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But one of the Caped Crusader’s most ardent supporters is not in a comic book, but in the United States Senate, and he has known the bat for over 80 years.
When not working in the Senate chambers in Washington, Leahy retires to Gotham, where Batman fights cartoonish villains and rules the Batmobile. It was a comfort that he took at the age of 4.
When Leahy met Batman
Leahy declined an interview for this story through her spokesperson, but her affinity for all things Batman is well documented. As he wrote in the foreword to “Detective Comics: 80 Years of Batman”, he was born just a year after the first Batman comic book published in 1939.
He first discovered Batman at the age of 4, when he received his first library card. He frequents the Kellogg-Hubbard library in Montpellier, where he spends many afternoons studying comics. While her classmates were delighted with Superman, Leahy found a “family connection” with the bat.
“Entering the world of Batman through my imagination opened an early door to a long-standing love of reading,” he wrote in his foreword.
He would continue to spend hours at the library every day until adulthood, and even after moving to Washington, he would take the time to come. He is a strong advocate for literacy and the preservation of libraries so that children can have similar training experiences with books.
Leahy’s appearances from page to screen
Leahy was elected to the Senate in 1974, and until the mid-1990s her affinity for Batman had little to do with her duties on Capitol Hill.
“I’m explaining to everyone that blowing myself up was OK because my wife is a registered nurse,” he joked to Roll Call in 2016. “She got me back on my feet and I never missed one vote.”
His most notable cameo, however, came in 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” when he took on Heath Ledger’s Joker and famously told the villain that he “isn’t intimidated by thugs.” The Joker, true to form, responds by grabbing Leahy’s character and threatening him with a knife.
Ledger, who died before the film’s release, is Leahy’s favorite Joker.
“He scared me, when he came up to me with the knife,” he told Roll Call. “I didn’t have to act.”
“I have too many other things going on with Covid, with appropriation bills,” he told the newspaper in August.
While her movie roles have certainly satisfied her inner fanboy, Leahy does it for the library where her love for reading has blossomed. He donates all expenses of his appearances and residual exhibits royalty checks to his beloved Kellogg-Hubbard Library, where he helped fund a children’s wing bearing his name. From her roles in the “The Dark Knight” trilogy alone, Leahy has donated over $ 150,000 to her hometown library, said Carolyn Brennan, co-director of the library.
In 2012, the library hung a plaque honoring Leahy, who staff called a “superhero.”
Why Leahy loves Batman so much
Leahy found Batman as a child, but his love for the fictional hero is fundamental to who he is and the lawmaker he has become. Batman instilled in Leahy a love of reading and promoting literacy and justice (albeit as a civil servant, not a capped vigilante).
Leahy preferred Batman to other characters because, unlike the divine Superman or the super-powerful Spider-Man, Batman was only a man, albeit extremely wealthy, with “human strengths and human weaknesses”. The danger Batman faced was different than the other heroes – he felt real, Leahy wrote in the DC collection foreword.
“The Batman prevailed through superior intelligence and detective skills, through the freedoms bestowed by great wealth and sheer will,” Leahy wrote in her foreword. “Not superpowers, but skills, science and rationality.”
Much like Bruce Wayne, Leahy is just a man, despite having more power than most and the ability to make real, tangible changes in his own Gotham. Following Batman’s lead, he vowed to use this power wisely.
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