KLAVAN ON THE CULTURE: Leftist Hollywood vs. Reality

I confess: I think JFK is a very entertaining film but I do think it's a shame that so many people learn about the man and the assassination from the film without doing further research.

Re: Terry Schiavo… I don't know. It's a sad story and I realize both sides are passionate about the issue. Did the federal government overstep its bounds? I'm not an expert so I couldn't say.

Just can't get agree with you on the Terri Schaivo thing. Allowing nature to take its course and letting a brain dead woman, with no chance of recovery, the peace and mercy of death seems to me the more morally right decision than forcing her body to keep "living" with the help of machines. I believe her parents were selfish, keeping her body animated long after everything that made Terri a person was gone, because they didn't want to give up that last bit of hope, even though everything we know about science said she would never recover. In death there is peace and euthansia to end misery and suffering is not evil, forcing another to live in agony or as a vegetable is worng.

Well said, Andrew. I love your brain.
I actually didn't find Avatar as offensive as many of you on BH. Yes, that Colonel is horribly cliched, but Cameron does make an attempt at balance by having the main character and several other marines be the good guys. I think it's just hard for writers, no matter what kind of movie they are doing, to come up with believable bad guys who aren't cliches- that's where extra efforts to be creative could really help the story overall. The corrupt businessman and the overzealous military guy make easy fallback characters.

As far as the "good natives" thing- I actually liked the portrayal of the Pandoran people. It was kind of a beautiful fantasy culture, which I think is okay as long as they are understood to be fictional. But I guess that's the problem-many will see this movie and automatically identify them with other native cultures even though the reality is far different.

I personally found Cameron's Titanic more annoying- because I really wanted a good scene with beautiful ballroom dancing, but he just couldn't bring himself to show the upper classes in any positive light. And the love scene was inappropriately steamy for younger audience members, and I think the main character was a tramp.

Lost in the controversy over Terri Schiavo's life was what the Schiavo case was all about: When a person has been rendered incompetent, on whom should the law rely on to have a good idea what the now-incompetent individual would have wanted? If Teri Schiavo would have wanted the feeding tube/life support discontinued (and let's face it, how many of you would want to exist in a persistent vegetative state?) who are we to say anything? The law says the spouse is the person most likely to have a sense of what the now-incompetent spouse would have wanted. Terri Schiavo's spouse said she would not have wanted to be maintained in a persistent vegetative state.

Terri Schiavo's parents disagreed, and believed that because they wanted to maintain her in some semblance of life, their claims should outweigh her husband's. Before you agree, remember that custody of an incompetent individual is hard to separate from control of all resources of theirs not legally locked down, then think of your biggest mooch relative. Imagine reaching that point where you and your spouse understand you would not want to be further maintained in that state—then imagine Cousin Mooch using some version of "Terri's Law" to exclude your spouse, drop your electrically stimulated meat in Filthy Pines Nursing Home, and bug off to Tahiti with the rest of your money…

I'm not sure they cut off Shiavo's hydration, but you should know that stavation is one of nature's ways when people are terminally ill and it is not painful. The body adjusts, shuts down, endorphins kick in. As the body is shutting down, digestion and elimination are affected and forcing food into someone whose organs stop working can be the worst thing you can do. Whatever her husband's motivation, it was the kindest thing to do. She deserved her peace.

I laughed all the way through that, that was 10 pounds of awesome in a 5 pound bag. Excellent, very funny and witty vid. Thanks Andrew!

Klavin, Please watch a Star Trek Voyager episode "Critical Care." You and our brethren may find it fascinating:)

It's my understanding that Ms Schiavo was in a permanent vegetative state which means that her body no longer had cognitive functioning or processed stimuli. Therefore, no awareness of pain or…..anything. Schiavo had left her life long before; it was time for her mortal coil to follow.

Death by starvation and dehydration is very common among those who have the power to decide for themselves. MANY elderly and terminally ill people choose to die this way. It's hard to watch as a by-stander, but apparently not for the person refusing intake. I cared for my dear friend who suffered from a particularly aggressive renal cancer who died this way. I and his his other friends kept trying to convince him to eat some Jello, ANYTHING he would consent to take, but he steadfastly refused.

This CAT scan shows the severity of Schiavo's hydrocephalus. Sadly, it was a one-way trip for her; she wasn't coming back from this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schiavo_catscan... The Schiavo incident was heart-breaking on so many levels and then all those Bushian suits started elbowing each other for camera time and forcing their will on that distressed family. Tom DeLay, one of the baying hounds at the heels of Schiavo's husband, Michael, had hypocritically allowed life support to be removed from his very own comatose father. The colossal nerve and the lack of sensitivity was staggering.

As long as I'm here:

What Mr Klavan is doing is confusing fiction with culture, not reality with culture. I hate to have to remind him that all of his film references were fictitious; even the Kennedy film was laughable and everybody said so at the time.

I'm not a fan of Mr Cameron's. From reviews I've heard, his film, 'Avatar', though visually stunning, it's a plot light-weight and very derivative. I like more 'there' there.

Mr Klavan might grab a few moments catch up on his reading. The Native peoples of North America were highly cultured, though naturally their culture was different from that of the European invaders. They were keenly aware of the natural world and how to utilize it's resources without razing forests, driving sources species to extinction, and contaminating drinking water.

I've read most about the tribal nations of what was to become New York. The people of the Iroquois Confederacy maintained a matriarchal society. The line of succession for chiefs followed through the women, not the men. Women were held in high regard and consulted by the chiefs about every topic of concern. Their counsel was heeded. An excellent example is "Molly Brant", Sir William Johnson's wife, who, after his death, went on to become an extremely important beacon and sage to her people throughout the Revolution.

Sorry, not a 'Lawn in Order' fan, either.

Although I haven't seen 'Titanic' (that Cameron thing again), so much has been filmed, written, and perpetuated about the luxury segment of the ocean liner, that it's great to hear that someone put in a plug for the ancestors of the rest of us! I hadn't realized about this aspect of the film before – perhaps I'll grudgingly have to see. Curses!

All the best.

Great stuff. Someone needs to smuggle this into a public school and splice it into a Howard Zinn screed.

If Terry Schiavo was already dead, why not just bludgeon her with a table leg? Stab her in the neck with a letter opener and let her bleed out. It would've been more humane (not to mention more honest) than "allowing" her to slowly starve to death. Or better yet, why not allow her parents, who loved her and believed in their hearts that she wasn't a lifeless lump off goo, to care for her for until she passed away? Well, because her husband wanted her gone so her could collect the insurance money and party with the gal he was already shacked up with, and because any notion that Schiavo was "alive" in any way might put a damper on progressives crusade for government-sponsored euthanasia.

Andrew – a very nice bit. Kudos to you! I particularly like the Law & Order piece.

andrew i think the best yet from you, but who knows, i will say that next time too. but i think your videos need to bee seen on fox news, perhaps you, and some of the other creative people at pjtv, and reason tv need a large visible audience, even dare i say it, public school?

I agree with you that Terry Schaivo should not have been kept alive with no hope of recovery. Doing so seemed to me to be almost a kind of taxidermy on the parents' part — keeping her alive so they could have her. It would be hard to pull the plug on a child, but one must eventually think about that child. That said, the husband who had remarried should have had no say in the subject. My gripe is withholding water–which seemed inordinately cruel.

Culture today certainly sucks with all its lies.

Then why are you commenting on this forum? You don't vote. You don't have any input into the democratic process. You're a helpless, passive observer who can affect nothing and do nothing. Go on and play and let the grownups talk.

If you believe that Terry Shaivo should have been killed, why can't you be merciful and agree that they should have shot her in the head? She was denied water, which is what killed her, after an agonizing period of days. She didn't die peacefully, she died in torment and agony. She was certainly alive enough to smile at her parents, to make noises, to cry. She wasn't a vegetable, she wasn't brain dead, she wasn't on life support. She was severely brain damaged and was on a feeding tube.

She died in agony. If you want to euthanize those who do not please you or meet your standards of what is a "good life", can't you at least give them a merciful death? A gun shot to the head, that is merciful. Dying of thirst? Not merciful at all.

Mr. Claven. Please keep your "realities" to yourself and try not to look so foolish next time.

Case in point. The Kennedy assassination. Not everyone is on board with just the "lone shooter" line. People speculate there was more than one gunner that day. Doe's that fit into your "reality?" Reality is not which current right wing revisionist history you choose to believe in as the right one sir.

You said, "In reality Evangelical Christians try to keep people alive… in the culture, they murder people."

Umm, you must be forgetting about Scott Roeder (born again from watching the 700 club,) confessed killer of abortion provider George Tiller. Did you purposely leave that out? So in fact, this is probably what you should have said. The "reality" of a Law and Order episode was in the depiction of a fanatical religious person killing someone. Sounds better.

You set up your next tirade talking about primitive civilization. As if that has any actual bearing on the very fictional movie of Avatar. Excuse me, but please remind me where in our history of primitive civilizations they were able to plug their hair into a tree, or to the wildlife? You also mentioned Pocahontas, a DISNEY movie, and Dances with Wolves. You skewed the viewers feelings by making broad claims that all the women were treated fairly (in a Disney movie), and that native medicine was construed as somehow better. Even though Kevin Costners character's foot was saved by medicine rather than being chopped off in the beginning of the movie Dances with Wolves.

Umm… Please provide some examples of what you are talking about here? Your argument comes across as very flat.

You said, "In reality it's civilization, democracy, capitalism, and technology, which give us greater health, and happiness."

What you say here is interesting because I am confused as to how this has anything to do with Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, or Avatar as two of these movies are in the past, and one is based 150 years into the future on a distant fictional world. Care to elaborate on this? I am confused as to what line of reasoning needs following.

You said, "So, when you go to see Avatar and enjoy it's special effects and 3d imagery, just think to yourself, 'Wow, we would never have anything as cool as that if we've lived like the Indians,' I mean, they never even invented the wheel!"

You know something else the Indians never did either? They never were able to plug their hair into a CAT the size of two horses and control its movement. Nor were they able to live in a tree the size of a sky scraper, or were they able download their memories into planet Earth. Or do pretty much anything else that the Na'Vi were able to do in the movie. Cameron's Native American Indian allegory was obviously lost on you. I wonder what's your obsession with trying to tie Native Americans fully and wholly to the allegory of the Na'Vi? My guess is because your "noble savage" corollary would fall apart if people actually went out and watch the movie and were able to compare and contrast how much the Na'Vi actually were like the Native Americans.

Bonnie, why are commenting? You have said nothing except call someone a helpless passive observer. Do you have any opinions on what he had to say about Kennedy? Or saddam? Or Russia? If you are a grown up and talking, then why is it all you have to say is essentially tantamount to nothing?

What shows are those again?

"and agree that they should have shot her in the head?"

Why shoot her in the head? Jesus, that seems a little much, right? Why not give her a lethal dosage or something. "Shoot her int he head." SHEESH!

She was not being kept alive by machines. She was not on a ventilator, she was not on life support, she breathed naturally, slept and dreamed and responded to her parent's loving touch.

She was on a feeding tube. Nothing more. The whole "life support" meme is simply meant to give a figleaf of humanity to those who approve of killing a helpless woman.

You seem to have a rational mind. I wold suggest you go and see Avatar for yourself! If only for the visuals at least. It's a ride worth watching while it still is in the theater!

I would actually say you are correct in that it was the culture of the right which lead to this reality. Sorry.

I was wondering why you were on this thread. Now I see: Klavan mentioned Avatar in a negative light so he must be admonished for his naughty thoughts!

"Voting is a precious, powerful right of our Constitutional Republic."

Why do you assume that chooseing not to vote is anything different?

"Why should anyone care what he thinks, when he doesn't understand enough about our system of government to vote? "

Did it ever occur to you that he understands enough of our system that the only viable choice was to NOT vote? Once you figure out that both parties are lying to you, the "Republic" will actually start to mend and grow again. Until then, you will have sheep on both sides claiming to be "right" while nothing of substance will ever get accomplished.

thomsas2002, you write a lot. I hope you're getting paid well.

Art comes in many forms, and in my humble opinion, you sir, are an artist.

HA! I'm flattered.

When you can say for sure the extent of the human soul and mine – with total and absolute authority, then I'd listen to your argument. Otherwise, I think you are really say – she's inconvenient and it makes you feel bad for her, so let's let her die.

Because that is what you are saying – in reality. You may not think you are, because you feel you care, but the final analysis is that you simply don't like the way someone like that makes YOU feel. You don't KNOW that she was gone. She was not on life support, she was able to live – just not eat or drink – on her own.

if we go with Klavans view as opposed to this guy, Hollywood will make a movie about Roeder and his cohorts of I guess terrorists and honor killers spread throughout the Christian Regimes. And we can pick up DVDs and websites filled with slogans of Kill the Jew and Kill the Freedom Loving Atheists. As opposed to just lone individuals who lose it and commit sin. Which as we Christian know, exists in all man, Christian or not.

Thomas 2k2 wrote:

[You said, "In reality Evangelical Christians try to keep people alive... in the culture, they murder people."

Umm, you must be forgetting about Scott Roeder (born again from watching the 700 club,) confessed killer of abortion provider George Tiller. Did you purposely leave that out? So in fact, this is probably what you should have said.]

Do you really want to go there?

Mass shootings ranging from Columbine to Virginia Tech are committed by ATHEIST students. In terms of terror attacks on US soil, godless mass murderers make al Qaeda look like slackers.

The face you could name only one Christian shooter in the last decade proves Klavan's point about my faith being at heart pro-life.

Creepy…

Well, until he (or she) clarifies it – I think it was written to praise your ability to stomach it, not write. Chimpanzees can pound a keyboard – that's not a skill. Anyone can cut and paste talking points, and even occasionally "update" them and tailor those remarks to match a topic.

You use anecdotal evidence and warp ideas to fit your perception. That's not Reality.

What does a soldier's being a Christian have to do with anything? Except he's truly less likely to act like a monster and behave like a soldier. I'll grant you that. Since you like "anecdotal" instead of simply let facts speak for themselves, I guess if you are attacked, you are simply going to allow it? If others assist that attacker in trying to bring you down, that's good with you too, right?

Also, you almost had me thinking you were civil, but eventually the fact you are unhinged just has to make itself known.

"Mass shootings ranging from Columbine to Virginia Tech are committed by ATHEIST students."

And this supports your argument…. how again? I am not talking about atheists or what they do, I'm talking about Christian extremists. You know… like the Waco incident… or the

Also. The columbine "Do you believe in God" has been proven to be a lie and meant to falsely portray the killers as godless. Not that I really care.

Source. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/30/bern...

The Virginia Tech killings? Bam! You got me there! sure showed me! But I would wager the impact of some little organisation called the Klu Klux Klan takes the cake on christian terror.

Or, the Army of God, which bombs abortion clinics.

"The face you could name only one Christian shooter in the last decade proves Klavan's point about my faith being at heart pro-life."

Face it. All religion is stupid. Just because your religion has happened to crawl out recently from the dark ages doesn't make it any less retarded or less hate oriented. Your "faith at heart" means that you have to refuse two people who are in love the same rights as any married couple shares. You deal in absolutes. Does not mean they don't exist. It's universally accepted that murder is wrong. But that didn't stop the Salem witch trials, or all the other heinous acts done in the name of religion.

Your faith has done more harm to this world than good. Twisted more minds towards hate, than towards actual selfless love. Religion has killed more people, started more wars, than you could ever admit. Religion is the seed of the devil, if there is one. And he's laughing all the way to the bank. I have never felt more uplifted or spiritually free when i released the shackles of hate and ignorance that "faith" provides. When I was able to look at gay people and say for the first time, "You know what? It's not my business. There are two people in love over there. That's beautiful."

Don't get me wrong. There are good people out there with good intentions. It's just that religion can be used for ill gotten means. Ill purposes way too easily.

Here's the deal. Insulting? Well, if someone truly peed on what they realized and understood was a symbol of someone dear to you, that'd be insulting wouldn't it? Personally, any moron can burn the flag, because truthfully, it's a piece of cloth. They did no actual damage of what it represents. The same with the crucifix (by the way He was not actually in the bottle). It was juvenile and meant to provoke. You are also wrong to call it art. Art is meant to inspire and awe at best, influence minds and perhaps change them. It brings out the best of people even if it is terrible to behold or reminds us of our ugliness.
Mapplethorpe was not doing that, was he? I don't know the man, but from what I have read, even from his defenders, is he meant to show us what he truly thought of Christians. Specifically Catholics. He wanted shock. Shock is not art. It is not a deliberate attempt to simply anger and insult. Art can do both, but not simply for the sake of doing so – that's simply hubris. Ironically, it is usually the indicator that someone is self-righteous – though they may not think of it in that terms.

Thomas 2k2 wrote:

[Face it. All religion is stupid. Just because your religion has happened to crawl out recently from the dark ages doesn't make it any less retarded or less hate oriented. Your "faith at heart" means that you have to refuse two people who are in love the same rights as any married couple shares.]

And the truth comes out.

You're whining because the majority refuses to pass laws to make you feel less guilty about your lifestyle. Charles Winecoff responded to this nonsense better than I could:

Let me get this straight (no pun intended): we in the LGBT community feel we are entitled to majority-style state approval of our feelings and lifestyles – often against the will of our friends and fellow citizens (who, by the way, are largely in support of nice, secular civil unions, which can always be improved) – yet we refuse to relinquish an iota of our minority status. That ain’t going to get you what you want. Make up your mind, people.

Having grown up with the gay rights revolution, I can safely say it’s no longer the straight majority that has the problem with us. It’s the gay community that’s still hung up on “being gay.” How about dropping the adolescent security blanket of comfy persecution – and try being less of a Na’vi and more of a Marine? The rewards might be a lot greater than make-believe “marriage equality.”

Amen, brother.

[...] You’ve got to see this one.  It’s so right — and it really resonates with me because I work so hard educating and inoculating my children against the omnipresent Leftist pop culture.  I think the video also works for me because, as a history major who has always rejected Marxist and deconstructionist approaches to history, I believe in historic facts and despise the way in which liberals manipulate history to suit their current political outcomes.  (Although, to be just, Shakespeare did precisely the same thing, although he was pandering to current royalty, rather than trying to propagandize the public.) Share With Others: [...]

"to pass laws to make you feel less guilty about your lifestyle."

Why should I feel guilty about my lifestyle. I mean my parents do not like that my girlfriend and I are shacking up, but I have no problem with it so far. What lifestyle should I feel guilty about? You need to clarify.

Why did you quote some random gay guy named Charles Winecoff? If he feels he is entitled to majority style state approval then more power to him! Good luck with that minority status thing though. You can't have your cake and eat it to. It's going to be a long uphill battle for gay people. I feel sorry for them.

You are reading too much into the sarcastic joke I made at the author.

etc.- illustrate how deeply rooted this evil devaluing of all innocent life has become. Terri Schaivo was INTENTIONALLY STARVED TO DEATH to make a political point and open the door for euthanasia to become accepted, same as abortion. It's a slippery slope. Having had a sibling become brain dead after the trauma of an automobile accident, I can assure you that, medically speaking, it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep a brain dead person alive on a machine- you can pump air into a body from now till eternity, and you will still end up with a rotting corpse once the brain is dead. Terri Schaivo was not brain dead, nor was she on any machines. Terri Schaivo may not have been living someone else's idea of what life should be, but then that begs the question- "what exactly IS a life worth living, and WHO gets to decide that????" A public execution of an innocent on National TV- who exactly are the selfish ones???

I thought it was pretty contrived and silly.

"Piss Christ was insulting. But the Bible already warns us of that."

The bible already warns us that Piss Christ was insulting? Are you drinking? You do not make much sense sometimes.

"And when it came out I was a commie liberal atheist artist so…"

And now you are just the same person, but on the extreme, "right." Sigh….

"She was not being kept alive by machines."

Semantics. How about Drip IV's then? Still it's not "natural" either.

I see what you did there and I approve!

Actually, it's Thou Shalt not Murder. Little bit of trivia. Some mistranslation from the original Hebrew, apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

Oh dear, is that going to make it more difficult for you to embrace your prejudice against Christians? Probably not, but it's worth a shot.

The bible already warns us that Piss Christ was insulting? Are you drinking? You do not make much sense sometimes.

More likely the Bible has something about unbelievers who will mock and ridicule. Alas, I don't have a Bible handy, but I may try to look it up. Or perhaps someone else who actually has access to a Bible might beat me to it.

I with you Bonnie. My brother-in-law gripes about politics, especially conservatives, but he has never voted. Many people have died to give us the right to vote.
Russ is passive. And many other things but I won't go into that.

No, Thomas.
Yours is a Boy's Philosophy that allows you to feel superior without committing to anything. You will sit on the sidelines tsk tsking, and the Republic will just automatically "start to mend"… how?

Adults work with what there is to work with, while boys demand that perfection just happen while they wait for it at the Carlyle, or sleeping in the park.

Thomas, you have a remarkable ability to utterly miss the point. Or, perhaps seeing the point, and not liking it, you pretend that it is not there.

Terri was killed slowly, and painfully.

She did not choose the method, or the time.

She was not "allowed to die," she was killed slowly and painfully — unless you think locking someone in a cell and denying them food and water is "allowing" them to die. Try that with a pet, and see what happens to you.

What fully aware, terminal patients, whose organs are shutting down, choose to do every time they are offered food and water has nothing to do with what was done TO a helpless person whose organs were NOT shutting down — but everything to do with US.

[...] sent me this amazing video from Andrew [...]

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