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Manners and Morals

What Happens in Vegas . . .

October 13, 2006

Regarding the well-known Las Vegas promotional ads claiming that "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," the allusion to them in last night’s episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (see the item immediately below) vividly reminded me of how revolting I’ve always found that ad campaign to be. Yes, revolting. The claim, of course, is that running wild in a strange town has no consequences. The subtext is that prostitution is legal in Nevada. Hence, for married folk the implication is that you can be sure your spouse will not know about your indiscretions when you return from your business trip out there (because you run no risk of getting arrested for solicitation), so please book your meetings and conventions in Vegas. For single people, the point is that there will be lots of people out looking for a good time with no commitments: the young men will have the fallback option of using the legalized prostitution, and the young women know that the legal prostitution means that there will be plenty of young men there. Of course, contracting a venereal disease would seem to be a very possible negative consequence of what often happens in Vegas, but perhaps they

Fannysmackin’ Our Vegas Mentality

October 12, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

The closing words of tonight’s episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation express a truly great insight into contemporary American society. After solving the case, the investigators ponder the question of who is ultimately responsible for the depredations of a group of teenage thrill-killers in Las Vegas, whether it is the parents or simply the kids themselves. Someone mentions the "moral compass" the young people should have been provided. Team leader Gil Grissom enters the room and provides a wiser perspective: The truth is, a moral compass can only point you in the right direction. It can’t make you go there. Our culture preaches that you shouldn’t be ashamed of anything you do anymore. And unfortunately, this city is built on the principle that there’s no such thing as guilt: "Do whatever you want. We won’t tell." So, without a conscience, there’s nothing to stop you from killing someone. And evidently, you don’t even have to feel bad about it. That’s a powerful statement, and entirely true. It’s even more powerful on screen than on the page. The episode is called Fannysmackin’ and is well worth seeing for this excellent brief speech.

Best New Show on Television

October 11, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Most people aren’t going to like to hear this, but I think that we are truly in a golden age of television right now. Sure, most TV series are pap, but the best are truly comparable to theatrical movies in both story and production values. And they are getting better and better. A good example is Friday Night Lights, which earns my vote for best new show on television. Yes, it’s about high school football, which might seem to limit its appeal, but the subject most decidedly does not do so. The program uses its context to tell stories that are about much more than football. The central theme of the show is what each character sees as his or her purpose in life and how they pursue it. We are invited to judge the characters on their view of what their purpose is: glory, pleasure, honor, service, etc.; and on how they go after it—by hard work, chicanery, manipulation, planning, intuition, etc. And we are given realistic looks at the obstacles they must overcome, the disappointments they endure, as they move through life. The choices they make in response to these disappointments are some of the most revealing about

“Bravo” for the Omniculture

October 3, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

One of the biggest trends of the past couple of decades has been the increasing commercialization of what used to be thought of as a counterculture. The 1950s and ’60s movement to question all existing values quickly entered the mainstream, and in the 1980s it basically became the mainstream, insofar as there is such a thing in our fractured Omniculture. The values pursued are originality, passion, assertiveness, authenticity, and the like. In the Omniculture, a place without a central set of widely shared values, enormous corporate conglomerates pursue particular audience slices by means of "edgy," aggressively weird programming. Pay-cable series such as Six Feet Under and Weeds, for example, are programs that really make very little sense as entertainment or popular art, although there are interesting thoughts to be found in them, but they are able to find an audience because a certain thrill is given to viewers as participating in something truly "challenging" that sets them apart from their boring neighbors who watch football and shop at Wal-Mart. This is vividly true of the cable network Bravo, which started out as basically an opera and ballet channel and in the past few years has evolved into an outlet

Liberty and Culture

October 2, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

I’ve just returned from a conference on great Americans’ contributions to the nation’s ongoing discussion of liberty and order. What struck me most strongly was the fact that our opinions on liberty depend so greatly on our cultural treatment of the issue, and that the latter depends so thoroughly on leadership. To read the speeches and other writings of great leaders such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the two presidents Roosevelt (as much as I disagree with the positions of these last two individuals), one is positively revolted by the puerility and ignorance of our modern politicians. Since Ronald Reagan there has not been a leader in either American political party whose thinking and writings could approach placing them in a class with these persons, or even as close as several notches below. Certainly one could suggest a variety of reasons for this, but the greatest of these, I believe, is a simple deficiency of interest in and understanding of basic principles. Our modern politicians seem far too caught up in politics, as opposed to being interested in and willing to investigate in depth the principles behind human action and political activity. This has always been true to some degree,

“The Gridiron Gang,” the Philosophy of Determinism, and Freedom of the Will

September 26, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

“The Gridiron Gang,” the Philosophy of Determinism, and Freedom of the Will

The Gridiron Gang, mentioned immediately below, is a very good film, by the way, well worth seeing. Starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson," the film is based on the true-life story of a juvenile-home worker who put together a football team that helped some of the young men learn good character and thereby find a way out of the gang life which sucks in so many young people today and destroys their lives. Watching the film, one feels great sympathy for the boys even while seeing that their choices are indeed choices and are appallingly stupid and destructive of both others and themselves. The key is that the boys don’t believe they have a choice in life until their coach shows them that they do. This is a truth we can all benefit from remembering at times. Our overall circumstances are indeed largely outside our control, but how we react to them and what we make of them and ourselves are left up to us. The belief that we don’t have a choice is the thing that most certainly cripples us, far more powerfully than circumstances ever can. Hence the film is about much more than football, touching on issues

Bush “Snuff” Film Premieres in Toronto

September 15, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

James Pinkerton of Tech Central Station went all the way up to Toronto for the city’s annual film festival this year, and he has brought back an excellent article on one of the most vivid manifestations of Bush hatred seen so far, the film The Death of a President. In an article appropriately and only slightly hyperbolically titled "Snuff Cinema," Pinkerton writes: Five years after 9-11, it’s apparent that we all aren’t getting along. And the political left is throwing plenty of mean punches. A case in point is that new Bush snuff movie, "Death of a President." Some might say that "snuff movie" is too strong a term — but how else to describe a movie that clearly revels in the prospect of George W. Bush’s being assassinated? . . . "Death" is a pseudo-documentary that purports to show what happens to America in the year after President George W. Bush is assassinated on October 19, 2007 (stock market nerds might note that 10/19/07 is the 20th anniversary of the 500-point stock market crash, for whatever symbolism that’s worth). A few points about the movie: First, it has a "big" look. As film-society types would say, "Death" is fluent

A National Scandal: Brad Pitt, Beloved Sweetheart Angelina Tragically Prevented from Marrying!

September 13, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

A National Scandal: Brad Pitt, Beloved Sweetheart Angelina Tragically Prevented from Marrying!

I am regrettably rather late in mentioning the actor Brad Pitt’s enlightening recent comment regarding why he has not yet married the acclaimed actress Angelina Jolie, a subject which he believes should have an important effect on the nation’s political process. USA Today reports the tragic, earth-shattering news: Brad Pitt, ever the social activist, says he won’t be marrying Angelina Jolie until the restrictions on who can marry whom are dropped. "Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able," the 42-year-old actor reveals in Esquire magazine’s October issue, on newsstands Sept. 19. I think he’s referring to domestic animals here, but I’m not entirely sure, as he has neglected to provide specifics. In any case, let’s get together and change the laws to Brad’s liking so that he and Angelina can move in together and have kids and whatnot, OK? It’s little enough to ask a country to do, after all, for such an important person.

The Need for Moral Courage (ABC’s Path to 9/11, Part 2)

September 12, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Part 2 of the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11, which aired last night, was, if anything, more critical of the Bush administration’s obliviousness to the threat of al Quaeda than it was of the Clinton admin. Yet I hear no complaints about it, nor any threats of censorship. The film’s critique of the Bush administration is basically that it didn’t get up to speed quickly enough (which is rather to be expected when the enormous White House bureaucracy switches parties) and was too devoted to political correctness prior to 9/11. Regarding the former, then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice comes off as manipulative and unprepared to run a big office. That may be true or it may not be, but it certainly does not suggest that she is responsible for 9/11. Hence: no harm, no foul. Regarding the Bush administration’s continuation of the previous team’s concern for political correctness, throughout the narrative leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, a concern over "racial profiling" prevents the nation’s defense and policing agencies from picking up and holding obvious terrorists. This was a huge error, of course, and was something many people had warned was posing a serious danger. Now we know. In

New Film to “Speak Language of Sex” to Mainstream Audiences

September 10, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

Another item for our ongoing Everything Happens in the Omniculture department: Shortbus, a film that is highly sexually explicit but allegedly not salacious according to its director, has received a distribution agreement to appear in mainstream theaters in the United States and elsewhere. It is not clear at this point how widely it will be distributed in the United States. Reuters reports: Three months after John Cameron Mitchell showed his sexually explicit film "Shortbus" out of competition at the Cannes film festival, he said it had attracted distributors in dozens of countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, France and Singapore. "People are ready for change. There is a thirst for something different," Mitchell told reporters on Friday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Shortbus" was set for its North American premiere before an October opening in the United States. Mitchell aims to use sex as a metaphor to tell a story about people looking for solace and searching for something more in their lives in a post-September 11 world. "What pissed me off was that it was … generically identified of as porn," Mitchell said of his film. "We are not trying to do anything salacious here. That

Trial by Media

September 7, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

David Broder points out in his column today, "One Leak and a Flood of Silliness," that the press owe Karl Rove a big apology for their asinine treatment of him in the Valerie Plame leak incident. I agree entirely with Broder’s indictment of the press’s rush to judgment in this case. The media’s overheated and absurd reaction to the Plame case reflects a common but utterly irresponsible and unacceptable phenomenon in journalism today: the assumption that people are guilty simply on the say-so of someone the members of the press want to like, as in the outrageous public execution of the Duke lacrosse team, or because the accused is an individual they are disposed to dislike. Regarding the press’s mistreatment of Rove in the Plame case, I will let David Broder speak for himself in the following excerpts: For much of the past five years, dark suspicions have been voiced about the Bush White House undermining its critics, and Karl Rove has been fingered as the chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition. Now at least one count in that indictment has been substantially weakened—the charge that Rove masterminded a conspiracy to discredit Iraq intelligence critic Joseph

A Magazine for the Modern Lady’s Hectic Schedule

September 7, 2006

By S. T. Karnick

A Magazine for the Modern Lady’s Hectic Schedule

Here’s a publication no one should be without: Four Weeks is a new monthly magazine that includes a variety of articles in four categories customized for the four weeks of a woman’s menstrual cycle. In week 1, the magazine informs us, ladies like things to be "Fun, Familiar," and in subsequent weeks "Exciting, Exotic," "Indulgent, Introspective," and "Cautious, Caring," respectively. This is information that could be very useful to any smart fellow as well, as it is obviously disastrous for a chap to give his lady fair a gift that is of the wrong type for her particular week of the month. We’ve all been forced to puzzle through the mystery of the wrong-week gift, haven’t we? Also of great interest is the magazine’s Hormone Horoscope, which deftly combines two things of utter inscutability into an easily understood guide to life. Thanks, gals!

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Manners and Morals

What Happens in Vegas . . .

Fannysmackin’ Our Vegas Mentality

Best New Show on Television

“Bravo” for the Omniculture

Liberty and Culture

“The Gridiron Gang,” the Philosophy of Determinism, and Freedom of the Will

Bush “Snuff” Film Premieres in Toronto

A National Scandal: Brad Pitt, Beloved Sweetheart Angelina Tragically Prevented from Marrying!

The Need for Moral Courage (ABC’s Path to 9/11, Part 2)

New Film to “Speak Language of Sex” to Mainstream Audiences

Trial by Media

A Magazine for the Modern Lady’s Hectic Schedule

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