Actions and Consequences
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MM 13 – The Metropolitan Man, Chapter 10 (part 2) & Chapter 11 (part 1)
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This is where I start to lose favor with this story. If Clark is anything, he is a Journalist. And a damn good one at that, as implied earlier in this very story. If he finds that a juror was being bribed to find Calhoun guilty, that should raise all sorts of red flags. Clark would step back and realize there is more to the story than meets the eye, and look into who this other actor is. That he falls to his emotions and reacts int he bloody way that he does in the story is IMO a failure of this as a Rationalist story.
In my reading of it, I think that at this point Superman is having a crisis of faith with regards to democracy and our entire justice system. He takes steps to ensure that the bribery doesn’t have an impact on the final verdict and then he watches to see what will happen. When you’re having a crisis of faith it’s very hard to focus on anything else. Are all your foundational beliefs false? Things like “Who is doing the bribing” are inconsequential trivialities in comparison to “Does The American System work at all?” Systemic failure is a far worse problem than any individual bribe.
Turns out – The American Way is a failure. Calhoun is the proof of this. And then he chooses words that grind directly into this freshly-torn wound into the core of Superman’s psyche. Oops.
In my reading Clark is not a good Journalist. He does not know how to use his tools efficient, makes no interviews, is a simple man without great knowledge to share, cheats with using his godpowers gain information he cannot give a source or credit for.
Thats nothing I would call a good Journalist.
He surprised me with actually checking on the farm, following the post as far as he could and thinking about the safty of his hometown. We never have seen him investigate anything, just him doing his hero work without engaging with many people in a deep way. On his job Clark does not show that he applies rational thinking, so I think it is safe to assume he would not develop the patterns in an emotional shocking situation which requires him to step out a great deal of his usuall mind.
So far I like it, Clark did not recive a downgrade this chapter, he got an upgrade for showing precaution on the farm and investigation in the case. This shows that he is able to learn and I assume he will step up his game now. It will be interesting to see how Lex adapts to this in the future.