A few Saturday afternoons ago, I sat down at my desk, clicked on the TV and started searching for the Cubs -White Sox game, knowing all the while that my Cubbies had a snowball's chance in Hell of keeping up with the mighty White Sox. They ended up losing 8-5. Be it known, now and evermore, that as a Packers/Illini/ASU/Cubs fan I am a helpless glutton for disappointment. But also let it be known that I am not a fatalist, I my friends, am the ultimate optimist. This is always the year. The year the Packers win the Super Bowl, Illinois wins the NCAA basketball crown and the Big Ten football title. The year ASU goes to the Rose Bowl and the Cubbies win the Series. Yep, every year I enter each season believing such, no matter what the so called experts say. Although after watching the Cubs play so lousy this year I have changed the old mantra of "Wait Until Next Year" to "Wait Until The Year After Next!" Anyway, so there I was running through what seemed like 5000 channels, and nothing! The game was blocked out. But I did come across the showing of the 1978 Superman movie. You know, the one with Christopher Reeves and Margo Kidder? So I settled down for a little nostalgia. I can remember taking my oldest son to see it when it came out. He was only five years old and I don't know who enjoyed the movie more, my son or his 'old man'. I was all of 28.

    The scene I was watching was of Superman meeting Lois for the second time on her balcony. The night before was the first time Superman had appeared, when he saved Lois, a helicopter crew, and the helicopter, from falling off a skyscraper. The next day Perry White, the editor of The Daily Planet newspaper, humorously played by an old childhood favorite, Jackie Cooper, told his reporters to find out everything they could about this flying man. Then Lois, moving around the balcony with pencil and notepad in hand, was asking Superman all about himself and his super powers and then hurriedly jots down all the vital data. As she moves behind a large flower box Superman tells her he has x-ray vision, she jots down that bit of info then coyly asks, "Oh... what color of panties am I wearing?" Ol' Sup, being not just a man, but Superman!, smiles as he looks down at her mid-section, now blocked from view behind the flower box, and then frowns as he was unable to tell. When she apologizes for being so forward he smiles and explains that it was not the question that disturbed him but rather the fact that he cannot tell the color of her panties because the flower box must be made of lead. He explains further that he cannot see through lead. "Mmmm," says Lois as she greedily jots this weakness down on her notepad, "that's interesting, can't see through lead." Cut to the next scene of arch-villain, evil mastermind Lex Luther in his underground lair as his beautiful assistant reads aloud from the next day's edition of The Daily Planet with Lois Lane's exclusive Superman interview... and BAM! "It says here that Superman cannot see through lead!" Cut to a further scene and Luther had tricked Superman into opening a lead box containing Kryptonite, Superman's Achilles' heel.

    Okay, without bragging, and knowing that many of you also caught the stupidity of this reporting of the not seeing through lead thing to everybody, including Lex Luthor, the first time you saw it, as I did, watching it again now was a little more disturbing than thirty years ago. Thirty years ago it was a joke, "the dumb broad told his weakness." It was funny. Sort of like how the bad guys used to shoot all of their bullets at Superman and he stood there as they bounced off his chest but when the bad guy's gun was empty and he threw it Superman would duck! 

     Today, after last week's disturbing account of the NY Times article telling the World, including our real life Lex Luthors, about the secret program to track money transfers, it's no longer funny, it's a crime. Just as Lois Lane put Superman and everyone else in her fictional world in danger, The NY Times has placed not only all of our military, but all of us in danger. They did so for the sake of a story, a headline, money, a job. You have to wonder, even with a fictitious Lois Lane reporter, why reporters would do such things? Lois is on Superman's side right? The NY Times is on our side, right? Well, apparently not. Or are they just that stupid, that ambitious, that arrogant? In the fictitious world of The Daily Planet, Superman saves Lois Lane's and many other people's lives time and again. In the real world our military, and our government, saves all of us, including those at The NY Times, again and again. Believe it. Canada just arrested a bunch of terrorists, Florida was just the scene of arrests for a group planning to blow up the Chicago Sears Towers. What The NY times has done was just as stupid as what Lois Lane did in a movie. Only this is real life and bullets don't bounce off our kids in uniform like they do Superman. Nor will you and I will fly out of an exploding building unscathed.    

    Now try to imagine a WW II newspaper headline in 1943 stating that the Allies had obtained the German code machine. Imagine a newspaper reporting just prior to the Battle of Midway that the Americans have determined the Japanese code name for Midway Island by using a trick message saying that Midway needed fresh water and thus now knew where the Japanese fleet was headed. How about this one on June 4, 1944: D-Day: Its Normandy On June 6! Think that's funny? The way things are today, what's to stop them? I look to the future for headlines and reports on CNN that, as our troops are moving in, the world is told: "bin Laden is hiding at 2755 N. Mountain Avenue! American troops are converging on the area now. We go there now, LIVE, with reporter Jim..." and so on. Personally I believe bin Laden is rooming comfortably in a suite atop the NY Times building. 

    But really, what's to stop them? Integrity? Hell, they're reporters! Responsibility? They proclaim the freedom of the press, declare their freedom of speech, decry an absence of malice. Besides, without some sort of punishment, some toll to pay, there can be no responsibility. It has long been known among mankind that we cannot depend on people to police themselves and always do the right thing. If that were the case we would not have so many prisons. Without some sort of punishment, why should reporters or their papers restrain themselves? Well then, how about Patriotism? Yeah, right, dream on.

    One more interesting note about the movie. In the balcony scene Lois asks Superman what he stands for. He replies with the famous line, "For Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Almost thirty years later they have released Superman Returns, although I never knew he had left. In this new version that Truth, Justice line has been taken away from Superman and given to Perry White, the editor, as he is telling his reporters to go and find out all about what Superman is like now that he has returned, "You know, does he still stand for Truth, Justice... (pause) and all that other stuff?" Remember that five year old son I took to see the first one? He has seen the new one and tells me that he understands why they cut out, "The American Way." 

      "Superman is more global now Dad. People all over the world relate to him now, it's not like the old days." 

    Funny isn't it, how the world seems to hate us but loves and embraces just about everything we come up with? Well, that is, if they don't have to say it is American.

    In the meantime, just as Superman keeps saving Lois Lane's bony little butt, our military will keep protecting the NY Times and our rights and freedoms. But unlike Lois Lane when Superman saves her once again, the NY Times will never utter those two words of appreciation and say, "Thank You."

Semper Fi,
Mike

"Copyright 2006.  Michael E. Tank   All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."