Culture

As a mid-twenties single white male, I represent the target demographic for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie “Bruno.” The mockumentary about an Austrian fashion designer was promoted as a follow up to the irreverent character chicanery in Cohen’s hit film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” However, after viewing the film and conferring with other theatre goers I want my money back.

The film follows “Bruno,” an Austrian Fashion designer on a quest for fame and acceptance in the United States. Interspersed with a grab bag of licentious smut, Cohen uses footage of mainstream celebrities who have been tricked into granting “Bruno” what they think are authentic interviews. Other Americana, such as a Fred Phelps anti-gay protest and a lewd craigslist swinger’s party are portrayed with mirthful indifference.

Mocking stereotypes may have its place in the arts, but “Bruno” is unredeemed proof that anything goes for entertainment if it can put a viewer on the edge of their seat. Yet it may not be anticipation of the next scene that has viewers on the edge of their seats in this case; many are getting ready to walk out of the theatre.

Bruno opened on a Friday night with strong box office returns, yet ticket sales quickly fell 39% on Saturday—a sign that viewers immediately warned their friends against the hype. Scrambling in the UK, “Bruno” producers have re-released a censored version of the film this week in hopes that underage viewers will not be turned away.

Though it appears Universal Picture’s profits are secure, the movie is not the blockbuster that opening night indicated. After one full week in theatres, ticket sales are down 73%. I have to hope and wonder: has my generation turned the corner and started to reject entertainment that flaunts our sense of tolerance by shredding public decency? The box office results of Sacha Baron Cohen’s flick “Bruno” would indicate yes.

The critics aren’t helping either. Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly writes that, “the movie is a toxic dart aimed at the spangly new heart of American hypocrisy: our fake-tolerant, fake-charitable, fake-liberated-yet-still madly-closeted fame culture.” Yet if Bruno is a toxic dart, then it is poisoned with the same base hypocrisy that Cohen pitches as humorous.

If Sacha Baron Cohen’s film contains a lesson about our culture, it is that humor has been exchanged for disgust, beauty for titillation, and decency for blind tolerance. There is almost nothing left for an irreverent comedian like Cohen to criticize.

Can a tolerant generation survive if it does not censor itself? It will be up to us twenty-something’s in the target demographic to answer this question. Many of our politicians practice democratic morality when they argue about same-sex marriage, abortion, dope, war, peace and taxes, while our pop-culture applauds anything with shock value. But I am afraid that this paradigm cannot last; we are trying to stitch the fabric of a tolerant society together with the cord of a lit fuse.

After all 88 excruciating minutes of Mr. Cohen’s film have passed, the viewer should learn at least one thing from the character “Bruno:” don’t just aspire to be rich and famous, ask for your money back once in a while.

Having quoted Rush earlier today, I can't help coming up with my own self-indulgent 35 undeniable truths of life:

1) The New York Yankees represent everything that is right with America.

2) The Chicago Cubs represent everything that is wrong with America.

3) The Greatest Threat to World Peace comes not from a strong America, but from a weak America.

4) The only way to acheive real Peace is by having superior firepower vis a vis our enemies.

5) Conservatives revere the United States Military.  Liberals are, at best, ambivalent.  At worst, liberals express outright contempt for the U.S. Military.

6) Karl Rove was right: After 9/11, liberals offered therapy to our enemies; conservatives prepared for war.

7) The Prision at Guantanamo Bay has (quite literally) saved American Lives.

8) Liberals are more concerned with conferring rights upon terrorists and criminals than with protecting decent people.

9) Over the Long Run, dictatorships kill far more people than the wars that end dictatorships .

10) Iraq proves undeniable truth # 9.

11) Since 2003, more people have been killed in Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Burma than have been killed in Iraq.

12) There are only two ways to end wars: Victory or Defeat.

13) The Man who threw his shoe at George W. Bush would never have done that to Saddam Hussein.

14) Persons who whine about alleged U.S. torture have no idea what real torture is.  Such persons will whine about anything the U.S. Miltary does to give meaning to their insignificant lives.  They are best ignored.

15) Israelis are morally superior to Palestians. 

16) Palestinians cannot be trusted until they suffer overwhelming military defeat.

17) Free-Market Capitalism is the best, and only, path to prosperity.

18) The American Consumer is the greatest force for good in human history.  The American Military is second.

19) Free Trade creates jobs and prevents wars.

20) Taxes are not too low; government spending is too high.

21) When Investment Tax Rates are lowered, the government collects more tax revenue.

22) Joe the Plumber knows more about economics than President Obama.

23) Paul Krugman is a pathological liar.

24) When politicians talk about "investments," they're coming for your wallet.

25) Targeted Tax Cuts are a euphemism for welfare.

26) Reprductive Freedom is a euphemism for murder.

27) Medicare Part D is the model for all future entitlement reform.

28) Californians ruined California.

29) Rudy Giuliani personally saved New York City.

30) Motley Crue is the Greatest Band of All Time.

31) Dave Matthews sucks.  If you listen to Dave Matthews, you suck.

32) See undeniable truth #31; ditto Jack Johnson, John Mayer, The Killers, or Fallout Boy.

33) Instant Replay is Good for the NFL; Major League Baseball should incorporate it.

34) Any country that allows fans of the New York Mets to marry already practices Gay Marriage.

35) Liberals want to make America more like Cuba.  Their reason for wanting this will always baffle me.

Andrew Breitbart writes that conservatives won’t fix their Internet problem until they fix their culture problems. Writes Breitbart:

The Democratic Party resonates on the Internet because it resonates in pop culture. The Democratic Party resonates in pop culture because it has been committed to dominating it for over a generation…

The spectacular Will.I.Am song and video, “Yes We Can,” could not be duplicated by Republicans if T. Boone Pickens airdropped his fortune on the RNC headquarters.

The Mac versus PC advertising campaign best sums up the stark divide. Only it’s much worse.

What the Republican Party needs to do now is figure out how to make up for 40 years of ignoring the net effect of film, television and music, and the youth culture that goes along with it. When will the people who make the big decisions and write the big checks realize the AM radio band is not enough?

As I’ve written and stated many times, college Republicans and other young conservative activists need to go Hollywood - in mind, spirit and even in location.

I don’t know if it’s quite as bleak as Breitbart says, but it is a challenge for conservatives. Here’s the deal. It seems that most of the people leading on the right are so left-brained towards fields like finance, business, or government that they can’t even grasp the idea of cultural productions as anything more than diversions.

When in reality, culture really turns the wheel of society and in fact is often far out front of government. Culture defines how many people think about issues. Something as simple as who the good guys and who the bad guys are can move people’s views of the world.

Of course, works of culture need not be about specific topics. One example of this if Harrison Ford’s 1993 Hit “The Fugitive.” The plot: A doctor is wrongfully accused and convicted of the murder of his wife. He escape and seeks to clear his name. It was based on a 1960s TV Show.  In the 1960s show, the villain was a one-armed man, a simple thug who did the crime. *spoiler warning ahead*

But we couldn’t have that in 1993. The source of villainy was an evil corporation that wanted to get their heart drug approved by the FDA even though it caused liver problems, because we all know it’s better to make a few hundred million in sales and then get hit by a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit when someone else figures out the problem.

And how did Deputy U.S. Marshall Samuel Gerard figure out the company was behind it. He quoted it’s Market CAP of several billion dollars and said, ”It’s a monster.”

Yes, any corporation with a larget Market CAP is a criminal enterprise ready to kill you and/or frame you for murder in order to kill other Americans because of their insatiable greed. Thus, to many Americans, if you say, “My name is Bob, I work for a Fortune 500 company…” they’ll think, “Must be a soulless robot.”  

Now, if conservatives are smart, we’ll see more films that feature labor unions as the bad guys. Such an effort would produce a situation where people would think, “So you work for the mafia?” when they introduce themselves as a leader of a union.

While my fellow conservatives may look at me as if I’m from another planet when I mention that I write Science Fiction, my cultural efforts will continue as they matter more long-term than my political ones.

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Very sad news that the senior statesman of stand-up comedy, George Carlin, passed away last night.

http://www.courant.com/entertainment/celebrity/sns-ap-obit-george-carlin,0,4522518.story

Blogs are obviously a form of free speech often focused on irreverant satire of whoever is "The Man' at the time of the blog post. We all owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to George Carlin, who made doing this so damm funny and made it look so damm easy.

Please let's not use all of those "seven dirty words" in our blog posts today. None of us want the  FCC taking us all the way to the Supreme Court over such an issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Communications_Commission_v._Pacifica_Foundation

The collective swoon over B. Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama is getting corrosive. If Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) (see parts I and II) was a public health hazard, we ain't seen nothing yet. The Morbid Obama Intoxication (MOI) beats BDS on all fronts.

For a proper understanding we must turn beyond the field of psychology - to philosophy - which explains matters in broad abstracts. As is happens, a number of parameters alarmingly coincide - and here it gets sticky - with the German interbellum.

We all know how that ended. Nota bene, I'm not collating Obama with Adolf Hitler, or lumping him with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels; although he is playing the campaign like a full-fledged demagogue, the problem rather lies with his fans and admirers.

The American Left is traditionally steeped in pragmatism. That may sound innocent and practical, but it comes with a few less known consequences which seldom come to the fore all at once.

The champion of pragmatism is the American pioneering psychologist William James (1842-1910), who gave the concept its name. The brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James wrote: 'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving." Dewey applied pragmatism to education.

Pragmatism is a Romanticist version of relativism. Extrovert action and passion are valued over introvert reflexion and reason. Pragmatism is essentially amoral. It has contributed to the nastiness of Postmodernism by positing a sort of secular, Western form of taqqiyah, which is governed by the same principle: our goal is so ethical that even the unethical is justified in reaching it - the aim justifies the means, truth is flexible and depends on the need of the moment, a utility expedient towards realization of the goal.

As a consequence pragmatism is rather dishonestly presented as the opposite of what it aims to achieve. It seemingly is the practical over theory, portends to position the individual in a central role, ostensibly respects reason and facts, while its very principle constitutes an assault on logic (everything is in flux), gives a central role to feelings and passions (subjectivism), denies reality (nothing is absolute), and reduces the individual to an atom of the collective. That collective - in pragmatism is usually 'our generation,' 'liberals,' or 'society'; it is not an aggregate, but an 'organic entity.'

It holds a number of Orwellian concepts, as Hegel's 'Ethical Whole' to which individual free will must be sacrificed for the good of the Collective Will, and Rousseau's notion which has come down to us in Marxism, of 'true freedom through the state'. A picture of mystical group-think is emerging from the Obama campaign which looks ominously familiar, but is by itself not enough to warrant great concern.

Is gets more hazardous when pragmatism is coupled to dogma and subjective passions spiral out of control. This is the winning ticket that made National Socialism such a lethal ideology: they strengthen one another. One can see how that works: our aim justifies the means because we say so. Dogmatism couples blind belief to an already brutal concept. It beckons: stop thinking, follow me and I'll give you what you want so passionately!

If we turn our attention to the Obama campaign we hear one mantra: Change, Action, Belief. The latter represents the dogmatic side: blind faith, not in the Obama ideas (he doesn't have any) but in his method, while Change through Action suggests Will to Power: the dogmatic approach to a subjective aim that justifies the pragmatist means.

There is the negative myth as summed up in part II by Front Page Magazine author Ben Johnson's "The Left's Fairy Tale," a shortlist of the main delusions that the Dems and the Leftist world at large have convinced themselves of. The demonization of George Bush is not a Sorelian myth, but it lends sufficient fire and motivation to reach the goal: getting Obama into 'our' White House.

Sit tight for Leonard Peikoff quoting Herman Goerring in "The Ominous Parallels" (Meridian, 1982, p. 55):

"Just as the Roman Catholic Church considers the Pope as infallible (...) so do we National Socialists believe with the same inner conviction that for us the Leader is (...) simply infallible. [Hitler's authority derives from] something mystical, inexpressible, almost incomprehensible which this unique man possesses, and he who cannot feel it instinctively will not be able to grasp it at all."

If you think that's tacky, compare that to this load of Postmodern 'spirituality,' according to which Obama is both the infallible Pope and the celestial Leader rolled into One:

"Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway. (...) The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics? No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity. Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord. Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare."

Mark Steyn noticed it too:

"Obama the humble savior:" "I face this challenge with profound humility (...) limitless faith (...) I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation."

It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? ... Yeah, and divorced from reason ...

I've been reading the reviews of Sex & the City (hereafter referred to as SATC).  Now, understand, I only watched the show 1 time - just so I could understand what all the single women were raving about - still don't understand.

It seems that the NEW SATC, as opposed to the OLD SATC, is mostly focused on clothes, sex, clothes, slutty remarks & actions, clothes, a wedding, clothes, and, well, clothes.

Judging from the original, I'm having a hard time (oh, how Samantha would smirk at that) seeing what's different about it.  Except the "girls" are in their 40's and 50's.  Which, as we all know, is just the age that makes men salivate - you know how anxious they are to bed the menopausal woman.

Must be that misty glow we get when the power surges kick in.

Why am I, along with many other Americans, against unbridled, illegal immigration?

To hear the pro-illegal pro-undocumented almost-citizen crowd tell it, I'm against those black brown  people of color who make up the majority of illegals.

Well, that's a flaming lie not quite correct.  I come from a long line of native Americans (by that term, I mean someone whose parents were born here).  But, as I was born in 1951, I knew many recently arrived immigrants.

And those were actual immigrants - people who filled out the paperwork, waited their turn, and, finally, arrived - ready to work.  The overwhelming majority of them became citizens, as soon as they qualified.  Even before that, they started learning the language - it was considered essential to being able to manage in the new country.  Most of them still used the former languages, in their homes.  With me, and others who were not able to speak that language, they switched to English - heavy accents, broken syntax, and all.  They did that, knowing their acceptance was enhanced by adopting the language and culture of their new land.

Their children were, like the rest of my friends, gung-ho (yes, I realize that's a Japanese phrase) Americans.  They seldom spoke the old tongue, except with grandparents.  They resisted dressing in the native costumes of their parents, rolled their eyes when parents started talking about "the old days" (not unlike American kids - we don't "get" that ancient history), and worked hard to fit into the new culture.

Parents were torn - on one hand, they wanted to pass on traditions.  On the other hand, they took pride in how well their children fit into the mainstream.

In general, immigrants brought a little of the Old World, and blended it into the New.  They liked to keep the same religion and foods, but added on new tastes, a little at a time.  By the time the 3rd generation came along, they had become just another American.

Not so today - too many immigrants feel that Americans are the ones who need to make the changes.  They expect that they will be able to keep their language intact, and pass it along, unchanged, to the next generation.  They want to keep ALL their heritage in place - including that part that directly contradicts the laws of America.  Hence, Americans are being called "narrow-minded" for not recognizing multiple marriages.  It must be racism to not celebrate the wonderful, women-friendly practices of polygamy, clitorectomy, and "honor" killings.

Further, immigrants too often feel that all government services should be theirs, by right.  They seem not to understand the concept of rights that are limited to citizens.  Funny, that - in their home countries, if I were the immigrant, I would have NO rights.