What a great thrill it was to see President Batman finally throw down against the Axis of Evil! First we must deal with Penguin, whose turn it is this year to head the Axis. Though his Baghdad lair is over six thousand miles away and is no conceivable threat to the Republic of Gotham, he is a mortal foe to the Gotham Empire!

His latest shenanigan went almost unnoticed. Just recently, as many citizens of Gotham settled in for a morning of peaceful fuhrer worship on the Sunday talk shows, Penguin’s henchmen planted an intoxicating gas in all the TV studios. As panelists all over the city began to discuss Gotham’s global responsibilities, the gas started to escape. They all began slurring incomprehensibly. Then, at the mention of Penguin, they all became horribly drunk!

George F. Will could not even speak anymore. He peeled his shirt off and tried to arm-wrestle with anyone and everyone. Tony Snow tied an American flag around his neck like a cape and pretended to fly around the panelists. He stopped and shoved Fred Barnes, who fell behind his chair and off camera but could still be heard mumbling “sssassskickin’ time now saaskickin’ time now.” William Safire went from a cerebral discussion of language, to throwing his chair across the set at Doris Kerns Goodwin. His glasses barely dangled from one ear. Tim Russert could take no notice with the lampshade he had placed over his head. He babbled senselessly underneath. William Kristol kept trying to say “Penguin,” but with every utterance, he spit-up on himself, smiling bravely throughout the ordeal. Oh the humanity!

In the aftermath, a new group calling itself “Mad Mothers Against Power Drunk Politics” has organized. They should not anticipate as reverential press coverage as was received by their prohibitionist sisters in MADD, because all things are Penguin’s fault!

But if some citizens cannot see the threat that Penguin poses, they should be forgiven. They do not have access to the technology of the Batcave. Batman does. He can see, in ways that they cannot, why only he has the moral vision to resist evil by, say, sending weapons into a conflict with a collapsing peace process. And how could a peace process collapse in the very Holy Land itself? The Axis of Evil, that’s how! The Axis was caught red-handed sending weapons into the conflict. Gotham’s indignation was understandably broad.

So Batman summoned the city’s commissioners into the Hall of Justice. He called on them all to have the courage to face the Axis, and that anyone, anywhere who does not side with him, sides with the Axis. Batman declared that the Penguin would not be allowed to take away Gotham’s cherished freedoms-that job belongs to the commissioners in the Hall of Justice, alone.

Well, the commissioners sure appreciated that, because they jumped up and down like it was ice cream day! So the Penguin and all his henchmen had better watch out, because that night, as Batman and his drunken chums retired to their late dinners, they sent Gotham’s brave children out, all those many miles away, gunning for the Axis of Evil!!

Na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na, na,…BATMAN!

March 1, 2002