The American Culture

The new ABC tv series Eli Stone deals with some serious issues—most importantly the question of whether our time is a congenial one for religious truths. Central to the story is the premise that the title character may actually be a religious prophet.

The main evidence for this startling proposition is in the visual and auditory hallucinations he experiences. The show gives a natural explanation—he has an inoperable brain aneurysm—but as an acupuncturist points out later in the narrative, the natural cause of the visions does not explain the content of the visions, which included insights that Eli cannot possibly have come upon through natural means.

Hence, the narrative insists, there must be some supernatural intervention involved. And of course the protagonist's name suggests as much: Eli, from the Old Testament Elijah and several other names, and Stone, from Peter (Petra, the Rock) in the New Testament.

Like most ABC fiction series, Eli Stone incorporates these strongly fantastic and melodramatic elements in a largely realistic narrative shot in a style based on Italian neorealism updated for color film and American sensibilities. It's visually bright, cheery, crowded, and energetic. The visual style makes the strange material seem more plausible, conveying the TV equivalent of literary magical realism.

The main plotline deals with a contemporary issue, as is also common in ABC series. As lawyer for a plaintiff suing a pharmaceutical company, the title character comes upon proof that the firm's vaccines cause autism. He springs it in court, and ultimately wins the case.

The notion that vaccines are responsible for autism is a very bad rumor to be spreading, because creating false fear in parents about vaccine safety will leave numerous children prey to infectious diseases that could easily be prevented.

In this case, irrational fears can condemn children to needless suffering and death.

There is a very simple explanation for the facts of the case. The mother noticed that her child was acting differently a week after the vaccination; he turned from a normal boy to an increasingly autistic one. The obvious explanation is that the two events were not causally related but instead were mere coincidence.

The intuitively obvious question, of course, is how this could be just a coincidence. The problem is that the question arises from a logical error known as the fallacy of special pleading. Instead of looking at one case in isolation, or even a few, causal proof requires that the effect be repeated in controlled circumstances. Yet that is not what happened in this case, and coincidence is not only possible but likely.

The reality is that hundreds of thousands of children across the country getting vaccines every year, and that thousands of children are discovered to be autistic every year. It's obvious that in numerous cases, then, children who are vaccinated will be discovered to be autistic soon afterwards.

It's a simple matter of numbers. With enough instances of two different things happening to people, a great many will come in close temporal proximity and seem to have a causal relationship. But they're quite unrelated. The child's condition is indeed tragic, but there's no reason at all to suspect that a vaccine caused it, any more than that milk, peanut butter, or sunshine is at fault. 

What is worse is that the episode equates this belief with faith in God. I should hope I needn't point out that such a claim is absurd, for the two things are of entirely different orders. We know nature solely by knowing nature: the more we know about it, the more we understand its workings. Hence, anything inconsistent with what we know about nature cannot be accepted as a premise for action. And our way of understanding nature is by testing it. Faith does not enter into it.

Our belief in God is also based on our understanding of nature, but is of a different order entirely, for it is not testable. Neither belief nor unbelief is provable in this world. Each is a leap of faith. (Note that point carefully: disbelief in God is just as much a leap of faith—we may call it a leap of unbelief—as is belief in God. Neither is provable in scientific terms.) One either accepts God, or one doesn't. What we call faith is really just the fundamental prism through which we see all that we experience.

Eli Stone does get that part right, even if Eli Stone the lawyer doesn't. An acupuncturist tells him, "There are two explanations for everything: the scientific and the divine." The healer makes the point that one chooses either to believe in God or not, and it is at the very least an equal choice, with the evidence allowing for one to hold either position reasonably.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Fox TV series House made an interesting, rather subtle comment on religion and unbelief last night, but the scene reaches so many levels of irony most viewers won't know what to make of it.

The show was the series' Christmas episode, the network having apparently saved it as a way to get viewers to return as the all-important February ratings sweeps approach. (February is one of the months when advertiser rates are determined, and most series are running out of new shows or have already been tapped out, due to the Hollywood writers' strike.)

A subplot predictably dealt with House's dislike of Christmas, and another seemingly minor plotline dealt with a pretty, young, blond prostitute who has contracted a disease through contact with a donkey or mule—she cannot remember exactly what it was.

The strong implication is that she got the disease venereally. She invites House to see her act, and after looking at the flyer she hands him, he seems uninterested, though unusually polite about it.

After the primary case is solved, House looks in on the office Christmas party and seems sad to see his coworkers enjoying one another's company, laughing and looking foll of cheer. He leaves the building, and the next place we see him is a beautiful Catholic church sanctuary filled with people during a Christmas Eve service.

As House sits in a pew beside a humble-looking family, he looks toward the chancel and sees that a living Nativity is beginning.

Sitting on a donkey, representing the Virgin Mary, is the prostitute. She and House exchange knowing smiles.

The idea that a Christian congregation would have a living nativity unwittingly featuring a prostitute as the Virgin Mary is clearly supposed to be important, given that the producers saved it for the final moment of the show.

The main story line of the episode is about telling the truth, and obviously this young woman has failed to tell the congregation's leaders the truth about herself.

Yet House doesn't fault her for it, unlike his treatment of everyone else in the episode. He could have done so when she gave him the flyer. But instead he holds his tongue, for perhaps the first time in his life.

Why? Apparently because he enjoys the irony. But House would never allow that as an excuse for any other lie.

The only thing we can conclude is that House hates religion more than he loves the truth.

That's a very revealing point about House—and about many unbelievers in general.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

ESPN2 morning co-anchor Dana Jacobson is back at work after a week's suspension for her drunken, foul-mouthed tirade at a public dinner.

At the beginning of the Jan. 28 program, the first since her suspension, Jacobson offered a rather cryptic apology:

I want to once again say how truly sorry I am for my poor choices and bad judgment that night. I've taken responsibility for what I did say and do that night.

What's cryptic about it, of course, is the phrase "what I did say and do". Certainly no one should expect her to apologize for anything she did not do, so the use of the word 'did' is redundant and indeed confusing.

Evidently her intent was to imply that she did not say the most offensive thing attributed to her: "F— Jesus!"

Yet neither Jacobson nor her ESPN bosses has denied that she said it. Hence the use of the word 'did' is obviously intentional dissembling.

After a lengthy meeting with the Christian Defense Coalition, ESPN executives will not deny that Dana Jacobson said "F--k Jesus" or a similar expression at an ESPN event.

 

The Coalition continues to call for ESPN to release the video tape from the event or a verbatim transcript of exactly what Jacobson said.

The Christian Newswire story then goes on to editorialize—accurately—about what ESPN's actions in the case say about the media giant:

ESPN also confirmed that do not believe that any insensitive or discriminatory religious speech took place and that Ms. Jacobson was suspended for "her behavior" and not for anything that she said.

 

So, it appears that using the term "F--k Jesus" or a similar expression in the workplace by an ESPN employee does not merit suspension or discipline.

The story quotes Christian Defense Coalition Director the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney as saying, "over and over again in our discussion with them, ESPN made it clear that Ms. Jacobson was not fired for her speech or comments she made. She was disciplined only for her behavior. In other words, ESPN does not believe any offensive or discriminatory religious language took place."

Exactly.

In her on-air apology, Jacobson made an interesting universal moral statement:

Mistakes do not define us. It's how we respond to those mistakes that does. I hope you forgive me, and allow my future to define me.

I hope that Ms. Jacobson will not be overly disappointed if few of us take her up on her exceedingly kind offer to serve as a moral guidepost.

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Yes, I mean that: the first half of Rambo is better than Apocalypse Now.

It's nowhere near as arty, of course. Stallone, who directed this film, is a clever but not brilliant director. But the film's treatment of the themes and ideas is superb, and it is definitely better than Coppola's inventive but confused development of John Milius's intelligent screenplay for Apocalypse Now.

The second half of Rambo is not for intellectuals, however. It is the bloodiest and most violent film I've seen in quite a while.

Nonetheless, the violence is neither distancing nor seductive. It is simply real. The backdrop of the story is from real life: the Burmese government's brutal mistreatment of the nation's Karen Christian minority. Rambo's effort to rescue a group of American Christian missionaries kidnapped by government militia forces leads to the expected action-movie violence—in fact, a good deal more violence than expected, as the militia forces vastly outnumber Rambo and the small group of mercenaries involved in the rescue.

Stallone forges Christian themes in Rambo just as relentlessly as the hero pursues the Burmese militia members who routinely murder, maim, rape, and torture the Karen Christian minority in the country, and who have kidnapped the American missionaries who bravely and rather recklessly traveled up the river to bring medicine and medical treatment to the refugees.

The initial sequences of the film show Rambo capturing dangerous snakes. The theological reference to serpents is not overly obvious and is very effective.

In addition, a couple of dialogue scenes tackle the issue directly.

For example, when the American missionaries try to persuade him to take them to the Karen refugee camp, Rambo derides them as foolish for thinking that they can change the world. His comments indicate the power and ubiquity of original sin. Ultimately, however, he comes to realize that the missionaries' way is a central part of the solution to mankind's ongoing violence and exploitation. Likewise, the missionaries come to realize that Rambo's way is also an important element of the answer.

If the film concentrates rather strongly on the latter, the practical need for protectors and warriors in a sinful world, it certainly gives sufficient attention and respect to
the equally powerful need for forces of love, peace, and reconciliation. That's rather more than the average action film is able to accomplish, and Stallone is to be commended for attempting it and largely succeeding.

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In all the controversy over the Dana Jacobson issue, I suspect that it is all too easy to lose sight of what actually is important about it. What happens to Jacobson as a result of what she has done is important to the general public, but not because Jacobson is any serious danger to society. Of course not.

It is important because the response to her by her bosses and the elite in general represents what kind of society and culture we live in and whether we can cause positive changes in both.

It is not obvious that we can do so without much struggle.

We can all agree that what Jacobson appears to have said is reprehensible. The question then becomes, what should the various parties do about it?

In particular, how should Christians respond?

Note that my observations in the present case actually centered on ESPN’s management and American elites in general, not Jacobson in particular. My point is that if people are going to be fired for one kind of slur, they should be fired for all kinds of slurs.

As you’ll know from my previous writings on the site and elsewhere, however, actually I strongly oppose all of this sort of hypersensitivity, and I think that pointing out the hypocrisy is a good way to try to get people to see that this identity politics is absurd and wrong. After all, if Jacobson is allowed to retain her job after saying something grossly offensive about and to Christians (if she indeed did so), then those who say equally offensive things about, say, blacks or homosexuals have to be given the same leeway, don’t they?

That, of course, would open the door to all kinds of strife.

Nonetheless, the immediate consequences of such an approach should not be accorded undue weight and overbalance both rightness and the long-term interests of society.

The point is, we either have to put up with vulgarity and offensiveness from all sources, or not do so. Equal treatment should mean equal consequences for equal offensiveness, whatever we may decide those consequences should be.

There is in fact a way to accomplish this.

We could institute manners and mores so that ours is a society where people can freely speak their minds, but they pay a price if the speech offends others—as long as the price is not exacted by government.

Unlike the Muslim opponents of Geert Wilders and Theo Van Gogh, Christians aren't calling for Jacobson's death and haven't tried to kill her. They are calling for censure, and that is perfectly reasonable. The question then becomes what kind of censure, who should institute it, and what the reaction to Jacobson's eventual response to the matter should be.

The answer to the all-important first question, in my view, is that the censure should be equal to whatever censure is accorded those who say equally offensive things about any other groups, such as blacks and homosexuals, to take two conveniently recent examples (the Imus and Hardaway cases).

That is essential if we are to claim ourselves a society that tries to pursue true and equal justice for all.

In a message to me which he has kindly given me permission to quote, National Review literary editor Mike Potemra expands on this point about the frequent hate-athons directed at an odd assortment of social offenders. Mike makes the very important point that identity politics threatens to turn each individual in society into an angry, scolding tyrant:

There's a remarkably close analogy to Dana Jacobson in the controversy about Fox's John Gibson making fun of Heath Ledger after the latter's death a couple days ago. Shocking! Horrible! He must be fired!

In today's "politics of the Thunderdome," we're all encouraged to be little mini-Roman Emperors, with our thumbs-up and thumbs-down determining the fate of the gladiators. I look at Gibson and Jacobson and say, OK, my opinion (if anyone asks) is I disapprove, but am I really supposed to get all worked up because somebody somewhere is being a jerk?

Bill Bennett wrote a book a few years ago called "The Death of Outrage," whose title I think gets it 100 percent wrong—our culture today thrives on 24/7 outrage, with somebody new to hate every few days.

Mike has it exactly right. This all comes down to what kind of culture we want to have: a free culture, or one that is a slave to the state and a few self-appointed private-sector gatekeepers backed by enormous amounts of money—all of which reflects attitudes flowing out of what people are taught in the public schools.

A free culture will include much that we don't like, but it will also include much that enriches us and brings joy. The current hegemony of identity politics in both the culture and society, however, is antithetical to cultural freedom and is in fact the greatest present obstacle to it.

Identity politics is stupid and wrong, and if Jacobson should skate, then those who say other offensive things should skate as well.

Of course, if you think that people are too freely offensive now, you might shudder to think what will happen when there are no taboos left.

But will there actually be no taboos left? Society can regulate itself quite nicely, actually, if government stays out of the fray. We need only recognize and accept the essentiality of equal treatment, and then live by that truth and teach it in our schools.

As I've said before on this site and elsewhere, instead of judging people's actions on the basis of whom they hurt, we should judge them on the basis of how much they hurt, whomever they may hurt.

That's the real issue here.

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The BBC America sci-fi series Torchwood, a spinoff of the most recent revival of the long-running series Doctor Who, will show an explicit sexual clinch between two men in tonight's season opening program on the basic cable network.

The scene depicts polymorphously perverse series protagonist Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) with guest star James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

I was not impressed by the first season of Torchwood, as it is rather too cute and the special effects too cheap to make up for the snarkiness of the whole affair. The short-lived U.S. series Firefly was far superior. Not recommended.

For additional information about the series, visit the BBC America Torchwood page.

Update: In the original version of this article I used the words 'sex scene' to describe the sequence, which may have been technically accurate but certainly had the unfortunate effect of suggesting that the scene includes pornographic effects. That is an inaccurate impression, according to reports. Hence I have changed the term to avoid any potential confusion. As it happens, it took me rather a long time to figure out a phrase that wouldn't sound too creepy or would too weakly describe the scene, and I'm not altogether sure that I have succeeded.

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Chicago Sun-Times writer Greg Crouch asks in his column today whether ESPN personality Dana Jacobson really did say the offensive words attributed to her that resulted in a one-week suspension. (See story below.)

That's a good question. Crouch points out that the original report of Jacobson specifically saying "F— Jesus" came from a blog and has not been confirmed by a particular eyewitness at the event, Scott Cronick of the Press of Atlantic City, whom Couch asked about it yesterday. Cronick said that he does not believe she said "F— Jesus."

Couch's point is that mainstream journalists should not quote information from blogs because bloggers are not responsible journalists and not reliable news sources. Real journalists—which Couch appears to define as people working for corporate newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio stations, and websites—check their facts and are "reliable."

If I ever see any responsible journalism in the mainstream media, I'll check on that contention.

Remember that it was the mainstream media that convicted the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape, and it was web journalists such as I who argued from the beginning that the case was an obvious frame-up. We were right, and they were wrong. 

To be sure, Couch agrees that if Jacobson really did say what she is accused of saying, she should be fired, not just suspended. In addition, he recognizes that the evidence strongly suggests she said something so offensive that her bosses don't want it confirmed, and that it probably was exactly what has been reported:

ESPN has a tape of the event. [Christian Defense Coalition director, the Rev. Patrick J.] Mahoney said he spoke with an ESPN executive who didn't deny that Jacobson had said it and wouldn't show the tape. So, Mahoney said, responsibility is on ESPN.

I respect Mahoney's passion, but his ground is shaky. It is not becoming of a reverend to make an example of someone who might be innocent.

That said, ESPN isn't handling this right, either. Why not show the tape? Jacobson's apology did say, ''I respect all religions.''

Why would she say that? It is suspicious, when neither ESPN nor Jacobson will stand up and deny the rumors. ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz wouldn't hand the tape over to me, either. Why?

Why, indeed? Perhaps the web reports were more reliable than Couch wishes to admit. Couch is right to point out that no one has been identified as actually having been at the event and willing to confirm that Jacobson actually said the offending words.

Yet ESPN has a tape and could easily end the discussion if she is indeed innocent of the charge.

Unless Jacobson's bosses deny that she did it and come forward with exculpatory evidence, it is certainly reasonable to believe that the rumors are true.

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Providing further proof that America's elites are delighted when people of low mental ability use Christians and Christianity as punching bags, ESPN has suspended sports-show anchor Dana Jacobson for one week after she indulged in a drunken, foul-mouthed public tirade that included an astonishingly vulgar curse directed at Jesus Christ.

The one-week suspension is very revealing of the mentality of the management team at the Disney-owned sports network, given that the same behavior would have gotten anyone not in the media fired, and it would have gotten a media person fired had it been delivered against an accredited victim group—cf. the termination of radio host Don Imus and basketball commentator Tim Hardaway last year.

At a Jan. 11 roast for fellow ESPN personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, Jacobson, reportedly very drunk, launched into "a rambling speech that included vulgar references about Notre Dame," according to a Chicago Tribune story.

Jacobson, a University of Michigan grad, often exchanges on-air taunts with Golic, a Notre Dame alum, about the two schools.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times report, the audience was not amused:

An article in The Press of Atlantic City the next day said that Jacobson ''made an absolute fool of herself, swilling vodka from a Belvedere bottle, mumbling along and cursing like a sailor as Mike & Mike rested their heads in their hands in embarrassment.'' She was booed off the stage.

All of that would be enough to get an ordinary person fired, of course.

Jacobson then went on to say (using expletives indicated by first letter only here):

F— Notre Dame, F—Touchdown Jesus, and F— Jesus!

Clearly, the only reason Jacobson was not fired and subjected to the same kind of universal condemnation directed at Tim Hardaway and Don Imus last year is that her words were directed at Christians and their God.

If you think for even a moment that this is not true, imagine what the results would have been if Jacobson had targeted a different group.

Imagine that she had said the following: F— Grambling, F— Eddie Robinson, and F— Martin Luther King!

Or that she had said this: F— the Middle East, F— Mecca, and F— Muhammed!

Or that she had said this: F— the Democrats, F— Hillary Clinton, and F— abortionists!

She wouldn't survive a day.

But because she chose to offend Christians, she'll be back at work in a week.

Compare this with the firing of Stephen Coughlin from the U.S. military's Joint Staff for daring to observe that jihad is inherent in Islam, and the death threats against Geert Wilders and the murder of Dutch columnist and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh for making similar observations.

Jacobson is getting a free ride because her despicable tirade was directed against Christians.

I am very tempted to say,

F— ESPN, F— the mainstream media, and F— Dana Jacobson!

But I am too polite to do so.

Update: Further thoughts on this issue, including how Christians and others should react and what kind of society and culture various reactions imply, are available in my follow-up article here.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Correspondent Mike D'Virgilio reviews the musical film Once. Or is it more than a musical?

'Once' and Again

By Mike D'Virgilio 

I hate musicals!

In our house, the women (wife and daughter) love musicals. The men (dad and the two sons) don’t. This is a solid line, brightly demarcated, where no compromise is broached.

Think, then, of the surprise and amazement when I told the girls that they had to see a musical I had seen the night before. They were dubious, to say the least, until they started watching. I rarely watch movies twice, and if it’s got too much music, chances are I won’t watch it even once. But I watched Once on back-to-back nights.

Now, saying that Once is a musical is not exactly right, although the publicity refers to it as a “modern day musical.” It’s really a movie with a lot of music in it, very touching, melodic, and powerful music.

Once is an ode to the power of music to touch and express the soul. The two main actors are in fact musicians first who had never acted until this movie. Good choice. I can’t imagine the parts being played well by actors who were not musicians.

The story takes place on the streets of Dublin, where a struggling musician plays for coins. Through his music he meets a young Czech immigrant who sells flowers on the same street. It’s a tale of loneliness and longing told through song, and a love story with an ending that is an anachronism for our age: no sex!

The Dubliner, in pain from a love lost, is a thirtysomething slacker who works with his father fixing vacuum cleaners. The gal, also a musician, lives with her mother and toddler daughter in a small apartment while her husband remains in the Czech Republic. You can see the adultery coming from a mile away, but surprisingly and refreshingly, it never comes.

Instead, in the space of a week the two musicians inspire each other with their music and their mutual longing, and because of the girl’s encouragement they end up recording songs so that the guy can hit it big in London.

The style is low-budget yet engaging, minimalist, even rough, but satisfying. It shows you don’t need a lot of money to tell a touching story in a powerful way.

Once is a beautifully simple story told with elegance and grace. Its emotional power is much stronger than most mainstream films can even hope to muster. Watch it, and you won’t be able to get the tunes out of your head for some time.

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Dutch politician Geert Wilders is back in the news for daring to say what few in the West will admit: that Islam is not a religion of peace.

Wilders is about to release a ten-minute film that shows Islam to be “a source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror.”

As we noted earlier today, many in the West have so little regard for their own civilization that they habitually criticize their own societies while praising those that do the very opposite of what they recommend for their own.

As a natural consequence of that attitude, when the occasional brave or foolish Westerner dares to criticize another culture or society, Western self-loathers run for cover or go on the attack against the hated truth-teller.

Thus it is with criticism of Islam, as vividly evidenced in the reactions to Wilders. Wilders has dared to criticize Islam, resulting in horror among his Dutch countrymen and threats of war from Muslim leaders.

As the entertainment newspaper Variety reports,

Last year, Wilders sought to have the Koran banned in the Netherlands and compared it with Adolf Hilter’s “Mein Kampf.” He said that if Muslims wanted to stay in the country they should tear out half the Koran and throw it away. . . .

Last week, Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun said that if the Freedom Party leader tears up or burns a Koran in his film, “this will simply mean he is inciting wars and bloodshed. And he will be responsible. It is the responsibility of the Dutch people to stop Wilders.”

These threats are by no means idle: in November 2004 a radical Muslim murdered Dutch columnist and filmmaker Theo van Gogh for his criticisms of Islam. Wilders says that "the government’s anti-terrorism chief warned him last week that he might have to leave the country if the film is shown," according to the Variety report.

So much for the government protecting its citizens.

Wilders has said editing the film will take another two weeks, after which he wants Dutch broadcasters to run the program in one the slots assigned to his party by the end of the month.

Wilders has laid bare the demoralized double standard of the Dutch elites—and Western elites in general—particularly as regards the status of Christianity, as noted in the Variety story:

Writing Wednesday in De Volkskrant, Wilders complains that the “panic” over the film, which reached new heights over the weekend, would not have happened if he had criticized the Bible. He concludes that this demonstrates the Dutch government’s obsession with Islamic sensibilities. “In this way the Koran film has already proved its usefulness.”

What this all demonstrates most vividly is the grotesque demoralization of Western elites.

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One of the greatest difficulties in the West's confrontation with Islam in the past decade has been our failure to recognize the true nature of Islam. This is a direct consequence of our failure to recognize the true nature of our own civilization, and the great good that is inherent in it.

The modern West has been loath to view itself even as a civilization worthy of respect, much less the best that mankind has had to offer, which it surely is despite its many imperfections.

That has made it difficult or impossible for those the West who adhere to this philosophy to criticize other cultures and civilizations, a notion that has come to be called multiculturalism but is in fact simply demoralization.

The open confrontation with Islam, however, does appear to have brought some people to the realization, however reluctant, that the West has its virtues and other cultures have their faults.

That is a very good development indeed.

Today Carol  Iannone (not one of the demoralized ones) superbly expresses this point of view in a post on National Review Online's Phi Beta Cons blog, in a summary of the ideas in Stephen Coughlin's master's thesis, "'To Our Great Detriment': Ignoring What Extremists Say about Jihad," submitted to the National Defense Intelligence College:

I can see why it got him into trouble. He frankly declares that this administration has been wrong on the relation of Islam to jihadism and terrorism. . . . Coughlin points out that on the basis of very little, Bush, Rice, and other Administration people blithely declare Islam a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a few violent extremists for their own agenda, an agenda which they insist has nothing to do with Islam.  They ignore all the evidence from Islamic sources that support violence in the name of spreading or defending the faith and bypass the professed and frequently stated aims of the jihadists. 

Iannone summarizes what appears to be Coughlin's view:

[This] view says that there is indeed a problem with Islam itself, that even if only a minority of Muslims will ever take up jihad, most Muslims know that that is mandated by their religion and they do support it in belief and sometimes financially.  The term Islamo-Fascism is really a euphemism for those who wish to deny or ignore the violence inherent in Islam. This view sees that jihad has been a feature of Islam from its beginnings and that martyrdom is honored and rewarded in Islam.  This view also finds that Islam may well be in conflict with liberal democracy.  Muslims are told that they are meant to Islamicize the countries they live in, through "peaceful" means if they can, and violent means when necessary, and we already see signs of this in Europe and America.

The Bush administration, then, has been grossly mistaken in thinking that radical Islam is an aberration and not central to Islam:

[H]e says that we are hampered in dealing with the enemy and in producing good intelligence for our strategic plans because instead of listening to what the enemy is saying, we impose our own hopeful, optimistic kind of view on the Islamic world, that everyone is really like us at heart and that we will see this in the end.

I think that this is a very good analysis, and I am very glad that Carol has brought it to our attention.

Jihad, in fact, is the mirror image of Western demoralization. On the one hand, a civilization compelled to press its fundamental beliefs on the entire world, and on the other a civilization that has in great part lost the will even to defend itself.

The need to retain the delusion among Western elites is powerful, however, and for his efforts to remove the scales from their eyes, Coughlin was fired from his position on the U.S. military's Joint Staff. As Bill Gertz noted in the Washington Times:

The action followed a report in this space last week revealing opposition to his work for the military by pro-Muslim officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

The essay is available online here, and I recommend that you read it.

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The data privacy group's report will identify companies' compliance with EU privacy laws. Judging by past EU behavior, a finding of noncompliance could affect firms' status or result in hefty fines.

This is a blow to internet giant Google, which stores the IP addresses of its search engine users in order to confirm to advertisers that people are actually using the services and seeing the ads. The firm also says it collects IP addresses in order to improve search results by tailoring them to the user's geographic location. Google strips out the last two numbers of the address, which the firm says sufficiently protects users' privacy.

A representative of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said that Google's claim is "absurd," the AP story reported.

Microsoft will not be affected by this decision, as its search engine does not collect IP addresses.

The statement by Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, is good news for computer users.

Dave Kopel, research director for the Independence Institute, agrees:

My view is that the EU is right on this one. An absolutely strict libertarian view would say that the government shouldn't interfere. I try to take a "practical libertarian" view, in which we look at freedom (which includes privacy) holistically, and recognize that in a practical sense, big businesses can sometimes thwart freedom.

And given Google's ready cooperation with the Chinese dictatorship, it hardly seems unlikely that Google would refuse to share its databases with governments, even without a warrant, under the right circumstances.

So I say "good for the EU."

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two grim, bleak films about the dark side of American life led the nominations for this year's Academy Awards.

The award nominations showed that the Academy is fully in tune with the elite culture's current predilection for gloom and doom.

No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood led the nominations with eight apiece, including Best Picture and Best Director. Both films were helmed by smart, talented, thoughtful filmmakers, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen and Paul Michael Anderson, respectively.

The sad romance Atonement, the anti-business legal thriller Michael Clooney, and the teen pregnancy comedy rounded out the Best Picture contenders.

Actor and actress nominations were drawn from the Best Picture nominees and other weird, gloomy, or politically charged films such as Tommy Lee Jones (for Best Actor for In the Valley of Elah), Julie Christie (for Best Actress for playing an Alzheimer's victim in Away from Her), Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Viggo Mortensen, Casey Affleck, and Amy Ryan.

Whether any stars will actually attend the ceremony is in doubt at this point, as the Screen Actors Guild is honoring the Writers Guild strike against the movie and television industry. Such an outcome, of course, would probably severely cut the award program's ratings.

A complete list of nominations for the 80th Academy Awards is available here at the Motion Picture Academy website.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The film grossed $40 million in U.S. ticket sales during the weekend, and added another $6 million on Monday.

Grabbing second place was another TV name. 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy starring Katharine Heigl (Gray's Anatomy, Knocked Up), took in $22.8 million over the Friday-Sunday period and another $4.5 million on Monday.

Cloverfield grossed nearly as much as other recent big-studo monster movies such as King Kong, Jurassic Park, and the Godzilla remake, but was made on a much smaller budget, reportedly around $30 million, which is less than major studio romantic comedies cost nowadays.

The filmmakers used real ingenuity in shooting the film, making it look as if it were recorded on a camcorder. That made it both less expensive to produce but also made it more likely to look real to contemporary viewers.

The distributor contributed a smart marketing plan that left it unclear precisely what the film was about until just days before the premiere, while suggesting that it would be suspenseful, action-oriented, and human-scaled—three characteristics that seldom coincide in films today.

Set in Manhattan with skyscrapers falling and people fleeing in panic through the streets, Cloverfield clearly connects with audience members' fears of current-day dangers, just as the Japanese monster movie Godzilla did after the atomic bomb destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Perhaps the most innovative idea behind the film was Abrams's desire to make an old-fashioned monster movie that paradoxically made viewers feel good. Minimizing the gore quotient and introducing realistic characters whom viewers could care about were essential parts of that, the Los Angeles Times quotes the producer as saying:

"I loved monster movies when I was a kid," Abrams said recently, "and I had not seen a monster movie since then that made me feel anything, where I got that rush. I just desperately wanted to have that sensation."

The dedision to go against the current theatrical cinema trend of making everything obvious to the point of crassness clearly paid off.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's praise for former President Ronald Reagan is an interesting development, as it is the first time a major Democrat candidate for president has praised Reagan, a Republican whose policies and political success both made him utter anathema to the Democrat Party. Predictably, his opponents for the Democratic nomination for president are attacking Obama as a heretic, illustrating the seriousness of the ideological implications for Democrats.

Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

The implicit critique of fellow contender Hillary Clinton's husband as a trimmer was surely intentional, and both Mrs. Clinton and former U.S. senator John Edwards responded with harsh words about Reagan, echoing an attitude toward him long prevalent in the Democrat Party.

Edwards criticized Reagan for his sins of lowering taxes and refusing to be intimidated by labor unions, and Mrs. Clinton slammed the Republicans in general for shutting down the government (which was actually her husband's doing) and driving the country into debt.

It is worth noting that Obama did not praise Reagan's policies directly, choosing instead to cite the undeniable fact that the Republican was successful in his overall attempt to change the direction of American politics and polices. Nonetheless, the extraordinariness of his statement is evident in his opponents' horrified reaction and the accuracy with which their responses reflect the prevailing sentiments of their entire party over the past three decades.

Talk is cheap, of course, and Obama has shown little to no commonality with Reagan during his brief tenure in the U.S. Senate, but it is an important event when a Democrat presidential candidate praises the most successful Republican president since Calvin Coolidge.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sports are important, as they provide physical exercise and personal camaraderie, but to make a fetish of anything in life is always disastrous.

So it is with sports, as we see all too often in these days when Americans have so much time, money, and freedom (all of which are good things, of course, and are great blessings when used properly).

The Associated Press reports just such an incident this week: 

Upset that his 7-year-old son wouldn't wear a Green Bay Packers jersey during the team's playoff victory Saturday, a man restrained the boy for an hour with tape and taped the jersey onto him.

Mathew Kowald was cited for disorderly conduct in connection with the incident with his son at their home in Pardeeville, Lt. Wayne Smith of the Columbia County Sheriff's Department said. Pardeeville is about 30 miles north of Madison.

The 36-year-old Kowald was arrested Monday after his wife told authorities about the incident. Kowald was taken to the county jail and held until Wednesday, when he pleaded no contest, paid a fine of $186 and was released.

It was a stupid and silly thing to make a big deal over, to be sure. Yet there seems to me to be a bit more to this. 

First, it seems to me that the boy should have worn the jersey even though he didn't want to, as parents do have authority over their children. Sure, the father was being asinine, but would hardly have killed the lad to wear the jersey. It's not as if it were made of tarantulas (at least according to the AP story).

In addition, defying a parent ought to earn some sort of punishment, even if the parent is wrong. Was this punishment the proper one? Probably not, as restraining a child physically should only be done in order to prevent the child from harming themself or others (or very temporarily in order to inflict corporal punishment in cases of severe importance).

Finally, should the government have been involved in this dispute? It seems to me that the answer is decidedly no. Undoubtedly the mother feared that if her husband would do this to their child, he might to anything, and it was important to call the cops to teach him a lesson.

Which is exactly what the father was trying to do to the child.

So the mother was wrong.

What about the arresting officers and the court?

The police certainly shouldn't have arrested him. This was a domestic disturbance, after all, and that is a category of police activity in which some real judgment ought to be used. The government really should stay out of people's homes, and when people call for help, the police should calm things down and get out, unless they perceive a serious danger to the individuals in the household.

In the current instance the latter appears definitely not to have been the case. The police officers should have calmed the situation, told the father to use better judgment in future, and told the family to be more reasonable with one another—and department procedures should establish that as the proper course of action.

Given that the father pleaded no contest, the judge appears to have been absolved of any responsibility in the matter. If it had gone to court, he would have had little choice but to deal with the situation and rebuke all parties involved for their asininity.

No one here acted wisely or correctly.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the very best mystery writers of our time is gone.

Ed Hoch, author of nearly a thousand mystery short stories, died suddenly this morning, according to Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Hoch wrote traditional puzzle mysteries in a wide variety of settings and featuring a diverse roster of detective characters. Hoch's stories had strong plotlines, were intellectually stimulating, and played fair with the reader (openly presenting all the clues to the solution while still managing to fool the reader). Since the early 1960s he wrote at least one story per month for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, along with numerous other publications, and appears to have been the only author to make a living strictly by selling short stories during the past half-century.

His work was not overtly ambitious, but Hoch gave little insights into human life in everything he wrote, and the accumulation of his observations over time is a laudable intellectual accomplsihment. 

According to all who knew him, Hoch was a likeable, kindly man, just as one would deduce from reading his stories.

Hoch was a giant of the mystery form, an entertaining and artful writer, and a great blessing to the American culture.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't seen The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie, so of course I have no opinion on whether it is any good, but I found a fascinating assumption in Lou Lumenick's review of the film in the New York Post.

Lumenick suggests that a work reflecting Christian values must necessarily be bad.

In an outline of what's wrong with the film, Lumenick states the following:

The CGI animation is crude, the humor is cruder, and the plot is Christian-friendly. Proceed at your own risk.

My advice to all, including non-Christians: when reading reviews in the New York Post,  proceed at your own risk.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in a comedy about two terminal cancer patients living it up before they'll have to cash it in, came in number 1, with a three-day take of $19.5 million in its first week of broad release, even though it got mainly very bad reviews from critics.

Number 2 was First Sunday, a comedy starring Ice Cube and centering on a group of thieves who decide to rob a church. It snagged $19 million from a mostly young, African-American crowd. Like Bucket List, the film got generally poor reviews.

Rounding out the top five were Juno, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Turner Classic Movies is presenting a documentary on filmmaker Val Lewton, produced and narrated by Martin Scorsese, tonight at 8 EST with a repeat presentation at midnight.

Lewton (b. Vladimir Ivan Leventon in Yalta, Russia) was a highly talented writer and producer whose atmospheric suspense and horror films of the 1940s for Hollywood's RKO studio are much admired by film critics and scholars and the more tasteful and well-informed of today's filmmakers.

The documentary, Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows, will be followed by a ten-film marathon of Lewton movies.

For a good selection of clips from Lewton films, click here.

Courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, here is the schedule for the documentary showings and film marathon:

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The title of Fox's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles definitely captures show's real emphasis. The Terminator character, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film series, is the hook to get people to tune in, but the real focus of the show is the character of Sarah Connor (Lena Headey), mother of the man who will one day save the world.

Taking Linda Hamilton's depiction of the character in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and building on it, Headey makes Sarah Connor into a complex, believable character. She is strong, like Hamilton's version, both physically and emotionally, and she is smart. She is tender toward her son, and tough toward everyone else. She is also very alone, in a way more typical of male action heroes.

Most interestingly, Sarah's protectiveness toward her son, John, seems likely to resonate with many children, although the show does not seem pitched toward that age group.

John's father is gone, and Sarah and he must live very frugally and are perpetually forced to move to new towns and start over, as government agents are chasing her because they think her a dangerous person. Which is precisely what she is, of course, but ony to those who endanger her son.

Like both Ripley and the alien mother creature in Aliens, Sarah Connor in this series has no greater goal in life than the protection of her child. She will do anything she must, endure anything she has to, in order to keep him safe. Like Hamilton's version of the character, she is a female Rambo, but she is a warrior not by choice and thirst for blood or adventure, but instead for the most noble of motives: to protect her loved ones.

The missing father and struggling mother theme must of course have great resonance for today's children, given the heavy prevalence of divorce and unmarried motherhood today. I suspect that African-American children will find the show very compelling, given the even greater prevalence of fatherless families in that demographic group.

But the show's strongest emotional effect may well be on women who are divorced and raising children.

Sarah's strength, along with that of a new T2, played by Summer Glau, suggests to women, in particular, that they can summon up the power to struggle through even the most dire of circumstances, and the fact that John will make a great difference in the world shows how fully worth the effort that struggle is.

The show is a fine example of how character is revealed in action.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In an excellent column on the legacy of the year 1968, in today's National Review Online, Thomas Sowell observes that aging hippies and would-be hippies and their cultural descendants will spend this year commemorating all the great things that happened in 1968, but that the cultural revolution that supposedly happened at that time in fact deserves condemnation, not admiration.

He's right. The radicals' activities of the time did immense damage to the nation, which has lasted for decades, Sowell notes:

"The events of 1968 have continuing implications for our times but not the implications drawn by those with romantic myths about 1968 and about themselves."

He gives several vivid examples. Regarding the riots in American cities after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sowell notes, 

These orgies of mass destruction, vandalism, looting, and deaths have likewise been seen nostalgically as mass “uprisings” against “the system.”

But “the system” did not kill Martin Luther King. An assassin did. And the biggest losers from the 1968 riots were the black communities in which they occurred.

Many of those communities have never recovered to this day from the massive loss of businesses and jobs. 

Similarly damaging sources of disastrous long-term consequences were the campus insanities of the time: 

Dispersed among these national shocks were various local and regional shocks, as colleges and universities across the country were hit by student disruptions and violence of one sort or another over one issue or another.

Like the ghetto riots, campus riots flourished where the authorities failed to use their authority to preserve order. Instead, academics sought to cleverly finesse the issues with negotiations, concessions and mealy-mouthed expressions of “understanding” of the concerns raised by campus rioters.

Many academics congratulated themselves on the eventual restoration of calm to campuses in the 1970s. But it was the calm of surrender. The terms of surrender included creation of whole departments devoted to ideological indoctrination.

Members of such departments spearheaded the campus lynch mob atmosphere during the Duke University “rape” case, as they have poisoned other campuses in other ways, all across the country.

To Sowell's observations I would add the important point that the great majority of the U.S. population had little to no sympathy for the radicals. The influence of the latter knuckleheads was entirely a creation of the media, brought on by fawning press coverage. The great majority of Americans voted for Nixon and George Wallace during the 1968 presidential elections, and a majority of the 18-21 year olds who voted for the first time in 1972 actually voted for Nixon, not McGovern.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Starting this evening at 9 EST and over the next four months, PBS will broadcast The Complete Jane Austen. The series runs through April 6, and will include adaptations of all of Austen's novels, plus Miss Austen Regrets (Feb. 6), a film biography detailing the never-married author's "lost loves."

The Complete Jane Austen will consist of new adaptations of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility, plus previously produced versions of Emma (featuring Kate Beckinsale) and Pride and Prejudice (starring Colin Firth).

Both of the latter were quite good, and I intend to watch them this time around as well. 

The four new adaptations were scripted by Andrew Davies, whose adaptation of Bleak House for last year's Masterpiece Theater season was quite good. 

The Complete Jane Austen is a Masterpiece Theater presentation. The long-running PBS series has been divided into three annual "seasons." Adaptations of older works will appear in the winter and spring under the name of Masterpiece Classic. That will be followed in the summer by Masterpiece Mystery and in the fall by Masterpiece Contemporary.

Masterpiece Classic will be hosted by Gillian Anderson (The X-Files, Bleak House). Hosts for the other series will be announced later.

Here's the schedule for Masterpiece Classics' The Complete Jane Austen, with episode descriptions courtesy of PBS:

“Persuasion” (1/13, 9-10:30) Sally Hawkins (Little Britain) appears as Anne Elliot, destined for spinsterhood at age 27 after being persuaded eight years earlier to refuse the proposal of dashing Captain Wentworth (Rupert Penry-Jones, “Casanova”). Then chance brings them together again. While her better days are past, his are definitely ahead, as he’s now rich and free to play the field among eligible young beauties. Anthony Head (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) co-stars as Anne’s spendthrift father. Adapted by Simon Burke. Directed by Adrian Shergold. Executive producer, Murray Ferguson. Executive producer for WGBH, Rebecca Eaton. Produced by David Snodin. A Clerkenwell Films production for ITV in association with WGBH/Boston.

• “Northanger Abbey” (1/20, 9-