I am a huge fan of Frank Capra.   And whereas it pains me to do so, I must call a proper spade a spade.  In my (what I presume will be ‘lonely’) opinion…this single movie has done more to undermine  America than any other in memory. 

And yes, I realize I’m about to infuriate both the Left and the Right… Christians and Atheists… Socialists and the ACLU… Jimmy Stewart fans, movie buffs, my entire readership, and my mother…but I have to say it:  There is an insidious lie placed smack dab within the heart of this otherwise exquisite movie.  And the strange thing is – along with hundreds of millions of people worldwide — it is still one of my favorite movies of all time.  And therein lies the rub. 

The most dangerous and injurious of falsehoods is the one that is shuffled in with the Truth.

Let me back up.  I first saw this movie sometime around the early eighties, and since then one of my most anticipated traditions has become watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve.  I love the humor, the performances, the depth of character, the twists and turns, the entire story.  And mostly, (the part that really gets me in the gut) is the central theme of two of the greatest human attributes known to man:  humble gratitude and self-sacrifice.  The nobility of George Bailey forfeiting his plans and dreams for his father, his wife, his family, his neighbors…and his eventual ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment of epiphanic appreciation of how truly rich he is…leaves me choked up every time I watch this timeless classic.

“So why, Gary Graham, are you so hell-bent on disparaging this fine work?”

Because it attacks, denigrates, demonizes and attempts to dissemble one of the main ingredients to the American experiment – Capitalism.

Picture the Baileys.  A fine, upstanding family working to make the American dream a reality for themselves and their community.  But hold on, there’s a major obstacle in everyone’s way – the Rich Guy – Henry F. Potter.  Seems he owns pretty much the entire town.  And he seems to delight in squeezing his patrons.  Business is hard and brutal and has no place for ‘sentimental hogwash’ dontcha know.

Mr. Bailey puts it like this:  “This town’s no place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter.”  His son, George, fidgets from the specter of returning to work in his father’s savings and loan association, and of sacrificing his dream of college and creating ‘something big’ with his life.  And the father’s answer is, “You know George, in a small way I think we’re doing something important here…supplying a need …[for a man] to have his own roof, and walls and fireplace…”  But nonetheless his father urges him to escape from the ‘dreary’ town of Bedford Falls and go off and get an education.   George leans forward and says, “Pop, you want a shock?  I think you’re a great guy.”  (Side note to Capra’s ghost:  The line “I think you’re a great man” would have had tons more power.  But I digress…)

Ask yourselves this:  What was preventing Mr. Bailey, Sr. from being not just a great guy…but, in fact, a great man? 

Attitude, for one.

“This town’s no place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter.”  What a loser attitude!   I mean, come on…   What if instead of a building and loan, Mr. Bailey owned an NFL team.  And on that given Sunday you’re playing the reigning Superbowl champs.    What do you tell the team pregame in the locker room  – “Dudes…we don’t stand a chance.  Let’s just slip out back and get on the plane.”

Had Mr. Bailey, Sr. had more tenacity and drive, (and most importantly, belief in himself) he could have built his business into a standing success; and instead of scuttling about in desperation, helped hundreds, maybe thousands more to realize their dream of owning their own home.  (And without all those Fannie-May/Freddie-Mac shenanigans.)  Had he used more God-given ingenuity and creativity he could have taken on Potter in the arena of business competition and kicked butt, undercutting Potter’s prices and gaining market share.  As his clientele grew, he could expand, hire more people and build more houses cheaply (and finally put that alky moocher Uncle Billy in a home … ha — just kidding!).  

You take my point.   Capitalism is what advances not only the practitioners, but the entire community, radiating out with ancillary benefits as far as the mind can see.  Just because one rich guy buys up the town doesn’t keep someone else or a bunch of someone else’s to come in and throw up their shingle and compete for the business.  I mean…it’s not like Potter was the government. 

“It’s a Wonderful Life” depicts capitalism as a system in which only the jackals can excel…only the crooks prosper…and only evil can flourish.  The system is fatally flawed and the only hope we the people have…is to rely on the good nature and charity of our friends and family.

It’s a complete and total lie.

It burns me that so many fine artists…and politicians…don’t have a clue about what makes our system of Capitalism work…and how you build a business.  Sadly, these well-intentioned framers of public opinion – and policy – are the ones who insinuate themselves dead center in the middle of private business. 

FDR (and Woodrow Wilson before him) perpetrated the myth and passed it down to generations of ‘progressives’.  Self-gain is evil.  Self-interest is a sin.  If one person can’t get ahead, then no one should.   And tragically — government’s heavy-hand solution to this is to tear down those getting ahead in the misguided attempt to advance those who are not.  (Or at least convince you that that’s what they’re all about when, in fact, they are all about securing your vote and building their personal political power.  But…again …I digress.)

We still hear the echoes of that latest most popular catch-phrase, “creating jobs”.  But a job is not created by government fiat, wishful thinking, praying, or an angel named Clarence.  Jobs are created by a business owner looking to fulfill a business necessity. 

Self-interest drives an economy; not government bailouts, laws, restrictions, taxes or Congressional committees. 

I was always fond of exclaiming, while watching the TV show, “The West Wing” – “Amazing!  Liberalism works like a charm every time…in fiction.” 

But what about the main antagonist in Bedford Falls, what about this figurehead of evil, this personification of greed and selfishness?    The image of Mr. Potter and his sniveling, smirking cratchityness (Is that a word?  It is now!) is forever indelibly ingrained within our corporate memories as the ‘typical rich guy’.  Mr. Potter – the archetypal money-grubbing, tight-fisted, cruel, conniving, plotting, scheming, twisted old wretch of a geezer — such a stereotype as to have been crafted by either Beelzebub or Dr. Seuss.  The poster boy for Class-Envy…the paragon of non-virtue…everything to ensure that our kids grow up resenting, even hating, ‘the rich’. 

Ya see how they treat the little guy?  The man be keepin’ us down.

Rubbish.  Yeah, of course you get the occasional Howard Hughes…the ‘he-was-a-genius-‘til-he-became-a- nut-job’.  And then there’s the twisted saga of the Koch brothers.  But these specimens are the exception, not the rule.

In my experience, what we call ‘rich people’ are hard-working and creative individualists who rely on themselves and their wits and ingenuity to survive and build their enterprises up into organizations that make innovative products and provide invaluable services that enrich all mankind. 

And oh yes – along the way they create tens of millions of jobs.

This is America.  Accept no substitute.

I grew up hearing, and believing, all the old lies about rich people.  “The rich get rich and the poor get poorer.”   Can I have a show of hands – how many have ever been hired by a poor person?  “It takes money to make money.”  How many famous industrialists started as poor immigrants with less than $500 in their pockets?  I don’t know either, but I know there have been many. 

As I’ve grown and experienced, I’ve realized that a man having money is no sin.  It’s what he does with the money that defines his character.

Riches have corrupted those who are not up to the responsibility of their money.  And those who have cultivated misguided notions of what that fabric is of a full and rewarding life tend to chase excess, hedonism and desperate reflections of their own bloated significance.

I am a big fan of those beautiful commercials that run these days… ‘commercials’… that are selling nothing more than human goodness.  They’re done by The Foundation For a Better Life.   In one, a new student can’t find a seat in the cafeteria, is rebuffed by ‘the populars’ and sits lonely…until a brave student reaches out in friendship.  In another, a youngster has wandered up onto an empty concert stage and embarrasses his parents by playing ‘Chopsticks’ on the concert grand piano…until the maestro approaches…and joins him in an impromptu and beautiful rendering, to everyone’s delight.  In still others…people playing, smiling, families loving, living, and giving…the goodness of life.  At the end of these beautiful vignettes a single word appears… Character…Respect…  Encouragement… Generosity…and then …Pass it on.

 These little spots run for barely 27 seconds.  But in that brief time, they often move me to tears.   Some common note is struck, some universal chord resounds.   Some beautiful reminder about what it means to be truly alive.

The man responsible for these spots is a multi-billionaire named Philip Anschutz.  He seeks no publicity, hasn’t done an interview in 35 years, gives millions to many, many charities, goes about his business quietly and efficiently and values his family’s privacy. 

The next time you’re tempted to look upon all rich folk as Henry F. Potter… think twice.  You just may have been sold a bill of goods.

It is possible to build a wonderful business…in a wonderful America…and have a truly wonderful life.

–

This “noble savage” archetype, embraced by the romantic primativists of the past and today by those who stopped their intellectual development as UC Berkeley sophomores, has been around for centuries.  In Avatar, James Cameron substitutes his blue-skinned Na’vi aliens for American Indians and it’s off to the races with Seen That Before taking an early lead and Gimme A Break a close second. 

Now, the purpose of this cliché is to critique Western culture by comparing the culture of the children-of-the-Earth, in-touch-with-nature, “authentic” natives with the hero’s repressed, emotionally-stunted, alienated-from-nature, technology-obsessed Western culture.  This cliché requires that the natives be portrayed as paragons of moral and physical perfection – and that those of the hero’s culture be shown as just the opposite. 

But in doing so, filmmakers necessarily infantilize the natives.  To portray any group as flawless is to make them something other than human – they stop being individuals and start being caricatures instead of characters, symbols instead of people.  American Indians, contrary to the old Hollywood stereotype, were not just bloodthirsty savages.  But in contrast to the new Hollywood stereotype, neither were they just paragons of virtue.  Instead, they are human beings, with strengths and weaknesses – but treating them like human beings doesn’t help the agenda so their humanity must be sacrificed on the altar of political expedience.

The other problem is that embracing the cliché means ducking the hard questions.  In Avatar, apparently civilization will end if the humans do not get the minerals beneath the Na’vi land.  So, is Cameron’s view that we should just sit back and die as penance for despoiling the Earth?  He doesn’t dare answer that question.  Certainly many of the climate change scammers would be thrilled to see our civilization crumble as punishment for our refusal to shiver in the cold and darkness of their Luddite utopia, but most of us don’t embrace the notion that our only moral course of action is ritual suicide. 

Filmmakers can decry the conquest of North America, but they never actually grapple with the implications of their position.  Would they really prefer the Europeans had lost?  The brutal struggle between Native Americans and the Europeans had plenty of atrocities on both sides, but the world is enormously better off by the rise of the United States and Canada.  Would Cameron have it otherwise?  Well, at least we wouldn’t have to put up with the hype about Avatar.

What is also interesting is how this view simultaneously slags our culture and that of the indigenous people.  It holds that our culture must somehow be controlled, regulated and constrained in order to control these horrible capitalist/military tendencies.  Clearly, this is a job for our liberal overlords.  But the natives themselves, being innocent children, must likewise be protected and overseen.  Why, that’s also a job for our liberal overlords.  Funny how giving liberals more power to control people’s lives always seems to be the answer no matter what the question is.

And we’ve seen the practical consequences of this attitude suffered by the American Indians.  The liberal prescription during the last century was to bureaucratize the reservations, creating what James Watt memorably called “an example of the failure of socialism.”  The only thing that got the liberals madder than Watt’s accurate assessment is the fact that many tribes have finally found the prosperity they deserve thanks to capitalism – their casinos are a wonderful example of prospering by finding a need and filling it.  

Now, simply because a Western character encounters members of a non-Western culture does not necessarily trigger the cliché.  Lawrence of Arabia was the true story of an Englishman’s work with Arab tribesmen during World War I.  It hardly portrayed the Arabs as perfect – in fact, much of the film’s conflict revolved around their failings.   

Other films use Western characters solely as eyes to allow the audience to see into the native culture.  In Zulu the European missionary is merely an observer as the Zulus prepare for battle.  His dialogue with his daughter and interaction with the warriors provide the viewer information, but in no way does he have any influence on the situation.  Of course, the Zulus did not need any help – they were one of the few native peoples to ever fight a large Western force and win.

In Avatar, the white guy (representing Western civilization) coming along to save the natives meme is particularly heavy-handed, but then the movie is hardly subtle about anything.  His natives aren’t noble savages; they’re just noble.  We’re the savages.  But we savages are also the noble natives’ only hope.  Or something like that.  

But trying to decode the mixed messages of movies like Avatar will only give you a migraine.  So save yourself some time and some Tylenol – just accept that Western civilization is the root of all evil and the message will have come through loud and clear.

You often hear that when you step up to point out the lefty assumptions, biases and what John Nolte calls the “liberal tells” within popular entertainment.  You are allowed to praise the technical achievements of an Avatar – such as they are, since many of us think it looks freakin’ stupid – but heaven forbid that you dare question the hackneyed liberal noble savage clichés that James Cameron offers up instead of a story.  The message is clear – our proper role as pop culture consumers is to sit back, open our eyes, slacken our jaws and swallow Hollywood’s agenda.

But what is remarkable – and crucial – is that we are no longer passively accepting whatever Hollywood dumps on us.  The backlash to Avatar’s flabby thinking and tired ideology is the new paradigm, with even reviewers outside the conservative movement slagging it for its staggering intellectual hypocrisy, cardboard military/corporate villains and sophomoric Mother Earth enviro-babblings.

This is good, because Avatar is not just a neato movie.  And “Imagine” is not just a pleasant song.  And Adam Lambert is not just a flamboyant artist with a powerful personal vision that transcends our hidebound, repressed notions of morality.  They are all part of an agenda, and the proper response to that agenda is illumination.

The real danger is not that Hollywood preaches the tenets of its agenda – people tend to tune out preaching – but that its assumptions and values will be inculcated by osmosis and accepted simply because they are always there and no one even bothers to point them out, like ideological wallpaper.  Left/liberalism first infects the political culture through popular culture, and it must work in secret to displace the values, norms and traditions – like decency, hard work, free enterprise and patriotism — that most people are still brought up to believe in.  If you see, for example, enough movies where the villain is – surprise! –an evil corporation, after a while that is going to make an impression.

Look at the JFK assassination.  Somehow, through the magic of popular culture, in the minds of millions of Americans the murder of a fairly conservative (by modern standards) president by a dedicated, Castro-loving communist became the martyrdom of a crusading liberal by a cabal of military/capitalist conspirators.  Huh?

Don’t look for movie critics to do the job of calling out the nonsense.  Most of them are in on it and always have been.  Witness the unbelievably embarrassing review that liberal Roger Ebert bestowed upon 1991’s staggeringly ignorant and foolish JFK.  Back then, if you weren’t reading National Review, you probably had no idea until you plopped down your money for a ticket that the staff of Pravda couldn’t have made a more anti-American film.

This backlash is something new, and it means that we no longer have to let left/liberalism be our culture’s default setting.  Vitally, the internet and resources like Big Hollywood mean that we no longer need to fight alone.  We can leverage our collective power to support that kid coming out of Avatar somewhere in Missouri who thought the movie looked kinda cool, but can’t help thinking that seeing all those American soldiers getting slaughtered was not something people should be cheering about.  He can’t really put into words an explanation why he feels that way to his gushing friends.  Now we can give him the tools to put his finger on the nagging feeling that so much of popular culture leaves him with, and we help him to articulate his response so that the next time he can say, “Wait, I’m not buying that, James Cameron.”  And so he can tell his friends.  And they’ll likely agree.

We are all soldiers in this fight, and popular culture is the front line.

But isn’t it a losing battle?  Why be the guy who says, “Wait a sec – did that character on CSI: Miami just refer to global warming like it’s more real than leprechauns, unicorns and Blue Dog Democrat senators who vote the principles they profess?”

No, it’s not a losing battle, because the mere act of raising the issue defeats the Hollywood elite’s insidious power to infiltrate and undermine.  If the viewer sees the agenda, he can evaluate it, consider it, and then decide whether to accept or reject it.  That’s not a process we conservatives fear.  We don’t have to disguise what we’re selling like our liberal – oops, I mean “progressive” – friends.  That’s why the Hollywood elite values a discussion of its agenda like the post-1/20/09 Democrats value dissent.

We need to confront the agenda not just because we like picking apart movies – though we do enjoy holding foolishness up to ridicule – but because every time the silly ideas and clichés of the Hollywood elite pop up, someone has to be there to play cultural whack-a-mole.  After all, those who send these messages succeed only through misdirection — “America sucks.  Now quick, look over there at that explosion!”

And we need to respond, “Wait, America what?”

And we need to call out their nonsense every single time, whether in print or just to the pals you went with to the movies.  Avatar cries out for it:

Oh, the bucolic natives are once again oppressed by the evil Americans!  Nonsense! Americans have freed more people from oppression than any other group in history.  The world would be an immeasurably worse place if we had not conquered North America.  And the American Indians were imperfect like all human beings – some were good, some were bad, but they were certainly not the dopey, touchy-feely constructions of pure Rousseauean sweetness and light of modern Hollywood’s patronizing portrayals.

Oh, evil businessmen ruthlessly ravage mother Earth and exploit innocent Third World peoples in a greedy race for profits!   Nonsense!  Capitalism and market economics have done more to improve the lives of human beings than anything else.  The Third World’s embrace of socialism, self-destructive cultures and through-and-through corruption are the overwhelming causes of its problems.

Oh, evil Western countries are causing climate change that will result in an environmental catastrophe!  Nonsense!  Global warming is a scam, a hoax and a fraud, and is less science than pagan religion.  I wish it weren’t – hot weather is a great excuse to mix up some Sapphire and tonics and this cold weather we keep having is becoming a real bummer.

And Hollywood, you can peddle your oppressed visionary act to some other sucker.  Nobody is saying don’t make liberal films.  We’re just saying that your days of doing it in secret, of being able to get away with putting out your propaganda knowing that your secrets are safe with fellow traveling reviewers, are over.

You go ahead and make the films you want to make – many of us have fought for your right to do so.  But it’s our right – and our duty – to critique you.  Now you actually have to make your case, out in the open, in the global warming-amped sunlight.

You’re welcome to compete with us in the marketplace of ideas.  Except we’re going to be Wal-Mart: embraced by most Americans; and you’re going to end up like Circuit City: obsolete, inflexible and ultimately bankrupt.

We’re calling you out – on your flabby arguments, your weak thinking, your stunning ignorance of history and your rank hypocrisy.  We’re not going to be distracted by bright colors, loud explosions, or hi-tech gimmicks.  We’re ignoring all of the hype.

So, Jimmy Cameron, tell us….

Why is capitalism – you know, the economic system that allowed you to make Avatar – so bad?

Why are primitive societies – you know, the kind you manifestly do not live in – so morally righteous?

And why are the deaths of American fighting men – you know, the folks who are keeping at bay the bastards who would saw your open-minded, tolerant, liberal head off with a butter knife given half a chance — something you think ought to bring cheers from the audience?

Hey, Jimmy, you made your stupid movie.  Now we’re going to make you make your case.

And so we have Hugo Chavez, the pockmarked prince of all things petulant – paying a visit to the Climate Change conference to rousing, delirious applause. Check out the human sausage below.

In sum, Chavez is all about ending “imperial dictatorships,” and that “capitalism is the road to hell.” He says, “Let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.”

He also said he liked to have sex with goats while Sean Penn watched, but I may have gotten that translation wrong.

Anyway, according to the Herald Sun, all of this was greeted with a standing ovation. And Hugo deserves it – for he’s exposing this crap fest for what it is: a massive transfer of wealth from the west to scumbags like him.

But Chavez wasn’t the only one to lecture America on how evil we are. There was Zimbabwe President, Robert Mugabe, who noted that as “these capitalist gods of carbon…belch their dangerous emissions,” it’s “the lesser mortals of the developing sphere” who die. Yeah, we’re the murderers. Not Mugabe – who delighted in the torture, starvation and killing of his own people, for years.

This would all be hilarious if these creeps didn’t have our own leaders on their side. Witness secretary of State Hillary Clinton announcing that our country is ready to create an annual $100 billion climate protection fund to help “address the climate change needs of developing countries.”

Where will this money come from?

Well, Hillary wouldn’t say – but she didn’t have to. There’s only one place it can come from – you. And that’s why the Chavez’s and the Mugabe’s of the world love climate change hysteria so much. To the world’s thugs, thieves and murderers, the US becomes that fat tourist in his favorite vacation hat, jingling his change on a street corner.

Easy pickings.

Tonight, another packed show:
Dinesh D’Souza!
Anna David!
comedian Stephen Kruiser!
X’s legendary guitarist Billy Zoom!
and the best damn writer at the New York Post: Kyle Smith, with his best and worst picks for flicks!

Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history. His current curriculum suggestions, like introducing three-year-olds to the lynching of African-Americans, or quizzing seven-year-olds on which Presidents owned slaves, should be a red flag to parents.

Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.

These two books have now become the basis for a new documentary, entitled The People Speak, to be aired December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel. The trailer portrays the documentary as a collage of compelling one-person readings, told through the words of “ordinary” people who have struggled throughout American history against oppression. Produced by Zinn, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Chris Moore, the documentary appears to be cloaked, ironically (given Zinn’s admitted socialist agenda), in many of the traditional ideas that were behind our founding. The verdict is still out on the doc, but it is not for the books that inspired the film as well as the educational initiative associated with it.

Perhaps due to their one-sided perspective of America’s past, Zinn’s history books have largely been limited to colleges and universities, until now. In the press release announcing the broadcast, HISTORY introduced a partnership with VOICES Of A People’s History Of The United States, a nonprofit led by Zinn that bares the same name as his companion book, to help get his special brand of history into classrooms.

Delving into Zinn’s nonprofit is where this story gets interesting, and the organization’s grade school educational ambitions concerning.

VOICES’ function is to provide live performances of readings from the book Voices of a People’s History as well as educational materials to schoolteachers. The nonprofit’s site provides teachers with resources, including a teaching guide that explains how to get students excited about Zinn’s history books. Their educational materials also includes the Zinn Education Project, a resource for teaching Zinn’s perspective of American history to – drum roll please – pre-Kindergarten through high school students! Included in the curriculum for pre-K students (that’s three and four year-olds) is “Rethinking Columbus,” which counters “the myth of Columbus.” In Zinn’s view, our pre-K children “need to hear from those whose lands and rights were taken away by those who ‘discovered’ them.”

Another teaching lesson for our three-year-old students is “One Country! One Language! One Flag!” that includes teaching ideas for “examining the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the political milieu in which it was written.” The teaching plan suggests introducing our pre-K-ers to the lynching of African-Americans in the 1880s, and introducing the history of violence and discrimination against minority groups. It also proposes a discussion on an old “One Language!” chant allegedly used in classrooms up until 1942, and poses teachers with the question, “Why not lead kids in the original Pledge to the Flag, including the ‘One Language!’ chant and the Nazi-like salute, and then lead a discussion about the politics of the Pledge?”

This discussion is proposed for kids age three to seven?

Zinn also includes a youngster version of his influential book entitled A Young People’s History of the United States as an introduction to his untold American History. The publisher of the book highlights a review by the magazine Socialist Review, who proclaimed “Howard Zinn has adapted his People’s History of the United States for younger readers, but in no way do these books pull their punches. Zinn feels the younger reader is entitled to look at US history honestly.”

The background of the board of directors and advisers of VOICES’ can only be described as jaw dropping and begins to show a clear motive behind teaching this predominantly anti-American history at such a young age.

Made up of several notables including Zinn, Kerry Washington, and Marisa Tomei, all of whom make appearances in the documentary, the VOICES board also includes radicals who play a role in our public schools. Brian Jones, a New York teacher and actor, is a board member of VOICES and has also played the lead in Zinn’s play Marx in SoHo. You can see Jones speaking about Zinn and the play below, recorded for a performance in Greece, where he extols the benefits of this one man play as a tool to introduce people to Marx’s ideas:

Jones is also a regular contributor to Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and speaks regularly on the beneficial principles of Marxism, including this year at the 2009 Socialism Conference. He recently gave a speech on the failure of capitalism, proclaiming that “Marx is back.”

Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles high school teacher, is also on Zinn’s Teacher Advisory Board. Like Jones, Knopp is also a regular contributor to International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, is an active member in The International Socialist Organization, and was also a speaker at the 2009 Socialist Conference. Here is Knopp speaking about the benefits of socialism, how capitalism destroys lives, and how she advocates workers taking over their factories:

Is it becoming clearer why this group might want to teach children to think poorly of the American system?

Then there is Jesse Sharkey, a schoolteacher in Chicago. Sharkey is another of Zinn’s Teacher Advisory Board Members and, completely uncharacteristic of this group, is a contributor to… Socialist Worker.

This is the group that the History Channel is working with “to develop enhanced, co-branded curriculums for a countrywide educational initiative.” If readers choose to watch The People Speak, which we at BigHollywood encourage, keep in mind the context of the documentary’s creator and the pre-K to high school curriculum that the History Channel and VOICES could possibly create given the makeup of the board members.

I am not advocating that we spare our kids the harsh truths of American history, but I am suggesting, given Zinn’s far-left political affiliation, this project is designed to breakdown our vulnerable children’s views of American principles so that they can be built back up in a socialist vision.

Zinn’s one-man play Marx in SoHo provides an example of his attempt to reestablish the socialist ideology. The play, created in 1999, places Marx in New York after bargaining with the authorities of the after-life for a chance to come back to earth to clear his name. At the end of the cold war, Zinn felt that Marxism was unfairly discredited through being anchored to the fall of the Soviet Union. Through the play, Zinn wanted “the audience to see Marx defending his ideas against attack.” Those associated with the play have described it as an attempt to reestablish Marx’s philosophic and economic outlook – a philosophy that views capitalism as corrosive to the human condition. It doesn’t take a great leap to surmise that instilling in children a pessimistic view of the American experience could make his ideas more palatable.

Zinn’s socialist philosophy has definitely made its way into the documentary, including a speech by prominent socialist Eugene Debs. In his speech, which is a prose to the ills of the capitalist system, he speaks to a court that convicted him of sedition:

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man, who does absolutely nothing…to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

The promotional videos can be viewed here:

It is not surprising to me that there are groups sympathetic to Marx’s ideas throughout our country. What is surprising is that the most powerful persuasion machine in the world (Hollywood) and the History Channel would provide Zinn such a prominent soapbox to stealthily build a case for a destructive ideology to our children, and as a result mainstream his ideas with the magic of cool music, graphics, and celebrity. Groups that push Marx’s philosophy are like a virtual organism that will not die off even when stung by the undeniable historical evidence showing human behavior makes such a system unsustainable. If we let this virtual organism into our grade schools, it will take decades for our kids to unlearn the ideology.

And if there are any doubts of the intentions of Howard Zinn’s movement, I provide a quote of his in closing. When a reporter asked Zinn, “In writing A People’s History, what were you calling for? A quiet revolution?” Zinn responded:  “A quiet revolution is a good way of putting it. From the bottom up. Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives. It would be a democratic socialism.”

It appears that Zinn’s ilk have started the institutional phase of their agenda.

Hugo Chavez: Toast of the Venice Film Festival

When you and I picture life under Obama’s vision for America, we see a dreary existence spent in breadlines, drab apartments and small jail cells with rat cages strapped to our face conditioning us to say “Herstory” instead of “History.” These Castro-lovers and Polanski-defenders see something completely different.

Watch “The Lives of Others.” Not only is it one of the best films of the decade, it also answers the opening question. You’ll see how life under fascism is the complete fulfillment of every narcissistic desire Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and the rest of their sorry lot has ever had.

Leftist Hollywood is not driven by wealth or artistic freedom, they’re driven by status and the insatiable need to be unconditionally adored. Unfortunately for them, as actors in America, status and adoration is tied to awards and the size of the paycheck – in other words competition and a free market – which they hate. But that’s the least of their worries. All this messy American capitalism forces our favorite artistes into the undignified position of having to beg for money in order to have the millions necessary to watch themselves be all artistic on the big screen, and all this messy American free expression allows people like you and me to criticize and ridicule their hard self-serving work.

Not so under a dictatorship.

The way they see it, with the right dictator, the State would hand them money for film projects and jail anyone who criticized them in print or elsewhere. Hugo Chavez shutting television stations down doesn’t horrify Leftist Hollywood, it makes them giddy.

Certainly the days of the $20 million pay check and multiple homes would be over, but that would come as a relief because status wouldn’t be tied to uncontrollable market forces. There would be no more stressing all weekend hoping those idiot hicks in Middle America make it a box office hit. As long as the State was happy with the product, the State would hand out status like welfare checks in the form of dinner parties, awards, nice apartments and “important” projects.  

But what about artistic freedom, you might ask…

These Leftists enjoy complete artistic freedom now and what do they do with it? They flack for the state, undermine liberty and trash religion. All any fascist dictator would have to say is, “Carry on.”

Disney studio representatives predict that this latest adaptation of the Dickens classic will do well over time, like Zemeckis’s 2004 The Polar Express. My assessment is that the biggest element limiting the film’s appeal in the pre-release period was the annoyingly frenetic and superficial quality suggested by its promotional trailers and commercials.

Jim Carrey’s noisiness appears to be wearing quite thin, and a film that features him as not only the protagonist but also three other characters sounds like far too much of a no longer good thing. Carrey would do well to follow the path of the equally obnoxious Robin Williams and move on to more serious film roles, even if it kills his career. Yes, I’m well aware that Carrey’s occasional serious performances have been pretty awful, but he’s dead either way, and it would be best to die with honor instead of ignominy.

Carrey is following in Williams’s footsteps in one way, however: the making of idiotic political pronouncements. Talking with the Chicago Tribune to promote A Christmas Carol a few days before the film’s release, Carrey released the following burst of political flatulence:

“I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we’re going through,” says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. “Every construct we’ve built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition. Capitalism without regulation can’t protect us against personal greed.. . .

Making certain that many people reading the interview will resolutely avoid seeing the film, Carrey describes the protagonist as follows:

“Scrooge is the ultimate example of self-loathing,” Carrey says, noting that, after playing the title character in Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” he was merely “going to the source” in fleshing out Scrooge.
“Beware the unloved, I always say,” Carrey continues. “They’re the ones that end up being the mean guys. It comes from that deep, spiritual acid reflux within them. With Scrooge it infects his whole being.”

Whereas Dickens presented a reasonably nuanced view of the issues the story brings up, and did so with an appropriate narrative tone, Carrey makes the latest film version sound like a ham-fisted socialist diatribe, hardly a strategy for drawing middle American families in great numbers.

Zemeckis, for his part, avoided making any big political claims about the film. That’s the wise course, and given the already annoying qualities suggested by the commercials and trailers for the film, the last thing his version of A Christmas Carol needs is for its star to blunder around the media with claims that this energetic fantasy is any kind of brief for socialism.

Still, when I do take in the rare hour or two, I have always found Rush to be a profoundly insightful thinker.  Far from the partisan blowhard the left portrays him to be, Rush is, from my limited listenings, a true philosopher, perhaps a bit more crude than his toga-wearing, boy-loving predecessors, but one of them just the same.  His philosophy is American Conservatism, and he champions it far above party.  In fact, I suspect it is the soft-left members of the GOP that fear him most, since the DNC cannot by their very nature be held to the standards of limited government and natural-liberty over enforced-equality he champions in the first place. 

Rush Limbaugh is hated, in my opinion, because he provides an inoculation in the minds of everyone who hears him against the permeating cultural narrative of relativism, peace through acquiescence, racial guilt, political correctness, redistributive change, and the soft-tyranny of an intrusive government bent on controlling the poor rubes and savages over whom it rules quite unconstitutionally.

All of this hatred is on full display in a new piece, published recently at the Huffington Post, written by Radio World contributor Bill Mann called, Rush Limbaugh’s Dirty Little Secret of Radio “Success”.  Like many critics of Limbaugh, and conservative talk radio in general, Mr. Mann’s chief complaint in the article seems to be that Rush is successful.  He bemoans the fact that Rush can always be heard in “rural areas,” which Mann generously identifies as everything existing “between cities.” According to Mr. Mann, this permeation of the EIB network to even so mean an environment as a suburb is “obviously” not due to audiences there finding any commonality with the views of Mr. Limbaugh (though Mr. Mann provides no support for this claim).  It is also not, as many on the right would claim, due to anything so pedestrian as the free market.  The truth of Mr. Limbaugh’s success is in fact, according to Mann, a little known and apparently nefarious system called the barter deal.

Here’s how a barter deal works, according to Mann:

To launch the show, Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Radio Network… gave Limbaugh’s three hours away — that’s right, no cash — to local radio stations, mostly in medium and smaller markets, back in the early 1990’s…

In exchange, Premiere took for itself much of the local station’s available advertising time (roughly 15 minutes an hour) and packed the show with national ads it had already pre-sold.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that I don’t even know if this information is true, though I have no reason to doubt Mr. Mann’s statement.  I don’t have the slightest idea how radio is sold or marketed.  I did jock for a few years at a country music station in Lubbock, Texas in college (Esoteric Radio Theatre with Jeremy Danial…  You can imagine how successful it was…), but I have no idea how the economies of talk radio function.  (In the interest of disclosure, I do have a good friend who syndicates many of the top talk radio hosts in the country, but other than the fact that he is often generous when it comes time to pay for a meal, I have no real clue how his business works.)  I do know one thing though: THIS SOUNDS LIKE A BRILLIANT IDEA. 

Think about it, if you believe you have a product with a high value, and you believe that product can attract and sustain a broad national audience, why wouldn’t you trade the show itself for advertising time in markets that might not be able to afford the licensing rights upfront?  It is basically win, win.  You get to expand your income potential and your sphere of influence by adding gross listeners.  The local stations get to increase their ratings by hosting a well-hyped, news worthy, national show, which increases their ability to monetize the advertising time they retain.  I’m sure local radio hosts suffer, but that is true with competition of all kinds. Indeed, if the local station drummed up the money to license Rush’s show, the result for the local host would likely be the same. 

In truth, if you take out a few of the negative adjectives, I think Mr. Mann’s article would suddenly read like a glowing, how-to, self-help for businessmen of all stripes.  Instead of Rush Limbaugh’s Dirty Little Secret of Radio “Success,” you could just call it Rush Limbaugh’s Secret of Radio Success!, and sell a million copies to all sorts of radio entrepreneurs.  In fact, the syndicators of liberal talk radio would do well to emulate this model, if they haven’t already.  It makes great business sense.

Of course, that is where the real problem with Mr. Mann’s position lies.  Mr. Mann’s main objection to the barter system seems to be simply that he hates Rush Limbaugh.   He finds it immoral that Rush would use competitive advantage because it works.  How dare you use something that works!  All success and profit is patently evil, unless it is strictly controlled by the government or advantages people Mr. Mann doesn’t hate.  You see, the market still wins in the end.  Rush’s success in large markets has given him the opportunity to take a risk in the smaller ones.  He can give his show away in trade for something that might prove more valuable in the end because he has built enough success to sustain him if the gamble fails.  At the end of the day, though, an audience still has to respond to the show or the new ads will be worthless, as will the local stations remaining stock.  So, despite the protestations of Mr. Mann to the contrary, Rush Limbaugh is on the air nationwide expressly because his views are mainstream, or at a minimum, substantial enough to be valuable in the market (the fact that conservative candidates continue to win nationwide year after year speaks more to the true mainstreamness of Rush’s underlying philosophy…).  Certainly any other radio personality of any other political stripe could employ the same technique, the question that remains is will liberal radio shows that Mr. Mann approves of succeed in growing audiences capable of sustaining the deal with local stations. 

 The fact that so many on the left seem bent upon ensuring the government grant them equality instead of competing for it seems to be proof that they will not.  Perhaps it is Mr. Mann’s whose views are outside of the mainstream.

Note: No children were actually indoctrinated during the making of this film.