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1. 1 Comment by Rob on 24 January 2008:

   I’m suprised that Dr. Fleming did not see or even hear of Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” in which the late Mr. Ledger appeared. I suspect that was one of the few times in recent years that people actually realized the American Revolution actually took place in the South )though one has to admit that Col. Tavington was doing things that even Ban Tarelton would not have done). Having said that, I think Dr. Fleming is spot on in his take on celebrity.

2. 2 Comment by robert reavis on 24 January 2008:

   “This morning my wife asked me in a choice between Hilary and McCain, which (if either) would be worth voting for. ”

   Dr. Fleming’s reply to his wife’s question reminds me of the late John Senior’s reply to a breathless student who told him with great joy and misplaced hope that Reagan had beaten McGovern in a landslide. ” Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping McGovern might win. At this point in time it would be more dignified to be killed in the collapse than nibbled to death by ducks.”

3. 3 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 24 January 2008:

   As one European living in exile to another, I thank Dr. Fleming for an article about which I have no disagreement.

   Yes, I was born in the Federal US, which means to me very little. Culture, religion, and maybe even social class, can be changed — for better or worse.

4. 4 Comment by Chris Hewlett on 24 January 2008:

   I think Dr. Fleming is trying a little too hard here. There was a great stir when Elvis died thirty years ago – people wept – pilgrimages, flowers to Memphis, etc. The fact that Americans (as well as everybody else in the world) are enamored with celebrity is not news.

5. 5 Comment by James Newland on 24 January 2008:

   When did Reagan ever face McGovern? Nixon ran against McGovern in ‘72 and Reagan faced Carter in ‘80. Anyway, it’s a good quote, Mr. Reavis, and one that I agree with. In my view, given the infinitesimal chance that the people of this country will ever perform the radical surgery necessary to save it, this country cannot be saved. Thus, it’s better to get it over quickly with the homicidal Democrats than die the slow, painful death of Republican mercy.

6. 6 Comment by James Newland on 24 January 2008:

   Mr. Hewlitt, I was struck by the same thing. Elvis’ death was indeed a big deal at the time; the biggest deal ever for a celebrity, as a matter of fact. But I think Dr. Fleming’s overall point remains intact: even third-stringers get the Elvis treatment today when tragedy–even self-imposed tragedy–strikes. People used to be obsessed with Elvis. Now they seem to be obsessed with everybody, nilly-willy.

7. 7 Comment by Rob on 24 January 2008:

   As opposed to third stringers of the past? Germanicus, John Laurens, John Pelham, James McPherson…I don’t know. I keep thinking that this could just be something we do when a young and attractive man fades from the scene.

8. 8 Comment by robert reavis on 24 January 2008:

   JAmes @ 5

   Thanks James. “Thus, it’s better to get it over quickly with the homicidal Democrats than die the slow, painful death of Republican mercy.” That was the essence of the quote and I appreciate you differentiating between my personal error and a
   misleading falsehood. Chesterton once described H.G. Wells by saying,”I never met a man who knew so much,and understood so little.” My posts must be interpreted by men wiser than myself — who know what I would have said if I were intelligent enough to say it . Ecco Homo — You are him ! Thanks.

9. 9 Comment by woodcutter on 24 January 2008:

   Dr. Flemming, good post. I felt exactly as you did when I seen the head line. If you were to check out the front page of CNN news web page, you would see that sightings”big foot” outranks any news on the war in Iraq. It is laughable. If I were a young fellow fighting for my life while fighting for so called “democracy” I would be outraged. It is unthinkable to me that the US can be spending billions and loosing thousands of lives for something that doesn’t even rate a headline above bigfoot. The media is obviously in control.

10. 10 Comment by jmcnulty on 24 January 2008:

    The cult of celebrity is pornography for “decent” people — the peering into the lives of the rich, the famous, the exhalted, the beautiful. Now, Mr. Ledger, of whom most people were not even aware, becomes another “legend” to which the living will be compared. Even Fox News, supposedly the “rightwing network,” is monopolized by celebrity and the obsession with the beautiful (why else are most of their newsreaders glossy blondes, not “newsmen”?). The very idea that voting should be denied for those receiving a government check is as a matter of political philosophy is “unthinkable” in such a world. Even the “opinion” shows are entertainment with dueling attorneys or shouting politicos. Such is our current fallen state.

11. 11 Comment by TJF on 24 January 2008:

    There is something about internet columns that inspire the “gotcha” tendency to misinterpretation, as well as a perverse insistence on changing the subject. I simply do not understand why an obviously true (to anyone who lived through the period) statement, no matter how imperfectly expressed, that the death of Elvis–a man actually adored by millions of people, some of whom I knew well–did not receive the media treatment of comparative nobodies today–is contradicted by the public and largely spontaneous mourning that he received.

    A better approach is that of the polite correction of Reavis’ little slip, followed by an intelligent interpretation of his point. The only occasions on which one does not give the benefit of the doubt are debates and conflicts with enemies. I know most of you mean well, but stop and think, sometime, about the tone of what you are saying. If you are going to act as an enemy, you will inevitably treated as one. I also know that you are tired of hearing “Miss Manners” harping on the subject of decorum, but the way to avoid these little sermons is to behave with courtesy and discretion.
    Perhaps one less cup of coffee in the morning would tone down the malignant spirit of contradiction. Anyone but a tired and cynical old man would seriously resent a phrase like “trying too hard.” And even a tired and cynical old man begins to wonder what sort of manners are being taught these days.

    As Sam Francis would always say, apologetically, too explain awaysome unexpected act of decency or courtesy on his part, “I wasn’t brought up in a stable, you know.” Indeed, he wasn’t. I wish more people could make that claim.

    No, the deaths of Germanicus et al are not a point of comparison. These were brave men who had served their nation in battle, not a prettyboy actor who played a homosexual. In Germanicus’ case, he crystallized opposition to Tiberius–a far more astute military man with far better sense on how to treat the Germans than Germanicus. John Laurens was a brave soldier, a member of Washington’s staff, son of one of the great statesmen of the Revolution, and the last known casualty, it was believed, of the Revolutionary war. The youth of these men was an additional cause for mourning, but it was their virtues and actions that inspired grief. In what sense can a senior commander and member of the ruling family (Germanicus) or an aristocratic war hero (Laurens) or a soldier who became a legend for his gallantry (Pelham) be regarded as third-stringers?

    I saw a bit of the Patriot on an airplane once, and while I was very much prepared to like a film that echoed the career of Francis Marion, I was bored by the plot cliches and disturbed by the ideology. A half hour of the Patriot soured me permanently on Mel Gibson and caused me to reevaluate my previous enthusiasm for Braveheart. Perhaps I am oversensitive–there is an alleged connection in the distant branches of my family tree with Col. Tarleton, though I suspect that any Anglo-American has as good–or rather–as bad a claim as I do. It is a strange fact that most of us, if we are normal, are suckers for any contact, no matter how implausible, with the great or evil men of the past. Poor Richard Nixon, when his family tree was researched, discovered that he was descended from King Richard II. When I read that, I felt poor Nixon was doomed, as indeed he was.

12. 12 Comment by rick on 24 January 2008:

    #7 I never would characterise John Pelham as a third stringer and neither did General Lee

13. 13 Comment by woodcutter on 24 January 2008:

    Actually if you scan the front page of http://www.cnn.com/ there is no direct mention of the war in Iraq except indirectly through a blog from a marine. The headline to the blog doesn’t actually mention the ongoing war. I would be truly ashamed if I had anything at all to do with this CNN front page.

    God bless those poor soldiers fighting a war that doesn’t even deserve acknowledgment from the country that has sent them there.

14. 14 Comment by James Newland on 24 January 2008:

    Rob (#7), as Dr. Fleming pointed out, the hullaballoo over James Dean was considerably more muted when he died, and he was far, far better known than Ledger. Anyway, a handsome, young neighbor of mine was killed recently in an auto accident. He merited only a short column in my local paper. So it’s not the young and handsome part that does it. It’s the celebrity. An old, ugly celebrity like Rosie O’Donnell would be treated pretty much the same way.

    Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Reavis (#8), but I should warn you never to overestimate the intelligence of a man who can’t reliably count to ten! (See my post in the Clyde Wilson column.)

15. 15 Comment by Karl Keating on 24 January 2008:

    I differ with Tom Fleming slightly, on the matter of disenfranchisement.

    I see no particular reason to take the vote away from unmarried women. Half of the women I work with are unmarried–some because they have not yet found a suitable husband, others because they likely are headed for a religious vocation–and I would trust their votes over the votes of most American men, married or unmarried.

    But Tom leaves out an sizeable group that really ought to be disenfranchised: those people (almost exclusively women, I suppose) who buy the magazines found at supermarket check-out stands.

16. 16 Comment by woodcutter on 24 January 2008:

    Dr.Flemming, It seems that the previously unknown to some “Heath Ledger” has two mentions on the front page of CNN.com as well as Sasquatch . One about five lines above “Bigfoot”…. so he is more famous than the “harry man turning sideways to look at us.” And definitely more famous than the ongoing war.

17. 17 Comment by TJF on 24 January 2008:

    Karl Keating, you are perfectly right both about the dedicated young women who come to work for organizations like Catholic Answers and The Rockford Institute and about the stultified housewives who buy Soap opera Digest, People, and things far worse.

    This is what I get for being too moderate and in fact disingenuous. My otherwise intelligent mother told me that she voted for Jack Kennedy partly because of his looks and charm and then added, that because of their vulnerability women should not be allowed to vote. Like every other social and political innovation of the 20th century, women’s suffrage was a disastrous mistake, though it was championed by many Republicans who thought that women would be conservative on social issues. My general point about unmarried women is that they do not always have a man to rely on and often vote, in statistical terms, for abortion and other leftist causes. Married women are more moderate.

    I think the best way of voting, if we must have elections, would be for every member of a household to have a vote (children included), and the vote total would be cast by the head of the house, that is, the patriarch. If that is too sexist, then husband and wife could draw straws or come to an agreement. If they could not, they should lose their vote. It is terrible for a family to be divided by trivial differences over politics. (In New York I knew a family where the Communist husband was forever quarrelling with the socialist wife.) This would address the manifest injustice of single people having the same political clout as a married couple with four children. It would also reinforce the authority of parents as opposed to government social workers who claim to represent “the best interests of the child.” At one point in Sweden (if I recall correctluy), such a proposal was seriously discussed.

18. 18 Comment by Rob on 24 January 2008:

    Thank you for the comments gentlemen. I did not mean to leave the impression that I thought Ledger was the equal of Germanicus, etc. I appreciate the intelligent responses; they offer me some solace in what is increasingly a society I do not understand or respect.

19. 19 Comment by robert m. peters on 24 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    Among my kin and in the traditions of my family, we have never made wish lists for Christmas; however, in the past few years, with my son in Wisconsin and my daughter in England, we have made them via e-mail. Mine are always for amusement since Christmas comes, for me, if, in a moment or two of solitude, I can contemplate the Advent of the Christ with family and close friends and get my hands on some spiced peaches, Louisiana navel organges and raisins on a stem; eat a Christmas ham and have some of my own, home-made eggnog. Knowing that I will never receive it, I always place the most expensive gift first on the list with the rest in order of their respective costs. First on my list this year was your Winter School in Rome, second was a .357 magnum revolver, third was a Dutch oven, and fourth was a new band for my cheap watch. To my surprise, I got the Dutch oven, on which I am now learning to cook with wood. (I though that I would get the new band.) To this point I then come: I would love to have been in Rome at the Winter School!

    To the point of your article, I learned the following this morning and now have finally figured out what two men of our local congregation were talking about this past Sunday.

    I had never heard of Heath Ledger until this morning as I read your article. I did not know that he of whom I had never heard had died until I read your article this morning. However, your information puts the conversation I heard last Sunday in context. The two men, in their thirties each with wife and child and each from the most Southern of climes, were saying that whomever they were talking about was from Australia but could mimic an American accent when he acted. Thus, it is now apparent to me that the fame of the late Mr. Ledger had made its way into the western march of Louisiana and into the minds of even the most “pious” of the hill folk. For a brief moment, I wanted to inquire about this American-speaking Australian; but something, perhaps the Holy Spirit, drew my mind elsewhere and I passed on down the hall to my Sunday school class. Although I should not be, I continue to be amazed at where cultural banality shows up.

    Also, this morning, after having read your article, I went by the little country school where I tutor and asked if any of the pupils had ever heard of one, Heath Ledger. Interestingly, none of the boys claimed to have heard of him; however, all of the girls, from the youngest to the oldest had; and the very oldest, about sixteen, said that she had really cried for him last night, cried for a “person” whom she had only known as a two-dimensional figure on a screen or as a two-dimensional figure in a teeny magazine. It would seem that “knowing” and relationships in general have become strictly emotional and two-dimensional. Perhaps teen pregancy will actually decline as more and more teens do their sex over the cell phone and My Space. Also, I would bet that if the creators of Homer Simpson would let him die some tragic death, the nation would go into a state mourning that would eclipse the cult of JFK or the Princess.

20. 20 Comment by C Bowen on 24 January 2008:

    President George W. Bush postponed an event on Wednesday to promote an advertising campaign on preventing prescription drug abuse after actor Heath Ledger’s death from a possible drug overdose, the White House said.

    “We felt it would be better not to hold the event today given the tragedy of yesterday’s passing of the beloved actor,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

    1/23 Reuters Bush postpones anti-drug event after Ledger death

    No comment needed.

21. 21 Comment by Bruce on 24 January 2008:

    An instant classic in the category of grumpy right wing jeremiads (a genre that I enjoy). Sad but true.

    I’m going to sieze on a sentence that’s tangential to the point of the commentary, just becaue it’s bothering me:

    “In a free society, stereotypes and prejudices are somewhat false conclusions drawn from experience”

    Supposedly, Murray Rothbard told Pat Buchanan “All stereotypes are true.”

    I tend to believe “largely true” rather than “somewhat false.”

22. 22 Comment by TJF on 24 January 2008:

    Thanks to Rob and Messers Peters and Bowen. To Mr. Peters, what a disappointment–a Dutch oven instead of Rome. I will say that I dabble in fireplace cooking. We have a “Tuscan Grill” which allows me to grill first-rate steaks and chops over a hardwood fire–infinitely better than charcoal grilled steaks and more evenly cooked. I have experimented with a Dutch oven with legs that I put into the fireplace, heat up very hot, then cook a beef stew or Texas chilli, though it has been a while. Perhaps this weekend. Cooking well and eating well are a part of living well, which is certainly the best revenge against these times.

    Rob’s underlying point is valid, and I was somewhat too hasty in correcting him. The death of beautiful and heroic young men does give rise to religious impulses, hence the stories of Adonis and Dionysus, but also consider the fate of Augustus’ nephew Marcellus, so beautifully described in Book VI of the Aeneid. The Theater of Marcellus is an equally beautiful testimony to a man who died young without fulfilling his promise.

    The Bushism cited by Charley Bowen comes hard on the heels of his statement that the US should have risked lives and equipment in a militarily pointless bombing of Auschwitz–beyond their typical range–in which everyone–Nazis, Jews, and the cleaning lady’s niece–would have been killed.

23. 23 Comment by TJF on 24 January 2008:

    PS to Bruce. Rhetorically in the context it was necessary to point out the limited truth and thus partial falsity of stereotypes in order to contrast them with the total falsity of our own propaganda. We published an excellent piece some years ago by Steven Goldberg, who pointed out there are too sides to a stereotype. A Scotsman whom we regard as pennypinching regards himself as thrifty, while a “pushy Jew” regards himself as enterprising.

24. 24 Comment by jmcnulty on 24 January 2008:

    I remember my aged grandmother saying that she would not vote for Nixon in 1968 because “his head is whop-sided.” She turned out to be right: his head was not on straight.

25. 25 Comment by robert reavis on 24 January 2008:

    “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.”

    The same should hold true for colleges but the servile conditions we are suffering has eliminated any real alternative. A friend recently told me about speaking with a college counselor from one of the Ivy Leagues who was giving her spill about admission requirements at a local Catholic high school.
    My friend asked her, “What would be the chances of a young man from the midwest who had excellent grades, top 95% on his entrance scores, Mother was not a feminist, Father was a local gas and oil producer, youngster was homeschooled for the first five elementary grades, had six brothers and sisters, knew Latin and French, owned and knew how to handle and fire long guns, hand guns and quail hunt. Was a former Boy Scout, (reached the rank of Eagle ) prayed on his knees before bed in the evenings, and liked to fly fish.

    Answer : You might want to mention the Fly Fishing.

    Kid ended up going to Duke.

26. 26 Comment by Scott Palmer on 24 January 2008:

    Celebrity-worship and its effect on political life are not unique to the United States. It’s happening in almost all Western countries.

    Peter Hitchens’s book “The Abolition of Britain” contrasts the dignified (and very English) mourning after Winston Churchill’s death with the hysterical public reaction to the death of “Princess Di.”

    I’m not a sociologist, but if I had to blame somebody, I’d blame the corporate mass media — television, movies, and popular music.

27. 27 Comment by Daniel W on 24 January 2008:

    Mr Ledger starred in many a mediocre movie, but his performance in “Brokeback Mountain” was outstanding. He showed glimpses of a true acting genius and might well have become one of the great actors of our time. James Dean is not a far-fetched comparison at all.

    We might all do well to remember the old adage “De mortuis nihil nisi bene”. When mr Fleming uses the death of a fellow human just to kick off a column, it shows not that he is a stranger in American pop culture, but rather that he fits right in.

28. 28 Comment by Marty on 24 January 2008:

    There are a lot of men who read tripe as well, though I don’t suppose they are soap opera fans.

    I am a woman (married) and I am voting for Ron Paul. I know any number of men who are prepared to vote for Hilary Clinton.

    My (single) daughter and her boyfriend are voting for Ron Paul. They don’t want the government to take care of them and think Social Security should be phased out and people should take care of themselves in old age, or that their adult children should care for them if they can’t care for themselves.

    Saying women, or at least single women, shouldn’t be trusted with the franchise, is a generalization. And we all know what Mark Twain said about generalizations!

29. 29 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 24 January 2008:

    @17: You know, Dr. Fleming, I can recall suggesting that very same voting suggestion out loud when I was about twelve. Not that I was a prodigy–I was not–I didn’t at all understand why, but something about it just seemed right, and I was enough of a little gobsh*te to blurt out whatever “seemed right.”

    As for the death of our celebrity idol, it was no doubt tragic, but I must confess I cannot help but feel the smallest bit of glee at knowing I will never see his face on the screen again. Kudos to you for having never heard the name, “Heath Ledger.” It inspires me anew not to poison my mind voluntarily.

30. 30 Comment by Marty on 24 January 2008:

    My late father was concerned about the debasement of the franchise. He felt that perhaps people who had a high school diploma should get one vote, bachelor’s degree, 2 votes, etc. Then he reflected that there are plenty of idiots with “PhD” after their names. I don’t think the problem of people voting who have no idea what responsible citizenship entails is, is a function of sex or race or class. Unfortunately. Perhaps people should have to pass some sort of citizenship test or something. But that will never happen.

31. 31 Comment by Joshua Cooney on 24 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming and Mr. Keating,

    The ideal man in our culture is the couch potato, beer drinking, worshipper of sports and athletes. I believe this is even more disastrous than women who waste their time reading silly magazines, trashy novels, and soap operas. If men are naturally the head of a family, and wives then follow the man’s leadership, then it is not surprising that women and children currently exist in such a debased condition. I am not only speaking of old fashioned manhood in terms of discipline, hunting, fishing, and hard work, but also in taking the lead in matters of religion: “I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument (Tim 1:8).

32. 32 Comment by Bede on 24 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming:

    Great post, as always.

    TJF: “Leftists apparently know what they are doing since more and more of the reporting on NPR is taken up with pop-cultural inanities.”

    Terry Gross will treat a rapper and serious scholar with the same dignity and respect.

    TJF: “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.”

    So true. An acquaintance I knew in casting told me that white males could not even be considered for judges. The most egregious case of political correctness, though, is in a number of action films where the bad guys are “German terrorists,” like in Die Hard. Yea, those pesky German terrorists.

    TJF: “I suggested, Hilary might be less dangerous–though she is so ignorant of foreign affairs….”

    Also, it would be easier for McCain to push amnesty through, whereas if Hillary tries it, Republicans will oppose it out of partisan habit.

    TJF: “These were brave men who had served their nation in battle, not a prettyboy actor who played a homosexual. In Germanicus’ case, he crystallized opposition to Tiberius–a far more astute military man with far better sense on how to treat the Germans than Germanicus.”

    I’ve noticed here and in other posts that you have a more favorable opinion of Tiberius than many historians. You don’t buy the account that he largely was an absentee emperor and Seianus was the man running the show? Or are you talking about his earlier years?

33. 33 Comment by PcH on 24 January 2008:

    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.

    Well said (as usual). It’s a pity we can’t chock this up to “white genocide” as Bob Whitaker does, without sounding crass and crude.

    The connection to servility is especially valuable. What I find especially funny is that the most egotistical are also the most servile, and they imagine that their servility is a sign of their individual superiority, since they follow the latest fad correctly.

34. 34 Comment by TJF on 24 January 2008:

    A few very brief responses. On generalizations, of course they can be overplayed. But 2+2=4 is a generalization. So is “West Africans win sprinting medals” and “Homosexuals get AIDS.” As we discussed re stereotypes, old-fashioned generalizations tend to be more or less true statistically; otherwise practical people would not have accepted and repeated them. The question is not whether men vote more intelligently than women but whether or not women should ever have been given the vote or sent to work in the marketplace or involved in politics. The historic voice of our civilization says, generally, no, and that is good enough for me unless some conclusive argument is put up.

    I said nothing about Mr. Ledger, either as an actor or as a person, except for the repulsiveness of a straight guy playing such a role. I feel nothing for the death of a stranger of whom I know nothing except for a list of roles he played, and I believe it would be strange and sick to feel any other way. Smug talk of “nihil nisi bonum,” when a man’s character has not been attacked is not only irrelevant but a perfect illustration of the deep moral problem I was drawing attention to: our high regard for the generally low characters who act in films and the pretense that their lives or deaths mean something to us. I liked John Wayne as an actor, was indifferent to him as a man I knew only from newspapers and books, and felt nothing very little when he died. There is altogether too much gushing in modern life. I remember, decades ago, an interview with John Carradine, who was talking about his friendship with John Barrymore. The host–I think it was Johnny Carson–made the obligatory remark, “I guess youu still miss him,” to which Carradine honestly replied that he had given up thinking about him long before.

    I nowhere suggested that the phenomenon of celebrity-worship is limited to the US, though we certainly have led the way. There are silly and hollow people all over–as the cult of Princess Di reveals–but I am not convinced that it is as bad in the UK as here. As in most other modern pathologies–the inculcation of ignorance in schools, for example, or obesity–we are in the lead. I fully agree with Mr. Cooney that the problem with women today is the lack of men, and if I really thought anyone was going to restrict the franchise on the basis of my suggestions, I would vastly prefer that my wife and daughter vote as opposed to virtually the entire professoriate.

    Tiberius is a fascinating case, and I think a fairly large number of Roman historians have revised the picture of his reign. My reading is that like his brother he was in his heart an aristocratic republican who despised the servile nonentieis of the senate and eventually despised the empire he ruled. His contempt for others, joined by self-loathing, led to unfortunate consequences, but in his policies, he was a good follower of of his predecessor. He was well-educated, a good if somewhat pedantic speaker, and a shrewd judge of character. “How eager,” he remarked after leaving the Senate early on in his reign, “they are to be slaves.”

35. 35 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 24 January 2008:

    Not that acting has ever been the most honorable of professions, but it would seem that modern actors lack self-respect. To get their feet in the door, most modern actresses are willing to be filmed graphically in the nude to get parts. And modern male actors are not much better. Ned Beatty assented to being luridly raped in “Deliverance.” Harvey Keitel allowed himself to be filmed frontally nude in “The Piano.” The late Heath Ledger rolled passionately on Wyoming’s soil with another man to great acclaim in “Brokeback Mountain.” Somehow I can’t see John Ford asking John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart to do the same in any of his films and if he did I am sure both men would have guessed Ford had had too much of the sauce and was pulling their legs. To steal a bit from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, modern film is “deviancy defined down.” Heath Ledger was part of that deviancy. Some legacy.

36. 36 Comment by robert reavis on 24 January 2008:

    Mr. Leaberry at # 35

    Priceless !!!!! I turned red from huge belly-laughs reading your post. It is rare that I am so amused. Thanks so much and keep them coming.

37. 37 Comment by Red Phillips on 24 January 2008:

    I don’t think there is anything wrong with pop-culture per se (not a morally degraded one such as we currently have) as a temporary diversion from the toils of life or more weighty forms of entertainment. There was one season where I was heavily invested in the outcome of American Idol. The problem is that today so many people’s lives revolve around and are entirely consumed by mindless pop culture.

    So a good question is, do we retreat from pop-culture or try to capture a small slice of it for ourselves? Is it possible to capture a small slice?

38. 38 Comment by Lee on 24 January 2008:

    Only a side note:

    It does not help the cooking of food to get a Dutch oven too hot — it’
    s a little like trying to get a baby in a month by getting 9 women pregnant. The best way to cook in a Dutch Oven is to put approximately an equal number of coals above and below the oven so that the contents cook both from above and below. Two or three Dutch Ovens — one on top of the other — is a great way to cook an entire meal including desert.

39. 39 Comment by TJF on 24 January 2008:

    There is nothing wrong with folk culture but a great deal wrong with commercial pop culture and it is wrong per se. This does not mean that within the business there are no people doing good things. American filmmakers in the 30’s AND 40’s–Ford, Capra, Sturgess, Huston, Hawks–all made interesting movies as well as money. (Why American film falls short of some competing film traditions , I think, has to do with the fact that Hollywood is an alien culture.) On occasion I can find good things to say about some rock and roll and country music, but, my dear Dr. Phillips, the only way to watch American Idol is as a pathologist with a fascination with junk. I watched several shows while my wife was at choir practice. The only parts I enjoyed where evil Simon’s putdowns of the awful awful performances. The trouble is, though, there was nothing but the orgasmic groanings we have come to expect from pop music. We are a long way from Miss Kittie Wells and Hank Snow, Carl Perkins and even Elvis and Roy Orbison. I have a young friend who confessed an affection for what I can only describe as disco music. I ridiculed him mercilessly, and he now appears to have sobered up.

    Re Dutch ovens, there is no one temperature for cooking. Stew meat, for example, has to be seared before the temperature drops. Fire on top and bottom is best, though in my fireplace, the surrounding brickwork gets so hot that there is even heat. Good to see Lee, by the way, in Rome.

40. 40 Comment by Red Phillips on 24 January 2008:

    Was there something wrong with Andy Griffith or Bonanza or Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons when that was part of our pop culture? I guess you could argue that pop culture inherently degenerates.

    I thought Taylor Hicks was very talented and certainly not a cookie cutter pop star. That he was recently dropped by his record label because he is not commercial enough testifies to this. But perhaps I got caught up in the moment rooting for the underdog from Alabama.

    Narrative is often a better way to instruct people than is didactic. I don’t think we should just cede that ground. There is a market out there for wholesome entertainment, as the success of a lot of G rated movies and other reasonably wholesome fare attests. I wish that more conservatives and Christians were creating these things because they wanted an alternative instead of Hollywood types just trying to make a buck by catering to a certain market niche.

41. 41 Comment by James Newland on 24 January 2008:

    “The problem is that today so many people’s lives revolve around and are entirely consumed by mindless pop culture.”

    To my mind, this is the nut of the problem. Most people today seem to conceive that they have one duty and one duty only in life: to work in order to pay their bills. Beyond that, they think the rest of their time is their own. They don’t think of themselves as having a duty to God on Sunday, to their city, state, or country by staying up on events and voting at election time, etc. All the time not spent at work is considered recreation time and tv/movies/music are probably the three major sources of recreation. People today are, as Dr. Phillips says, “consumed by mindless pop culture.” That, apart from work, after all, is their whole life.

    I don’t suppose I can be the only one who’s noticed how game shows that used to sport some fairly difficult general knowledge questions (Jeopardy comes to mind) increasingly rely on players’ knowledge of TV shows and movies…?

42. 42 Comment by Bruce on 24 January 2008:

    I always enjoyed Burl Ives’ folk music. It’s not great music but it always has a neat story to tell about early Americans, Brits, Irishmen, sailers, loggers, cowboys, etc. It’s a good way to introduce children to our folk heritage.

    We share a lot of older pop culture with our children. We surprise a few older folks when they hear our boys singing Davy Crockett. I think that type of pop culture was healthy for boys.

    I hope when they grow up they don’t even recognize the name of the latest dead pop-culture idol.

    American Idolatry?

43. 43 Comment by Seeker on 24 January 2008:

    It would seem Nicholas G.P. Moses’ mind already is poisoned — thus his posting.

44. 44 Pingback by Eunomia · A Dissent on 24 January 2008:

    [...] Thursday, January 24th, 2008 in politics, culture by Daniel Larison 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. ~Thomas Fleming [...]

45. 45 Comment by Fred Breisch on 24 January 2008:

    Amen Dr. Fleming! I’m afraid we will always be plagued by the foreign policy thinking of the Holbroke and Albright and Rice types. It’s really, sadly, been a long time since a president has been on top of foreign policy. Interesting that two of these mentioned are women.

    Do we really need a woman president and, likely, a woman in charge of foreign policy again? Defranchisement sounds brilliant, but it will take a complete meltdown to initiate it.

    Please keep up the good work, it gives one hope that there are still sane men somewhere…mostly around Rockford, perhaps.

46. 46 Comment by Sean Scallon on 25 January 2008:

    Well let’s see, I’ve seen only one Heath Ledger film (The Patriot) and two Brad Pitt (Fight Club and Ocean’s 11) so I guess that’s makes me eligible to vote in the Wisconsin primary on Feb. 19.

    Oh wait a minute…shucks, I forgot about Troy, that’s three Brad Pitt. Oh well.

    There’s has to be a year out there in our recent past, perhaps 1970, or maybe 1960 I don’t know, where persons born after that year have no concept of a time when the lives, deaths and antics of celebrities did not make the evening news. Having been born in 1972 and becoming at least aware of the surroundings of the broader world by 1980, I’m afraid I was well past the time when there wasn’t such a thing as a mass popular culture. Back then it was limited to the U.S. and the British and Australian tabloids. Now it is world wide.

    Younger paleos will be touched by moderity. Some more than others, but nonetheless we will all be affected in some way. Unlike our elders, we cannot dream back to a once real past and say to ourselves “Once upon a time, there was no such thing as People magazine.” No we’re stuck with the whole edifice complex of celebrity. As I’ve said before, celebrities are the new aristocracy. The great landowners, the nobles of title, even great industrialists are all gone now, their fortunes and properties taken away by socialism or squandered by degenerates. Since nature abhors a vacumn, some group of wealthy persons had to take their place and sure enough it was actors and actresess, singers and dancers. Now like the old aristocrats, we either look up to them, adore them, try to become like them, follow their every move or curse them and try to bring them down in hypocritical feats of eglatarianism.

    Reading Chronicles and meeting members of the Rockford Institutue opened a bigger world for myself and hopefully others as well. Otherwise I would be like everybody else, thinking that what passed for modern culture was perfectly acceptable and what could be the alternative? Folk music? You mean that Joan Baez/Pete Seeger stuff my parents listened to in the 1960s? Are you kidding me? After all, the so-called “conservatives” I grew up with listened to rock n’ roll and played video games. Why, even Ronald Reagan had Michael Jackson over to the White House for a chat. None of us were going to be squares

    And yet, 10 years later, here I was at work using internet radio to listening to Newfoundland folk music and sea shanties. Without Chronicles I would have never bought a Merle Haggard album or a cassette tape of Polish polkas or partook of food at family owned restaraunts and local bakeries or shopped at my local farmer’s co-op hardware store. Now I even like Baez’s siong “Angelina.” I am truly greatful.

    Once of the nice things about Ron Paul is that he truly has absolutly no clue about pop culture. Mention GQ magazine or the Daily Show or some film or actor to him and he will absolutly have no idea what you are talking about. Now there’s a man of the Old Republic.

    I reacted the same way to Heath Ledger the exact same way I reacted after Christopher Reeves death. I said to myself “Oh, how sad.” and then went on doing whatever it was I was doing at the time. If only the whole world could be so restrained.

47. 47 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 25 January 2008:

    @40: Most of the best and brightest Christians in America are shunning the humanities altogether, unfortunately, because of the lack of availability of solid classical education. Very few have any awareness of the rich cultural tradition from which we have sprung (and subsequently cut ourselves off), which is why explicitly “Christian” films are unfortunately often very B-grade at best.

    But while I’m on the topic, be careful of ratings: most Disney cartoons, for example, are rated “G,” yet many of the recent ones contain quite a bit of perverse material (things one does not, of course, understand as a child but which are quite plain in retrospect and which are definitely not helpful to good child-rearing). That and most of them water down the great repertoire of fairy tales, as well as insulting children’s intelligence. It’s just modern degenerate culture stepped down a few years.

    @43: Of course my mind is poisoned; I grew up in the 1980’s and 1990’s in the United States. If I may suggest so, however, next time you want to make a point with a hit-and-run, you might want to pick a target that people will actually care about.

48. 48 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 25 January 2008:

    Hmm… my retort was fairly innoculous by my standards, but not knowing the temperament of my adversary, I must apologize if I said something that had the potential to trigger a flame war. Defending myself was not *that* imperative.

    As for celebrity deaths, one star that I will be sad to see go, if indeed I do outlive her, is Maureen O’Hara. She’s just a beautiful woman inside and out, tough and enduring yet modest and pious. It is a shame that Hollywood can no longer attract such talent. The waning of her career has been a great tragedy to the industry; she is a definite reminder of better days gone by.

49. 49 Comment by john gillis on 25 January 2008:

    Good one! Please forgive a copy editor’s point: it’s disfranchisement, not disenfranchisement.

50. 50 Comment by robert m. peters on 25 January 2008:

    Assuming that voting is indeed somehow worthwhile, voting being a construct of the state more at a privilege thereby granted rather than a right which it is presented to be as red meat for the masses, I make the following suggestions on voting before we make the final leap to disfranchising the fairer sex:

    Who votes is a matter solely for the states and not the general government.

    Only those with property vote. People should not be allowed to steal what I own with the vote.

    Use the Hertz standard for renting an Audi TT, which is thirty years of age. If you must be thirty to handle an Audi TT, one should be at least as old to handle the vote.

    There should be a test at least as difficult and time consuming as the one required to get a license to drive a car, including the fee.

    Just like a car license, and some states have this, the right to vote should come up for renewal from time to time.

    Registration, including the testing and the fees, should take place, at a minimum, ninety days before the any election and be done, as it used to be, in person at the court house.

    U.S. Senators should once again be elected by the state legislatures.

    Legislatures should elect in joint session the electors for presidential races, with one person elected from each congressional district in the state and with said electors not being registered members of any political party and not being holders of office or employees of general, state or local governments.

    Governors should be elected by sheriffs.

    States should reclaim their right, abrogated by the nine divines of the Supreme Court some years back, to configure their legislatures as they will.

    Hence, those of us who care will be mindful of whom we elect to be our state senators and representative because they will be electing our U.S. Senators and electoral representatives, and we will also be mindful of our sheriffs because they will be electing our governors.

    Actually, if you note, with some exceptions, what I propose is not too far from that which we had when this republic began!

51. 51 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 25 January 2008:

    Along about the late 90s I started to notice a change in college freshmen and sophomores in introductory history classes. Generalizing broadly, the young people were no longer able to make any kind of identifiction with the past—they could not connect at all with, say, the experience of pioneering, or how river transportation was more important than land transportation to early Americans., or what and why the Founding Fathers thought about government, or the Alamo. They did not even know Bible stories. Before that, the identity with Western civilsation was thin, but it could be cultured and made to grow. There was a kernel of knowledge and imagination. Now there was only a complete lack of ability to imagine anything not before the nose. There was no capacity to make judgments—only robotic repetition of PC opinions which had been drilled into them. But not really any acceptance of even those opinions just a rote recitation. I could only conclude that Deweyite education and mass media have succeeded splendidly in the goal of creating obedient people without imagination or judgment.

52. 52 Comment by robert m. peters on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Wilson,

    I teach German as an adjunct in a small private college, allegedly a liberal arts one. I have noticed the same decline. I attempt to place the learning of German in a historical context. The problem is that the students have absolutely no inkling of that context, none whatsoever; and most of them have had college level history and philosophy, which says, I suppose something about history and philosophy as it is being taught in college, at least at this “liberal arts” college.

53. 53 Comment by Michael Jones on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming’s post contains a large enough amount of specific information to allow for disagreements about details. But then we can look at the bigger picture of what I think (at least part of) his point is: the culture of the West has degenerated into a trivial caricature of what our culture once was. Isn’t the very phrase, “Pop Culture” an oxymoron? I can find no argument with the gist of Dr. Fleming’s message. Would that I could!

    On this day, the Feast of the conversion of Saint Paul, it is an appropriate time to reflect on what is important – vital – as opposed to what is peripheral, at best, and a deathly distraction at worst.

    When I heard of Heath Ledger’s death, I simply prayed for his soul, and moved on. As has been demonstrated by many responses here, there is no shortage of other, more important issues that are worthy of thought and discussion.

    But that again demonstrates the value of what Chronicles provides: an uncompromising perspective on what is happening within our culture, combined with provocative opinions on what we might do about it. It is encouraging to know that amidst the devalued and devolved tabloidification that daily, relentlessly impinges on our minds and souls, there is in this blog an oasis of discourse that is insightful, artful, humorous, and often uplifting.

54. 54 Comment by TJF on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Red, the question is not whether or not one should cede ground but whether or not to commit moral and aesthetic suicide by subjecting our imaginations to cheap commercial entertainment that is the cultural equivalent of fast food. “We” have no clout in the popular media, and when a halfway decent person finds himself in a position of popularity or influence, he either has to adjust to their expectations or lose influence. I was quite careful to say that there are real people, even artists, in popular entertainment, and even today there are clever writers in film and television, though what they produce is usually harmful. I am delighted that my good friend Ron Maxwell has been able to make honest and intelligent movies and cheerfullly forgive him for making “Little Darlings.” I am a big admirer of the late Don Siegel and think Preston Sturgess was the best American comedy writer of the last century, but it is harder and harder to find anything worth the time.

    General statements about the merits of narrative can equally be applied to Justine or Les liaisons dangereuses. It is the content and style that matters. Andie Griffith was heart-warming but it was junk compared even to Amos ‘n Andy or I Love Lucy. The writing stank and only Griffith was Southern. All the accidental characters coming through Maybury had New York accents, which as a youth I found very disturbing. In my limited experiene of TV watching, Barney Miller was consistently first-rate as popular entertainment.

    Amen to Dr. Wilson and Mr. Peters and to the young Mr. Moses. Yes, poor Mr. Ledger is a slender reed on which to hang a comment, but so are the presidential candidates and the members of Congress. If I waited for morally serious people to write about, I would confine myself to history. On question of manners, I always advise reviewers not to chide an author for not having written the book the reviewer would like to write and I make it a practice not to tell a painter or architect or musician that he should be taking another approach. If we don’t like a craftsman’s objective or approach, we need not buy or look at his work. The question I prefer to ask is whether the work is well-done. Otherwise, we fall too easily into impertinence.

    Disenfranchise is certainly a false formation, but it has been with us a long time (17th C), though not so long as disfranchise (15th) and seems common, at least in American usage–though I could be wrong. There is a host of such formations, as disengage, disenslave, etc. It is, of course, preferable to use a properly formed compound when it is available, though usage (by which I mean the usage of the best writers over a period of time) remains the test. If the issue were put to a democratic vote, disenfranchise would win (by a quick Google search) by 4 to 1. Fortunately, neither grammar nor art are subjects that can be ruled on by the majority: They are dis(en)franchised.

55. 55 Comment by robert reavis on 25 January 2008:

    Clyde Wilson @51

    The best teachers ( like yourself ) all say the same thing. We can’t read a 100 “great books” ( if anyone ever could ) because we have lost the thousand good books which was the cultural preparation — Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island, Last Of the Mohicans, Wind in the Willows, and Mother Goose. Frost noticed in his Prayer for Spring that we humans must bring something to the table— We must first notice before we can reflect. How can any young American raised on concrete appreciate a man like Nathan Bedford Forrest having umpteen horses shot out from underneath him defending his small “country” who has never read Will James or tried to draw a picture of a horse or even petted one at the local circus ? Of course this view seems quite trite because like all first principles, it is SIMPLE and TRUE. Thanks for what you say and do — “For which it only needs that we fulfill.”

    A Prayer in Spring
    by Robert Lee Frost

    Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
    And give us not to think so far away
    As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
    All simply in the springing of the year.

    Oh, give us pleasure in the orcahrd white,
    Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
    And make us happy in the happy bees,
    The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

    And make us happy in the darting bird
    That suddenly above the bees is heard,
    The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
    And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

    For this is love and nothing else is love,
    To which it is reserved for God above
    To sanctify to what far ends he will,
    But which it only needs that we fulfill.

56. 56 Comment by Allen Wilson on 25 January 2008:

    I haven’t read all the posts here, so I apologise if I’m about to make a point here that someone else has already made. I dont think that Mr Ledger’s death is being harped on by the media so much because of the cult of celebrity, though that is obviously part of it. I think this is a special case. I think the reason they’re harping on his death is because he starred in the homosexual propaganda film ‘Brokeback Mountain’. Of course they’re not making any effort to emphasis his role in that film over others he has played, because that would be too obvious. If he had never starred in that film, they wouldn’t be so adoring of him right now, and if he had played in a conservative oriented film in which homosexuality were somehow condemned or presented even slightly negatively, we would never have heard about his death, or at least it would only have gotten a passing mention.

57. 57 Comment by Bill Jenkins on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    I enjoy and appreciate your and Chronicles’ contrarian cultural perspectives as much as anyone, but I must take exception with your drive-by hit on Andy Griffith in response to Red Phillips.

    Andy Griffith and The Andy Griffith Show are both treasures of American pop culture. The writing on the show was superb. And the humor, which was primarily character humor, and not situation comedy, was decidedly southern and also, superb.

    For the record, not “only Griffith was southern”. Most of the enduring main character actors were, indeed, at least somewhat, southern. Ron Howard (Opie), is from Oklahoma. Don Knotts (Barney Fife), was from Morgantown, West Virginia (which is, whether anyone counts it or not, pretty southern compared to any berg further up the Monongahela River). Jim Nabors and George Lindsey (Gomer Pyle and Goober, respectively) both hail from Alabama.

    Many of the bit, out-of-town-jerk characters were played by Yankee actors, that is true. But they were jerks! And even Francis Bavier, the actress who played Aunt Bee with her upper west side accent, retired to Siler City NC, having more or less adopted her stage home as home.

    And the episodes that featured The Darling family featured some mighty fine folk-bluegrass music performed by the Dillards from Missouri.

    I apologize for the low-brow foray. But I had to set the record straight.

58. 58 Comment by James Newland on 25 January 2008:

    “I could only conclude that Deweyite education and mass media have succeeded splendidly in the goal of creating obedient people without imagination or judgment.”

    I don’t think it’s so much Deweyite education that’s responsible, but rather the conscious and unconscious effort on the part of the modernists who run things to erase history. This is a necessity to them because their whole regime rests so precariously upon sand. Their bedrock philosophy–materialism–is so full of gaping holes and questions these supposedly brilliant men can’t answer that they are forced to go the route of the Khmer Rouge and militantly re-educate the educated (read: punish those who question or expose them) and prevent the education of the uneducated. Dewey’s program serves their interests, in that it trains worker ants for their role in the hive (and nothing else), but it is not itself the cause of the dumbing-down. The cause is the a priori desire to erase history.

59. 59 Comment by Jeff Leiker on 25 January 2008:

    I agree with Allen Wilson’s comment that Mr. Ledger was a homosexual propaganda star, and hence the significant attention after his death. Additionally, one has to wonder what his role in this film did to him emotionally because he was apparently straight. Most heterosexual males would have extreme reservations about passionately kissing another man and simulating sodomy on the screen before hundreds of millions of people. Mr. Ledger might have ended up regretted taking his agent’s advice to accept the role in ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

60. 60 Comment by TJF on 25 January 2008:

    Allen Wilson is perfectly right, and I expected that conclusion to be drawn from what I wrote, though I did not make it clear enough. One respondent did, however, point out that Mr. Ledger gained fame by rolling around and grubbing with another male.

    Mr. Jenkins, alas, is not telling me anything I did not know about the Andy Griffith Show or about Mr. Griffith. I have been to the real Maybury and indeed was once given a concussion by a young bruiser from Mt. Airy, when I was a graduate student at UNC. I wish I had not watched so many episodes or picked up as much as I did about the actors and the background of the program. I even knew about Frances; Bavier’s decision to retire to Siler City, a town through which and past which I have often driven, after she received a warm reception from the locals.

    Griffith was a talented comedian and comic actor who specialized in yokel types, as a nice rube in No Time for Sergeants and as a sinister one in the brilliant though flawed Face in the Crowd. Don Knotts was indeed from Morgantown, a place without perhaps too much relevance for North Carolina, though a good deal more than Opie Cunningham’s Okie background. Ron Howard, I suppose we shall be hearing, preserved his southern/western background in his subsequent career. As for Knotts, who hit a peak on the Steve Allen show, his frenetic over-the-top style, which stole the attention from the more talented Griffith, hurt the show and destroyed the original concept. His annoying persona makes it difficult for me to watch reruns. I would say the same of Lucy. The Desilu writers were much better in Amos ‘n Andy, but they also had more talented performers. What I wouldn’t give to see the work of the great Tim Moore put on decent DVD’s?

    The longer Andy Griffith was on the air, the more it was simply Hollywood. Griffith was a shrewd businessman and though he startee out with a good idea, a show focussed on a lovable rube sheriff, he ended up with the Desilu/Aaron Spelling formulas. The New York actors, by the way, played good people as well as bad people and usually they were often supposed to be Southern. I did not say that the use of such actors was necesarily wrong, only that I was disturbed by their accents. In the matter of taste in TV shows, one is free to indulge one’s tastes, but no amount of personal taste can convert the Andy Griffith Show, however heartwarming, into good comedy. Griffith was probably sincere in his affection for his hometown, and it is to his credit that he gave time to traditional musicians. But, to cite a parallel, the fact that Flat and Scruggs appeared more than once on the Beverly Hillbillies is scarcely enough to rescue that show from its deserved opprobrium, though I will say that I joined my college chums in their admiration for Ellie Mae. What is the point in defending junk like this?

61. 61 Comment by Daniel W on 25 January 2008:

    It would appear no one here has actually seen the movie at hand. The character played by the late mr.Ledger is extremely uneasy with his homosexual tendencies and spends the entire movie working to beat them back. Hardly a propaganda victory, as the men so inclined find only unhappiness or death.

    Now I am not a movie buff and have never made an actor my hero,
    but the acting by mr Ledger was excellent. Acting is simply a skill that can be appreciated, like that of the boatbuilder or the columnist.
    Acting is not the same as reality. Robert Mitchum in real life never commanded a battleship, either.

    As the father of two small children, I am much more worried about the way women are put on display in mindless music videos, than about life’s hardships as portrayed in artsy movies.

62. 62 Comment by Bill Jenkins on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Flemimg,

    No argument on the Beverly Hillbillies. Hollywood junk!

    Do recall that the Darlings/Dillards and their music were always nicely woven into the story and context of the Andy Griffith Show. I suspect any appearance of Flatt and Scruggs on the Hillbillies was as a sideshow joke.

63. 63 Comment by TJF on 25 January 2008:

    No, I have never seen Brokeback Mountain and noone I know has admitted to seeing it or knowing anyone who has. Why would anyone, particularly a straight married man, expose himself to such stuff? I had a similar conversation once with a former colleague, who once told me that everyone he knew had been affected by some friend dying of AIDS. I told him I not only didn’t know anyone with AIDS but did not know anyone who had told me he knew someone with AIDS. Life is lousy enough in these United States that we do not have to go looking for depravity. To this day, I resent the friends who took me to see Midnight Cowboy and Taxidriver, a brilliant, well-intentioned but ultimately sick film.

    As I recall, Lester and Earl were treated as friends of the family and introduced, I am informed by imd.com, on 7 occasions. And, as everyone recalls, they performed the theme song. I don’t think thatin comparative terms the Hillbilles were any worse than most TV sitcoms. The stock characters and stock plots strike me as more wholesome than the strained neurotic storylines of more acclaimed programs (Mary Tyler Moore, Seinfeld, Cheers).

    Here is a question for Dr. Red, Bill Jenkins, Robert Peters, Nicholas Moses, and others: What performers, artists, directors in popular culture are worth our serious attention? Let us confine the discussion to the past 10 years, a period which is mostly unknown territory for me, with special attention to people coming up today. 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. Assuming, for example, that most people are going to see movies, they are probably better for seeing many films with Robert Duval, a semi-conservative nonbeliever who made one of the most sympathetic movies about American Protestants, The Apostle. But that was just over 10 years ago. Please give this cynical old greybeard some reason to be interested.

64. 64 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 25 January 2008:

    Dan, Heath Ledger still rolled around on the ground with another man in a love wrestling match. Ledger has no self-respect. No man would do such a thing for all the money in the world.

    Allen Wilson is correct when he states that Ledger’s legacy is the legitimization of homosexuality in the most manly of all film genres- the American Western. He would have been no more important than Jay North, Billy Mumy or Anson Williams if he had not played the part of a homosexual cowboy. Heath Ledger, whether he knew it or not(I’m sure he didn’t), played an important roll in the cultural Marxist advance in our nation.

65. 65 Comment by Bill Jenkins on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    I appreciate your willingness to parry on such pedestrian issues.
    I’ve always considered the Andy Griffith Show to be a unique treasure in a pile of sitcom junk.

    The last ten years? That’s a tough assignment.
    Off the top of my head, I can only think of two that are well- known artists: Though I don’t bow and scrape at his feet and don’t hold him up as any role model, I would name Mel Gibson has having had an overall positive influence on Hollywood movies in the last ten years. And I would name Alan Jackson as a positive influence in the world of Nashville country music. He’s a lone original and authentic man of country in a field of largely forgettable boys.

66. 66 Comment by Jeff Leiker on 25 January 2008:

    Three programs I had always thought were junk were the 1970’s Brady Bunch, Happy Days and Charley’s Angels. But my nine year old daughter and most of her friends are cult followers of these reruns. My wife tells me that there is quite a resurgence of these shows among this female age group here in North Texas. These are kids who got sick of the ridiculous, modern, slick and propagandized ‘Zoey’ and ‘Hannah Montana’. I’d prefer my daughter to be reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, but with lots of kids come lots of compromises. Better normal shows than soul-killing shows.

67. 67 Comment by Bill Jenkins on 25 January 2008:

    Since I already risk being banned for naming Mel Gibson and Alan Jackson as positive influences, I don’t want my word error, above, to compound my problems. I meant to say “tarry”, not “parry”.

68. 68 Comment by Bill Jenkins on 25 January 2008:

    Jeff Leiker,

    I hear you in spades. My 13 year-old daughter is hooked on Andy Griffith and I Love Lucy. Better that than the Disney fare.

69. 69 Comment by Lee on 25 January 2008:

    Re: James Newland #58

    “The cause is the a priori desire to erase history.” This is only a necessary effect. Dewey is merely the Rockefeller hireling who was most influential. There is ample documentation (see Gatto: “Underground History of American Education” for tons of references) that American public information was forced down everyone’s throats by New England (understand Puritan spawn) industrialists for the purpose of inculcating Work and Consumption into the core of every upcoming citizen. It was the number one objective of the Republican’s agents (Carpetbaggers), after the NE industrialists’ candidate, Lincoln, conquered the South, to install NE public education in the South and thus secure the recolonization of that region. Public schooling is not a failure; rather, it is an incontestable success. But, it is not and has never been education. Even whole word reading was specifically designed to teach children to just barely read — only just enough to consume products and work in factories, and never enough to potentially learn to think.

70. 70 Comment by Lee on 25 January 2008:

    Apologies, “American public information” should read “American public schooling”.

71. 71 Comment by Lord Karth on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming @ 63:

    “What performers, artists, directors in popular culture are worth our serious attention? ”

    None.

    Actors and “artists”, like other members of the lower orders, base their ability to earn a living on their ability to deceive or cause others to deceive, and are no more worthy of serious attention than any other sort of parasite.

    A properly run culture would take steps to ensure that such creatures are kept outside the city walls, and away from honest people.

    Your servant,

    Lord Karth

72. 72 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 25 January 2008:

    I must disagree with my much esteemed and venerably gray-bearded comrade Dr. Fleming about the Beverly Hillbillies. The good people were all plain folk and the Yankees were almost all greedy and phony people. I took it as a quite effective satire on Yankee materialism and shallowness. And I can never forget that Granny went to war against U.S. Grant and believed, like Richard Adams’s “Traveler,” that Grant had surrendered to Lee and we had won. That is naturally what any good-hearted person not familiar with the facts would believe in their heart.

73. 73 Comment by TJF on 25 January 2008:

    Plato’s argument for expelling the poets was only partly based on his own failure as a poet. It is as wrong-headed as only a Plato can be. Actors are a low sort of person, typically (though not always), but one can say the same of garbagemen and executioners and of the “scum” who won Wellington’s victories. Poets, painters, and composers, whatever their personal foibles in any age, are the only people capable of elevating swinish humanity up from its collective trough. Philosophers and theologians are, for the most part, too remote, which is why churches have painted images and beautiful music and dramatic liturgies. The fact that Hollywood is depraved today or that Marlowe and Caravaggio were swaggering bully boys should not blind us to the merits of Dante and Giotto.

74. 74 Comment by Daniel W on 25 January 2008:

    Dr Fleming,
    I’ll throw in my two cents, if you’ll have the wiews of someone ever so briefly exposed to depravity. For contemporary/traditional music from Lousiana, check out “Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys”. If you are not used to cajun music it will take some listening to. It is, however, irresistable in the long run. These guys make music with their own hands, and it is not overly produced and smoothened, which is the scourge of American music today. “La Touissant” is a good album to start with.

75. 75 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 25 January 2008:

    A few thoughts, if I may, on “Brokeback Mountain:”

    http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/2652

76. 76 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 25 January 2008:

    Christians in America are discovering they’re not jews culturally…even after 50 years of t.v. and media domination by the latter.

    That makes sense – it took 1500 years approximately of acculturating a European to christianity. Thankfully it can’t be erased overnight and judaism is not the thing or secular jewishness neither is the ‘thing’ that could ever replace that development except that it were a voluntary conversion to judaism and then imbedded over the same amount of time.

    So now as the patently semitic takeover is being completed in finance, media, government the big three – there is yet the problem that now the vast majority of americans feel like they are aliens in THEIR own land. Which at least began as a white European Christian enclave, for better if you perceive it that way or worse if you don’t perceive it that way – but THAT nonetheless.

    And ‘they’ know that’s what’s happening but they’re tribal and so don’t spill the beans, they keep the poker face. Hi, poker faces. How are you?! Think this is ‘good’?

77. 77 Comment by TJF on 25 January 2008:

    In reverse order, I am not familiar with Steve Riley but I have listened to a good deal of Cajun music and travelled extensive in Cajun land, mostly to eat the food and hear the music. I agree with Clyde Wilson that the heart of the Hillbillies was good, which is the real reason–not its silliness–why it was hated. In fact, I modified my objection: “I don’t think thatin comparative terms the Hillbilles were any worse than most TV sitcoms. The stock characters and stock plots strike me as more wholesome than the strained neurotic storylines of more acclaimed programs (Mary Tyler Moore, Seinfeld, Cheers).”

    The show was created by the hack Paul Henning, a Missourian who also gave us Petticoat Junction and worked on the now-forgotten Bob Cummings show. I remember hearing in college that at least one southern writer–William Price Fox– worked on the show, but apparently Paul Henning did not give him screen credit. Since Fox is in Columbia, Dr. Wilson could look him up. My objections to the Hillbillies are purely literary and aesthetic. It was as goofy as the A-Team and as implicitly wholesome. It beat the Dukes of Hazzard as a southern-exploitation show, but it is nothing much to crow about as comic drama.

78. 78 Comment by Michael on 25 January 2008:

    Let us stop to remember, when considering our own pop culture, and comparing it with what we have as representative of the past, that there was pop culture in the past as well. Most of this has been deservedly forgotten, and what has survived is what has stood the test of time. The great, albeit uneven, light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were the best of a much larger genre that was largely ephemeral. Tin Pan Alley churned out songs by the thousands, only a few of which are remembered today. Almost nothing survives of the vaudeville and burlesque that amused our forebears before the introduction of moving pictures. The Chautauqua tent has long been struck.

    I suspect the difference between popular culture today and what the more fastidious in a former age might have called ‘vulgar entertainments’ is that it’s impossible to escape today’s pop culture. One cannot shop for groceries or other household needs without being subjected via a public address system to the raucous howl of what is questionably described as music. Even if one watches very little television – I have whittled what I watch down to little more than the local news and weather – the inevitable commercials inject an ample sufficiency of meretricious trash. The extent to which the electronic media have facilitated the distribution of pop culture has not only ensured its omnipresence, but have made its purveyors rich beyond the imagination of any impresario of a previous age. Pop culture thus has far more influence now than it ever did before.

    Apropos of Elvis (#4, above) – when the Elvis phenomenon was at its height, I was prompted to reflect that in mediæval England, when according to all we are told, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, the common people mourned the death of St. Thomas à Becket, revered and attributed miracles to him, and made pilgrimages to his shrine at Canterbury. In the late twentieth century, with all the advantages of public education, sanitary sewers, central air-conditioning, and every other amenity of modern life, the common people mourned the death of Elvis, saw apparitions of him after that event was reported, and made pilgrimages to his shrine at Graceland. This is what we call progress.

79. 79 Comment by Jeff Leiker on 25 January 2008:

    In regards to Dr. Fleming’s request for artistic talent, who inspire, in the last ten years I’d recommend: Director: Mel Gibson; Actors: Gary Oldman and Johnny Depp; Music: Paul Schwartz, particularly his ‘State of Grace’ CD.

80. 80 Comment by JSM on 25 January 2008:

    TJF said: “Let us confine the discussion to the past 10 years, a period which is mostly unknown territory for me, with special attention to people coming up today. 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.”

    This one has me stumped. Brad Bird, maybe.

81. 81 Comment by TJF on 25 January 2008:

    Yes, you are right to a great extent, but I think we should make some distinctions between a purely commercial pop culture and the popular culture of more naive periods. Tin Pan Alley churned out mostly junk that for the most part degraded the listeners. Gilbert and Sullivan worked in a light opera/operetta/opera comique vein that had counterparts in France, Austria-Hungary, and Spain and later in the US (Victor Herbert). Gilbert was a superb comic versifier and a wise man, Sullivan a trained musician-composer. Both wrote for money, as most non-rich writers and composers do, but both were serious craftsmen. Compare the Mikado and Patience with the pretentious drivel put out by Andrew Lloyd Weber, aimed at about the same middle-brow audience.

    The omnipresence of electronic media is, as you point out, an important factor but so is our willingness to accept it; the need to create lots of novelties, thus draining the writers and composers dry rather quickly, is another, but more important is the stupidity and degradation of the American people, to say nothing of our European cousins. A quick comparison of popular films or songs of, say, 1938 or 48 with those of 2008 and 1998 would drive the point home. As the geeks used to say a few decades ago, garbage in/garbage out. Fill your mind with garbage and you become garbage. Snigger with Seinfeld and his pals, and you become Seinfeld, at least to some extent.

    You raise several points worth exploring. I wonder, for example, when the cult of pop celebrities started. There was a time when actors were despised. There was a time when actresses and ballet dancers were lionized because they were beautiful, yet no one wanted to become an actress or ballet dancer. The radio and the gramophone and the silent movie certainly played an important part in turning actors and singers into heroes and celebrities, but these inventions also came at a time of moral, social, and spiritual collapse.

    Without at all buying into anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, I think we should also be aware that pop entertainment, at least since the 20’s and 30’s, has been in the control of people who do not sympathize much with the Anglo-American Christian culture they were radicalizing. The career of Irving Thalberg would make an interesting study–his destruction, for example, of the wonderful Buster Keaton, the promotion of the Marx Brothers–funny as they were–as socially destructive anarchists exploding the vanity and pretensions of poor Margaret Dumont. The difference between French, English, and Japanese films, on the one hand, and much of American film, on the other, is that much of our industry is dominated by people out of touch with what used to be America. The exceptions–Ford, Capra, Sturgess to name only three–are also our greatest directors. Casablanca, a wonderfully entertaining film, is, by contrast, morally subversive and disconnected from the American experience. It is not just a question of Christian v. Jew, since many Italo-American film-makers–Coppola and Scorsese–seem to hate Wasp America and its traditions. I don’t think that much art, popular or otherwise, can be successful when it has no roots.

82. 82 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 25 January 2008:

    I agree – ROOTS. roots in a genetic past & if there’s anything more MUST sink down to an eternal source or at least ‘deep’ over a period (expanse) of time… the tree of life as it were… standing in the middle of an ‘eternal’ or thereabouts – SEA… yaddah, yaddah…

    but i always think it is BOTH – (sometimes) it’s christian vs. jew like now – inevitably – and sometimes it’s not… i’m For christians today to be honest blog –

    whenever you seem to see two things sufficiently apart as to seem separate then it IS so – like two sides of a coin heads and/or tails it’s both AND one… but if one wants to be Up all the time in the limelight and grab all the goodies… then it’s ignoring that it’s BOTH and pretending to oneness…

    BAD

    you know me -?- i draw my double edged Sword … it’s one but is expert in which side it cuts on – and WHO it cuts etc.

    what are you dopey? you don’t know’dis?

    i kid – you’re pretty smart – and not too ugly though not so pretty. when are you going to invite me to italy? i kid. how’s the pope?

83. 83 Comment by Mrs. G.S. on 25 January 2008:

    There have been some wonderful movies (though too few) made in the past decade which are a bit under-the-radar but always make me wonder about who made them.

    For example, despite some problems, I thought Gattaca was a brilliant film.

    For those who are dissatisfied with the state of Hollywood, may I humbly suggest exploring Soviet films? Instead of Disney cartoons (which were hard to come by before 1988), I was raised watching these movies and aside from talented *professional* actors (as opposed to the pretty-boy Hollywood types), many Soviet-made films are (ironically) poignant critiques of modernity.

    One movie about the effect of war on an individual and a community is Destiny of a Man. Surprisingly enough, this movie was made under Stalin’s reign.

    Of great interest to Chronicles readers would be a humorous rendition into film of Kuyper’s essay on Uniformity. The movie is titled The Irony of Fate: Or Enjoy Your Bath (though I doubt the producer ever heard of Kuyper).

    I strongly agree with Dr. Flemming regarding the family vote. I speak as (most likely) one of the youngest members of the current discussion who has seen girls (and been one myself) too easily swayed by D.C.’s “conservative” political culture (not to mention girls who become starry-eyed over the Obama campaign) into making silly voting (and life) decisions.

    And though I am probably more interested in the finer points of natural law and Catholic social thought than my husband, I’ve discovered that one of the nice perks of marriage is that I no longer have to bother about such things. It is a relief to just trust my husband’s judgment about Ron Paul.

84. 84 Comment by Jeff Leiker on 25 January 2008:

    The last sentence of Dr. Fleming’s last posting was:

    “I don’t think that much art, popular or otherwise, can be successful when it has no roots.”

    This is the concept I was trying to allude to earlier when I wrote:

    “Three programs I had always thought were junk were the 1970’s Brady Bunch, Happy Days and Charley’s Angels. But my nine year old daughter and most of her friends are cult followers of these reruns. My wife tells me that there is quite a resurgence of these shows among this female age group here in North Texas. These are kids who got sick of the ridiculous, modern, slick and propagandized ‘Zoey’ and ‘Hannah Montana’. ”

    Considering two working parents, and the TV options, as they mature, my nine-year old daughter and her peers are innately drawn to these 70’s programs precisely because they resonate more with their Anglo-American/Christian ‘hidden’ ethnicities. The perverse ‘females are smarter than males, blacks are smarter than everyone else’ messages of ‘Zoey’ and ‘Hannah Montana’ are now ‘boring’, according to my daughter. Her elementary school district is the second best in Texas. Maybe there is hope for us all.

    Mr. Jenkins (#68) and Dr. Wilson (#72), I have just now recommended ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ to my daughter.

85. 85 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming, you’ve got me. I actually like (sometimes) Coppola and Scorcese, although I concede their films are not always the most uplifting. Still, I daresay I would almost rather owe a cultural debt to La Cosa Nostra than to the popular fare that masquerades for American culture today, only because I’m not sure whether it’s more moral to dissolve a child’s body in acid or to point a little girl toward a harlot’s apprenticeship. (And no, I am not naïve; I know people with LCN connections and yes, they freak me out.) I do not much sympathize with WASP America, but that may well be because I was born outside of the South and my family only arrived here in the twentieth century, by which time its non-Southern element at least had well eaten itself to death.

    But to answer your request, in spite of myself–and in spite of her, really, I rather like Céline Dion. Yes, her husband is twenty-six years older than she; yes, they had a child from in vitro fertilization; yes, she did a long-standing stint in Las Vegas; and yes, she doesn’t write most of her songs. Still, she’s a singer, not a songwriter, and even so, there are instances when one can see her (very down-to-earth) upbringing and life story aptly reflected in her lyrics (listen to “Je lui dirai” for one example: the French-Canadian woodcutter, the rugged Canadian soil, the Lebanese father–it’s quite touching). And she’s got a gorgeous natural untrained voice that emanates rugged northern woodlands at their finest. (Growing up in New York near the Canadian border, I suppose I’m just nostalgic for that, but so be it.) She’s a popular musician who can be fun and contemplative–and she’s one of the top five female solo artists of all time to boot. Hardly a pinnacle of perfection, but Céline is one of the better examples of what North America has produced recently.

    Overall, I say, just find what it is that you like, indulge in it (provided it is not immoral), and be inspired by it. We can spend all our time wishing that Ford, Wayne and O’Hara still stood proud, or we can admire their achievements and allow ourselves to be influenced by their work. Maybe it’s easier for me, growing up with my generation, to give my contemporaries the finger, but I’m not sorry to see stupidity falter.

86. 86 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 25 January 2008:

    @84: A simpler solution, of course, is to destroy the rabbit ears–or better yet, if you cannot resist the temptation to go beyond NetFlix, to throw the TV (to say nothing of public education) out the upstairs window for good, but your daughter is definitely taking a step in the right direction.

87. 87 Comment by G. Oren on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming:

    Finding a redeeming element in the popular culture of the past ten years takes a good bit of gleaning through tares, but I’ll take a shot at it.

    Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan”; Speilberg’s and Hank’s produced HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”; Spielberg’s “Munich”; Mel Gibson’s “We Were Soldiers”; Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down”; Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13 (actually 1995)” and the subsequent Hank’s produced docu-drama “From the Earth to the Moon”; and Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (yes I know Lee directed “Brokeback Mountain”, which I refuse to see). Save for the last mentioned (and “Black Hawk Down”), all of these deal with people and events prior to the early and mid 70’s descent into cultural narcissism. Such descent being the outcome of the disintegration of cultural norms in the late 60’s (not that the prevailing culture of the 50’s was any great high point). But these shows resonate with duty, discipline and sacrifice.

    Peter Jackson also did about as well as anyone could in bringing Tolkien’s trilogy to the screen. Wherever anyone might place Tolkein’s work in the pantheon of modern “literature”, his works were an important milestone of a type of pietas (much as the works of George McDonald were for a young C.S. Lewis) that helped point the way for many of us that grew up in the cultural cesspool of the 70’s.

    On the Music front I can only name Norah Jones, raised in Texas by her mother, as someone worth listening to. Past Merle Haggard, George Jones and Willie Nelson, I can’t listen to country music – though the soundtrack from “O Brother Where Art Thou” is stirring. I prefer the trio of Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and Bob Seeger to anything in current pop – because much of their music evokes the middle-american experience, small town, main street etc…

88. 88 Comment by Lord Karth on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Fleming @ 73:

    “Plato’s argument for expelling the poets was only partly based on his own failure as a poet. It is as wrong-headed as only a Plato can be. Actors are a low sort of person, typically (though not always), but one can say the same of garbagemen and executioners and of the “scum” who won Wellington’s victories. Poets, painters, and composers, whatever their personal foibles in any age, are the only people capable of elevating swinish humanity up from its collective trough.”

    With respect, sir, I did not advocate expelling poets from the city, simply actors and other “performers”. (I include mercenary athletes in that class, btw.) The poet has to have at least some command of his/her language and culture in order to create works that are good enough to be remembered.

    Painters and composers are often very learned people, with solid attainments and knowledge behind them. The same holds for many writers; the SF writer Gregory Benford, for example, is both an excellent writer and a Nobel-class physicist.

    The actor, on the other hand, “earns” his bread by deception and by the denial of who and what he is—he has no inner moral core. Garbagemen, executioners and soldiers are at least honest with themselves about who they are and what they do. Their positions also require some small vestige of verifiable and often valuable skill.

    On the other hand, the highest knowledge an actor can be said to have is of how to lie and deceive; himself most of all. (For my part, the meanest advertiser, low-born that he is, has more moral core than the “best” actor.) They also tend to be far less rational and far more emotional than normal Humans; the “best” of them are often clinically insane. Such “performers” should be kept away from healthy people, for sheer safety’s sake, if nothing else.

    Your servant,

    Lord Karth

89. 89 Comment by John Willson on 25 January 2008:

    TJF63:
    I want to add something modest but heartfelt and entirely constructive to this downer thread about “popular culture.” Tom, your gracious nod to Robert Duval points us toward what we should really be looking for. “The Apostle” is a little gem of a movie; Duval felt so strongly about it that he spent his own money to produce it.
    It’s about a pentecostal preacher gone wrong, who kills the boyfriend of his adulterous wife and flees to a little place where he can be “The Apostle,” and where his sins and his faith transform the lives of losers like him.
    The theology is lousy, but the emotional and spiritual impact are wonderful. Almost as good as the moral message of “Nobody’s Fool,” a film that Paul Newman put both his heart and his money into. Newman’s film is a redemptive interpretation of the nihilistic novel by Richard Russo. A failure, man about our age learns that he is a father and grandfather, and that a whole town cannot function without him.
    There is no theology here, but there is much real depiction of what small towns are like. I’ve not yet found a friend who did not like both of these movies.
    This is small stuff, and very specific, but causes me to say that “popular” culture is often what we make of it.

90. 90 Comment by G. Oren on 25 January 2008:

    I would echo Mr. Wilson’s thoughts about “The Apostle” and Mr. Duvall’s turn in “Tender Mercies”.

91. 91 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 25 January 2008:

    Mr. Oren, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, and Ang Lee are not Americans.

92. 92 Comment by G. Oren on 25 January 2008:

    Dr. Wilson:

    You are right, of course, and I can’t remember if Mel Gibson was born here and raised in Australia or the other way round.

    Thank you for pointing out my oversight.

93. 93 Comment by Seeker on 25 January 2008:

    I much would rather immerse myself in the work of Clint Eastwood than in the work of surly, cranky absolutists such as Albert Jay Nock, Willmoore Kendall and Russell Kirk. Eastwood, especially in his most recent films, represents an older, nobler and emotionally deeper strain of American conservatism, in the context of the psyche of the individual man’s divided self, than Nock, etc. The films of the Farrelly Brothers (“There’s Something About Mary,” “Fever Pitch,” etc.) play this split personality for laughs, which is fine up to point, but Eastwood is the artist.

    I’ve noticed that many people who post here amount to little more than a cut-rate Polonius, lecturing heathen youth about the need to avoid our “trashy” culture. Perhaps these culture warriors instead might learn something about today’s culture. Eastwood’s films are a good start.

94. 94 Comment by G. Oren on 25 January 2008:

    I noted a couple of comments about the Disney movies etc… I’m at a business conference in a Disney World hotel – without my family – surrounded by the symbols of Disney characters; rather depressing actually. So many of the Disney stories reflect broken families and messages that are subversive of traditional family.

    Having only been here once before – for a similar conference – I can’t really get a sense of the size of the place, it seems to go on forever. As well, the architecture can best be described as American Kitsch – across a lake from my hotel (the beach club) are two other hotels? one sporting two immense swans, and the other two immense fish, dolphins maybe, on their roofs. I suppose they are meant to convey a sort of ebullient fantasy, or outsize expression of childhood whimsy. At any rate, all I can see appears to be garishly tasteless, which maybe is along the lines of this thread.

    Since these conferences are always in Southern climes, I would much rather be in Charleston (downtown near the Churches and battery) my favorite city to visit, or even in Savannah.

95. 95 Comment by G. Oren on 25 January 2008:

    Mr. Seeker:

    Being out of town, I have no books to hand, but I seem to remember a quote that Whitaker Chambers made to WFB regarding Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” – something along the lines of – “I wouldn’t storm the beaches of Tarawa to defend that tradition, and neither would you”. Of course, some would say that Chambers was something of a curmudgeon himself. I equate absolutism with abstract ideology, a liberal disease, and something that Kirk would have resisted to the last. Kirk’s conservatism was a defense of the particular against the generalizing zeitgeist of our time. The defender of the small platoons against Leviathan.

    More in a bit as Mickey is telling me my internet session is about to end, and I must pay another $10 for access.

96. 96 Comment by Robert Reavis on 26 January 2008:

    ” I much would rather immerse myself in the work of Clint Eastwood than in the work of surly, cranky absolutists …”

    The last Eastwood movie I saw was Unforgiven. It also was about the modern “Wasteland” theme of what you describe as the “context of the psyche of the individual man’s divided self.” — ie. man estranged from his roots and household Gods– Modern man, .
    In Dante’s poem, I think he reserves one Canto for these individuals right outside the vestibule of hell. He notes that they are the majority of mankind, not really very memorable, and then moves on to more wonderful heights and terrible depths of human existence. I don’t mind a bit of this kind of wallering in the enui or boredom of mediocrity, but the modern prejudice and condescending notion that it is the only human activity worthy of the true artist’s attention is at least arrogance on stilts, when it is not down right hellish. If watching Eastwood attend daily Mass, insult and bicker with his local priest — both suffering from philosophical cynicism — and then train and kill his own daughter/ fighter from a depraved sense of mercy is your idea of high brow art, I would try Henry James again or that fellow in New York writing novels in a white suit and dapper bow tie. They won’t and can’t offer a cure, (it is not of this world) but at least they are better artists. Cheers rr

97. 97 Comment by Sean Scallon on 26 January 2008:

    The last 10 years in U.S. culture? I think such a period may explain why you are cynical and a stranger to the pop culture wasteland Dr. Fleming. This has not been a good period of time from which to choose from. Anything that’s been worth watching or listening to or reading were done by people established well before the decade.

    “Or Brother Where Are Thou” both the soundtrack and the movie by the Cohen Brothers, probably is the best of this period. That albumn, produced by T.Bone Burnett, sold a million copies without so much as a minute of airplay on county music radio (which shows you what know). I would concur with G. Oren about Norah Jones. As for an actor, the only one that comes to mind is Edward Norton and that’s about it. Perhaps Reese Witherspoon (native Alabamian) as an actress. I do like the Wilson brothers collaborations with director Wes Anderson. Their movies (Rushmore, The Royal Tennebaums, The Life Aquatic) have been some of the funniest I’ve ever seen.

98. 98 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 January 2008:

    Clint Eastwood is not a “conservative,” he is a nihilist.

99. 99 Comment by Joe Porreca on 26 January 2008:

    If voters are irresponsible, why not try the ancient Greek and Roman practice of selection of political representatives by lot? It’s not that I think that ignorant voters chosen by random as legislators would do anything great, but I don’t think they’d do worse than the people they would elect, and at least we’d be spared the less edifying sights of political campaigns, such as Hillary Clinton weeping after a primary loss, grief stricken at the prospect that Americans might be deprived of her indispensible leadership.
    As to Mrs. Fleming’s question about a choice between John McCain and Hillary Clinton, I might speculate that Clinton would be more dangerous than McCain. In his book, Feeling Your Pain, James Bovard assigns primary responsibility for the bombing of Serbia to Hillary Clinton, and he quotes Alexander Cockburn as follows: “It’s scarcely surprising that Hillary would have urged President Clinton to drop cluster bombs on the Serbs to defend ‘our way of life.’ The first lady is a social engineer. She believes in therapeutic policing and the duty of the state to impose such policing. War is more social engineering, ‘fixitry’ via high explosive, social therapy via cruise missile.” Hillary Clinton still has at her side Madeline Albright, who became famous for chiding Colin Powell about his reluctance to use the wonderful military he was always talking about, and who infamously told Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes that she thought it well worthwhile to have a half million Iraqi children die as a result of our policy. To my knowledge Hillary Clinton never objected to any of the forty-four overseas deployments of the military by President Bill Clinton. I fear that she would find all kinds of “humanitarian” reasons to initiate military action.

100. 100 Comment by woodcutter on 26 January 2008:

     let’s hit 100! “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” was a good movie with many mystical moments that were truly priceless.

101. 101 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 26 January 2008:

     I think I take slight issue with Clyde’s observation that Clint Eastwood (not a realtive of mine to my knowledge) is not a conservative but a nihilist. He’s probably not a conservative because although bright in my opinion not that bright. He has character I suspect, Clint, I mention as an aside. (Clyde knows what conservative means.) As for nihilist well, nothing doesn’t exist except as a concept like the concept of zero. It’s useful for math. Clint exists…but I realize we have to deal with what we ‘mean’ by “nihilist”. And that’s a book.

     I think the concept of nihilist came about as meaning something (paradoxically), because people ‘felt’ they Could know G-d, with certitude? So if you didn’t ‘believe’ that then perhaps you were to be percieved as a nihilist. But if we Could know God with certainty then there would be no Actual need for faith.

     What if Clint just has faith in what can’t be known, anyway-?-

     And so then still has character – knows the difference between good & evil right and wrong, and has the backbone to stand for that which he suspects to be the Way his way too, come hell or high water even at his own personal peril:

     ‘I may have shot’em all… and you’re thinking in reaching for that gun did he fire five or fire six – well Punk – do you feel lucky today-?- because frankly I can’t remember myself…go ahead, Punk – make my Day.’

     personally – i’m not sure that’s a nihilist? call me crazy?

     or in “Unforgiven”… ‘I don’t deserve this -’ says the murderer of his friend… as Clint takes aim – ‘It ain’t about deserving’ -

     Is that nihilism…or is the notion of ‘nihilism’ merely an ironic contradiction of itself? There you have it again – a book. No?

     Nihilism may just be dreaming, sitting on the couch for all we know, right? But stay there, please – if you don’t have ‘nothing’ to contribute. Please.

102. 102 Comment by PcH on 26 January 2008:

     @101

     But if we Could know God with certainty then there would be no Actual need for faith.

     Faith is also loyalty, troth.

     And with a certain knowledge of God, one trusts that as things get materially worse, one nevertheless keeps to his mission.

     Thus faith is also courage, hardiness.

103. 103 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 26 January 2008:

     PcH if you say so re: this ‘certain knowledge’ – i’ll give you a pass since it made you not 1/2 bad… and so more good.

     But more the goodness… who accepts ‘certitude’ is God’s domain Alone He alone his Holy He alone is Lord etc. and that we only belong to him, no?

     think about it, kid. you above God… ? if he has a bad day? and where’s his privacy… if you’re Sure he’s who You think he is?

     what if he’s in love with the ugliest girl in the world? i kid. that would probably be a good thing. no i take you seriously, you exist.

104. 104 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 January 2008:

     After having come to this particular forum, I was clicking through German, French and Russia news sites. One of them, I cannot remember which, asserted that Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger had become friends during the shooting of “The Patriot,” and that Mr. Ledger often went to Mr. Gibson for advice. According to the source, Mr. Ledger asked Mr. Gibson’s advice about taking the role in Brokeback Mountain and Mr. Gibson advised him against it, on moral grounds, primarily. Apparently, this moment of discord did not necessarily end the friendship but it ended the fellowship of the friendship.

     As a sidebar, I wish that Mr. Gibson would direct and take the leading role in a film on the life of General Richard Taylor, with a focus on the Red River Campaign.

105. 105 Comment by JSM on 26 January 2008:

     Dr. Fleming’s challenge was to come up with people who are “technically competent at what they do and have an overall positive influence,” and so far the ensuing comments have failed this challenge. Clint Eastwood, Johnny Depp, and Celine Dion have been named, which serves to prove Fleming’s point. Really, a metrosexual pirate? We are stretching for answers. I’m in my late 20s, have paid good attention to pop culture in the last ten years, and can think of almost nothing that fits the criteria above.

     Brad Bird–with Iron Giant, the Incredibles, and Ratatouille–is a possibility. Maybe Shymalayan with Signs and The Village, though George McCartney didn’t care for either of those much (but those are still major releases that millions saw that praise the local and the rural). Who else has had an impact?

     Sorry, Coppola’s done nothing lately. Scorcese has not had a “positive influence” by any stretch. Eastwood has been lousy lately — Million Dollar Baby and those two WWII movies. TV’s most popular shows have been a karaoke contest (American Idol) and four nihilists talking about sex and nothing else (Seinfeld).

     Any other suggestions?

106. 106 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 26 January 2008:

     “overall positive influence”

     Okay, perhaps I misread it in naming Céline, then… I was thinking “any positive quality” rather than on balance being an asset to our culture. Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown up in some rather desperate times, but I’m inclined to think that a culture whose mainstream includes Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Steven Spielberg would be worse off without Céline. Then again, I’m setting my standards awfully low.

107. 107 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 26 January 2008:

     On American Idol: it’s not a show that’s worthy of elongated attention (nothing on television is), but in a society where non-singers become rich musicians (i.e., most of the

     I would never go out on a limb and say that there is nothing wrong with the commercial “pop” genre as a whole. We would be better off without it. But let’s be existential for a minute. Given that it exists, the best of it is that which is unpretentious about its essence and is just lightweight fun.

     Not, mind you, that there are not healthier forms of mindless fun: give me a folk music-slash-binge-drinking session at the tavern with some good friends over a pop concert any day. However, sometimes it does get rather tiring being an alien in one’s own society, and throwing onesself in and indulging with all the rest of the mutants is a good reminder that we are, after all, human (i.e., corruptible). We are not of this world, but we shouldn’t be walking six feet above the ground, either. The next time I go to confession I don’t think I shall say that I played four Céline Dion songs and three Daniel Bedingfield tracks when I was mindlessly pining over my lost love.

108. 108 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 26 January 2008:

     And I forgot to finish the first paragraph. I was going to say that in a society where non-singers become rich musicians, it is certainly entertaining–and not altogether worthless–to hear a foreigner remind us that good singers must be… well, good singers. Granted, the judges’ interpretation of what makes a “good singer” is open to discussion.

109. 109 Comment by jmcnulty on 26 January 2008:

     The ending of “Million Dollar Baby” was shocking and nihilistic. Imagine it. Instead of helping her achieve a new life as a paraphegic — something that would have shown real courage on both sides — he kills her for “mercy.” She was not only his fighter; she was his surrogate daughter. I thought that this movie was scandalous, and the fact that it ws acclaimed only shows how depraved we have become on the idea of “mercy-killing.” This was part of the ideological softening-up process to prepare the proles for the killing of the old — a real prospect given the size of the “Baby-Boomer” generation — and the sick and the young and the handicapped. Think about the future when we move beyond believing that people have a “right” to end their own lives to the idea that certain people “ought” to end their own lives, especially when it can be made to appear like going into surgery and painless. At some point, when Hillarycare has been implemented, old people will hear that they are monopolizing scare medical resources with their “selfish” desire to remain alive after their time is done.

110. 110 Comment by Bruce on 26 January 2008:

     The Passion of the Christ ?

111. 111 Comment by jmcnulty on 26 January 2008:

     One more thought on Clint Eastwood (who I want to like and admire): He split “Flags of Our Fathers,” a patriotic book, onto two anti-American movies. He took the most celebrated moment in American history — the flag raising on Mount Seribachi — and drowns it in the cynicism of advertising and war-bond drives. He then produced “Letter from Iwo Jima” that incredibly saw the battle from the Japanese viewpoint! He actually made American troops THE ENEMY. The whole movie was sympathetic to the Japanese (who had to be dug or blasted out of caves because the refused to surrender), even to the point of showing Japanese troops sharing their scarce water with a captured American. I never thought that I would live long enough to see a Hollywood movie in which American troops are portrayed as the enemy. How can anyone think that our nation will survive when one our foremost popular filmmakers is comfortable showing American troops as the enemy? What is next — a movie in which the Islamic insurgents in Iraq are the heroes? Wait a minute, I think that movie has already been made.

112. 112 Comment by Mark Depré on 26 January 2008:

     I would suggest Steve Vaus and some stuff of Daryll Worley.

113. 113 Comment by T. Chan on 26 January 2008:

     He actually made American troops THE ENEMY.He actually made American troops THE ENEMY.

     Well, yes, by definition they were the opposing forces that the Japanese had to face, and the movie was done from the Japanese pov. But that does not mean that Mr. Eastwood thought the U.S. was in the wrong, etc. (I haven’t read Flags, so I don’t know if it is as anti-war as Letters, but I do think that the the point of the movie was to humanize the Japanese and show that not all of them were monsters or equally culpable in the injustice of the war.)

     It might be wrong to make such a movie during WW2, but 60 years later perhaps we could be a bit more “objective” at looking at the conflict and those who participated in it?

114. 114 Comment by T. Chan on 26 January 2008:

     oops–that should be “watched,” not “read” Flags

115. 115 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 27 January 2008:

     I am thoroughly in agreement with Clyde Wilson that Clint Eastwood is a nihilist and that is much to be regretted because he is an extraordinary talent. There is no one who can equal Eastwood on both sides of the camera other than Mel Gibson and thank God Gibson’s vision is heroic and Christian. I have heard that Eastwood pressured his one time girl friend into getting an abortion. This doesn’t surprise me. I do find it rather scarry how much I have liked some of his movies – Unforgiven for example – the very title of which seems anti-Christian. As was said by the anti-Christian nihilist Nietzsche, “Gaze not too deeply into the abyss lest the abyss gaze into you.”

116. 116 Comment by Allen Wilson on 27 January 2008:

     Mr McNulty, your concern over Eastwood’s two war movies is justified. In fact, I had the same reservations before seeing the movies. However, I agree with Mr Chan. I think that Eastwood actually showed the truth about the war bond drive and the realities of the time. The bond drive was cynical and was a big act of fakery, and and I think Eastwood nailed it on the head. That movie should be looked at from the human perspective of the marines and sailor involved in the whole mess, as Eastwood intended.

     As for ‘Letters’, the same applies. Eastwood wasn’t trying to make American soldiers look bad, rather he was trying to get at the human experience of the Japanese soldiers. I thought it was a very good movie. He showed some Americans sympathetically, and if he showed an American murdering Japanese prisoners who had just surrendered, well, that happened as well. It was realism.

     That said, there is some question as to why Eastwood would wish to be cynical with his own country and sympathetic toward the Japanese. On the other hand, had he been cynical toward the Japs and sympathetic toward his own country, could the films ever have been made, and if so, would the media have treated them like they did Gibson’s ‘Passion’?

117. 117 Comment by Allen Wilson on 27 January 2008:

     I should have added that the Marines and the sailor were good American boys who were being used and manipulated by the powers that be for cynical ends. The shame of this is well captured in the film, and to me, the accuracy of this portrayal rings true.

118. 118 Comment by Culturist on 27 January 2008:

     I am always proud when a celebrity dies and I have never heard of them. This guy’s death, therefore, brought me a moment of pride. Frankly, it was good when Anna Nicole Smith died. She is a celebrity, like so many others, who never did anything worth being known for – no loss there. Beyond that, her death sent the message that her kind of lifestyle is not healthy.

     http://www.culturism.us

119. 119 Comment by pablo H on 27 January 2008:

     Allen Wilson,

     I suggest actually read the book and you’ll realize what a travesty, and anti-American piece of Agi-prop “Flags of our Fathers” was. The movie would have been much better if Eastwood had shown the Americans with the same respect he showed the Japanese in “Letters from Iwo Jima”.

     I’ve read the book and a lot others on WW II, and can tell you that the movie was not only unhistorical (is this a word?) it deliberately twisted facts to make the USA and Marine Corps look bad.

     And ( Not addressed at Allen Wilson) its rather pathetic
     the way that Christians and Conservatives, instead of attacking and mocking Hollywood take the latest Hollywood piece of anti-western sewage and try to convince themselves thats its really “conservative” or supports Christianity. When someone like Speilberg or Reiner make a movie they ARE NOT trying to uphold Christian/Western values. Ninety percent of the time they are trying to subvert them. Band of Brothers was a Tom Hanks production, and SPR was was full of cartoon characters and made from a Jewish perspective of painting the Germans as the bad-guys and supporting the US military. And to make money.

120. 120 Comment by Rick on 27 January 2008:

     I believe one of the most under rated actors over the last decades has been Kurt Russell.

121. 121 Comment by bromhead on 27 January 2008:

     “Reagan beat Mcgovern????” Nothing like trying to make a brilliant point and coming up with ignorant facts.

122. 122 Comment by robert reavis on 27 January 2008:

     Bromhead @121

     Yes, it might have been poor Walter Mondale instead of Senator MCGovern. In any case, I assure you that Dr. Fleming has suggested to me in private and on numerous occasions, that with my combination of brilliance and factual ignorance that my true talents might be better employed or utilized with the neo-cons over at the Weekly Standard or NRO. I have assured him, however, that I wouldn’t think of such a thing. I simply admire all of you paleo-cons too much to ever put my sword at the service of another.
     By the way, if you research my posts even more devoutly you will find graver errors — ecco, for ECCE and HOMO, instead of Hey, Ho the Holly!!and other such inventions. Fear not, I know my place in the world and it is right here with all of you !!! I wouldn’t hear of any other arrangement. As that great English historian , Mr. Belloc, once noted –there is not a better time to write history than in an age such as ours, where one can say anything he pleases about Napoleon provided he dutifuly footnotes that the Battle of Waterloo was actually fought on a Monday instead of Sunday. Cheers

123. 123 Comment by robert m. peters on 27 January 2008:

     Dr. Wilson or some other contributor to these fora can correct me if I am wrong, but my best information is that General Robert E. Lee, who was quite willing to send the men of the Army of Northern Virginia into the jaws of death and who was quite willing to kill as many of the enemy as necessary in order to win, nevertheless did not see his men as fodder but loved them and did not dehumanize his enemy, even prayed for them, wishing not to destroy their home and hearths but wishing only that they would go home and leave his beloved Virginia in peace. This, to my understanding, is the mark of a Christian soldier.

     I have read none of the books on which Mr. Eastwood’s movies, mentioned in posts supra, were based. I have also not seen the movies discussed above.

     The flip side of dehumanizing one’s enemies is quickly appropriated by and subsumed into the Marxist narrative: enemies do not exist; they are merely the products of our biased and prejudiced imaginations. Using dehumanized enemies as dialectic leverage, the Marxist turns the admonition of the Christ, to love one’s enemies on its head, namely to love an enemy, according to the Marxist, is to declare that one has no enemy – that race does not exist, that ethnic and cultural frictions are fictions and that intra-specie rivalry is not a part of human nature.

     I took my first lessons in this from my Uncle Charlie, who served in WWI in Europe and in WWII – wounded near Casablanca and spending the rest of his life, until 1976, in a V.A. Hospital, and my father who fought his way across France and into western Germany along with thousands of other Americans. Both of them fought and killed Germans. Both of them saw friends die horrible deaths in the crucible of war. Neither of them hated Germans. My father often spoke of young German soldiers – Papa was an old man of 26 – which he encountered dead or severely wounded. He knew that if he had his druthers he would be back at the confluence of Sandy Creek and Big Creek, where is home was, and nowhere near the mess he and millions of men were in. He supposed that the young Germans would have rather been there where home was to them as well. My Uncle Charlie, during the years in the V.A. from 1943 to 1976, saw maimed men from WWII, Korea and Vietnam, maimed in body, in mind and in soul. Once, among the several times, on medication, he got out for Christmas, I recall his talking about WWI and then North Africa in WWII. His words were, “Poor boys, all of us, Americans, French, English, and German; so scared and so far away from home!” Maybe that is not what he felt in 1943; I do not know, but that is what he came to understand as meaningful life slipped away because of those events and that is what he said to me.

124. 124 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 27 January 2008:

     Sometimes it seems to me that paleoconservatism, like liberalism, is just another species of effete snobbery– its adherents turning up their collective nose at aesthetically unpleasing things– strip malls, fast food restaurants, pop culture outlets, and what-not– and treating them and those who frequent them as if they were moral abominations. Posts like this one, as well as the self-congratulary tone of the responses to it, tend to reinforce this suspicion on my part.

     I mean, look, Heath L. was a movie star who died at a young age. What is so horrible about news outlets reporting the fact that he died? And yes, he played a homosexual in one movie. Even if we can agree that homosexuality is not healthy or morally permissible behavior, why slag the dude for playing a part in a movie? How many other actors have played mass murderers, rapists, tyrants, etc.?

125. 125 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 27 January 2008:

     As for Mr. Fleming’s distinction between “folk” culture and “pop” culture– the first good and healthy, the last inherently bad, apparently– I again suspect that mere snobbery is at play here. “Folk” culture, if I am correct, would equate to “things that I and my fellow paelocon snobs approve of,” i.e. bluegrass music, Celtic folk songs, etc., and “pop” culture encompasses everything paleocon snobs reflexively dismiss, up to and including just about every movie made in the last 30 years…

126. 126 Comment by T. Chan on 27 January 2008:

     123

     Yes, with Letters from Iwo Jima at least, while the Americans have been “dehumanized” from the Japanese perspective, and are not readily distinguishable from one another, their faces not being clear to the audience and so on, the Japanese do learn the lesson that the Americans are human just like they are, and thereby gain some measure of sympathy for them.

127. 127 Comment by CM Collins on 27 January 2008:

     Cormac McCarthy partially qualifies with Cities of the Plain (1998), No Country for Old Men (2005), The Road (2006), The Sunset Limited (2006), and other recent works, but he’s not coming up today so much as established and still working.

     I like Neal Stephenson as more of an up-and-coming author.

128. 128 Comment by James Kabala on 27 January 2008:

     The coverage of Ledger’s death is perhaps the quintessential example of self-perpetuating media hype. Dr. Fleming is probably under the misapprehension that Ledger was regarded as a big star among the younger set before his death, but he wasn’t really. Most of his movies were neither big box office successes nor critical favorites. The accomplishments of Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp, like those of Mr. Ledger, are negligible at best and pernicious at worst, but they genuinely are big stars in the public mind; Ledger was not. The modern media, however, feel the need to inflate the death of a minor celebrity into an epochal event so they can have some sleaze to feed off for a few days. (This is a disservice to Ledger as much to the public; many of the early claims about the manner of his death – although not, as far as I know, those repeated by Dr. Fleming – have turned out to be false or exaggerated.)

     Dean and Presley were also partially media creations, of course, but there was enough normality left in those days (or so I understand; I wasn’t alive then) that one could not become a posthumous icon without striking some kind of genuine chord with the public. This appears to be no longer the case. If Ledger is still being revered a decade or two from now, he will the first pop culture legend (or perhaps the second, after Princess Diana) whose cult is completely divorced from the natural opinions people had formed about him.

129. 129 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 January 2008:

     Mr. K, Lincoln’s cult “is completley divorced from the natural opoinions people had formed about him” while he lived, and he has been a legend for a century and a half.

130. 130 Comment by pablo H on 27 January 2008:

     I’ve tried to carry on Dr. Flemming’s assignment without success. Restricting myself to American movies & TV I draw a blank. However, I can think of several good movies from say 1978 to 1998,
     Band of Brothers, is the only American TV program that comes to mind.

131. 131 Comment by G.S. on 27 January 2008:

     @ Mr. Nowicki (124 & 125),

     What you forget is the possibility that strip malls, fast food restaurants, and pop culture outlets actually *are* moral abominations.

     One distinction between folk and pop culture might be that pop culture is not in fact popular. That is, it is not derived from the life of ordinary people, but rather imposed from above by marketing executives who occupy the elite class of this country.

     The reason I detest “pop music” is because I have populist tendencies, not elitist ones. I resent the prospect of rich advertising moguls poisoning the minds of the people I love.

     @ Mr. H (119)

     While I was initially impressed by SPR when I saw it in the theatre, the last couple years have led me to agree with your assessment. Not so much because it is some sort of conspiratorial demonization of Germans, but because of the theme expressed in Tom Hank’s little “why we fight” speech:

     “You know, if going to Rumelle and finding him (Ryan) …. if that earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that’s my mission.”

     Over time I have come to realize that there are few things more disgusting than this implicit assumption — that a man has to “earn” from the modern superstate his “right” to go home.

     I haven’t seen any of Eastwood’s latest, but I would agree with Dr. Wilson’s assessment of the man as a nihilist — as well as Mr. Higdon’s assessment of this nihilism as an unfortunate misdirection of talent.

     Mystic River struck me as simultaneously well-executed and warped.

     I would reiterate my wife’s suggestion of the science-fiction film “Gattaca”. If one can get past Jude Law, Ethan Hawke, and Uma Thurman, it’s a highly original and redemptive piece of work.

     Glancing through the original script (a copy of which is online) it turns out that it initially carried even more pro-life subtext than what was translated onto the screen.

     I would also highly, highly recommend the (1988-1999) television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which adds supplemental, comic commentary to low-grade B-movies.

     Not quite P.G. Wodehouse, but definitely *not* Seinfeld either. In some ways MST3K really does have a worthwhile message — when the pop culture gives you lemons, make satiric lemonade.

     The series’ premise is that of a man being held prisoner by a mad scientist who seeks to destroy the prisoner’s mind by forcing him to watch really bad movies — with the man’s only means of survival & fighting back being his biting & erudite sense of humor.

132. 132 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 27 January 2008:

     @25: “The reason I detest “pop music” is because I have populist tendencies, not elitist ones. I resent the prospect of rich advertising moguls poisoning the minds of the people I love.”

     It really says a lot about the last century that the influence of these moguls is so pervasive that any sort of truly “popular” character in the sense G.S. describes practically has to go through shadow state apparati to gain any sort of recognition (i.e., Frank Sinatra and the Mafia connection).

     There are actively culpable players, though the very existence of mass media has not helped our culture (to say the least). I wonder if a truly conservative movement would shun the T.V. and the Internet altogether, but then, being a product of modern culture, I would never have found Chronicles without the latter. Really sad.

     “Not quite P.G. Wodehouse, but definitely *not* Seinfeld either. In some ways MST3K really does have a worthwhile message — when the pop culture gives you lemons, make satiric lemonade.”

     On this front, depending on how much you want to factor decency into your choice of “good” popular culture, Mad T.V. would occasionally qualify, as would the French music group Paral & Piped (whose rather appalling parody of Britney Spears [the original song was only slightly less explicit, but hardly any more subtle or tasteful] is an excellent guilty pleasure).

     On the other hand, the cultural drawbacks in the advancements in information technology have an important but seriously undertapped counter-advantage: the easy storing and access of archival works. If today’s material is unacceptable, we can step back as many years as we want to and immerse ourself in the cultural treasures of the past. And those with sufficient artistic and literary talent can thereby immerse themselves in this wonderful culture and resurrect it.

     In brief, while I admit to indulging in the satire culture myself, I have to admit that there is no genuine excuse for indulging in parodies of ridiculously self-parodying material when there are so many good works of art, music, literature and even film so readily available, if only I take the time to look.

133. 133 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 27 January 2008:

     G.S., strip malls, Walmarts, and fast food restaurants are only moral abominations if one conflates tackiness and evil. Which is just what many paleocons, such as most of those chiming in on this thread seem to be doing.

     This, in turn, is why I am hesitant to embrace paleoconservatism wholeheartedly, though I share many paleocon tendencies. Self-righteous snobbery and scorn those with “bourgeois” (Sp?) sensibilities is no more attractive among proclaimed rightists than it is among liberals.

134. 134 Comment by C Bowen on 27 January 2008:

     A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: three Brad Pitt films that are entirely paleo-defensible.

     Music: techonology has cut into the power of Corporate Music with high speed internet, and cd burning, and an entire category, Americana, has been created by 30-something consumers.

     Movies:Joyeux Noel. Mr. Scallon is rigt on with his Wes Anderson films.

     To the critics, consevatives and (real or paleo) libertarians are anti-egalitarian, and it is well true, smoothing out the difference with a capable and disciplined Right-populism remains a challenge.

135. 135 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 27 January 2008:

     “Self-righteous snobbery and scorn those with “bourgeois” (Sp?) sensibilities is no more attractive among proclaimed rightists than it is among liberals.”

     The bourgeois has been criticized for its materialism and banality since it existed and long before leftism existed; see Molière. The bourgeois supported the American and French revolutions in large numbers. The aristocracy and ancient loyalties were the biggest roadblocks to them coming out on top with their mechanical technocratic regime.

     As for leftists, I’ve noticed the word “bourgeois” is more a bogeyman for any institution a Marxist wants to do away with, up to and including the patriarchal family. And it’s ironic, because an ideal Marxist society would be a faceless industrial technocracy through and through–bourgeois par excellence. Nowadays it is used concurrently with “racist,” “religious bigot,” “homophobe” and so forth as the whipping boy of the libertine left.

     Joyeux Noël was indeed a good film, if unintentionally so (I’ve met the director, an atheist with rather ambivalent views on religion).

136. 136 Comment by woodcutter on 27 January 2008:

     @133 “This, in turn, is why I am hesitant to embrace paleoconservatism” With your attitude toward things that have helped to create a secular western world full of radical individualist, I’m not sure why you are even reading this blog at all.

137. 137 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 27 January 2008:

     “Fight Club” is another Brad Pitt movie that could easily be seen as paleo-friendly in its critique of materialism and corporate consumerism. But it is vulgar and shockingly violent, which doubt turns up the noses of the paleo-snobs who happen upon it.

     (These, of course, are the same paleo-snobs who extol the fiction of such writers as Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, replete as they are with depictions of violence and moral squalor! Once again, I detect rank snobbery.)

138. 138 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 27 January 2008:

     Back to Heath Ledger: if you’re inclined to assail him for playing a homosexual in a movie, I hope you’re also willing to condemn anyone who ever played MacBeth or Claudius in “Hamlet” for playing vicious murderers. Murder is a worse sin than sodomy, I think.

139. 139 Comment by C Bowen on 27 January 2008:

     Mr. Moses;

     I think that is what makes it work, though thank you for the insight on the director–I had no idea, if it makes sense. Who else could set aside 500 years of Church fratricide by employing the Latin Mass. It was a liberal film, for “white nationalists” and “libertarians” , strippped of traditional nationalism, and it did challenge “conservatives” to reject the Law and Order and recognize the essential Truth. As a viewer, I felt challenged. So while a gimic, it, as you say unintentionally, revealed a truth about our experience in this time.

     I didn’t meet the director, but I have walked that battlefield, some 12 years ago. It’s impact on popular imagination is only just begining, apparently.

140. 140 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 27 January 2008:

     @Andy Nowicki (133):

     “G.S., strip malls, Walmarts, and fast food restaurants are only moral abominations if one conflates tackiness and evil.”

     Not at all. The problem with all of the above is the role that they play in destroying local economies and culture.

141. 141 Comment by G.S. on 27 January 2008:

     Mr. Richert is right-on.

     Mr. Nowicki, consult *Fast Food Nation* by Eric Schlosser — hardly a journalist who could be accused of being a “paleo-snob”, I should think.

142. 142 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 28 January 2008:

     @139: Don’t get me wrong; I agree with you. I wrote rather quickly last night. In spite of his atheistic inclinations, Christian Carion was at least perceptive enough to understand the world as it was in 1914 and to sympathize with the characters as well as with their faith, and decent enough to avoid overt modernist preachiness. In spite of the film’s technical weaknesses (hammy German actors and terrible lip-synching), he was so successful that he undermined the presumably intended leftist connotations and instead gave us a brilliant celebration of a truly unified Europe, bound together not by bureaucracy and human rights ideals, but by a common religion and ethno-cultural heritage.

143. 143 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 28 January 2008:

     @137: I’ve never seen Fight Club, but on the whole I’ve noticed that “mainstream” critiques of modernism and materialism these days are typically every bit as insipid, alienating and corporate as the targets of their ire. This is certainly true in the field of architecture, where postmodernists heap scorn on the alienation wrought by faceless modernist buildings and then proceed to replace them with gawdy, esoteric space-wasting shrines to their egos forced upon an “unsophisticated” populace. Have a look at the new Scottish Parliament. And don’t even get me started on the crystal dome above the Reichstag.

144. 144 Comment by TJF on 28 January 2008:

     one small note to Mr. Moses. One can distinguish between the talents of Copola and Scorsese and their ethnic resentments of WASP America. Who but a WASP-hater could put Dianne Keaton in anything, especially in contrast with Apollonia? Or, from the same series, consider the portrait of the Nevada senator, or the portrayal of ordinary American life in Goodfellows. One can easily multiply instances. I cheerfully concede the merits of these directors and do not feel particularly offended by their attitudes, but in the context of this discussion I wanted to point out that Jews are not the only resentful immigrant group.

145. 145 Comment by Tom Piatak on 28 January 2008:

     It has been off the air since 2002, but I would nominate the “X-Files” as an excellent TV series. Not only were the writing, acting, and special effects consistently first rate, the show had a subversive conservative sensibility, featuring a skepticism toward the federal government and other large institutions, leftists often appearing as villains (e.g., an episode where a “tolerant” leftist minister is revealed to be a minion of Satan, as his fundamentalist opponent had charged), an avoidance of multiculturalist cant, and a fondness for traditional American institutions, including religion. Indeed, the final episode was unabashedly pro-Christian.

146. 146 Comment by Tom Piatak on 28 January 2008:

     Mr. Nowicki:

     I can’t say I like Wal-Mart, but I do enjoy fast food in moderation. So there is at least one Chronicles contributor who likes McDonald’s. (Although I think the best fast food chain is Wendy’s).

     I do think the quality of American movies has declined, particularly in the past decade, but Hollywood still manages to produce a handful of decent movies each year. “Joyeux Noel,” mentioned by several commenters, was excellent. I did enjoy “Fight Club,” except for its absurd ending, and agree that it did have some paleo-friendly themes. I can’t say much for television, because the X-Files was the last TV series I watched.

147. 147 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 28 January 2008:

     Mr. Paitak,
     Wendy’s is my personal favorite fast food chain as well (in moderation, of course, as you note), although Chick-fil-A also has its merits.
     The creator of “X Files,” Chris Carter, had another lesser known show called “Millennium” in the late 90s that I suspect you would also enjoy. (It’s available on netflix, which you should be able to tolerate if you don’t automatically get haughty when someone mentions the idea of having McDonalds for lunch)
     It shares most of the merits of “X Files” that you enumerate, and it also takes the phenonenon of evil very seriously. Good acting, good writing, good everything. It’s quite criminally underrated.

148. 148 Comment by Tom Piatak on 28 January 2008:

     Mr. Nowicki:

     Thanks. I was given the entirety of “Millennium” on DVD as a gift, but have yet to watch it. Your recommendation might prompt me to do that.

     You might be interested to know that the late Sam Francis was a huge fan of the X-Files. It is a shame that Sam never wrote about the series.

149. 149 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 28 January 2008:

     @144: I see what you mean, although in your post supra you discussed “the Anglo-American Christian culture they were radicalizing,” and perhaps I’m blind, but I’ve never really seen either director as much of a “radicalizer,” whatever their cosmological faults.

     Mr. Piatak, good call on the X-Files. I’d held such a grudge against TV for so long I was blocking out the fact that there have been good TV shows (though on balance the medium is decidedly evil). And I agree with you and Mr. Nowicki: when I’m in a pinch, Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A are far preferable to basically any other fast food chain. (Although, when I’m in Europe and everything is closed, I take KFC over McDonald’s.)

150. 150 Comment by MJK on 28 January 2008:

     Hey Tom – You are right on with the X-Files!

     It also introduced me to Frank Black and Millennium, which is a terrific series — you should enjoy it…I, too, received the complete series Christmas 2006, and found it worthwhile. Lance Henrikson is excellent as Frank Black. Let me know.

     You may also want to check out the “Lone Gunman” series, which was another short-lived 1013 production.

     I was thinking about enter the fray and highlighting the production work of Chris Carter – creator of the X-Files, Millennium, and Lone Gunman. In trotting through the swamp, I have always enjoyed Carter’s work. He was heavily influenced by the Kolchak: Night Stalker program, starring a worthwhile actor in his own right, Darren McGavin. Regards, Michael K.

151. 151 Comment by Allen Wilson on 28 January 2008:

     To Nowicki and Piatak: I agree that Wendy’s is the best fast food chain, though I noticed a big fall in the quality of the meat in their burgers three months or so after the death of the founder. That made me mad, so I dont generally eat there any more. I never eat at McDonald’s, but they have the best fries and coffee of any fast food chain, so sometimes I indulge. You’d be surprised how well coffee and fries go together if you salt the fries down well.

     To all: I have only just begun to look into Podcasts oriented towards music. There may be a huge potential here for alternative music that is ignored by big media, and it covers every genre imaginable.

152. 152 Comment by Tom Piatak on 28 January 2008:

     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.

153. 153 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 28 January 2008:

     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.

154. 154 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 28 January 2008:

     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?
     ____

155. 155 Comment by robert m. peters on 28 January 2008:

     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.

156. 156 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 28 January 2008:

     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.

157. 157 Comment by rick on 28 January 2008:

     Outside of South Park theres not much worth watching on todays TV

158. 158 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 28 January 2008:

     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 -

159. 159 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 28 January 2008:

     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…

160. 160 Comment by T. Chan on 28 January 2008:

     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.

161. 161 Comment by T. Chan on 28 January 2008:

     See the interview with Annie Proulx: http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid23486.asp

162. 162 Comment by TJF on 28 January 2008:

     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.

163. 163 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 28 January 2008:

     “

164. 164 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 28 January 2008:

     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.

165. 165 Comment by Chet Eastwood on 28 January 2008:

     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.

166. 166 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 28 January 2008:

     @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.

167. 167 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 28 January 2008:

     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.

168. 168 Comment by woodcutter on 28 January 2008:

     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.

169. 169 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 January 2008:

     @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.

170. 170 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 28 January 2008:

     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.

171. 171 Comment by I am not Spartacus on 28 January 2008:

     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

172. 172 Comment by David on 28 January 2008:

     In Middle Tennessee, the food in the local restaurants is better than the chains practically every time.

173. 173 Comment by PcH on 28 January 2008:

     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.

174. 174 Comment by PcH on 28 January 2008:

     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.

175. 175 Comment by G.L.A. on 28 January 2008:

     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.

176. 176 Comment by woodcutter on 29 January 2008:

     “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.

177. 177 Comment by rick on 29 January 2008:

     GLA. thank you for the history lesson!

178. 178 Comment by Ronald Kyser on 29 January 2008:

     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.

179. 179 Comment by James Kabala on 29 January 2008:

     I’ve never been addressed as “Mr. K.” before, but I kind of like the sound of it.

180. 180 Comment by TJF on 29 January 2008:

     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.

181. 181 Comment by Eagle on 30 January 2008:

     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.

182. 182 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 30 January 2008:

     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…

183. 183 Comment by John C. on 30 January 2008:

     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.

184. 184 Comment by Eagle on 30 January 2008:

     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?

185. 185 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 30 January 2008:

     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.

186. 186 Comment by Eagle on 31 January 2008:

     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.

187. 187 Comment by Andy Nowicki on 31 January 2008:

     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.

188. 188 Comment by TJF on 31 January 2008:

     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.

189. 189 Comment by Daniel W on 31 January 2008: