Worst Idea Ever: Campaign Urges Christian Bale To Visit Colorado Shooting Victims Dressed As Batman

The pressure’s on for Christian Bale to be a real-life superhero. That’s all thanks to a Facebook campaign and now a Change.org petition asking Bale to visit kids who were injured in last week’s shooting during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. Bale, who plays Batman, released a statement over the weekend expressing the horror he feels and how his heart goes out to the victims and their loved ones.

Now his fans are urging the actor to something about it. As Emily Sanchez, a Facebook user who launched the entire campaign, wrote on her page:

All those kids in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds at the Batman massacre could use a visit from their hero. I propose we [as in all of Facebook] should make enough noise asking Christian Bale to visit these kids in the hospital dressed in the real Batman outfit. They need to know Heroes can be real too, not just the bad guys. Dear Christian Bale, please visit the injured children from the movie massacre as Batman. You have the power to be a Hero right now, not a movie Hero, a real life flesh-and-blood one.

Her plea went viral, which means Bale, who’s currently in Europe, is no doubt feeling the pressure. That said, Sanchez’ idea sounds like a pretty terrible one to me. Yes, we need to be supporting all the victims of last week’s unfathomable shooting, that’s just a given. But I’m not so sure that meeting “Batman” will do the trick, especially considering that 24-year-old gunman James Holmes was wearing a gas mask during his bloody massacre, not to mention the fact that investigators found an actual Batman mask in his booby-trapped apartment. If anything, seeing a masked man would be nothing but traumatizing for these kids.

If Bale wanted to visit these young victims dressed as himself, well, there’s no harm in that. Still, I can’t help but think this group’s effort could be better spent raising money to help the victims with medical costs, for instance. These campaigners have good intentions, no doubt, but having anyone show up at a Colorado hospital clad in Batman costume is wrong on so many levels.

(Photo: WENN.com)