Re: NRO salutesmen like syvyn11 and Lord Gow
Pocket Protector Man
> 2. The Incredibles (2004): This animated film skips pop-culture references
> and gross jokes in favor of a story that celebrates marriage, courage,
> responsibility, and high achievement. A family of superheroes - Mr.
> Incredible, his wife Elastigirl, and their children - are living an
> anonymous life in the suburbs, thanks to a society that doesn't appreciate
> their unique talents. Then it comes to need them. In one scene, son Dash, a
> super-speedy runner, wants to try out for track. Mom claims it wouldn't be
> fair. "Dad says our powers make us special!" Dash objects. "Everyone is
> special," Mom demurs, to which Dash mutters, "Which means nobody is."
The superheroes were super due to an accident of genetics and the
antagonist is someone who earned his powers through his intellect and
labor.
> 4. Forrest Gump (1994): It won an Oscar for best picture - beating Pulp
> Fiction, a movie that's far more expressive of Hollywood's worldview.
Pulp Fiction features a boxer who won't throw a fight and who risks
his life for his values (and a Vietnam war heirloom). A hit man
becomes religious and renounces his evil ways. Homosexual rapists get
their comeuppance and are brutally tortured. What's not for
conservatives to like?
> 11. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003): Author J. R. R. Tolkien was
> deeply conservative
He also wasn't a fan of allegorical crowbarring. It's all over his
Letters. He absolutely hated when people used LoTR to make frivolous
comparisons to real politics or war.
> 12. The Dark Knight (2008): This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a
> man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise
> new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred
> of the press and public. If that sounds reminiscent of a certain former
> president - whose stubborn integrity kept the nation safe and turned the
> tide of war - don't mention it to the mainstream media.
I read the Batman-Bush comparison in the mainstream media several
times after this film was released.
> 13. Braveheart (1995): Forget the travesty this soaring action film makes of
> the historical record. Braveheart raised its hero, medieval Scottish warrior
> William Wallace, to the level of myth and won five Oscars, including best
> director for Mel Gibson, who played Wallace as he led a spirited revolt
> against English tyranny. Braveheart taught that freedom is not just worth
> dying for, but also worth killing for, in defense of hearth and homeland.
> Six years later, amid the ruins of the Twin Towers, Gibson's message
> resonated with a generation of American youth who signed up to fight
> terrorists, instead of inviting them to join a "constructive dialogue."
> Liberals have never forgiven Gibson since.
Not to speak for liberals, but I would guess they had more of an issue
with Passion and Gibson's drunken rant than anything having to do with
Braveheart, which is a movie pretty much everyone seems to love. Tying
this to 9/11 was a distasteful stretch, btw.
> 20. Gattaca (1997): In this science-fiction drama, Vincent (Ethan Hawke) can't
> become an astronaut because he's genetically unenhanced. So he purchases the
> identity of a disabled athlete (Jude Law), with calamitous results. The
> movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically
> correct world - the road to which is paved by the abortion of Down babies,
> research into human cloning, and "transhumanist" dreams of fabricating a
> "post-human species." Biotechnology is a force for good, but without
> adherence to the ideal of universal human equality, it opens the door to the
> soft tyranny of Gattaca and, ultimately, the dystopian nightmare of Brave
> New World.
Why is it wrong to interfere in the process of another being's life in
the instance of aborting a Down baby but right to interfere with
someone's life when they want to modify themselves? (Transhumanists
are not interested in creating starchildren, but rather in artificial
self-enhancement; the "fabricating" quote is itself fabrication.)
> 23. United 93 (2006): Minutes after terrorists struck on 9/11, Americans
> launched their first counterattack in the War on Terror. Director Paul
> Greengrass pays tribute to the passengers of United 93 by refusing to turn
> their story into a wimpy Hollywood melodrama. Instead, United 93 unfolds as
> a real-time docudrama. Just as significantly, Greengrass provides a clear
> depiction of our enemies. United 93 opens as four Muslim terrorists pray in
> a hotel room. Several hours later, the hijackers' frenzied shrieks to Allah
> mingle with the prayerful supplications of United 93's passengers as they
> crash through the cockpit door and strike a blow against those who would
> terrorize our country.
Propaganda
> 24. Team America: World Police (2004): This marionette movie from South Park
> creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone is hard to categorize as conservative.
> It's amazingly vulgar and depicts Americans as wildly overzealous in
> fighting terror. Yet the film's utter disgust with air-headed, left-wing
> celebrity activism remains unmatched in popular culture. As the heroes move
> to stop a WMD apocalypse, they clash with Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Susan
> Sarandon, Sean Penn, and a host of others, whom they take out with gunfire,
> sword, and martial arts before saving the day. The movie, like South Park
> itself, reveals Parker and Stone as the two-headed George Grosz of American
> satire.
These same agnostic libertarians created, and were piled-on by neocons
as being part of the biased liberal media that this guy's "South Park
Conservatives" book blasts, for creating "That's My Bush".