Mitt Romney: The Newest Batman Villain?

As conservative chatterer Rush Limbaugh was perceptive enough to discover yesterday, Bane—the name of the super-strong monster in Christopher Nolan's upcoming superhero flick, The Dark Knight Rises—sounds suspiciously similar to Bain Capital, a financial services firm co-founded by Mitt Romney in 1984. 

As Limbaugh pointed out:

"Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?"

When writers first created the character of Bane in January 1993, they wanted a name that would inspire terror. Plus, they obviously knew that 19 years later, Romney would run for the American presidency. So they had to set in motion a sequence of events whereby a movie adaptation of their comic would emerge in 2005, with the series culminating in the summer before the 2012 election.

The decision to name the villain Bane was and is a transparent effort to discredit and villanize Romney in the eyes of the American people by linking him with the likes of a brutal, hulking leviathan luchadore. This may very well be the most brilliant PR move of the last century, fated to determine the outcome of the most important election of our lifetimes.

Or not.

More on Romney's bane at Bain here.