Dear God keep op-ed columnists away from the Dark Knight

Sorry, just because the Joker did something bad doesn't mean torture is OK now.

Should Batman kill the Joker?

But if we say that Batman should kill the Joker, doesn't that imply that we should torture terrorism suspects if there's a chance of getting information that could save innocent lives? Of course, terrorism is all too present in the real world, and Batman only exists in the comics and movies. So maybe we're just too detached from the Dark Knight and the problems of Gotham City, so we can say "go ahead, kill him." But, if anything, that detachment implies that there's more at stake in the real world - so why aren't we tougher on actual terrorists than we are on the make-believe Joker?

Dear God, why do you hate me? Over the past few weeks we've had to suffer through interminable articles from columnists and wonks who got told the new hip thing was the Dark Knight and then decided to graft their half assed geopolitical analysis onto it. Batman has alternately been Bush, McCain, Cheney, Obama, the United States, and US foreign policy. Joker is usually bin Laden, Iraq or terrorism in general, and the surrounding characters and story are grafted into this third rate melange of old men who want to seem relevant.

The Dark Knight is a fictional movie. The goddamn Batman is a fictional character. The actions and story are a fabrication. The movie was written in absolutes and black and whites to simplify narrative issues. It is not to be gainfully grafted on to your juvenile, tosspot ideas about torture, surveillance or the war on terror. There are real complexities in these issues, focus on them for five minutes instead of your fantasies about the goddamn Bushman slapping around bin Joker in the hoosegow to save the US. "But but but...the Batman did..." is not adding anything.

It is not a relevant foreign policy discussion, furthermore the people who do this seem to largely miss the point of the Dark Knight or even glorify some of the tactics and ideals that are clearly presented as right and wrong within the movie. This is almost as bad as the '24' meatheads who think we should be allowed to torture anyone we capture because Jack Bauer did it on TV to stop a nuke from going off in an hour......and it worked! Stop confusing simplistic fiction with reality.

Wait, now that i think about it, how can I be against the death penalty when people like Freddy Kruger and Anton Chigurh exist in movies? Don't I want them punished?