And that’s just what the Republicans in Congress did to Hollywood when it abandoned the rush to pass SOPA and regulate the Internet for the benefit of Tinseltown. Astonishingly, considering its usual inability to perform competently at even the most basic level, the GOP not only managed to embrace good policy but drove a wedge into the Democratic coalition that may well have dramatic consequences down the road. And, best of all, it provided a bit of long overdue payback to the smug oligarchs of LA’s West Side who have spent the last couple decades treating Republicans like something you’d hasten to flush.

Hey, suckers, how do ya like us now?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is only the latest attempt by Hollywood to breathe some life back into its dying business model. Enraged that online “pirates” are passing around bootleg copies of movies, shows, books, music, and all other manner of intellectual property, the industry did what it has done for years: ran to Congress for ever more burdensome and onerous laws designed to hold back the inevitable consequences of progress. 

But this time, it went too far. Perhaps it was Hollywood’s arrogance. Perhaps it was the provisions allowing Hollywood to use the United States government to shut down any website it pleased on the mere accusation of “piracy” without any due process, a power lefty–fascist bureaucrats would be only too eager to accept.

Not surprisingly, the people who make their living on the web were less than thrilled about giving Uncle Sam and the media conglomerates an off-switch.

Initially, the Republicans once again fell into Hollywood’s trap. When Hollywood needs something from Congress, it dons the mask of “business” and enlists the GOP ideologically. After all, the Republicans are supposed to love “business.” Until now, they have been blind to the fact that many of the “businesses” that plead for special breaks before them are about as capitalist as your typical Occupy Wall Street mutant – the only difference is nicer suits and better drugs.

They aren’t capitalists; they’re cronyists, either relying on government handouts directly or basking in the protection of special favors. And that’s precisely the opposite of what we conservatives are about.

Businesses compete; “businesses” like the entertainment industry use the government to enact rules and regulations that make it so they don’t have to compete.

So, like Pavlov’s dogs hearing the dinner bell, the GOP started drooling when Hollywood started playing the business card. In fact, Republican Lamar Smith of Texas was only too eager to carry water for it – as were several other normally solid Republicans who should have known better.

Of course, Hollywood laughed. It laughed because it holds Republicans in contempt. For decades, Hollywood has endeavored to depict conservative Americans are weirdos, losers, petty tyrants, religious nuts, baby killing fanatics, and idiots. And, once again, the GOP was falling into its trap and dancing to its tune. “What a bunch of suckers!” snickered the Hollywood big shots.

Oh, and the Democrats? Not an issue. Not only are Hollywood and the liberals in ideological lockstep, but Hollywood represents buckets of money and bushels of glamor. The Dems are always on board for whatever Hollywood wants. They know where their locally-sourced, whole wheat artisan bread in non-dairy buttered.

But something funny happened on the way to the fascism.

There was a backlash. The peasants revolted! Tech savvy Americans, both right and left, saw that the Internet that they had grown up with and embraced was in grave danger of being bound by regulations for the sole purpose of ensuring that the dying Hollywood business model would last a bit longer – at the price of stifling everyone else.

No dice.

The rebellion came as a shock to the GOP congresscreatures, who in reality probably had not given much thought to the contents of SOPA – that is, until all hell broke loose. Suddenly, they became VERY interested in intellectual property and telecommunications law.

The Republicans, pushed by a groundswell of opposition from conservative new media types, bailed. SOPA was a non-starter, and now everyone will be looking the next time Hollywood tries to play them. Hey, Hollywood, there’s a new paradigm in Tinseltown.

And the Democrats who supported SOPA  – and who could not back out no matter how outraged the nutroots got – ended up looking both foolish and like tools of the corporate power structure.  And that’s just what they are.

But it gets better.

It gets better because this was a great object lesson all around. To those in Republicans in Congress, it brought attention to a subject that had been sadly ignored but is vital to a huge number of influential voters. It gave them an issue – Internet freedom – that is truly congruent with conservative values, unlike the past political payoffs to connected Hollywood cronies. We conservatives can run on this.

It was also a lesson to young, tech-savvy people who see themselves as culturally liberal and just kind of voted that way, mostly out of habit.  The group that really shares their values – creativity, enterprise, freedom – is the conservativees. The liberals they counted themselves among wanted to shut down websites, not the conservatives. SOPA opened a lot of eyes.

Everything they thought they knew was a lie. Here was Kevin Bacon, and he was telling John Lithgow not to dance.

Can you say “Wedge issue?”

Internet freedom, besides being the right thing to do, is a powerful banner to carry aloft into the battle for the next generation’s hearts and minds. The young, affluent, educated voters the Democrat Party is counting on for the future have to choose between the stolid, limited, controlled world of the Democrat’s corporate owners or the free market of the conservatives where their only limits are those they impose upon themselves.

The Democrats can’t flex on this – they are bound to Hollywood for money and what’s left of its fading aura. But the GOP? It won’t miss what it never had.

In fact, Hollywood’s history of trashing conservatives only make it sweeter when its emissaries come to us for help and we laugh in their botoxed faces.

With its crappy product, promotion of (mostly) non-stellar “stars” and sneering contempt for the majority of its customers, Hollywood seems desperately committed to failure. That’s why when is asks us for a life preserver, we should be only too happy to hand it an anvil.

We all know Hollywood is spinning around the bowl, waiting for the final flush. Attendance at theaters is not just flat-lining, it’s in free fall. There are a lot of reasons, some of which Hollywood really cannot do much about. Video games occupy young eyeballs. Technology now delivers a tsunami of entertainment options to our TVs, computers and iThings. But there are ways that Hollywood can respond. It can make movies that don’t suck, but that’s another subject for another time. And it can make the theaters into something new and different – that is, it can make them into places we want to be.

I (and folks like me) should be a target demographic for the green eyeshade guys who supposedly run Hollywood.  While, even if all the conditions were perfect, I wouldn’t go as much as I used to, I used to go a couple times a week before I was married, and even after I’d go weekly. I’ll spend my few free bucks (including the fortune for babysitters) if there’s something I want to see (doubtful, and again another issue for another time) and if going to the theater itself is something other than a nightmarish death march.

Which brings me to my trip to the El Segundo, California, ArcLight Cinemas on a recent Friday night to see “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”…

The ArcLight, and other “premium” theaters, represents the industry’s attempt to address some of the more common complaints about theaters from people like me – decrepit facilities, careless projection, and snack options that range from bland to hideous.  As a drunken college student, I didn’t mind going to some hellhole theater on dollar night to see awesome fare like “The Exterminator II” and “Pieces”– hey, aesthetics aren’t Consideration No. 1 when your flick’s tagline is “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!” But today, I want a little more than sticky floors and discreet ticket takers who overlook the beer cans I had obviously secreted in my pockets.

The ArcLight promises a premium movie-going experience; it’s a concept that is being tried around the country. In theory, it’s awesome. There’s assigned seating – no more battling for a seat with some nimrod who announces that he’s “saving” the entire row for his coterie of quarter-wit buddies who are out in the parking lot sparking a doob in the back of somebody’s mom’s Dodge Caravan.

There’s alcohol, both in the refreshment area and in one of the 14 theaters. The snacks are of higher quality and are carefully prepared. There’s even gourmet coffee. The seats are roomy and clean. A nice young attendant comes in and introduces the movie. There’s no coming in after the first five minutes, and they do not show ads during the previews.

It all sounds awesome in theory. In practice, however, the ArcLight is a pain. It seems that the proposed solutions to our complaints simply spawn a whole new set of different problems.

Start at the beginning – buying the ticket. The first thing you notice is the price – $14.50 a seat. To be clear, that’s dollars, not pesos.  I started off flipping burgers at Carl’s, Jr. for $3.10 an hour; $14.50 is a lot of dough. And double it if you’re not a creepy loner. Leaving aside parking and a sitter and dinner, you’re out $29.00 walking in the door. That’s like the per capita income of residents of Burkina Faso.

So, if I’m dropping $29.00 on a flick, I want it smooth and I want it comfortable and, most of all, I want it hassle-free. But the hassle starts when I try to pay that $29.00. There’s a line, and there’s a line because everyone has to go through the ritual of picking their seats. It takes forever. I took forever; I wanted one near the aisle but not up in the stratosphere because I enjoyed a light alcoholic beverage and didn’t want to shimmy past a dozen folks to go out and hit the head. Buying a ticket is just a pain in the tail.

Now, I could have avoided the hassle by buying the tickets online – I’d have even gotten a discount. But leaving aside the fact that many couples are still arguing about which movie to see right up until they plunk down the cash (as we were), when I’m paying people to provide services, I expect them to conform their behavior to my desires, not vice versa. I’m not here to make ArcLight’s job easier by buying tickets the way they want; they need to make whatever choice I make easy. I’m called a “customer.” Look it up.

Oh, and no, I don’t have the answer on how to make the process less annoying. It’s not my job to figure it out; it’s theirs.

So, after getting a ticket, I was ready for a drink. I looked over to the tiny bar and observed a long line of thirsty patrons snaking into the dining area, being frantically served by two overworked bartenders who not only mixed drinks but had to make gourmet coffees. Having only 20 minutes until the movie started, we headed to the theater. ArcLight lost a sale, probably $20 worth.

I made sure to hit the restroom on the way in. See, the 14 theaters are strung out along a long hallway and there’s one bathroom in the whole place, which is back in the lobby. Yeah, it’s like a 150 yard walk each way, and you have to go through the ticket guy again. Are you kidding me? If you were watching “Gone with the Wind,” and you left to hit the restroom when Scarlet is watching her suitors ride off to battle, you’d get back about the time Atlanta catches fire.

“What did I miss, honey?”

“Just the Civil War.”

Here’s another suggestion for the restrooms. Managers, you might want to walk through them once in a while. Your people will keep spotless the things they see you inspect. I don’t like to have to strategically position myself before the urinal to avoid stepping in the puddle of used soda generated by those whose aim fell short. There’s really no excuse for it.

And heaven forbid you want a snack. See, they give you extra loving care when you buy your snacks – they even insist on putting the cream into your regular coffee themselves. That’s nice. And utterly inefficient. It takes forever to get a popcorn – no, I don’t want to hear about how your butter is locally-sourced. Get me my food, take my money (and they want a lot of money) and let me get the hell back to my $14.50 movie.

Oh, here’s another idea. You might want to have more than two of the cashier stations open. I mean, I understand that Friday is not usually a big “movie night” and all, but it might speed up the process from “agonizingly slow” to merely “ridiculously slow.” ArcLight lost yet another sale, probably another $10-$20 worth.

The theater itself is okay – the seats aren’t as comfortable as ArcLight thinks they are, but they aren’t awful. I felt cheated because we did not get the usual cheery pre-movie briefing by one of the ushers. Ironically, this is the one movie that really could have used it. “Tinker, Tailor” appeared to be shot on particularly grainy stock, probably to recreate the feeling of 1970s England and movies of that era. But it looked odd, and it would have been nice to hear that the movie was shot that way on purpose.

Note that all the employees I encountered were well-groomed, helpful and polite. There was just the right number of previews – not too few but not too many. And no one decided the theater was the perfect place for an extended cell phone chat, but that might have to do with the fact that “Tinker, Tailor’s” target demographic is not teen morons who were raised by wolves. We liked the movie too.

Experimentation is good, and I think ArcLight (and others) should be commended for trying. However, there are some serious bugs that need to be worked. They need to engineer their processes better – I find it hard to believe any ArcLight executive has dropped in unannounced like a regular customer.

If any had, they would have seen how many of the processes are not fully thought through; if you want to sell drinks to 14 theaters full of people, you need more than a pair or bartenders. You need to speed up the food service or you’ll lose sales – like they lost mine. You need a toilet within walking distance of all your theaters. And you need managers who get off their tails, walk through their operations, and actively lead their people (hint: hire some recently retired Army non-commissioned officers to run your theaters – problems solved, gentlemen).

I want to go back to the movies, and I appreciate that premium theaters like the ArcLight are trying to address the concerns of people like me. I really want to patronize you, so fix the flaws under your control and I’ll give you a chance. It’s just too bad you don’t have control over the quality of the movies.

Maybe, but it’s hard to see why.

There was a time when the Academy Awards were an institution, where the nation devoured the nominations and joined together around their TV sets to watch the show itself.  It was fun – the whole family watched.  But that time is rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror of American culture.

It’s more than the fact that there are, literally, other things to watch while in the past the other two networks bowed to the inevitable and counter-programmed with “Mannix” reruns.  But the ratings are now in freefall.  We don’t care about Oscar because Oscar stopped caring about us.

Let’s look at the Best Picture nominees:  “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” “Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Help,” “Moneyball,” “War Horse” and “The Tree of Life.” For many of these, that’s the first time anyone has looked at them – only three of these movies are even nearly within even the loosest definition of a “hit.”

“The Help,” which has its fans but struck many as another movie about plucky white folks rescuing blacks, thereby making its nomination a certainty, made about $170 million. “Moneyball” and “War Horse” made about $75 and $72 million respectively. And the rest of the nominees? They’re coming soon to one of those supermarket bargain DVD bins near you.

Hollywood defaults to the darlings of the urban elite – I’m doubting “The Tree of Life’s” mopey, soul-searching spiritual journey through time and space and Sean Penn’s soul did a lot of business outside of hipster-infested coastal cities where neo-beatnik audiences in skinny jeans snapped their fingers in approval of the groovy insights Terrance Malick flashed on screen in the place traditionally filled with things like ”a plot,” “action” and “a point.”

The presence of Tom Hanks and its high-falutin’ literary heritage are the only things selling “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” – but America isn’t buying.  It’s made just $12 million. I guess 9/11-related journeys of self-discovery are a hard sell. And I guess the only people who don’t get that live in Hollywood.

There’s Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.” Well, if it’s Paris there’s no reason why he couldn’t have somehow incorporated Roman Polanski into it too and made it the ultimate Hollywood tribute to elite-approved and excused sexual exploiters.

“The Descendants” had a big downside – smug lefty George Clooney in the role of  “Sensitive George Clooney” – and one huge upside – it was written by the hilarious Jim Rash, best known as the Dean on “Community.” “Hugo” was generally seen as a pleasant diversion. But neither was a huge hit – probably 5-8 million out of 310 million Americans saw each of them. And more importantly, neither has sent out the cultural shockwaves of truly great films – they’re just movies, and not a hugely memorable ones.

Where are the classics, the movies that in future years we will stumble upon on AMC on Sunday afternoons and be unable to look away?  These aren’t “Best Pictures” – they’re “Meh Pictures.”

Now, “The Artist” has enjoyed raves but, at $12 million, made little impact at the box office. It seems like a pleasant enough film, but a black and white, silent movie about old Hollywood isn’t a Best Picture. It’s a novelty, and one that’s only been noticed at all because it flatters Hollywood by being about Hollywood.

Maybe “Harry Potter and the Damn Thing Finally Ends, Part 3″ was not the best picture of the year, but did the Academy really expand the number of Best Picture nominees just so that another session of cinematic onanism from Malick could stagger onto the list?

It’s not supposed to be a dry exercise in film criticism – where’s the showmanship, the pizazz that Hollywood used to deliver? This isn’t a Best Picture nominee roster; it’s a laundry list of mediocre movies no one will remember in six months. Sheesh, there’s not even anything amazingly, awesomely awful enough to get our pulses pounding.  3-6 Mafia, where are you!

So, will Americans gather together in their living rooms on Oscar night, with partisans of “The Descendants” shouting down those favoring “Moneyball?” Yeah, sure. And Jonah Hill deserved to be nominated over the great Albert Brooks.

Hollywood is out of touch and disconnected from its audience on every level. Its theaters are miserable, its content dull or worse, its politics offensive and the ticket price for it all outrageous. The idea of a movie star is dying, and it appears the Oscar is on life support.

The arrival of a serious film about a serious conservative presents liberal reviewers with a quandary. When the film trashes the conservative, that’s great – the slander in and of itself is good for at least a star on its own, and if the boom mikes aren’t looming in the frame and the actors don’t forget their lines you’re guaranteed at least a three star review if only in the name of socialist solidarity.

But if the movie, as some say happened here, refuses to take a position on its subject, then there’s a problem for the liberal reviewer. As we shall see, they tend to handle it by simply inserting their own limousine liberal insights into the review. Somewhere, sometime, someone must have lied to them and told them that the world gives a damn about the political views of guys whose job it is to discourse upon movies that feature singing chipmunks, space robots and/or Ashton Kutcher.

No one is really sure about what might happen in the third theoretically possible situation. It will be interesting to see how liberal reviewers respond if Hollywood ever makes a major movie biography about a prominent conservative that views him or her in a positive light.

The reviews for “The Iron Lady” are mixed, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 55 percent score by the critics.  Not surprisingly, the critics are having a tough time sticking to the substance. Many of them just can’t resist taking a whack at her – as if she had not spent her career being hit harder by better.

Roger Ebert, a reflexive leftist whose pinko opinions usually saturate his movie reviews, wrote a thoughtful review here. He objected not to the opinion the film held of its subject, but that the producers seemed too timid to offer any opinion at all:

Was she a monster? A heroine? The movie has no opinion. She was a fact. You leave the movie having witnessed it. Whatever your feelings were about Thatcher were before you saw it, you now have some images to accompany it.

Love him or hate him, that’s some sharp writing. If true, it represents a valid criticism and is the kind of keen insight one looks to a reviewer to express. But, of course, Ebert could not resist a long digression into lefty/peacenik silliness over Thatcher’s steadiness in the face of Argentine aggression in the Falklands which then morphs into a lament for her heartlessness:

Thatcher held office for an unprecedented three terms, bitterly divided Great Britain, and led her nation during the Falklands War, which seemed to be largely an exercise in hubris on both sides. Before the war (and now), no one frankly gave a damn about the Falkland Islands, and Thatcher’s foreign policy amounted to: “They’re ours and you bloody well can’t have them.” For this brave troops on both sides were killed, and those who cared to could deceive themselves that there was one small spot of foreign soil that, as far as Thatcher was concerned, would be forever British. (Footnote: The British didn’t consider it foreign.)

Of course, Argentina started the war by invading the Falklands, over which it had disputed Britain’s claim since 1833. You can’t say they didn’t wait long enough before taking action. And if Argentina mounted a military invasion, what could Thatcher do? She was compelled to defend the islands. The loved ones on either side who lost someone in that war must have been hard-pressed to understand why death was useful or necessary.

That wasn’t Thatcher’s concern. In a striking scene that takes place in her increasingly senile old age, she declares that ideas are more important to her than feelings. That seems to have been a governing principle in her life, allowing her to look with apparently limited concern at unemployment, hunger and homelessness on the domestic front.

Ebert’s feelings about British policy of the 1980s really aren’t the issue – we just want to know if “The Iron Lady” is any good. But like all liberals, Ebert seems to think we’re dying for his insights on politics when the important question is whether we should drop $40 for seats and popcorn to watch this flick.

Lesser reviewers likewise join in the Thatcher-bashing. You’ll be shocked to learn that Karina Longworth of the Village Voice resented Thatcher not being presented with horns and a pointy tail. Variety accepts the unexamined premises of the community it serves, showing why it is Hollywood’s own Pravda when reviewer Leslie Felperin fumes that “[m]uch is made of how Thatcher broke through the glass ceilings of gender and class on a personal level; rather less is said about how her policies disadvantaged the poor.”

While it’s no shock that Slate’s Dana Stevens thinks that it was Thatcher’s “policies of economic deregulation and union-busting that dismantled Britain’s social safety net,” I expect that British subjects taxed into poverty to support the bloated behemoth of cradle-to-grave socialism on that sinking island would be shocked to hear about this alleged “dismantling.”

Cole Smithey (“The Smartest Film Critic in the World”) sugarcoats it by labeling Thatcher one “of the Right’s most reprehensible examples of absolute power corrupting absolutely,” raising the important questions, “Who is Cole Smithey, and why should I give a rat’s ass what some hipster doofus with a website and a subscription to The Nation thinks?”

He also asserts that “Thatcher contributed to the world’s current economic collapse with a cunning brand of daring cruelty that defies logic and reason,” forgetting that the lefty Labor Party had some small part in running Britain after Thatcher stepped down in 1990. I particularly enjoyed his characterization of how “Thatcher’s heavy-handed military response in the Falklands rightly paints her as a warmonger.”

He seems to have forgotten that Argentina invaded the Falklands, not vice versa, but then he seems to have grown up in an age where wussy school administrators suspend both the kid who starts the fight and the one who fights back. Smithey opines that “[h]istory will not be kind to Margaret Thatcher,” a threat I would find more chilling if Smithey’s comments betrayed any familiarity with history.

With all the hyperventilating about the subject of the film, it’s hard to get a straight answer to the only question we really want to hear these critics answer – should we pay to see the movie?  We still don’t really know.

The Walking Dead, HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” Showtime’s “Homeland” and Fox’s “Terra Nova” could not be more different in concept, tone or execution, but what they have in common illustrates the biggest threat to Hollywood – and the solution to Hollywood’s problems.

The industry faces unprecedented technological challenges and dwindling audiences, but those alone won’t close down the Glitter Factory. Hackneyed plots, unquestioned political premises and disrespect for the audience will.  But great storytelling, fine acting and technical work – those can save it.

This is written as a fan, as someone who wants these shows to succeed, who wants the hundreds of people who are employed by them to keep working. Please note that spoilers will run free and without restraint throughout, flowing unhindered like stupid ideas from Ron Paul’s Fed-hole.

“Boardwalk Empire” is a near-great show, adult fare not only on account of the complex themes of loyalty and greed that it explores but also in the sense that it packs more female nudity per episode than a drunken Disney teen star’s hacked cellphone camera. 

“Empire” should be great, but it’s not because it falls into the same tiresome traps that we see again and again. As Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, the boss of 1920s Atlantic City, Steve Buscemi is fantastic. I had my doubts at first that this slight, weird-looking guy could pull off a ruthless politico/crime boss. Interestingly, his physical weakness – he’s not a standard tough guy, and the one fight he gets into is pathetic rather than brutal – is overwhelmed by the icy ruthlessness lurking beneath his cynical, smart-ass exterior. Nothing sums it up better than when he personally pops his former protégé in the face with a .38 in the season finale – then coldly blows his brains out. I can’t say it enough; Buscemi is amazing.

There is a lot of amazing in “Empire;” the other actors are uniformly terrific (even when playing poorly conceived characters). The sets and costumes are fantastic as well; you are transported back in time. Great performances and great technical production are what set a show up for greatness. So why is Empire not quite great?

Two things, things we see again and again in modern Hollywood that act to drive away audiences that want to love the show wholeheartedly. The first is – once again, as Ben Shapiro has vividly illustrated and thoroughly documented– the creators simply cannot help but impose their own insular, anti-religious, west-of-Interstate 5 cultural vibe. And second, they’ve bought into the hackneyed conventional wisdom that what makes great drama is talky, sludgy, momentum-stalling domestic conflict.

Can we have just ONE SHOW without characters dealing with weird daddy issues?

Here’s the thing – we watch “Empire” to see how these guys weave their criminal web. But the interplay between Nucky and his mistress, or Nucky and his dad, or his mistress and her brother? No. One. Cares.

I don’t know where this comes from; I suspect they don’t think women will watch if the show focuses too much on things that are interesting. They haven’t met my Hot Wife; whenever the mistress comes on screen she gets up and goes into the kitchen until the next scene.

Does anybody remember anything about Mrs. Godfather? Case closed.

Oh, and Jimmy Darmody’s relationship with his mother – did you have to go there? Did he really have to have sex with his mom? Really? I get the Oedipus thing, but you know, just because you have the cable-TV freedom to create a plot line that mirrors Oedipus doesn’t mean that you have to do it.

And the last scene, where mistress (I keep calling her that because I forgot her name because I stop paying attention when that soul-crushingly dull character comes on screen) signs the key deed over to the church, had better lead into Nucky popping her in the noggin with a .38 in the season three premiere. The story requires it. Keeping the audience watching requires it. Guys, it’s all upside.

That brings us to the other problem – religion, as conceived by a bunch of Hollywood writers. Every religious character is either a fundamentalist lunatic/hypocrite or just a sucker and a hypocrite. The priest seems to be a money-grubbing exploiter of the mistress’s conception of God as some sort of sacred vending machine where you put some money in and get your wish granted.

The only ones who don’t get treated as utter slime are the black churchgoers, mostly because Hollywood liberals always depict African-Americans of faith as harmless, childlike believers while everyone else who professes a belief in God is insane, evil or both.

“Homeland” has similar strengths and weaknesses, but while the finale of “Empire” hefted the trend-line skyward (the character of Jimmy Darmody had pretty much gone as far as he could go when he went as far as he could go with his mother), the trend line for what seems to see itself as the “thinking man’s ‘24′” cratered in the finale. It started strong and plummeted, as thoroughly documented at Big Hollywood.

We have the same strengths here, particularly acting. Claire Danes is astonishingly good as the mentally unbalanced CIA analyst who is quickly losing it. Even when her character’s actions are ridiculous, and when the screenplays let her down, she owns it. The other actors are likewise terrific, even Damian Lewis as the Marine turned terrorist. Plus, Morena Baccarin is there for those who enjoy attractive, dark-haired, vaguely Latin women who take their clothes off, a demographic otherwise known as “men.”

But once again we see the same problems – a focus on plot elements that no one cares about, and a multicultural vacuity straight out of the lib-left play book. “Homeland’s” home life is death; whenever Lewis’ TV family comes on screen the show grinds to a complete halt as feelings are shared and more feelings are shared.

Stop sharing feelings. It’s terrible. This is a show about hunting terrorists. Hunt terrorists and leave the hugging to Lifetime movies.

But the worst part is the moral relativism that manifests itself in ginning up sympathy for the terrorists by the hoariest, lamest tropes imaginable. Surprise! The Vice-President is secretly a war criminal whose evil antics brought this terrorist plot on. Gee, we’ve never seen a Hollywood product ever make out America to be the villain! What a radical new direction to take the story; never saw that coming!

Let’s keep breaking exciting new ground. How about next we have a romantic comedy where the lovers fight because of a misunderstanding then reunite for a happy ending?

Let me help out the producers and writers a bit. Americans are the unambiguous good guys in this war. The jihadis are the bad guys. There is no grey area. We did not “bring it on ourselves,” and we have not only a moral right but a moral obligation to hunt them and their scumbag buddies down anywhere they hide. An American who consorts or sympathizes with them for any reason is a traitor who deserves to be hanged and his corpse tossed in a fetid swamp. Jihadis’ views, ideas, beliefs and grievances merit no respect and have no importance except to the extent that understanding their sick, idiotic ideology allows us to more effectively destroy them.

Any questions? You guys have ten minutes into the season two premiere to “wow” me by showing that you’ve learned your lesson or I flip the channel. Dismissed.

“The Walking Dead’s” problems are well documented – once again, it focuses on boring peripheral feelingsy nonsense at the expense of zombie action, and its ideology is drawn straight from a seminar titled Hollywood Liberal Shibboleths 101. But the last, bleak, hopeless moments of the mid-season finale (whatever that means) provides some hope that TWD might reanimate when the show returns in February.

Until the last two minutes, the season had been a fiasco. The entire scenario had the survivors hunting for some stupid kid who didn’t listen and ran off into the zombie forest. Instead of letting Darwin do his job, these people spent every episode looking for her. Shane, the alleged “bad guy” who in reality is the only one who’s not a complete half-wit, became my hero. He was a bad-ass who packed heat when everyone else got wussy about guns (there’s this utterly bizarre gun control vibe running through the show), took on the dirty jobs, exhibited some rare tactical common sense and scored with all the hot women. I’m all aboard Team Shane.

When some fatbody who stupidly wounded a kid became a liability when running from zombies to bring back some medicine to save said kid, Shane’s innovative solution was to kneecap him so he could bring the stuff back while the zombies were occupied turning Mr. Chunky into a tubby smorgasbord. This was supposed to be some giant moral conundrum. Pffft. Hey, if either the kid or the dumb-ass who accidentally shot the kid has to die, I vote for the dumb-ass. And if he wasn’t man enough to choose to make the last stand so Shane could escape, then I have no problem with Shane volunteering him.

But the redemptive highlight was the final scene where the survivors are clearing out a barn full of zombies belonging to a religious nut (because, again, if you are religious you have to be a nut). After they smoke all the zombies, one more stumbles out, the little girl they had been hunting all half-season. Awesome. Then the hero pops her in the forehead. Nice.

You gotta have some guts to spend weeks having your characters hunt for a cute little girl then have her turn out to be a zombie and then have the hero cap her. That’s quality storytelling. So I’m moderately psyched about the rest of the season. Keep up the momentum.

Finally, “Terra Nova,” the time travel dinosaur show on regular TV, started weak with a lot of feelings and way too few dinosaurs. However, it’s gotten better, though the limitations of free TV take away any kind of edge. Older kids can certainly watch it, which is not really a selling point in my book. It is what it is. But there still aren’t enough dinosaurs.

There is lots of running around, explosions, and a lot less talk of feelings – though there’s at least a hug or two per show. The actors are finding their characters; Stephen Lang as the commander is awesome. The (as usual) daddy issues-centric mythology storyline makes little sense, but there are some intriguing hints about the show’s future direction.

Here’s the problem – once again, the same old Hollywood cultural premises and assumptions seem to prevail. Like “Star Trek” (many of the creative types worked on past “Trek” programs), the society in “Terra Nova” is militarized with a clear rank hierarchy. The thing is, such a structure (when applied to a society as a whole instead of just the military itself) is known as “fascism.” Sure, it’s a smiley face fascism, but it’s fascism – just a more militaristic socialism with spiffy uniforms.

The major means of production are all owned collectively and controlled by the government. Sure, there are a few small businesses – a bar, a trader – but those are on the fringe and treated as at least disreputable if not corrupt. Note also that the human villains are all puppets of – wait for it – a giant corporation from the future. The commander tosses people into jail at will; his whim is all the “due process” anyone is allowed. It’s a dictatorship – a benevolent one, but a dictatorship nonetheless.

And the show seems to think this is all okay. It’s kind of a liberal’s perfect world – no power bases outside government control, businesses marginalized (or, if outside their control, evil enemies) and no inconvenient dissent allowed. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman probably eats it up.

Also, as with “Star Trek,” there is no religion – none at all. It never comes up. Clearly, the producers don’t seem to see this as a bug – in fact, in their minds it’s probably a feature. But the scene where the military buries a dead soldier in a non-religious ritual uncomfortably evokes the Nazis’ neo-pagan rites. When leftists (of which Nazis are merely a better dressed subspecies – yeah, I know you leftists hate to hear the ugly truth) succeed in driving out God, they try to fill the people’s spiritual void with the State. Let me be clear; I am not saying “Terra Nova” is some kind of a Nazi show. What I am saying is that the show has a lot of room to explore some of the issues that the show’s scenario raises about democracy, capitalism and religion.

And that it could use more dinosaurs.

These four shows all have weaknesses, mostly stemming from taking their eyes off of what makes them interesting and focusing on hackneyed domestic drama that someone somehow decided was necessary to appeal to women. If I were a woman, I’d be insulted. As a man, I’m just annoyed. Further, they all, to some extent, embrace cultural and political premises that many if not most Americans reject – especially with regard to religion.

But there’s good news too. All of the shows are entertaining. All of them have good production values, and all offer fine performances. Hollywood has the talent to do great work. A little focus on the story, a little open-mindedness toward the views and ideas of others (by which I mean Americans who don’t live in the 310 area code) and it can consistently do so.

Again, we conservatives don’t want Hollywood to fall short. We want it to succeed. And if it chooses to do so, it can. So, less talking about feelings and more stuff about the mob, more killing terrorists, more zombies and more Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

This woman took very, very little in the way of ability and somehow provided a service – of a kind that frankly baffles me – that millions of people nevertheless want to spend their money on. Regardless, it’s none of your or my business, and it’s especially none of the government’s business.

But now, here comes “Occupy Hollywood,” a hilarious exercise in poetic justice in which the left proposes to chase its own tail by attacking the same cretinous celebrities who have been the first to parrot every commie slogan the bongo-playing degenerates of Occupy Wall Street have misspelled on their placards.

Jo Piazza, the author of some remainder bin perennial titled Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, is leading the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you-athon with an article in The Huffington Post called “Occupy Hollywood: Why It’s Time To Call Out High-Earning Celebrities.”

For some reason, she thinks what movie stars make is some sort of problem:

Yet, the middle class continues to prop up the .01 percent: Hollywood celebrities who make millions just for being themselves. When it comes to making money, celebrities are abnormal. Their enormous salaries make them outliers in the American economy, on a pay grade above most CEOs, surgeons and lawyers — the professions that typically come to mind when we think of the wealthy.

Well, it sure is a problem, like global warming is a problem — that is, it isn’t. As Chet the Unicorn would say if he was here and not riding the magic rainbow to Happyland, that some people she envies are successful is apparently America’s greatest crisis; ergo, you should all be outraged! After all, to liberals, government’s primary function is catering to the worst impulses of jealous busybodies.

Piazza whines about Kardashian, Snooki, and Brangelina making money. For some reason, she is under the impression that what celebrities make is her business:

It is messed up! So what can we do about it?

Only a liberal sees other people being successful and finds it imperative to put a stop to it. Her solution?

So how about a movement to Occupy Hollywood?

Gimme a break. Here’s a better idea. How about you and the rest of the left-wing morons start a movement to shut the hell up?

We, as conservatives who love freedom – meaning of necessity that we love free enterprise and detest the idea of the kind of fascist nanny state these losers would impose in order to to make the world conform to their arbitrary and self-serving concepts of fairness – need to draw the battle line here, at the celebrities.

We need to defend the right of everyone – even stupid, useless, vapid nincompoops – to get rich.

Johnny Depp (by all accounts a good guy) made $50 million last year, Piazza complains. And we conservatives must say, “Awesome!”

Liberals see success as a problem – if people are able to live their own lives without the guidance of aspiring liberal fascists, the entire premise of liberalism is fatally undercut. So success is the target, and not a lot of people have been as successful as Johnny Depp has.

Yeah, he’s earned a lot of money. That’s great! The key word is “earned.” He has talent, he has skill, and he provides something that makes him worth $50 million a year to someone. That someone wants his services and considers it a good deal to fork over $50 mil, but Piazza, the liberal fascist, would prefer to substitute her arbitrary assessment of his value for the free choice of those who actually are paying him.

Hell no.

Depp’s time and talent belong to him — not to Piazza, not Michael Moore, not to any of those drumming idiots in Zuccotti Park.

It belongs to him, not her, and he owes no one – not me, not you, not Piazza, not Obama – any explanations, reasons or excuses. If he wishes to bathe nude in a swimming pool full of twenties, that’s his business and none of ours.

It’s his property. Taking it from him, as Piazza would love to do to satisfy her personal vision of justice, is theft.

It’s morally wrong.

And as a practical matter, it’s devastating. Piazza and the rest of her envious, thieving loser pals don’t really care about Depp’s millions. They care about our thousands. Hell, we all know how communism works; it’s the regular folks who get their property redistributed while the nomenklatura elite lives in luxury.

We can safely assume Piazza envisions herself a redistributer rather than a redistributee. It’s always like that with liberals; somehow we end up making the sacrifice while they sip champagne. Do you think Al Gore is going to take a seat on a biodiesel Greyhound bus or hop on a private jet to the next climate change scam confab?

Spreading hate for the successful, lying that their success is somehow illegitimate or “unearned” because it fails to meet some ever-shifting set of arbitrary standards, is simply a way to get their fascist footsies in the door to redistribute us.

Sure, it’s amusing to see a bunch of liberal Hollywood nitwits suddenly confronted by howling leftists who the stars thought they had been backing. As entertaining as poetic justice is, it’s still wrong to take people’s property just because they are stupid and embrace idiotic ideas – Alec Baldwin, I’m looking your way.

Sure, you have an elitist buffoon like Frank Rich figuratively – at least – sporting wood over the idea that this Occupy Wall Street nonsense will develop into a real class war. Limo leftists are always turned on by the thought of real live revolution – that’s why they don t-shirts silk-screened with the mug of that butcher Che Guevara (they forget how that coward died begging for his useless life before the CIA and Bolivian Army sent him on an eternal vacation to hell).

But dilettantes like Rich and the Hollywood left would soon find themselves against the bullet-pocked wall if a real revolution came. And they’d die wondering why, as so many other useful idiots have in the aftermath of previous leftist revolutions.

Of course, that won’t happen here, because there won’t be a leftist revolution, because too many of us will fight to the death before we ever let that happen. So there’s no real danger; the elite leftists from Hollywood to New York can keep on posing as the vanguard of the coming people’s struggle, kept safe and secure, as always, by the efforts of better men and women than themselves.

In the meantime, we can hold the line for freedom and free enterprise by defending the rights of clowns named Kardashian and malignant dwarfs named Snooki to sell whatever it is that people – for whatever unfathomable reason – choose to buy from them.

Maybe a few celebrities might learn a lesson from Occupy Hollywood.  Maybe some might not be so quick to reflexively adopt the latest tidbit of lefty received wisdom next time. But it doesn’t matter. We don’t defend their freedom because we like them. We do so because it is the right thing to do, and because when we defend their freedom, we are defending our own.

No, the great conflict I speak of is the schism between those of us who believe ‘The Walking Dead’ is great television and those of us who haven’t felt this level of disappointment in something they desperately wanted to support since John McCain got the nomination.

The premiere of the second season has scored boffo ratings, and Big Hollywood’s own Christian Toto has recently eloquently stated the pro-’Walking Dead’ case here. Many people love the show.  Can all these people be wrong?  Yes, and it gives me no pleasure to say so.

The fact is that ‘TWD’ is annoying, liberalish, and frustrating. It was last year as well, as I pointed out at length here at Big Hollywood (‘The Walking Dead: Populated With Racist Southerners, Dumb Characters‘). Testifying to the level of interest was the fact that it received over 400 comments, mostly questioning my taste, intellect and parental marital status.

People love zombie stories – I love zombie stories – and no one wants ‘TWD’ to fail. But the problem is that in the second season it seems to be going down the same dead end road as in the first season – except faster.

The problems with ‘TWD’ come in two flavors. The least annoying – yet still annoying – are the liberal Hollywood assumptions that permeate the stories. The second is the fact that the characters act like such utter idiots that it actually suspends the suspension of disbelief – for example, a “shocking” sequence at the end of the premiere (Caution: Light Spoilers Ahead!) actually caused me to burst into laughter.

One set of annoying liberal assumptions is about religion. Last season, we saw how the brutal wife-beater was – wait for it – one of those crazy born-again types. Naturally, his wife’s version of Christianity in the premiere is a twisted, weird form of it unfamiliar to anyone who actually knows and hangs out with born-again Christians. Her religion only manifests itself when the writers want to creep out the audience with gothic freakiness – and not the good kind. Note that though the story takes place in Georgia, this weirdo appears to be the only one with any kind of pre-existing interest in religion.

The hero, a sheriff’s deputy who, for reasons that remain unclear to me, still insists on wearing his full deputy uniform, complete with shiny badges on his chest and Smokey Bear hat (More about distracting tactical failures below), also prays at one key point. He admits he’s “not much of a believer,” then proceeds to deliver a monologue directed at a crucifix. It’s not an offensive scene, just a predictable and kind of dull one. And let’s just say his prayer is not answered.

Then there’s the stuff about guns. The dozen or so survivors in the little band seem to have plenty of guns.  It’s just that the hero and his cop buddy have decided no one else gets to have any. The rationale is that the others are “untrained.”  Let’s leave aside the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of Southern folks who don’t know how to shoot – though this band seems nearly entirely urban except for one redneck guy.

The liberal premise is that firearms are to be reserved to an elite is obnoxious – in fact, one key sub-plot in the premiere is that they took the gun belonging to one woman away, and refused to give it back to her even after she was nearly eaten because she was unarmed. I can’t abide a zombie flick that would earn the Brady Campaign’s seal of approval.

Maybe they could solve the training “problem” by actually training the civilians, but that never seemed to occur to the self-appointed leaders. In fact, the two cops don’t seem interested in preparing the civilians at all. Instead, they spend most of their time talking about their feelings. It’s agonizing.

Here is the thing about the hero that ‘TWD’ itself does not seem to realize. He’s completely inept, and over the course of the show, his failure to perform with even the most minimal level of tactical competence has directly led to scores of survivors ending up as zombie chow.

The ‘TWD‘ producers like to talk about how their show is about the people, not the zombies. Why that’s supposed to be a good thing is unclear.  Regardless, part of the payoff should be watching people we like and root for, not ones who are so lame that the entire series seems to consist of them doing stupid things in the first five minutes and then trying to unscrew them for the next hour.

The zombie apocalypse premise is interesting because it makes you think “What would I do?” ‘Dawn of the Dead’ was a great example. We watch as they go into the sporting goods store and gather ammo. We see the characters choose to hide out in a mall. We see them clear the zombies out and then fortify it. We see how they set up a secret hiding place, just in case. These are good ideas. That’s why ‘Dawn’ was a cool movie.

Here? Well, it’s a fiasco. I’m not asking for the tactical precision of a well-trained infantry platoon, but everything these characters do devolves into a complete cluster-flunk, and it’s distracting as hell.

In the season premiere, they think there might be a military redoubt and decide to drive 100 miles or so south from Atlanta to Ft. Benning. Now, after attending the Officer Candidate School, Airborne School and the Infantry Officer Advanced Course there, the notion of anyone choosing to go to Ft. Benning is pretty hard to fathom, but the way they choose to do it is simply ridiculous.

Do they take light, four-wheel drive vehicles of the type that are all over the place in Georgia? No – instead of taking vehicles with mobility and fuel economy, they take a Winnebago with a track record of breaking down. Why? Who knows. Probably because it helps the plot.

They have a guy with a motorcycle. Does he recon the route? Nope. By the time they notice a jumble of wreaked cars, they are in among them. Then they drive deeper into the pileup not knowing if there’s a way out. Oh, and they bring the Winnebago into the jam, and it soon breaks down.

So then they pile out of their vehicles and proceed to talk. And talk. They talk a lot in ‘TWD.’ Mostly about feelings.  Hell, the only good thing about a zombie apocalypse would be that it would wring out this society’s insipid embrace of constant discussions of people’s stupid feelings.

Do they post security in all directions?  Nah. They put a guy on the RV who manages not to see a herd of about 200 ghouls until they are 50 meters away. By that time, all the survivors are scattered around the wrecks, walking about without a care in the world. Nice organization, Deputy. You just want to reach into the big screen and slap him.

Later, a search party composed of most of the survivors goes out, noting that they are taking everyone so they “can cover more ground.” Then, they proceed to walk in single file down a path.

The distracting part of ‘TWD’ is not that the characters do dumb things. People do dumb things. But that’s all they do – dumb things. It’s tiresome. It feels like it’s like a whole TV series that consists of nothing but the kind of dumb where the slasher victim’s hot best friend gets out of the shower in a towel to investigate a strange noise. Except there’s no hot girl in a towel, only these dumb dummies.

And don’t get me started on how, for a show about zombies, there are barely any zombies.

It seems like even with a new showrunner following Frank Darabont’s departure, ‘TWD’ is going to continue stumbling down the same path. It’s a shame; the idea is cool and the series could be awesome. But the execution is lacking, and if it keeps up, one Sunday night soon, crashing early is going to seem like the more rewarding choice. Pity.

But let’s not allow this conflict to tear us apart. No, in the end, those conservatives who find ‘The Walking Dead’ lively, quality entertainment and those who feel like hucking their shoes at the screen must find common ground. And that common ground should be a commitment to terminate this zombie administration.

—–

Now, understand that it gives me no pleasure to report that Terra Nova is off to a crappy start.  None.  Anyone living in California knows lots of people who work in the Industry, from crew to talent, who rely on production to feed their families.  We want shows to be great, to be hits, to run for years.  And none of them got up and said “I want to take an interesting idea and turn it into a hackneyed, tedious death march.” Well, maybe the writers and producers did – the vicissitudes of chance do not account for how they managed to hit every tiresome cliché and make every bad choice available every time.

The conceit of Terra Nova is that a bunch of people from 2189 are sent back in time from a polluted, fascist Earth 85 million years to restart human civilization.  They face all sorts of ferocious dinosaurs, which is cool, and that have all sorts of bitchin’ guns, which is also cool.  Steven Spielberg is involved with it, and once upon a time he made movies I actually liked.  Fox is spending a fortune on it.  It should be kinda interesting and kinda fun.

But no.

No, the premiere was a ponderous nightmare composed of the same cookie-cutter, lazy choices that have been wrecking such shows and movies for years.  Like the mega-disappointing Walking Dead, which somehow made a zombie apocalypse boring, Terra Nova has somehow done the same for another cool idea – this one being carnivorous dinosaurs. 

Terra Nova has done a lot of things wrong, though it did do a few things right.  But the premiere’s meh ratings, despite months of hype, showed that the creators better get a grip before the show joins its main attractions in extinction.  Here are some key takeaways from the endless two-hour premiere:

1. Enough of the Manufactured Family Drama:   Surprise – our hero has a family, and they spend all of their time talking about their feelings toward one another.  The father, played by Jason Mara, was in prison because the family had an extra kid and he only rejoins the family (after the world’s simplest maximum security prison breakout) as they step back in time.  So he has issues.  With his wife.  And his teen son.  And his teen daughter.  And his other daughter.  And they talk about them.  All the time.  Then they hug.  It all makes me want to projectile vomit.

Now, screenwriters, I know they teach you at screenwriting seminars that you have to create a rooting interest for the audience.  Okay, here, rooting for them to win the gunfights with the rampaging velociraptors is plenty interesting.  Interminable discussions of emotions followed by cuddling, not so much.

Why …. why …  does every show seem to have to focus on bizarre daddy issues?  I want an exciting, interesting entertainment experience, not to sit there watching you work out your personal psychodrama.  Just show me a tyrannosaurus biting a tank.

Remember 2005’s War of the Worlds?  It sounded great on paper.  You got aliens and Spielberg and special effects…it should have been awesome.  And what did we get?  We get this idiotic domestic drama with Tom Cruise arguing with a couple of urchins as they drive around the Eastern Seaboard.  Sure, he beat on Tim Robbins, which was cool, but otherwise it was like Are We There Yet? with an older, duller Maverick taking the Ice Cube role. 

—–

And I bet Cube would have spent less time bickering with the shorties and more time going upside some alien head.  Yeah, now that would have been the mierda.

Look.  There’s this stupid notion floating around out there in Tinseltown, promulgated by self-appointed script gurus and enforced by Hollywood suits whose only flair for creativity is within the realm of their personal debaucheries, that the focus of every story needs to be a loving family that fights then hugs.  Give me a freaking break.  That’s the same thinking that turned Super 8 into Super Suck.

Someone needs to dare to speak truth to hackery and say, “How about the story focus on something cool, like running from dinosaurs, without taking momentum-halting stops to work through abandonment issues every time something interesting is about to go down?”  Which leads us to the next point:

2. Can the Characters Not Be Idiots?  Characters doing dumb things, like going for a naked swim while Hatchet Boy is running around the abandoned summer camp, has been a cliché for decades.  In Terra Nova, it’s even more frustrating because it usually revolves around the same insane need to stop the story  every two minutes in order for a couple characters to hash out their stupid feelings. 

Someone is missing and needs to be found before darkness falls and the dinos come out to dine…what do you do?  Do you grab your rifle and join other trained warriors, moving quickly to locate and rescue the lost people, or do you get into a lengthy argument with your wife who isn’t a trained warrior but wants to come along anyway because…well, I don’t know…because fighting off carnivorous reptiles isn’t hard enough without bringing along some unarmed civilian to slow you down. 

Oh, and when you do find an injured person in the middle of nowhere, do you: A) Secure the wounded person, load her in a vehicle, and move out before the monsters come back or B) spend some time out in the open in the dark, lizard-filled forest discussing your feelings.  Well, if the answer was “A”, it would be Terra Awesome.

3. The Concept Is More Interesting Than Any Character:  Sorry folks, but I know that your gurus tell you character is everything, but this isn’t freaking Ingmar Bergman.  I’m not tuning in to delve deep into the psyche of… geez, I watched two hours of that show and already forgot the main character’s name.  Whatev.  I don’t care about the characters.  The concept is cool; if I want a character study, I’ll seek out a story that doesn’t involve time travel to the Jurassic Age.  You feel me?

Now, the concept is not just dinosaurs.  The idea of starting a civilization over could be really interesting if they started exploring issues like how society was organized, whether they would try communal living or a market, dictatorship versus democracy.  The focus on feelings overwhelmed most of it, but there were interesting hints at how this new society was forming.  Contributions seem to be made according from the ability of the colonist, while resources appear to be distributed according to his needs.  We call that communism; Hollywood people called that “Awesome…for you peasants.”

I wonder if the producers will have the guts to confront the failure of non-market economics in a way that the super-lame – and overtly fascist/socialist Star Trek: The Next Generation (Yeah, I went there Trekboys) – never did.  Probably not – Terra Nova’s executive producer Brannon Braga is a Star Trek alum.  So we’ll probably hear lots about a wonderful new world without greed or capitalism or stuff.   It’ll be a paradise, just like the pilgrims (whose name the series appropriates for the colonists) experienced in New England prior to introducing free enterprise.  Communism worked really well there, just like it has everywhere it’s been attempted.  At least, that’s what Chet the Unicorn told me.

4. There Are Hints of a Mythology Which Must Be Ruthlessly Suppressed:  Ever since Chris Carter’s The X-Files started the trend by weaving its detailed, incoherent, stupid back story into its episodes, every sci-fi/fantasy show on TV now has to have some elaborate and pointless mythology.  Mythology episodes are always death – you can tell a terrible X-File episode because it starts off with some portentous Scully monologue and inevitably ends up raising more questions and bile than it answers. 

Please don’t think we need that here.  You have man-eating dinos.  You don’t need an all-encompassing conspiracy by powerful forces that come together in a terrifying effort to occupy the imaginations of lonely 35-year old virgins with nothing better to do than think about TV shows.

5. There Are Some Good Things:  There are some things that deserve praise.  First, Stephen Lang as the dictator of the place is pretty awesome.  And his character is not what you expect – though he is on the cusp not only of a mythology plot line but one that involves his lost son.  Don’t.  Go.  There.

The dinosaurs are pretty cool, as are the rest of the special effects.  They’re not perfect, but who cares?  The set design and props are really good.  It would be nice, though, if those neat-o guns seemed to have any effect on the dinosaurs.  The characters get all Scarface on the  lizards, firing off long bursts of rounds that have about as much effect as a multi-billion Obama stimulus package.

And the politics do not (yet) make me sick.  I was busy complaining to my Hot Wife, so I missed what somebody told me was the shot showing that 2189 money had Obama’s face on the bills – that’s amusing.  I just wonder who gets his mug on the higher denomination, him or Jimmy Carter?

It’s so far not as eco-stupid as I expected.  The producers mention that “we” somehow ruined the planet, but they don’t mention or attribute it to the global warming scam, which was nice since I grilled some really tasty cheeseburgers right before and it would have been a shame to puke them up. 

Also, the fascist government that arrests people who have too many kids cannot be considered right wing – in fact, famed Chinese family planning fan and liberal fave Thomas Friedman would have approved.  So, at least for now, there was no liberal sucker punch. 

Perhaps Terra Nova will improve.  I hope so.  No one wants to see a show fail.  It certainly could be interesting.  For the viewers, it’s a cool concept and might be a fun diversion.  For the many folks on and off camera, it’s their livelihood.  This is not just a beat down for the sake of beating down an easy target.  This is a plea… to give us a fresh, exciting program that doesn’t spout the same hopeless clichés that have wrecked so many other movies and shows.  So, guys, get it together and cut the mierda.

Not content with achieving Father of the Year Emeritus status for his unique, outside-the-box parenting skills, Alec Baldwin spent yesterday evening on Twitter to once again offer his nuanced, carefully researched insights into a variety of important topics.  In doing so, he offered a powerful challenge to such innovators as Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and even Hanoi Jane for the coveted title of “Hollywood’s Biggest Idiot.”

In the past, I’ve even taken to these pages to defend Alec as a performer.  But as amusing as he is on screen, the fact is that he is a moral illiterate who refuses to let his manifest ignorance hinder his desire to have himself taken seriously as something more than an actor. 

Alec wants to be just like Ronald Reagan, except he’s handicapped by some challenges the Gipper didn’t face – like being a leftist, a jerk and a fool.

The bloviating buffoon apparently got agitated because Georgia decided to execute a cop killer who had spent 22 years failing to convince any jury or judge that the overwhelming evidence against him was inadequate.  Ironically, the police officer Troy Davis finished off with a bullet to the head was an Army veteran – and judging from Alec’s attitude toward our warriors as manifested in his subsequent tweets, he probably thought that fact supported sparing the killer of Officer Mark MacPhail, Sr.

Here’s a selection of some of his inane tweets from his Twitter timeline.  Let’s see who fails to live up to Alec’s exacting standards!

Well, Michelle Malkin certainly does:

C’mon!! Let’s go all Town Hall on that supreme thinker @michellemalkin. A world class, crypto fascist hater!

Davis is dead Does that make you happier, @michellemalkin?

@macandroo @michellemalkin @michellemalkin… Like Palin, but even mire (sic) of a hater.

The ferocious Malkin doesn’t need any help defending herself from this hack’s semi-coherent ranting – though I did jump in through my Twitter account (feel free to review and follow) during the skirmishing to assist by kicking the trembling, twitching carcass Malkin had left behind. 

On the plus side, Malkin can now say she knows what it’s like to be treated like a movie star.  Unfortunately, that star is Kim Bassinger.

Alec doesn’t limit himself to new outrages either – he spices things up with some classics.  For example, he’s one guy who won’t let us forget the nightmare of the Bu$HitlerCheneyHaliburton regime no matter how many years President Obama has been in office:

When do Cheney and Rumsfeld go on trial for murder? Will that trial be in Texas? Georgia?

That’s a great question!  Their crimes include waging war in Iraq, waging war in Afghanistan, keeping Guantanamo open, and other wars in Somalia, Yemen and Libya!  Oh, wait….

Proving himself totally immune to irony, he also tweeted:

Obama….2012

But it’s not just a few Americans who don’t measure up to Alec’s standards – it’s all of us!

Troy Davis is still dead. The gulf is still contaminated. Fukushima is still radioactive. #wecraveignorancesowecanshoplikeamericans

Wait, I thought that a new day dawned in January 2009 where America was respected and loved again?

US death penalty humiliates us in the eyes of much of the world

Alec leaves unsaid the obvious question – who gives half a damn what the motley collection of corrupt, genocidal losers who make up much of the world think?

And Alec reserved special contempt for our troops:

Right-wingers always hide the shameful policies of their nutbag policies behind “supporting the troops.”

Gee, to the extent that I can decipher what it means to “hide the shameful policies of their nutbag policies,” from my vantage point as someone who did more than play one of the troops, I think right-wingers have been pretty damn supportive.  But why should Alec just limit himself to yapping about things he knows anything about – he must allow his mind to run free so he can provide us with the full benefit of his ignorance!

Then there are these gems:

..soldiers are doing their sacred duty at the direction of maniacs like Cheney. We struggle the longer you won’t face that.

You can support the troops and still face the fact that Cheney and Rumsfeld betrayed their country.

Interesting.  So, by carrying out Cheney and Rumsfeld’s nefarious plots, the troops therefore also “betrayed their country,” right?  Or are the troops too dumb to know what they are doing and therefore get a pass?  Alec, I need to know – are our troops morally bankrupt or just stupid?

—–

Hey, are the ones still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan still betraying their county, or did that change at some point?  Alec, I must have your moral guidance!  I mean, when I need a moral leader with an unerring sense of right and wrong, my first instinct is to seek out the guidance of a Hollywood star like you. 

That, or consult Chet, my talking unicorn.

Well, apparently our generation’s greatest moral referee has come to his conclusion:

Wonder if the McPhail family will seek death penalty for US leaders who killed thousands of US soldiers and countless innocent Iraqis

Wow.  Bravo, Alec – you’ve managed to simultaneously label our troops killers of “countless innocent Iraqis” while also trashing the murdered cop’s family, all in just 140 characters!   Yeah, I suspect the MacPhail family would have happily stayed out of the limelight, except the murderer you coddled kind of drew them into it by finishing off their husband and father by shooting him in the head

Oh, here’s my personal favorite of his Deep Thoughts:

@admiralwaugh US soldiers r brave n true. Their leadership is, by n large, borderline sociopathic. If u don’t have guts to face that……

Well, Alec, save your public “US soldiers r brave n true” line for the rubes.  At least have the guts to go full-troop hater.  You know you want to.

But you try to evade having to take a position that even your stunted moral sense tells you will expose you to the unbridled contempt of every decent American.  You hedge.  You embrace the classic troop-hater dodge of only despising (at least in public) the troops’ “leadership.”

You punk. I’ve been part of that leadership you slander in war and peace.  The leaders of our military, from the newest corporal to the highest general, day and night struggle to accomplish their missions while taking care of their troops.  They spend years away from home.  Many of them get hurt; some get killed.  But they “have the guts to face” America’s enemies and they don’t back down.

On the other hand, you call little girls “pigs” over the telephone.

Alec, you are unworthy of further discussion.  You’re not a thinker, you’re not scholar, and you’re not a man.  You’re a privileged clown without the common sense or the common decency to shut your pie hole about better men and women than you’ll ever be. 

You are nothing.  You are dismissed.  Get out.

Hell, you not only have a right to do it, but you have a right to have it federally funded through the NEA by the very taxpayers whose collective mind you intend to blow by getting so darn real.   It’s right there in the Constitution, amid the emanations and adjacent to the penumbras.  Oh, but if you accurately depict the acts leading up to the murder of nearly 3000 Americans, you’ve got to be stopped.  After all, the artistic elite can’t let you upset the Krugman-esque party line that 9/11 was really about Bu$Hitler and Company’s wars for oil or something.

The artistic community is anti-censorship right up until the second it decides it wants something censored.  Then it piles on.

A little background.

Steve Reich is a Pulitzer-winning composer who lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center when the planes hit on September 11, 2001.  He was out of town at the time, but his family was home.  They barely escaped, but the experience was so emotionally traumatic that it was only as the 10th anniversary of this monstrous crime approached that he was able to finally express his feelings through his art.  You would think the artistic community would praise him – well, you would think that if you had not been paying attention and still believe that it possessed the capacity for shame at its own rank hypocrisy.

Reich’s composition was called “WTC 9/11.”  As described by Terry Ponick at the Washington Times, it “is a short, three-part work that blends live music with the actual recorded sounds of the day’s events playing in background and foreground.”  The CD was originally scheduled to be released on 9/11/11, but a completely unexpected (if you don’t understand the Left) uproar occurred.

The uproar?  Take a look at the original cover photo above.

Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?  The sight of that jet being guided straight into the South Tower as hundreds burn alive in the North Tower makes you think about how 9/11 was not just some random tragedy that befell us, as if by mere misfortune or a twist of fate.

It makes you think about how it was a calculated act of murder by people who wanted to enslave or kill us, and who still want to enslave or kill us.  And the artistic elite can’t let that thought cross your mind.

Slate’s Seth Colter Walls is suitably mortified that the simple image is so…simple:

Given the piece’s complexity, it is surprising to see that the first studio recording of WTC 9/11, due to be released by the esteemed label Nonesuch Records just days before the 10^th anniversary of the attacks, is being marketed with cover art that looks like something swiped from Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign press shop circa January 2008.

Yeah, it’s surprising that was piece called “WTC 9/11” and inspired by the events at the World Trade Center on 9/11 might have a cover that actually depicts the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Sorry, Seth, if it’s a little on-the-nose for you.  Now go complain about poetry that rhymes.

The “controversy” – to the extent rank censorship by self-appointed guardians of the public consciousness constitutes a “controversy” – over Reich’s chosen cover art has delayed the CD’s release until the 20th.  That will give the informal Ministry of Truth time to scrub away the cover image that might give rise to unapproved thoughts.

Here is the new cover:

Wow.  Wispy grey clouds – it could be a thunderstorm or perhaps some other act of nature.  Maybe smoke billowing from the factories of one of those corporate polluters we hear so much about.  It could be anything.

Anything except the Twin Towers and the plane piloted by jihadi cowards intent on murdering us.

Ponick of the Washington Times does an excellent job of explaining why the Left demanded this ritual sacrifice:

The grievance was almost certainly generated by hyper-touchy liberal New Yorkers who’ve appointed themselves guardians of 9/11 imagery, aided and abetted by the media coverage (notably Slate and NPR) of reflexively leftist scolds who don’t want to be reminded that the U.S. is not always the bad guy in the arena of human events.  And it’s this latter group that really made the album cover an issue.

Yes, it’s the Left being the Left being the Left. Of course their reaction to 9/11 is just the opposite of “never forget.”  They want us to forget the truth and instead impose a false memory more conducive to their agenda.  They prefer, “always remember America is the villain.”  And the original cover reminds us that America is not.  So it must be suppressed.

In the Los Angeles Times, August Brown fretted, wondering if “the subtlety of the piece accurately conveyed by this incredibly blunt and literal cover?”  Not surprisingly, the Washington Post’s Anne Midgette agrees that the cover should be changed:

It’s the right decision. But the debate is, for me, a red flag that, in the well-meaning wish to guard everyone’s feelings, we risk losing sight of the inherent transformative process of a work of art.

Of course, the “transformative process” the truth might initiate is to transform people from couch-bound lumps thinking in the passive voice about “the tragedy that happened” into furious citizens roused to righteous anger – and their own defense – against the threat that still faces us.

Is one album cover going to turn American culture 180 degrees from the weepy, passivity our liberal elite, spearheaded by the artistic community, wants to keep us trapped in?  Of course not.  And is Reich himself a fire-breathing warrior urging on the American people for further feats of martial achievement?  Probably not.  According to Midgette, his statement read:

As a composer I want people to listen to my music without something distracting them. The present cover of WTC 9/11 will, for many, act as a distraction from listening and so  . . . the cover is being changed.

Regardless, it’s sad that Reich feels forced to constrain his artistic vision not because it is wrong but precisely because it is right.  The elite is not trying to suppress lies but to hide the truth – that a gang of fundamentalist Muslim jihadis murdered 3000 Americans and would do so again, and that we either fight and win, or choose enslavement and/or death.  The latter is what the original cover says, and what it says is the truth, and the truth is precisely what they want to censor.

The artistic community doesn’t stand against censorship – it embraces censorship.  Crying “wolf” about censorship is a useful weapon to protect its untalented hack members who make crappy art off the largess of Uncle Sucker.  And it will not hesitate for even a second to use censorship against its own members when they cross the party line.

Next, maybe Reich can write an album about this incident and the community or artists that has abandoned him.  His only problem will be finding a cover art image that suitably evokes the concept of hypocrisy.