Our society has been picking straws for years in the superhero department, forced to borrow champions of yore and update them to the modern era.
This was fooling nobody. Emo Batman and a metrosexual Superman show these protagonist paradigms are empty vessels unable to function as cultural ideals in the modern era.
Enter Tim Wentworth.
Tubby and bespectacled, this middle-aged Midwestern avenger swooped down in his van and quickly scooped up about $3 million of loose cash that had fallen out of the back of an armored truck in downtown Indianapolis.
With $20 bills floating through the air like confetti and a mad dash for cash all around him, Wentworth stepped into the fray and began to fend off the evil opportunists who felt the series of fortunate events that resulted in random money falling from the sky was somehow justification to abandon the values that made America great.
Tim Wentworth knows banks need money far more than the average American does, and even though this seems like a case of fate smiling upon the downtrodden residents of a besieged American city, it’s actually an opportunity to explore the collective hopes and ideals of our culture through the actions of a modern-day superhero.
Schlepping around in an ill-fitting polo and proudly sporting a pair of prodigious man boobs, this brave defender of the banking sector knows American greatness stems from our ability to nurture and feed houses of wealth.
Far from a divine and direct stimulus, the actions that led to millions of dollars falling into the middle of the street were certainly the work of a being unfamiliar with the way America works.
Wentworth was quoted as stating he saw “people grabbing 20s left and right and having a good time,” and this was clearly not part of the grand plan. He knew, deep in his tiny heart, the cash was intended to be paid to some millionaire in the form of a dividend and not merely grabbed up by some grubby layperson late on his or her mortgage.
“I figure somebody needs that money somewhere” was the exact quotation he used, applying personhood exclusively to the financial institution that served as the intended recipient of the bundled cash.
The unbelievably lucky people running away covered in Jacksons must have been something closer to ghouls in Wentworth’s telling of the story.
This story, though, is our story — the story of a brave new world where the Supreme Court rules businesses and bundled money in the form of interest groups have a more pressing need to free and unfettered speech than an individual citizen.
Everything about what the cash grabbers did was illegal, and Wentworth is being hailed as an exemplary citizen and Good Samaritan for his actions. But it can’t be surprising in a place where banks got bailed out and neighborhoods continue to empty out in a perverse fire drill, a man fighting to keep found money in the safety of a bank is a true hero indeed.
Tommy Maple is an international communications graduate student. His column appears every Tuesday.
