What does Superman have to do with the Supreme Court's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision? Quite a lot, actually.
In the new film "Superman Returns," the Man of Steel no longer stands for "truth, justice and the American way." Now he's dedicated, according to the movie's promotional materials, to "truth, justice and all that is good." Though, in the movie, the phrase gets edited down by Daily Planet Editor Perry White to "truth, justice and all that stuff." Typical editorial arrogance, if you ask me!
Although conservative talk radio has surely gone overboard in bashing the film, the movie does represent something of a retreat from Superman's traditional patriotism. "The world has changed. The world is a different place," the movie's co-writer, Dan Harris, told the Hollywood Reporter. "The truth is, he's an alien. He was sent from another planet ... and he is here for everybody. He's an international superhero." And in the movie, Superman's traditional backdrop of the American flag is replaced by the whole world.
Of course, it's good business to make Superman much less American because moviegoers are so much less American, too. A pushy, all-powerful, self-proclaimed superhero who stands for the "American way" might turn off, say, Pakistani audiences.
Still, we live in a cosmopolitan time. Although conservatives (rightly) celebrate economic one-worldism when it comes to trade and the like, liberals have fetishized cultural and political cosmopolitanism. The impulse to create a "parliament of man, the federation of the world," in Alfred Tennyson's words, informs every debate about the United Nations, global warming or human rights. For many liberals, globalization means empowering the transnational elites who get together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the Clinton Global Initiative to eat fusion cuisine while discussing the political fusion of the planet. Sen. John F. Kerry is a poster boy for this crowd. He actually thought telling U.S. voters that "foreign leaders" really wanted him to beat President Bush would help his cause.
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Few institutions are more cosmopolitan than the American media. Top journalists are on the best panels at Davos and see themselves as servants to the world. After 9/11, members of the media had a huge internal debate about whether it was an ethical breach to pin tiny American flags to their lapels. American journalists once proudly wore U.S. military uniforms, but in 2001, many concluded that, yes, wearing an American flag was simply too jingoistic. For the media, this is an issue in which economic interests and values coincide.
Many news outlets use the same excuse as the makers of "Superman Returns": We are competing in a global marketplace, and so we can't seem too "American." Hence, CNN bans the word "foreigners," and Reuters refuses to use the word "terrorist" and gives al-Qaida and other such groups so many benefits of the doubt - so as not to offend Middle Eastern readers and Harvard faculty - that critics have dubbed it "Al Reuters."
One institution that has hopped aboard the cosmopolitan bandwagon is the Supreme Court, particularly the more liberal slice of it. Long before the Hamdan decision came down, the court was embroiled in various controversies about its increasingly cosmopolitan jurisprudence. When she was still on the bench, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicted that justices "will find ourselves looking more frequently to the decisions of other constitutional courts" because globalization is creating "one world."
Of course, Superman has always changed with the times. During the New Deal era, he was a "champion of the oppressed." What is disturbing is that "the American way" now seems to have become code for arrogant unilateralism that falls somewhere outside truth, justice and all that is good.
