I think the picture of Rick Perry over at the Drudge Report’s homepage — in which the candidate is shown in the middle of an arm-wave or hand-gesture, in front of a garishly colorful and flashy background — is rather too similar to the visuals of Jack Nicholson’s “Who Do You Trust?” parade in the 1989 Batman movie. (Check out the video here.) It’s not that the photo of Perry is bad, per se, or unflattering; just a little . . . unsettling.

Incidentally, three years after that movie, Pres. George H. W. Bush used the same phrase — “Who do you trust?” — as a campaign theme in the 1992 election. Now, the younger readers out there are probably thinking, Shome mishtake, shurely? Wasn’t the first President Bush the one who’s most famous now for having pledged “Read my lips, no new taxes” — and then raising taxes? Surely, after that kind of breach of trust, he couldn’t possibly have had the political cluelessness to campaign with the phrase “Who do you trust?”? Ah, my dear young friends, this just goes to show you that your generation was not the first to witness chowderheaded political foolishness. People have been doing this sort of thing since — well, choose your own traditional phrase: since Hector was a pup; since Jesus was a godchild; since Methuselah was in short pants . . . you get the idea. When you’re a politician, you’re surrounded by people who tell you how great you are, and these people — staff sycophants, political consultants, et hoc genus omne — tell you to go ahead with ideas like that. The result in this specific case was the election of Bill Clinton.

I offer this as consolation to anyone deeply depressed by the spectacle of today’s cultural-political wasteland: The past, sometimes, was no prize either.