“Through calculated chaos and spectacle, Trump distracts the media and public from the dangerous consequences of his agenda.” — Andrew Mitrovica, Al Jazeera
Well, he finally did it. Controversial business magnate Lex Luthor has surrounded Earth with LexCorp satellites, targeting their lethal laser beams at every head of state in the world. Unless Superman reveals his secret identity by midnight, Luthor will assassinate presidents and prime ministers, one by one. The world watches the clock in fear, questioning whether Superman will save us, terrified of who will be first.
In the face of this threat to worldwide order, I am here to tell you this: Do not worry about it.
It is just a distraction. It is fine.
Consider the timing. Isn’t it all a little convenient that he just happened to hatch a dastardly plot one week after a nefarious scheme?
It was only last week when Lex Luthor set his killer robot squad loose on the streets of Metropolis under the guise of autonomous trash collectors. In the ensuing chaos, he lost support among his own board of directors at LexCorp. Now, to change the narrative and keep his job leading the missile and poison company that bears his name, he has cooked up this silly satellite business.
We must keep the pressure on Luthor by ignoring this latest global threat and calling it out for what it really is: an attempt to save face by a vulnerable billionaire.
Lex Luthor is doing the evil thing I care less about, as a distraction from the evil thing I care more about.
While it seems like ages ago in today’s fast-paced news environment, it was just last month that Luthor was caught pouring powdered kryptonite into the Metropolis reservoir. While many saw his raised fists and maniacal laughter on the reservoir’s edge as evidence of ill intent, I saw the truth: It, too, was a distraction.
Anyone worried about space rocks in the drinking water is letting Lex Luthor set the terms of the conversation.
Some would say there are no distractions. They believe that the more obvious pattern is that Lex Luthor simply enjoys doing villainous things, that he will continue to do villainous things every day, multiple times a day, as long as he can.
These hardened skeptics point out the well-reported fact that Luthor wakes up every morning by shouting, “Curse you, Superman,” from his penthouse lair. They share the story that every Metropolis resident has of the first time Lex Luthor commanded them to “be gone.” They remind us that Luthor’s graduate thesis was How to Be a Bad Guy. Yes, Luthor’s history of villainous behavior is widely known. But what if it’s all a ruse?
On a recently resurfaced episode of LexCorp’s podcast Evil Doer, his longtime assistant and henchman Otis Burg outlined the company’s “Do a Lot of Evil” strategy.
“Basically, what we do,” Burg said, “is a lot of evil stuff. That makes it hard for The Daily Planet to focus on each evil thing, which allows us to do more evil things, which is ultimately the goal.”
So there you have it. Lex Luthor is only doing all these evil things so that at the end of the day, he can do more evil things. Like him or not, you have to respect it as a brilliant media strategy.
Once you see the pattern, it’s obvious: The reservoir debacle was to distract from an earlier scandal (when Luthor exploded a skyscraper with his Warsuit), which he only did to distract from a fiasco (when Luthor exploded a mountain with the Legion of Doom) which he only did to distract from a controversy (when Luthor exploded the sun).
We must never let Lex Luthor force us to take our eyes off the ball, just because he threw another, technically more consequential ball. The most important thing for Metropolis residents like us, more than protesting this latest offense, is to pick one thing to be mad about. And the second most important thing is to make sure the thing we are mad about is not the current thing happening.
The third most important thing I guess would be doing something. Does anyone know Superman?