Some films are great, obviously great. Mary Poppins is a nearly perfect film with only an overly long chimney sweep dance scene marring glory. Some films are bad, hopelessly bad. There was a moment of such clarity in the middle of Fifty First Dates. Drew Barrymore may be fatal to any movie. President Bush is rumored to be asking her to co-star with the mullahs in Iran in a project sure to lead to the cancellation of the theocracy.

The Aviator is another kind of movie which merely seems great, but isn’t. At any given moment, I felt like I was watching a thoughtful and important film. The total of those moments felt contrived and lackluster. In the end, one decided that the studio had sent out to Paint-By-Oscar for a serious movie. It got one and I hope they make the best of it. It is hard to imagine anyone choosing to watch this in the years to come. This film manages to seem both commercial and dull which is the most amazing feat in the film.

There is one exception. As hard as it is to admit, Leanardo DiCaprio is becoming a fine actor. His portrayal of Hughes is the best thing about the movie as he keeps puffed up lines from blowing away. He is handsome and commanding, but also manages to almost physically shrink under the strain of mental illness. However, his fine acting is off set by the painful performance of Cate Blanchett. Blanchett had a greater range of emotion in Lord of the Rings, he said grimly, than she shows in this film. She parodies Hepburn rather than playing her and so manages to make one wonder how the classic film star ever attracted studio attention let alone that of Hughes. Blancett was painful to look at in the worst designed clothing since time began. She looked like a female impersonator playing Hepburn.

Howard Hughes was not a great man, but he was an interesting one. This film reduces his real accomplishments to the level of his obvious psychological flaws. In attempting to explain Hughes, the film is overly simple and so essentially explains him away.

Does Hollywood hate people it cannot reduce to a sexual or simple psychological story line? Must everyone be portrayed as having some inner secret that must sense of the whole man.? This prejudice may explain why they shy away from Biblical epics of late, even though they are box-office gold. Biblical heroes cannot be reduced to hormones or inner pain without offending the core audience. Almost anyone else can be reduced a person whose problems could have been solved by a good stiff viewing of Oprah.

Modern Hollywood is good at looking for inner quirks they can exploit. C.S. Lewis devolved into a tragic romantic figure in the hands of Hollywood after all. Howard Hughes was a page full of screen writer hyper-links for writers inflicted with this disease. The script of the film jumped from quirk to inner pain to scenes with mother in a frantic manner. None of it tries to give a coherent picture of the man, but it does keep the film moving alone at a frantic pace forever. The film is fast moving, but overly long as if MTV shot a music video over the course of an hour. Any given scene is executed quickly, but there are far too many of them.

Bush avoids label of job-loss president: “Bush avoids label of job-loss president
Associated Press ^ | February 5, 2005 | JEANNINE AVERSA

Posted on 02/05/2005 8:20:56 AM PST by Dubya

WASHINGTON —- President Bush has narrowly escaped becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs on his watch.

Questions about the health of the nation’s jobs market dogged Bush throughout his first term, and Democrats used the issue in the presidential campaign. Ultimately, the jobs situation and the economy weren’t enough of a concern to deny Bush a second term.”

What is the actual news?

Bush gained jobs in his terms.

When Kerry said Bush was the first President to lose jobs in his term since Hoover, he was wrong.

Unemployment is lower than it was for most of the Clinton administration.

Someone will always be unemployed. A politician cannot admit it, but zero unemployment is impossible or bad. (Bad if we had more jobs than workers.)

Think of the negative spin of this story. Bush “avoids.” It is not that his plan worked. Bush and the negative phrase “job-loss” are linked in the headline. Hoover’s name is linked to Bush in the head line. (Why not: Bush has experienced some of the lowest unemployment in recent American history, comparing well to Reagan and Clinton.) The second sentence deals with Democrat talking points as if the miracle of their refutation is the real story. Bush could not be “denied” a second term . . . as if that was the objective.

MSNBC - Fearing civil war, Iraq’s Sunnis rethink strategy: “Influential Sunni Arab leaders of a boycott of last week’s elections expressed a new willingness Friday to engage the coming Iraqi government and play a role in writing the constitution, in what may represent a strategic shift in thinking among mainstream anti-occupation groups.”

What will happen if Bush wins?

Bush said we could set up a democracy in the Middle East. If we do it, the Middle East will be changed forever. Freedom will start to flow through the region. Terrorism will die down.

We are winning. Unlike Vietnam, there is no Super Power to oppose us. If we have the will, then there will be an imperfect democracy in Iraq soon. Even an imperfect democracy will change nations like Saudi Arabia.

The Democrat Party has married itself to our failure. Good luck, Mr. Dean.

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Judge Nixes New York’s Gay Marriage Ban: “Ling-Cohan noted that one plaintiff, Curtis Woolbright, is the son of an interracial couple who moved to California in 1966 to marry. She said California then was the only state whose courts had ruled that interracial marriage prohibitions were unconstitutional.

Some courts, Ling-Cohan wrote, justified anti-miscegenation laws (bans on interracial marriage) as defending tradition rooted in ‘natural’ law. They ‘rejected the rights of adults to choose their marital partners based on outmoded prejudices that are now recognized as illegitimate grounds for government action.’”

The move to compare abnormal sex behavior with being Black is well under way. Already, members of the King family are called racist for resenting this hi-jacking of history. It is bad argument, hopelessly bad, but let’s go ahead and give three reasons to think opposition to gay marriage is different from opposition to inter-racial marriage.

1. The biological differences between men and women are profound. Race is an artificial construct invented by human beings. There are no races really, but there are males and females.

2. The biology of sexuality is designed for procreation between men and women. There is nothing in that function that makes sex between the races odd or abnormal. One can procreate with someone of a different race, but not with someone of the same sex. Homosexuality is unnatural behavior.

2. The great Western religions, one source of knowledge about the world, believe homosexuality is morally wrong. Some forms of religion in the USA believed inter-racial marriage was a sin. There is no comparison between the universal nature of the first belief and the deviant nature of the second. The first belief is grounded in the religious structure of marriage. The second was a foolish prohibition that did not even exist at the time of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, some days, I feel very old. It happens when a student talks about classic films from the nineties or when my freshman can only dimly recall the Clinton administration.

It makes me a bit sad. It seems like just a few days ago that I was teaching an experimental on-line philosophy course for Q-Link on my Commodore 64. We were the cutting edge.

Getting old is not hard to do, just hard to accept. There does not seem much good about it.

Then I remember a really old man, the prophet Simeon. Here was a man who spent his time waiting for the coming of the Messiah, simply waiting. He was listening for the voice of God. When he was young, he had been promised that he would not die before he saw God’s Promise and so he waited. And he waited. At first, his friends must have thought him dedicated, then mad, and then simply old and crazy. Finally, most of his friends were dead and Simeon would have been in the Temple alone. Waiting.

Was this a life well spent? He must have wondered. Towards the end, he must have felt that death would be better than another day listening to the crying babies and hoping. Hope gets thin after twenty years. It is all about gone after fifty.

Then one day he head a baby. And he knew. His patience and prayer had made his spirit ready to recognize God’s cry when it came. Of all the leaders of Israel, holy Simeon was one of the few that knew. Young Simeon had heard prophecy and imagined greatness. Old Simeon had become fit to hold Jesus Christ. Was it worth it?

Getting old for Simeon made him fit to see and touch Jesus Christ. It was worth it. Here what he said:

²⁹Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

³⁰For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

³¹Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

³²A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

Old age is a slow motion martyrdom. If we let it, it grows us up and prepares us for Paradise. It cannot be easy, because our souls are in tough shape. We give up things we think we want, even things that seem natural to us and good. We see and hear hurtful things.

If like Simeon we wait on God, then we shall see Him. Most of us are impatient or refuse to grow old in our waiting. We rush about like a young person hoping that our rushing will disguise our creaky joints.

What is our reward? As Simeon shows us, it is to hold Wisdom in our arms and behold salvation with our eyes. And then? And then we die and see God’s face forever. We have become souls fit for Paradise.

Thank God for you, holy Simeon, blessed old man. May I become like you and may I too see at the very end of my days the glory of your people Israel.

Christians are always critical of how they are doing in the culture. Let me remind all of us of one area where we are have made great strides: talk radio. When I was just a lad, back in the days when Christian radio was more apt to curse Plato than quote him, Christian radio was a source of never ending shame. Now it is much, more better.

Of course, the bigs like the Lord of the Blogs, Hugh Hewitt have always been good. (”One blog to guide them all, one blog to find them, one blog to bring them all”. . . but then Hugh has more than one eye, is not evil, and has never been seen with an orc. So much for that literary analogy.) Local talk radio is catching up.

The best example right now is the Frank Pastore Show. Frank started strong and is getting better. Frank is very bright and is well read. He has a stronger educational background, I would guess, than roughly, say, one hundred percent of the reporters on the LA Times. He talks about everything: ideas, religion, politics, and culture. He is not afraid to express strong views, but he also has guest on who disagree with him. Shockingly to some, Frank has a sense of humor.

It does not hurt that as a former major league athlete, Frank does not have the sat-all-my-life-talking-to-a-mike softness on air. He sounds like a Real Man, because he is one. My daughter, who thinks Major League Baseball is the apex of Western civilization, venerates every word that comes from the Mouth of Frank.

In short, this is a punchy, funny, thought provoking show. Imagine NPR if the hosts were NOT pretentious and bombastic, but smart without being pretentious. That is Frank Pastore. Give it a listen.

I get a great many thoughtful questions. One of them reminded me that often thoughtful opposition to gay marriage sounds like it should lead to the desire to make many private behaviors illegal.

Christians, including men like the Founders influenced by Christianity, believe that authority comes from God. Human beings are given rights by their Creator that do not come from the state or from society. These rights do not have to be written down, because they are written in nature and nature’s laws. For example, the right to life does not need to be in any written constitution on this traditional view, because it is not a right the government gives us or could take way. In fact, there was no bill of rights in the original constitution partly because of a fear that limiting government in a few ways would be seen as a full list of all the rights people have. Such basic “unwritten” rights include the right to life, liberty, and the ownership of private property.

There are different types of authority in a culture. Social pressure is often more controlling than law! I have known students who would break state laws without a thought in their driving habits or drug use, but who would not have listened to the “wrong” music or the dressed the wrong way for any amount of money. Religious groups have their own ways of enforcing discipline as do families. Traditionally, Americans have thought of culture as divided into the authority of church, family, and state. Each has its own powers and most importantly limits.

As a result, most things that a Christian thinks are immoral need not be illegal. Christianity is fundamentally a religion of liberty. Our God placed man in a good garden and gave man the right to sin. Man should not have sinned, but God allowed him to do so. In the same way, a good Christian commonwealth does not force men to do good things. They allow for evil in this age.

Of course some things are so bad that society cannot tolerate them. Murder harms others and so cannot be an area of personal liberty. Many other moral evils cannot be officially allowed, because they are so devastating to the culture. These areas should be kept small however. State power, or any other sphere, is always apt for abuse. No one wants to give the government that runs the Post Office much power over families.

Homosexuality need not be made against civil law in a Christian state. Christians may decide, as most American Christians have, that this is an area best dealt with by social and religious sanctions. Men and women who wish to sin and break the laws of God and of nature should be allowed to do so.

However, gay marriage takes this one step further. One can allow the neighbor to paint his house pink and green (merely irritating!) or to live in with his girl friend (wicked and harmful to society). No man should be forced to give the neighbor a prize for co-habitation or proclaim it equal to real marriage.

The homosexual is our neighbor. We have pity on his disorder as we hope he pities our own sins and disorders. His sin is not the worse sin a human being commit nor the most important to our culture. Unjustified divorce in families with children is far worse. (Of course, the fact that someone is worse than I does not justify me!) Like all sinners, a fault in one area does not prevent virtue, even great virtue in another area. The homosexual neighbor is created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity with his virtues recognized.

What we will not do is pretend that his relationship is good or normal. We will not and cannot put it on par with marriage. Of course, he may disagree, but he is a tiny minority. Toleration is all he has the right to demand and we must grant him that. No bullying. No name calling. However, we will also not be bullied by the Andrew Sullivans of the world into refusing to see what any sane man can see: homosexuality is an objective moral disorder that misuses a great and powerful gift for end for which it was not intended. We will not encourage and celebrate evil and call it good.

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: “And this is the justification for banning gay unions in the constitution itself. So I - as a gay person - am somehow a threat to ‘family and faith’?”

Yes, Mr. Sullivan, you are. Your life style is immoral and your demand that we recognize it as equal to marriage is harming our culture. It openly breaks the laws of nature and of nature’s god. You should not be persecuted, but we will not sanction your taste in sin. We shall not ask anyone else to sanction our own problems either.

We are happy to leave you alone, but do not ask us to give you benefits for your problems.

Mr. Sullivan replies to the long religious and secular tradition now only with righteous indignation. The fact that we would use the constitutional process to keep marriage from being changed by people who want to use the courts to do so somehow makes us the bad guys.

Dean will soon be party chairman, so the wise ones say. On the other hand, these same folk had Dean as a lock for the presidential nomination and then Gore endorsed him. Dean should keep away from Gore for the next few weeks. Far away. Slam him in public. Call Tipper bad names. Dean must act now to save himself from the embrace of Gore, who more and more is politically starting to resemble the salt sucking monster on the old Star Trek while physically becoming the Gorn.

Where will Dean take the party? An amusing thing to do is to go read Kos and other left-of-sanity web sites. Forget the policy decisions. Those can be massaged with good ads. I am interested in the style for the moment. Dean will bring condescension to the party of Jackson. He knows he is smarter and better than everyone else and soon he will be on television all the time telling all of us. Dean will bring frantic energy of the sort that used to be self-medicated in men his age with a good stiff drink. Dean is Healthy and so will simply, periodically, go mad on national television. Dean reads books which tell him what the Folks want to hear and then tries it out. Soon he will be learning our language, badly. “I think the President’s social security reform is washing in the blood of all societies lambs, the young and the elderly who rely on the program.” said Dean to Tim Russert.

In short, Dean who has never had an actual job in government (the governor of Vermont was last seen at the Maple Syrup Tasting Day ribbon cutting) will soon bring the sparkling personality that won him so many primaries in states named Vermont to the Democrats.

George Bush is the luckiest man alive.

The only danger on the horizon? I see signs that Denny Hastert is starting to look like Tip O’Neil in State of the Union addresses. Will this provoke the rise of a Democrat Reagan?

The Passion of the Christ was the best movie of 2004. I proclaim it so with the all the authority I have. Sadly, for Mr. Gibson I have no authority to make such a proclamation outside of my little house on Jalisco Road. . . and even my kids are pulling for the incredible. . . but then they don’t count since they couldn’t see Passion.

So let’s try again. Imagine a movie that carried an R rating and became one of the biggest ticket sellers of all time. Imagine a film that was not in English and became a block buster. Imagine a movie that tried to be artistically excellent, and in some measure was, and still got people to sit in seats and watch. Imagine a movie with no real big stars that still drew the folks. Now put all these into one package, stir in a group that wanted it banned, and you get lots of awards. Right? Right?

Wrong.

Why worry? Oscar frequently snubs the best picture while rewarding trash. If you are kid or religion friendly, best picture has been out of reach for quite some time. Of course, generally what most people making movies think we want for our families are slap-together horrors like the Piglet Movie. I defy anyone over eight anywhere to watch this movie twice. It cannot be done.

By making such trash, Hollywood can justify their sneer at families. After all, no wants to see it, we all know it is garbage, so now on to another award for “Serious Pretentious, but Big Studio Friendly Film of the Moment.”

“What do you want us to do,” they sigh, “Give an award to the Piglet Movie?”

Well, no. Why not make good movies that are also family and faith friendly? Even the mildly entertaining (to grownups) Princess Diaries did well.

The good news is that such films are on the way. The next Walt Disney of Family Films, Philip Anschutz, (or is he Roy? Either way, he is full of exciting ideas!) is finding his way. Even Disney is seeing the light teaming up with the sort of person who should be running their business to produce Narnia.

The bad news is that Narnia is not until December and we need a good media fix now.

So back to the Passion and my suggestion for your buying pleasure Passion of the Christ: Songs.

This is fine music by solid musicians with some songs that make the entire collection worth purchase. The CD contains a challenging mix of styles, but the powerful story behind the film keeps it from becoming disjointed. Some of the cuts are excellent. Truly Amazing with P.O.D. is. The Passion with Lauryn Hill is searing and thought provoking. It is rare for a song to invoke head and heart. This one does it. Some of the cuts are more paint by numbers, but none demand the skip button on your player.

This is our chance to vote with our wallets and encourage people doing quality, mainstream, religion friendly stuff to keep doing so.

the evangelical outpost: Who Gets Left Behind?: “Larry’s comments bring up another are of Christian media: Music
Until about ten years ago, the music produced by the Christian community was prozac for the saved. The whole hosanna thing freaked me out as a musician.
Then as the industry matured, the quality improved to the point where now the Christian bands are able to provide music that usually better in quality to the trash on MTV.
I think LB is the hosanna music for Christian fiction. Its success is providing a way for Christian authors to provide fiction to people that do not want trashy sex scenes and foul language.
The agents for the LB machine, Alive Communications is actively using the resources and connections it has to bring other authors to market. This would not have happened had LB not been the huge commercial success it is.
Posted by: Mr.Fine at February 2, 2005 10:55 PM”

The Corner on National Review Online

The President of the United States:

One name we honor is Marine Corps Sergeant Byron Norwood of Pflugerville, Texas, who was killed during the assault on Fallujah. His mom, Janet, sent me a letter and told me how much Byron loved being a Marine, and how proud he was to be on the front line against terror. She wrote, “When Byron was home the last time, I said that I wanted to protect him like I had since he was born. He just hugged me and said: ‘You’ve done your job, mom. Now it’s my turn to protect you.’” Ladies and gentlemen, with grateful hearts, we honor freedom’s defenders, and our military families, represented here this evening by Sergeant Norwood’s mom and dad, Janet and Bill Norwood.

And then the hug. One woman from Iraq thanking another from Texas for freedom. Aren’t you sorry tyrants exact our dearest blood, but proud that such cost has bought a chance for freedom. Even a chance for freedom is worth while.

Has anyone noticed that Bush places being pro-life in terms of a philosophy? He actually paints a world view picture that is not merely anti-abortion, but for all human life. His world view and his rhetoric come together to give him options to be for and against.

I would like to suggest that as a result George W. Bush is the most pro-life president of all time.

1. Bush has become very comfortable being President. He looks presidential and he understands the powers and limits of the job.

2. Bush is swinging for Rushmore. If the second term is scandal free, then he may make it. If we win the peace in Iraq and Iran falls to US pressure (things that now appear possible), then Bush will begin to equal the great work finished by Reagan. He will not have won the War on Terror, but he will have made it so even a Jimmy Carter could not lose it.

3. The Democrats are driven mad by Bush. They were rude and foolish. Older people (he says as one) should not boo and hiss. Crabby older folk don’t look strong, but cranky. The modern Democrat response is starting to come off like the sputtering old guy who cannot like anything. (”My french fries were cold!”) The Democrats gnatter and mumble, boo and hiss, and posture as if they could do anything better then those “darn Republicans.”

4. Bush has a plan. The Democrats are for the status quo or just against things. Plans win.

5. Why is giving me my money to save a bad idea? Shouldn’t I get my own money to save for retirement? Why is it good sometimes (my work retirement plan), but would destroy Social Security?

6. Bush stuck with the Defense of Marriage. Brave man.

Finally, the Democrats don’t get it on Iraq. Americans hope to win and they look like they are rooting for our losing. John “Eyore” Kerry is so obvious. “Good evening, if there is anything good about it. We had elections in Iraq. Hurrah. People will still die. Toilets are still not working. There are still people without Game Cube. We are doomed or at least any future presidential bid by me will be if I am wrong about this.”

RConversation: Blogstorm descending on CNN: “The official WEF summary does not mention Eason’s remarks, and there is no transcript or webcast. But I was in the room and Rony’s account is consistent with what I heard.”

It is time for CNN to stop hiding. Release the full account of the story. Either they have a reporter that can show monstrous war crimes happen in Iraq, the murder of reporters, or they have a reporter who slandered the brave men who defend us.