And if we are comparing films, I don't feel Iron Man is any more of a "Let's kill some bloody wogs!" film than the Rambo films, or the Missing in Action films or any of the other of the mortal super hero genre where one-man armies wipe out endless hordes of enemies by themselves. No doubt Iron Man is part of that genre. But as I stated in my earlier post, since the hero is saved by the one the "wogs" in the beginning of the film, and since we see the transformation of the playboy munition maker Tony Stark into someone concerned that his inventions have needlessly killed "wogs" and wanting make amends, I just don't see where you can simplistically put Iron Man into a category of chauvanistic fantasy escapism. I pointed out one angle the story could be viewed from and while the average fellow may not be able to construct a suit of armor with missles as Tony Stark does, it would not suprise in this day and age or privitze warfare, a bounty hunter or lone guman would kill Osama bin Laden before the state armies of NATO do.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to brush up on my Yiddish...

My wife & I regret we didn't read Mr. McCartney's review of *Juno* prior to wasting good money on seeing that turd in theaters -- but I guess that's what we get for heeding sycophantic hype from the "professional pro-Lifer" circles, who regarded *Juno* as a bone thrown to them from the alternative-hip arts crowd.

As to Iron Man, while I hold Mr. Scallon in high esteem, I think Tony Stark is best read not as a Ron Paul-esque icon of American independence but rather as a synthesis of George Soros and Bill Gates. A transnational, New World Order billionaire technocrat hero, with oodles of gadgets, devoted to helping the world get better and better every day, in every way.

As a former comic-book junkie in my high-school years, I can vouch that the explicit depiction of Tony Stark is that of a shallow, pseudo-intellectual atheist who spends much of his time fighting reactionaries like "The Mandarin" -- who values tradition & ancestors (how ghastly) over "science" (as defined by the philosophical geniuses at Marvel Comics).

Or he fights backwards, change-fearing rednecks (vice Arabs) who steal his technology in order to run amok and commit dastardly deeds. I kid you not, that was one of the plotlines.

Moreso than any other comic-book hero, Iron Man is an avatar of the Cult of Progress.

But comic-books in general are absolutely perverse. I keep an eye on them, and can assure you all that they have only degenerated further even in my own short lifetime.

A recent issue of "Captain America" depicts a neo-Nazi villain trying to rise to power by starting a Third Party (gasp!).

The villain also dupes the masses, by criticizing the hypocrisies of the Democrat-Republican binary system -- which is of course the surest sign of a fascist, as every good little media-entertainment zombie knows.

I do not exaggerate. If any of you all have kids out there who collect comic books, take it from me that you should burn them.

Thank you. I feel very fortunate to have you as a reader. I am especially pleased to learn that even when you disagree with my assessments you nevertheless find some value in them. That is a compliment to be savored. Ideally writing should bring us into the realm of collegial discussion and honest dispute and this I take to be your central point. It's good to read it. As for books, dismayingly, there is but one: Confused Roaring: Evelyn Waugh and the Modernist Tradition. Needless to say, it's a superlative performance. Waugh, by the way, was an inveterate moviegoer. Although he had little regard for most movies, he was fascinated by the medium and schooled himself in its techniques in order to write his vivid, quicksilver narratives.

Yours, George McCartney

And now to The Visitor, the film in question. Tarek, the Syrian illegal who seems to be upsetting some of my readers, is in America because his mother brought him here after her journalist husband died as a result of being imprisoned and tortured for saying something unflattering about the Assad regime. She arrived on a temporary visa and then failed to take the steps necessary to gain permanent residency. She then ignored the problem and simply stayed on in Michigan. Was this wrong? Unquestionably. And the film never says otherwise. It was also foolish since she would have had a chance for asylum as a member of a politically persecuted family. Do she and her son deserve to be deported? Legally, yes. Still, given the family’s circumstances as elaborated in the film, I think it’s not traitorous to wish they could have been afforded another chance to make their case for citizenship rather than to be shuffled through an outsourced and hopelessly inept INS bureaucracy. Some seem to think the film is arguing for continued waves of mass Mexican immigration. I fully appreciate and frequently share the paranoia that has descended upon us since 9/11. But we must make moral and practical distinctions. Otherwise we’ll become what we deplore: a people who ignore the individual within the mass.

To those who find my review of Iron Man misbegotten, a few words. Had I known Iron Man was a plank in Ron Paul’s foreign policy platform, as Sean Scallon has usefully indicated, I should certainly have foresworn any criticism of the movie. But I wonder. Can Congressman Paul really believe we should all don self-propelled metal suits equipped with missile launchers? I doubt even the NRA is prepared to go quite this far. And would we, so martially outfitted, infallibly blast America’s enemies? Or would we occasionally make a mistake and obliterate a few innocents while fulfilling our patriotic duty? It also occurs to me that Dr. Paul has argued, admirably in my estimation, that wogs should be regarded as something more than targets. As for my vetching about a “non-existent sex scene,” does Mr. Scallon mean kvetching, Yiddish for persistent complaining? Well, I never thought of myself as a kvetcher, but I can’t deny complaining about sex scenes in movies pitched to children. Call me a prude, but unless it can be demonstrated to have some thematic urgency, the two-backed beast has no place on the family screen. Jimmy and Judy will learn soon enough where they came from. Besides I’ve always had an aversion for circumlocutions. “Yes, Jimmy, that lady is undressed, but, you see, it’s like this. Iron Man asked her to a slumber party and she forgot to bring her p.j.’s.” Any scene in which consenting actors vigorously grind pelvises rates as a sex scene in my practical anatomy. Now it may be, of course, that Marvel Studios had this scene trimmed from Iron Man’s run in Mr. Scallon’s part of the country (there’s no bottom to the shameful tactics of movie producers!) but I can assure you that in New York actress Leslie Bibb would certainly have ground Mr. Downey to dust had there not been a timely cut to her alone in his bed quite naked under artfully arranged sheets, her hair wrecklessly tousled, in the wake of her passionate exertions. Of course, we could also understand this sequence in terms of advanced waste disposal. When later that morning Downey’s secretary peremptorily orders Ms. Bibb out of the bedroom, she explains that her duties include throwing out the trash. I suppose this hose and dispose moment has educational value for the young.

The idea that the film promotes the killing of “wogs” in the context of the current war in Afghanistan, when one of those very “wogs” saves Stark’s life in the beginning of the film, to me, completly misreads the film (not to mention McCartney’s vetching over a non-existent sex scene in the film). Stark turns his back on manufacturing weapons for the state and military industrial complex because such weapons have been misused and manufactures a weapon he can use for his own aims. This is in part of the essence of a Paulian foreign policy. Maybe we can learn something from it.

The description of Iron Man leaves me confused. The “Iron Man” starts out making weapons for the US Federal Government to use overseas, changes his ways by saying his company will stop helping the USFG make war, and then goes back to fighting for the USFG overseas for no other reason than learning that certain enemies of the USFG instituted a draft?

Tony Stark orders the company to stop making weapons not because he doesn't want to help the USFG make war, but because the weapons he has created are being used against American troops. As for fighting the terrorists--again, it's not because he's doing the work of the USFG, but because he feels guilty that the terrorists are able to harm innocents by using weapons manufactured by the Stark Corporation.

It is very important, I think, to understand not just the wrongheadedness, but also the hypocrisy of the people who put forward that canard.

What they seem to be putting forward is that it goes against the New Testament for a Country to stop the inhabitants of poorer Countries from immigrating into it.

But if they actually believed that, they would concentrate incredible anger and activism at Mexico, which goes to tremendous lengths to keep out immigrants from its poorer Central American neighbors.

Why are they so offended by the suggestion of the American border with Mexico being sealed, when they don’t mind the reality of the Mexican Border with Guatemala and Belize being sealed?

Why are they so offended by the suggestion that America allow only a small number of legal immigrants, when they don’t mind the reality of Mexico only allowing a small number of legal immigrants?

The answer is that they have fallen under the sway of a strange modern philosophy which holds that while the culture of Mexico (etc.) is valuable and worthy of being protected, the culture of America is not.

Furthermore, this philosophy holds that while the Mexican worker is worthy of being protected from having to compete with lower wage Central American labor, the American worker deserves no such protection from lower wage Mexican labor.