Dumping Them Out: Is Batman Racist?
Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. Introduction over.
I've been trying to find a decent true crime podcast to listen to when I go to sleep. My standards are very low. The only real good one I've ever found is Dateline, but I've pretty much exhausted all of those. Any podcast that has remotely interesting crime stories will do. I'm not looking for a true crime series either. I don't want something well put together (i.e. Serial, or The Case where Kirk Minihane solves an actual murder over however many episodes). Just something with individual stories to put me to sleep. A podcast where someone sits down in front of a microphone and essentially just reads me a Wikipedia page about a crime they learned about no more than an hour ago.
The problem is I'm having a hard time finding one that doesn't piss me off. The people who do those true crime podcasts either A) Think they're the Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle of True Crime, or B) Thinks their true crime podcast is saving the world.
I just want a boring ass true crime podcast where each episode is a new story, somewhere between 20-60 minutes long, where nobody is doing bits, and some woman isn't constantly lecturing me on how she's a hero because he true crime podcast gives a voice to a family who blah blah blah. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Anything Dateline-esque is perfect.
Earlier today I was wondering how exactly Batman's family made their money. I tried to look it up, and all the answers are pretty vague. Obviously they made money via Wayne Enterprises, which is a, "multinational conglomerate involved in various industries, including technology, manufacturing, and real estate."
I also found something that claims the first generation Wayne's became wealthy by trading pelts and skins with the French. And that Wayne Enterprises was founded in the 17th century. So if it's been around since the 1700's, it only stands to reason that at one point in time the Wayne Family probably owned slaves. Probably used child labor as well. Probably had some shady sweat shops in China. That would be a fun new woke thing to get mad about. If someone protested the next Batman movie because the fictional Wayne family in all likelihood used some not-so-chill business practices hundreds of years ago. I bet if I started a "Cancel Batman" Facebook group based on that premise I could find some people who would unironically join it.
The other day I was watching a TikTok of a guy who accidently found a sunken car in a river. They dove down and got the license plate, then called it into the police to see if it belonged to a missing person or something like that. I forget what they found out about it, but when the guy was reading the license plate number to the police over the phone he used the NATO (military) alphabet. He was like, "Yeah, the license plate number is TANGO! MARY! THREE! TWO! WHISKEY! NINE! YANKEE!"
And I thought to myself, "Calm down man. We get it. You're a tactical ass dude. We're all very impressed."
There's no way the average person finds that helpful. You're just showing off. If I was ever on the phone with someone and they were reading me a license plate, or a password, and they went all army ranger on me, I would be more thrown off than anything. I would say, "I'm sorry sir, but this is an Enterprise Rent-a-Car, not the Marines. Would you mind just saying the letters like a regular fucking person."
Sorry that was maybe unfair. The guy in the TikTok was talking to the cops, so the NATO alphabet is a little more acceptable in that situation. But he did seem like a douche. And in the hypothetical scenario I just made up in my head where I'm working at Enterprise Rent-a-Car because my professional baseball sports didn't pan out and I had nowhere else to turn to, and Billy Football calls in about his rental and starts shouting the NATO alphabet at me when reading off the license plate number… I would be annoyed.
