Five-year-old cancer survivor Miles Scott recently delighted America when his wish to become Batman was granted by the Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area Foundation. Social media exploded and the adventures of "#SFBatkid" were followed by millions of people as he saved a damsel in distress and rescued the mascot of the San Francisco Giants. Over 12,000 volunteers helped make Miles' wish come true, and numerous articles were written about how faith in humanity seemed to be restored.
San Francisco city supervisor Eric Mar seems to have missed the heartwarming lesson behind the day, and instead decided to politicize the event. He tweeted and posted the following on Instagram:
Waiting for Miles the BatKid & Wondering how many 1000s of SF kids living off SNAP/FoodStamps could… http://t.co/LNNwpDsIsS
— Eric Mar (@ericmar415) November 15, 2013
SNAP (aka food stamps) is a federally funded program. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a private charity. While Mar eventually tried to cover himself later that day on Facebook, the fact still stands that he attempted to politicize a childhood cancer patient's special wish. While childhood hunger certainly is a problem (though the SNAP Challenge Mar encouraged people to attempt has been shown to be not that challenging.), there are 364 other days of the year that don't involve a sick child's dream coming true to discuss it. His comment was in very poor taste.
Mar was also behind the effort to ban toys from Happy Meals in San Francisco. It is unknown if Mar is on the League of Shadows' payroll.