Kathy Shaidle
Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury, now entering its 11th year online. Her latest book is Acoustic Ladyland
This popular post was originally published January 5, 2011.
Late last month, one viral video managed to awaken the internet during that comatose No Man’s Land between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day.
The video showed actor R. Lee Ermey — most famous as the real life U.S. Marine drill sergeant turned fictional one in the film Full Metal Jacket (1987) — at a Toys 4 Tots fundraiser. In his inimitable fashion, Ermey loudly denounced President Obama’s “socialism.” The crowd more or less cheered, the rest of the dais blanched — and a viral video was born.
We all know leftists live in a bizarre alt-history fantasy world populated by perpetual victims and “liberal” saviors, but this is ridiculous.
The far-left Village Voice was forced to post the following notice yesterday:
Freelance writer Rob Sgobbo’s article “For-Profit Blues” was removed from the website after the Voice learned that Sgobbo had invented a character, “Tamicka Bourges,” who claimed she had amassed a large debt at Berkeley College without obtaining a degree.
Lest the fictional student’s fake “Ebonic” given name fail to clue readers in, the illustration (see above) created for the “expose” makes it clear the Village Voice story had had a strong racial component: the drawing depicts a smarmy white man in a suit inviting a trio of hapless, darker skinned fellows in stereotypical ethnic garb to enter a shabby doorway to “COLLEGE.” Subtle! read more…
Late last month, one viral video managed to awaken the internet during that comatose No Man’s Land between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day.
The video showed actor R. Lee Ermey — most famous as the real life U.S. Marine drill sergeant turned fictional one in the film Full Metal Jacket (1987) — at a Toys 4 Tots fundraiser. In his inimitable fashion, Ermey loudly denounced President Obama’s “socialism.” The crowd more or less cheered, the rest of the dais blanched — and a viral video was born.
‘Red State’: Kevin Smith’s new film targets religious extremists. Guess which religion? Oh, sure you can!
I hate Kevin Smith. His slovenly appearance and (somewhat baffling) modicum of success have made him dearly beloved by that most misbegotten of cultural mutants: the loser hipster nerd.
Unless you’ve never seen a film made before the year you were born, it’s obvious his movies are crap. Clerks? Why would anyone spend ninety minutes with two stoned, incompetent name-taggers, when perfectly good copies of The Fountainhead are available on DVD?
And I, too, once had an idea for a “controversial” movie “satire” about stoopid ol’ “organized religion” that was a lot like Dogma; alas, I couldn’t get funding for it because I was only 14.
I forget what his other movies are right now, but I don’t like them either.
Now Kevin Smith has a new movie debuting at Sundance early next year. It’s his first horror movie, and it’s about vicious religious extremists running amok in America.
The film that launched ten thousand ill-advised careers?
In 1998/2003, the book/movie Easy Riders, Raging Bulls laid down a new stratum of received wisdom:
That the 1970s witnessed a “Silver Age” of American film making, after brave young rebel outsiders employed their low budget indie hits as celluloid Trojan Horses, infiltrated bankrupt, boring old Hollywood and rescued it from itself.
(And went on to make stuff like, er, Star Wars – yes, I said it – The Goonies and One from the Heart. High fives all around!)
Reinforced by the coincidental companion piece The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994/2002), the “We practically invented cinema, dude!” meme was embraced by the rest of the Baby Boomers (self-congratulatory as ever), hipster Gen-Xers, and precocious Whatever You Young People Today Call Yourselves.
Now, some folks have “a problem with names.” I have a problem with memes.
Don’t get me wrong: there are some great 1970s movies: (The Conversation, Nashville, Jaws, A Clockwork Orange); some that weren’t great but ahead of their time and hugely influential (The Jerk, Smile, Pretty Poison, Harold & Maude, Massacre at Central High), and others I’ll admit are just charms on my personal mythology bracelet and may in fact be crap (The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Willy Wonka…, Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise).
(And You Young People Today who think of Jack Nicholson and Robert DeNiro as “those old dudes who always play the crazy mafia dad”? Please add Five Easy Pieces (1970) and Mean Streets (1973) to your must-see list.)
But holy Mackinaw, Boombers and hipsters everywhere: just glance at this blush-inducing list of 1970s movies! American Graffiti?! The Sting?! Apocalypse Now?! (the movie about the movie is vastly superior.) The massively overrated The Exorcist, which takes about 40 minutes to even start? Ugh.
(And like all rightwing blowhards, I devoutly profess that the best part of Easy Rider is the last 60 seconds….)
Alas, one of the 1970s most overrated (and, more importantly, negatively influential) films was just honored with a place on the Library of Congress’ prestigious National Film Registry. That movie is All the President’s Men (1976).
‘Red State’: Kevin Smith’s new film targets religious extremists. Guess which religion? Oh, sure you can!
I hate Kevin Smith. His slovenly appearance and (somewhat baffling) modicum of success have made him dearly beloved by that most misbegotten of cultural mutants: the loser hipster nerd.
Unless you’ve never seen a film made before the year you were born, it’s obvious his movies are crap. Clerks? Why would anyone spend ninety minutes with two stoned, incompetent name-taggers, when perfectly good copies of The Fountainhead are available on DVD?
And I, too, once had an idea for a “controversial” movie “satire” about stoopid ol’ “organized religion” that was a lot like Dogma; alas, I couldn’t get funding for it because I was only 14.
I forget what his other movies are right now, but I don’t like them either.
Now Kevin Smith has a new movie debuting at Sundance early next year. It’s his first horror movie, and it’s about vicious religious extremists running amok in America.
Before he became the billionaire creator of The Simpsons with the unpronounceable name, Matt Groening drew the alt-strip “Life in Hell”. The annual highlight was the “Forbidden Words” strip, when Groening listed, with uncanny accuracy, the words we were all sick of hearing and reading after 12 months of lexical torture.
You know what I mean: “no brainer,” “impactful,” “croissandwich.”
Now, people like us have been rolling our eyes over “Islamophobia” since probably December 2001. As you may (I hope) have noticed about all things “politically correct”, eye rolling just doesn’t cut it in terms of rendering any phrase extinct. We have to come up with our own, alternative word and stubbornly use it until it catches on. (You’ll notice that “politically incorrect” made Groening’s list in 1998.)
As 2010 lurches to an end, I propose we adopt my coinage: “Islamo-nausea.”
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna make stale Network references anymore!”
Wouldn’t you love to hear your least favorite progressive talker make that their new year’s resolution?
It’s like I said yesterday: lefties are fickle. They pick up, dump, then booty-call their “clever” memes-du jour like Julian Assange at a key party. read more…
Having spent too long as the Media Matters “watcher” for NewsReal, I’ve learned that “good writing” — if you’re a modern day “progressive” — equals “reads like it was typed up at the last minute by a moonlighting Groupon intern with Tourettes.” (For a classic example, see the lefty blogger being roundly mocked here — but it should go without saying: extreme language warning.)
You can tell the writers at Mediaite are young lefties, too. Not because they swear a lot, but because (when they aren’t larding on the snarky snide) they dutifully parrot all the rhetorical tropes they learned in college. One of their lessons was: “When stuck for a response, accuse your debate opponent of ‘using generalizations.’”
read more…
Blogger IsraelyCool and Brian of London call it an emergency:
Palestine Media Watch (PMW) translates and posts videos from the TV Channels of both the official Palestinian Authority (rulled by Fattah) and Hamas TV. They’ve brought to the world such gems as the genocidal bunny rabbit and Farfour the murderous mouse.
Well YouTube have shut them down for hate speech when all they are doing is reporting the hate speech of Islam.
These bloggers have a list of all the “objectionable” videos, and a running list of bloggers who are jumping on this story (like we are here at NewsReal). read more…
This popular post was originally published December 17, 2010.
Every year, Catholics renew their baptismal vows and reject, among other “snares of the Devil,” something called “the glamor of evil.” The old dead white guys who penned those vows predated People magazine and Day of the Locust by centuries, but intuited a profound truth about human nature:
We get more of whatever we glamorize.
The facts matter less than the fame; merely projecting an individual — hero or villain — onto the shallow surface of the big screen conveys implicit societal approval and permission, and always with diminishing returns. So we’re faced with the unedifying spectacle of 21st century gay activists, appointing themselves the Rosa Parks of the blood donor clinic, or who look upon Christian bed & breakfasts as Woolworth’s lunch counters of their very own.
And so the past is cannibalized to feed a self-aggrandizing present and an unlivable future.
The cult of Erin Brockovich represents one of these ill-advised misadventures in selfishness disguised as selflessness, another quest for secular sainthood. Fortunately, her heroic saga is finally unraveling — but like so many leftist, do-gooder tales, too late.
Every year, Catholics renew their baptismal vows and reject, among other “snares of the Devil,” something called “the glamor of evil.” The old dead white guys who penned those vows predated People magazine and Day of the Locust by centuries, but intuited a profound truth about human nature:
We get more of whatever we glamorize.
The facts matter less than the fame; merely projecting an individual — hero or villain — onto the shallow surface of the big screen conveys implicit societal approval and permission, and always with diminishing returns. So we’re faced with the unedifying spectacle of 21st century gay activists, appointing themselves the Rosa Parks of the blood donor clinic, or who look upon Christian bed & breakfasts as Woolworth’s lunch counters of their very own.
And so the past is cannibalized to feed a self-aggrandizing present and an unlivable future.
The cult of Erin Brockovich represents one of these ill-advised misadventures in selfishness disguised as selflessness, another quest for secular sainthood. Fortunately, her heroic saga is finally unraveling — but like so many leftist, do-gooder tales, too late.
