of the noise that’s corrupting independent thought, that parrots talking points as if they actually meant anything, that misuses statistics and science and weaves together misinformation and lies to manipulate people.
ID: So you were afraid of being somebody’s Sammy Davis, Jr.
S: In a nutshell, yeah. He voted democrat most of his life, but one back-scratching endorsement of Nixon later and he’s suddenly the poster-child for the Republican’s minority constituency.
ID: So you were worried about being the Democrat’s token alien, part of their big-tent strategy to go after extraterrestrials? Or were you just worried about them parlaying that into all aliens, such as illegal Mexican immigrants?
S: All joking aside, I don’t like politicking. I think politics is supremely important, but I don’t like how either party panders, how fast and loose they play with the truth. Even when I fully agree with a politician I often find myself disgusted with their methods.
ID: So why are you disgusted but fully agreeing with the Democrats now?
S: This particular week, you mean? Because of two cancer-screening suggestions that have come out recently. First, the United States Preventive Services Task Force revised guidelines for mammography, saying regular checks should begin at 50 rather than 40y, and should be done biannually rather than annually. Second, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed the recommendation for pap smears from annually to biannually.
The appropriate response for both parties should have been that they welcome any scientific evidence that will help American healthcare become more efficient and positively effect their constituents’ health and well-being. That’s it. They don’t need to endorse or deny the suggestions, because we do not want politicians battling scientists and doctors over control of our healthcare.
Instead, the fear-based, eternally-campaigning Republicans went on the offensive, and I mean that in both senses of the word, and used the nonbinding advice to drum up more fear about “rationing.” The embattled Democrats were of course forced to respond by saying that they disagree with the science, and won’t let it affect healthcare coverage. Both sides are acting like children, but in this case, the Republicans started it.
And they usually start it. The Republicans are consummate politicians, constantly on the attack, constantly fighting to preserve party unity and stamp out independent thought.
But rationing healthcare is a special case. Because healthcare is a limited commodity, it will always be rationed. We’ve been fortunate, in that our relative economic plenty has meant that the rationing isn’t always visible, but it exists, and at current it is controlled by insurance companies. It’s flatly stupid to complain about government rationing when corporate rationing is the status quo. If that’s the only opposition you have, then you effectively have no grounds for opposition at all; you’re simply obstructing for the sake of political posturing.
Now if my choices are between Democrats who don’t always have the courage of their convictions, or Republicans whose only convictions seem to be the preservation of their own power, well, that’s a pretty easy choice to make.
ID: This all reminds me a bit of Jon Stewart’s interview with Lou Dobbs on the Daily Show.
S: I love Lou Dobbs. He’s Wrong, with a capital “W” on many if not most things, but he’s reasonable, rational. He’ll discuss with you why he’s Wrong, and why he thinks you’re wrong. I think his ideas are at this point coming from a slightly bent to the right curve, and thus don’t always conform to the strict by the facts ideology he sets out for himself, but at least you can follow his line of reasoning.
And it’s a shame to see him leaving CNN. I sincerely hope he doesn’t end up some place like Fox News, because while I think he’s sort of left the reservation, I think Fox, rather than letting him be the voice of reason, would encourage his fringer leanings, and we’d lose what’s useful of his voice in the national conversation.
ID: Could I get you to agree that Republicans are acting like boobs? It would actually help synthesize the two subjects under one title.
S: (sigh). Yes. Republicans are acting like boobs. So that would make you a Republican, right?
ID: Ooh, soiled by my own hubris.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Impractical Dirigibles: Usually I have to poke you with questions, badger and threaten and once blackmail, to get you to reveal potentially aliening information. What gives?
S: I’ve always tried to retain a balanced, independent view of American politics; even when that failed, I always tried not to let my own thoughts or even leanings leak out. I know that certain people respect me, but I didn’t want to try to capitalize on that. I think, and maybe this comes from my parents, but that America is at its strongest when all of its citizens are thinking clearly for themselves.
ID: Pretty. But might I point out that that’s never actually happened.
S: Maybe not. But I didn’t want to become a part of the noise that’s corrupting independent thought, that parrots talking points as if they actually meant anything, that misuses statistics and science and weaves together misinformation and lies to manipulate people.
ID: So you were afraid of being somebody’s Sammy Davis, Jr.
S: In a nutshell, yeah. He voted democrat most of his life, but one back-scratching endorsement of Nixon later and he’s suddenly the poster-child for the Republican’s minority constituency.
ID: So you were worried about being the Democrat’s token alien, part of their big-tent strategy to go after extraterrestrials? Or were you just worried about them parlaying that into all aliens, such as illegal Mexican immigrants?
S: All joking aside, I don’t like politicking. I think politics is supremely important, but I don’t like how either party panders, how fast and loose they play with the truth. Even when I fully agree with a politician I often find myself disgusted with their methods.
ID: So why are you disgusted but fully agreeing with the Democrats now?
S: This particular week, you mean? Because of two cancer-screening suggestions that have come out recently. First, the United States Preventive Services Task Force revised guidelines for mammography, saying regular checks should begin at 50 rather than 40y, and should be done biannually rather than annually. Second, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists changed the recommendation for pap smears from annually to biannually.
The appropriate response for both parties should have been that they welcome any scientific evidence that will help American healthcare become more efficient and positively effect their constituents’ health and well-being. That’s it. They don’t need to endorse or deny the suggestions, because we do not want politicians battling scientists and doctors over control of our healthcare.
Instead, the fear-based, eternally-campaigning Republicans went on the offensive, and I mean that in both senses of the word, and used the nonbinding advice to drum up more fear about “rationing.” The embattled Democrats were of course forced to respond by saying that they disagree with the science, and won’t let it affect healthcare coverage. Both sides are acting like children, but in this case, the Republicans started it.
And they usually start it. The Republicans are consummate politicians, constantly on the attack, constantly fighting to preserve party unity and stamp out independent thought.
But rationing healthcare is a special case. Because healthcare is a limited commodity, it will always be rationed. We’ve been fortunate, in that our relative economic plenty has meant that the rationing isn’t always visible, but it exists, and at current it is controlled by insurance companies. It’s flatly stupid to complain about government rationing when corporate rationing is the status quo. If that’s the only opposition you have, then you effectively have no grounds for opposition at all; you’re simply obstructing for the sake of political posturing.
Now if my choices are between Democrats who don’t always have the courage of their convictions, or Republicans whose only convictions seem to be the preservation of their own power, well, that’s a pretty easy choice to make.
ID: This all reminds me a bit of Jon Stewart’s interview with Lou Dobbs on the Daily Show.
S: I love Lou Dobbs. He’s Wrong, with a capital “W” on many if not most things, but he’s reasonable, rational. He’ll discuss with you why he’s Wrong, and why he thinks you’re wrong. I think his ideas are at this point coming from a slightly bent to the right curve, and thus don’t always conform to the strict by the facts ideology he sets out for himself, but at least you can follow his line of reasoning.
And it’s a shame to see him leaving CNN. I sincerely hope he doesn’t end up some place like Fox News, because while I think he’s sort of left the reservation, I think Fox, rather than letting him be the voice of reason, would encourage his fringer leanings, and we’d lose what’s useful of his voice in the national conversation.
ID: Could I get you to agree that Republicans are acting like boobs? It would actually help synthesize the two subjects under one title.
S: (sigh). Yes. Republicans are acting like boobs. So that would make you a Republican, right?
ID: Ooh, soiled by my own hubris.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
S for Salacious
Indigo Ding-a-ling: Okay, so who’s your hero?
Superman: Um… you?
ID: No, but that’s a good guess. No, I’m told that Beneath the Cape will not be published. Ever. I’m told that the publishing house was bought out by a new company called Wayne Publishing, and also that a team of very rabid lawyers have descended upon the manuscript with claims of defamation, libel and slander. Now, last week you talked about your ability to sense lying, well try mine.
S: I… really didn’t know.
ID: Huh. You didn’t. Which actually does kind of make sense, seeing as I can still smell the pepto coming off your breath. Kidding, I can see the bottle sticking out of your bag, see the top isn’t zipped all the way.
But funnily enough, I came across Wayne Publishing’s parent company, Wayne Entertainment, the little we hiding under big WE, Wayne Enterprises', skirt. Their first division was Wayne Film, which you might recall popped up after yourself and, uh, “Big Barda”- God I hope that’s her proper name- made a “video.” It seems under the influence of someone called “Sleez” the two of you did some “acting.”
S: If you don’t stop doing air quotes I’ll take your fingers away.
ID: Heh. Your newfound ability to deadpan notwithstanding, I wasn’t finished. Apparently WE (the little WE) bought up the distribution rights as well as every extant print and proceeded to sit on them. I was speechless for like a day and a half; regardless of whatever influence you might have been under at the time- Spanish Fly, Barry White, maybe some hypnotic whatever- you did SuperPorn. We’re just going to take a moment, for you, myself, and the folks reading at home, to let that set in.
--------
And we’re back. But here’s the rub: I may have, in my search, discovered elements of the manuscript and/or movie that’s been rather unquietly swept under the table. Journalistic ethics dictate that I divulge this information, at least as far as it’s informative and not just salacious- though, because I am the man I am, that’s not a line I’m very good at sussing out. But I’ll offer a trade. You answer me truthfully about sex as part of today's interview segment, and I forget the things I know. Now I understand that a person’s sex life isn’t just their own, so, you don’t have to identify partners or their proclivities, but I want honesty, here. I’m more interested in the psychological implications than I am in the gooey details.
S: I think you’re lying.
ID: About the gooey details, a little, but I doubt the audience skews as pervy as I do personally.
S: I mean about having details. I think you’re bluffing.
ID: But you’re not sure- you can’t be sure. Because I may not know everything, but I know some things. So you’ll answer my questions. I’ll be gentle- after all, it’s your first time.
S: One caveat: you stop that.
ID: Fair enough. I think your history shows that you can have an imtimate relationship with a woman- so a far more interesting question is, given your physical differences- what’s sex like?
S: Are you asking about whether Kryptonian genitalia is analogous to human, or are you asking more generally?
ID: I can guess from the scornful way you said the first that it's a stupid question, so we'll go with option 2.
S: I can feel the ebb and flow of each oxygen and nitrogen atom across my skin as I cross a room. I can count the number of water molecules tumbling down my throat when I drink. When you see the world, you’re looking through a $30 children’s microscope; I see, feel, touch and experience everything at the magnification of an electron microscope. There’s really no way to express to you what it’s like, how it feels- you have no comparison that even parallels. I was curious once, myself, and J'onn showed me what being human was like telepathically, and the English language, even Kryptonese, fail to convey even in simplistic terms the gulf between our experiences.
ID: Okay. Given that, the fact that you look like a movie star- well, okay, Brandon Routh and Chris Reeves were both soap opera actors before they played you, but still, soap operas have pretty people on them, too- and the fact that you can leap small buildings with a single bound- how is it that you’re not a total whore?
S: I guess… my parents just raised me to believe in physical intimacy in a certain way. Growing up, I never even really imagined the idea of a carnal relationship outside the context of a romantic one. And really, by the time I reached an age and a point in my life where the thought could even really occur to me, I’d had other experiences that had taught me that I prefer romantic and physical monogamy.
ID: I’m going to give you a list. I’m not going to include any of the possibles I’ve come across, but we’ll keep it at the likelies: Lois obviously, Lana likely, Chloe definitely, Lori Lemaris- now that one you’re probably shocked I know about- Barda, Maxima, Cat Grant, Lyla Lerrol. I mean, you’re not a billionaire playboy, but still, respectable- especially since this is just the likelies. Care to deny?
S: No comment.
ID: And that is what we in the printed news industry call a non-denial. It’s like an admission, only more libelous. Still, you can usually print it so long as you mention the caveat. But on the subject of Maxima, why didn’t you ever just agree to give her a super baby?
S: It goes back to what I said about romantic relationships taking precedence over physical ones, because physically, Maxima and I were compatible, but personally- well, I don't even know about compatibility, because she never stopped dry-humping me and stood still long enough for us to have even a single meaningful conversation.
ID: And on the subject of super babies, you knocked up your wife a few years back. There are a lot of questions, really, so I'll let you just tell us how.
S: I'll skip the birds and bees part- that's pretty standard. Then there was, not getting too graphic, some “catch and release.” We talked about a turkey baster or getting help from a fertility clinic
ID: Wait, you intentionally got Lois pregnant?
S: Yeah. Absolutely. We were at a point where Lois wasn't fulfilled anymore as a reporter, and she was happy with our relationship, but she just wanted something else, too. Eventually she realized she wanted to be a mother. So we did a little research, and a little planning- and after just two tries, well- apparently we're both very fertile.
ID: Okay, so if you intended to get your wife pregnant, what happened to the baby?
S: Same thing that happened when you thought the pregnancy was unintended- Lois miscarried.
ID: Oh. And were there complications? Can she not have children now?
S: Nothing like that, no. She just... losing that first one. You know how that old saying goes, that it's better to try and fail than never to have tried at all? Well, for her at least, losing that first child was more horrible than anything she'd ever imagined. She told me it was like losing me, but worse, because she also lost a part of herself, too. And for the longest time she just felt empty inside. And I think she's come a long way since then, but I don't think it's a scar that ever really heals. I mean, maybe, if I'd lived a little longer, maybe we would have tried again sometime down the road.
ID: You're talking about yourself as if you were already dead.
S: Am I? Hmm. I guess in a way, I feel like I am. Lois and I finally had to go shopping. She was bursting into tears every time she saw me, and I finally got it out of her that she could handle watching me die, slowly withering away, but that my clothes, big and baggy like they were, they just reminded her too much of how far gone I already was. She just needed not to have it in front of her right now. And that was when it hit, when I was in a dressing room, trying on pants that wouldn't have fit me even in high school- that's when I realized that I don't think I'm getting out of this one- and I don't think I have that much time left. I'm actually scared by that.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: Um… you?
ID: No, but that’s a good guess. No, I’m told that Beneath the Cape will not be published. Ever. I’m told that the publishing house was bought out by a new company called Wayne Publishing, and also that a team of very rabid lawyers have descended upon the manuscript with claims of defamation, libel and slander. Now, last week you talked about your ability to sense lying, well try mine.
S: I… really didn’t know.
ID: Huh. You didn’t. Which actually does kind of make sense, seeing as I can still smell the pepto coming off your breath. Kidding, I can see the bottle sticking out of your bag, see the top isn’t zipped all the way.
But funnily enough, I came across Wayne Publishing’s parent company, Wayne Entertainment, the little we hiding under big WE, Wayne Enterprises', skirt. Their first division was Wayne Film, which you might recall popped up after yourself and, uh, “Big Barda”- God I hope that’s her proper name- made a “video.” It seems under the influence of someone called “Sleez” the two of you did some “acting.”
S: If you don’t stop doing air quotes I’ll take your fingers away.
ID: Heh. Your newfound ability to deadpan notwithstanding, I wasn’t finished. Apparently WE (the little WE) bought up the distribution rights as well as every extant print and proceeded to sit on them. I was speechless for like a day and a half; regardless of whatever influence you might have been under at the time- Spanish Fly, Barry White, maybe some hypnotic whatever- you did SuperPorn. We’re just going to take a moment, for you, myself, and the folks reading at home, to let that set in.
--------
And we’re back. But here’s the rub: I may have, in my search, discovered elements of the manuscript and/or movie that’s been rather unquietly swept under the table. Journalistic ethics dictate that I divulge this information, at least as far as it’s informative and not just salacious- though, because I am the man I am, that’s not a line I’m very good at sussing out. But I’ll offer a trade. You answer me truthfully about sex as part of today's interview segment, and I forget the things I know. Now I understand that a person’s sex life isn’t just their own, so, you don’t have to identify partners or their proclivities, but I want honesty, here. I’m more interested in the psychological implications than I am in the gooey details.
S: I think you’re lying.
ID: About the gooey details, a little, but I doubt the audience skews as pervy as I do personally.
S: I mean about having details. I think you’re bluffing.
ID: But you’re not sure- you can’t be sure. Because I may not know everything, but I know some things. So you’ll answer my questions. I’ll be gentle- after all, it’s your first time.
S: One caveat: you stop that.
ID: Fair enough. I think your history shows that you can have an imtimate relationship with a woman- so a far more interesting question is, given your physical differences- what’s sex like?
S: Are you asking about whether Kryptonian genitalia is analogous to human, or are you asking more generally?
ID: I can guess from the scornful way you said the first that it's a stupid question, so we'll go with option 2.
S: I can feel the ebb and flow of each oxygen and nitrogen atom across my skin as I cross a room. I can count the number of water molecules tumbling down my throat when I drink. When you see the world, you’re looking through a $30 children’s microscope; I see, feel, touch and experience everything at the magnification of an electron microscope. There’s really no way to express to you what it’s like, how it feels- you have no comparison that even parallels. I was curious once, myself, and J'onn showed me what being human was like telepathically, and the English language, even Kryptonese, fail to convey even in simplistic terms the gulf between our experiences.
ID: Okay. Given that, the fact that you look like a movie star- well, okay, Brandon Routh and Chris Reeves were both soap opera actors before they played you, but still, soap operas have pretty people on them, too- and the fact that you can leap small buildings with a single bound- how is it that you’re not a total whore?
S: I guess… my parents just raised me to believe in physical intimacy in a certain way. Growing up, I never even really imagined the idea of a carnal relationship outside the context of a romantic one. And really, by the time I reached an age and a point in my life where the thought could even really occur to me, I’d had other experiences that had taught me that I prefer romantic and physical monogamy.
ID: I’m going to give you a list. I’m not going to include any of the possibles I’ve come across, but we’ll keep it at the likelies: Lois obviously, Lana likely, Chloe definitely, Lori Lemaris- now that one you’re probably shocked I know about- Barda, Maxima, Cat Grant, Lyla Lerrol. I mean, you’re not a billionaire playboy, but still, respectable- especially since this is just the likelies. Care to deny?
S: No comment.
ID: And that is what we in the printed news industry call a non-denial. It’s like an admission, only more libelous. Still, you can usually print it so long as you mention the caveat. But on the subject of Maxima, why didn’t you ever just agree to give her a super baby?
S: It goes back to what I said about romantic relationships taking precedence over physical ones, because physically, Maxima and I were compatible, but personally- well, I don't even know about compatibility, because she never stopped dry-humping me and stood still long enough for us to have even a single meaningful conversation.
ID: And on the subject of super babies, you knocked up your wife a few years back. There are a lot of questions, really, so I'll let you just tell us how.
S: I'll skip the birds and bees part- that's pretty standard. Then there was, not getting too graphic, some “catch and release.” We talked about a turkey baster or getting help from a fertility clinic
ID: Wait, you intentionally got Lois pregnant?
S: Yeah. Absolutely. We were at a point where Lois wasn't fulfilled anymore as a reporter, and she was happy with our relationship, but she just wanted something else, too. Eventually she realized she wanted to be a mother. So we did a little research, and a little planning- and after just two tries, well- apparently we're both very fertile.
ID: Okay, so if you intended to get your wife pregnant, what happened to the baby?
S: Same thing that happened when you thought the pregnancy was unintended- Lois miscarried.
ID: Oh. And were there complications? Can she not have children now?
S: Nothing like that, no. She just... losing that first one. You know how that old saying goes, that it's better to try and fail than never to have tried at all? Well, for her at least, losing that first child was more horrible than anything she'd ever imagined. She told me it was like losing me, but worse, because she also lost a part of herself, too. And for the longest time she just felt empty inside. And I think she's come a long way since then, but I don't think it's a scar that ever really heals. I mean, maybe, if I'd lived a little longer, maybe we would have tried again sometime down the road.
ID: You're talking about yourself as if you were already dead.
S: Am I? Hmm. I guess in a way, I feel like I am. Lois and I finally had to go shopping. She was bursting into tears every time she saw me, and I finally got it out of her that she could handle watching me die, slowly withering away, but that my clothes, big and baggy like they were, they just reminded her too much of how far gone I already was. She just needed not to have it in front of her right now. And that was when it hit, when I was in a dressing room, trying on pants that wouldn't have fit me even in high school- that's when I realized that I don't think I'm getting out of this one- and I don't think I have that much time left. I'm actually scared by that.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Presidential Power
Irascible Democrat: There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you, since your view of the current President has softened, while down-home vitriol at him seems to be ever-increasing. Plus, there was his Superman joke during the campaign. So what's your take on his presidency so far?
Superman: I’m a reporter, first and foremost, so I have to take umbrage a bit with your phrasing. There are people who are angry with the President, and some of them even have a point, but if you’re specifically bringing up the Tea Parties, or the people shouting at politicians who try to speak about health care or climate change- they’re in an obstructionist minority.
But again, some of them do have a point. A wide majority of people favor health care reform. When you ask them about any specific plan on any specific timeline, support drops to a little below half. I think the problem, particularly with health care, is that the public like their health circumstances today, and they're scared of things changing. But the reality is their circumstances are constantly changing, evolving. If current trends continue, without reform costs will continue to rise, and that will mean that some people will have to change to cheaper insurance, others will lose coverage entirely. So people want to freeze their insurance as it stands today- but that isn't really possible. The public is just scared, right now, which I think is largely the fault of that obstructionist minority I mentioned, but the administration hasn't effectively countered it, either.
ID: But overall, how do you rate the President?
S: I’m not going to give him a grade, or a thumbs up or down. But I’ll say one thing for the man and the administration he's built, that I think encompasses most of my feelings on the subject: he’s trying. Whatever your political feelings on what he’s attempting to do, whatever your favorite hobby horse, he’s attempting to do something about it. That was always the most damning charge against Bush, and Luthor after him, that they were terribly passive. They wanted to let the market sort things out, let someone else figure out a way to profit when things went wrong, rather than getting in with the resources at their disposal to help. And Obama, and the congressional leadership, they’re trying. They’re fighting the good fight.
Sometimes, with all the pies they have their hands in, things get necessarily back-burnered, but I think it’s unreasonable to think even a great president would be able to address every standing question in the nation at the same time.
Take Darfur. The League came out in a joint statement with President Bush's administration, declaring our belief that what was taking place in Darfur amounted to genocide. We also filed an amicus brief of our research efforts for the ICC. Now under international law, Bush was supposed to act to stop the genocide in Darfur once it was determined to be occurring. But Bush, and Luthor after him, seemed content with that, assuming someone else would deal with it effectively.
ID: Given your own non-interventionist approach, isn't that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?
S: The difference is slight, I'll grant you, but huge. First, the League is a collection of people from different nationalities, and are not signatories nor parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The CPPCG actually states in part that signatory nations have a responsibility to act against a genocide. Where the League lacks the mandate and the infrastructure, the U.S. does not. The U.S. under either Bush or Luthor could have assembled another coalition. Hell, the US could have devoted no resources whatsoever, and just called in Captain Atom, one of the few Captains in our circles who actually holds the rank legitimately- in the Air Force, specifically.
ID: Okay, so what's the difference then in current policy?
S: Admittedly, part of the change is that now there's a UN force in place, there's a warrant for genocide-related crimes out for [Sudanese President Omar al] Bashir from the ICC. But despite the fact that Darfur is at least in the process of making progress, he's still talking about it. And he's dispatched specific envoys tasked with aiding the situation. I think he could do more. I think, in private at least, he should mention Captain Atom, and the fact that one single air raid through the country could destroy upwards of 80% of the military infrastructure, and probably deliver Bashir into the waiting hands of the ICC. I think maybe Obama doesn't want to push that too hard, where he's using fear and threats as a proxy for diplomacy, and I think Darfur is one of those things that has been back-burnered in favor of pressing domestic concerns- but I think it's on his to-do list, whereas with Luthor and Bush I don't think it even registered as something they should think about acting on.
ID: Okay, what about GM?
S: I think, given the lousy set of circumstances, he’s done well enough. After all, it was the previous administration that first loaned GM billions of dollars. So when it came to choosing between letting that “investment” die- and letting all those jobs disappear- or sinking more capital into the company, I don’t think there was a good choice- so I think they tried to be practical.
ID: What about people upset about the lack of movement on “Don't ask, don't tell.”
S: I think it's still on the President's radar- it's just a difficult policy to replace with other things on the table. I think, also, he's a bit gunshy because of what happened to Clinton that originally led to the compromise that is “Don't ask.” I think it's again Obama choosing some priorities over others.
ID: Are you an apologist for the President?
S: I'm not an apologist for anyone, except occasionally myself- and even then, only when I feel I've genuinely erred. Besides which, these are your questions, which means either you were wanting me to fall the way I did, the other way, or, I suppose if you're that rare kind of genuinely curious reporter, then you were just interested in which way I eventually would fall.
ID: Okay, but if the next election were tomorrow, would you vote to reelect him?
S: I don't know- that depends on my options. If all the Republicans are offering is Palin, Romney, Huckabee, then I'd take anyone else with a pulse and a synapse or two- which would definitely include the President. If Al Gore decides to challenge as the father of a new independent party, running on a platform of genuine environmental revolution- things like mandating recyclable containers for all food products- then I don't know. I always really liked the title “man of tomorrow,” so if there were an election then, I hope I'd be looking towards the future, and who was going to get us to the best one possible.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: I’m a reporter, first and foremost, so I have to take umbrage a bit with your phrasing. There are people who are angry with the President, and some of them even have a point, but if you’re specifically bringing up the Tea Parties, or the people shouting at politicians who try to speak about health care or climate change- they’re in an obstructionist minority.
But again, some of them do have a point. A wide majority of people favor health care reform. When you ask them about any specific plan on any specific timeline, support drops to a little below half. I think the problem, particularly with health care, is that the public like their health circumstances today, and they're scared of things changing. But the reality is their circumstances are constantly changing, evolving. If current trends continue, without reform costs will continue to rise, and that will mean that some people will have to change to cheaper insurance, others will lose coverage entirely. So people want to freeze their insurance as it stands today- but that isn't really possible. The public is just scared, right now, which I think is largely the fault of that obstructionist minority I mentioned, but the administration hasn't effectively countered it, either.
ID: But overall, how do you rate the President?
S: I’m not going to give him a grade, or a thumbs up or down. But I’ll say one thing for the man and the administration he's built, that I think encompasses most of my feelings on the subject: he’s trying. Whatever your political feelings on what he’s attempting to do, whatever your favorite hobby horse, he’s attempting to do something about it. That was always the most damning charge against Bush, and Luthor after him, that they were terribly passive. They wanted to let the market sort things out, let someone else figure out a way to profit when things went wrong, rather than getting in with the resources at their disposal to help. And Obama, and the congressional leadership, they’re trying. They’re fighting the good fight.
Sometimes, with all the pies they have their hands in, things get necessarily back-burnered, but I think it’s unreasonable to think even a great president would be able to address every standing question in the nation at the same time.
Take Darfur. The League came out in a joint statement with President Bush's administration, declaring our belief that what was taking place in Darfur amounted to genocide. We also filed an amicus brief of our research efforts for the ICC. Now under international law, Bush was supposed to act to stop the genocide in Darfur once it was determined to be occurring. But Bush, and Luthor after him, seemed content with that, assuming someone else would deal with it effectively.
ID: Given your own non-interventionist approach, isn't that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?
S: The difference is slight, I'll grant you, but huge. First, the League is a collection of people from different nationalities, and are not signatories nor parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The CPPCG actually states in part that signatory nations have a responsibility to act against a genocide. Where the League lacks the mandate and the infrastructure, the U.S. does not. The U.S. under either Bush or Luthor could have assembled another coalition. Hell, the US could have devoted no resources whatsoever, and just called in Captain Atom, one of the few Captains in our circles who actually holds the rank legitimately- in the Air Force, specifically.
ID: Okay, so what's the difference then in current policy?
S: Admittedly, part of the change is that now there's a UN force in place, there's a warrant for genocide-related crimes out for [Sudanese President Omar al] Bashir from the ICC. But despite the fact that Darfur is at least in the process of making progress, he's still talking about it. And he's dispatched specific envoys tasked with aiding the situation. I think he could do more. I think, in private at least, he should mention Captain Atom, and the fact that one single air raid through the country could destroy upwards of 80% of the military infrastructure, and probably deliver Bashir into the waiting hands of the ICC. I think maybe Obama doesn't want to push that too hard, where he's using fear and threats as a proxy for diplomacy, and I think Darfur is one of those things that has been back-burnered in favor of pressing domestic concerns- but I think it's on his to-do list, whereas with Luthor and Bush I don't think it even registered as something they should think about acting on.
ID: Okay, what about GM?
S: I think, given the lousy set of circumstances, he’s done well enough. After all, it was the previous administration that first loaned GM billions of dollars. So when it came to choosing between letting that “investment” die- and letting all those jobs disappear- or sinking more capital into the company, I don’t think there was a good choice- so I think they tried to be practical.
ID: What about people upset about the lack of movement on “Don't ask, don't tell.”
S: I think it's still on the President's radar- it's just a difficult policy to replace with other things on the table. I think, also, he's a bit gunshy because of what happened to Clinton that originally led to the compromise that is “Don't ask.” I think it's again Obama choosing some priorities over others.
ID: Are you an apologist for the President?
S: I'm not an apologist for anyone, except occasionally myself- and even then, only when I feel I've genuinely erred. Besides which, these are your questions, which means either you were wanting me to fall the way I did, the other way, or, I suppose if you're that rare kind of genuinely curious reporter, then you were just interested in which way I eventually would fall.
ID: Okay, but if the next election were tomorrow, would you vote to reelect him?
S: I don't know- that depends on my options. If all the Republicans are offering is Palin, Romney, Huckabee, then I'd take anyone else with a pulse and a synapse or two- which would definitely include the President. If Al Gore decides to challenge as the father of a new independent party, running on a platform of genuine environmental revolution- things like mandating recyclable containers for all food products- then I don't know. I always really liked the title “man of tomorrow,” so if there were an election then, I hope I'd be looking towards the future, and who was going to get us to the best one possible.
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Dr. Kent
Icky Dick: I want to bounce off of our discussion last week of the TED conference, and ask you a silly question. If you didn’t have the amazing abilities you have now, but had the ability to fix one thing in the world, big or small, what would it be?
Superman: Hmm. That is a silly question, though it’s kind of TEDish in its myopic grandiosity… but it’s also a sly attempt to keep me within the realm of fickle politics. Do you play chess? You should try playing Bruce sometime…
ID: I’ve been known to lose at chess on more than one occasion. But I’d be happy to play chess with Bruce, so long as our conversation was on the record.
S: I don’t know that I’d hold my breath on that- even if I don’t really technically need to breath.
But to answer your question… I’m tempted to stymie you and say “farm equipment,” which would only partially be a joke. There is something almost spiritual about using your hands to fix something that will help feed people- there’s an uncommon nobility to that, and I think it would send you scrambling for further topics to this discussion. But I have trouble accepting the smallness of that- it would be too selfish, too personally rewarding while bearing limited good for everyone else, the fed people notwithstanding. And I like to think I’m a practical person- a pragmatist. So the real question, then, is what’s the most important problem in the world right now- or perhaps, rather than importance, the one problem in the world that has the best chance of being addressed.
There are a lot of problems mankind’s butting up against: war, pollution, famine, poverty, clean water, disease- to name just a few. So maybe my answer is simply cheating, since it touches on all of them, but I suppose, while we may not often think of it in these terms, it is a pretty basic necessity, and that’s health.
ID: Hmm. So what do you think of Obama’s plan, then?
S: I wasn’t done- but I’ll indulge you for a moment. I think, like most of the public, I can agree that one, our health care system doesn’t work like it should, and two, I have no idea what the impact of Obama’s plan is going to be. I think the truth of it is that neither can he- what he’s doing is tackling the mammoth industry in this country, and the one where all of us stand to lose or gain depending on the outcome. Health reform is necessary and worth attempting- I just hope that politics and the necessary uncertainty of change don’t get too much in the way.
But American health care is really too small- and that’s not to disparage my countrymen, merely pointing out that we’re less than 5% of the world’s population, and not everything revolves around us. Though, I suppose, at the center of this is the fact that Americans are disproportionately disadvantaged as Western nations go, so health reform would disproportionately advantage us, too.
But let me explain first what I mean about health tying into everything. Solid health reform would focus on the really easy things to fix first. As an example, more than enough food is produced in the modern world to feed the population, but it is used in such a way that food produced is more costly, less healthy, and spread less efficiently than it should be. Health reform would include better nutrituional planning in terms of what we put into our bodies and how we get it there. Health reform should also include access to clean drinking water, and some form of sewage system. These are really just part of the foundation of good health reform- and the most basic kind of preventative medicine.
And to bring back TED for a moment, providing research into cheaper eyewear, to the end of eventually supplying eyeglasses to that billion people without them- imagine how many geniuses we might be missing out on simply because they cannot see. Germany at the start of World War Two had about 80 million people, but Hitler’s policies ended up driving out some of the world’s greatest minds, Einstein, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Hans Bethe, and physicists including what would eventually become the core of the Manhattan Project. Imagine if that figure held, that once in every eighty million we got an Einstein, a Bloch and a Born- now imagine there’s a one in six chance that they wouldn’t be able to see well enough to change the world. That’s basic visual care- a pair of eyeglasses, for God’s sake, and the benefits could be incalculable.
Sorry, I was getting tangential for a moment, there. Anyway, I’ve never been one to argue green technology from a karmic standpoint, or even from a global warming one. I remember a conversation I sort of stumbled into between Bruce [Wayne] and Ted Kord, and while they were both arguing the practical and economic reasoning, I just said, “It’s poison- industry is making the planet a little more hostile to human life every single day.” Ironically enough I followed that with, “I don’t know about the two of you, but I plan on living a very long life, and it would be nice if the planet were still pretty and teeming with life for the duration.” And I don’t take any credit, in fact, if anything, I think they were both just trying to figure out how to implement green strategies, but Kord and Wayne Industries are two of the greenest companies on the planet- and just maybe pollution isn’t causing more asthma and other breathing related diseases, but it’s still several birds with one very self-serving stone.
The connection to poverty’s admittedly a little shakier, and I don’t think that health reform will fix bad economies, or even resuscitate good economies going through a bad streak, but it will help. Health costs are strangling virtually every first world nation, and lead to rationing in others. And it’s also possible we could eliminate some of that poverty by spreading out production into other nations where production costs would be lower, which would create some better paying jobs in poorer countries, and as an added side-effect, the carbon-footprint of medicines and equipment would shrink as well.
Conflict- war, violence- is one of the biggest problems on the planet, but what does conflict tie into? Disparity and inequality. Someone believes someone else has something they should, so they’re willing to fight for it- that’s in a nutshell. Of course, that dynamic is distorted by the fact that most of the time the people benefiting in a conflict are no longer those in the line of fire, so there’s really not the same cost-benefit at play. The people who fight wars in the last fifty years have usually been the poor and disadvantaged.
But in a world where people are going to live 70 years, and they’re going to be healthy and relatively happy, that comes into consideration. If I’m twenty and have AIDS in a country I can't find work let alone afford antiretrovirals then I’m more likely to make poorer, rasher decisions than someone looking at another 50 years of life and prosperity. War doesn’t end, but the pool of proxy soldiers available for pennies or vulnerable to idealogic posturing gets shallower- and you start seeing those greedy people who try to manipulate others into fighting for their benefit actually having to risk for what they’re trying to take- it becomes a different game.
The thing is, if you add up the amount of people who are suffering because of war, or even poverty, even if you could address the underlying social and economic issues, you’ll only help them incrementally, because this one issue looms so large- because the cost of healthcare and its subsequent rationing in poorer countries distorts everything else. Even if you increased global wealth per capita to the level of the American middle class, you’d still have a health crisis. But if you can drive down costs- then healthcare becomes cheaper for everyone- and as industrializing nations’ economies develop, they’ll be grandfathered into a more efficient health care system.
ID: Wow, you’ve gotten knee-deep into this and we’re already through our allotted time. Um, we’re going to keep recording, but I’m going to stop it here so I can start transcribing, and we can try and get this thing out sort of on time (since regular on time isn’t in my otherwise robust vocabulary).
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
Superman: Hmm. That is a silly question, though it’s kind of TEDish in its myopic grandiosity… but it’s also a sly attempt to keep me within the realm of fickle politics. Do you play chess? You should try playing Bruce sometime…
ID: I’ve been known to lose at chess on more than one occasion. But I’d be happy to play chess with Bruce, so long as our conversation was on the record.
S: I don’t know that I’d hold my breath on that- even if I don’t really technically need to breath.
But to answer your question… I’m tempted to stymie you and say “farm equipment,” which would only partially be a joke. There is something almost spiritual about using your hands to fix something that will help feed people- there’s an uncommon nobility to that, and I think it would send you scrambling for further topics to this discussion. But I have trouble accepting the smallness of that- it would be too selfish, too personally rewarding while bearing limited good for everyone else, the fed people notwithstanding. And I like to think I’m a practical person- a pragmatist. So the real question, then, is what’s the most important problem in the world right now- or perhaps, rather than importance, the one problem in the world that has the best chance of being addressed.
There are a lot of problems mankind’s butting up against: war, pollution, famine, poverty, clean water, disease- to name just a few. So maybe my answer is simply cheating, since it touches on all of them, but I suppose, while we may not often think of it in these terms, it is a pretty basic necessity, and that’s health.
ID: Hmm. So what do you think of Obama’s plan, then?
S: I wasn’t done- but I’ll indulge you for a moment. I think, like most of the public, I can agree that one, our health care system doesn’t work like it should, and two, I have no idea what the impact of Obama’s plan is going to be. I think the truth of it is that neither can he- what he’s doing is tackling the mammoth industry in this country, and the one where all of us stand to lose or gain depending on the outcome. Health reform is necessary and worth attempting- I just hope that politics and the necessary uncertainty of change don’t get too much in the way.
But American health care is really too small- and that’s not to disparage my countrymen, merely pointing out that we’re less than 5% of the world’s population, and not everything revolves around us. Though, I suppose, at the center of this is the fact that Americans are disproportionately disadvantaged as Western nations go, so health reform would disproportionately advantage us, too.
But let me explain first what I mean about health tying into everything. Solid health reform would focus on the really easy things to fix first. As an example, more than enough food is produced in the modern world to feed the population, but it is used in such a way that food produced is more costly, less healthy, and spread less efficiently than it should be. Health reform would include better nutrituional planning in terms of what we put into our bodies and how we get it there. Health reform should also include access to clean drinking water, and some form of sewage system. These are really just part of the foundation of good health reform- and the most basic kind of preventative medicine.
And to bring back TED for a moment, providing research into cheaper eyewear, to the end of eventually supplying eyeglasses to that billion people without them- imagine how many geniuses we might be missing out on simply because they cannot see. Germany at the start of World War Two had about 80 million people, but Hitler’s policies ended up driving out some of the world’s greatest minds, Einstein, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Hans Bethe, and physicists including what would eventually become the core of the Manhattan Project. Imagine if that figure held, that once in every eighty million we got an Einstein, a Bloch and a Born- now imagine there’s a one in six chance that they wouldn’t be able to see well enough to change the world. That’s basic visual care- a pair of eyeglasses, for God’s sake, and the benefits could be incalculable.
Sorry, I was getting tangential for a moment, there. Anyway, I’ve never been one to argue green technology from a karmic standpoint, or even from a global warming one. I remember a conversation I sort of stumbled into between Bruce [Wayne] and Ted Kord, and while they were both arguing the practical and economic reasoning, I just said, “It’s poison- industry is making the planet a little more hostile to human life every single day.” Ironically enough I followed that with, “I don’t know about the two of you, but I plan on living a very long life, and it would be nice if the planet were still pretty and teeming with life for the duration.” And I don’t take any credit, in fact, if anything, I think they were both just trying to figure out how to implement green strategies, but Kord and Wayne Industries are two of the greenest companies on the planet- and just maybe pollution isn’t causing more asthma and other breathing related diseases, but it’s still several birds with one very self-serving stone.
The connection to poverty’s admittedly a little shakier, and I don’t think that health reform will fix bad economies, or even resuscitate good economies going through a bad streak, but it will help. Health costs are strangling virtually every first world nation, and lead to rationing in others. And it’s also possible we could eliminate some of that poverty by spreading out production into other nations where production costs would be lower, which would create some better paying jobs in poorer countries, and as an added side-effect, the carbon-footprint of medicines and equipment would shrink as well.
Conflict- war, violence- is one of the biggest problems on the planet, but what does conflict tie into? Disparity and inequality. Someone believes someone else has something they should, so they’re willing to fight for it- that’s in a nutshell. Of course, that dynamic is distorted by the fact that most of the time the people benefiting in a conflict are no longer those in the line of fire, so there’s really not the same cost-benefit at play. The people who fight wars in the last fifty years have usually been the poor and disadvantaged.
But in a world where people are going to live 70 years, and they’re going to be healthy and relatively happy, that comes into consideration. If I’m twenty and have AIDS in a country I can't find work let alone afford antiretrovirals then I’m more likely to make poorer, rasher decisions than someone looking at another 50 years of life and prosperity. War doesn’t end, but the pool of proxy soldiers available for pennies or vulnerable to idealogic posturing gets shallower- and you start seeing those greedy people who try to manipulate others into fighting for their benefit actually having to risk for what they’re trying to take- it becomes a different game.
The thing is, if you add up the amount of people who are suffering because of war, or even poverty, even if you could address the underlying social and economic issues, you’ll only help them incrementally, because this one issue looms so large- because the cost of healthcare and its subsequent rationing in poorer countries distorts everything else. Even if you increased global wealth per capita to the level of the American middle class, you’d still have a health crisis. But if you can drive down costs- then healthcare becomes cheaper for everyone- and as industrializing nations’ economies develop, they’ll be grandfathered into a more efficient health care system.
ID: Wow, you’ve gotten knee-deep into this and we’re already through our allotted time. Um, we’re going to keep recording, but I’m going to stop it here so I can start transcribing, and we can try and get this thing out sort of on time (since regular on time isn’t in my otherwise robust vocabulary).
We’ll be trying to bring you a new section of the interview every Tuesday. Some of the questions have already been prepared by the interviewer, but to ask Superman a question, leave a comment or send an email to DeathofSuperman@gmail.com.
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