I Human Events Online
While flashy wingnut sites like WorldNetDaily, RenewAmerica, and Power Line seem to get most of the attention, today I want to pay tribute to HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE, which is just as wingnutty as the others, and which also possesses its own special charm.
So, here's just a sampler of the delights that HEO has to offer.
1. The Top 10 Movies Conservative College Students are Watching -- ("Ranked by the staff of the Leadership Institute’s Campus Leadership Program").
1. The Passion of the Christ
The testament of Christ, the basis of all Western thought and tradition, the most important moment in history.
ALL Western thought and tradition are based on the New Testament? Maybe the Campus Leadership Institute's staff should spend less time leading and more time going to class.
5. Death Wish
After his family is destroyed by thugs, Charles Bronson decides to teach criminals the lesson that the liberals can’t through courtrooms or mediation.
6. Red Dawn
Communists invade the heartland, and a band of boys take to the hills and start an insurgency against the invaders.
7. Dirty Harry
Much in the same vein as Death Wish, Clint Eastwood is a police officer doing what it takes to fight crime against the liberals who worry more about defendant rights than the victims.
8. The Outlaw Josey Wales
Clint Eastwood is a soldier who fights those who took everything he cared about.
Conservative college students are really into violent revenge fantasies (fantasies that the liberals won't make true), aren't they?
This makes me wonder if the #1 Conservative College Student movie of next year will be something like:
Death Wish 23: Jesus's Revenge
After he's crucified by thugs, Jesus resurrects himself and teaches the perps the lesson that the liberals can’t through courtrooms or mediation. Then he and chief apostle Dirty Harry take to the hills and start an insurgency against the Roman invaders.
Maybe Jack Abramoff could produce it.
2. Now here's Don Feder with The 10 Best Conservative Movies of 2005.
What is a conservative film?
Let’s start with what it isn’t. It’s not about men with bulging biceps and even bigger guns. It’s not cartoonish action heroes. It isn’t revenge tales masquerading as heroism.
Uh oh. I guess the conservative college students didn't get the word.
Conservative cinema does more than entertain; movies that do no more are visual candy. It instructs and inspires.
So, conservative cinema is didactic is purpose, and one attends a conservative film not to be entertained, but to become a better person. It's like church, only with popcorn.
Conservative films celebrate virtue. They tell timeless tales of individuals overcoming all manner of adversity to achieve true greatness. They’re about honesty, loyalty, courage and patriotism. They’re concerned with conservatism’s cardinal values – faith, family and freedom.
Um, okay, What are some of Don's picks for this year's timeless tales of adversity, faith, family, and no sex?
2. King Kong – [...] Superficially, it’s a fine action film. On a deeper level, its characters exemplify feminine virtue, masculine heroism and romantic love. The movie describes a hopeless romance and makes us care for its computer-generated title character.
I guess the Naomi Watts character exemplifies feminine virtue by letting men take care of her (and by not having sex with the giant ape). The guys who shoot at King Kong exemplify masculine heroism by trying to rescue a dame. And the relationship between Naomi and the monkey exemplifies romantic love, in that it ends badly for everyone.
3. The Island – Reviewers despised it. Audiences treated it as just another sci-fi flick. But “The Island” is a forceful and compelling pro-life statement.
The statement that cloning people, letting the clones grow up in ignorance in secret underground complexes, and then killing them and harvesting their organs isn't very nice. (Obviously, if this were a liberal movie, the good guys would be the wealthy politicians who own the clones, and have them carved up for their own benefit.)
10. Memoirs Of A Geisha – Surprised you, didn’t I? Reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the film -- based on the 1997 bestseller by Arthur Golden -- is not about prostitution in the Land of the Rising Sun.. (As the film explains, a geisha isn’t a hooker in a kimono, but an “artist of the floating world” – though there is a sexual element to this world.)
Hey, that's not what fellow conservative Debbie Schlussel said in her review of the film, which she entitled "Memoirs of a Whore in a Kimona."
The heroine, Sayuri, is sold as a child to a geisha house. Her choices – to become a menial and spend the rest of her life working off her contract to “mother,” or embrace her destiny. She chooses the latter only when the kindness of a handsome businessman makes her yearn for a way to enter his world. Sayuri is brave, determined and compassionate. It’s touching to see a child form an attachment that lasts a lifetime.
Touching, or kind of creepy? YOU make the call! (And wasn't that basically the plot of Gigi, except that the handsome older guy ended up marrying her instead of taking her as his "artist"? I wonder why Gigi didn't make the conservative college students top 10 list?)
[F]ocus on the story of a little girl who falls in love with a man, and endures much for the sake of that love.
Take your little girls to see it -- they might learn some tips on how to win the love of rich, old men ... and that's certainly one of conservatism's core values.
And that's Human Events Online On Film. A little later we'll explore what they have to say about other stuff.
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