He wished.
We would have won the War. But of course, the Gotham City Police Department would have been helpless.
This would make a great movie. Imagne Ho Chi Mihn hanging out in a Factory loft with uniformed hencemen, colored spot lights, and a slanty camera angle.
I’m giving my prize to you.
Shutupshutupshutup!
I’m just trying to picture Batman in The Deer Hunter. 
I just keep seeing the ears come up out of a foggy river, then the cowl, then the EYES – straight out of Apocalypse Now.
…The Bat-Copter whooshing in over a little village, firing Zuni rockets and playing the Batman theme song: “da-na-na-na da-na-na-na BAT MAAAAN!”
…Batman and Robin in the classic spandex outfits surfing between the mortar shells at the mouth of the Nung river.
I get that it’s a Rush Limbaugh joke, but for those who might be wondering, Golden Age Superman was deferred 4-F in WW2 because he got nervous at his physical and accidentally read the eye chart in the next room with his x-ray vision.
I think Batman could have claimed conscientious objector status. Much like Muhammed Ali, he’s fine with beating people up but draws the line at killing anyone. If he won’t kill the Joker he’s not going to take out the Vietcong either.
Dunno about Batman, but I would guess that Bruce Wayne would have been deferred by virtue of having a job that was deemed essential to the war effort. Wayne Enterprises did defense contract work, right?
This was my guess. Both of my wife’s grandfathers were exempted from service because they were highly trained steelworkers. One was in basic for a few weeks before he got yanked back out and sent home to Johnstown, Pa., to get back to work.
cbawlmer
Yes, I wasn’t too thrilled about Ali’s non-violent conscientious objector stance either. (I mean if he played badminton, tetherball or croquet that would have been different).
Nonetheless, Jack Kemp got a medical deferment from military service yet bravely persevered to play quarterback for the Buffalo Bills. Now there’s a hero for ya. :rolleyes: Somehow, Ali’s draft-dodging made front-page news for a long time. Jack Kemp’s “deferment” (at least on a par with Ali’s) somehow managed to escape the newspapers.
BelowJob2.0 - Nope. Being an orphan or an only child did not make you draft exempt. Being the sole surviving male child did. That is to say, if there were 2 sons in a family, and one was killed while enlisted in the military, the other son was exempt from military service.
I was eligible for the draft in the 1960’s and it sure didn’t seem the way that most people describe it presently. My brother graduated from college in the 1960’s and it was almost as if you got your diploma in one hand and your draft notice in the other. As far as a draft lottery, I think that was instituted in 1970. So, if someone were elgible to be drafted in 1967, and they say they had a high number, they are full of shit.
So be that as it may, Bruce Wayne, being rich, would have had the right connections and would never have had to serve in the military.
I would imagine it was a combination of things - wealth, power, connections, and government contracts. Besides simply being prepared that is.
Oh, there’s a huge difference between beating people up and actually killing them. I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I want to make it clear that I think it’s completely legitimate.
This may be canon, but I can’t believe that getting out of the draft in WW2 was as easy as reading the eye chart wrong. There would have been an epidemic of “blindness” in that case.
cbawlmer
Ali’s deferment at the time made me a little angry (and it made a lot of people really angry).
Anyway, that’s why I had to mention in the very next sentence, the great American “hero” Jack Kemp - the football qurterback with the medical deferment.
I said his deferment was at least on a par with Ali’s but Kemp didn’t suffer 1% of what happened to Ali.
Ali lost a lot of fans for the stand he took and he lost his title. (Don’t know why a fighter can lose a title for that but he did). Anyway, as I said, it’s too bad that more wasn’t made out of Jack Kemp’s exclusion from military service. Ali took a lot of shit, and Kemp just kept playing ball and went on to a political career.
Oh, he was serious? I never thought about it. I guess they had to get him out of the war somehow, but is that the best they could do?
He’s just a typical American boy from a typical American town. And when it came his time to serve, he knew better dead than red. However, when he got to his old draft board this is what he said: “Sarge I’m only 18 I’ve got a ruptured spleen and I always carry a purse. I’ve got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat and my asthma is getting worse.”
Well it’s not AFAIK still canon because current continuity has no Golden Age Superman, unless DC has changed things again since Crisis. Regardless, the attitude toward the draft was a lot more positive in WW2 than it was in the Vietnam era.
Quoth toadspittle:
Wow… I don’t think you’re my brother-in-law, but both of my grandfathers were exempted as steelworkers, too, one of them in Johnstown.
Somehow my grandfather got an exemption because he was an only son and needed to work the family farm. The odd thing is one of his sisters served in the Army Medical Corps.