Sleeper cell

Rush Limbaugh "thinks" Hollywood liberals planted an evil reference to Mitt R-money back when production started on The Dark Knight Rises, what, two or three years ago:


Rushbo can make such an absurd claim, straight from his vivid but bullshit-filled imagination and in fact impossible, only because his listeners have no critical thinking skills whatsoever. They believe him simply because they want to believe some dark conspiracy of nefarious others acting for no plausible motive is keeping them down.

It's really depressing to contemplate the rank stupidity that passes for the American public conversation these days.

Whenever the history of this awful period in American history is finally written, either some Leni Reifenstahl in the fanatical wingnut media will write its triumph in glorious tones of fascism, or Rush will be identified as a far worse malefactor than Joe McCarthy ever tried to be. Historians will wonder how his ugliness went on so long without reducing his undeserved credibility.

Not cute any more

Click image for full Joe Heller/Green Bay Press-Gazette cartoon.

Facts just get in the way

For all teh people who think Jim Garrison was the spittin' image of Kevin Costner and a bunch of gay mafia Cubans assassinated JFK, it's always good to see mythic Hollywood extravaganzas get fact-checked, even a little tongue-in-cheek. The credulous are often the same folk who can't tell the mythic stories of the Bible from historical documents. No matter how many times you say Gilgamesh, they keep right on replying, "Never give up. Never surrender." And they believe "The Passion of the Christ" is history. Hey, it's in Aramaic!

It's amazing how well-represented Mel Gibson is in this panoply of bullshit, though it would be religiously incorrect to notice that "The Passion" is tendentious bullshit (not to mention a pornography of violence quite in keeping with Mel's secular work), and it is therefore omitted. Gives a whole new meaning to the line from "Notting Hill", "Mel does his own ass work. And why wouldn't he?" When it comes to gibsons, put your belief in Henry or in pearl onions steeped in gin.

I do have a hard time understanding how a movie released in 1968 can be held accountable for inaccurately predicting 2001. If "Back to the Future" showed the ridiculousness of Ronald Reagan's presidency from the eyes of 1955, even Ray Bradbury, who got closest with "A Sound of Thunder", couldn't have predicted the avalanche of decadence and stupidity that allowed Duhbya to take office in 2001.

It also cracks me up that sending a computer virus to alien spacecraft should be held up as an exemplar of authenticity. Probably just a Mac product placement and thus representative of the modern American commoditization, purchase, and sale of factoids as if they were true.

I have nothing against a good rollicking blockbuster myth. It's just that I can distinguish it from reality, and I wish more Americans could, too.

Appetite for Muzak

Repressive regimes one and all suppress music that they find arousing rather than sedating. The state mercantilists of the P.R.C. want all the dulcet sounds in their economic elevator to be nicey-nice. The once and future Soviets could never stand rock or jazz - too "decadent".

Conservatives and Constitutional "originalists" sometimes suggest that the freedom of speech ensconced in the First Amendment pertains only to political speech. Over and over again, authoritarians have shown that the edgy speech of artists (and charlatan pretenders, too) is something they rightly fear and is vital to human freedom, including political freedom. Protecting that is the essential job of the free speech clause.

American conservatives, like the communists before them, love to attack Hollywood. Their reasons are similar.