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Posts Tagged ‘Cairo’

Charles Winecoff

Cultural Kleptos: How the Left Hijacks Art (and Everything Else) for the Good of Mankind

by Charles Winecoff

Kids love movies about people who tell lies – because they’re such naughty, little fibbers themselves.  During my formative years, it seemed like the same two films were on TV everyday when I came home from school – to remind me of the dangers of mendacity.  Perhaps it was a portent of things to come.


William Wyler’s “The Children’s Hour” (1961)

One was Weird Woman (1944), a neglected camp classic that was part of Universal’s low-budget Inner Sanctum series - about a scorned librarian (scream queen Evelyn Ankers) who seeks revenge on her ex- (Lon Chaney Jr.) by spreading gossip about his new wife (Anne Gwynne), an all-American voodoo princess he met on a South Seas expedition (don’t ask).

After several people inadvertently die as a result of Ankers’s aspersions, Chaney and gang steal a move straight out of the Democratic playbook - they devise an elaborate, fear-mongering ruse to guilt her into submission (and make her confess).  Here’s a clip of Ankers being browbeaten – with prophecies of gloom and doom – by little-known B-actress Elizabeth Russell: (more…)

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Posted Jul 30th 2009 at 5:03 am in Classic Hollywood, Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 69 Comments

Charles Winecoff

Britain to America: ‘Don’t Let This Happen to You!’

by Charles Winecoff

When I was a kid, American Idol wasn’t even a twinkle in Simon Cowell’s eye.  No, instead of Adam Lambert’s girly warbling, we listened to wrinkled pacifist Walter Cronkite rattle off the US body count as we ate our TV dinners.  (Thank God for I Love Lucy re-runs.)

But Vietnam wasn’t the only war raging.  There was a culture clash going on too, right in the privacy of our own home: the ’60s counterculture – seen in everything from Easy Rider to The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour - versus our deeply ingrained Anglophilia.  In other words, a tug of war between “social justice” and the Social Register.

Decades before it became cool to diss the Queen with an iPod, the Royals represented everything Americans were not, and never could be: educated, sophisticated, multi-lingual, above carrying cash – and worldly enough to know one doesn’t clean one’s antiques (think no housework).  Growing up in our comfy, middle class, anti-war household, I never knew if I was supposed to say “burn, baby, burn!” or “sod off, yank.”

This dichotomy took a psychic toll, which came to a head when I did my part for the revolution by proudly shoplifting a ballpoint pen from our local Lamston’s (”the establishment”).  To my amazement, my parents were not pleased.  Instead of a gold star, I received a verbal barrage of uncharacteristic cliches (”Do you think we send you to the best schools so you can steal?” ) that left me even more confused. (more…)

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Posted Jun 12th 2009 at 5:03 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 6 Comments

Robert Davi

Burnt Offerings: President Obama Addresses the Islamic World

by Robert Davi

From time to time I feel like presenting a piece that should be read. This is one of them — sent to me by a very close friend in Congress. 

Obama’s Cairo Message: Limited Audience, Limited Impact 

1. President Barack Obama’s address at the Cairo University on June 4, 2009, which was billed in advance by his staff as a historic message of goodwill and reconciliation to the Islamic world, had a limited audience. Though projected as an address to the Islamic world, it was largely an address to the Arab world and focused largely on issues of interest to the Arabs.  

2. The Arabs constitute a minority in the Islamic world. Non-Arab Muslims living in countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia constitute the majority. The issues, which agitate them, are different from the issues which agitate the Arab world. Osama bin Laden understands this better than Obama and his advisers. That was why in his audio message released through Al Jazeera a day before Obama’s Cairo address, bin Laden focused on issues of immediate concern to the non-Arab Muslims in the Af-Pak region such as the large-scale displacement of Pashtuns from the tribal areas of Pakistan. By focusing on their plight and by holding the Americans responsible for it, he sought to make it certain that the anti-American anger in the Af-Pak region will increase rather than decrease.   (more…)

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Posted Jun 5th 2009 at 1:21 pm in Featured Story, Politics, Religion | 6 Comments