Liberal bias in CW's “Elseworlds”

I sent this to a newspaper but it looks like it will not get in.

 

I loved comic books when I was growing up. Superman, Batman and Flash were all among my favorites. So, it’s great to watch some of the DC based shows on the CW network, especially the recent three-episode cross-over story “Elseworlds,” involving “The Flash,” “Arrow” and “Supergirl.”

 

It used one of my favorite plot devices, parallel worlds. The basic idea is that there are many earths (each with their own number-we apparently live on Earth-1) that all vibrate at different frequencies, so they are normally separate and unaware of each other.

 

But heroes like the Flash can vibrate their body just right to travel to another earth. Sometimes a “crisis” occurs that opens up a pathway or porthole between worlds and the heroes from multiple earths need to team up to save the day.

 

That’s what happened in “Elseworlds.” It was great fun, like a comic book coming to life.

 

Unfortunately, though, to me, there was an injection of politically slanted dialogue that was certainly not needed to enhance the story or advance the plot. There’s no reason for comic book characters to push a liberal agenda.

 

The first example was when Lois Lane reminded Clark Kent (Superman), after he told her what a great reporter she was, that he "is still making 21 cents on the dollar more than me." This is an obvious reference to the so called “gender wage gap,” the idea that women get paid less for doing the same work men do (more on this later).

 

When some of the characters venture to Gotham City, Barry Allen (The Flash) remarks that it has only “bad parts of town.” Then an armored car, perhaps a Hummer, stops nearby. A burly security guard gets out holding a big machine gun, followed by a man and women holding shopping bags. Barry then says “looks like the one-percenters bring the good part with them.”

 

Really? Do we need a lesson on social inequality while watching a super hero show? And only a liberal view at that?

 

Near the end of the story, after the good guys have won, Superman tells Supergirl that he wants her to take over for him for a while so he and Lois can start on their family. He says the world will still be safe.

 

Then Lois says it might even be safer and “a study out of Harvard last year said that women respond better than men under competitive pressure.” In the context of the story, this did not need to be said since several female heroes were prominently featured.

 

But lets go back to the gender wage gap. Lois Lane is portrayed as being highly intelligent. Since she likes to quote Harvard studies, why doesn’t she know about Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin?

 

Goldin has researched the gender wage gap extensively and in a 2017 New York Times article said “It cannot be reduced to a single number, though it often is expressed that way” (like the way Lois Lane did). Part of the reason why men make more, according to Goldin, is “workplaces that pay more per hour to those who work longer and more uncertain hours.” Also, it is a result of choices that people make, like whether or not to take dangerous jobs.

 

Goldin is not alone in questioning the common thinking on the gender wage gap. In 2016 The Washington Post gave President Obama two Pinocchios (meaning he stretched the truth) for saying “the average full-time working woman earns just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.”

 

This liberal bias has happened before on the CW. Last year on “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” the heroes had to go back in time to stop a super intelligent evil gorilla (Grodd) from killing Barack Obama when he was in college. When this villain appears, he says “Time to make American Grodd again,” thus equating him with Donald Trump. Later in the episode one character says to Obama “I miss you.”

 

Seeing such one-sided views on these programs makes me wonder if we all live in parallel political worlds, one for liberals and one for conservatives, that usually don’t mix, just like the parallel earths in DC comics. But when they do come into contact with each other, there is often a crisis, maybe because the two worlds don’t understand each other very well.

 

Look at what happens, for example, when conservative scholars are invited to speak on college campuses. Sometimes they are shouted down and riots have occurred. Some have even been physically harmed. People on the far right instigate violence as well.

 

When so many TV programs present biased political views, it does not help bridge the gap between our parallel political worlds. It may only serve to drive them farther apart, leading perhaps to even more crises.