A couple weeks ago I pointed out an essay by Wil Wheaton where he discussed how political polarization has gotten in the way of family relationships. His springboard was a paternal meltdown over the (then proposed) clemency for Tookie Williams.

Turns out his parents don't agree with how they were portrayed in his original essay - and Wheaton agrees he made some assumptions he shouldn't have.

In a new essay, on his own blog, Wheaton shares portions of an interview he did with his own parents, and asks forgiveness from his parents for bruised feelings.

Well written and a worthy read. But I think he's too hard on himself. The first essay raised some legitimate and underdiscussed concerns about what polarization does to our families and our communities.

It's good that they can talk about politics calmly and rationally - sitting around the table after the fact. But the Gibsonesque meltdown occurred - and it's occurred to a lot of us.

Perhaps his writings (I wouldn't join in calling them mistakes) will lead some to think in advance instead of trying to patch things up afterwards.

Kudos to Wil Wheaton for sharing both parts of his exercise with the public. Far too few are willing to consider the feelings of others, admit they might have made some errors, and try to make amends. He's one of the most honorable of any stripe you'll find.

Crossposted from Gregprinceblog

Interesting piece by my co-blogger on us vs. them.

Not that long ago I did a post discussing how perspective matters on how events are interpreted. Mick's comments on Brokeback Mountain's alleged failure commercially are a case in point.

Setting aside its "artistic merits", Brokeback is aptly named--the movie only cost 14 million to make but will still lose money.

He's probably relying on the same news sources as Faux News, which was reporting on the film's failure on the same day the first sales numbers were released, showing record same screen ticket sales for Brokeback Mountain. Interestingly, even Fox has had to concede the math when looking at the Christmas weekend numbers.

Who's afraid of a couple of gay cowboys? Not moviegoers, who helped "Brokeback Mountain" post the highest per-screen average over the film-flush holiday weekend.

The Ang Lee film, which follows the 20-year forbidden romance between two roughneck ranch hands, earned $13,599 per theater, compared with $9,305 for weekend winner "King Kong" and $8,225 for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

Note well, Kong premiered on 3568 screens and took in $50.15 million. That same week Brokeback, which was showing in only 69 theaters (no smirking from the peanut gallery) took in $2.4 million. In its first week of release, showing in only six theaters, it took in a staggering $109,000 per screen.

Back to Mick:

Even among its cherry-picked audiences, the movie is garnering a surprising negative reaction. a standard survey of Box Office Mojo members resulted in 22% giving the film and 'F'.

And this is meaningful why? Box Office Mojo is a just a website - a movie industry and box office reporting service. Individuals can rate movies and thousands have. Their own review for Brokeback is very positive, and on sites like this it goes without saying that movies like Star Wars and Batman are going to get the best user ratings. You'd expect nothing less given their large box office hits. One has to wonder how many of the "F" grades were given by people who haven't even seen the film.

As far as the cherry picked audience, there's a half truth to that. They wanted the film available for the 2005 awards season, but they wanted to control the release so word of mouth could provide some additional momentum.

Apparently, it's worked well enough that, according to BOM, they've actually stepped up their release into the heartland.

The expansion will be more aggressive than previously planned, with around 275 theaters set for Jan. 6 and about 400 for Jan. 13. The original intent was to be in 300 venues by the end of January. Among Brokeback Mountain's encouraging numbers, Foley noted two theaters in conservative markets that Focus used as an experiment for the picture's crossover appeal: the AMC Yorktown 18 near Chicago and the Cinemark Legacy 24 in Plano, Texas—"one of the biggest grossing theaters in the nation for The Passion of the Christ," explained Foley. Brokeback Mountain ranked No. 2 and No. 3 in the complexes, respectively. "[The movie] is playing to the smart set as well as the boomer set, the senior set and the gay community," Foley said.

In midwestern suburbia, the midweek matinee I attended had a nearly full theater made up of typical midwesterners - a mix of young and old, male and female, and not really any stereotypically gay. Apparently the advance ticket sales are setting records even in Salt Lake City, near Mick's home. Perhaps he should burden himself with viewing the film before deciding he hates it. I do warn him, though, it's more of a chick flick than he (or I for that matter) would typically see.

In any event, the $14 million movie that my friend just knows will lose money has already grossed $13.9 million. And that's just limited release in North America. Nevermind international, DVD sales, etc. His instincts are usually better than this where money is concerned..

But it certainly shows, yet again, how the perspective one brings affects your interpretation.

Mick's right, we usually comment on each other's work through comments - however some topics go beyond what fits easily in comments, and on others we have significantly divergent opinions and simply reserve the write to blog regardless of the other's posts. Excursions into the reality based community can be found at my site, and excursions into realms untainted by left of center reasoning can be found at Mick's site. I recommend both.

Attentive readers will notice that "Greg's a little sensitive on the topic of" insert topic du jour is someone's way of saying, "I got spanked on the facts." Consider, for example, the exchanges over the sorry Schiavo spectacle. I'd be happy to fisk the entire original, but it didn't seem necessary at the time.

That said, a few quick notes are in order.

A more reliable number for the studio's take is in the neighborhood of 55 percent. At that rate, Brokeback would need about a $25.5 million gross to break even. It'll do that. Mick is correct that there are all sorts of possible side deals which obscure the true cost and profitability. Keep that in mind when you hear the media reports about how Hollywood is in a slump, that revenues are declining, and so forth. That's the real story; how all these multi million dollar flops keep getting made if it's really that unprofitable.

Mick is correct that typical films make 60-80% of their gross in the first weeks of release. He errs by applying a generic formula driven by films that open on thousands of screens to an art film that opened on six screens in three cities. Some films release slowly. Some films gain an audience largely by word of mouth. In both cases, their box office graphs aren't going to look like those of the typical Hollywood blockbuster.

No pardon is necessary that Brokeback was low budget. Nobody suggested otherwise, and nobody believed it was going to out gross Titanic (Or Kong, or Narnia, or Harry Potter, or any of a whole host of movies). Assuming an onerous distribution deal might be too much - the professionals aren't in it to lose money. Moreover, it flies in the face of established fact - this was the most profitable on a per screen basis nationally and was among the most profitable at multiplexes in Chicago (number 2) and Dallas (number 3) over the holiday weekend. Similarly, I'm not surprised that there's a lack of controversy.

Now, on to your regularly scheduled floggings...

Anything to add on NSA or Abramoff? :)

Mark Steyn worried about demographics and mentions the European crisis on a regular basis. Well today he has an extensive article on the subject on OpinionJournal, actually a reprint from the New Criterion.

The basic observation is that westerners are refusing to reproduce themselves and thus ceding the future world to the developing world, particularly Islam. The U.S. is barely at the replacement rate of 2.1, but virtually every other western country is in a death spiral. The generalized policy within western countries is to compensate with immigration, but therein lies another problem--the immigrants aren't being assimilated.

The irony here is that if the new immigrants were assimilated, they would quickly become part of the problem--demandiing 35 hour work weeks, eschewing children so inconvenient to planning those yearly jaunts to Thailand.

Steyn doesn't just describe a bleak landscape, he explains how it got that way:

We spend a lot of time at The New Criterion attacking the elites, and we're right to do so. The commanding heights of the culture have behaved disgracefully for the last several decades. But if it were just a problem with the elites, it wouldn't be that serious: The mob could rise up and hang 'em from lampposts--a scenario that's not unlikely in certain Continental countries. But the problem now goes way beyond the ruling establishment. The annexation by government of most of the key responsibilities of life--child-raising, taking care of your elderly parents--has profoundly changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. At some point--I would say socialized health care is a good marker--you cross a line, and it's very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government largesse to cross back. In National Review recently, I took issue with that line Gerald Ford always uses to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." Actually, you run into trouble long before that point: A government big enough to give you everything you want still isn't big enough to get you to give anything back. That's what the French and German political classes are discovering.

This is precisely what makes the problem so intractable--"we" are part of the problem. What fascinates me about this topic is the realization how personal the rise and fall of civilizations really is. Its not merely "their" problem, but one that touches each of us. As I look at my father's generation, my own, and that of my children, I see some remarkable differences. My father lived through WWII and the post-war occupation of Austria as an adolescent. He grew up in a time and culture where industriousness was a virtue higher than all others. His efforts to deliver his family a better standard of living were herculean. When he got married, there was no question of having children or not, it was a given, Marriage meant wife and children--family.

My adolescence was nothing like my father's--no one was dropping bombs on my head and I lived in what Michael Barone has called "soft America"

...from the age of 6 to 18, our kids live mostly in what I call Soft America--the part of our society where there is little competition and accountability. In contrast, most Americans in the 12 years between ages 18 and 30 live mostly in Hard America--the part of American life subject to competition and accountability; the military trains under live fire. Soft America seeks to instill self-esteem. Hard America plays for keeps.

I suppose I am one of those dissolute 18 year-olds that evolved into a competent 30 year-old but there is something else at work here, something far more fundamental.

I got married the day after I turned 23 and was a father at 25. That was unusual where I grew up--most of my friends from highschool married late, if at all, and had few if any children with notable exceptions. The difference was cultural--I came from a large family with strong religious values. It was and still is common for young people in my faith to get married comparatively early and have comparatively large families.

This is very important to understand because ultimately, there is nothing biological telling a man it is time to be a husband and a father. You do it because you're culture expects it of you, considers it a right of passage into adulthood and respectability. In my young mind, being a husband and father made me a man. In the minds of my friends in the secular culture, there simply was no such impetus.

It seems like such a small thing, such a personal decision, but our personal decisions collectively determine the rise and fall of civilizations.

Memes like evolutionary adaptions, can sometimes be beneficial, sometimes destructive and sometimes dormant. We don't usually actively recognize them as such, if we are aware of them at all, yet they determine our futures.

It is for this reason that I have no compunction about calling myself a social conservative. It is not a matter of fear of change, but rather a recognition that seemingly innocuous attitudes and perspectives have far reaching effects not only in our personal lifes, but for society as a whole. Social liberalism in my view is largely a combination of narrow experience and arrogance--what they don't understand they dismiss as irrelevant. Social conservatism doesn't preclude change, it simply refuses to rush in where angels fear to tread.

What Europe--what the entire western world needs, is to re-endow fatherhood with honor, to recognize the worth of a man (or woman) by the sacrifices they make rather than the things they acquire.

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A credit report is to help you keep check on your present finances as well as plan ahead for any mortgage or loans that you already have. The main aim is to stay out of ways like debt consolidation and spend your credit cards wisely.

Glenn Reynold's Instapundit entry on polygamy caught my attention, first because its not a common topic over there, and second because Reynold's is talking out of school.

I'm occasionally amused by the implication that there's something unnatural about polygamy, though: It's quite possibly the most common form of marriage in human society, and certainly far too common to dismiss as some sort of perversion. (Heck, read your Old Testament). But I think that most of the polygamy-talk now is just a symptom of the gay-marriage debate, rather than a genuine freestanding concern.

Ironically, here in Utah we think gay marriage is just a symptom of the polygamy debate ;-)

Polygamy is in fact a "genuine freestanding concern" here for some very real and serious concerns. One must understand that polygamy as practiced in North America, is overwhelming the result of religious belief, not simply an odd little arrangment between consenting, secular adults.

There is far more relevance to that fact than one might assume at first glance. In many (not all) cases, polygamy is a means of social control. Among the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, an offshoot of the 19th century Mormon church), wives and children are given as rewards for faithfulness, and taken as punishment for dissent. Those sullen young men Glenn refers to do not exist in the abstract, rather they cruise the streets of Las Vegas and Mesquite, Nevada selling their bodies for food and a place to sleep. A young man who is dispossessed from the polygamous community has no education, no skills and no prospects in the secular world. The cruel exile is the inevitable result of a relentless logic that demands that the community shuck off its surplus males in order to preserve the social economy of multiple wives.

That same logic says that girls should be married off at impossibly young, even prepubescent ages, to insure early pregancy and thus and iron link into polygamous society.

Before I moved to Utah, I thought much like Glenn Reynold's did, but the reality is sobering indeed, in fact I dare say that Mormon opposition to gay marriage (as contrasted to Evangelical opposition) is strongly tied to the fear that legalizing gay marriage means inevitably legalizing polygamy.

Surprisingly to some perhaps, polygamy is de facto legal. There have been no recent prosecutions based on the mere existence of a polygamous relationship. Rather prosecutions in Utah and Arizona in particular are focused on statutory rape (the Tom Green trial comes to mind), welfare fraud and other incidental practices and outcomes that are politically easier to prosecute in an age where people's maritial arrangements, or lack of them, isn't treated as a criminal matter regardless of whatever laws may still exist on the books.

The tip-toe-through-the-tulips legal approach to polygamy makes Utah attorney-general Mark Shurtleff a pretty popular guy throughout the intermountain west and even in Canada, as various states and local governments consult with him on how to deal with local groups of polygamists.

Its arguable whether legalizing polygamy would exacerbate the problems or not, but make no mistake--polygamy is a problem.

I don't have a high opinion of George Stephanopoulos and generally don't watch "This Week" as a result, but yesterday I watched all the news shows as a sort of pre-show for the Alito hearings. What I saw surprised me as Stephanopoulos accidentally committed journalism.

Kennedy wrote in the Washington Post on Saturday:

Failure to recuse himself in the Vanguard case : In 1990, during the confirmation process on his nomination to the 3rd Circuit, Alito disclosed that his largest investment was in Vanguard mutual funds. To avoid possible conflicts of interest, he promised us that he would recuse himself from any case involving "the Vanguard companies." Vanguard continues to be on his recusal list, and his investments in Vanguard funds have risen from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, in 2002 he failed to recuse himself when assigned to sit on a case in which three Vanguard companies were named parties and listed prominently on every brief and on his own pro-Vanguard opinion in the case. In this case, he and the White House have floated many excuses, but none provided any sensible explanation for his failure to keep his promise or follow his "personal practice" of recusing himself whenever there was any possible ethical question about his participation in a case.

The irony of Ted Kennedy accusing anyone of ethical lapses is bad enough, but not surprisingly, Kennedy is lying. I'll let Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center demonstrate that.

Back to Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you about it, because you have raised this issue, and you said you’ve -- he failed to recuse himself from issues involving the Vanguard companies. He held mutual funds that were managed by the Vanguard companies

But in 1994 you defended Judge Stephen Breyer’s right to decide a case that could have affected one of his investments. Let me show you what you said

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KENNEDY: You have asked for my opinion whether Judge Breyer has committed a violation of judicial ethics in investing in Lloyd’s name and insurance underwriting while being a federal judge. In my opinion, there was no violation of judicial ethics
(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Double standard?

KENNEDY: Well, absolutely not. On the one instance, Steve Breyer cleared himself from any potential conflict of interest. In the other case, Judge Alito basically...

The rest is Kennedy trying to change the subject.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute has updated information on the status of abortion law and attitudes across the nation (Hat tip: Give Up Blog) which suggests the following map of abortion restrictions in a theoretical post Roe world.

Read more

The Globe & Mail reports that Canada's department of Justice has recommended that polygamy be legalized

Canadians will soon know what the inside of Pandora's box looks like..

Captain's Quarters weighs in.

Would you like to understand what all the fuss is about as it concerns judicial activism? Consider the situation in Maryland where a Baltimore judge ruled that a law banning same sex marriage is unconstitutional.

Now I am not going to comment on whether that is true or not--its on appeal to the Maryland Supreme Court and they'll decide the issue and a lot of Maryland Democrats are praying that they decide it is constitutional.

What? Maryland Democrats want to ban gay marriage in Maryland?

Well yes. Maryland Crats are hardly monolithic on the issue--most would rather deal with gay civil rights than with expanding the definition of marriage. Republicans on the other hand are pretty much monolithic on the question

The issue of same-sex marriage arrived Friday like an unwelcome houseguest for many Maryland Democrats, who say only a quick reversal from the state's highest court can keep the divisive issue from reshaping the 2006 campaign season.

"That would end the debate, and we could get back to a normal campaign season," said Timothy Maloney, a lawyer and former Democratic state delegate. "If not, there are all kinds of possibilities for mischief. . . . The Republicans will use this to beat the hell out of moderate Democrats."

All that is pretty obvious, but then look at this statement.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said salvation for Democrats who feel hamstrung by the issue could come before Election Day if the Baltimore court ruling is quickly reversed on appeal, and he said he is "confident it will be overturned."

For that strategy to succeed, the high court would have to work fast.

M. Albert Figinski, a Baltimore lawyer, said most expedited reviews by the seven-member court take 85 days, meaning a ruling would come after the General Assembly adjourns April 10.

"But," he said, "the court has been known to accommodate swift hearings in cases that are of great public importance."

That in a nutshell is why Democrats voted along party lines to kill the Alito nomination--the court isolates the Crats from the fallout from their more controversial political alliances. No one even seriously disputes that gay marriage is a political non-starter which is why liberal judges will just have to establish that the right has always existed

Unfortunately, the Crats have been hoisted on their own petard--if the court rules "liberally", they are in a world of hurt

Excuse me while I shed some crocodile tears.

When I first saw the commercials for this sitcom, my first reaction was, "what the hell were they thinking about?"

If you don't know what I am talking about, and that is a distinct possibilty, the Book of Daniel was a TV show about a drug-addicted Episcopalian priest, his alcoholic wife and promiscuous, drug-dealing kids. Oh but the way, Dan talks to a hippie-dippy messiah version of Jesus Christ.

Evangelicals complained, and who could blame them, but ultimately no one watched it.

The show's creator and executive producer, Jack Kenny, has said his goal was to depict how "humour and grace" help a flawed man struggle with his faith and family.

Kenny is a moron. There are plenty of ways of depicting the humanity of Christians without insulting their beliefs, values and God. You know this would never have flow if the title character were an Iman, but then again, Kenny would be in hiding right now,sharing a bathroom with Salman Rushdie.

from The Wall Street Journal

Despite the cracks about gay cowboys on late-night TV and chin-stroking about whether it would play in Peoria, "Brokeback Mountain" is poised to be not just one of the most praised films of the 2005 Oscar class -- it will become one of the most profitable movies of the year, and a mainstream one at that.

Who'd have thunk it?

VBG

Somewhere in the confirmation of the Alito nomination, the State of the Union and various other major news events, they announced the Oscar nominations for this year.

"What all these films have in common is they're about the human condition," said Oscar-nominated "Crash" co-writer Bobby Moresco. "The pendulum has swung back to movies about politics. People want films that have something to say; they're tired of fluff."

Really?

Of the current crop of Oscar nominees, only Crash is clearly in the black. Brokeback Mountain is probably at even money now and will likely be in profit after the awards, although in objective terms it could only be considered to be a modest success. The rest are losers and some are major losers.

I recently explained film economics which explains why a film like Brokeback Mountain can have production cost of 14 million and only break even with 60 million in box office.

Notably, the more political the film, the worse it seems to do.

So how does the public really feel about fluff?

Fun with Dick and Jane has grossed 135 million

Big Momma's House 2 has made 30 million in its first weekend

King Kong 522 million

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (Narnia) 634 million

Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire 879 million

Chicken Little 251 million

Flightplan 197 million

Seems to me that people would really prefer to watch fluff (financial information from box office mojo)

Ed Driscoll:

And note that with his line that "It's been an amazing year, very much like 1968, '69 and '70", Steve is yet another member of the left stuck in the late sixties/1970s mobius loop. All the more ironic and disappointing, since it was he and George Lucas, 30 years ago, who did the most to break Hollywood's cycle of dark, not-very-profitable political films during that period.

Whatever is a new blog for me and I like it:

Numbers: At this moment, the three highest-grossing Best Picture nominees (Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Munich) have done less business in aggregate than the single Adam Sandler film The Longest Yard, and only barely edge out the terrible Superhero film Fantastic Four. All five combined made less than Madagascar -- or the 2000 Best Picture, Gladiator. The average domestic gross of the Best Picture films this year at the time of their nomination is $37.1 million; adjusted for inflation, I suspect strongly this is the lowest-grossing class of Best Picture nominees in the entire eight-decade history of the Academy Awards. Whichever film eventually wins is very likely to be the first Best Picture in a decade not to crack the $100 million mark -- the last Best Picture to fail that was The English Patient.

Just how uncommercial is this crop of nominees? Consider this: a nominee for Best Documentary -- March of the Penguins -- has made more money than any of the Best Picture nominees. I guarantee you that has never happened before, ever. When Hollywood's best films can't compete with chilled, aquatic birds, there's something going on.

The controversy over the cartoons published in a Danish newspaper is more than it appears.

The question we have to be asking ourselves is how a set of rather innocuous cartoons made their way to the middle east and where they got all those flags to burn...

Conspiracy theorist might consider this a devious psyop, but it is more likely a symptom of a volatile situation waiting for a spark. The tension between Islam and the west hasn't been this intense since the Crusades, and lots of different parties can find a reason to exploit the situation.

We saw something similar with the Koran-flushing story reaction.

So we understand the dynamic, but what do we do about it? Well, one school of thought suggests that we censor ourselves to avoid giving offense, but the same people who are passing out tinder, er--r-r I mean flags and reproducing the pictures to outrage Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere, don' t need to wait for a fine opportunity. Our own political environment makes it clear that no one actually has to do anything wrong, it just needs to be able to appear to be wrong in order to extract political advantage.

By the same token, we should understand that just as Americans are seldom fooled by the antics of politicians and their media accomplices, neither are Muslims mindless disciples--the demonstrations we are seeing on television are no different that the million-something marches that descend on Washington every year--sound and fury signifying nothing. They tell you that "some" people are upset, but nothing about the general mood of the country, or a people, or the members of a religious faith.

The bottom line is that the kindling is arranged well before the match is struck and that the best policy is one that clears the fire hazard rather than ban matches.

Lagomorphic Tendancies wonders when one of those exploitive parties is going to get into the game.

I wonder where all of this will go next, and I am terribly curious to see how the fascistic fundamentalism is going to play out in the sympathies of the left… So far the BBC is taking the position of how terrible it is for the evil, disrespectful Western cartoonists to offend the great religion of peace. Selective respect for the diversity of only one religion is a hard position to defend, so it will be rather amusing to sit back and watch them try to do it. I wonder if they actually think we don’t know that this has nothing to do with respect and everything to do with the fact that they are just plain scared to death of these people.

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Why? Because when the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon bemoans that, if only the execution order on Salmon Rushdie had been successful seven years ago, “this rabble… would not have dared,” the veil is lifted and Western nations must admit that they face terrorism rather than innocent piety.

Joe makes a good point--terrorism in large measure is a means to control speech as much as policy. Say the wrong thing in a totalitarian state and you disappear, which of course means that few people will dare to say the wrong thing. Historically we and the Islamofacists have demonstrated a clear pattern--they attack, we retreat, as a result they are emboldened and press their advantage. Would there have been a 9/11 without a Lebanon and Somalia? Success breeds success. If the western press caves on this, it will not be the end of it, but the beginning.

Unfortunately, some people don't get it.

I've been have a long-running, off-line debate with co-blogger Greg Prince about gay marriage, so this caught my attention.

Psychologist David Schnarch, author of "Passionate Couples: Love, Sex and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships" said "People still have preconceived notions and distortions about how love and marriage operate," and anything contrary to those preconceived notions "is hard to get across." A popular notion, for instance, is that people should marry their soul mate -- someone who is "so compatible, so similar that there's no cause for friction," he says. But too much similarity is a recipe for boredom. "Marriage is a people-growing machine," says Mr. Schnarch, who directs the Marriage and Family Health Center in Evergreen, Colo., with his wife, Ruth Morehouse. A real soul-mate marriage is one in which two people forge a relationship "as broad as their differences, rather than one as narrow as their similarities," he says.

Working on my 25th year of marriage (yeah, I got married as a baby...), I can attest to the truth of this. Marriage is less about romantic love, as stated by gay and lesbian activists, than it is about making a working relationship-emphasis on "working".....with an alien.

The transformative power of family life to make good citizens out of pirates and barbarians and bind us to the generations before us and after us is a unique institution.

The frictionless paradigm described by Schnarch as people "so compatible, so similar that there's no cause for friction" describe gay relationships to a 'T'. You can't get more compatible that two lads or two lasses with very near identical outlooks. The reality that so many of these relationships eventually dissolve only underscores Schnarch's assessment of eventual boredom. Notably, traditional marriages almost never break up because of boredom--boring is good in long-term marriages.

After my wife informed me that Crash had gotten the best-picture nod, I went to sleep with the thought, "there will be hell to pay..."

Brokeback wasn't just a movie, it was a cause. We were going to accept gay romantic leads whether we liked it or not (not too different from gay marriage). Dismal box office was spun to become "per screen revenues", and the fact that anyone at all saw the film in Utah was a sign of a cultural tidal wave (In spite of Utah Jazz-owner Larry Miller putting the kibosh on screening Brokeback in his theaters, the film did play in an art house theater in Salt Lake City...)

Ken Turan wrote in the LA Times:

I don't care how much trouble "Crash" had getting financing or getting people on board, the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.

For "Crash's" biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed.

So for people who were discomfited by "Brokeback Mountain" but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, "Crash" provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what "Brokeback" had to offer. And that's exactly what they did.

Brokeback wasn't manipulative and unrealistic? Well, perspective isn't what people were looking for on this movie--they wanted validation, manufacturered or not.

Its rather ironic to have Hollywood being accused of not being liberal enough. All the nominated movies were ciphers to the broad American public, masturbatory paeans to pet liberal causes that simply have no resonance with the American mainstream. Oddly enough, there might be some truth to the accusation as the tone of the Oscars seemed to communicate an awareness that Hollywood was too far out on the fringe. Jon Stewart got a chill from the Oscar audience for his self-deprecating humor (although out in TV land, we were cracking up...)

"I'm from New York and I've been here a week and a half. A lot of people say this town is too liberal. Out of touch with mainstream America. A modern day beachfront Sodom and Gomorrah. A black hole where innocence is obliterated. An endless orgy of sexual gratification and greed.

"I don't really have a joke here...and I just thought you should know a lot of people are saying that."

George Clooney went so far as to acknowledge that Hollywood is out on the fringe, but spun it as a good thing, citing the Oscar given the Hattie McDaniels for her role in Gone With the Wind (I just saw that again, and she deserved that Oscar hands down...) as Hollywood being ahead of its time. They guy has chutzpah, you've got to give him that.

Then there was that curious absence of Bush jokes. Every Oscars night since Bush was elected featured a healthy dose of Bush-bashing. Last night? Silence.

WIth all that in mind, its not outside the realm of possibility that there was a conscious choice to pull it back, to go with a safe choice. I mean everyone is against racism, right?

Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but I saw last night as Hollywood in sack cloth and ashes--even the fashions seems muted.

Jon Stewart was hired on to get "the kids" back into watching the show, but if Stewart has the pulse of the rising generation, Hollywood is in a lot of trouble. Unlike Billy Crystal whose reverence for old Hollywood produced a starry-eyed affection for the industry, Stewart refuses to worship at the altars of any sacred cows, and his audience reflects that view. They don't know who Jimmy Stewart was and they don't think George Clooney has a clue.

The kids will watch the movies, but the Academy Awards as a spectacle is headed for Miss America land...

Why wasn't the purchase of P&O by Dubai World and the subsequent takeover of port activities in six U.S. ports a mere "kerfuffle"?

This may have something to do with it.

A University of North Carolina graduate from Iran, accused of running down nine people on campus to avenge the treatment of Muslims, said at a hearing Monday that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar was accused of driving a sport-utility vehicle through the Pit, a popular campus gathering spot, injuring nine people Friday. None of the victims was seriously hurt.

University Police Chief Derek Poarch said Taheri-azar told investigators he intentionally hit people to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world." In a 911 call after the incident, Taheri-azar said he wanted to "punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world."

Every religion and even every political party has radical elements in it, but not many create a generalized impression of radicalism the way that Muslims do and increasingly Americans and perhaps others in the West are unable to make the distinction. The so-called "moderate Muslim" appears to most Americans to be mythological, a matter of faith rather than empirical evidence.

Cigar-smoking, suit-wearing and very charming Ambassador/Prince Bandar is the face of Saud in the U.S., but as the media constantly reminds us, the Arab princes are financing Madrassas, suicide-bombers and terror in Iraq while they sip brandy and make jokes with the Washington elite.

This two-faced reality has been used to great effect with the UAE as well, as some conservative talk-show hosts drive the point home that Dubai has been a financial cross-roads for terror, that they support Hamas and have privately said nice things about bin Laden.

At the end of the day, Americans tacitly believe that all Muslims are radicals and the one's that aren't are just hiding it until a more auspicious time comes around--sort of like Hillary Clinton's dormant liberalism.

This kind of baby-with-the-bathwater view of Muslims is highly problematic, but as much as we might like to have Americans make distinctions between radical and moderate Muslims, its really out of our hands and in the hands of the Muslims themselves.

The moderates would do well to shed the Leprechaun shyness because a backlash is coming and in fact will probably be welcomed by the radicals as a catalyst for true radical unity in Islam. They would do well to remember that the restraint shown in Afghanistan and Iraq by coalition military forces was due in large measure to the belief that if we could just rid ourselves of the bad apples, we'd have a whole different prospect. As people are coming to believe the whole bushel is bad, restraint won't be the order of the day.

Michael Kalin writes an interesting oped in the Boston Globe on why Jon Stewart isn't funny.

Actually, he concedes that Jon Stewart (whose real name is Liebnowiz, but he thought the name was "too Hollywood") is funny, but that the impact of his political humor is no laughing matter

Meet Joshua Goldberg, a fictional composite of the typical apostle of ''The Daily Show." Born in Newton, Goldberg attended Newton South High School where he played an integral role in securing the school's debate championship. His 3.8 grade point average and impressive array of extracurricular activities earned him a scholarship to Vassar, where he majored in political science and joined a Jewish fraternity. Throughout his formal education, Goldberg stayed up-to-date on national politics through nightly coverage on ''The Daily Show" and even led a petition to protest the genocide in Darfur.

Many of Stewart's die-hard supporters might use this persona as proof that ''The Daily Show" engages disillusioned viewers who otherwise could not be reached. This argument, however, fails to consider the ultimate career path of Josh Goldberg: Upon graduation in 2004, he accepted a prestigious job as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. Although he no longer follows Washington's daily political squabbles, Goldberg gives a significant annual contribution to the Democratic Party.

The tragedy of this portrait is not that investment banking corrupts young souls (although one could argue otherwise), but rather that the students who abandon politics out of a naive self-consciousness often represent our country's most idealistic minds. Stewart's daily dose of political parody characterized by asinine alliteration leads to a ''holier than art thou" attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ''The Daily Show" would never choose to enter the political fray full of ''buffoons and idiots." Content to remain perched atop their Olympian ivory towers, these bright leaders head straight for the private sector.

Kalin remarks that Stewart, "undermines any remaining earnestness that liberals in America might still possess"

I think he has a point, although I'm not sure it has the gravity that he endows it with. While I am apparently in the 2% conservative cohort that watch and enjoy the show, I simply can't see how Stewart's sacred cow abbatoir can have such a profound effect--particularly on people smart enough to "get it".

Stewart doesn't characterize politicians as idiots and buffoons, he simply highlights idiotic and buffoonish behavior. In my view, The Daily Show is the antidote to political clowning because it serves to disabuse politicians of the notion that their silly pandering actually works.

Have you watched a Nancy Pelosi press conference lately? This is a smart woman saying stupid things because she thinks the American public will eat it up. Jon Stewart is the straw poll on political posturing and the more popular he gets, the more politicians will have to pay attention, particularly Democrat politicians.

What will attract bright, young talent into politics is a change in the political culture, not the common liberal tactic of turning a blind eye to boorish behavior.

Crashing the Gate, by Jerome Armstrong (myDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (Kos of daily Kos fame...) is a prescription for liberal electoral success...in Narnia or some other imaginary land.

I say that not having read the book, which admittedly suggests a certain amount of hubris, but having been a long-time Kos reader, I was always struck by how completely other-worldly the Kos perspective was. I've mentioned several times over the years the utter delusion present on a daily basis at the Daily Kos leading up to the 2002 election. Kos has of course disclosed the views he presents in Crashing the Gate in numerous public forums as well as on-line which gave me some insight into what he would commit to print.

Someone who has read the book though is Josh Trevino, who writes a devastating review that confirms every expectation I had.

It's a deeply silly exegesis of the events in question -- any bets on how often Moulitsas found himself "silenced," pre-blog, in Berkeley? But it is revelatory for this: it reveals him as an archetype -- an American leftist who cannot understand why his party is in the minority, who grasps at resentful myths like the martyrdom of Max Cleland and the theft of Florida 2000, and who conjures up an imaginary quasi-fascist society in place of the actual America in which to set anecdotes of persecution. This man, and his friend, want to fix the Democratic Party. As a Republican, I can only urge that party to take them up on the offer.

Good prescriptions spring from good analyses. The analyses in Crashing the Gates veer wildly from insightful to awful.

It seems to me that good advice has to start with a firm grasp of reality and while lefty fantasies are great for creating a thriving on-line community, I wouldn't run an election campaign on them.

Worth reading.

A San Diego woman is suing her former employer for wrongful dismissal after allegedly being fired for being a moonbat.

In her Feb. 21 claim, Laroca asserts that on Oct. 8, three weeks after she started working for the marketing company, Fath called her on a Saturday and requested they meet at a nearby grocery store parking lot so Laroca could pass on some documents Fath needed.

During the brief encounter, Laroca charges, the manager pointed to the bumper sticker ---- the only one on Laroca's car ---- and remarked that it was a new sticker and called it "that Al Franken left-wing radical radio station."

Laroca alleges in her suit that Fath then told her, "The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Qaida."

A stunned Laroca laughed nervously at the statement, the suit alleges, and then was dealt "the final blow" when Fath fired her on the spot.

On the face of it, it appears to be a crummy thing to do, but unlike religion, race and sex, political affliation is not a protected right. My guess is that the employer was fully within her rights to fire her unless Laroca had an employment contract that precluded it.

I don't suppose too many moonbats are enterpreneurs, but business--any business, is about relationships and relationships depend significantly on perceptions. On more than one occasion I had to tell employees and subordinates that their appearance was inappropriate. I hated to do it, but the reality is that purple hair, obvious tattoos, sloppy or unorthodox dress is fine as a personal statement, but doesn't work when you're a representative of a company that people perceive or one wishes them to perceive as serious, disciplined and conservative.

An Air America sticker on a vehicled used to visit clients is definitely a bad idea and frankly so is a 'W' 2004 sticker. Its just better for everyone to separate their personal from their professional lives. Having said that, if it were me, I would simply have asked Laroca to remove the sticker.

H/T Radio Equalizer

Aretha Franklin is a hell of a singer. All hail the queen of soul.

Yet at a recent appearance she declared herself "proud" to be a large woman.

Proud?

The self-esteem movement has gotten way out of hand. While I don't believe one should necessarily be ashamed of being obese (reasons for it are far more complex than "gluttony"), there is no reason to be proud of it. Its not an accomplishment, and it will kill you. Before it does that though, it will destroy your quality of life.

I've known a number of people who have died young from complications of obesity--and those who die from heart disease are probably the lucky ones. The complications of Type II (adult onset) diabetes are horrifying and include blindness and circulatory problems that can make amputation necessary. The mother of a good friend passed recently while praying for death as relief from her suffering.

I wouldn't wish life like this on my worst enemy, much less on Aretha Franklin.