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Shorter Rudy: Platanos en Tentacion used to be my favorite starter, but since 9/11 it's Empanada de Queso all the way!
Anyone else yearn for the halcyon days when all a Republican thought they had to do to win Florida's Cuban vote was ineptly roll a few cigars and promise to make Castro their bitch?
EPIPHANY:
Sweeney Todd: No I had him!
His throat was there beneath my hand.
I had swear I had him!
His throat was there and now he'll never come again.
Mrs. Lovett: Easy now, hush love hush
I keep telling you -
Sweeney Todd: When? Why do I wait?
You told me to wait -
Now he'll never come again.
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And it's filled with people who are filled with shit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it.
But not for long...
They all deserve to die.
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.
Because in all of the whole human race
Mrs Lovett, there are two kinds of men and only two
There's the one they put in his proper place
And the one with his foot in the other one's face
Look at me, Mrs Lovett, look at you.
Now we all deserve to die
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett, tell you why.
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us death will be a relief
We all deserve to die.
And I'll never see Joanna
No I'll never hold my girl to me - finished!
(shouted) Alright! You sir, you sir, how about a shave?
Come and visit your good friend Sweeney.
You sir, you sir? Welcome to the grave.
I will have vengeance.
I will have salvation.
(shouted) Who sir, you sir?
No one in the chair, come on! Come on!
Sweeney's waiting. I want you bleeders.
You sir - anybody.
Gentlemen don't be shy!
Not one man, no, no ten men.
Not a hundred can assuage me -
I will have you!
And I will get him back even as he gloats
In the meantime I'll practice on dishonorable throats.
And my Lucy lies in ashes
And I'll never see my girl again.
But the work waits!
I'm alive at last!
And I'm full of joy!
Via Think Progress, where Amanda also details Rudy Giuliani's excuse-a-thon on this morning's edition of Club Stephanopoulos. Let me add, too, that Rudy has developed quite the appetite for the current President's "the buck stops everywhere else" mantra.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
Imagine if you will ...
China and the Soviet Union engage in biological warfare. The result is a plague that wipes out most of the world's population. The only survivors are Luddite-albino-religious cultists who are led by a zealot named Matthias --a former LA-based talking-head. They blame technology and smart people for the state of the world.
Hard-drinkin', hard-livin', lucky-enough-to-have-access-to-a-vaccine, soldier-scientist Neville also survives.
Neville spends his days tooling around LA, watching footage of Woodstock, shopping empty stores, reading the classics, drinking scotch and hunting down the infected albinos. The albinos, who call themselves The Family and only come out at night, hold bonfire prayer meetings and try to hunt down Neville because he's an "evil" scientist.
While shopping one day, Neville runs into another "normal" survivor named Lisa. Lisa is an African-American woman who lives in a mountain-top hippie commune with other "normal" survivors. Neville and Lisa get it on. Lisa somehow gets infected. Neville concocts a cocktail cure. Neville's lair is attacked by the albinos and in dramatic end-o-flick fashion ends up dying sorta like Jesus on the cross. A half-cured Lisa is gathered up by the hippie kids and heads off to the hills to start a new life without the plague or the Luddite albinos.
That's the short version of The Omega Man --the 1971 effort starring The Hest, and based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I am Legend. It's a classic science vs. fundies story. And it bears little resemblance to the currently released flick starring Will Smith.
In 2007, our story starts with a Hillary-type doo-gooder, know-it-all doctor who's found a cure for cancer. The Hillary-type doctor is played by Emma Thompson, who also played the shrill know-it-all Hillary-type character in the movie-version of Joe Klein's chicken-shit anonymously penned Primary Colors. Just so you can't avoid thinking of Hillary, the health care legislation know-it-all.
Like all good scientific discoveries that aren't really good for you, the cancer cure mutates into a plague that wipes out 99% of the population. In this version, the albinos are little more than blood-thirsty animals who've fed on the 1% that survived. Instead of Los Angeles, the new version is set at "Ground Zero" and Neville, our refusing-to-cut-and-run scientist-soldier vows to stay in New York City until he's found a cure for the horrible plague created by the door-gooder Hillary-type doctor.
In 2007, Neville is saved from the albinos by a religious Latina chick who was "told by God" to find him and flee to Vermont --where survivors have set up a walled, but picturesque, New England Village compound Plato would be proud of.
Instead of getting it on, they eat bacon, watch Shrek and discover a cure. After their hide-out is discovered by the plagued, Neville sacrifices himself to save the God-fearing Latina and her child companion by blowing himself and some of the albinos up ...in classic Terror Dream fashion.
I've left out a bunch of the details, but you get the picture.
Whenever this very silly person publishes a particularly silly, self-important screed that says something like ...
But remembrance without resistance to jihad and its enablers is a recipe for another 9/11. This is what fueled my first two books, on immigration enforcement and profiling. This is what fuels much of the work on this blog and at Hot Air.
[snip]
The 9/10 crowd stubbornly refuses to connect the dots to see any connection at all between 9/11 and the Iraq ...
...it always reminds me of this:
Profit provides a fundamental alternative to the predominant attitudes on fear-mongering, race-baiting and naked, un-checked Capitalism. It also offers a defense of the most reviled "get rich quick" paradigms created by venerables such as Don Lapre, Ron Popeil, and Carlton Sheets.
Thousands of loyal patriots have taken the words in Profit to heart. They have abandoned their soooooo 9/10 concepts of fairness and truth, learned to harness the power of fear, and made wads of cash in the process. Isn't a time you profited from Profit?
Damn, I was good.
First, check out Colbert as he opens a can of whoop-ass on Dinesh D'Souza.
D'Souza's NRO interview with K-LO indicates he's upset with "the Left’s uncontrolled fury toward [his] new book," The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. Let's see ... other than the title, why would the Left --whatever that is-- be upset?
...Our concern should be with the traditional Muslims, who are the majority in the Muslim world. These people are also religious and socially conservative, and they are our natural allies. In fact, since the cultural Left in America is de facto allied with the radical Muslims, we as conservatives have no choice but to ally with the traditional Muslims. We cannot win the war on terror without them. No matter how many Islamic radicals we kill, it’s no use if twice as many traditional Muslims join them. Now building bridges to this group doesn’t mean changing our way of life, and if we are conservative there is nothing that needs to be changed. Our values are quite similar to those of traditional Muslims...
Leaving crazy-ass Coulterisms aside ...Not since I was "discovered" by Horowitz's Discover-the-Network, have I read such a blatant example of this contemptable form of reckless guilt-by-association. And while D'Souza asserts his Neo values track more with traditional Muslims, I see shared values with hard-core fundamentalists:
...Muslims in Indonesia and Egypt and Pakistan don’t see “America,” they see the face of American popular culture that is projected by our television and movies and music. They see the dimension of America that in their view corrupts the innocence of children, and undermines the family, and promotes homosexuality as a normal way of life. In fact, this is the America of the cultural Left. What the Left considers “liberating,” much of the world considers a scandalous assault on modesty and decency...
A commenter at TBogg replies:
And oy, that age-old "art is sin" canard just won't die. I wonder, too, if he includes "dangerous" cartoon dipictions of Mohammed in that category. Maybe the real problem is that fugly Miami-Vice-if-it-were-filmed-in-Cleveland outfight you wore on national television Tuesday night, Dinesh. Hell, even K-Lo kinda sort gets that D'Souza is way off the charts.
A couple of years ago, I poured over selected bits of Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World and came to the unhappy conclusion that fundmentalist religiousity of every stripe would be the plague of the 21st Century. D'Souza and his ilk do nothing to counter that view.
[via]
I've been mostly ...well, amused is the wrong word... by the desperate political theater. But now my fucking blood is boiling.
So, I'm watching the mockumentary right now and thought I'd let you know that anti-feminist "feminist" Patricia Heaton plays Barbara Bodine --the former American ambassador to Yemen. O'Neill and other FBI agents encounter her while in-country to investigate the bombing of the USS Cole.
Of course she's nagging, ball-busting, bitch-on-wheels who throws up "unnecessary" obstacles like diplomatic relations, cultural sensitivity and the like for the sole purpose of ...oh, I just don't know.
The real Barbara Bodine offers her take on the mini-series here.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter announced,"It's the end of the age of irony" -- just one of many proclamations that augured a more somber cultural landscape.
The effect of 9/11 on pop culture is chief among the angles used to contextualize today's five-year anniversary. Interested readers may want to start with a visit to the Boston Globe website, where in addition to reading a package of stories on how the arts world has responded -- including theater, music and books -- you can listen to the newspaper's television, film and pop culture critics discuss the differences between television and movies' handling of 9/11 and its aftermath.
The Philadelphia Inquirer looks back at how quickly life returned to "normal" after 9/11 in an article titled, "A more serious country? Get serious." Case in point: Within six months of 9/11, "Fear Factor" aired the Playboy-centerfold edition.
"Those irony pronouncements were coming from people who profoundly misunderstood the nature of American popular culture," Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture and television at Syracuse University, tells the Inquirer. "No matter how horrific the event, to expect an entire culture to change in one day is like going on a diet and expecting to lose 100 pounds in one day. Cultures absorb events like 9/11. American culture is a powerful solvent."
(The article's author, Alfred Lubrano, also notes that while church attendance, charitable giving and volunteering may have increased after 9/11, the long-term effect was negligible.)
The Sunday Herald looks at how 9/11 changed the world in nine brief essays. In "The Impact on Popular Culture," Graeme Virtue reminds us of the swift, if confused, response. "Digital artists removed all traces of the Twin Towers from footage already shot for blockbuster Spider-Man, though director Sam Raimi inserted new dialogue hymning New York," he writes. "But as more people began chipping away at the subject, it ceased to be so terrifyingly big. The first mainstream 9/11 joke appeared in Anger Management, an Adam Sandler comedy released in 2003."
Over at the L.A. Times, Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher," reflects on post-9/11 humor, "Whenever there's a tragedy, comedians are presented with a dilemma: When is the right time to make jokes about it, and what kind of jokes can you make?" Back in the fall of 2001, comments that questioned the wisdom of President Bush or his administration were risky (for Maher, at least, whose previous show, "Politically Incorrect," was cancelled by ABC), but the atmosphere was more relaxed by the end of that year -- as evidenced by the return to Bush-is-dumb jokes.
I'll write more soon about fall television line-up, but this Baltimore Sun story deserves mention here for its analysis of the influence of 9/11 (along with new viewing technologies) on the new crop of complex, serialized dramas -- which critic David Zurawik calls "perfect vehicles for stories that grapple with the anxieties of a post-9/11 world." Television executives join in the analysis:
"Kidnapped is about a cataclysmic event just like the plane crash in Lost, or, in real life, the attacks of 9/11," says Vivi Zigler, executive vice president of current primetime series for NBC, which has four serialized dramas this fall."I do think 9/11 has changed things. As a nation, we watched 9/11 play out over time, and we went through mourning and denial communally. I do think there is a sentiment now in viewers - not all viewers, and I don't mean to generalize or stereotype - but I do think there is a greater interest in consuming programs that make you feel that they are based in realism. Serialized drama is more analogous to the way life works. Your life doesn't stop and everything is neatly resolved at the end of a day."
While Eisner's [Abe] Novick sees an "element of something dangerous" underlying the worldview of many of the new dramas, he also points out that a few grapple with society's interest, intensified by the events of 9/11, for a "certain kind of heroism" in which ordinary men and women manage to transcend a crisis. That, he says, is a direct attempt by network executives to air programs "that resonate with 9/11."
Looking back at series that have been audience and critical hits over the past few years, Matthew Gilbert, television critic for the Boston Globe, sees "Rescue Me," the series starring Denis Leary as an emotionally charged firefighter, as the perfect example of a post-9/11 interpretation of the chaos of daily life.
Since that Tuesday morning, TV has been crammed with "24"-like suspense series that play off terror cells, homeland security, and Muslim villains. But the New York-set drama evokes only how the attacks altered the ordinary American lives in the shadows of the towers that fell.It has a strong parallel in the 1946 movie "The Best Years of Our Lives," which captured the weight of World War II through the psychology of soldiers returning home, and not through battlefield or political action. On "Rescue Me," too, the battles aren't global; they're personal, spiritual, religious.
Viewers have complained that the series jumps too flippantly from black comedy to tragedy and back again. But the schizoid tone of "Rescue Me," which recently turned a funeral into a wedding, is a mark of its post-9/11 identity.
Pop critic Joanna Weiss credits "Lost" for accurately reflecting the post-9/11 mood:
Through "Lost," we get war-in-Iraq wish fulfillment: Sayid, the noblest survivor, fled the Republican Guard due to his conscience and flogs himself emotionally when he tortures someone. Through "Lost," we meet our enemies in the form of "Others," elusive and far more sophisticated than they look. They hide as sleeper agents, awaiting the moment to strike. They view the castaways as invaders.But what really makes "Lost" a post-9/11 parable is mood. This is a show about uncertainty and indecision, about learning that a beautiful world is actually full of threats. It's a paranoid fall from paradise.
Finally, "Did Jack Bauer replace James Bond?" That's the title of this commentary in the L.A. Times by Leo Braudy, which looks at film and television's interpretation of world events during the Cold War. By comparison, Baudy thinks there's an absence of "a more visible 9/11-spawned pop culture."
Certainly the majority of the new television shows cited above seem to be tackling personal anxiety instead of larger political threats (though viewers might look again to science fiction -- particularly the critically acclaimed "Battlestar Galactica" -- for more urgent storytelling).
Or maybe we're looking for the wrong story. A recent editorial in the Times (UK) Online notes:
Few serious writers or film-makers have not somehow incorporated their reactions to 9/11 in their work since then. But fewer still have tackled it head on, partly for fear of being seen to exploit victims grief or the pornographically violent stock of imagery produced by those murderous 100 minutes; and partly on the assumption that their audiences had already been fed a surfeit of news footage that needed little captioning [....][L]ike Pearl Harbor, 9/11 may prove less engrossing to creative minds than its aftermath. Hollywoods next Vietnam will not be the twin towers, but Iraq.
[Rove's] intending to line up 9/11 families to accuse McCain, Warner and Graham of delaying justice for the perpetrators of that atrocity, because they want to uphold the ancient judicial traditions of the U.S. military and abide by the Constitution. He will use the families as an argument for legalizing torture, setting up kangaroo courts for military prisoners, and giving war crime impunity for his own aides and cronies. This is his "Hail Mary" move for November; it's brutally exploitative of 9/11; it's pure partisanship; and it's designed to enable an untrammeled executive.