Strangers in a Strange Land
I think I have been away from my country for a long time, though not too long. I do not refer to my brief visit to Rome in the first half of January but to the sense of strangeness I experience every time I turn on the evening news or look at the stories on The Drudge Report or Google News. The past two days, I was completely caught off guard by the front-page reporting on the death of someone I honestly had never heard of: Heath Ledger.
As I have learned from ABC News and The New York Times, Mr. Ledger was an Australian-born actor who made a series of films I had never heard of, except for Ang Lee's tribute to cowboy love, Brokeback Mountain. He was not, it turns out, homosexual, which makes him even more disgusting than most actors, and on the set he contracted a liaison with an actress by whom he had an illegitimate child. According to the police, his apartment was filled with tranquilizers for which he had prescriptions, and, according to rumors, he abused illegal drugs and had been treated for heroin addiction.
At its gushing worst, the Times compared Mr. Ledger with James Dean and mourned the premature loss of a great talent. Admirers have been dropping off tributes--candles, flowers, photographs--outside his apartment building, and a grieving nation is seeking comfort for this tragic death.
It is not news that Americans since the 1920's have gone gaga over film stars, pop singers, and athletes, but I do not recall the deaths even of James Dean or Elvis, genuine pop idols that they were, creating so great a stir. In watching Charlie Gibson recite his ungrammatical and mispronounced platitudes on the nation's loss, I thought of George Orwell, both of how right he was and how wrong he was: right in sensing that the totalitarian states of the future would manipulate their citizens through propaganda but wrong in overemphasizing the role of political propaganda.
Nothing so clearly indicates the servility of most Americans as these manifestations of concern for celebrity life-styles. Leftists apparently know what they are doing since more and more of the reporting on NPR is taken up with pop-cultural inanities. This morning, they wasted a good 10 minutes on an LA group of Beatles imitators, "the Fab Faux," who are performing the later material that the Beatles never actually put on in public.
The least depressing conclusion I draw from all the coverage of Britney, Lindsay, OJ, and now Heath is that elections mean nothing. People who care who the next American Idol will be or who will win Dancing with the Stars could not be trusted to elect the board members of the Parks Department, much less the temporary dictator of an empire of 300 million people. One small detail. We Americans laugh at the people of India and Pakistan who choose party leaders on the strength of their last names, and then a significant number of us run out to vote for George W. Bush or Hilary Clinton. Benazir Bhutto may be as crooked as Hilary Clinton, but she spoke far better English and was a fine-looking woman, which makes her superior to every female I know in American politics. And, while on this low topic, what man would not follow a pretty air hostess like Sonia Gandhi? Good looks, charm, and an impressive demeanor have always played a part in human affairs, but here in America even our screen idols are monkey-faced women and epicene males. To restore the republic, we should have to undertake a massive program of disenfranchisement, beginning with people who work for or receive benefits from government, moving on to unmarried women, and finishing off with anyone who has seen three films starring Heath Ledger or Brad Pitt.
Celebrity eats up reality, the TV and film cameras suck out the souls, both of the actors and of the watchers who live through the actors. George Garret's brilliant book, Poison Pen, may be the single most important commentary on the people we have become. It is not easy to get a hold of--and uses language not suitable for women and children--but it is horrifyingly true. In any kind of republic or democracy, the electorate must consist of people in touch with everyday reality. The wonderful thing about pop culture is that it alienates a majority of people from reality, persuading them that the criminal class consists of middle-class white males, and that brain surgeons and nuclear physicists and judges are, typically, people played by Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson. In a free society, stereotypes and prejudices are somewhat false conclusions drawn from experience; in the servile state, the stereotypes are almost always the opposite of reality.
If popular government of any kind could ever work, it would be in periods when hard-working men were sufficiently concerned about their local community and their personal self-interest to support the side that pandered to them and then to hold the politicians' feet to the fire. Athenians, who lived in a powerful state about the size of metropolitan Rockford, subjected outgoing officials to a scrutiny that assumed they had abused their office. But even with every safeguard, they felt into mob rule followed by tyranny. However, in acting like the suspicious peasants that most of them were, Athenians showed themselves more capable of self-government than any generation born after 1860.
This morning my wife asked me in a choice between Hilary and McCain, which (if either) would be worth voting for. On foreign policy, I suggested, Hilary might be less dangerous--though she is so ignorant of foreign affairs, she would have to turn to Holbrooke and Albright. anyone really thinks that Huck or Mitt really is able or willing to do any good, let me suggest that he vote for Heath Ledger. What harm can a dead foreigner actually do?
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Michael,
Thanks. Yes, I will make a point of checking out "Millennium." I agree with you about Carter, and always enjoyed the Lone Gunmen characters on the X-Files, so I may have to watch that series as well.
Andy, the problem is that Heath Ledger's homosexual cowpoke was portrayed positively and was a push of the envelope in the degeneration of American culture. Iago, McBeth, Johnny Friendly, the Riker brothers and Hitler are not favorably portrayed in film or stage and the actors that portray them as evil are on the up and up. Iago is meant to be villainous and any attempt by an actor to make Iago a sympathetic character would be dishonest.
Samurai Sam's - at least in the Southwest has Steak Teriyaki & it's big chunks of steak plus steamed vegetables & rice. $5.29
As opposed to say Yoshi's ... which is not as good... it's sort of a shredded beef. minced meat as it were... yuki-poo.
I always say no rice at Sam's - and i get a discount.
Brown rice is good... but at least in my digestion - never mix protein with complex carbs only protein and simple carbs like the vegetables.
At another meal have the complex carbs if you feel like it, like brown rice w/ the teriyaki style vegetables. At least in my digestion complex carbs only work with simple carbs.
Just about anything mixes with simple carbs... why we always have salad (simple carbs) at home at the end of a meal.
What's my point? There's more steak which is whole protein rather than burger-run thru a meat grinder-where it loses a lot of it's nourishment - more in the steak teriyaki at Sam's because it is whole CHUNKS of steak, than there is in a pound of burger.
But i don't disapprove of Wendy's ... the $1 stack attack... it's good bang for the buck - if you not only can swallow it - but digest it?
____
I have not had the experience in things of television and even of film to weigh into this discussion at its present state. It is far beyond me.
As I have said, somewhere on some thread on one of these Chronicles fora, we got television rather late. The two shows which I remember watching were Have Gun, Will Travel and Gunsmoke, the original thirty minute version with Chester. For a while, I did, as a late teenager watch a show entitled Wackiest Ship in the Army, a show set in the Pacific Theater of WWII. As an adult, I have watched little television.
I believe that I once saw about thirty minutes of the X-Files. Seinfeld I never saw. I did see Joyieux Noël just this Christmas. In some ways, however, pursuant to that theme, I find the film It Came Upon a Midnight Clear to be better, a film which picked up the theme of Joyieux Noël in a more intimate context in WWII.
McDonald's does have the best coffee and fries, nation wide, of any fast food chain. I actually get coffee and fries at McDonald's every Monday night on my home from teaching German - it's a ninety minute trip home when class is out at 2100.
Derek, I take your point; although I haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain" and don't plan to, I understand that many view it as an attempt to propagandize on behalf of perversity. (Of course, at least one conservative movie critic has said that "Brokeback Mountain" is far from being a "gay rights" screed, but is instead a tragedy which shows homosexual behavior to be ultimately destructive; see Victor Morton's "Right Wing Film Geek" site.)
Still and all, an actor's job is to act a part, regardless of the larger ramifications of the movie functioning as some kind of grenade in the "culture war"-- and I don't think Ledger should be blamed for choosing to play what must have been a very challenging role for a heterosexually-inclined man.
Outside of South Park theres not much worth watching on todays TV
Father of minutes father of days... father of whom we most solemnly praise.
and so it goes... fortunately for the better -usually- (if you notice) rather than for the worse...
thanks God. although in this world unless building toward heaven (again? - where we 'fell' from?) - the worst here for us personally can be said, is always yet to come... unless bUilding... then what's to lose, where moth and rust do corrupt -
A hypothetical for paleos:
What if you had were in another town on a business trip, and you had a choice between eating dinner at a local representative of a nationwide chain whose food you generally liked, or eating at a mom-and-pop diner type of establishment whose overall quality you doubted. Which would you choose?
I ask because I wouldn't have any qualms of conscience opting for Chili's or TGI Friday's over a local place, but I know that a lot of paleocons almost make opting for the local place a kind of categorical imperative; hence, it seems, principles come before pleasing one's tastebuds. I have no problem with principles; I even think it's quite commendable to be principled, but I don't understand why my proclivity to dine at Pizza Hut instead of Mama's Local Greasy Spoon Country Cookin' makes me such a bad person...
Victor Morton is wrong about Brokeback Mountain. The filmmakers and the author of the original novel have made it clear that it's a plea for tolerance; if there had been more tolerance from society, there would have been no destruction.
See the interview with Annie Proulx: http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid23486.asp
I am sorry to have to tell the truth but I have tried, on the road, to eat at the chains, and the additives disturb my digestion, the manners of the wait staff get on my nerves, and the food fills me with horror. I'll eat in a Steak 'n Shake on the highway, but for the most part what they serve at Pizza Hut, Chillis, etc., is unspeakable and hardly qualifies as a credible imitation of food. Better to fast. I know, I know, this is snobbery. But as GB Shaw says in Man and Superman, a picture gallery is a dull place for a blind man, and two generations of AMericans have grown up knowing as much about food as they do about the grammar of Attic Greek. What is it Merle put in a song? When a girl could stilll cook and still would. Perhaps the whole lyric is worh quoting, though I am not persuaded by the Polyannaish hope at the end:
I wish a buck was still silver.
It was back when the country was strong.
Back before Elvis; before the Vietnam war came along.
Before The Beatles and "Yesterday",
When a man could still work, and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell.
Wish a Ford and a Chevy,
Could still last ten years, like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
I wish coke was still cola,
And a joint was a bad place to be.
And it was back before Nixon lied to us all on TV.
Before microwave ovens,
When a girl could still cook and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell.
Wish a Ford and a Chevy,
Could still last ten years, like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good?
Stop rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell.
Stand up for the Flag and let's all ring the Liberty bell.
Let's make a Ford and a Chevy,
Still last ten years, like they should.
The best of the free life is still yet to come,
The good times ain't over for good.
"
Mr. Eastwood: if you're addressing me-- no, I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Maybe because I'm not yet as aware as you are. Keep praying for me.
see TJF even when you edit me appropriately (i admit) ... i touch a nerve. poor andy above # 165 feels (what an improvement - he feels) i'm addressing him.
even though deleted can you keep a record of my # 164 - not so i can say 'i told you so' but for "history".
it's late... i'm "trying" to walk the line still... but some are on their way Up and some on their way down.
i kid... i kid.
@160: It is entirely possible, based on what I've heard of the story, that the creators were simply incompetent to created characters unsympathetic enough to allow for an anti-homosexual agenda interpretation. However, even if that had been their intention (which no one can rightly contend), it would probably be overridden by what I'm told is some rather graphic homoerotic imagery throughout the film.
Most fast food is terrible and Pizza Hut probably makes the worst of the chain restaurant pizza. On the other hand, Popeye's makes very good fried chicken, biscuits and fried. When cooked right, Popeye's onion rings are pretty good.
A suggestion for Andy@159..... maybe you should examine yourself and your attitudes. As a self proclaimed Catholic and "former liberal" your need for praise by criticizing others and obvious love for pop culture shows us to the extent that you are brainwashed by liberal thinking radical individualist, the politically correct, and multi-national cooperations and others. You should take a good hard look at your self and the teachings of the Church and reorganize your spare time of which you obviously have lots of.
@Andy Nowicki (159):
What if you had were in another town on a business trip, and you had a choice between eating dinner at a local representative of a nationwide chain whose food you generally liked, or eating at a mom-and-pop diner type of establishment whose overall quality you doubted. Which would you choose?
If I can find a local establishment that looks inviting, I'll eat there. In fact, if I have some reasonable idea in advance of where I might be at mealtime, I'll try to scout out a local place, with the help of websites such as Roadfood.com or local newspapers.
I ask because I wouldn’t have any qualms of conscience opting for Chili’s or TGI Friday’s over a local place, but I know that a lot of paleocons almost make opting for the local place a kind of categorical imperative; hence, it seems, principles come before pleasing one’s tastebuds.
I won't offer my opinion of Chili's or TGI Friday's but instead assume, for the sake of argument, that they are decent establishments. Instead, I turn the argument around: Think about the assumption that you're making. Implicit in your argument is the idea that a local, non-chain restaurant can't be any good. Otherwise, why would you assume that eating at such a place wouldn't please one's tastebuds?
I eat at local restaurants when I travel for the same reason that I scour the menu of the local restaurant for the one dish I'm unlikely to get anywhere else: There's something valuable in local culture and cuisine that no national chain, no matter how good it might be, can recreate.
You seem to think that this is some form of snobbishness, but the very fact that I'm proud to say that I can tell the difference between a Flint Coney Island, a Detroit Coney Island, and a Tony Packo's Chili Dog ought to make it clear that snobbishness has nothing to do with it.
Thanks "woodcutter" (gee, do you really cut wood for a living? how "authentic" of you!!!), for serving up an essential daily dose of withering condescension. (And back atcha-- see my previous paranthetical comment) You're right-- I must not be a real Catholic because I like some American movies and occasionally dine at Chili's. Your eloquence and nuanced argument has helped me to see the light!
On the other hand, thanks to Mr. Richert for a more thoughtful response. I don't deny that local restaurants can be good, and in general I don't like the homogenization of American culture-- I just don't think it's right to hold people in contempt if they don't share your own personal taste, which is what I find many paleos tend to do.
And Derek, you are right: Popeye's, greasy and gross as it is, can be irresistable at times. No question about it.
Let us try to pick a few film directors or TV shows as well as pop and country musicians, who are technically competent at what they do and have an overall positive influence.
Lucinda Williams. When she plays and sings I can smell the Louisiana dirt.
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/williams-lucinda/ventura-2438.html
Anyone in the Nashville/Franklin area ought check out Leiper's Fork. I was there last summer visiting family and we stumbled upon lovely Leiper's Fork and ended-up going back that same evening to hear a free concert with fantastic musicians such as Ricky Ray and Al Perkins.
http://www.tnguy.com/10378.html
If you do go to the area, don't miss this. I went on the tour and I was not the only adult male tearing-up.
http://www.carter-house.org/TheBattle.htm
In Middle Tennessee, the food in the local restaurants is better than the chains practically every time.
Dr. Fleming-
When you are on the road, may I suggest Wafflehouse? They serve a fine grits. You can put anything you want in it. I like extra onions, cheese, ham, and I unscrew the Tabasco and dump it in, too.
PS: And while one reads Anabasis in the original, one can drop a quarter in the jukebox and play Willy Nelson. You'll see the Attic in ways you never thought possible.
PPS: On Christmas Eve, I treated my mother to Wafflehouse. They were the only place open. I was still dressed for church in a sleek black suit with a wild rose in the lapel. I had me my grits. I don't know why, but I've never seen so much laughter before. They thanked me when we left. In a good way, I think.
Re: Food, fast or otherwise. A few comments.
Food production and consumption is connected to politics.
1. Observe the $250 billion "farm" bill. The USDA and the food industry (fast food corpoations included) exemplify the national socialism that began in earnest in the New Deal and eventually penetrated the farm belt mentality that once belonged to Taft Republicanism. If one investigates the USDA's NAIS program (a national farm animal id /regulatory system that requires inserting micro chips into all of America's farm animals) the totalitarian nature of the feds farm policy reveals itself , especially to small farmers who are tyring to resist NAIS.
2. In the book recommended in an entry above, "Fast Food Nation", the history of the fast food industry is shown to have paralleled the development of the Feds interstate highway system (ostensibly a national military road system). As the Feds made America's mobility easier, the highway system became an ideal location for the fledgling fast food chains.
Ray Kroch spotted his ideal model of an efficient, clean and fast hamburger joint in San Bernadeno (owned by the MacDonald brothers). It was no accident that this California locale, with its increasingly mobile, rootless population was the birth place of America's favorite food consumption concept.
3. As the fast food corporations demand for product (beef, potatoes, onions ) began to dominate American agriculture , certain large, corporate players began to corner the market, set the price low(using immigrant labor and government subsidy) and squeeze out the smaller family farms. As the farms went, so did the churches, the schools , and eventually the towns. The fast food corpoartions with thier "cheap pricing" were built by redistributing tax money from the middle class, and by the widespread use of "migrant" and illegal immigrants.
4. The fast food industry grew as the American family diminished.
Working mother's, too tired to cook after a long day at work (who can blame them) loved the idea of a quick, "cheap" meal for the whole family.
5. You can try, but you will not find the recipe for a fast food chain hamburger in the "Joy of Cooking". The reason for this is that the fast food "hamburger" is not really food by any traditional definition. These "dishes" are developed by food chemist in labs and test marketed for mass appeal. Many of the ingredients, the fats, the additives are specially developed by the chemist. There was a time when ethnic tradition and culture determined our food taste. In America, everything is managed by the corporate experts, including the taste of food.
6. The globalization and concentration of production has become common place in the fast food industry. The beef for the hamburger can be sourced from Argentina, Austrailia or Alberta .
It all arrives in giant production facilities that puts the multi-sourced beef into giant vats where it is ground, made into paddies, froozen and shipped.
7. Beware of Sysco. This giant food producer and distributor is penetrating the food on the menus of even the independent, mom and pop restaruants. If the cole slaw or pie is not home made, it is probably from Sysco. Mass produced and "taste managed", Sysco's food is becoming a stable in hospitals, schools,military bases, hotels and restaurants. In some parts of North America, Sysco has a virtual monopoly on commercial food distribution.
"The wonderful thing about pop culture is that it alienates a majority of people from reality" Dr.Flemming
Thank you GLA for the reality check. Your comment helps to back up my feelings about pop culture. If you participate in it you not only live it, but you also support it. If you support it.........you help people live in a false world of instant gratification which is one of the down falls of western society.
One of the most disheartening things I have ever seen was the sight I received apon stepping out of the subway station in Klone, Germany. The first thing you see is the magnificent Cathedral that towers towards the heavens .... the second thing you notice is the Golden Arches right next to it on the same street.
GLA. thank you for the history lesson!
G.S. (#131)
"The reason I detest 'pop music' is because I have populist tendencies..."
"Not quite P.G. Wodehouse..."
Wodehouse started out as an Alleyman, writing songs with Jerome Kern-- including one about Neville Chamberlain's dad-- and writing about theater at the New Yorker. He deserves as much credit as anyone for the vast improvement in the quality of popular song lyrics, particularly in rhyme and scansion, so evident to those who research (or just perform) the material.
Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz used to mock the lower lyrical standards of one of their contemporaries with:
"Lord, please save us
from Benny Davis..."
I hope everyone (still) here gets the joke. It was sad enough that Schwartz had to explain it to the aging New York Jews at the YMHA.
Anyone who attempted to "rhyme", say, "beetles" and "eagles", as a Nashville singer did a few years back, would have been laughed off W. 28th St. in short order in the 1930s.
I've never been addressed as "Mr. K." before, but I kind of like the sound of it.
Although, like nearly everything else that has been posted, it is an irrelevant datum, Wodehouse's memoir of those days, Bring on the Girls, is very amusing, and his experience on Broadway, writing with Guy Bolton and the man songwriters always used to call Mr. Kern and later in Hollywood furnished him with material for some of the stories. He was not, however, a Tin Pan Alley songwriter like Harry Ruby & Bert Kalmar, Irving Caesar, or any of that (with few exceptions) dreary tribe.
Mr. Nowicki,
I believe you are confusing snobbery with discriminating taste. The latter is considered un-PC these days and you very much sound like the PC police in your posts here, despite your professing so much common ground with paleocons.
All this reminds me of a former friend I had that went to work for the "right honorable" Tony Blair as part of his election machine. In order to better get in tune with the common people and better prepare Mr. Blair for governing, my acquaintance spent his days reading tabloids and trash novels and watching soap operas and then somehow synthesizing something from this garbage for the would-be prime minister.
One had hoped that he would simply acknowledge that he was trying to understand the undiscriminating minds of society so as to more easily manipulate them, but he actually went so far as to defend the merits of the trash he was consuming - Britain's "pop culture", if you will. Political Correctness actually had devoured what little the fellow had of a discriminating mind. He too thought it was snobbery to elevate Shakespeare above Coronation Street.
That's what happens when you get educated at Oxford. Trully sad.
Mr. Richert,
I too am a fan of the many varieties of hot dog. One fun show to watch is the Food Network's foray across the nation in search of the best hot dog places. I am not familiar with these deep fried dogs of the south, but look forward to familiarizing myself with them soon. All the best places they feature are indeed mom-and-pops or mom-and-pops that made it big and now feature two or three shops.
No, I don't have a problem with discriminating taste; I just don't think it should be elevated as a virtue to an extent that those without it are castigated as somehow morally reprobate. One can be a slob and still be a good person. One can have discriminating taste and be a bad person or even a monster-- to use a pop culture reference, take the memorable example of Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter...
On an unrelated note, my sister pointed this out to me. This is the last portrait that Heath Ledger had done.
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/19750892.html
For what it's worth, it's shown me that celebrities are no different than the average man when faced with drug addiction. I too am a recovering addict (Oxycontin, followed by heroin), and seeing this reminds me of the same hopelessness that I felt during those dark and hazy times. The difference is that I found God while Ledger submitted to his despair. I'm not saddened by his death; I never met the man. But in a way I sympathize because I know all too well what he was going through. Every soul is important and I wish the best for all of us. And regardless of his sinful lifestyle, I would have preferred that he found faith and converted rather then turn up dead in a hotel room. This is a pathetic story, indeed.
Mr. Nowicki,
"Hannibal the Cannibal" ate people! My, what discriminating taste he demonstrated! His was a marxist / pop-cultural caricature of the evil aristocrat that literally lived off the people. To invoke this image is to further my point. Aristocratic manners and discriminating tastes are to be lauded not demeaned. And the ability to discriminate (in art, food, manners, etc) is indeed a virtue.
Furthermore, I have yet to find a more staunch defense of oridinary people, particularly of those in "fly-over country" where the Rockford Institute is located, than that mustered by the regulars at Chronicles and their palecon friends on this site.
So, please tell me again, "dude", what is your point?
I'm not sure why the mocking "dude" in quotes, but okay, if it somehow makes you feel better, dude...
Hannibal was depraved and evil, but he was intelligent, articulate, and he did have impeccable taste. He didn't mind murdering and eating people who annoyed him, but the people who annoyed him tended to be people who didn't have the same kind of impeccable taste that he had. My point was simply that he was a really wicked man but one who had discriminating taste (I'll bet he never frequented a Walmart or a shopping mall)-- hence, with the example of Hannibal Lecter in mind, having discriminating taste doesn't make someone a good person.
My larger point is while having discriminating taste is a good thing, lacking discriminating taste ought not be seen as a moral deficiency.
Your interpretation of Hannibal Lecter as a Marxist caricature doesn't exactly work, given that he's a sort of anti-hero; audiences end up liking him and finding him charming in spite of themselves. If he were a Marxist caricature of an aristocrat, the audience would be manipulated to despise him, not like him.
Mr. Nowicki,
"Dude" in quotes was a tongue-in-cheek mocking of your undiscriminating taste in addressing others....realizing that you are most likely yourself kidding in using it.
It is a bit silly to engage in dissecting the use of a character like Hannibal, but if we must:
He is absolutely a marxist caricature because figures like his simply rarely exist in real life and are designed to make us believe otherwise. I believe a famous writer once wrote, and it is often repeated on this site, that the loss of manners is the first step in a slippery slope towards nihilistic behavior. Think of the reverse. When have real aristocrats (not celebrity imitators, mind you) with good manners and impeccable taste been found to be homicidal, cannibalistic psychopaths? Yes, you occasionally have the Klaus von Bulows of the world that give one pause. But is there some rampant murderous aristocratic secret society that I have been overlooking? And before you cite some modern head of state as a mass murderer, consider that these figures are usually poorly-mannered nouveau-riche imitators of true gentlemen. Hannibal is fiction designed by the likes of Jonathon Demme, the same director whose chief concerns, at least according to the themes of movies like Philadelphia, align with the typical modern liberal-marxist thought process of victimization and victimizer. Clearly, an otherwise well-mannered afficionado of high art with a "fancy" British accent must be the cannibalistic murderer, just like the German and Serbian terrorist that rarely, if ever, existed in real life, must be the "bad guy", and precisely in line with how the unlikely minority is usually used as the nuclear physicist and computer scientist character.
The point most on this site are trying to make is that the films of today are unintelligent, vulgar pieces of propoganda and you are using one of their ugliest characters as a prop to prove a point that has no substance amongst this crowd.
Who here on this thread or on any other thread on the site has been demeaning ordinary people with lesser tastes. To lament the fact that widespread ignorance and poor taste do indeed exist is not the same as treating those people uncharitably, as you suggest. It is in fact an analysis of a very real situation we face today. Unlike the liberal manipulators of our state apparatus, paleocons do not consider the oridnary folks of our nation (whose taste in politics, shopping, art, etc may be questioned) convenient consumers and cannon fodder.
So, sir, as with my previous post, I again end in saying I do not recognize what you are talking about and gently suggest that you may be entirely off base, if you stop and consider.
Again I ask: if Hannibal Lecter is some Marxist caricature of an evil aristocrat, why are audiences manipulated into rooting for him? Marxists wouldn't want us to LIKE a depraved aristocrat; they would want us to HATE him, and to root for his demise. You may dismiss this question as trivial, but I don't think it is.
And with respect, I do think that some articles in Chronicles comment rather uncharitably about the "common man." TJF is certainly often prone to be uncharitable in his assessments of modern-day Americans. I don't think lack of charity is neccessarily uncalled for; often it is quite called for. But it is uncharitable (perhaps even somewhat mean) just the same.
And... refined gentlemen can't/don't commit horrific crimes? I'm not sure what world you're living in.
This conversation has become utterly ridiculous. I suppose it would be uncharitable to say that Mr. Nowicki runs the risk of making a fool of himself, but the kindest thing I can do for him is to end the discussion. I am grateful to "Eagle"--I assume it is a Serbian double eagle that inspires him--for his patient attempt to introduce some sense into the discussion. Perhaps one can close the argument over cultural populism by quoting Metternich's famous sentence that the heart of the people was good but their head was muddled. It is hardly an insult or lapse in charity to say that ignorant people are ignorant, and it is nothing less than impudence for the ignorant to presume to instruct the learned in matters of taste or literature. People who are content with bad food and drink and spend their time watching TV or lousy horror movies should not be treated with contempt, though their bad taste and poor judgment should not be allowed to waste our time.