Several Wall Street investors had been willing to finance the paper at a loss in order to bring an explicitly right-of-center voice to the New York City news media, with assurances that the paper would ultimately become profitable, but in recent months the losses had become too big to be borne.
The declining stock market and inability of the paper to build a strong paid circulation base ultimately doomed the effort.
The most serious miscalculation on the publishers' part was probably in trying to create a new newspaper at a time when newspapers are dying out. It was like trying to open a horse-buggy company just after the invention of the Model T.
Thus the paper's end has nothing to do with its conservative editorial stance and everything to do with the dying out of the newspaper industry.
Letterman Slams McCain for Having Better Things to Do
CBS talk host David Letterman ripped U.S. Senator John McCain on-air Friday night for canceling an appearance on Letterman's show in order to attend to the nationwide financial crisis.
Having devolved from a cheeky observer of human foibles into a crotchety, self-absorbed bore a full two decades ago, it's time for David Letterman to be put out to pasture. His belief that his lame, autopilot, late-night TV talk show is more important than the U.S. economy proves how self-important and out of touch he really is.
Letterman, who has openly supported Barack Obama on his program, opened his diatribe by complimenting McCain for his war record, but then launched into a cranky denunciation of the Republican candidate for daring to cancel a scheduled appearance on Letterman's show. Letterman then launched into the standard Democrat critique of McCain and Palin while claiming McCain is falling behind Letterman's preferred candidate, Obama.
Letterman's weak attempts at humor in his criticisms of McCain merely demonstrated the talk host's invincible arrogance:
Oversexed, Underinteresting TV Sitcom 'Do Not Disturb' Canceled
Fox's situation comedy Do Not Disturb is the first new network TV series to be canceled this season.
There was good reason for the cancellation of the show after only three episodes.
One, the ratings were spectacularly bad, with the show averaging a 1.6 rating and 4 share (percent of all TVs being watched at the time). A total of only 4 million people watched the three episodes.
They were treated to a truly awful experience. The series, dealing with the staff of a New York hotel, seemed intent on masquerading as something cheeky and original while actually constituting a compendium of contemporary sitcom cliches.
One, the entire premiere episode was about nothing but sex. I cannot for the life of me figure out why nearly all TV situation comedies must now be about nothing but Topic A, but that's the way it is. Two, the limited subject matter made the episode utterly predictable and boring. Three, the treatment of the subject matter was nearly exclusively immature and asinine. Four, the inclusion of a homosexual character whom the narrative defines entirely by his sexuality and who talks in lurid detail about his impulses and the activities related to them is guaranteed to strike 99+ percent of the public as unenjoyable in the extreme.
The one redeeming feature of the program was that ultimately the premiere episode did suggest that sexual promiscuity was probably not the most satisfying and emotionally fulfilling way to live.
Unfortunately, that message was delivered in a context of such dreary self-indulgence that nearly all of the audience must have been long gone by then. And now it is gone forever. Will these people never learn?
Blatantly Partisan MSNBC Host Olbermann Bumped from Political Coverage Anchor Seat
Confirming that talk-show host Keith Olbermann is indeed one of the most horrible people in the world, MSNBC pulled the blatantly partisan blabbermouth from the anchor slot on its nightly political coverage, along with fellow repugnant ass Chris Matthews.
David Gregory has taken over the hosting job, with Olbermann and Matthews serving as commentators.
Although it is difficult to be more leftist than MSNBC in general, Olbermann managed it quite spectacularly, making Democrat consultant James Carville seem circumspect by comparison.
AP reported that Olbermann's grotesquely obvious partisanship had become thoroughly embarrassing during the presidential primary season and the political conventions:
The tipping point appears to have come during the GOP convention when Olbermann criticized MSNBC for showing a Sept. 11-themed video prepared by the Republicans.
MSNBC executives, who had publicly defended their anchors' roles while privately monitoring them throughout the political season, made the change over the [Sept. 6-7] weekend after discussions with Olbermann. Despite [Despite? The correct term is 'because of'.—Ed.] the controversy around him, Olbermann has been a hero with left-leaning viewers and keyed MSNBC's growth among coveted young viewers.
During her acceptance speech last week, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin talked about the "Washington elite" not accepting her qualifications for the job. Some delegates on the convention floor began chanting, "N-B-C, N-B-C."
Olbermann began to have difficulty keeping his opinions in check, or simply stopped trying.
He sarcastically dismissed GOP pundit Pat Buchanan on the air after Buchanan said the Republicans had been enlivened by the entrance of a conservative Republican.
"Those reading US Weekly with the picture of her and her youngest daughter with the word `scandal' written across it won't be so happy," Olbermann said.
He expressed little sympathy at another point when GOP anger at rumors over the Internet about Palin were being discussed.
"We'll see if people feel sorry for unfounded rumors on the Internet," he said. "If that's the case, Senator Obama's probably standing up and cheering and waiting for people to feel sorry for him."
That last observation vividly illustrates Olbermann's rhetoric: He falsely equates blatant bias among the professional press, which was inflicted on Palin, with weirdos yammering on obscure websites, as has happened to Obama and every other person who has run for office since the invention of the Internet (and has happened to every candidate since the invention of the mimeograph machine, and before that since the invention of the soap box).
The situation had become so embarrassing to MSNBC that another open Democrat partisan talker, Daily Show host Jon Stewart, compared the mess to the island of feral children in William Golding's brilliant novel Lord of the Flies and the Lohan family.
Emmy Winners, Presenters Slam Bush, Palin, Republicans in General
To the surprise of no thinking person, the honorees at this year's Emmy Awards ceremony, broadcast nationally Sunday night, used the occasion as an opportunity to foist their elitist, collectivist, coercive political opinions on a nationwide audience interested in looking at celebrities' clothes, not in hearing lectures.
The current Bush administration and the Republican candidates for president and vice president were the main targets, predictably. The Chicago Sun-Times report provides an informative post-mortem:
The political shots began during the show's opening [gee—it took them that long?—Ed.] when Emmy co-host Howie Mandel noted he and his co-hosts Ryan Seacrest, Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum and Jeff Probst didn't have a prepared opening monologue.
"We are, like, on Sarah Palin's bridge to nowhere—that's where we are right now," the comic said. "The government can't even bail us out of this. We have nothing."
HBO's "Recount," about the disputed presidential balloting of 2000, was named best movie, prompting producer Paula Weinstein to promise, "They will be there on Nov. 4, fighting again. Vote!"
Not to be outdone, "John Adams" producer Tom Hanks politicized when picking up the Emmy for outstanding miniseries.
"The election between Jefferson and Adams was filled with innuendo; lies; a bitter, partisan press, and disinformation," Hanks said without a hint of irony. "How great we've come so far since then."
Clearly referring to President Bush, the writer of the John Adams series said that the early years of the nation were "a period of our history when articulate men articulated complex thoughts in complete sentences"—thereby contradicting Hanks and revealing a stunning ignorance of history. Vulgarians, scam artists, and nitwits have always been drawn to politics and always will be.
Another participant in the John Adams series, the actress Laura Linney, indulged in what the Sun-Times referred to as a "sly dig at Palin's comments at the Republican National Convention. The Emmy, she said, 'will give me a great reason to stop and pause and be so grateful and thankful for the community organizers that helped form our country.' "
The men also wore white wigs and used tobacco, we might note.
Reuters provided a useful summary of the main award winners, for those wise enough to refrain from watching the show. Of particular note was that the John Adams miniseries was the biggest winner overall with 13 awards, including best miniseries, and the AMC series Mad Men was the first show from a cable network other than HBO to win the Emmy for best drama.
Here's an interesting question: Why are Hollywood remakes of popular Asian horror films mostly neither scary nor interesting? E! Online suggests an answer here. In summary, the writer, Leslie Gornstein, says the use of CGI makes the American versions less real and involving to audiences.
That may well be a factor, but I think the much more important reason is that Asians and Americans see the world through very different lenses as a result of our greatly differing religious traditions. The Anglo-American tradition of horror sees the cosmos as a basically logical place, and the horror is in the introduction of uncanny and disturbing phenomena, which can emcompass a wide variety of forms. Ultimately, Anglo-American horror fiction confirms the basic logic of the cosmos by the very means of showing how disturbing and wrong the horror-inducing phenomenon is.
My familiarity with Asian horror literature and film is relatively limited, but from my experience it appears that the effect of these narratives is different from what I described above for Anglo-American horror. The Asian narratives tend to base their thinking on Confucianism, Buddhism, and the like, dealing with issues such as physical demonic attacks, the workings of karma, and other notions relatively alien to Americans. Naturally, Western audiences find it difficult to get the point of such narratives, regardless of the film techniques employed to express them.
This is a subject meriting further scrutiny and explanation, and although I appreciate the E! Online author's attempt to tackle it, I hope that others will pursue the line of inquiry I suggest here.
The first episodes of season three of the NBC series Heroes premiered last night.
I'll analyze these episodes as soon as I get a chance to watch and ponder them, but until that happy day, I'll refer you to the interesting recap from E! Online:
"So now...everything has changed."
The article is packed to the gills with plot spoilers, so be forewarned. For those not satiated after reading the E! piece, here's one from NJ.com.
Last season the show was marred by difficulties created by the writers' strike, and the producers struggled to establish a new story line with a different threat of catastrophe. The show was still watchable, but nowhere near as interesting and evocative as before. Ratings suffered as a result. It will be interesting to see whether the prooducers have managed to get the franchise back on its feet.
Week two of NBC's sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live was a great improvement over the season premiere episode—and avoided the political partisanship that marred that earlier effort.
After a very uninspired season premiere episode a week ago. NBC's Saturday Night Live was much improved this weekend. Most of the sketches were at least mildly amusing, especially one depicting jury selection in the current O. J. Simpson trial that exemplified the appealingly zany turn the show's humor had taken in the past few years.
And although Weekend Update was still supportive of Democrats' political positions, it wasn't as persistent about it as the previous installment. A repeat appearance in this segment by Fred Armisen as a discombobulated political comedian was a highlight.
The opening sketch, in which Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is asked to approve several commercials, is hilarious, and the target is not McCain himself but instead the ludicrously deceptive nature of many political ads.
One sketch stood out as particularly impressive, skewering elites in the way SNL had begun to do more often in the past couple of years. Coming right after Weekend Update and a commercial break, the sketch began with a dynamite premise: a New York Times editor (played by host James Franco) addressing a group of fifty or so reporters being recruited to go to Alaska and dig up muck to throw at the state's governor, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The comic thrust of the piece comes as the reporters respond to the editor's description of conditions in Alaska, revealing the vast gulf between their privileged Manhattan existence and the lives of ordinary people.
That's a very loaded premise indeed, simultaneously acknowledging the essential unfairness and elitist and ideologically motivated nature of the press's treatment of Gov. Palin. In addition, it's spot-on in calling the New York Times in particular to task for this effort. For Saturday Night Live to acknowledge and indeed call attention to the Times's political bias is a moment of serious cultural significance.
It's a terrifically funny sketch and a huge slap in the face for the New York Times, which richly deserves it.
'Lakeview Terrace' Thriller Includes Good Ideas, Bad Decisions
Lakeview Terrace adds an interesting angle to the suspense-crime genre—but unfortunately soon decays into standard hackwork.
Industry insiders expect the new film Lakeview Terrace to win the box office competition this weekend, in its first week of release. That's probably a good bet, but whether the film will have long-run success is much less clear.
Starring Samuel L. Jackson as a police officer who increasingly harasses the interracial young professional couple who moves next door to him in a wealthy Southern California neighborhood, the film is unusually logical in its early going, for a modern-day crime-suspense film, but is ultimately somewhat dreary, and in the end the filmmakers unwisely go for sensational effects instead of a rational exploration of the characters' motives and likely actions.
Lakeview Terrace is a variation on the story of the 1992 film Unlawful Entry, which starred Kurt Russell, Madeleine Stowe, and Ray Liotta in the story of a police officer who becomes obsessed with the female member of a married couple who moves next door to him. In that version, the officer initially appears normal but is slowly revealed to be delusional and violent.
Lakeview Terrace adds race/color issues to the mix, to good and interesting effect. The scary-cop neighbor in this one is played by Samuel L. Jackson, and the couple is interracial, with a white male having married a black female. The film realistically explores various people's reactions to the couple, and it brings some attention to the special difficulties involved in just being a black person in America. The film doesn't suggest that these problems are excuses for failure, however, and that's an important and salutary point.
In fact, Jackson's character, Abel Turner, is intent on making sure his children learn to take responsibility for themselves. Unfortunately, he is unwisely and unkindly strict in his attempts to ensure that they go on the right path, which brings special resentment from his adolescent daughter. That, too, is a very realistic element. As the film progresses, however, he is revealed to be an extremely unsavory character and becomes a standard Hollywood villain.
Of additional interest is the fact that the well-to-do young professional couple next door, Chris and Lisa Mattson (played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington, respectively), represent a certain amount of irresponsibility.
As Turner points out in a tense conversation with Chris in a local tavern, Chris's use of the word "whatever" to dismiss disagreement is emblematic of a kind of irresponsibility only those brought up in comfortable circumstances can afford. In addition, the Mattsons indulge in sexual activity during the daytime in their outdoor swimming pool in full view of the neighbors. Of course, such an incident, although inexcusable, should not result in an escalating series of confrontations, but that's where Chris's faults come into play.
Chris has no idea how to deal with people, and his efforts to get Abel to back off show an astonishing ignorance of how other people think, and hence they backfire badly. One finds it very difficult indeed to identify with such an ass as Chris, even if his antagonist is wrong, as Abel certainly is.
For a film to present a black character as upright and responsible while in conflict with a white one who is selfish and irresponsible is a nice twist on the usual cinematic cliches. The fact that the film presents Abel's good characteristics and the Mattsons' bad ones makes it initially a good deal more interesting and inteligent than the average suspense film.
Unfortunately, the makers of Lakeview Terrace decided audiences would require a big dose of sensationalism and melodramatic villainy, and these things ultimately undermine the good that the first half of the film does in making the characters complex and realistic.
It's a pity, because this could have been more that just a run-of-the-mill suspense thriller. As it stands, there are some very good ideas in it, and some very solid scenes, but their effect is overwhelmed by the increasing nonsense as the film careens to its illogical conclusion.
Angelina Jolie's Political Leanings Causing Speculation, Concern
Hollywood watchers are wondering whether Angelina Jolie will follow her father's lead and come out in support of Sen. John McCain's bid for the presidency. Don't laugh: this actually matters.
jon voight [sic, throughout] is a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth. The neocons who own jon voight and make him dance on the chabad telethons are the worst most elitist people on earth. glen beck and jon voight are their bitches... both of them are used tampons who must be flushed down the toilet immediately! jon voight your evil spawn angelina jolie and her vacuous hubby brad pitt make about forty million dollars a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more. (just sayin').
Also miss jolie says she likes mccain too and hasn't decided who to endorse....huh?
Thus the game is afoot and the mystery engaged: Is it possible that Angelina Jolie, certainly the top female movie box-office draw of our time and a knockout looker whose personal and professional success must inspire great admiration, actually be a frightful right-wing McCain supporter?
Jolie has been known to engage in rather heated disputes with her father, so his support for McCain may actually be an indicator suggesting that she would go in the opposite direction. Yet Jolie has in the past expressed an openness to Sen. McCain's candidacy and written an oped suggesting that the United States should continue its military presence in Iraq for humanitarian reasons.
Comically describing the suspense as "a little nerve-wracking," an E! Online story popped the question a while back (following up on a story in Variety) and provided some tantalizing evidence:
Angelina Jolie says she still hasn't made up her mind yet on who she will vote for in the upcoming presidential election.
"I have not decided on a candidate," the actress tells Variety in a statement sent by political advisor Trevor Neilson. "I am waiting to see the commitments they will make on issues like international justice, refugees and how to address the needs of children in crisis around the world."
In addition to the rather startling revelation that the actress has a political adviser, the story does confirm that Jolie has yet to make up her mind about which of the candidates on whom to bestow her royal blessing. That is indeed a rather extraordinary admission to make in a Hollywood and media environment that is overwhelmingly leftward and strongly supports the Democratic party both financially and ideologically to the extent that the market will allow them to get away with the latter.
Meanwhile, yesterday Jolie's common-law husband, the actor Brad Pitt, was revealed to have given $100,000 to forces hoping to defeat a California ballot iniatiative intended to prevent the government from forcing individuals and organizations to recognize same-sex marriages. That's the largest sum the cause has received from a major celebrity so far, the Los Angeles Times reported. As another E! Online story noted,
Pitt—who along withAngelina Jolie drew a few raised eyebrows after saying that they have no intention of tying the knot until everyone in the United States has the same right—wants to make sure that California, at least, remains a place where anyone can say "I do" and have it stick.
"Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8," the Burn After Reading star said in a statement.
This might seem to be typical Hollywood left cant, and it may well be just that, but one can also imagine that Pitt and Jolie take this position in an awkward effort to carve out a classical liberal/libertarian position on the matter. This is, after all, the same position that many contemporary libertarians take.
However, although undoubtedly well-intended, it is, as I've noted earlier, decidedly not a liberal and non-coercive position. Nonetheless, it's clear that support for same-sex marriage in Hollywood hardly indicates some sort of Marxist leanings.
Hence, it's quite possible both of these fabulous movie stars are closet McCain fans, or that they're not, or something in between, or one is and one isn't, or they're actually both looking seriously at Bob Barr. (Well, the latter does seem unlikely.)
It would be easy, of course, to dismiss this as a frivolous matter not worth thinking about, and many do exactly that, but that is quite wrong. The reality is that culture strongly influences how people think, what their worldview consists of, and thus how they will act. The latter includes voting, and with government as big and overweening as it is nowadays, votes affect our lives in ways that classical liberals such as I dearly wish they would not.
Hence, regardless of whether Pitt and Jolie consciously inject their politics into their work, both of these activities will surely be outcomes of the ideas they hold and the values they place on things. Inasmuch as these may be revealed by their voting choices, that's worth knowing.
'Closer' Season-Ender Presents Chilling Picture of Radical Environmentalism, Darwinism
Radical environmentalism and an anti-human perversion of Darwinism spark an attempt at mass murder in the season-ending episode of the acclaimed TNT drama series The Closer.
As befits one of the most interesting, intelligent, and engaging series on television (admittedly not a great mountain to climb), the season (actually midseason) finale of the TNT show The Closer is about as politically incorrect as possible.
In the episode aired this past Monday, the police team headed up by Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick), has had its name and mission changed from Priority Homicide to Major Crimes, the result of a biased (though basically accurate) news story in the Los Angeles Times by a politically motivated investigative reporter.
That's both realistic (police departments are commonly subjected to all sorts of politically motivated directives and are full of politics themselves) and rather refreshing in that the reporter is at once politically left of center, openly engages in advocacy journalism and ethnic and cultural posturing, and is nakedly ambitious. For once the crusading journalist is not a sterling hero of unalloyed beneficent intentions but is in fact rather like a real person with complex motives and, as is true of many if not most political crusaders, a good deal more to dislike than to admire.
If that were all the episode accomplished (following as it does on a theme prevalent in the entire season's episodes), it would be noteworthy, but there's more.
Most surprisingly, the villains of the story are young men influenced by the Columbine killings, with the new angle being that they are driven by fanatical attachment to anti-human beliefs derived from Darwinism and radical environmentalism. These precocious and deluded high-schoolers are attempting to carry out a spectacular mass murder that will take the failed plans of the Columbine killers to a new level and kill many more people than the perpetrators of that crime managed.
The boys all sport tattoos of two E's, signifying their common cause: Evolution's End. Their belief, articulated by one of them during questioning by Johnson and one of her lieutenants, is that all of humankind is a pox on the earth, a foul disease that must be exterminated if the world is to survive.
What is perhaps most remarkable is that the character who articulates these thoughts almost directly quotes a notorious diatribe by University of Texas professor Eric Pianka given when accepting the Texas Academy of Science's 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award. Pianka described human beings as a "scourge" on the Earth, said "We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth" (which elicited sympathetic laughter from the audience of scientists), and exclaimed, 'We're no better than bacteria!'"
Pianka went on to say, according to Forrest Mims, chairman of the academy's Environmental Science Section, "AIDS is not an efficient killer, [Pianka] explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years."
This outburst could be dismissed as the ravings of a fanatic if not for two things. One, Pianka's statement echoed countless others by radical environmentalists and eco-terrorists making exactly the same point and often using the very same words and analogies. Two, in a truly chilling demonstration of the widespread acceptance of such radical, anti-human notions, the scientists, professors, and students gathered to honor Dr. Pianka gave him a standing ovation after this mad manifesto strongly reminiscent of ravings in Industrial Society and Its Future, by the "Unabomber" terrorist, Theodore Kaczynski.
"There was a gravely disturbing side to that otherwise scientifically significant meeting, for I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola."
The ovation was nearly unanimous, Mims notes. "Almost every scientist, professor, and college student present stood to their feet and vigorously applauded the man who had enthusiastically endorsed the elimination of 90 percent of the human population," Mims wrote. "Some even cheered. Dozens then mobbed the professor at the lectern to extend greetings and ask questions."
Mims is quoted as worrying about the possibility that "a Pianka-worshipping former student might someday become a professional biologist or physician with access to the most deadly strains of viruses and bacteria?"
That is the kind of scenario this evocative episode of The Closer considers so honestly and provocatively—and, one might say, given the ruthless suppression of dissent practiced by the modern environmental movement—rather courageously.
Programming note:the next scheduled showing of The Closer: "Time Bomb" is Saturday, September 20, at 10 a.m., EDT
Spy Novelist Le Carre Contemplated Defecting to Soviet Union: Report
The acclaimed spy novelist known as John Le Carre once contemplated defecting to the Soviet Union. Judging by his books, this should surprise . . . no one.
Here's a shocker: the espionage novelist known as John Le Carre (nee David Cornwell), has let slip the great, big secret the he once considered defecting to the Soviet Union. AP reports:
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 76-year-old novelist was quoted as saying he was curious about what was on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
"I wasn't tempted ideologically," he was quoted as saying. "But when you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border ... it seems such a small step to jump ... and you know, find out the rest."
One of the great exponents of the thoroughly discredited doctrine of moral equivalence between the West and the communist world actually thought about defecting. Imagine that.
Referring to his breakout book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), the AP story laconically notes the centrality of the moral equivalence doctrine in Le Carre's books:
That book and others received critical acclaim for their exploration of the moral ambiguities of the Cold War.
As noted in the AP story, Le Carre claims the temptation to join the enemy was not ideologically motivated but based more on a sense of intense curiosity about life behind the Iron Curtain. Bosh. No one who was truly ideologically opposed to communism and honestly loyal to his nation and the liberal West (with all its faults) would ever contemplate such a mad thing.
The facts confirm it: the very few who did defect were either thorough communists or were traitors about to be apprehended and executed. The fact that Le Carre ultimately didn't defect does not necessarily do him honor.
The Insufferable Helen Thomas Lauded in HBO Documentary
An HBO documentary lauds the arrogant, smugly antagonistic journalist Helen Thomas, longtime lady dean of the White House press corps.
We've all seen Helen Thomas sitting at White House press conferences and customarily being called on to ask the first question, which she usually poses as some sort of test for the nation's duly elected commander in chief. She's as American as apple pie—or muggings.
The filmmaker, Rory Kennedy (youngest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy), said, "She has a compelling personal story, she was very determined to be a journalist at a young age," Kennedy says. "I think it is also the story of the role of journalism in America and the role of journalism in a democracy," as quoted in Editor and Publisher.
Yes, but not in the way Kennedy thinks. Thomas's story perfectly depicts the outsized egos of people in positions of power in any field. As Lord Action noted, power corrupts, and this is as true of journalists as anyone else. Thomas's life shows the astoundingly self-righteous arrogance of journalists who fancy themselves the defenders of a public trust when in fact their real job is and always has been to sell ink-smudged paper or lure audiences to media outlets always filled with as many advertisements as possible. Hence:
The film takes square aim at Helen Thomas' latest battles with President George W. Bush, opening with a press conference in which Thomas asked Bush why he wanted to go to war.
"Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis," Thomas says in the clip. "Every reason given has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war?"
A question Bush deflected, claiming he did not want to got to war. "After that, I became persona non grata," she says in the opening piece of the interview with Kennedy. "There is a blackout now, I believe, until the end of his term."
There you have modern-day journalism in all its glory and flamboyant hypocrisy: the arrogance of a batty little crone thinking that she has a right to be called upon in press conferences in preference to the dozens of other reporters there, simply because she is older and more obnoxious than they.
Regardless of one's opinion about President Bush or the Iraq War (both of which I have criticized extensively, as it happens), Thomas's view of herself is spectacularly vain. Unfortunately, as this laudatory film demonstrates, it is the common attitude of America's contemporary elites and one that they openly praise.
Bill Maher, Our Very Own Voltaire, Enlightens Us Once Again
Boldly going where only a few thousand writers have gone before in mocking religious believers, philosopher-king Bill Maher brings us the real truth about God, the universe, and everything, in Religulous.
Guess what: religion is bad, and Christianity the worst of all! Who would have thought it?
Well, lots of people, actually, as openly anti-Christian literature has become a big trend in publishing in the past couple of years and has been a staple of fashionable clever minds for the past three hundred years. The idea is that Christians are becoming too powerful in these United States, and thus must be stopped. Stopped, I tell you, by any means necessary!
But hey, who reads books nowadays, especially boring ones full of the same tired anti-theistic arguments made for centuries by self-styled independent thinkers and refuted repeatedly by Christian authors?
So the great philosopher Bill Maher, who hosts a very important talk show on pay cable TV in which all the most important issues of all time are discussed and The Truth conveyed with brilliance and candor, decided the best way to bring this discussion to the benighted, deluded masses was to create a brilliant documentary refuting the foul dogmas of Christianity and other monotheistic superstitions.
Not having any such arguments in his arsenal, however, Maher decided to hire the director of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan to film him interviewing the least articulate and knowledgeable Christians, Jews, and Muslims he could find, take the least persuasive clips from each, and put them together into the film Religulous.
Get it? Religion is ridiculous—how frightfully clever!
Maher, as Reuters notes, actually seems to be unaware that the aforementioned books slamming religion have been flooding the bookstores (and promptly destroyed or sent to the remainder bins when nobody buys them) and that the entire elite media hate and mock Christianity at every turn, and consequently has deluded himself into the hilarious paranoid fantasy that he is doing something heroic and awe-inspringly courageous:
"Just to question why is faith good, I think is a question never contemplated by most people" in the United States, Maher told Reuters at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the documentary debuted this week.
He and Charles said their goals are modest—make people laugh first and generate discussion second—and Maher added the movie culminates his 15 years of poking fun at religion in talk shows "Politically Incorrect" and "Real Time."
Using the same techniques as in Borat (but without the engagingly daft personality created by Sacha Baron Cohen), Charles and Maher make sure to prove their point that all people who really believe in God are dangerous idiots:
Scenes are edited to generally leave people looking foolish. But the more revealing moments seem to require little embellishment, such as conversations that show two Vatican priests to be among the most moderate voices in the film.
As an added bonus, the film also proves the superiority of Maher's elitist, coercive politics:
Particularly grating to the pair is the mixing of religion and politics in the United States. "You can't get elected in America without having a religious affiliation. And it wasn't always that way," says Charles. . . .
"I think if we can create some sort of debate before the election it may actually help defeat McCain and Palin," Charles said in a separate Toronto news conference. "Tens of millions of us don't think a lot about religion either way."
Yes, we shall surely all watch and think and discuss earnestly, and undoubtedly will be transported to a realm of pure reason and be fully persuaded by this spectacular instance of the fallacies of affirming the consequent, proof by assertion, argumentum ad nauseum, proof by example, and numerous others (see note below). Yes, indeed!
Thank you, Bill Maher, for the enlightenment, and may . . . Gaia bless you for your sharing of wisdom and your loving kindness for all of humanity!
Note: as just one example of the fallacies of Religulous and all similarly themed blasts and bravos against religious claims, here's how the fallacy of affirming the consequent works in the film: "If God doesn't exist, theists are wrong. Theists are wrong. Therefore, God does not exist."
Saturday Night Live's season-opening episode was marred by blatant political partisanship and was surprisingly uninspired overall.
After a good season last year, Saturday Night Live stumbled badly in its season-opening episode this past Saturday night. Host Michael Phelps was very dull, Weekend Update so-so, and nearly all the sketches were tepid at best.
Emblematic of the horror was yet another locker room sketch in which Will Forte plays a swimming coach trying to rev up an uninspired and talentless team. Having Phelps's character say, "I just don't get this swimming thing" while walking out on the team was apparently supposed to be funny.
A taped commercial for the Michael Phelps Diet actually was funny, as it involved eating anything you want, and a commercial for a Jar Glove was mildly amusing. The rest of the show fell terribly flat.
Even worse was the return of the show's old politics. After a couple of years in which the writers took a fresher look at things and attacked pols on both left and right (although usually siding pretty openly with the left), Saturday's installment took the same tired, partisan-Democrat political stance the show consistently took under former head writer Tina Fey before she left to produce 30 Rock.
Thus the opening political sketch featured Tina Fey (in an excellent impersonation of Gov. Sarah Palin) and Amy Pohler (as an unnacountably gaunt Hillary Clinton) in a joint address to the nation. It's a funny idea, and the sketch included a couple of good jokes, but it would have been much fresher and spunkier had it trod some new ground.
Instead, the sketch simply presented Palin as inexperienced ("I can see Russia from my house!" is Palin/Fey's amusing take on Palin's foreign policy expertise) and not otherwise of any interest, and depicted Clinton as insanely jealous of Palin for undeservedly getting the VP slot the brilliant New York senator had hoped to get from her own party. Haha.
The Weekend Update segment likewise took an openly pro-Democrat approach, and the fact that the show's producers had invited Sen. Barack Obama to appear in the season premiere episode (he canceled at the last minute without giving any sensible explanation) indicates that their sentiments lie in actually hoping to affect people's votes. Such open partisanship typically kills both the writers' creativity and a good part of the audience's affections.
The show's political partisanship became extremely boring and off-putting years ago, and the brief rays of sunshine in last season's less-partisan approach have unfortunately been clouded over completely. Add to that the gross lack of inspiration in the sketch material, and you have an astonishingly dreary season opening show.
I'll give the show a couple more looks, but prospects do not look good at all.
As it happens, Saturday's episode was the highest-rated SNL season premiere since 2001. That, however, is probably bad news for NBC and the show's producers: an unusually large audience saw a very poor show.
Media, Political Attacks on Gov. Palin Spark Apocalyptical Speculation
The media reaction to Sarah Palin may look like a culture war or a clash of civilizations, but it's really just politics as usual.
Well, yes, people have certainly got all worked up over Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, to the extent that the national furor of recent days is being characterized as a culture war—or even a clash of civilizations.
Republicans breathed a vast sigh of relief that McCain seemed finally to care about his electoral base, and began leaping with joy at the prospect the campaign finally seemed on track. The consensus among Republicans was definitely that Palin is a superb choice and will surely help the McCain campaign vastly. Her immense appeal to Republican constituencies with the least affection for McCain—evangelical Christians, firearms rights advocates, low taxers, haters of big government, global-warming skeptics, advocates of more natural resource recovery, etc.—seemed effortless, and her appeal to Republican women and abortion opponents played to McCain's strengths.
Given all that Republican joy, Democrats understandably went mad with fury that McCain could steal their thunder with, in their view, an outrageously inexperienced and corrupt yokel from nowhere. The press, always eager to side with Democrats and other statist scoundrels, quickly jumped in with absurdly obsessive coverage of Palin's physical attractiveness, the smallness and allegedly ignorant population of the state she governs, and her politlcal enemies' allegations of political and personal perfidy.
The reality, however, is probably something rather more prosaic than a clash of civilizations. As the Politico website notes, McCain's addition of Palin to the Republican ticket created "a 20-point shift among white women, from Obama to McCain." That's huge, and Democrats are understandably in a frenzy.
Hence both Democrat operatives and the press have dispensed a horde of investigators to bleak Alaska in a fevered attempt to find some dirt that will stick to her.
They have found, well, nothing. While one should expect one's political opponents to go to all possible legal and morally justifiable ends to achieve victory, this press treatment of Palin contrasts vividly with the same media's hands-off treatment of Obama's past, which has some seriously unsavory aspects to it, in the form of questionable financial activities and unquestionably damaging associations with quite mad political radicals.
[W]here were the four front page stories, where was Maureen Dowd with her repellent references to breast pumps and go-go boots, where was the smarmy Frank Rich, when it came to “scrutinizing” Barack Hussein Obama? (Or John Edwards for that matter?)
In all, the media's vastly different treatment of the two people has been clearly beyond the pale and has most certainly backfired. McCain-Palin has passed Obama-Biden in the polls, and the ticket's lead has continued to rise. As Kimball noted in the column referenced above,
The curious thing about the Palin Payload is that (so far) the most conspicuous damage has been inflicted not directly by Governor Palin but, jujitsu-like, by the media’s efforts to destroy her. It’s been a spectacle of auto-immolation precipitated by the media’s confrontation with a phenomenon whose nature they misunderstood and whose power they gravely underestimated.
Clearly this is all indicative of serious political differences between the two parties and between their respective standard-bearers, and that would seem sufficient in itself to explain the frenzy. In a Politico article on the Dems' attacks on Gov. Palin, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen note that the Democrats' and press's reaction is based on fear of the way she has changed the dynamic of the race, giving a huge boost to the Republican ticket:
"The Obama campaign is calculating that it must reckon with Palin and the big public boost she has provided McCain in the past week. When Palin was first named, the Obama staff attacked, then he pulled back. Now, reflecting the threat posed by Palin, Obama is taking the unusual route of attacking the opposition’s No. 2, a job that would more typically be left to Biden, who focused more on McCain and President Bush."
Later in the article the authors include a quote from an academic observer:
"When you change directions [as Obama did in attacking Palin himself] it's usually because of the polls. Obama is probably getting [so much] pressure from supporters and campaign strategists that he can't let her popularity go answered," said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. "Since people don't know so much about her they're using the opportunity to brand her and nick people's impressions of her."
The attacks became so intense and unhinged, in fact, that Palin's political opponents began to defend her, as another Politico article reported:
WomenCount, a group co-founded by top Hillary fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell, posted a lengthy item on their blog decrying questions over whether Palin can, as a mother of five, juggle her family responsibilities and still be vice president.
"The very notion that Sarah Palin should not have accepted this nomination because she is a mother with demanding challenges underscores just how far we have to go," wrote Rosemary Camposano, the group's communications director.
She added: "It will be good for America to watch Sarah Palin on the campaign trail—bouncing from parenting to politics. That’s how most women function—multi-tasking, leaning on friends and family, and waking up each morning and doing it all again."
I have news for these ladies: nearly all the fathers I know do the same thing, and without the whining—but I think we can indeed admire WomenCount for their consistency and willingness to put poltiics aside for principle once in a while. The group fully disagrees with Palin's political positions, but they are to be commended for recognizing that the press were well over the edge in their attacks on her and speaking up to express their convictions.
In his column mentioned above, Roger Kimball eloquently makes the case for the Clash of Civilizations thesis:
In 1996, the political philosopher Samuel Huntington wrote a prescient book called The Clash of Civilizations, which foretold (among other things) the coming struggle between Western civilization and the Muslim world. The reaction to the nomination of Sarah Palin shows that the sort of clash Huntington described can take place within a civilization as well as between civilizations. “The clash between the multiculturalists and the defenders of Western civilization and the American Creed,” Huntington wrote, is the “real clash within the American segment of Western civilization.”
My friend Mark Steyn is fond of quoting the historian Arnold Toynbee’s observation that civilizations die from suicide, not murder.[Excellent point—SK] Civilizational suicide is rarely a dramatic, one-act performance; generally, it proceeds by a protracted enervation and enfeeblement. I believe that a lot of people in America have an inkling that such enervation and enfeeblement is well advanced in American society and, indeed, that is a major reason they are so enthusiastic about Sarah Palin. She represents the promise of civilizational renewal, not by the extension of socialism and the embrace of the effete values of multiculturalism–what we might call the Europeanization of America–but by fostering more robust, more elemental values. Of course, the same things about Sarah Palin that have sparked admiration and enthusiasm in one part of the American public have sparked contempt, dread, and outrage in the segment epitomized by The New York Times and what Bill Buckley summed up in the name “Harvard.” They want America to become more like Europe, they endorse the values of multiculturalism and political correctness.
Roger Kimball is a visionary political and social analyst, and his opinions always merit strong consideration. However, I see absolutely nothing that we should not have expected in the Democrats' and press's reaction to Sarah Palin as they recoil from her like vampires from garlic. President Bush has been getting it just like this for about six years now, as has any other successful Republican who doesn't buy the press's favor by becoming a Rino. The only thing really different about Palin's situation is that she's a woman, which really shouldn't matter.
I agree with Kimball that the yawning political divide in the post-Cold War United States has been quite real, and I have argued that the current disunity is in fact a manifestation of a multi-century ebb and flow between two streams of Western civilization. What we see today is by turns repugnant, harmful, and silly, but it certainly isn't new.
Like Dan Quayle twenty years ago, Sarah Palin seems strangely immune to the blandishments of the Washington, DC-New York City political and media elites, and like Quayle she must therefore be stopped at all costs. Unlike Quayle, however, who often seemed so desperate for approval, Palin appears remarkably sure of herself and unlikely to back down under fire (and Quayle, to his credit, typically stood his ground as well, which makes Palin's stolidity even more plausible and threatening to her political opponents).
Clearly, Palin will not be put down easily. Thus the ferocity of the attacks.
[T]he unhinged quality of both Obama and Biden since the appearance of Palin suggests either they believe things to be worse than they appear to the rest of us, or that they don’t handle bad news very well.
I suspect that they believe that their prospects for the big prize are fading rapidly. And that's sufficient explanation for their hysteria and that of their supporters: just politics as usual.
FX Series 'Sons of Anarchy' Tackles New Formula with Ambitions
The FX drama series Sons of Anarchy plays to an increasingly common formula, but does it well.
The FX TV network made its name by offering "edgy" series emulating the outre and sensationalistic subject matter of pay-TV networks HBO and Showtime, stretching the boundaries of free-TV programming with shows such as Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Damages. The shows have earned both good ratings and critical plaudits. (AMC has followed suit with critically acclaimed shows such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad.)
Of course, these supposedly cutting edge programs involve a formula of their own. Typically, the story centers on a clearly flawed and morally compromised but basically decent person drawn into dire and increasingly fanciful and unpleasant situations in a setting recognizable but not overly familiar to viewers. (This even happens in the comedies.)
In Damages, for example, an extremely ambitious young lawyer lands her dream job—and falls in the center of a web of intrigue, betrayal, huge money, and multiple murder. In Mad Men a successful early 1960s advertising executive is pursued by events from his unsavory past. And so on.
The new FX series Sons of Anarchy fits the formula well. The thirtyish, ruggedly handsome but smart and secretly sensitive protagonist, Jackson ("Jax") Teller, is the only son of the founder of a California biker gang known as the Sons of Anarchy. Respected as the founder's son and widely liked by the gang's terrifyingly disturbed and immoral but amusingly colorful members, Jax is the heir apparent should its cagey and brutal current leader, Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman, the two Hellboy films, Beauty and the Beast), ever have to be replaced.
Jax, however, is developing doubts about the wisdom, and indeed the morality, of the gang's increasingly violent criminal activities. Originally envisioned by Jax's father as a harmless, idealistic, hippie-style commune, the gang quickly evolved after the latter's death many years ago into a vast criminal enterprise centering on the supply of illegal drugs and guns. The apple apparently has not fallen far from the tree, however, as Jax, finding some documents outlining his father's original vision for the group, immediately sees them as likely to lead to a much better life than the one into which he was born.
Complicating the situation is the fact that Jax's mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal), married Clay, her husband's partner, after her idealistic husband's death, and has been fully complicit and in fact pitotal in turning the group into a criminal operation. Jax is unaware that his mum is a superior manipulator and indeed a murderess who in fact shares with Clay full responsibility for turning the gang into a criminal enterprise. What Jax doesn't see, then, but which is obvious to the audience, is that Gemma will never let him jeopardize the operation.
There are, as it happens, powerful outside forces eager to do so. As the premiere episode begins, the gang is quickly thrown into a war with a rival gang, the Mayans, that stole guns belonging to the Sons of Anarchy. In the course of retrieving the guns, Clay, aware of Jax's highly unpleasant developing moral scruples, goads the would-be scion to shoot a wounded and defenseless Mayan, posing it as a loyalty and leadership test. In the midst of all of this, Jax's meth-addicted girlfriend, Wendy, has prematurely given birth to a baby boy, Abel, who has a couple of potentially fatal birth defects.
Jax nobly bears all these burdens in just the first episode, and things promise to become even more complicated and disturbing as Deputy Police Chief David Hale pursues the gang in a one-man effort to clean up the town, which the producers have named Charming in a truly spectacular display of obvious irony and ironic obviousness.
Naturally, the success of the program will depend on viewers liking Charlie Hunnam's portrayal of Jax and believing the character to be plausible and his motives both identifiable and ultimately honorable. That's how the formula works, however, and the fact that the producers have thus far been as manipulative as Gemma suggests they'll be able to bring it off.
And success in showing Charlie's courageous attempts to rise above the immorality he has always been taught could make for some edifying drama.
Brand Flops Before MTV Audience, Rebuked by Jordin Sparks
Embarrassing performance by MTV Video Music Awards host exemplifies intolerance of smug sexual radicals and moral relativists.
Americans still tend to think of England as a charming, socially stratified, emotionally repressed domain of stuffy baronets, cheerful Cockney laborers, Sherlock Holmes, Bertie Wooster, rascally Dickensian characters, friendly bobbies, intrepid explorers such as Dr. Livingstone, and plucky mums like Mrs. Miniver making do with meager rations during wartime, etc.
It's a natural habit. Britain really was somewhat like that, 75 years ago and more. But nowadays one is much less likely to see a friendly bobby telling a vagrant to move along than to see a drunken stockbroker urinating on a public street. Britain has gone "mod" once again, and its current-day culture makes the Swingin' '60s look stuffy by comparison.
Americans will probably think twice before going much more in the same direction.
Russell Brand seemed a little out of place as the host at the MTV Video Music Awards.
Not because he's British or relatively unknown in America, as most of the chatter was about before Sunday night's show from Los Angeles.
It was because Brand injected the VMAs with blunt politics, self deprecation, unabashed sexuality, and, yes, plenty of off-color remarks.
Particularly tin-eared was Brand's eagerness to send a predictable, partisan political message he has no business, as a foreigner and a particularly ignorant one, sending:
Early in his opening monologue, Brand pleaded: "Please, America, elect Barack Obama. On behalf of the world."
Most of the crowd, seemingly caught of guard, cheered, though at least a few pop stars didn't. The camera caught Britney Spears—who in 2003 said citizens should "just trust our president"—sitting quietly.
Brand then referred to President Bush as "that retarded cowboy fellow"—yes, the retarded cowboy whom the American people elected twice as their president. These are the yokels from whom Brand hopes to extract a good deal of money in the coming years. Good luck with that, Barama boy.
Brand, best known in the United States for a co-starring role in the forgettable Jud Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall, has largely made his name by making an ass of himself, as AP notes:
After all, Brand has built his image on his candor and edginess. He's well-known across the pond as a standup comic, TV show host and radio DJ—but more so as an outlandish and hedonistic figure who speaks unabashedly about his prior drug and sex addictions.
He made sure to stress that side of things at the awards program:
Sashaying around the stage in black leather, heeled shoes and snake skin scarf, Brand seemed to censor himself even less as the night wore on. . . .
Again and again, Brand—a confessed former sex addict [who seems to have learned nothing from experience]—poked fun at young sex and abstinence. Speaking of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter's boyfriend and would-be father, Levi Johnston, Brand sympathized with him: "That is the safe sex message of all time. Use a condom or become a Republican!
Once again, we see that the antinomian social progressives are among the most intolerant people in our society today. That very immoral certainty often leads them to overestimate the appeal of their ideas, however, and Brand finally overstepped the boundaries of even the ordinarily sass-loving MTV audience:
Brand clearly angered some in attendance when he repeatedly joked about the Jonas Brothers, the sons of a pastor, all of whom wear purity rings as a symbol of their vow not to have premarital sex. At one point, Brand brandished one as if he had won it from a Jonas brother.
Reflecting a cultural tide that is moving steadily away from the half-century, post World War II trend toward antinomianism, moral relativism, and knee-jerk rejection of anything seen as traditional or suppressing any momentary urge someone somewhere might feel, popular singer Jordin Sparks (who reportedly wears a purity ring too) jumped to the Jonas Brothers' defense while onstage to present an award:
"American Idol" champ Jordin Sparks defended them: "I just wanna say, it's not bad to wear a promise ring because not every guy and a girl wants to be a slut, OK?"
Brand later apologized to the Jonas Brothers, whom another AP story described as being "stone-faced" during Brand's apology. Their judgment was proven accurate when the host went on to indulge in more unprintable jokes.
That same AP story noted that the Jonas Brothers proved vastly more popular at the show than its sneering, preening host:
The Jonas Brothers performed a version of their song ''Lovebug'' that was so genteel one might have thought they were doing a tribute to the Osmonds. But the trio then segued to a rocked-out version of the song in the final moments, as a throng of screaming fans surrounded them on one of the show's many sets.
The fact that at least some of the MTV audience was not amused by the host's tired routine of slf-indulgent vulgarity and extremely safe pseudo-rebelliousness is surely a hopeful sign. The real courage on the MTV stage was not from the smug Brit but from the openly virginal Jordin Sparks and Jonas Brothers.
Those who talk incessantly about their passion for accepting all kinds of people without reserve ought to live by their words if they really wish to make a positive difference in this world.
'Bangkok Dangerous' Leads in U.S. Movie Box Office Crash
Morally and visually murky Nicolas Cage starrer undermines actor's usual appeal, fails to attract audiences on the late-summer weekend.
The Nicolas Cage film Bangkok Dangerous,recipient of hideously negative reviews from press critics, led the weekend's U.S. movie box office receipts. It was a pyrrhic victory, however, as the film took in only $7.8 million in a very down week at U.S. theaters.
The last film starring Cage, by contrast, was National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which opened with a healthy $45 million in its first weekend.
Bangkok Dangerous is a remake by directors Oxide Pang and Danny Pang of their hit Hong Kong crime film of the same name (as translated to English, of course). As tends to be the case with Cage films, the lead character's possible emotional growth and moral redemption is a central concern of Bangkok Dangerous, themes with strong appeal for U.S. audiences.
But the crowds are unlikely to give it much of a chance after seeing the unenticing trailers and reading the catastrophic reviews. With Cage portraying a lead character who is a remorseless and emotionally withdrawn assassin in the gritty, morally and visually murky underworld of the title city, the film seems perfectly calculated to seek out bad reviews and low audience appeal.
It succeeded mightily.
With no appealing new film to attract people to the multiplexes, and with a new TV season beginning and summer's-end weather luring Americans out of doors, the U.S. box office suffered a terrible weekend. Bangkok Dangerous was the lowest weekend high-grosser since 2003 (the David Spade comedy Dickie Roberts:Former Child Star, in case you're wondering).
Ironically, the filmmakers expect Bangkok Dangerous to turn a profit because of its relatively low budget and the lack of competition it faced.
The popular and populist films Tropic Thunder and The House Bunny finished a weak second and third.
'Prison Break' Shows What's Really Important in TV Dramas
The Fox TV series Prison Break is a stark melodrama, but a good one.
As I have noted earlier in this publication, the Fox TV series Prison Break is an excellent example of how genre fiction can rise above its formulaic roots and engage important concerns in a serious way.
By "important concerns" I don't mean stories that deal directly with the hot issues of the day. The latter aren't intrinsically interesting to any reasonably mature person, and in fact such political relevance can often hurt the moral depth of a story.
For example, having characters debate global warming, or to show them living out choices based on their beliefs about the phenomenon, would not be inherently dramatic, because the two choices—living one way because you believe global warming is a manmade crisis, versus living another way because you think it's not—are morally equal. They both involve living up to one's convictions. The global warming dispute is over facts, not over what choices we make when we know the facts, and the latter is the real basis for drama—our moral choices—as Aristotle pointed out two millennia ago.
Certainly Prison Break touches on serious contemporary problems such as government corruption, the flaws of our justice system, the ability of big corporations to do much damage if they act irresponsibly, the scandalously barbaric conditions in many of our prisons, the dangers of computer predation, and literally numerous others. Yet in each case the issue is used as a means of forcing the characters into difficult moral choices, and inviting the viewer to judge the characters' actions not only in terms of their shrewdness but also, and I think mainly, for their moral rightness.
Thus in the season premiere last week we saw Linc promise revenge against the disgraced former FBI agent Mahone for his role in Linc having been falsely convicted of murder in the show's first episode, thus drawing attention to Mahone's choice to go along with the initial scheme as well as Linc's understandable but morally dubious thirst for revenge.
Of course, the producers' (and audience's) thirst for thrills and excitement means that the show pushes every scene into stark melodrama, making each choice as difficult as possible and each betrayal more shocking and implausible than the last. And that lack of realism, of course, makes it more difficult for audiences to identify with the situations the characters find themselves in.
Yet because the characters are basically plausible, identifiable types, and some of them even rather likeable, it's fairly easy for audience members (those with a bit of imagination, anyway), to envision how they themselves might act if put in similar situations—and hence learn something about the limits of their own moral strength.
That's a decent accomplishment for any work of art—pop culture or otherwise.
Western churches, especially in Europe, have neglected their brethren around the world while enthusiastically signing on to political causes.
One important thing to bear in mind when considering international affairs issues is that although classical liberal principles (and, I would argue, common sense and moral decency) require us to stay out of other nations' internal affairs, we still can, and should, speak out when wrong is done.
Any smart and reasonable nation will typically stay out of others' fights, but by the same token, its citizens should be expected to speak out forcefully against outrages around the world. This should be especially true of churches, and all the more so when their church brethren are harmed or menaced.
Yet in the West in the past two decades the very opposite has been true. Governments have intervened, while church leaders have all too often looked away as appalling attacks on their brethren have been perpetrated.
When the West decided to defend Muslim interests in Europe (and hoped to keep oil imports flowing from Muslim-controlled countries) by attacking nominally Christian nations in the Kosovo war, the Western churches were largely silent or supportive. Similarly, when asked to support a war against a secular nation, Iraq, the churches enthusiastically joined the chorus.
On the other hand, Western Christians, including the Catholic Church, have been appallingly neglectful of the anti-Christian atrocities in India (see also here), the Middle East, and other non-Christian places.
One explanation for the unwillingness of Western Christian leaders to speak up on behalf of Christians under attack in eastern Europe and western Asia is that the latter aren't seen as the "right kind" of Christians, and in fact frighten the largely de-Christianized European churches by their very piety, as a recent article by George Pitcher in the Times of London notes:
There is the view that a Church that may have been founded in the first century by the Apostles Simon and Andrew and which survived the oppressions of the Soviet Union has emerged with too potent a sense of nationalism, burnished by its trials.
Orthodox churches are by nature highly autonomous. The Georgian one is strong and independent. Who knows where such demonstrably durable Churches might lead Christians disillusioned by western traditions that have been weakened by far lesser foes of secularism and dissent?
Western Christians do not feel like blood brothers and sisters for Orthodox congregations, which sometimes look like the real thing.
Hence while a few Western political leaders grumble about the Russian invasion of Georgia, and some have made threatening noises based on the implications for supplies of imported oil, the church has been largely silent, to its great shame, as Pitcher notes:
The gathering annexation of Georgia by Russia has been met with a cold shoulder from sister churches, whose leaders have in the past been only too keen to condemn illegal invasions of sovereign states, such as Iraq.
This is all the more surprising given that Georgia is a predominantly Christian country, second only to Armenia as the oldest official Christian state.
Some 82 per cent of the population are members of the Georgian Orthodox Church, with the next largest tranche of faith being the 10 per cent who count themselves Muslim.
Such a devout populace might have expected a unified condemnation of an attack on such a solid and venerable household of faith.
Pope Benedict XVI managed, from his holiday in the Italian Alps, to call for an "immediate" end to hostilities in South Ossetia and urged negotiations between Russia and Georgia over the contested province.
But it sounded like a rebuke to two squabbling children, not a plea for an end to a bloodbath, and carefully made no reference to the wider incursion into Georgia.
Elsewhere, there has been a resounding chorus of silence in the cloisters. Nothing from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the latter vociferous in his condemnation of Robert Mugabe's aggressions in Zimbabwe.
Nothing from the Anglican Communion, so keen of late to re-engage on the international stage with its march through London in solidarity with the world's poor.
Nothing even from the British Orthodox Church, from which one might expect a response, even if its affiliations are Coptic rather than Georgia's Eastern Orthodox tradition.
The response from churches in the United States has been similarly muted. (The Christian journal First Things did mention it once on its blog.) When oil is more important than one's religious brethren, the churches have seriously lost their way.
Scientists Present Ultimate No-Fault Divorce Theory
Study suggests tendency to unfaithfulness and divorce is genetic.
One of the miracles of modern science is how consistently reporters gravitate toward findings that tend to absolve people of responsibility for their actions. Making the leap from "possible" to "likely," journalists continually take complex scientific issues and boil them down to explanations that favor the dominant contemporary antinomian point of view.
Case in point: the Daily Telegraph—a basically conservative newspaper—reports on a Swedish study of more than 550 twins and their partners or spouses, which "looked at a protein in the body which responds to a chemical called vasopressin, which is central to human bonding. The scientists looked at DNA that flanks the vasopressin receptor."
They found the following:
[M]en with one version of the gene - called the "334" version, or allele - had low scores and were less likely to be married.
The wives of those who were married were also less satisfied with their marriage than women whose husbands did not have that genetic variant. Those with two copies of it were twice as likely to report having had a marital crisis in the past year, the team report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In addition, the story notes, other studies have suggested a genetic component to unfaithfulness:
Previous studies of twins suggest that both the tendency to be unfaithful and the likelihood of divorce are more likely to be inherited than major illnesses such as high blood pressure and cancer.
Even so, the story notes that the genetic component is not entirely predictive:
Mr Walum stressed that the gene could not be used to predict with any real accuracy how someone is likely to behave in a future relationship.
Nonetheless, the story strongly suggests that unfaithfulness is just something some people are stuck with, and the real solution is "the highly speculative possibility that scientists could one day develop drugs to target the gene in an attempt to prevent marriages from falling apart."
What is fascinating about this is the relentless and seemingly gleeful reduction of human beings to a pile of chemicals, as reporters and others embrace the idea that people have little choice in what they do. The notion that we make conscious choices is entirely absent from this story and a multitude of others such, as is any attention to the countless other chemicals in the body and mind that might have an effect on the characteristics studied here.
In addition, take a look at the graph above. If genetics are so important in rates of unfaithfulness and divorce, how can they vary so radically over so short a period of time? What massive genetic change overcame the population to cause a radical jump in divorce rates? Of course, the raw numbers don't tell how happy or unhappy these people were in their marriages, but as I've noted earlier, divorce statistics match up very strongly with social and legal factors. Obviously, the genetic component is just that—a component—and clearly a rather small one.
The tendency to reduce the complexity of human behavior and motive to nil and to see people as hopelessly reactive to external stimuli and internal chemistry is a thoroughly deterministic and demoralized point of view. That so many people embrace it so wholeheartedly shows them as cowards who want to avoid taking responsibility for their actions.
A society full of such people will be an awful place indeed.
Homosexual activists are applauding the rapidly increasing numbers of "transgender" characters and people on television, but they say there's much more work to be done.
"Transgender" activists are pleased with the "small but increasingly visible group of transgender women on U.S. TV, as well as a growing number of actors in transgender roles on film and TV screens," but the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said this group is still "a community that is under-represented on television," Reuters reports.
The Reuters story points out that the new season of the CW network program America's Next Top Model includes a 22-year-old transgender lassielad among the show's fourteen contenders for the title honor, and that another such individual is competing on VH1's I Want to Work for Diddy. This is in addition to the numerous transgender characters in series such as Dirty Sexy Money, Ugly Betty, and All My Children. (All three series are on ABC, widely acknowledged as the "gayest" TV network.)
Reuters quotes GLAAD spokesman Damon Romine as being very pleased with all the transgender types on TV these days:
"It is an exciting time. This is all really very new in the last two years or so that we are seeing transgender people in a new light," Romine told Reuters.
Despite all this apparently happy news, GLAAD still argues that people who are dissatisfied with their Y-chromosome allotment are underrepresented on TV, as noted earlier. Both GLAAD and other allied groups have continually argued that the U.S. culture as a whole does not pay enough attention to homosexual and transgender people.
The notion that transgender people are underrepresented in today's U.S. culture is absolutely false. If you doubt that statement, just go to any internet search engine and type the word in. A world of information will greet you in all its glory.
In the Yahoo search engine, a search request for the word 'transgender' currently finds 40,200,000 citations, plus 293,415 images and 885 videos. That would seem sufficient for even the greediest consumer of such wares.
What's more, the claim that transgender folk are underrepresented in the culture would be much less than tragic even if it were true.
The beauty of a cultural marketplace is that it allows people to find what they want and avoid what they don't like, and the central fact of the Omniculture, as I've noted before, is that everything happens.
Hence, if there's a market for something, it will happen. Thus the huge availability of stuff about transgender people on the Internet.
What bothers the homosexual activists, then, is not that transgender people aren't appropriately represented in the culture as a whole, for they most certainly are getting plenty of attention. No, what bothers them is that the mass audiences aren't clamoring for more transgender characters and stories and flocking to those intrepid artists who provide it.
The Dark Knight has become only the second film in history to top $500 million in U.S. movie ticket sales.
Although U.S. movie ticket sales hit the doldrums during the past weekend, The Dark Knight reached a milestone, becoming only the second film in U.S. history to earn at least half a billion dollars in U.S. theaters.
That's an impressive performance, but most analysts don't think the film will catch up to all-time leader Titanic, which earned $600.8 million in U.S. theaters. Most are expecting Dark Knight to top out at about $530 million, though $550 million is possible if it can continue at a stronger than expected pace.
In addition, because ticket prices are significantly higher today, Dark Knight would have to breach the $900 million mark in order to sell the same amount of tickets as Titanic. Obviously that's very unlikely.
Still, it's a hugely impressive and somewhat unexpected audience reaction, especially for an action genre film that could be expected to have less than ideal appeal for female audiences. Clearly, co-writer and director Christopher Nolan deserves much credit for bringing sufficient intelligence and emotional maturity to the story, and the performers, particularly the late Heath Ledger, found ways to make the potentially cartoonish characters recognizably human.
Even so, there must be something special in the ideas of a film for it to have such strong appeal for audiences, some way that it has captured the zeitgeist.As noted earlier, I suspect that what captivates audieces is the film's mature and sophisticated recognition of the reality of moral choices. For a society of people who have been taught moral relativism in the schools and throughout much of the culture but recognizes from life experience that some choices people make do indeed harm themselves and others, the film's stout declaration that morality is real and powerful is a bracing and inspiring thing indeed.
In that regard, The Dark Knight has earned every nickel it has made.
The conservative newspaper The New York Sun has closed down after six and a half years of operations, during which it lost an estimated $80 million.
The FX drama series Sons of Anarchy plays to an increasingly common formula, but does it well.
Embarrassing performance by MTV Video Music Awards host exemplifies intolerance of smug sexual radicals and moral relativists.
Reflecting a cultural tide that is moving steadily away from the half-century, post World War II trend toward antinomianism, moral relativism, and knee-jerk rejection of anything seen as traditional or suppressing any momentary urge someone somewhere might feel, popular singer Jordin Sparks (who reportedly wears a purity ring too) jumped to the Jonas Brothers' defense while onstage to present an award:
