Liberal Hypocrites

ANDREW KLAVAN: Batman Battles The Politics Of Resentment. There are, after all, no socialist filmmakers in Hollywood. There are only capitalist filmmakers (Michael Moore, for one) who make socialist films. Likewise, none of the coiffed corporate multimillionaires who anchor the network newscasts can honestly support the Occupy movement which, taken to its logical conclusion, would result in their being hanged from lampposts. Yet while repeatedly tainting the free-market tea party movement with a racism it doesn’t espouse and linking it to violence it doesn’t commit, many creatives and journalists lend moral support to the socialist “occupiers”—underplaying the widespread vandalism, lawlessness and grotesque anti-Semitism characteristic of their demonstrations. “The Dark Knight Rises” is a stinging, relentless critique of that upside-down and ultimately indefensible worldview. And why not? Our chattering classes frequently tell us that art should speak truth to power and shock the bourgeoisie. It just never seems to occur to them that “the power”—and the modern Babbitts of the bourgeoisie—are themselves.