WARNING: profanity. If you haven’t watched the series, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner:

Mad Men is a really interesting, addictive, and important show. It may well be one of the best shows on TV. But it is not the best show on TV.

That title goes to Breaking Bad, now that The Wire is over. Mad Men is too self-indulgent, too pleased with itself, too quick to get audiences to look for inside jokes, winks, nods, and allusions. It’s too ambitious and not grounded enough. It seeks to satisfy on too many levels and comes up not fully succeeding at any of them. It tries to make too many points. It is a modern allegory more reminiscent of Pilgrim’s Progress than its creators are willing to admit. Each character is a type. The show works because we haven’t seen many of these types portrayed so well, but their job too often  is to represent a Very Important Trend or stand-in for Something Important that is Lost (for good or ill).

Meanwhile, Breaking Bad is a better acted, better plotted (although this last season sagged a little bit in the shows before the final two) show with actual human beings. Morally it is much more compelling because it really only has one point: evil is a seductive cancer. I don’t know if the show’s writers would use the word evil, or describe their point that way at all. They might see it all as a grand allegory about drug use or addiction or some such. But that’s what it’s really about: The seductions of evil. Walter White (the main character) wanders from the straight and narrow for the best possible reasons, and he has become lost.   Don Draper is a handsome enigma. Walter White is a mensch at sea.

Agreed 100%. If you haven’t seen it, get it on DVD and enjoy.

Ross Douthat at the NYT agreed in June:

I had early doubts about “Mad Men,” but eventually I gave myself over to its charms, and after three excellent seasons I took it for granted that the saga of Don Draper was the best show on TV — the rightful heir, insofar as one could possibly exist, to “The Sopranos” and “The Wire.” But after working my way through AMC’s other drama, “Breaking Bad,” which had its season finale Sunday night, I find that I’ve changed my mind. And not only because “Breaking Bad” is brilliant — though it is, it is — but because its dramatic strengths expose some of the weaknesses of “Mad Men,” and puncture, ever-so-gently, the mystique that’s built up around Matthew Weiner’s show.

Karina Longworth of the Village Voice does not care for Oliver Stone’s latest.

So one-sided that it nearly validates what the Right says about Hollywood’s liberal crusaders, Oliver Stone’s essay/lecture/travelogue South of the Border is propaganda in the form of a home movie, documenting Stone’s summer vacation spent in the collegial company of the figureheads of various South American states.

About 10 minutes in, the iconic filmmaker appears onscreen for the first time alongsideHugo Chávez, the charismatic, controversial leader of Venezuela. This is not a sit-down interview; the filmmaker isn’t directing questions at Chávez, or apparently directing much of anything—they’re just hanging out. Afforded extraordinarily casual access to Chávez, Raúl Castro, the Kirchners of Argentina, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, and other heads of state, Stone generally allows his subjects to set the course of conversation, avoiding not only the tough questions about their records on human rights and allegations of corruption, but also pretty much any question that might get in the way of each leader’s sales pitch for his regime, or the notion of the U.S. as the big, bad man holding them down.

Stone and Chávez seem especially palsy-walsy: They kick around a soccer ball, kick it on Chávez’s private jet, and casually shoot the shit about how Chávez is a misunderstood man of the people, unfairly demonized by the media. Later, when it’s mentioned that Lugo owes money to the International Monetary Fund, Stone cracks, “Chávez will loan you that if I ask him.” His crush on Chávez is such that he avoids interrogating not only his politics, but also his demonstrated tendency to pitch those politics via a kind of over-the-top comic public theater.

And yet Stone raises the specter of media manipulation when it suits him, devoting a whole section of the film to sympathetically presenting Chávez’s argument that during the failed coup attempt of 2002, the Venezuelan media were so in the tank for his political opponents that they edited footage of rioting in the streets to make it look as if Chávez’s supporters instigated a fire fight. The construction of false realities for political gain is the subject of much of Stone’s own work—so why is he content to take each leader’s practiced-for-the-camera spiel at face value, never pushing for information or conducting interviews on any deeper level than a photo op? South of the Border’s subjects are masters at cooking bullshit, and Stone just eats it up.

We watched An Education yesterday and liked it a lot.

For those who’ve seen it, this account by the woman who lived the story is a good read.

Last night I saw Marlene Dietrich in “Witness for the Prosecution” and like, other times, thought, what a terrible actress. But she held great appeal for millions. Go figure

Here she is in 1930.

Seeing that makes Madeline Kahn’s sendup of her in “Blazing Saddles” all the funnier.

Hollywood wants more natural looking women.

IT took years for Hollywood to create the perfect woman. Now it wants the old one back.

In small but significant numbers, filmmakers and casting executives are beginning to re-examine Hollywood’s attitude toward breast implants, Botox, collagen-injected lips and all manner of plastic surgery.

Television executives at Fox Broadcasting, for example, say they have begun recruiting more natural looking actors from Australia and Britain because the amply endowed, freakishly young-looking crowd that shows up for auditions in Los Angeles suffers from too much sameness.

“I think everyone either looks like a drag queen or a stripper,” said Marcia Shulman, who oversees casting for Fox’s scripted shows.

Independent casting directors like Mindy Marin, who worked on the Jason Reitman film “Up in the Air,” are urging talent agents to discourage clients from having surgery, particularly older celebrities who, she contends, are losing jobs because their skin is either too taut or swollen with filler. Said Ms. Marin: “What I want to see is real.”

Even extras get the once-over. Sande Alessi, who helped cast the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, said she offers to photograph actresses in their bathing suits, telling them they can keep the photo for their audition books.

Professional courtesy? Not exactly. Moviemakers prefer actresses with natural breasts for costume dramas and period films. So much so that when the Walt Disney Company recently advertised for extras for the new “Pirates” film, the casting call specified that only women with real breasts need apply. By taking a photograph, Ms. Alessi said, “we don’t have to ask, we will know.”

The move toward “less is more” is being propelled by a series of colliding social and technological trends, more than a dozen film and television professionals said.

Cosmetic enhancements remain popular, with 10 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in the United States in 2009, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. At the same time, the spread of high-definition television — as well as a curious public’s trained eye — has made it easier to spot a celebrity’s badly stitched hairline or botched eyelid lift.

Men, of course, are not immune to the youthful lure of a surgeon’s scalpel. But it is women, to the surprise of no one, who are being scrutinized most closely.

Rhetorical question, that. But we should all be disturbed that a Muslim organization make an implied death threat and get a cartoon censored.

An episode of “South Park” that continued a story line involving the Prophet Muhammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central with audio bleeps and image blocks reading “CENSORED” after a Muslim group warned the show’s creators that they could face violence for depicting that holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh” for an episode shown last week in which a character said to be the Prophet Muhammad was seen wearing a bear costume. Mr. Van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam in 2004 after making a film that discussed the abuse of Muslim women in some Islamic societies.

The new episode of “South Park” on Wednesday night tried to revisit this character, but with the name and depiction of the character blocked out. It was unclear how much of the bleeping was Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker’s decision. In a message posted on their Web site, SouthParkStudios.com, they wrote that they could not immediately stream the new episode on the site because:

After we delivered the show, and prior to broadcast, Comedy Central placed numerous additional audio bleeps throughout the episode. We do not have network approval to stream our original version of the show.

On Thursday morning, a spokesman for Comedy Central confirmed that the network had added more bleeps to the episode than were in the cut delivered by South Park Studios, and that it was not giving permission for the episode to run on the studio’s Web site.

On Thursday afternoon, Trey Parker and Matt Stone released the following statement:

“In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.”

Alas, acting talent is no substitute for common sense.

Sean Penn has defended Hugo Chávez as a model democrat and said those who call him a dictator should be jailed.

If Penn thinks someone should be jailed for having the “wrong” opinion, how could Penn ever identify a true democrat? Or dictator?

The Oscar-winning actor and political activist accused the US media of smearing Venezuela’s socialist president and called for journalists to be punished.

“Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.”

Inside every ardent leftist beats the heart of a dictator.

Penn, who has visited Chávez in Caracas, said Venezuela’s poor majority had willingly embraced his leftist revolution, but that this view was concealed from Americans.

“We are hypnotised by the media. Who do you know here who’s gone through 14 of the most transparent elections on the globe, and has been elected democratically, as Hugo Chávez?”

Hugo was named Dictator of the Month in 2005, and he’s only gotten worse.

Another example of an actor who should be screened and not heard. Victor Davis Hanson:

Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.

“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”

Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers.  All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well,  an ignoramus.

Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:

1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.

2) How would Hanks explain the brutal Pacific wars between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos, and Japanese and Pacific Islanders, in which not hundreds of thousands perished, but many millions? In each of these theaters, the United States was allied with Asians against an Asian Japan, whose racially-hyped “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” aimed at freeing supposedly kindred Asians from European and white imperialism, flopped at its inauguration (primarily because of high-handed Japanese feelings of superiority and entitlement, which, in their emphasis on racial purity, were antithetical to the allied democracies, but quite in tune with kindred Axis power, Nazi Germany.)

Christian Toto in Pajamas Media:

The late Howard Zinn would be very proud of his protégé, Matt Damon.

The actor has long admired the lefty historian, a man whose anti-American impulses were so profound he could cast the United States’ participation in World War II and its aftermath in an unflattering light.

Damon’s latest film, Green Zone, rewrites history regarding the Iraq War in a way Zinn’s acolytes will cheer.

Never mind the facts. Green Zone keeps the “Bush lied, people died” narrative front and center while creating an alternative reality as warped as that of Inglourious Basterds.

But at least Quentin Tarantino fashioned his film so Jewish people could extract much deserved revenge against their Nazi captors — at least on film. Green Zone exist as liberal wish fulfillment writ large.

It also arrives at an inopportune moment considering the liberal magazine Newsweek’s recent cover story declaring victory in Iraq.

Green Zone is set at the start of the Iraq War, a chaotic time in which U.S.-led forces are swarming the Middle Eastern country following the collapse of its army.

Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) is leading the charge on a site known to house WMD (weapons of mass destruction). A lone sniper protects the building, but Miller and co. eventually fight their way past him.

It’s a tough, taut scene, one director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum)  could shoot in his sleep.

But they find nothing there, just an empty warehouse. It’s the third time a suspected WMD site has come up dry, and Miller wants answers. Now.

So do we. The moment reminds us of the frustration felt when each new news report told us those elusive weapons weren’t there. Even neoconservatives can relate, and feel echoes of a rising anger.

Miller finds a soul mate in CIA station chief Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a man who can see Iraq, the WMD hunt, and everything else about the region with perfect hindsight. The character, like several in the film, speaks as if his dialogue were written yesterday, not in the context of events occurring in 2003.

Together, they uncover the real story regarding the administration’s lies about WMD to coax the country into war.

Why? We’re not told. And, much more importantly, the false narrative flies in the face of how many countries’ intelligence services also supported the WMD claim, as did the Clinton administration and numerous Democratic senators.

And why would Bush lie about WMD knowing that he’d soon be found out?

I saw The Hurt Locker a couple week ago and kept wondering, “Where is this unit’s commanding officer?”

Now, with the Oscars upon us, some Iraq vets are speaking out.

…the anger about “Hurt Locker” stems not so much from such small inaccuracies — for example, the uniforms the soldiers wear in the film weren’t available until well after the time the story took place — but rather from the depiction of the main character, Sgt. 1st Class William James.

Portrayed by Jeremy Renner, who’s nominated for Best Actor, James is a daredevil who in one scene takes off his protective armor while disarming a bomb because, as he says, “If I’m going to die, I’m going to be comfortable.” He runs alone through the streets of Baghdad with his sweat shirt hood up like a gangster. Later, he takes two soldiers hunting for insurgents in Baghdad’s back alleys without any backup.

James’s fellow soldiers are, or try to be, by-the-book professionals. They call James “rowdy” and “reckless,” and one worries out loud that his leader’s crazy antics are “going to get me killed.” James is as much cowboy as soldier, and vets fear he could become an iconic figure in the American imagination should the movie win a bunch of statues.

“Films, almost more than anything, will be the way Americans understand our war,” Rieckhoff said. “So we feel that there is a responsibility for filmmakers to portray our war accurately. We see ourselves as watchdogs. . . . When he puts a hood on like Eminem and starts roving outside the wire, it’s ridiculous.”

Gallucci, a former sergeant who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, says he kept hoping James would get “blown up throughout the entire movie. I wanted to see his poor teammates get another team leader, who was actually concerned about their safety.”

Meanwhile, the LA Times:

Some soldiers and veterans say the movie, a favorite for the best picture Oscar, portrays them as renegades and doesn’t depict combat accurately. But film critics have praised its authenticity.

Yep, film critics are experts on military matters.

A demo real from Stargate Studios. HT: Maggie’s Farm.

…are a way of life in Hollywood, which makes this story so amusing.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is considering action against a producer of “The Hurt Locker” who sent multiple e-mails urging academy members to vote for his movie in the Oscar best-picture race and “not a $500 million film” — an obvious reference to close-competitor “Avatar.”

The e-mails by Nicolas Chartier, one of four nominated producers for “The Hurt Locker” and who put up the financing to make the front-running film, violated the academy’s rule against sending mailings that “attempt to promote any film or achievement by casting a negative light on a competing film or achievement,” according to academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger.

Making a hit movie is a tough business, even for ChiComs.

It was supposed to be the patriotic holiday hit. “Confucius,” the government-backed bio-epic about the ancient philosopher, was tailor-made to stir national pride over Chinese New Year.

What they got instead was China’s answer to “Ishtar” — a box-office dud with the misfortune of having to compete against the Hollywood blockbuster “Avatar.”

“Confucius says: flop” read a headline in the Shanghai Daily.

Even a historian who was invited to the film’s prescreening to offer the project a shot of credibility gave the thumbs down, saying the movie was riddled with inaccuracies.

“It’s been, in a sense, a loss of face,” said Stan Rosen, a Chinese film expert at USC. “It really backfired.”

And they really ticked off the Chinese masses by pulling Avatar from some theaters to make room.

” ‘Confucius’ is not fashionable,” said Yang Jia, a 22-year-old college student inside a Beijing cinema where “Avatar” was selling out. “I’m just not interested in historical movies.”

“Confucius” may never have been expected to compete with the Hollywood hit had it not been for a controversial move by film regulators. Days before the Jan. 22 opening of “Confucius,” 2-D versions of “Avatar” were pulled from theaters to clear the way for the domestic release.

That set off a media backlash in print and online, pitting “Confucius” against a global sensation that had already become China’s top grossing film of all time.

Wu Renchi, a movie blogger based in Shanghai, called for a boycott of “Confucius” to protest what he said was state manipulation of the film industry.

“They took the rights of moviegoers away,” said Yu, whose site has attracted nearly 800,000 hits and many “Avatar” fans. “It’s just an excuse to protect domestic films.”

Chinese have few civil rights at all. Strange what upsets people.

As much as liberals, particularly the urban upscale variety, proclaim their solidarity with the middle class, at heart they regard it with disdain and pity.

Consider Neal Gabler’s LAT’s essay on the excellent NBC drama, Friday Night Lights. First, Gabler indulges in hyperbole:

…at a time when NBC is being vilified, here is one thing it has done right. Despite paltry ratings, it has continued to support what may be the best dramatic series in the history of television. That’s right: history.

Umm, did Gabler not see The Wire? The Singing Detective?

But never mind — the show is excellent. Set in a fictionalized version of Odessa, Texas, it follows various characters as they make their way through life.

High school football is a key source of entertainment in those parts, much as basketball is in Indiana (see Hoosiers).

Or, as Gabler puts it:

The provenance of “Friday Night Lights” is H.G. Bissinger’s now-classic 1990 book of the same name that followed a year in the life of Odessa, Texas, and of the oil town’s perennially superb high school football team, the Permian Panthers. Bissinger’s Odessa was desolate – physically and spiritually parched.

It was racked by boom-and-bust oil cycles, by bigotry and racial division, by misplaced educational priorities and by a general sense of doom. What it had was the Permian Panthers to fill its existential void as they filled its 20,000-seat stadium on Friday nights during football season. As Bissinger quotes one booster, “Life really wouldn’t be worth living if you didn’t have a high school team to support.”

One wonders if the booster wasn’t just enjoying a bit of hyperbole at the author’s expense. After all, how do folks get by the other two-thirds of the year when there’s no football to distract them from their purported misery?

Do suicides spike after the playoffs?

Back to Gabler:

Friday Night Lights” may owe as much to Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film “The Last Picture Show” as to Bissinger’s book. Everyone in Dillon seems to realize, even if only subconsciously, that those football highs are temporary and that the miasma of Dillon may be permanent. Everyone seems to realize that the very best of life may be those four years playing Panthers football with a crack at the state championship, and that everything after that is anticlimactic. And everyone seems to realize that the dreams they harbor are likely to be unfulfilled.

Texas is a big place with a lot of “Dillons” but only one can be state champion. Does the rest of the state stumble about in gloom? Judging by the health of the Texas economy, I’d say no.

Hope comes hard. Like the town in which they live, nearly all of the characters are thwarted: Jason Street, the all-state quarterback headed to Notre Dame, breaks his neck on the first show; his replacement, sophomore Matt Saracen, is tentative about football and most other things; Street’s best friend, fullback Tim Riggins, is a handsome and bighearted but promiscuous lout with no ambition; Riggins’ former girlfriend, Tyra Collette, coasts through life trying to shake her bad-girl reputation; Street’s girlfriend, town beauty Lyla Garrity, has her life derailed by his injury; Smash Williams, the star running back, wrestles with whether he has the size to succeed at college football, his only ticket out of Dillon.

To Gabler, small towns are only for escaping. He cannot imagine that millions of small town people actually enjoy fulfilling lives: raising kids, loving each other, going to the movies, going fishing, and yes, watching/playing sports.

If life cannot be good in Dillon, where is the hope? The suburbs? Oh, heck no — the suburbs are routinely mocked by the elite left.

That leaves the urban areas where the have-nots live as sullen, often criminal wards of the state while the haves go to out to sushi restaurants, gallery openings and (oops!) therapists. Oh, the miasma!

Who, then, can be happy in Gabler’s world? Boring and stifling as he may find small town America, the people living here are filthy rich by global standards.

My hunch is that the left projects its own unhappiness on others. They’re miserable, so everyone else must feel that way, too. If you think you’re happy, you must be too dumb to know otherwise.

Pity locally, pity globally.

by Burt Prelutsky

The other day I was asked if I thought I would ever come face to face with writer’s block.  I had to laugh.  Inasmuch as I generally write about things that annoy, frustrate or just plain drive me nuts, running out of material or losing the impulse to complain in print are among the very least of my worries.

When you factor in that Barack Obama is my president, Joe Biden is my vice-president, Nancy Pelosi is next in line, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are my senators, Brad Sherman is my congressman, Antonio Villaraigosa is my mayor and Jerry Brown is lurking in the wings to be my governor, do you really think I’ll be turning my pen into a plowshare anytime soon?

            But at least now you might have a better handle on why I look back so fondly on what I have come to regard as the good old days when an American’s major complaint was that he had taxation without representation.

On top of everything else, I live in Los Angeles and have spent most of my adult life laboring in Hollywood, a place that some people regard as less an actual location than a state of mind.  I agree it is a state of mind in the same sense that paranoia and schizophrenia are states of mind.

After working in the field of entertainment for about 40 years, I swear to you that there are a fair number of normal, decent human beings who work in the industry.  But truth compels me to say that the lower you go in the pecking order, the likelier you are to find them.  That’s not to say that every producer, actor, director and writer, is an arrogant, leftwing, coke-snorting, bottom-feeding egomaniac, but that’s certainly the way to bet.

Sometimes, when I’m daydreaming about what Hell must be like, I envision a place where every day you wake up and have to go work for someone like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, nasty sourpusses who think that their every whim should be immediately pandered to and who regard themselves as God, but with a bigger expense account, a larger staff and a better pension plan.

In short, Pelosi, Frank and Reid and their congressional cronies, could find true happiness working at a TV network, a movie studio or a theatrical agency.  Perhaps you think I’m making this up, but I’m not.  Liberal politicians are doing their best to shove Obamacare down our throats, pretending it’s manna from Heaven, but you may have noticed that they haven’t the slightest intention of leaving their own medical care up to a lottery system.  And can you really blame them?  Do you think Pelosi wants a bunch of strangers deciding if she can get another dozen face lifts?  You think Robert Byrd wants to leave it up to a death panel to determine if it’s time to put the old Ku Kluxer on an ice floe?

You could call them hypocrites, but I call them Hollywood hopefuls.  They’d fit right in.  This is the town, after all, where people are still whining over the fact that a handful of mediocre actors and hack writers were blacklisted 60 years ago because they were, for the most part, unrepentant Communists whose allegiance was to the evil Soviet Union.  But these same people think nothing of blacklisting writers and directors who have done nothing worse than made the fatal mistake of turning 50.

Many years ago, radio wit Fred Allen observed that “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, stick it in the navel of a flea, and still have room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent’s heart.”  I say he was being too kind.  Although I regard myself as basically a loyal person, I’ve had about two dozen agents in my life.  What’s more, in what was a moderately successful TV writing career, by getting my own jobs, I made money for all of them, except the last one.  Which was just as well because she’s the one who went to the slammer for stealing her clients’ money.

The reason, by the way, I kept leaving agents wasn’t simply because none of them ever earned his or her 10%, but because eventually they all lied to me about what they would do for me or, worse yet, what they had already done.

In my experience, agents are people who like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them.  Those are the male agents, of course.  Female agents, on the other hand, like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them.

In other words, if a genie somehow managed to switch everyone in Hollywood with everyone in Congress, you would barely notice it.  In fact, aside from the fact that the paparazzi would all have to pack up and move east and that “Henry Waxman: The Musical!” would finally be green-lighted at Universal, life would go on as usual.

by Burt Prelutsky

A lot of people seemed shocked to discover that the folks at the National Endowment of the Arts were so ready, even anxious, to devote their talents to propagandizing on behalf of Obama and his administration.  That merely proves that a lot of people haven’t been paying attention.

It’s my guess that a majority of those involved with the NEA — even those few who are talented — are always eager to roll over for left-wing politicians.  Partly it’s because they are so hungry for attention and partly because they lack anything resembling a moral compass.

Allow me to give you a few notable examples of the way that people who earn their living in the areas of art and entertainment can voluntarily blind themselves to those matters that have moral implications.  Just recently, we got to watch a swarm of Hollywood retards climbing all over themselves in a rush to defend Roman Polanski, a piece of Euro-trash who confessed to having drugged and raped a 13-year-old child.  All sorts of big name, small brain, celebrities lined up to sign petitions on his behalf.  By attesting to his character, they merely confirmed that they lacked any themselves.

Hollywood is the place where the members of the Motion Picture Academy were once so angry at producer Jack Warner for casting Audrey Hepburn, instead of Julie Andrews, in “My Fair Lady, that they refused to even nominate Ms. Hepburn for her terrific performance as Eliza Doolittle.  However, proving, as usual, that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote even when politics aren’t involved, these lunkheads then gave the 1964 Oscar for Best Picture to “My Fair Lady,” which enabled the very same Jack Warner to stride onstage to thunderous applause.

Then there was the matter of Cliff Robertson and David Begelman.  When Robertson, an Oscar-winning actor, discovered that Begelman, the head of Columbia Pictures, had forged his signature on a $10,000 check, he blew the whistle.  After a police investigation, it turned out that Begelman had been financing his gambling habit with a lot of other people’s money, including Judy Garland, whom he had blackmailed.  The upshot was that Robertson had his acting career short-circuited, whereas Begelman, who was only sentenced to community service, was then hired to run MGM.

Shortly after the scandal occurred, I happened to be having lunch with my agent in a restaurant loaded with Hollywood types.  When Begelman entered, there was such a flurry of people competing for his attention, you could have mistaken them for a covey of cardinals vying to smooch the pope’s ring.

It’s not just actors, directors and producers, who act like dopes.  Consider writer Norman Mailer.  Perhaps because he was the fellow who once tried to settle a domestic dispute by stabbing the second of his six wives, Jack Abbott, who was serving time for bank robbery and murder, decided he’d be the ideal pen pal.  Mailer became so enamored of Abbott’s writing, he not only used his considerable influence to get Abbott’s book, “In the Belly of the Beast,” published, but got this career criminal paroled.  In New York, quite naturally, Abbott became the toast of the literati crowd, but only for a little while because six weeks after his release, Abbott stabbed 22-year-old Richard Adan to death.

Saving the best for last brings us to Leni Riefenstahl.  In Berlin, in the 30s, as in Hollywood at any time, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew, and Leni was a chum of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda.  Think of him as the head of Germany’s NEA.  It was Herr Goebbels who helped get her the opportunity to make “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia,” a couple of over-wrought “documentaries” dedicated to hyping the Third Reich.

After the end of World War II and for the remaining half of her 101 years, American and European cineastes — the same twerps who do cartwheels over Michael Moore’s propaganda flicks — showered her with honors and acclaim.  This in spite of the fact that although she claimed she wasn’t a Nazi and would barely have recognized Hitler if she’d tripped over him, had said, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived.  He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.”  Sort of sounds like Chris Matthews going on about Obama or Oliver Stone mooning over Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, doesn’t it?

In 1993, Riefenstahl had the gall to deny that she deliberately attempted to create pro-Nazi propaganda.  For good measure, she claimed she was disgusted that “Triumph of the Will” was used in such a way.  It was reminiscent of Captain Renault’s shock upon discovering that gambling was taking place in the backroom at Rick’s, all the while pocketing his winnings.

Having seen her most famous films, I can assure you that unless you cut the movies up into a million little slivers of celluloid and used them for toothpicks, there was no other conceivable use for them except as Nazi propaganda.

Moreover, in 1934, Riefenstahl said that “Mein Kampf” had made a tremendous impression on her. “I became a confirmed National Socialist after reading the very first page.  I felt a man who could write such a book should undoubtedly lead Germany.  I felt very happy that such a man had come.”

She was so impressed with the book that she wrote the author a fan letter.  The letter led to a meeting.  The meeting led to her directing “Victory of Faith,” a movie about the fifth Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg.  So much for her claim that she really only knew Hitler from his photos.

In fact, for someone who spent so many years churning out propaganda films, she was rather inept when it came to lying.  For instance, on one occasion she claimed that she was totally unaware that concentration camps even existed, while another time she swore that she only worked for the Nazis because Goebbels had threatened to send her to a concentration camp if she didn’t cooperate.

Frankly, what confounds me is why she wasted even a single second lying about her past.  I mean, even if she had been good at it, why bother?  After all, sensible and moral people never believed her self-serving malarkey; and, as for the celebrity crowd, they simply didn’t care.  They never do.

Oh, when will those reactionary liberals acknowledge that America in 2009 is not America in 1959? Probably never.

In the blink of an eye, late-night TV is shifting from a white men’s club to the start of a rainbow coalition.

Wanda Sykes’ weekly Fox comedy show debuts 11 p.m. EST Saturday, followed by George Lopez’s four-night-a-week talk show on TBS, starting 11 p.m. EST Monday. They join “The Mo’Nique Show” on BET.

Lopez is counting on an audience hungry for something different — as in the first Hispanic to host a nighttime talk show on a major network, cable or broadcast.

Sykes is the first black late-night host since the late 1990s, when celebrities Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Keenan Ivory Wayans tried and failed to follow in Arsenio Hall’s successful 1989-94 footsteps.

Wha?! You mean there have been black talk show hosts before? 20 years ago even?

Who knew? I wonder, are there any popular black actors? Singers maybe?

…has made the poor, pitiful pedophile depressed.

Awwww.

We saw Lymelife last night — another film where life in the suburbs is marked by great unhappiness.

It’s a good movie, well written and well acted. The production values are cheap, but they suit the material.

But the film is set in the 1970’s and the filmmakers have one of the brothers join the Army so we can see the mother fret about her son getting killed in the Falklands War.

Apparently, the filmmakers didn’t know that the Falklands War took place in the 1982 and it wasn’t an American war, but between the Brits and Argentina.

I suppose one war fits all.

At least they didn’t have him going off to the Crimean War to fight alongside Montezuma over control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Roman Polanski agreed to pay the victim in his child-sex case at least $500,000 as part of a civil settlement, but then failed to live up to the terms of the agreement, according to court filings reviewed Friday.

The documents leave open the question of whether the fugitive filmmaker has ever paid the money he promised in the confidential 1993 settlement with Samantha Geimer, but a change in her approach to Polanski in subsequent years suggests they may have resolved the issue.

In 1996, she was still trying to get the funds and even attempted to garnish his pay from movie studios. By the following year, she had stopped asking for court help to get paid and wrote a letter to a judge in support of Polanski returning to the United States and settling his criminal case without spending more time behind bars.

In an interview, Weinstein said that people generally misunderstand what happened to Polanski at sentencing. He’s not convinced public opinion is running against the filmmaker and dismisses the categorization of Hollywood as amoral.

“Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion,” Weinstein said. “We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe.”

Yep, and you ordered the US Naval carrier group to save tsunami victims lives, too.

Hollywood is an intense place with many unhappy careerists shafting each other. As the joke goes, in “Hollywood your friends are the ones who stab you in the front.”

Weinstein, by the way, has quite a rep.

Harvey Weinstein… just lost big time in a bet with Deadline Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke. Weinstein reportedly told “Page Six” that he would give $1 million to charity if Finke could produce proof of an e-mail she had quoted from Rudin, which alleged that Weinstein had harassed the late Sydney Pollack about moving up the film’s release date.

As it turns out, she could produce proof, and has since posted a screenshot of the e-mail. Though Rudin initially told “Page Six” that Finke was lying, he has since admitted that he was lying to the New York Post (follow that?) in order to preserve some semblance of peace in his working relationship with the Weinstein Company. Ordinarily this would be good news in the world of philanthropy, but given Weinstein’s shaky financial situation, it looks like the odds favor the mogul welshing on this particular bet.

Because so many in the “arts community” think that Roman Polanski should be allowed to rape children without consequence because he’s a great artist, it only follows that greater artists deserve even greater felony freedom.

So, based on box office results, here is our list:

• Steven Spielberg, with $3.4 billion in ticket sales, can destroy a small village including its inhabitants and go free. If he does so while filming, all the better.
• Robert Zemeckis, with $1.8 billion, can commit one murder with special circumstances.
• George Lucas, with $1.7 billion, can commit one vanilla homicide. (Some consider his later Star Wars films a crime, but no matter.)
• Ron Howard, at $1.6 billion, can fleece thousands of people in a Ponzi scheme without fear of prosecution
• And let’s not forget writers: J.K. Rowling is certainly entitled to at least one freebie felony as are Stephen King, James Patterson, Tom Clancy and Danielle Steele.

If you are a pedophile priest, then regardless of how long ago you abused a child, the law will pursue you to the end, and don’t expect Woody Allen or Harvey Weinstein to justify your sins.

In fact, Hollywood will use your crime to tarnish religion in general, so both you and your institution will feel the sting of righteous justice.

…because, after all, they are so beautiful and so talented and so, so essential. Here is the text of the petition to free Polanski.

Petition for Roman Polanski

We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski’s arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Morals? What a trifile!

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

“Inadmissable?” This sounds like Kingfish trying to talk important. I think the word they wanted was “unthinkable.”

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

Why, it’s like making an arrest in a cathedral!

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no-one can know the effects.

Simple solution: filmmakers should not commit felonies then go on the lam.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking – want him to know that he has their support and friendship.

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.

Here is what Polanski said about the rape in 1979.

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

The New York Times editorial:

“Judicial lynching,” said Jack Lang, the former French culture minister. “Absolutely horrifying,” echoed the current French culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand. “Provocation!” shouted Andrzej Wajda and other Polish filmmakers. From across Europe, nearly 100 representatives of the entertainment industry, including Pedro Almodóvar and Wim Wenders, signed a petition declaring themselves “dismayed” by the arrest, especially since it happened at the time of the Zurich Film Festival.

But hold on a moment. After being indicted in 1977, didn’t Mr. Polanski, now 76, confess to having sex with a 13-year-old girl after plying her with Quaaludes and Champagne? Didn’t he flee the United States when the plea bargaining seemed to fall apart, raising the prospect of prison time? Isn’t there a warrant for his arrest?

Indeed.

Maybe it’s a language barrier, but Jack Lang should understand that lynching is an extra-judicial act. For example, the victim’s parents and friends decide that Roman should pay for his crime and string him up.

Steve Lopez, on the front page of the LA Times has done everyone a favor by reading the trial transcript and including it in his column. In fact, he begins with it.

Q: Did you resist at that time?

A: A little bit, but not really because . . .

Q: Because what?

A: Because I was afraid of him.

That’s Roman Polanski’s 13-year-old victim testifying before a grand jury about how the famous director forced himself on her at Jack Nicholson’s Mulholland Drive home in March of 1977.

I’m reading this in the district attorney’s office at the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building, digging through the Polanski file to refresh my memory of the infamous case, and my blood pressure is rising.

Is it because I’m the parent of a girl?

Maybe that’s part of it.

But I wish the renowned legal scholars Harvey Weinstein and Debra Winger, to name just two of Polanski’s defenders, were here with me now. I’d like to invite Martin Scorsese, as well, along with David Lynch, who have put their names on a petition calling for Polanski to be freed immediately.

What, because he won an Oscar? Would they speak up for a sex offender who hadn’t?

To hear these people tell it, you’d think Polanski was the victim rather than the teenager.

And then there’s Woody Allen, who has signed the petition too.

Woody Allen?

You’d think that after marrying his longtime girlfriend’s adopted daughter, he’d have the good sense to remain silent. But at least Soon-Yi Previn was a consenting adult.

Zing!

The girl says Polanski, who was in his 40s at the time, opened a bottle of champagne and shared it with her and with an adult woman who later left for work. That’s when Polanski allegedly began taking pictures of the 13-year-old and suggested that she remove her blouse.

Quoting again from the grand jury transcript, with the girl being questioned by a prosecutor:

Q: Did you take your shirt off or did Mr. Polanski?

A: No, I did.

Q: Was that at his request or did you volunteer to do that?

A: That was at his request.

She said Polanski later went into the bathroom and took part of a Quaalude pill and offered her some, as well, and she accepted.

Q: Why did you take it?

A: I don’t know. I think I must have been pretty drunk or else I wouldn’t have.

So here she is, at 13, washing down a Quaalude with champagne, and then Polanski suggested they move out to the Jacuzzi.

Q: When you got in the Jacuzzi, what were you wearing?

A: I was going to wear my underwear, but he said for me to take them off.

She says Polanski went back in the house and returned in the nude and got into the Jacuzzi with her. When he told her to move closer to him, she resisted, saying, “No. No, I got to get out.”

He insisted, she testified, and so she moved closer and he put his hands around her waist. She told him she had asthma and wanted to get out, and she did. She said he followed her into the bathroom, where she told him, “I have to go home now.”

Q: What did Mr. Polanski say?

A: He told me to go in the other room and lie down.

She testified that she was afraid and sat on the couch in the bedroom.

Q: What were you afraid of?

A: Him.

She testified that Polanski sat down next to her and said she’d feel better. She repeated that she had to go home.

Q: What happened then?

A: He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, “No,” you know, “Keep away.” But I was kind of afraid of him because there was no one else there.

She testified that he put his mouth on her vagina.

“I was ready to cry,” she said. “I was kind of — I was going, ‘No. Come on. Stop it.’ But I was afraid.”

She said he then pulled off her panties.

Q: What happened after that?

A: He started to have intercourse with me.

At this point, she testified, Polanski became concerned about the consequences and asked if she was on the pill.

No, she told him.

Polanski had a solution, according to her.

“He goes, ‘Would you want me to go in through your back?’ And I went, ‘No.’ ”

According to her, that didn’t stop Polanski, who began having anal sex with her.

Whoopie Goldberg demonstrates, not just her warped moral sense, but her ignorance of the law.

Hint: a minor cannot give consent to sex.

Patterico finds the Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, who wrote a column supportive of the rapist dwarf, failed to disclose that her husband is a Polish muckety-muck working to get the case dismissed.

Jim Lindgren brings us wisdom from George Orwell:

In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear.

In case you missed the HBO documentary that has supplied Polanski-backers with a sense of righteousness, there is this from Salon.

Bad art is supposed to be harmless, but the 2008 film “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” about the notorious child-sex case against the fugitive director, has become an absolute menace. For months, lawyers for the filmmaker have been maneuvering to get the Los Angeles courts to dismiss Polanski’s 1978 conviction, based on supposed judicial misconduct uncovered in the documentary. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza ruled that if Polanski, who fled on the eve of his sentencing, in March 1978, wanted to challenge his conviction, he could — by coming back and turning himself in.

Espinoza was stating the obvious: Fugitives don’t get to dictate the terms of their case. Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, was welcome to return to America, surrender, and then petition the court as he wished. Indeed, the judge even gave Polanski more than he deserved, saying that he might actually have a case. “There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct during the pendency of this case,” he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Other than that, he just needs to submit to the jurisdiction of the court.”

Polanski deserves to have any potential legal folderol investigated, of course. But the fact that Espinoza had to state the obvious is testimony to the ways in which the documentary, and much of the media coverage the director has received in recent months, are bizarrely skewed. The film, which has inexplicably gotten all sorts of praise, whitewashes what Polanski did in blatant and subtle fashion — and recent coverage of the case, in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and elsewhere, has in turn accepted the film’s contentions at face value.

John Nolte at Big Hollywood:

Pleading guilty to unlawful sex with an underage girl — the drugging, raping and sodomizing of a 13 year-old — isn’t stopping Hollywood from ginning up an indignation campaign over the possibility of fugitive director Roman Polanski being held accountable for his crimes. Yes, these are the values of those who control the most powerful propaganda device ever created.  Which begs a question: If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?

My favorite part of the [Patrick Goldstein column] questioning the ethics of the LA district attorney for extraditing Polanski “at a time of severe statewide budget cuts.”

Now the Left worries about government spending!  This reckless, out of control, bringing-child-rapists-to-justice spending must stop!

Maybe I’m just a simplistic right-winger but everything stops for me upon learning a child was raped. That doesn’t mean we don’t eventually examine judicial misconduct or government spending, but only after we throw away the key.

If a plumber had raped his 13-year old neighbor and eluded the police for 32 years, would the LA Times argue that the poor fellow had suffered enough?

Hardly. But that’s what LAT’s Patrick Goldstein does:

But at a time when California is shredding the safety net that protects the poor and the unemployed, not to mention the budget of the public school system, you’d hope that L.A. County prosecutors had better things to do than cause an international furor by hounding a film director for a 32-year-old sex crime, especially one that Polanski’s victim wants to put behind her.

The victim understandably doesn’t want to relive this. But Polanski committed a crime against society, not just against her.

In an otherwise sympathetic article in 2003, the victime inadvertently made this point:

The one thing that bothers me is that what happened to me in 1977 continues to happen to girls every day, yet people are interested in me because Mr. Polanski is a celebrity. That just never seems right to me. It makes me feel guilty that this attention is directed at me, when there are certainly others out there who could really use it.

Back to Goldstein:

Still, actions have consequences and Polanski’s sins have not been forgotten. He has been barred from returning to the U.S. and prevented from traveling to other countries, including England, because of extradition issues. His career has clearly suffered from his inability to work in Hollywood, where he made such celebrated films as “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” He has been embraced by many — having won a number of awards over the years, but also shunned by a number of detractors. As he put it in his autobiography: “I am widely regarded, I know, as an evil, profligate dwarf.”

Oh, poor Roman. When he won his Best Director Oscar, he couldn’t come collect it in person.

The horror!

Roman Polanski, Hollywood’s favorite pedophile, has been nabbed.

Director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police as he flew in for the Zurich Film Festival and faces possible extradition to the United States for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, authorities said Sunday.

Polanski was scheduled to receive an honorary award at the festival when he was apprehended Saturday at the airport, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement. It said U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old director around the world since 2005.

“There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming,” ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. “That’s why he was taken into custody.”

Polanski, the director of such classic films as “Chinatown” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” fled the U.S. for France in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the underage girl.

Polanski has asked a U.S. appeals court in California to overturn a judges’ refusal to throw out his case. He claims misconduct by the now-deceased judge who had arranged a plea bargain and then reneged on it.

Sniff, sniff. In American today, Polanski would never get a plea deal for feeding a 13-year old girl drugs and wine, then sodomizing her. He’s bitching because the judge went back on a 42 day term for rape.

In Paris, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said that he was in contact with French President Nicolas Sarkozy “who is following the case with great attention and shares the minister’s hope that the situation can be quickly resolved.”

Mitterrand added that he was “dumbfounded” by Polanski’s arrest, adding that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them.”

Yes, he lost his parents in the Holocaust and his wife to the Manson family. That doesn’t excuse a man in his 40s from inflicting pain on a child.

If you have any sympathy for Polanski, read this transcript.

This is disturbing…

If you thought Tom Cruise’s character in “The Last Samurai” represented a real figure from history, you were wrong. But don’t feel ashamed. A new study shows that even students, with facts staring them in the face, tend to substitute Hollywood fiction for historical fact in their minds.

“What we found is that there’s something really special about watching a film that lets people retain information from that film, even when they had read a contradictory account in the textbook,” said Andrew Butler, a psychology researcher at Washington University in St. Louis during the time he and his colleagues conducted the study.

…considering the confused ideologues making movies today. I know people who saw Oliver Stone’s “JFK” and thought it historical. Ditto most of Stone’s output. Or George Clooney’s political films.

The stinky residue of Michael Moore’s wretched propaganda (Fahrenheit 9/11) poisoned the minds of millions, including much of the Democrat party leadership.

40 years ago was Woodstock. Not Woodstock the music festival, but Woodstock the media story, the movie and the hype.

Everyone I knew saw the movie — it was a generational pilgrimage with the object of worship being ourselves. By the time the movie debuted, the media’s Woodstock narrative was fixed: we Baby Boomers were absolutely wonderful, peacefully tolerating three days of music, drugs, sex, rain and crowds, becoming “a city” in Time magazine’s words.

Not just that, we were also the hope for a peaceful future. Our youthful voices should, nay, must be heeded. Alas, too many believed it. Too many still do.