Modern Primate

I was listening to my boy Rush Limbaugh the other day, and he hit on an interesting point:

“So this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there’s discussion out there as to whether or not this was purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. A lot of people are going to see the movie. And it’s a lot of brain-dead people – entertainment, the pop culture crowd – and they’re going to hear Bane in the movie and they’re going to associate Bain… And the thought is that when they’re going to start paying attention to the campaign later in the year and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, not Bain Capital but Romney and Bain, that these people will start thinking back to the Batman movies: ‘Oh yeah, I know who that is!’”

I couldn’t believe it! I’ve been a huge Batman fan for over 30 years, and Bane has been my favorite villain since he premiered back in ’93. But it never occurred to me that the character was devised as anti-Romney propaganda. And here’s how it happened.

In 1984 Mitt Romney co-founded Bain Capital.

In 1993 he began campaigning for his 1994 election to the United States Senate.

That same year, Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, and others at DC Comics created the character of Bane as an obvious ploy to smear Mitt Romney.

Think about it. Why else would they call themselves DC comics if they weren’t a branch of the Federal government’s propaganda machine? Why would a guy named Graham Nolan work for them unless he knew that a guy named Christopher Nolan would later direct the Batman films?

I’ve created this infographic to spell out the connections a little more clearly.