The American Culture

'Big Four' network brings original programming to Saturday nights, chasing MMA's upscale, young audience.

 

CBS Television is bring mixed martial arts to primetime, according to TV Week.

Mixed martial arts is the form of fighting that includes punching, kicking, and grappling, basicaly allowing all skilled, non-weapons forms of martial art, outlawing only non-skill actions such as eye-gouging, hitting in the groin, etc. The fights usually include significantly more action than a boxing match, while the danger of serious injury or brain damage is greatly diminished because there is less hitting to the head.

Last year the small broadcast network MyNetwork TV showed some International Fight League events. CBS will broadcast four live, two-hour programs of Pro Elite matches per year on Saturday nights, signing a multiyear deal with the organization. The cable channel Showtime, a subsidiary of CBS, showed Pro Elite matches last year. Now it moves to TV's most popular broadcast network.

This is interesting for two reasons. One is that mixed martial arts is clearly overtaking boxing in popularity, and that is a good thing. It's safer for the contestants, and the emphasis on honor and social inclusiveness are in great contrast to the deteriorating image of boxing in recent years.

The other interesting thing is that CBS is hereby taking a chance on providing original programming on Saturday nights. For several years, Saturday night has been a desert for network TV, with programming consisting nearly entirely of reruns of shows seen earlier in the week, with only Fox's Cops and ABC's college football broadcasts being major exceptions.

Ratings have thus been even lower on Saturday nights than they would be if the networks assumed that viewers would show up if the broadcasters offered something worth watching. In scheduling original mixed martial arts matches, CBS, the TV network with the oldest overall audience demographics, is making an effort to chase the sport's younger, upscale, followers.

CBS's experiment with original programming on Saturday nights thus bears watching in that regard, as success could bring more variety to Saturday night network programming.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

William F. Buckley, author, columnist, TV talk show host, and founding editor of National Review magazine, died today at age 82.

Buckley was one of the people most responsible for making the conservative movement a powerful force in the United States during the past six decades.

Especially through his influential magazine, Buckley set the agenda for the American right and made it appealing to a mass audience. His editorial approach and political philosophy combined to create an ecumenism on the right that allowed the various factions to work together, although the relationships have always been strained to some degree. However, his stolid opposition to statism in all of its forms provided a rallying cry for the American right and continues to do so.

Although his demeanor was anachronistically aristocratic, Buckley made conservatism less stuffy and more open to innovative thinking, often describing himself as a libertarian. In fact, he was probably a classical liberal at heart.

Many on the right see Buckley's influence as having been ultimately deleterious in making way for neoconservatism, which they see as merely modern liberalism done incrementally—which is a fairly accurate assessment of that faction. The growth of a political and social movement, however, always involves some compromises and dilution, and the fact that the modern right has stumbled in recent years shows how important Buckley's synthesizing role was in previous decades.

History will show that William F. Buckley was central in reviving conservatism and the American right from its awful post-World War II doldrums. The movement still lacks a standard-bearer of his stature.

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American film critics detest violent movies—unless there's an antisocial message involved. TAC correspondent Mike D'Virgilio looks at critical reactions to violence in movies.

With Sunday’s worst ever viewed Academy Awards in the rear view mirror, it’s a good time to reflect on the violence-dredged movies that were at the top of Hollywood’s heap this year. Certainly the depressing, grim fare nominated for most of the awards did not encourage audiences to tune in.

Just as the Motion Picture Academy is clearly disengaged from the tastes and preferences of its audience, so are America's mainstream media film critics.

In fact one of the most violent films nominated this year, No Country for Old Men, won all the marbles after receiving nearly universally laudatory reviews. S. T. Karnick, the proprietor of this fine web establishment, has an excellent review of this movie you can read below. He rightly points out that the film can be difficult for audience members to watch because of the “powerful violence."

I haven’t seen any of the nominees for Best Picture, but have heard plenty about them. An article in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal caught my attention with it’s title, “And the Oscar Goes to . . . Blood and Guts.” The article points out that most critics have no problem with the violence in the film, seeing it as “cinematic artistry,” as one critic put it.

The author, Jason Riley, doesn’t mind violence in movies per se, but he finds the startling realism and the objective of filmmakers to “disturb” audiences troubling. Violence in moves used to be more like “movie violence,” he says, something that propelled the story forward and pumped up the spectacle, rather than practically being an end in and of itself.

That is a good analysis of the difference between violence in films then and today—certainly sensationalism has taken over the cinema in the past half-century in all ways. 

I didn’t think much about this until it struck me some time after reading the piece that a few years ago critics were not so sanguine about movie violence. Well, one movie’s violence to be exact: The Passion of the Christ. I remember several critics railing against Mel Gibson’s use of violence as being “pornographic."

I saw that accusation on more than one occasion. Plenty of other critics found the violence offensive, but used other terms to convey their displeasure.

I find it interesting that when graphic violence is used to reflect on the Christian savior’s suffering it is unacceptable, but when it is used in the service of nihilism it is artistic and perfectly justified no matter how salacious. Of course the hypocrisy and double standards of the mainstream media are old news, but it is striking to see such an obvious example of this critical imbalance, especially considering the beating Gibson took from critics.

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In addition to the low box office numbers for most of the films nominated for Academy Awards and those that won, perhaps the strongest evidence that Hollywood—like the U.S. cultural elite in general—has become very distant from its audience is the fact that the TV ratings for Sunday's Academy Awards show were the lowest ever.

 

The show drew a full million fewer viewers than the previous low, in 2003 just after the U.S. began the Iraq War. The fact that the nominations, presenters, and host —cable TV comedy show host Jon Stewart—had little widespread appeal doomed the show to low ratings and indicated that what Hollywood's powers-that-be stand for is very distant from the beliefs of the American people.

The talented writer Diablo Cody, a twenty-nine year old former stripper who won the Best Original Screenplay award for Juno, exemplifies the disconnect between Hollywood and America. Ms. Cody is admired among the Left Coast elite largely for her bold personality, vulgar language, and blatant self-promotion, and only incidentally if at all, it seems, for the ideas behind her screenplay.

Her latest self-promotional stunt—releasing a silly picture of herself on the Internet—will only strengthen her appeal among Hollywood insiders and make normal people wonder just what is wrong with her.

Fortunately for audiences, money talks more loudly on the Left Coast than even politics can, and films with mass audience appeal are still being made.

Grudgingly, it would appear.

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As expected, Joel and Ethan Coen won the Academy Award for Best Picture for their film No Country for Old Man last night at the Oscar ceremony.

The brothers also shared the award for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film picked up another award as Javier Bardem won for Best Supporting Actor.

The violent crime drama, which many critics have described as extremely grim, disturbing, amoral, and even nihilistic—meaning all of those terms as compliments, which may be the most disturbing thing of all—had earlier swept the awards from the major film talent organizations, including the Directors Guild. The film clearly captured the mood of Hollywood and the media, although as noted here yesterday, underneath the surface No Country for Old Men actually contradicts their values.

Audiences were far less impressed. Even with the Oscar hype, the film has been mediocre at the box office, earning $64 million in more than fifteen weeks—which the action film Jumper has nearly equaled in just eleven days—and seldom cracking the top ten.

An equally grim film, There Will Be Blood, grabbed the awards for Best Cinematography and Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis).

As expected, the teen pregnancy comedy Juno, the only reasonably optimistic film among the Best Picture nominees, picked up the award for Best Original Screenplay.

The film with the highest rating among critics last year, Ratatouille, won for Best Animated Feature Film. The Disney/Pixar film was a huge audience pleaser (earning more than $206 million in U.S. domestic gross and finishing eighth in U.S. box office last year) and although set in France, it offered classic American values such as self-discipline, hard work, community, and a strong desire to achieve.

Some analysts have noted that the existence of the Best Animated Feature Film category probably cost Ratatouille a shot at a Best Picture nomination. That seems likely, but it seems extremely unlikely that Hollywood would have honored a film with such an optimistic, can-do attitude this year.

The makers of Ratatouille will thus have to settle for $617 million in worldwide ticket sales, $177 million in DVD sales (and counting), the highest critical rating, the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar, and knowing that they made a great movie that stands for what is good an right.

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No Country for Old Men, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, has garnered a multitude of honors since its release last fall, and has been nominated for the Motion Picture Academy Award for Best Picture. It is a highly deserving film, although difficult for many audience members to watch because of its powerful violence and overall downbeat tone.

In this regard No Country for Old Men certainly fits the current mood of Hollywood, and of modern liberals in general today.

AP summarized the situation well in a story aptly headlined "Dark films and politics loom over Academy Awards":

Oscar watchers say this year's best film nominees reflect the mood of the 5,800 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two front running movies for the best film honor are violent, a third nominee tells of corporate and legal greed, a fourth of family betrayal and the fifth teen pregnancy—that's the funny one.

The story noted that contemporary Hollywood's mindset is greatly at odds with that of its audience, the American peope:

Optimistic "Juno" has been the biggest box office hit among the best picture nominees with more than $125 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales. "No Country" has topped $60 million" and "There will be Blood" more than $30 million. "Atonement" and "Michael Clayton" took in about $46 million each.

The unamimous opinion on No Country for Old Men has been that it fits perfectly with the current Hollywood mindset—and as regards the surface impressions of the film, that is an entirely accurate assessment.

But the meaning of the film actually entirely contradicts the basic philosophy behind not only contemporary Hollywood but in fact modern liberalism as a whole.

The central events of No Country for Old Men all involve characters making the choice to move outside of society and indeed out of civilization altogether.

The initial scene that sets off all the action takes place in a remote desert in Texas, as a solitary hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), comes across a violent scene that emblemizes the lawlessness that drives the film: a drug deal evidently gone very bad, with the place littered with corpses recently killed—and one still dying.

Moss finds a case full of money, and he takes it—and as soon becomes clear, he intends to keep it for himself.

In doing so, he sets himself outside of society, for of course society cannot protect him from the consequences of his bad act, but in fact is set up to do precisely the opposite.

Moss has thus put himself in an environment that exists outside the boundaries of society, and indeed of civilization itself. Normal rules do not apply, and different characters make up differing moral codes on their own. Most of these codes, as is to be expected, are entirely self-serving and center on the assertion of raw power. It is the world of Friedrich Nietzche's philosophy made manifest.

Continual disasters and horrors ensue as Moss is swept up into events he cannot hope to control, when a hitman is put on his trail.

Formerly fully attached to civilization, as his name suggests, Moss is now bereft of the rock and the security it once afforded him. The rock—which in the Bible is Petra, the profession of faith in Christ—is now rolling, and it will not gather Moss.

The central dramatic motif of the film is the absence, in this particular world, of the ordering and pacifying forces of civilization, represented by the aged, disillusioned, and ultimately ineffectual Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones).

The hitman's habitual way of deciding whether those who inadvertently get in his way shall live or die—the flip of a coin—encapsulates the way characters outside of civilzation are at the mercy of fate, of events they cannot hope to control. It is only within society, within civilization, and specifically in this case a Christian civilization, that people can hope to thrive and make the world a better place.

Where this differs from the prevailing attitude in Hollywood is this: one of the main foundations of modern liberalism is the thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The central assumption behind all of Rousseau's thought is that human beings are born basically good and are corrupted only by society. In addition, the idea of self-love as being an entirely good thing is a strong part of Rousseau's philosophy. (The modern passion for self-esteem is but one contemporary manifestation of this idea.)

All of this, of course, is the opposite of the Christian claim that human beings are born sinful and require redemption.

What the Coen brothers' film shows so vividly is that outside of civilzation is chaos, destruction, and horror.

It is civilization, the film makes abundantly clear, that allows human beings to survive with at least a small slice of dignity, peace, and comfort, and with their humanity at least somewhat intact.

This is the exact opposite of Rousseau's claim, and it brilliantly validates the Christian view of humanity.

It's a good thing that Hollywood and America's film critics have failed to realize this about No Country for Old Men. Its message can reach people intact, thanks in great part to the honors heaped upon the film by its unsuspecting enemies.

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It's fascinating how often old sayings turn out to be true.

If, as now appears likely, Barack Obama can obtain the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency, and goes on to beat John McCain, it would literally constitute the triumph of hope over experience.

 

It will be interesting to see if the American public lives by the old saying or realizes the warning behind it.

I am no fan of Sen. McCain, in fact quite the contrary. But it's interesting to see two characters so strongly embody the saying. 

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This past Sunday NBC premiered a new movie, an updating of the 1980s series Knight Rider, about a young crimefighter aided by a supercar with artificial intelligence. The remake takes up the story of some of the characters' children, now young adults, as they move into roles analogous to those of their parents in the original show.

It is, of course, a romance with an entirely fanciful premise with possible positive meanings at heart, and must be accepted as such if one is to appreciate it at all.

Too bad the film's producers failed to do that. An  early scene establishing the important character of a female FBI agent shows her concluding an interracial, lesbian one-night stand.

Now that's realism!

Now we'll believe in an artificially intelligent, nanotech supercar piloted by a touseled-haired mesomorph, now that they've acknowledged that there is such a thing as lesbianism.

Yes, that is precisely what a nitwit might think.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 

The cat is out of the bag:

Al Gore will be the Democratic Party's candidate for president this year.

So says essayist John Derbyshire today on National Review Online. In fact, as Derbyshire notes in his article, he said this last year, and he is increasingly convinced that it's true.

I find this very interesting indeed because I too have been telling friends for a full year that Al Gore would be the Democrats' nominee this year, even though he was not openly running for the office. And, I, too, suffered scoffing, derision, and horror for the claim.

It just seemed to me that the enormous amount of respect Mr. Gore was accumulating — wrongly, in my view — for his statist campaign to use global warming as a pretext for a de facto government takeover of the U.S. economy was going to prove too attractive in the long run. And I said that Gore was indeed intentionally using this effort as a surreptitious, risk-free campaign for the Democrats' presidential nomination.

It was an ingenious plan, I noted, because he could build a huge amount of support among the Democratic Party faithful without suffering any criticism at all from his unwitting opponents. On the contrary, they would see him as a loyal ally and a prospective asset to their eventual campaign — right up until the very moment they felt the knife plunge into the left side of their back between the third and fourth ribs.

In addition, I suggested, if Gore failed to get the nomination, he could very possibly run as a third party candidate. But in any case it appeared to me that he was the most likely prospect to win the Democrats' nomination, given the gross deficiencies of all the other candidates.

Derbyshire agrees:

Don’t think it couldn’t happen. Don’t, in fact, think it isn’t going to happen. The Democratic party has two lame candidates, without a dime’s worth of executive experience between them. Competing on the campaign trail, by August each will have thoroughly alienated the other’s supporters, and turned off the voting public. Meanwhile, in the wings, there is this guy who was vice president for eight years, who ran a campaign for the presidency and actually won it! (well, according to party lore). He looks presidential, with a fine strapping physique and a big square jaw. You’re hankering after moral authority? How about a Nobel Peace Prize, for crying out loud!!

But … does he want it? Does Al Gore want to be the president of the United States?

Are you kidding me?

Read it here.

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Adrian Monk, the title character of USA Network’s hit detective series Monk, spends a lot of time with the dead. Gruesome ends follow him. Sometimes he’s called to the scene of the crime, but nearly as often, murder finds him. Wherever he goes—to a hotel, a rock concert, or a resort in the California wine country—Mr. Monk is a death magnet.

Coping with such circumstances usually calls for a tough guy, a fedora-wearing, cigar-chomping "dick" with a penchant for fistfights and fast women. Not so Mr. Monk. He’s afraid of milk. And snakes. And heights. And mushrooms. And germs, especially germs.

Monk pines for symmetry. He irons his socks. He is eager to straighten any crooked thing. Evenness is crucial. He will shorten, lengthen, pour, or move any substance to make sure it’s evenly distributed.

Monk puts as much energy into maintaining order in his private world as he does into nabbing crooks. We viewers can only guess about all the sources of the great detective’s quirks.

That’s as it should be because Monk is a program about questions, big and small. For all its humor and sweetness, the show has at its heart theological questions and insights about the nature of evil, the purpose of our lives, and the limitations even the phenomenally talented must accept. These questions usually remain lodged in the subtext but are, nonetheless, central to the character’s journey.

 

Monk’s idiosyncrasies stem from childhood, but grief intensified them after the death of his wife Trudy, by a car bomb Monk suspects was meant for him. He has given the ensuing years to searching, without success, for her killer.

Monk’s story is one of a broken, lonely man struggling under the double-edged nature of powers he often describes as “a gift … and a curse.” His exceptional abilities of observation and deduction are the key to his accomplishments, but possessing them means that, unlike most people, Monk sees the world as it sometimes is, without the screen of respectability so many set up.

To his detriment, he over-focuses on that corruption and is blind to as much as he sees. Monk sees much that others miss, but misses much that others see.

Most damaging to him is that he is oblivious to the ordinary blessings of friendship and satisfying labor. He is like a man obsessed with a smudge on a window, who fails to see the breathtaking view beyond.

Myopia is not Monk's only burden. His inability to solve Trudy’s murder is a source of constant sorrow for him. Monk commonly makes easy work of catching even clever criminals, but his failure to find Trudy’s killer is a symbol of another, greater mystery he cannot solve.

Monk struggles with the question of why terrible things happen. Why do the innocent suffer? Why are the kind and good-hearted often wiped away by the wicked? Or, as the lyrics to the show’s theme song put it, “Who’s in charge here?”

And this is the deeper mystery that Monk, with all his extraordinary gifts, cannot plumb.

 

Adrian Monk is a reluctant agnostic. Rather than bury his doubts in despair and dissipation, he seeks to resolve the question of God’s existence by making it irrelevant. Controlling his own surroundings tightly enough, he seems to think, will grant him the peace of soul he lacks. Unfortunately for Monk, whenever things are finally just right, murder happens.

Monk’s incapacity to determine whether God is in control of what appears to be the world’s chaos exacerbates his problems. Because he doubts God is bringing order to the big picture, he obsesses about order on a smaller scale. His fretting about dust, lint, and whether his side dishes touch the main course reflect this much bigger concern.

For a man with such remarkable powers of observation, Monk has great difficulty seeing the profound theological import of his life and work. His spiritual blindness, occasioned no doubt by his unrelenting grief, causes him to miss the larger spiritual picture he occupies.

Many people Monk encounters in his crimefighting have, like him, endured the murder of someone they loved. They too have questions about evil and its apparently random course. They too must wonder where God is as they suffer through their traumas.

The great irony of Monk’s life is that while he wonders where God is in the chaos and suffering of the world, while he longs for justice for the evil done to him and his wife, he, in his weakness, is a tool by which God is bringing order and justice to the world, if only provisionally and temporarily.

 

Monk does not see that, for the family and friends of the victims, God is present in these horrific situations through him, the nervous little man with almost supernatural powers. For those who survive, Monk does the Lord’s work.

More than once a victim’s friend has begged him to take a case, to believe that, in spite of appearances of accidental death, murder has been done. Monk always accepts. He brings low the haughty and exposes to light deeds done in the dark. In every episode he takes what appeared to be a senseless act of violence and reveals the dastardly machinations that, in fact, lay behind it.

The Christian hope is that, in the end, God will do on a grand scale what Monk does in each of his cases: pull back the shroud on the intricate causes of our suffering and show us the master plan, resolve for us questions whose answers we have failed to sleuth out on our own. This is what Monk needs if he is ever to be released from what haunts him: hope rooted in a powerful, eternal God.

It is Monk’s great burden to know that he has been wronged and that only the greatest of minds can right the offense. It is an even greater burden to believe his is the greatest of minds, and that all his power marshaled against the mystery has left him empty and exhausted. To lay his burden down, Monk must believe that a greater Mind exists and has already cracked the case; that we are only waiting for the solution to be revealed.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a preview of an article coming soon on another site. I've been working with the editor for a week to get this published, and an updated version will run eventually, but in the meantime here's a version that is timely because the season-ending of Prison Break will run on Fox tonight at 8 EST.

Elitist critics who disparage popular fiction, and antinomians who approve it uncritically, both fail to understand that art for the masses does very good things indeed, and typically does so through the very same means as more artistically ambitious works do.

The problem is that both uncritical detractors and defenders of such fiction are easily distracted by surface elements and fail to see how the works create meaning.

A good example is the Fox TV series Prison Break, the season-ending episode of which airs tonight at 8 EST.

Criticism of the show has basically been either (1) it's trashy and absurd or (2) it's great fun.

The reality is much more interesting.

Prison Break is in fact clearly a very thoughtfully constructed show, with a good deal of meaning behind the almost continuous action. Note that Aristotle, in his Poetics, pointed out that although character is essential to the production of good narrative art, action is the real essence of drama:

But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all. Again, without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character.  . . . [T]he most powerful elements of emotional interest in Tragedy—Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and Recognition scenes—are parts of the plot. A further proof is, that novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with almost all the early poets.

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colors, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of the agents mainly with a view to the action. (section 1, part 6)

Hence the action of even a frankly suspense-oriented a show such as Prison Break can be a valid artistic endeavor.

Clearly, the main character, Michael Scofield, an American who is masterminding an escape from a ghastly Panamanian prison after being unjustly incarcerated there, his ladyfriend killed, and the life of his nephew held for ransom, makes plenty of fascinating strategic choices in working out the elaborate scheme and setting it in motion.

Strategic choices, however, often do not involve much moral content, and hence are not truly dramatic, as Aristotle pointed out in his Poetics (for example, "Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids," section 1, part 6).

Still, Michael makes plenty of moral choices in Prison Break, as do most of the other characters, and it is this aspect of their choices that such fictions' detractors and admirers both tend to overlook.

In part it is because the action is so compelling that one can fail to look behind it. However, there can be no doubt that the implications of the characters' actions must be meaningful to most attentive viewers if only on an intuitive, unconscious level.

One such example occurred in last week's episode, which sets up tonight’s conclusion. Just as the escape plan was about to come to fruition in the previous week's episode, a young Panamanian man—really just a boy—incarcerated in the prison through some mishap, clearly an unjust sentence, realizes that Michael is planning an escape. Naturally, he begs Michael to take him along.

Recognizing that doing so would imperil Michael's life, those of his fellow escapees, and those on the outside whose lives literally depend on the escape succeeding, Michael refuses. There are already too many men in on the escape, and bringing along a teenage boy of small stature and no athleticism would put the effort in even greater jeopardy.

The boy, Luis, is understandably crestfallen, but he accepts Michael's decision and refrains from trying to force his way in or seeking vengeance by telling the authorities about the plot.

That, of course, is the morally right decision for Luis to make, and Michael's was likewise morally justified.

Luis's moral choice to refrain from interfering in the plan was rewarded in last week's episode, as Michael relents at the last minute and takes him along on the escape attempt. Unexpectedly, Michael Schofield's entirely unnecessary act of charity in doing so proves to be the key in ensuring the effort's success.

Part of the plan is that a boat will pick up the escapees after they swim out to a marker buoy in the ocean. Unfortunately, the man who is supposed to meet them with the boat is detained by the prison authorities on an unrelated matter, and can't get away. Meanwhile, the escape has been discovered, and the authorities, hot on the escapees' trail, have figured out that they must be out at sea. They call in the Coast Guard. Just in time (as always in suspense fiction!), the escapees’ rescue boat arrives, and they get away.

The man who has come to rescue them, however, is not the one they expected. It is Luis's father. Having been informed by Luis that the escape was on and when to expect him to arrive, the father figured out what must have happened and went to pick up the men. Had he not rescued them, they would surely have been captured.

Hence, Michael's decision to let a moral choice override his strategic assessment turns out to be central to the plan's success. It’s an emotionally and intellectually compelling moment.

Here an elitist critic could be expected to object that the incident constitutes poetic justice, a contemptible form of wishful thinking.

The elitist would be wrong, for the working out of the elements is immensely logical and quite plausible within the dramatic world constructed in the series. It is not wishful thinking, it is logical thinking, a perfectly sensible imagining of the consequences of people's actions.

It is also a superbly wise choice on the part of the filmmakers, for the significance of Michael's earlier decision will not be fully clear until we see the final irony of the group being rescued because Michael insisted on an act of charity the others thought was madness and tried to persuade him not to do.

This is the kind of truly dramatic, morally meaningful choice that routinely occurs in suspense fiction and other penny dreadfuls. It is why they sustain their appeal for great audiences—and why they should.

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The season-ending episode of Prison Break will be broadcast on the Fox network tonight at 8 EST.

Recommended.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Every day, identity politics raises its ugly head in America and snarls threateningly, as various interest grops complain about something somebody said or did that might reflect ill on some particular category of person. This trend threatens to destroy freedom of speech entirely, through largely private sector means, by pressing the constant, intimidating threat of government action.

In short, it follows the political premises of fascism.

How appropriate, then, that today's instance involves a TV proogram called Big Brother.

An autism group is demanding an apology from the CBS television network over a statement made by a contestant on the show Big Brother, a statement , of course, that the network never claimed represented the corporation's policy or views.

AP reports:

A national autism group is demanding an apology from CBS over a disparaging remark a contestant on the reality show "Big Brother" made about people with the disorder.

On the show, a contestant named Adam, who said he works for an autism foundation, said he would spend his winnings on a hair salon for people with developmental disabilities "so retards can get it together and get their hair done." The Web site for the show describes him as a 29-year-old public relations manager from Del Ray Beach, Fla.

His remark shocked his partner, Sheila, who replied, "Don't call them that."

Adam responded by saying, "Disabled kids. I can call them whatever I want. I work with them all day, OK?"

The notion that a TV network cannot even broadcast an exchange between two individuals over the etiquette regarding how to refer a particular group of people—especially a discussion that clearly makes the point for sensitivity in the matter—is thoroughly repugnant. 

I suggest that readers call or email Autism United Executive Director John Gilmore with their complaints about the organization's outrageous, unwarranted, and idiotic attempt at intimidation.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This Sunday night at 10 p.m EST, CBS attempts to bolster its writers-strike-depleted primetime lineup by bringing over a program from pay cable, Showtime's Dexter.

For those not familiar with the show, Dexter is a limited series based on the first in a series of novels about a Miami police forensic consultant whose expertise happens to be based in great part on the fact that he is a serial killer.

It's a clever premise, of course, and critics have widely acclaimed the show. The title character has always been prone to violent urges, which his policeman father turned toward what we are asked to see is good: he kills other killers.

The people he kills are very evil and dangerous indeed, and we are to understand that they will not be caught and will go on killing unless Dexter steps in. He dispatches them with scientific cleanliness and precision.

Like all police forensics shows, Dexter is heavy on gore, grim details of horrible crimes, and a generally depressing point of view on life, and it is even more so given that it originally appeared on pay cable TV, which puts a premium on sensationalism. Yet the questions the show brings up—real moral inquiries about the nature of good and evil—are serious and important ones, and the producers largely seem to give them the serious treatment they deserve. They don't offer any easy answers, but not through flippancy but becasue they clearly realize that there aren't any in the situations they're depicting.

In everything other than his killings, Dexter is very ordinary and somewhat likeable, although he finds it hard to become close to people because he has great diffficulty feeling emotional ties or affection for others, although at times he does seem to verge on feeling some true sympathy for his girlfriend, Lila, also a very damaged person.

The program is very careful not to make a hero of Dexter, yet it does not appear that audiences always see the distinction—I recently heard a local sports-talk personality say that Dexter was his hero, and he was not kidding. That's perhaps the scariest thing about the show.

CBS will show the entire first season, consisting of a dozen episodes, on Sunday nights. More information is available at the Dexter website.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes meaningful cultural moments crop up in the most unexpected places.

One place you'll find them is on the Discovery Channel show Man vs. Wild (Friday nights at 9 EST). In each episode, Bear Grylls, a former British military commando and an expert on survival techniques, shows how to get through the worst wilderness conditions and find one's way back to civilization.

It's a fascinating and informative show, for the techniques he uses are often quite ingenious, and although there has been some controversy over the fact that some of the show consists of recreations or scenes in which Grylls had protective equipment to ensure that he was not injured during the shooting of the programs, it's clear that he knows what he's talking about, and whe know that he has been through some extremely dangerous situations.

However, what I find most interesting about the show are two things. One is how matter-of-fact Grylls is about killing animals and eating them. As Grylls makes clear, when you're in a fight for your survival, there's no room for sentiment or squeamishness. Hence while on his adventures he eats all sorts of bugs, spiders, grubs, snakes, and the like, and he makes sure to let us know just how awful they taste. He's also perfectly willing to eat cuddly things such as rabbits, and he is shown on screen snapping animal's necks and performing other such killings.

It's rather bracing to see such a practical mind and a smart lack of sentimentality in our Disneyfied world. Grylls is a tonic in that regard.

The other way in which Grylls is unusual is much more subtle. Typically he begins each adventure by jumping out of a helicopter, parachuting from a plane, or performing some other such reasonably dangerous exploit. And before each of these instances he almost invariably makes the Christian sign of the cross.

It's a subtle thing, as I say, but it speaks volumes.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As former Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens testifies before a congressional committee investigating allegations of the use of performance enhancing drugs in the sport, the observations in my Tech Central Station article during the last big government investigation into the matter apply as strongly as ever:

It remains unclear . . . that legislative action by the federal government is needed or appropriate in this matter. If the use of steroids is indeed a problem, one should think that state laws would certainly be able to handle it, especially given the demand-side approach Congress appears to be taking, as evidenced by yesterdays hearings. Nonetheless, performing an investigation to shine light on the problem is certainly an appropriate activity of Congress.

The reason given by the committee members as to why this particular committee was investigating the matter, however, is rather chilling.

In short, they have noted that this committee is empowered to investigate anything it chooses to look into. Equipped with subpoena power, this makes the GROC into a central investigative tribunal for the federal government. Anyone who falls afoul of the interests of the Congress—which means anyone who should chance to fall into great disfavor in popular opinion, as baseball's steroid users have obviously done—might be hauled before Congress and forced to testify in a nationally televised fishing expedition, with or without a grant of immunity from prosecution on either the federal or state level. At which point, taking the Fifth Amendment becomes a highly public acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

Clemens's willingness to fight the Congress and the U.S. Justice Department appears foolhardy given the amount of evidence against him, yet one can surely sympathize with his situation. No one is big enough to beat the U.S. government if they really want to get you. Al Capone couldn't, Hitler couldn't, and even the Soviet Union's great empire couldn't.

That is why that government's power should be wielded only when necessary and only to the extent necessary. That is why our nation's Founders limited the national government's powers only to those explicitly granted in the Constitution (the now long-dead doctrine known as strict constructionism), and it is why our current bloated and intrusive national government is an offense against our principles and an outrage against the people of these United States.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those who have yet to understand that multiculturalism is nothing of the sort and is merely cover for the continual denigration of Western Christian civilization in the ongoing internal effort toward its eventual overthrow, the latest news from Europe ought to do a good deal of convincing.

The London Daily Telegraph reports that a Dutch Catholic charity organization has begun to call Lent "Christian Ramadan."

The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation.

"The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent," said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.

Four million Dutch describe themselves as Roman Catholics, according to the Telegraph story, and they tend not to be nearly as serious about fasting and other acts of self-denial during Lent as Muslims are during Ramadan. Hence the church charity's idea to set Islam as an example for its members to follow.

No doubt their intentions are good, but the assumptions behind their action are truly dumbfounding. If only for chronological accuracy, they should, if anything, be referring to Ramadan as "Islamic Lent."

But of course that would bring on full-scale war, and these people have already been so weakened by multiculturalsm that they would much more readily switch than fight.

If this sort of thing keeps on, how far away can the end be? 

(Thanks to Mark Steyn at National Review Online's The Corner blog, for drawing this news item to our attention.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As regular readers of this site and my other writings know, I believe that the U.S. presence in Iraq served its purpose—the removal of the presumed threat to American lives within our borders (however plausible that threat may have been)—some time ago, with the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

Given that all individuals and all peoples have the right of self-defense, anything that happened thereafter, according to classical liberal principles, was neither our responsibility nor any business of ours, unless it should come to pose a plausible threat to American citizens within our borders once again.

As I have argued in the past, I am hopeful that the U.S. military surge in Iraq will put an end to our involvement there, and soon. Nonetheless, I sympathize with the plight of the Iraqi population under attack by brutally violent Muslim fanatics under the aegis of al Qaeda.

Thus I agree fully with Rich Lowry, a strong supporter of the Iraq War, in his assessment of the situation facing the Iraqi people, in today's National Review Online:

At this village level, the war on terror is less a grand ideological struggle than an elemental fight to replace men with guns who want to prey on the local population (al-Qaeda) with men with guns who want to help it (us). It doesn’t take a romanticism about human nature to realize most people will prefer the latter.

This is a quite profound statement, and one which applies to nearly all such struggles. In addition, it succinctly identifies the laudable motive behind the continued U.S. presence in Iraq.

It doesn't justify intrusion in other nations' sovereign affairs, but it is a reality which we all should acknowledge.

Lowry's conclusion:

It is hard to imagine what the military is for if not to capture or kill al-Qaeda (through “lead poisoning,” as an officer puts it colorfully). Before he lets his American visitors leave his front yard, Hassen Nssaif Jasim insists that they take home a message: “We are very serious, and we are going to go all the way to the end of the path. We don’t want you to leave.” And we shouldn’t.

Here I strongly disagree. It's in fact quite easy to imagine what the U.S. military is for: to protect the lives of U.S. citizens within our borders and on official public business elsewhere. That is all, and it is quite enough.

The situation in Iraq today is tragic and appalling, but we have neither the responsibility nor the right to interfere with it.

Sympathy is a fine thing and essential to humanity, but we must never let it override reason.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

For those wondering when new episodes of network primetime TV series will begin appearing if the writers strike ends Tuesday as expected, there's a good AP article on the subject here.

Short answer: the rest of the season will be a mess. New episodes of popular fiction series will be scarce, and new episodes of most fiction shows that began this season are unlikely.

The worst news is for fans of the popular Fox series 24. The show will probably not return until early next year, according to reports.

Thus the writers union has accomplished what the worst supervillains in the world could not. Now that's power.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. film audiences continued to show their preference for light fare this week, as two new releases, both comedies, topped the weekend's U.S. movie box office competition.

The romantic comedy Fool's Gold, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, came out on top, unexpectedly grabbing an estimated $21.6 million over the weekend. The Martin Lawrence vehicle Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins finished second with a similarly better than expected $17.1 million.

The previous week's top draw, Disney's Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert fell to third but was playing on many fewer screens than the other releases and maintained its impressive per-theater average, at $15,296.

Two other comedies—the independent production Juno and the Katharine Heigl starrer 27 Dresses—continued their strong performances, finishing 5th and 6th, respectively.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

S. T. Karnick examines Warner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, now available on DVD and pay per view.

 

Rescue Dawn, directed by the talented and eccentric German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is one of the very best movies of the past year. It is truly a must-see.

The film recounts the story of Dieter Dengler, a German-American bomber pilot shot down over Laos in 1965. Captured by enemy troops, Dengler is subjected to physical abuse and then incarcerated in a Vietcong prison camp in Laos. He immediately begins planning his escape, and is intent on bringing all his fellow prisoners out with him.

The planning and the escape provide the film with a much stronger narrative drive than is usual for Herzog, and they make Rescue Dawn both emotionally compelling and intellectually stimulating.

The conditions in the camp are appalling. The half-dozen or so prisoners are kept chained together at night and are given little food or exercise. The guards brutalize them regularly, on entirely unpredictable pretexts.

As the living conditions in the surrounding areas deteriorate, the guards become even more abusive, the food even scarcer, and the need for escape even more dire. The guards increasingly see the prisoners as an unnecessary burden, and they ultimately decide to kill them so that they can return to their villages.

The scene in which the prisoners are given nothing but a bowl of insect larvae for their daily meal conveys the desperation brilliantly. Also highly telling is Dengler's enthusiasm in gobbling up this unexpected source of protein.

Herzog's characteriziation of the guards as distinct individuals with real personalities, instead of ciphers or caricatures, is extremely important to the film's overall effect. The fact that each of the guards treats the prisoners in a way different from the others shows that they do indeed choose their actions. This emphasizes the fact that even in war, individuals have choices to make that have moral implications.

It also illustrates the great difference between the worldviews motivating the two sides of the conflict. Whereas we know that the Americans have a sense of honor toward their prisoners, for the communists the prisoners are a bargaining chip and not to be seen as human. This is a choice, and it is based on the individual's view of the world.

This point is made very clear by the fact that the only guard who chooses to act humanely toward the men, and is the only one who ever smiles at them, is rewarded in the end.

In fact, if anyone ever needs an argument against mistreatment of prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, Rescue Dawn provides a vivid example. The fact that the treatment of prisoners is so deeply embedded in the two conflicting worldviews and is so important to what is good in the Western mind makes this argument brilliantly.

Also important is the fact that the other prisoners in the camp are mosty Asians, with only two Americans other than Dengler. This expertly conveys the war as not a simple local conflict but instead a clash between two completely different visions of civilization, and thus emphasizes the implications of those two worldviews.

A very important and insightful aspect of the film is the other prisoners' reactions to Dengler's suggestion of an escape. Most are initially skeptical, citing practical difficulties, but they are soon convinced by Dengler's ability to answer the objections with ingenious counter-measures. One of the prisoners, however, continuously opposes the plan until it becomes entirely clear that their captors are about to kill them all.

This character, Eugene, opposes the escape because he believes that the prisoners will soon all be released as a result of peace negotiations he believes are taking place. He has no evidence whatsoever that such talks are occurring, but is nonetheless convinced that they are.

Eugene thus vividly represents the Western Left's blind faith in negotiations with our enemies, and their greater respect for our civilization's opponents than for their own protectors. The fact that Eugene is entirely deluded about the supposed peace talks further condemns this unfortunately common point of view.

Also important is the fact that Herzog does not neglect to show the destructiveness of the Americans' bombing runs or the asininity of some of the American civilian and military leaders. His treatment is fair, and he is correct in not dwelling on the matter. In fact, he pointedly refrains from suggesting any equivalence between the Americans and the communists.

On the contrary, Herzog strongly conveys the difference between the two mentalities. Despite their flaws, the Americans and their Asian allies clearly have a sense of honor, whereas the communists believe that rules are good only for hamstringing the opposition.

Interestingly, this is also the attitude of the Western progressive left, and the film's characterization of this mentality is one of its most pointed effects.

Bale's performance is thoroughly brilliant and certainly deserved an Academy Award nomination. He deftly depicts Dengler's optimism and perseverance while always conveying the character's great intelligence and strength of character. It is a highly complex performance, and Bale's ability to make a truly good man immensely interesting is laudable.

The other performances are uniformly impressive as well. Overall, this is a truly brilliant film that expertly balances entertainment, artistry, and intellectual sophistication. It is one of Herzog's best films, perhaps his finest.

Rescue Dawn: Most highly recommended.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

S. T. Karnick reviews It Is Time for a Love Revolution, by Lenny Kravitz

Lenny Kravitz's new album, It Is Time for a Love Revolution, is a superb listen for those that enjoy classic rock music with serious ambitions but few pretensions.

 

Kravitz is a master of the classic rock song form: short instrumental phrases repeated and sometimes varied, vocal lines that resemble normal human cadences but are artistically heightened, catchy melodies, and lyrics that combine social and personal concerns with a strong sense of drama. The influence of the Beatles is as evident as usual, but really Kravitz has always taken up a wide variety of classic rock sounds while providing his own unique extension of the tradition.

Kravitz's respect for traditional forms allows many old-fashioned, 1960s-oriented critics to dismiss him, but they are wrong to do so. It is foolish to make a fetish of originality, for all great art has always incorporated both traditional elements and innovations, and even a purely conventional work can be made superior by the application of a major amount of talent, as in the novels of Charles Dickens or the movies of Buster Keaton.

It Is Time for a Love Revolution consists of 16 songs, and they fit together well, almost constituting a concept album, but without the pretensions often inherent in that form.

The opening song, "Love Revolution," sets the tone with, in quick succession, a brief stab of drums, Kravitz's voice singing urgently, and some crunchy guitars and bass setting a driving beat. It's a strong opener that sets a classic-rock tone for the disc, which never lets up.

Song three, "Good Morning," superbly brings out the "psychedelic '60s" side of Kravitz's sound, with a background of driving electric guitar chords, soulful vocals from Kravitz with echo treatment in the choruses and accompanying harmony vocals, and extended fadeout reminiscent of "Hey Jude"—all in just four minutes and seventeen seconds.

The lyrics throughout the album tend to be about Love, Love, Love (the title of one of the songs), with a 1960s sense of idealism but none of that decade's hostility toward bourgeois society. The latter spirit, of course, will probably earn the album the disapprobation of many mainstream rock critics, for the refusal to hate the normal people who by his albums.

Those critics oudoubtedly will be even more appalled by the explicit Christianity of many of the lyrics.

"If You Want It" exemplifies this aspect of the album. "If you want it, you can change your evil ways," Kravitz sings, while the song deftly combines hard rock and soul, with a skillful alternation between louder and quieter sections. Kravitz shows great skill in singing the following lines:

So drop your chains and pick up your cross,

And let Jesus make your way!

He sings the first line quietly, and in expressing the second line his voices rises into a passionate call to action.

Kravitz varies the sound effectively while staying within comprehensible classic-rock forms. The song "Will You Marry Me?" amusingly combines wholesome lyrical sentiments with a snappy funk arrangement reminiscent of James Brown and Prince.

He uses mellotron orchestra in "I Love the Rain" to place a melancholy texture over crunching electric guitar chords and his souful vocal.

Not all in the album is sweetness and light, however, even though the music never stops being enjoyable. In the driving "Back in Vietnam," Kravitz's lyric critiques American hubris without being annoying, as the chorus, "We're back in Vietnam!" is delivered in a catchy musical phrase.

Similarly bringing social realities home with a personal approach, "A Long and Sad Goodbye" is a dramatic monologue of an abandoned son singing to his father:

Papa—

Why did you turn your back,

Why did you stay your track,

Why did you leave and make her cry?

Oh, Papa—

You Meant the world to me.

Why did you abandon me?

The chorus uses multiple harmony voices to drive home how common such abandoment is these days, and Kravitz then provides a passionate electric guitar solo further suggesting the character's despair. It's a stunningly dramatic song.

Kravitz wisely follows this with a simpler and more positive song, "Dancin' Til Dawn." Similarly, the use of quiet piano chords as the main background for Kravitz's relatively quiet vocals in "A New Door" varies the sound effectively while still fitting well with the other songs.

Finally, any sense that Kravitz knows all the answers is fully dispelled in the closing song, "Confused," which has self-effacing lyrics, a deliberate pace, Beatlesque guitars, souful chorus, and another excellent guitar solo.

With its balance of humility and idealism, and of intensity and fluidness, It Is Time for a Love Revolution is a thoroughly successful album and another highlight in Kravitz's impressive career.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This Friday at noon EST the USA Network will rerun the comedy-espionage-mystery movie Underfunded, which premiered last fall. Co-written and co-produced by David Breckman, a writer for USA's Monk, the film depicts the travails of a Canadian spy who must endure numerous problems created by the organization's pathetically low budget.

It seemed originally that the film was the pilot for a forthcoming series, but the hoped-for show has not come forth yet. Nonetheless, Underfunded is good fun and worth a look. For more information, see my original review here.

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

The winningest coach in college basketball history, Bobby Knight, retired unexpectedly yesterday with several games remaining in the season.

Knight, known both for his coaching brilliance and angry, public and private tirades, has long been a big target of criticism from sportswriters.

A large part of that criticism is well-earned, for Knight has always been thoroughly uncompromising in his insistence that his teams play the game the way it should be played and that others involved in the game reach similar standards, and he often manifested it in childish behavior, verbal aggression, and physical violence.

An even bigger reason for sportswriters' dislike of him, however, is his refusal to pretend that he doesn't know that most of them don't know the game of basketball very well at all and that as a consequence they concentrate their stories on gossip, emotions, and other things ancillary to the game and not deserving of the elevated attention given them.

Thus it's not at all surprising to see that the sportswriters' reactions include a good deal of hostility toward him (examples here, here, and here).

I think, however, that there's another impulse at work here, beyond the need to justify themselves after decades of Knight mocking them and challenging the press as relentlessly as he challenged his players and himself.

That impulse is a general social dislike toward masculinity that is taught in the schools, inculcated through the culture, and enforced in the workplace.

Coach Knight's imposing physical presence (6'5" and very burly, with strong brow and piercing eyes), directness, impatience, refusal to compromise or apologize if he thinks he's right, self-assurance, intolerance of sloth and excuse-making, and the like are all strongly masculine qualities, and just happen to be prominent among the types of characteristics most consistently derided in our society today.

Of course I don't excuse chair-thowing, physical violence toward innocents, public vulgarity, and other actions that could seriously harm other people. But let's be realistic for at least a moment: slapping a player on the back of the head during practice—or even grabbing him by the neck, the act that got him fired from Indiana University—isn't going to hurt the young man, and might just help knock some sense into him.

If that sounds archaic and even a bit mad, that just shows how far our culture and society have gone in denying reality in the attempt to rid our society of independence, courage, frankness, leadership, firmness, and other personal characteristics that threaten the power of the state.

The reality is that young men tend to be stubborn and stupid and respond most readily to the prospect of physical force and promises of instant rewards. A coach who can't cuff his players around is severely handicapped in motivating his players.

In my occasional experiences coaching younger boys (those in middle school), I haven't ever felt even the slightest impulse to treat a player physically roughly, but when boys reach adolescence and their late teen years, it's a different story entirely. I recognize that much of what some coaches do is strongly socially disapproved and can even be illegal, constituting physical assault, but in such cases I think society and the law are wrong, not the coaches.

Nobody who didn't want to put up with Knight's rough ways had to play for him. On the contrary, players from across the country clamored to join his team, and the ones who complained about his actions as coach almost invariably happened to be those who coudn't meet his demanding standards.

Coach Knight's greatness is bound up in these very things that so many sportswriters hate about him. Bobby Knight is a great example of what is both good and bad about masculinity, and his immense accomplishments as a coach should give us an inkling of what we will all miss if our statist overlords should succeed in their assault on masculinity.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)