Rachel Maddow lampooned Rush Limbaugh for suggesting there was a political conspiracy to malign Mitt Romney through the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises."
/ AP photo
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow slammed conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday for suggesting a connection between a villain in the forthcoming "The Dark Knight Rises" Batman film, Bane, and the capital venture firm Mitt Romney founded, Bain Capital.
"What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran and around which there's now this make-believe controversy? Bain. The movie has been in the works for a long time. The release date's been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious fire-breathing four-eyed whatever it is villain in this movie is named Bane?" asked Limbaugh on his radio show Tuesday.
Limbaugh said he suspected that "brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd" would see the movie and associate the villainous acts of Bane with Bain Capital.
It proved too much for MSNBC's Maddow to ignore, and she lampooned it on her show later that evening.
"The villains in Batman were pre-named decades in advance in anticipation of a 2012 presidential election in which one of the candidates would have a contested affiliation with a company named Bain... the conspiracy is deep, and it has a lot of foresight. Decades of foresight," Maddow deadpanned.
The character of Bane first appeared in a Batman comic book in 1993. Bain Capital was formed in 1984.
Maddow criticized the right for its attachment to conspiracy theories, accusing it of being "hermetically sealed in a media universe that lets in no natural light and no air. They breathe in only their own exhalations... the modern American right has become addicted to conspiracy theories."
