ChronicPaine's Comments

Big Hollywood : Hollywoodâs Soviet Story

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:18:03 +0000

With the faintest scintilla of encouragement, I would happily drop everything for the next six months to write a screenplay for D. Keith Mano's THE BRIDGE: a dystopian novel published in 1973 that absolutely NAILS the horrors of eco-extremism taken to its logical conclusions. And by "encouragement" I don't mean some producer holding out a check with a smile on his/her face... No, with my left ear to the rail and a finger plugging my right to keep out the ambience, a butterfly landing on the track six miles down would be all the encouragement I'd need. Sadly, I don't hear it.

Big Government : Violent Left Fights for a BP Bailout

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:17:55 +0000

It occurred to me the other day that these bused-in SEIU protests at people's houses (most recently the Greg Baer incident in Montgomery County, Maryland) could be dry runs/wargaming for some future Krystallnacht-style mass home-invasion pogrom by the left. Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. has been accused of hiring young people for door-to-door issue advocacy, then creating "neighborhood maps" based on how residents respond; i.e. putting big red "x's" on all the conservative households. Could some umbrella group be compiling all this data for some future, possibly violent, use, given everything else we're learning--merging it with data on past political donations, memberships, subscriptions etc. to plan a massive politically "microtargeted" pogrom. Is this potentiality even on law enforcement's radar? Given that D.C. police actually escorted the SEIU buses to Greg Baer's home, and then Baer's local suburban Maryland police, fearing incitement, refused to intervene once the protesters were on his lawn, I think not.

Big Hollywood : SHOCK! Rush Limbaugh Embraces Capitalism

Sat, 3 Oct 2009 16:33:53 +0000

Great thumbnails of the big players. Surely we need one for Mark Levin!

Big Hollywood : Do The WarholâPart 3: The Velvet (Underground) Revolution

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:06:54 +0000

I think the secret is to simply create entertainment that respects and exalts the average American, or, in passe liberal parlance "the common man". By simply extolling common virtues in a present-day context, all the excesses of celebrity culture (and just about every liberal-chic cause) is made to look silly and trivial. Enough of this and the whole house of cards comes down. It's called "exposing reality." Mike Judge's new animated series The Goode Family is a start, although politically speaking Judge takes a more direct approach by simply poking fun at liberal causes and the people who obsess over them. But the Goode's black neighbor and Ms. Goode's SUV-driving, meat-eating, football-loving, father provide counterpoint. Those characters are merely one-dimensional foils and don't even challenge the "Joe Sixpack" stereotype nurtured and sustained by liberals--yet even they manage to make the case for sanity when contrasted against The Goodes' not atypical environuttiness.

Big Hollywood : Asking the Spirit of Reagan for Help

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:09:20 +0000

Just make sure you don't drive your old SUV clunker to the dealership. The sales guys will see you coming a mile away. Wait until you hammer out your best deal, then bring up the $4,500 when you're sitting at the desk, right before the pen hits the paper.

Big Hollywood : Time for the Amero?

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 02:28:06 +0000

Bigger is not better. Decentralization of power and opportunity is the answer--not the opposite.

Big Hollywood : Her Name Was Neda: A Generational Chance for Freedom

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:34:31 +0000

NO ONE is talking about material aid, MovieBob, so that is a strawman--but I get the sense that you are at least interested in doing the right thing here. To see why an unambiguous rhetorical statement of support from the U.S. President is not, as you cynically put it, a "meaningless 'end-of-a-Jerry-Bruckheimer-movie' declaration of macho feel-goodness," all you have to do is focus a tiny bit of that much remarked-upon liberal empathy from your full-to-bursting heart on the Teheran protesters in the street. Imagine for half a second that you are there with them, risking your life just by showing up, holding up a sign in English. See? That wasn't hard, was it?

Big Hollywood : Governor Palin Accepts Letterman's Apology

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:26:17 +0000

Palin's right to move on from this, but I'm hoping the grassroots pressure on Letterman and CBS continues, if only to make it plain that conservatives are through taking partisan cheapshots like this from the left. Don Imus (no conservative, he) apologized for his offhand but crude on-air comment about the Rutgers Womens' Basketball team, and the zealots demanding his head on a platter only got louder.

Big Hollywood : Big Hollywood Exclusive: Prejean Attorney Provides Playboy Emails; Carrie 'is being persecuted for s

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:19:52 +0000

Keith Lewis is potential gold for conservatives: a veritible archetype of the phony, smug, apish urban serpent who'd just as soon stick a knife in your gut as compliment your shoes--wearing the same unctuous pseudo-smile either way. It's odious back-bencher creeps like this who are the foot soldiers of the new fascism, and they must be held up to ridicule in the same way that nerds and rednecks were in decades past.

Big Hollywood : Jon David, A Pseudonym After My 'American Heart'

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:47:03 +0000

I was scanning the comments looking for something that matched my sentiments, and this comes closest. I'd only add that "I won't apologize," in any context, is not a "warrior's challenge." It does work, however, as a spontaneous, emphatic statement from someone who feels trapped in a corner and believes, in that way that only trapped and wounded animals can, that a stronger, more defiant statement could very well be his last. Which probably pretty much sums up JD's true feelings on the matter.

Big Hollywood : Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 16:41:12 +0000

Then maybe the best mythological metaphor is of a more recent vintage, namely Pink Floyd's THE WALL. Impressionable child molded by mother, school and father's absence into walled-off, emotionally inaccessible adolescent basket case, to reemerge in adulthood as a sociopathic, self-styled fascist demagogue with legions of mushbrained followers hanging on his every scripted word. "There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me, get him up against the wall!" THE WALL was apparently a soul-searching exercise for Pink Floyd lyricist/singer Roger Waters, who was and remains a dyed-in-the-wool, self-professed "empathetic" socialist. Toward the end of the band's '77 tour, Waters, frustrated by how loud and raucous American audiences had become, lured a teenaged boy to the stage at a Montreal concert, bent down, and spit in his face. THE WALL's themes conflate Waters' descent into fascism with Floyd founder Syd Barrett's losing battle with schizophrenia. I'm a big Pink Floyd fan, and give Waters credit for trying to exorcise these demons and stay true to his beliefs: a road Mr. Obama clearly hasn't yet explored.

Big Hollywood : Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

Sun, 7 Jun 2009 17:19:18 +0000

I think this is coming too, but you underestimate the media's commitment to this administration's success. It is total. They've already jettisoned credibility or any semblance of "objectivity" in an existential gamble whose outcome depends entirely on synergy between itself and a leftist-controlled state. In exchange for carrying the government's water it gets whatever's necessary, up to and including nonprofit tax-exempt status and taxpayer bailouts, to maintain its ability to create the illusion of consensus around liberal policies. Even liberals themselves understand this, which is why more of them tune in to FoxNews than CNN or MSNBC for information.

Big Hollywood : Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

Sun, 7 Jun 2009 06:49:05 +0000

Your premises, arguments and conclusions are all sound. It's just that I have difficulty seeing Barack Obama as a human being at all, and that for me renders him outside the scope of this kind of analysis. He's more like some kind of android, programmed to read a teleprompter and make all the right gestures, but unknowable beneath the surface. Rush Limbaugh reads this as intense anger, and he may be right--but even sympathetic observers (Charlie Rose, Tom Brokaw and Chris Matthews come to mind) have noted the creepy detachment and singularity of Obama. The more radical he reveals himself to be, the more chilling this becomes.

Big Hollywood : A Conservative Journey Through Literary America - Part 4: The New Formalism

Sun, 24 May 2009 20:43:38 +0000

I just cut and pasted your post into Word and removed all the "e's" using Find/Replace. It wasn't poetry. Oh... you mean the French poet chose only words that don't contain the letter "e", and then the translator only chose English words that don't contain "e"... OK, yeah, that would be tough. Nevermind :)

Big Hollywood : A Conservative Journey Through Literary America - Part 4: The New Formalism

Sun, 24 May 2009 16:56:37 +0000

When I first read Rand's The Fountainhead, I had difficulty believing that a character like Ellsworth Toohey could exist and wield as much influence as the author portrays. Toohey, you'll recall, was the self-appointed arbiter of taste whose mission in life was to prop up the inferior in the arts at the expense of genius, in the name of... democratic harmony... egalitarianism... and other Orwellian smokescreens amounting to the exact opposite of what is actually being sought. As Patterson illustrates in this post, Toohey not only exists, but he is thriving in literature. The notion that anything that's popular is by definition not worthy of serious artistic consideration is ridiculous on its face, yet it somehow prevails. Toohey wasn't believable to me because I felt that a formless amoeboid mediocrity could not, in a free society, achieve meaningful purchase on the collective psyche. How wrong I was. The only strategy for combatting this is a bold, declarative individualism that simultaneously indicts and exposes the Tooheys of the world for the nihlistic charlatans they are.

Big Hollywood : Wanted: A Vaccine for Liberalism

Thu, 21 May 2009 20:16:23 +0000

Hunh? NBC isn't subsidized by the American taxpayer? Is Obama's bailout buddy, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt planning to spin them off?

Big Hollywood : A Conservative Journey Through Literary America -- Part 2: A Conversation With Michael Blowhard

Sun, 17 May 2009 17:45:00 +0000

The night is always darkest before the dawn. I have to disagree with the conclusion that serious artists who lean conservative/"right" should steer clear of "highbrow" arts if they are so inclined. Of course, the distinction itself carries all sorts of ideological baggage, and don't get me wrong: the conclusion is perfectly rational based on present conventional wisdom... but the stars are aligned for a major cultural revolution that, once underway, will cast pro-individual/conservative artists working right now as trailblazers and visionaries. This is the same kind of environment that people like Martin Luther and Galileo faced: a seemingly unshakable intellectual, economic and cultural hegemony, backed by powerful interests eager to suppress dissent, and almost 100% WRONG about everything. These kinds of conditions always produce foundation-shaking revolutions, and if this holds, we're presently looking down the barrel of the complete and permanent rejection of socialistic thinking. What's on the other side will be largely determined by today's serious conservative artists and thinkers.

Big Hollywood : Tinseltown Twitters Tea Parties

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:16:44 +0000

I have thought this for years, and I couldn't have framed it better. Well said. It takes genuine empathy to look at things from another person's point of view: to step outside of your own habits and really examine different circumstances, experiences and backgrounds. I've concluded that a lack of real empathy is prerequisite to being a liberal today. At its best, liberalism is based on a me-centric, childish notion of compassion that falls apart the minute it is applied to any social unit larger than a family. It is a "surface compassion" informed not by real empathy/understanding of others' self-interest, but by the imposition (or projection) of ones own idea of "self-interest" onto others. "Do unto others..." is the Golden Rule, but it requires zero empathy, listening and true understanding. The projection in their accusations is of a piece with the projection in their brand of compassion: symptoms of a constitutional inability to see things from any other point of view than their own.

ChronicPaine's Comments

Big Hollywood : Hollywoodâs Soviet Story

Big Government : Violent Left Fights for a BP Bailout

Big Hollywood : SHOCK! Rush Limbaugh Embraces Capitalism

Big Hollywood : Do The WarholâPart 3: The Velvet (Underground) Revolution

Big Hollywood : Asking the Spirit of Reagan for Help

Big Hollywood : Time for the Amero?

Big Hollywood : Her Name Was Neda: A Generational Chance for Freedom

Big Hollywood : Governor Palin Accepts Letterman's Apology

Big Hollywood : Big Hollywood Exclusive: Prejean Attorney Provides Playboy Emails; Carrie 'is being persecuted for s

Big Hollywood : Jon David, A Pseudonym After My 'American Heart'

Big Hollywood : Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

Big Hollywood : Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

Big Hollywood : Are We Witnessing a Greek Tragedy?

Big Hollywood : A Conservative Journey Through Literary America - Part 4: The New Formalism

Big Hollywood : A Conservative Journey Through Literary America - Part 4: The New Formalism

Big Hollywood : Wanted: A Vaccine for Liberalism

Big Hollywood : A Conservative Journey Through Literary America -- Part 2: A Conversation With Michael Blowhard

Big Hollywood : Tinseltown Twitters Tea Parties

Big Hollywood : Hollywoodâs Soviet Story

Big Hollywood : Do The WarholâPart 3: The Velvet (Underground) Revolution