I’ve said before that The Dark Knight Rises needs to be Best Picture nominated for (a) its own satisfactions and (b) as a make-up gesture for the Academy having shamefully declined to nominate The Dark Knight for Best Picture in ’09. But if it doesn’t get nominated, it won’t be due to any nonsensical associations from the the Aurora tragedy but a growing suspicion that The Dark Knight Rises is a movie that delights Republicans, Wall Street elitists, capitalists and libertarians.

Hardy: “If I was a citizen I’d probably vote for Obama. Who do you like?” Nolan: “You probably don’t want to hear what I think, Tom…no offense. Just do your brute thing.”

If and when liberal Hollywood gets wind of this, they may once again choose to look the other way when it comes to the nominating process. Okay, maybe they’ll extend a little largesse if Romney loses in November but first they need to read Andrew Klavan‘s 7.29 Wall Street Journal piece and think things through.

The Dark Knight Rises “is a bold apologia for free-market capitalism and a graphic depiction of the tyranny and violence inherent in every radical leftist movement from the French Revolution to Occupy Wall Street,” Klavan declares, “and a tribute to those who find redemption in the harsh circumstances of their lives rather than allow those circumstances to mire them in resentment.”

What harsh circumstances are Mitt Romney types, plunder capitalists, the gangsta bankas and the LIBOR criminals enduring exactly, and what kind of redemption are they enjoying other than getting away with everything?

“None of these themes necessarily arises out of filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s politics, of which I know nothing,” Klavan writes. “Whatever his politics, he is an artist committed to creating, in Shakespeare’s words, ‘abstract and brief chronicles of the time.’ This is where Mr. Nolan’s honesty comes in.

“There are, after all, no socialist filmmakers in Hollywood. There are only capitalist filmmakers (Michael Moore, for one) who make socialist films. Likewise, none of the coiffed corporate multimillionaires who anchor the network newscasts can honestly support the Occupy movement which, taken to its logical conclusion, would result in their being hanged from lampposts.

“Yet while repeatedly tainting the free-market tea party movement with a racism it doesn’t espouse” — Tea Party scurvies haven’t shown racist colors? — “and linking it to violence it doesn’t commit, many creatives and journalists lend moral support to the socialist ‘occupiers’ –underplaying the widespread vandalism, lawlessness and grotesque anti-Semitism characteristic of their demonstrations.

“The Dark Knight Rises is a stinging, relentless critique of that upside-down and ultimately indefensible worldview.”