—–

The death of Christopher Hitchens hits like the 2008 death of Tim Russert. Both were men you really wanted to hear from during  a looming presidential election.

The word being tossed about in reference to the passing of Hitchens is “contrarian,” and that strikes me as a little unfair. Hitchens could be infuriating and even wrong, but there was nothing dishonest or insincere about the man. Though it’s not the perfect definition of contrarian, I don’t believe for a second that Hitchens ever once took a stand simply to be provocative or contrary.

Hitchens was a truth-teller. Whether it was the war in Iraq, Mother Teresa, or Bill Maher’s trained seal audience, Hitchens always told what he believed to be the truth.

It was never as simple as opinion with Hitchens. What he was for or against rose above opinion. Again, he wasn’t always right (especially when it came to Mother Teresa), but his arguments never failed to be so beautifully designed that even when he was wrong, you had to respect the fact that so much study and thought and reasoning went into them.

Hitchens was incapable of lying and of insincerity, which is more complicated than being a contrarian, and that’s why I both admired and respected him.

Besides his battle with cancer, during his final years, Hitchens became most famous for his atheism; going so far as to take the act on the road with a series of highly publicized and very engaging debates. There was something different about Hitchens’ atheism, though. His lack of belief wasn’t a pose,  but at the same time I always felt that his being so open and public and willing to engage on the subject said something more. It wasn’t so much that Hitchens was trying to prove believers wrong as much as he wanted believers to prove him wrong.

“Seek and you will find.”

In his own incomparable way, Hitchens did seek. And if he was wrong about the existence of God (and I believe and hope he was), I’m guessing that counted for something and that we haven’t heard the last from him.

Yes, people still buy those shiny silver disks, especially since it’s hard to wrap up a digital file and stuff it in a stocking. With that in mind, here are some recent book and music releases which could be just the right gift this holiday season.

BOOKS

• “Arguably” by Christopher Hitchens – The great writer may be battling cancer, but his rapier wit remains unchanged. “Arguably” assembles some of his thoughtful essays for easy consumption.
• “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark” by Brian Kellow – Conservatives may know Kael best for her infamous quote regarding President Richard Nixon’s re-election vote tally, but for movie buffs Kael’s prose represents a thoughtful, albeit typically left-of-center, voice.

• “Bossypants” by Tina Fey - The woman behind the infamous Sarah Palin impersonation is a top-notch humorist, and her first foray into the book realm proves it.
• “On the Island” by Tracy L. Garvis Graves – The compelling tale of an English teacher whose invitation to work on a tropical island ends up in disaster is a first-rate survival yarn.
• “The Ledge” by Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughn – The year 2010 ended with movie goers marveling at “127 Hours,” the true story of Aron Ralston’s inspiring escape from a mountain chasm. Readers can relish another true tale of adventure and survival with this detailed account of two men battling the elements.
• “Delirium” by Lauren Oliver - A young woman living in a government-controlled society finds love as well as purpose in this young adult novel.
• “Rescue” by Anita Shreve – Smart, sensitive tale of a man’s attempt to rehabilitate a troubled woman.
• “Swamplandia” by Karen Russell - Gator wrestling meets family dysfunction and loss -what’s not to love?
• “In 50 Years We’ll All Be Chicks … And Other Complaints from a Middle-Aged White Guy” by Adam Carolla – He’s the toast of the podcasting world, but Carolla’s shtick translates easily to the printed page. Politically incorrect, and proud of it.

MUSIC

• “21,” Adele – Possibly the biggest crowd pleaser of the year, with appeal to pop, rock, blues, and soul aficionados alike. Who doesn’t like “Rolling in the Deep?”
• “Bad as Me,” Tom Waits – The idiosyncratic  songwriter returns with his first full album proper since 2004’s “Real Gone,” revealing he’s still got a few fresh twists to take with his growly saloon-fixture aesthetic.
• “First World Manifesto,” Screeching Weasel – Screeching Weasel is one of the greatest pop punk bands ever, so it’s a delight to know that lead singer Ben Weasel is both conservative and Catholic, much to the chagrin of the punk community. Support this free thinker and get some great pop punk for yourself with his latest release.
• “Helplessness Blues,” Fleet Foxes – If you think vocals should be recorded in a single take with zero auto-tuning, this great American folk band is for you.
• “As Far as Yesterday Goes,” The Red Button – Near-perfect pop that feels like it was unearthed from a Flower Power time capsule. Seth Swirsky, a Big Hollywood contributor, and Mike Ruekberg re-team for another batch of great songs, from the blistering beauty of “I Can’t Forget” to the mournful “Picture,” you can’t go wrong with these 12 tracks.
• “Songs for Christmas,” Sufjan Stevens – Take a listen for yourself. A great mix of reverent but fresh takes on traditional Christmas music, plus plenty of magnificent originals. Also a great record of Sufjan’s progress as a songwriter over the years.
• “Best of Gloucester County,” – Danielson – Profiled on Big Hollywood at the time of its release, “Best of Gloucester County” is a rich, detailed celebration of family life and growing older and wiser, expressed through one-of-a-kind folk rock.
• “Bon Iver,” Bon Iver – Lush, expressive, melancholy folk music working from a wide sonic palette. A newly-released deluxe edition includes a music video for each and every song.
• “Drive” Soundtrack – Italo-Disco is back!
• “Era Extraña,” Neon Indian – Hazy, shoe-gaze-y but never lazy synth rock from the son of Mexican pop star Jorge Palomo.
• “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming,” M83 - Huge ’80s/John Hughes nostalgia trip, massive synth sounds. This is a rare double album that doesn’t drag; plus, if you buy it, you’ll be sticking it to unions!
• “Portamento,” The Drums -Very minimalist rock. Fans of both Joy Division and the Beach Boys will feel right at home.

Big Hollywood writers Ezra Dulis, Meira Pentermann and Ron Capshaw contributed to this guide.

I attribute the vitality of the comments entirely to the power of Christopher Hitchens. Such lively discourse is the fruit of Hitchens’ indisputable right to be taken seriously by anyone with any common sense at all.

Though the speed of his eloquence and the size of his vocabulary, not to mention the impeccable King’s English he can wrap it in, are intimidating, the sincerity of his insights into this American Epoch of Progressive Lies and Hypocrisies are most welcome.

This demands the greatest respect, even from Hitchens’ enemies.

There are actually only two British-trained intellects living today I respect more than Christopher Hitchens and they are Paul Johnson and Mark Steyn.

When you consider how Hitchens’ body of work contains a bit of both Johnson and Steyn, in both historical range and humor, that achievement alone is worthy of tribute, particularly given the circumstances Christopher Hitchens now finds himself in.

I’m turning 71 next Spring. After a bout of heart failure and subsequent surgery, I find myself much closer to the end of my life than I had ever imagined. However,  I do not face Death’s Door with such close proximity as Mr. Hitchens.

Then again, who knows?

Life, or in my case, God may have other plans than I do.

I’m presently staring at a rather savage looking wolf on my computer screen. His eyes are “in the hunt” and visions of my helplessness before his teeth possibly locking around my throat?

Just a thought.

But then again there are the wolves of the intellect, equally as savage and merciless. I’ve met a few.

One in particular, Tom Wolfe, author and owner of many “mounted heads on his hunting wall”. He might not even remember the luncheon meeting arranged by a mutual acquaintance.

Conversation was cut short before the appetizer.

One remark of mine received such immediate contempt and damnation from Tom Wolfe that I received my shrimp cocktail with the silence of a fellow crustacean. I remained in that reincarnation throughout the rest of an utterly pointless lunch meeting.

I suspect my erstwhile hero in the enemy camp, Christopher Hitchens, wouldn’t endure such a crude lack of manners. Alas, Mr. Hitchens wasn’t there. I don’t know if the two, Hitchens and Wolfe, ever crossed paths or swords but that would be an encounter worth recording.

This meeting, The Left and the Right, between Hitchens and William F. Buckley Jr. on Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge is worth more than one viewing. In it, Hitchens admits openly that, during the Sixties, he had been “a dedicated Marxist”.

Peter Robinson presses him on what in that period does he regret. He admits to the “hedonistic utopianism” of the Left in the Sixties.

Buckley is also asked for his regret, and he says he wished he had demanded an earlier exit from the Vietnam War. Both Hitchens and Buckley agree that American involvement in the Vietnam War was a disaster from the beginning.

“You regret trusting,” offers Peter Robinson, “the government of the United States.”

Buckley responds that he regrets trusting “individuals” in the government.

After viewing this debate, how can any sane conservative possibly not come to respect Christopher Hitchens? Please realize that he knowingly entered Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Coliseum aware that both his host and his opponent were among America’s Conservative Elite.

Another, similarly high profile but less distinguished scribbler, Bob Woodward, took a similarly dismissive disdain for my thought that Washington, D. C. visually embodied the ideals of American democracy but New York City was the brawling reality.

Admittedly even we poor Tea Partiers at Big Hollywood know the name of Bob Woodward because of All The President’s Men. At that other lunch in D.C., an intensely well-known, female friend of Woodward’s at the time, whose name I joyously forget … uh … no … now it unfortunately comes to me … Diane Sawyer, was silently but contemptuously as dismissive of my offerings.

Why?

Though a Liberal at the time, I’m also an act-or!

What could I possibly have to offer?

Hmmm …

A place to hold the September 7, 2011 Republican debate in?

The election of Ronald Reagan, of course, hadn’t happened yet.

The last time I encountered Miss Sawyer was at the Russian Tea Room and she was in the company of actor Michael York. Both Mr. York and I had been summarily fired by another equally regal Brit, Ridley Scott. Mr. York took the dismissal as if he had expected it.

Odd?

Yes.

Obviously the Irish like myself and the Brits I’ve grown to dislike are still congenitally at war with one another. The Irish/British, mutually shared but entirely different prejudice and distrust of one another … and of Life itself … are equally mystifying but locked in granite since the creation of Stonehenge and Gaelic

However, with the likes of even Christopher Hitchens, I must lay down the “business end” of my Irish whiskey and bow before this man as a gentleman and a courageously rare source of eloquent sincerity.

Now, as we all watch his … uh … yes … Dance of Death … and I recall Strindberg’s version of that ballet as performed by the Guthrie Theater, I see only Hitchens’ immensely moving isolation as the lights dim or the curtain falls.

Not to mention memories of his bravery.

Such courage arising out of what I’ve come to recognize as a Divinely Sad Bunny Rabbit?

I know for certain that the God Christopher Hitchens denies is watching over the writer with love. With a milder but still poignant version of divine love. The same love our Almighty God has lavished upon His own Son, Jesus of Nazareth, post Crucifixion.

In short, Hitchens is the only honorable member of an army I call The Progressively Hypocritical New World Order.

Then again, Christopher Hitchens might not be a Progressive at all.

Only he could tell us that.

The Hitchens contempt for the Tea Party, however, is the grandest dividing line, largely due to the tea Party’s fervent belief in God and its faith in Sarah Palin whom Hitchens repeatedly heaps fear and loathing on.

Hitchens, however, warns the world to not patronize Sarah Palin!

He points out that his favorite film on American Presidential politics is Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.

With an almost bottomless irony of ironies, he further adds that at one time Ronald Reagan was considered for a role but he was dismissed as “insufficiently Presidential”.

Therein lies the substance of his concerns about Sarah Palin and her Presidential Insufficiency.

It also strengthens my faith in the fact that Sarah Palin will, indeed, be America’s next Ronald Reagan and more.

The “more”, I’m certain, is what most terrifies Christopher Hitchens.

His contempt for America and anything classically American is so deep it makes him blind. He traipses out the history of the 19^th Century Pledge of Allegiance, smugly noting that the words “under God” didn’t reach the Pledge until the 1950’s. He finds it “funny” that Palin cross-referenced the Pledge of the Allegiance with the Declaration of Independence.

“God” reached the Declaration of Independence in the 18^th Century. In that profoundly obvious sense she was totally correct in saying she stands with the Founding Fathers.

A smirking history professor who is also a repeatedly self-described atheist would consider the ultimate truth of her statement irrelevant in the face of her historical liberties.

More the pedant he.

I have no doubt Hitchens knew that when he waxed contemptuous but … well … his fellow atheist, Bill Maher, would have broached the subject of “insufficiency” with fewer words.

Therefore Bill Maher has become the crass but funnier Christopher Hitchens.

From the other point of view, Christopher Hitchens is an eloquent but less entertaining version of Bill Maher:

It’s hard to imagine that there will be any more unwanted pregnancies or shotgun weddings when or if the Palins move to the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue, whereas with the Clintons, the very thing that made all Bill’s friends turn white and pee green was that they made him the president, and he still wouldn’t stop.

Here, however, comes Hitchens’ own, possibly Marxist justification for pushing the Progressive Panic Button on Sarah Palin:

Walter Dean Burnham, one of the country’s pre-eminent Marxists, used to attract ridicule back in the 1960s and ’70s by saying that Ronald Reagan would one day be president.

Nice to hear Christopher Hitchens and I agree on that same possibility for Sarah Palin, though from profoundly different points of view. One must applaud his absolute consistency as an atheist:

Interviewed by Rick Warren at the grotesque Saddleback megachurch a short while ago, Sen. Barack Obama announced that Jesus had died on the cross to redeem him personally. How he knew this he did not say. But it will make it exceedingly difficult for him, or his outriders and apologists, to ridicule Palin for her own ludicrous biblical literalist beliefs.

There will always be a Christopher Hitchens and Bill Maher to do that.

Here, however, is where Christopher Hitchens hands Sarah Palin a priceless gift for the hoped-for debate she will have as the Republican candidate with President Obama.

 I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet.

Don’t hold back, sir.

The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”

“The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere … “

God bless Christopher Hitchens for knowing that!

“… whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical.”

Yes, sir, God bless you!!

God bless Christopher Hitchens, indeed for his own indisputable honesty and lack of hypocrisy!!!

During the same period, various Leftist writers began penning spy stories of their own in reaction to Fleming’s potent brew of unapologetic clubhouse masculinity (smoking, drinking, gambling, golfing, seducing) and unqualified patriotism, favoring a more, shall we say, morally nuanced look at the Cold War. Author John “The United States of America has gone mad” le Carré, then finding fame with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963 — good guys die, bad guys win, yay!), considered Fleming’s books “cultural pornography,” and mused that in the real world Bond’s “misty, patriotic ideas” would hardly prevent him from betraying his country at the first opportunity. “Because if the money was better,” le Carré snickered with certainty, “the booze freer, and women easier in Moscow, he’d be off like a shot.”

Into this maelstrom of anti-Fleming derision came a little volume called The James Bond Dossier (1965), penned by a more notorious member of the English literati, academic-cum-novelist Kingsley Amis. A savagely witty writer, a world-class drunkard, and a conflicted serial adulterer (all qualities shared, you may recall from our previous installment, with Bond’s creator), the overarching critical statement of his book was simple enough: “Inside that conservative dark-blue worsted suit and under the same skin as a bearer of the hard-earned double-o prefix there lurks an intruder from another age,” a “Byronic hero,” who “is lonely, melancholy, of fine natural physique, which has become in some way ravaged, of similarly fine but ravaged countenance, dark and brooding in expression, of a cold or cynical veneer, above all enigmatic, in possession of a sinister secret.”

James Bond “enigmatic”?  Mrs. Fleming and her writer pals, secure in their superiority over Fleming’s simplistic nonsense, found that laughable. To them Bond was predictable and formulaic, about as enigmatic as the flashing neon sign outside of a gambling den or whorehouse. Yet against these prevailing critical winds Amis used The James Bond Dossier to build a countervailing case, one that posits that 007’s adventures “were more than simple cloak-and-dagger stories with a bit of fashionable affluence and sex thrown in.”

Guided by a close reading of the novels, Amis notes a number of startling truths about the character. Contrary to so many other fictional detectives, Bond “has no perceptible interest in the arts. . . his library is small. . . his mind is a completely utilitarian organ.” He argues convincingly that “this is an enormous refreshment after the dozens of adventure and thriller (and straight) heroes whom their authors load with learning or arty accomplishment as a reassurance, I suppose, to the more obdurately highbrow reader that he needn’t be ashamed of enjoying the stuff.”

Amis also revels in the way Bond “unreflectingly enjoys what we can no longer feel quite comfortable about” — drinking, smoking, womanizing, driving fast — but then astutely mentions the scene in Thunderball where Bond’s doctor reports the damage hard living is doing to his body and psyche. Fleming here hints at the ultimate, off-page end for his hero — a dark fate forged not by prepubescent wish-fulfillment, but by the same sense of dissolution and melancholy that haunted the author’s own final years. Such details, each deftly highlighted by Amis, give James Bond true depth.

In answer to feminazi critics decrying the (in one female reviewer’s words) “adolescent inferiority feelings compensated for” by Bond’s caveman misogyny, Amis corrects the record with aplomb. A thorough study of Bond’s varied dalliances leads to the inescapable conclusion that “However much amateur lip-curling toward women in general Bond may go in for, he never uses an individual woman unkindly, never hits one, seldom so much as raises his voice. (Rosa Klebb and Irma Blunt are admissible exceptions). . . Bond’s habitual attitude to a girl is protective, not dominant or combative. . . Women take to him because he likes them and knows how to be kind to them.” And then, Amis’ wickedly sly coup de grace: “Critical horror at Bond’s sexual victories, I feel, can have its own element of ‘compensation’.”

I’ve always found Judi Dench’s weirdly passive-aggressive, ball-busting, feminist-fantasy M of the recent Pierce Brosnan/Daniel Craig movies a nauseating false-note of a character (and one echoed by Joan Allen’s equally implausible attempt at grizzled gravitas in the Bourne films). But it wasn’t until reading Amis’ forty-five year old book that I figured out why. He points out that the M of the books is an old-school, world-weary, bridgeclub-and-cigar father-figure, one who engenders, in Fleming’s words, “a great deal of [Bond's] affection and all of his loyalty and obedience,” and is happily “loved and obeyed” by our hero throughout the series.

M’s masculinity, you see, is a crucial element to the series: a valuable link between the cold and cynical modern world and the old, towering, Kipling-esque England of war and empire, a place of great civilizational confidence. “What (if anything) holds [Bond’s] elementary moral system together,” writes Amis, “is belief in England, or at any rate a series of ideas about her.” It’s remarkable to see a writer who built his name on withering sarcasm praise Bond’s bedrock patriotism as “more sympathetic than the anguished cynicism and the torpid cynicism respectively of Messrs le Carré and [Len] Deighton.”

Amis realized early on that “Politically, Bond’s England is substantially right of center,” a world (Amis takes the quote from Dr. No) “of tennis courts and lily ponds and kings and queens. . . .”:

The England for which Bond is prepared to die, like the reasons why he’s prepared to die for it, is largely taken for granted. This differentiates it, to its advantage, from the England of most Englishman of Bond’s age group. Negative virtues are even more important in escapist than in enlightening literature, and not the least of the blessings enjoyed by Mr. Fleming’s reader is his absolute confidence that whatever any given new Bond may contain, it will not contain bitter protests or biting satire or even witty commentary about the state of the nation. We can get all that at home.

All of this met with the approval of our literary tour-guide — after an early flirtation with Communism, Amis had grown ever more disenchanted with the Left. He began to hate the overweening stupidity of the “permanent revolution,” cloaked as it was in faux intellectualism by zealots “who think student freedom is impaired when a college applies its statutes; who buy unexamined the abortion-divorce-homosexuality-censorship-racialism-marijuana package.” Or to put it another way: it was one thing for conservative women to occasionally frustrate the lecherous Amis by politely rejecting his advances, and quite another for an entire phalanx of glowering feminists to shriek “All sex is rape!” while spouting pithy inanities about fish and bicycles. By 1967, he was disgusted enough to publicly state “I think a half an hour with a convinced lefty is enough to make even the most progressive person wonder a bit whether Conservatism might not have a little more to offer.”

Shocked at his apostasy, the Left condemned much of Amis’ later work as misogynistic, racist, imperialist, homophobic — all their usual show-trial charges. Amis remained unbowed, supporting Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s while continuing to detest the loony fellow traveling of many of his friends. I particularly like how he challenged his late-in-life pal Christopher Hitchens on the younger writer’s asinine idolization of Lenin (a toxic infatuation which continues to this very day — the next time Hitchens grandstands about arresting the Pope and putting him on trial, everyone should keep in mind exactly whose century-old tactics the writer is emulating).

Amis died in 1995, his end hastened by a lifetime of prodigious drinking. Between benders he had managed to write three well-regarded, affectionate books on boozing, even as alcoholism slowly killed him. Oh well — some people overeat and keel over from heart attacks, others choose hooch. There’s worse ways to live and worse ways to die, as both Fleming and Bond well knew.

During one high point of The James Bond Dossier, the agnostic Amis laments the number of critics, both liberal and conservative, who accuse the Bond books of a “total lack of any ethical frame of reference,” and who see the character and his exploits as “both anti-human and anti-Christian.” To the contrary, he retorts:

I should have thought that a fairly orthodox moral system, vague perhaps but none the less recognizable through accumulation, pervades all Bond’s adventures. Some things are regarded as good: loyalty, fortitude, a sense of responsibility, a readiness to regard one’s safety, even one’s life, as less important than the major interests of one’s organization and one’s country. Other things are regarded as bad: tyranny, readiness to inflict pain on the weak or helpless, the unscrupulous pursuit of money and power. These distinctions aren’t excitingly novel, but they are important, and as humanist/Christian as the average reader would want.

Amen. This goes for the films, Goldfinger chief among them, as well as for the novels. Perhaps Fleming’s imaginary, pulp-fiction England — colorfully decorated as it is with outrageous villains, enormous breasts, bracing drinks, good smokes, and all the rest of it — isn’t quite the elegant “precious stone set in the silver sea” of Shakespeare’s fancy. But in a fallen, “progressive” world veering ever closer to the stuff of Orwell, we’ll take it.

James Bond — that magnificent battler of Communism and preserver of the old order — remains a blessed salve to conservatives, an antidote to the anti-Western fulminations of so many lauded writers of the modern era. Amis ends his wonderful book on an unembarrassed, heartfelt note, the sneering Malcolm Muggeridges of the world be damned:

Most of the above had already been written when Ian Fleming died. I hope I’ve sufficiently conveyed my admiration for what I think he did best. When a few Easters have gone by without a new Bond adventure, regret at the passing of his creator may well help to bring about an assessment of his proper place in literature. This, as I see it, is with those demi-giants of an earlier day: Jules Verne, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle. Ian Fleming has set his stamp on the story of action and intrigue, bringing to it a sense of our time, a power and a flair that will win him readers when all the protests about his supposed deficiencies have been forgotten. He leaves no heirs.

Ian Fleming’s spy fiction was pulp. Bond is pulp. And yet I agree with Amis: beneath all of the “Sex, Snobbery and Sadism” of a book (or a movie) like Goldfinger lies more honest humanity, morality, and existential truth than has been mustered up by most of the “nuanced” and “complex” novelists of our time over their entire award-winningly wretched careers.

This concludes our look at Ian Fleming’s rousing James Bond adventure Goldfinger starring Sean Connery. Come back next week for the beginning of an all-new For Conservative Movie Lovers series, only at Big Hollywood.

Previous posts in the series “Ian Fleming, Sean Connery, and Goldfinger”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Goldfinger is available in a special edition chock-full of extras both on Blu-ray and on regular DVD. You can also rent the flick from Netflix, of course. If you’ve seen it before, revisit the film armed with everything you’ve learned in this series. If you were deprived as a child and this is your first time seeing it, you’re in for a real treat. From the moment Connery sends his Miami hotel masseuse on her way with a stereophonic smack on the behind, you’ll know this isn’t the Bond pre-approved by the gelded metrosexuals who run modern-day Hollywood.

In an interview long after Goldfinger’s release, the actress Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore) fondly remembered that, “[producer Harry Saltzman] used to say that women came out of a Bond film dreaming of Bond, and men came out walking tall.” Check out this forty-five-year-old film, with its hero trapped in the amber of the culture of your parents and grandparents, and see if it still possesses the power to inspire those feelings in modern viewers.

The James Bond Dossier by Kingsley Amis. Amis wrote another Bond overview called The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007 (1965) along with the first Bond pastiche, Colonel Sun (1967). But it is his first foray into the field that remains closest to my own heart. The various ways he skewers the tired, politically correct arguments of the “better Red than dead” critics of the Bond series are priceless.

Ultimately, the book does for Fleming’s hero much of what the great bookman Vincent Starrett’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933) once did for that classic detective — it makes him deeper, more complex, more real, and thus more satisfying a fictional creation. Great fun all around, and most enlightening.

And for those who missed it, check out an old article from Big Hollywood’s Russ Dvonch, wherein he dissects the script of Goldfinger and used it to demonstrate how to structure and write a good movie screenplay. Interesting stuff.

Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com does not seem to be embarrassed.  He recently unleashed the full power of his ire upon the Pope over the recent child abuse accusations.  And his ire is awesome to behold, as we can learn from the plugs and testimonials his website continuously flashes – plugs testifying to his influence from the very same Hollywoodoids whose toes he claims to be willing to tread upon with abandon.

In short, Wells supports the wacky idea that a couple of well-known atheists should somehow arrest Pope Benedict on his trip to England:

I for one would be impressed and delighted if author and noted biologist and author Richard Dawkins and author Christopher Hitchens could manage to actually arrest Pope Benedict for crimes against humanity during a planned visit to England in September. The Pope “is not above or outside the law,” Hitchens has said. “The institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment.”

Certainly, the spectacle of the doddering Dawkins and the perpetually pickled Hitchens (who is not a dumb guy, is a tireless advocate against dictators and thugs, and really ought to know better) trying to cuff and stuff the pontiff would be amusing – especially watching the Pope’s unforgiving security team go to town upon them.  Advantage Hitchens – he’d be unlikely to feel a thing. 

Certainly Dawkins could put up a fight using one of his tedious anti-deity diatribes as a weapon.  You haven’t been bored until you’ve been militant atheist bored – what do people at atheist organizations talk about after the first five seconds in which they all agree there’s no God?  And Hitchens could fall over on the guards – and the dude’s probably got a weight edge on the security team.  But in the end, the conclusion is kind of forgone – Pope Benedict will jet back to Rome and the atheists will pat themselves on their collective backs, assuming the efficient Swiss Guards somehow failed to break their arms.

Which brings us to Wells.  Leaving aside the question of why this Tinseltown transcriptionist is writing about the Pope and the No God Squad’s Britannic antics – shouldn’t he be breaking the news about the big budget 3D reimagining of My Mother The Car starring Matt Damon, Kristen Stewart and Ice-T? – it sure  is nice to see Hollywood taking an interest in holding to account those who have allegedly abused children.  In fact, Wells has a track record when it comes to folks in the public eye who treat kids as sexual playthings.

He supports them.

Polanski slammers on Wikipedia have apparently tried to amplify the matter into a much uglier and more pernicious thing than may be fairly warranted, and his defenders have tried to frame the episode within a realistic historical and sociological realm — i.e., one unmotivated by a curiously frenzied and tub-thumping moral outrage….

One shudders to think of what Wells considers to be truly “ugly” and “pernicious.”  And if you really want to mourn the state of humanity, just take a gander at the comments that follow Wells’s plea for understanding on behalf of the man who thought it was cool to drug up and anally rape a 13 year old girl. 

I don’t know what the Pope did or didn’t do – that’s for the police to deal with, along with the Catholic Church and even God Himself.  The chips will fall where they may.  But I know what Roman Polanski did, because he confessed to it and then ran away.  And no matter how wonderful and transcendent an artist he is supposed to be – I think he’s generally a hack – the same standard applies to him that applies to everyone else. 

Rape a child, go to jail. 

No matter who you are, and no matter how many Hollywood celebrities think a child is just acceptable collateral damage, a fair price to pay for the chance to bask in the glow of the artist’s unique vision.

Now, this dreadfully unprogressive, black-and-white, unnuanced, single standard philosophy goes against everything the Hollywoodids and their supplicants like Wells believe.  But for too long we’ve tolerated too many double standards – not just in Hollywood but throughout the progressive realm.  And it must end.  It’s time to call people like Jeffrey Wells and the rest of the excuse machine on those double standards.  Relentlessly.

As for Wells, at least he can be confident that if the logrolling website deal doesn’t work out, he has a great future – as community organizer advising “entrepreneurs” for whatever pestilent group rises from the ashes of ACORN.

While its fun and all to smack Hollywood people around (as I did with Megan Fox), it is occasionally important to do the opposite. The plight of Katherine Heigl in the media has a lot to do with her background and what is expected of actresses in today’s Hollywood cesspool. In broader terms it speaks volumes as to what the left expects from women in our society.

Full disclosure. I have two personal connections to Ms. Heigl. My first feature film starred Dalton James who co-starred with her in the film “My Father the Hero.” Dalton always spoke highly of her and suggested her for numerous roles in our film. A few years later Katherine was one of the finalists for the lead role in my second feature film. Despite great auditions and numerous, friendly chats with my producer and me, we decided that she was a bit too young to play the part. As a side note this is exactly the kind of critical thinking on my part that has lead me to make movies with giant, rubber sharks. But I digress. In my dealings with her she was nothing but fun, friendly and talented.  I point this out not to impress or name drop, but to hopefully mitigate the trolls who will claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Flash forward to today. Heigl is a popular movie and television star and has launched her own production company. Bloggers, tabloids, and television shows have branded her “bitchy,” “difficult,” “obnoxious,” and worst of all apparently “ungrateful.” There was a brief dust up between her and the producers and stars of “Knocked Up” after she stated that the film was “sexist.” The people behind the film (Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow) took offense and said some unflattering remarks about the actress.

If you read bile like Perez Hilton’s site (he calls her a “bitch” in almost every article), you will see tons of negative posts about Ms. Heigl. She also took some heat for complaints she made on the David Letterman show about the producers of her show “Grey’s Anatomy.” Everywhere you look, Heigl is getting slammed by the press.

Internet Traffic Generating Trick #4: Sassy Photos.

In the Vanity Fair article that sparked the beef with the Apatow cult, is a little known fact, one already known to those of us who have directly interacted with her. Her family is Mormon and she possesses some very traditional values concerning sex and marriage.

Ah ha! That’s it. That’s why she’s persona non grata amongst the PR “intelligencia.” She’s a Mormon who refused to live with her boyfriend before she got married. She must be one of those evil, retarded, selfish Republicans. She must hate the gays and the blacks and want to convert all people to Christianity while embracing capitalist principles that oppress the poor.

But hold the phone. Heigl is a loyal, supportive member of SAG. She also marched with the writers during the recent writer’s strike. Gulp. And what’s this? During the whole “Grey’s Anatomy” hubbub, where one cast member made a derogatory comment about another, she publicly supported the gay guy. Gasp. And look, she smokes. She smokes more than Christopher Hitchens or Leigh Scott. Yikes. What are we to make of this?

Katherine Heigl isn’t a poster child for conservatism. Far from it. She maintains her own personal code and lives life marching to the beat of her own drummer. When asked about politics, she stated that it “wasn’t her forum” and declined to endorse a political candidate on camera.

Could it just be that Heigl pissed off the wrong people; the beloved Apatow team and their minions? Could the sycophants in the media simply be backing the man that they view to be the reincarnation of Frank Capra? Hardly. Katherine Heigl earns their scorn because she is a feminist; a vocal, powerful, successful feminist. And nothing ticks off the left more than a feminist who doesn’t fit their mold of what feminism should be.

Just ask Sarah Palin.

Feminists, by the leftist definition, are bitter, unattractive women who have been abused by the male dominated society. They are the types who cry foul at every opportunity. They are angry malcontents. I’ve linked two videos that are awesome displays of what leftist feminists should look and act like.

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Feminists shouldn’t be able to pose for Maxim. Feminists shouldn’t have happy, loving relationships with men who respect them. For the leftist, feminism is only useful as another divisive tool, a way to create another class of victim ready to be embraced by the gentle arms of Big Government. Only through the continued oppression of different groups of people can Marxism, Socialism, and Statism gain any traction.

When women achieve love, money, and power on their own, it destroys the construct that society makes it impossible for them to do so. Empowerment is a goal that must always be kept in the distance. The end zone is always moving. If you’re a Fox News anchor, Miss California, the Governor of Alaska, or an attractive actress/producer you must be slandered, silenced and stopped.

Sandra Bullock, America’s sweetheart, has also recently taken some heat from pundits and critics for her latest film. She is one of the most successful hyphenates in the industry. She is happily married to a man who is extremely popular with all of us in “flyover country.” She represents what can be done in our country through hard work and talent. She is the product of decades of struggle by great women to achieve equality and respect. She’s also about to get more bad press because she no longer fits the narrative of female victims.

There is another scary thing about people like Heigl. They demonstrate that we all don’t fit into tiny little ideological boxes. You can be religious and moral but still support gay friends, smoke, and march for labor unions. You can be a chain-smoking, scotch drinking, B-movie director who hasn’t been to church since he was 13, but passionately support the War on Terror and oppose all of the tomfoolery of the Obama administration. Long ago, the left seized on the alliance between the secular Libertarians and the Christian Right to reframe all arguments as scholarly theory vs. religious faith. In reality, it is a battle between faith in the state and faith in the individual. Once the masses figure that out, the left is screwed. They have to keep us divided into two simplistic opposing teams.

So there you have it. Katherine Heigl is a victim of her own success; personal and professional. She also represents a graying of political ideology that terrifies the demagogues. Think twice before you hate on her. If you knew her, and not the leftist projection of her, you might have a different opinion.

And Katherine, my bad, I should have cast you. If you ever want to battle aliens, dinosaurs, or giant insects you know where to find me.

So for the second time in about as many weeks, I’m hearing from Brad Pitt on religion. First, there was the absurd, “Eighty percent agnostic, twenty percent atheist” comment, and now he jokes that he’s running on the “no religion” platform in the New Orleans mayoral race. The leap from being atheist to being against religion fascinates me.

Why can’t you simply not believe in God? Surely atheism can exist without a hatred of religion. It’s particularly disturbing that the disdain atheistic non-religionistas have for religion is pretty much limited to Christianity – from my experience. I knew an atheist who was offended when someone at work played a CD by Christian rock band “Third Day.”

But I can sympathize to a degree, after all my son believes in this nut that dresses in a red outfit, is friendly with reindeer, and gives kids presents. Crazy, I know, but my kid runs around singing about this obese clown coming to town, or some nonsense — and IT JUST OFFENDS THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!!

Look, I get it. Religion can be intrusive. Christians of the right-wing variety block entrepreneurs from opening strip clubs and from selling beer on Sunday. They frown on dancing, and on standing-up sex, because somebody might think you’re dancing (I stole that joke from Lewis Grizzard, I know). Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character is funny because it rings true.

But none of this justifies the leap. Brad Pitt may run for mayor. And say the no religion thing isn’t a joke – it is a joke, but say it isn’t – what’s going to happen to charity in New Orleans? Pitt’s all about charity – he’s almost a Republican in that regard – but is he saying as Mayor he won’t work with the local churches? When atheist anti-religionistas complain about religious influence, they never point out the good things religious institutions do for society.

Similarly, many atheists, when pressed, use Doughboy logic to defend atheism. I even heard one, on evil talk radio, ask, “if there was a God, why did he let 9/11 happen?” And I’m not talking about a wacky caller, this was the guest, a spokesman for American Atheists, or some group like that. Why do they have groups? Atheists really conduse me, I gotta say. She went on to offer, “If there was a God, he’s got a lot to answer for!” So because there is evil in the world, there can’t be a God? To this particular atheist/secular humanist, and to about 75% of the ones I’ve talked to, the good in the world exists because of people.

I think my problem with atheists is the same problem they have with religion. Believe or don’t believe what you want to believe of not believe, but don’t impose it on everyone else. The fact that both believers and non-believers alike do this says more about people than it does about God. I suppose not all atheists want to convert the opiated masses; maybe it’s just the ones I talk to. Like the guy who, upon learning of my Christianity, implored me to read Christopher Hitchens’ “God is Not Great.” Turn that around, and I’m a Bible-thumper, y’know? Imposing my views. Nothing amuses me quite like Atheist Evangelism.

That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates.

I was a drama major. Hellooooo! What was I thinking!

Turns out the movie was homophobic and racist. Scar, the villain, was clearly gay, I was told. I missed that. By missing it, i.e. not having an opinion on the sexual preference of a cartoon lion, I was also a homophobe. Huh? As for the charge of racism, the hyenas, famously voiced by Cheech Marin and Whoopi Goldberg, were stereotypes of blacks and Mexicans. But, as I pointed out, James Earl Jones, a black man, voiced the role of Mufasa. The response still floors me: Yes, but he wasn’t portrayed as a black person.

Did you catch that?

Because Mufasa’s not shucking and jiving, he’s not a black person. I can’t pretend to have called my friends on this; frankly, I was stunned. The PC mindset had led my friends to charge the film with racism, and in doing so they revealed themselves to be slaves to stereotypes. Racists? Probably not. But certainly not deserving of their pious attitude toward Uncle Walt and Company.

Which brings me back to “Borat.” I happen to agree with Christopher Hitchens, who notes that the film makes Americans look more tolerant than the left seems to believe. The sequence in a “black” Atlanta neighborhood doesn’t work as humor if the viewer doesn’t have some pre-conceived notions about black street culture. The elitists were falling all over themselves to point out the rodeo audience cheering Borat’s pro-Bush, pro-War on Terror speech–guess they didn’t notice the woman rolling her eyes. I bet there were more reactions like this…on the cutting room floor, of course.

The elitists’ favorite scene, though, was the one that made fun of them intolerant southerners. The one where Borat insulted the host, crapped in a bag, and, in a move that busted up the party, invited over a prostitute. To the elites, the fact that she was OBVIOUSLY a prostitute had NOTHING to do with her presence breaking up the party. You remember, she was black. And this crowd was clearly offended to be in the presence of a black woman.

I don’t think this is the case and the reaction reveals more about the elites than the scene itself reveals about the great unwashed southern masses. In the end, the Liberal elites had to interpret the movie in this way, if only to excuse themselves for embracing a movie with wall-to-wall juvenile poop and penis jokes. With “Brüno,” they’re taking the “Lion King” approach, embracing it less than they did “Borat” and pointing out the stereotypes. I can’t wait to see what it reveals about them.

For instance, it used to irk me that Carl Bernstein, a rather minor footnote in America’s history, who only came to prominence because an anonymous snitch chose to pass along secrets to him and Bob Woodward, was depicted in two major motion pictures, “All the President’s Men” (Dustin Hoffman) and “Heartburn” (Jack Nicholson), when so many more deserving people haven’t been featured in any.  But that pales when compared to the number of movies that have glorified Che Guevara, a blood-thirsty villain.  In addition to numerous TV productions, he has shown up in “Che!” (Omar Sharif), “Evita” (Antonio Banderas), “Motorcycle Diaries” (Eduardo Noriega Gael Garcia Bernal) and “Che: Parts One and Two” (Benecio Del Toro).

Because I listen to a lot of talk radio, I keep coming across Christopher Hitchens.  I should first confess to being envious.  The fact that he has managed to become a best-selling author by promoting himself as the fellow who thinks religion is a terrible thing truly boggles my mind.  Why, I keep asking myself, are people buying his book?  I’m not suggesting he’s not entitled to his opinion, but why on earth does anybody care what Hitchens thinks about religion?  I mean, are there some religious people who are going to become atheists because of anything he says?  Frankly, I have this feeling that he protests a little too much, and that on his death bed, he’ll hedge his bet by calling for a minister, a priest, a rabbi, an imam and a witch doctor.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come across a few surveys that got my attention.  In one, it was found that 41% of women in their 20s would marry for money, 74% of women in their 30s and over 60% of women who were 40 or older.  The man’s looks were of little or no concern, but he had to have at least $2.5 million.  It wasn’t that love didn’t matter to the ladies, but it was love of money.

That reminded me that several years ago, there was a survey conducted by a woman’s magazine — perhaps the Ladies Home Journal — that asked mothers of all ages if, having it all to do over again, they would still opt to have children.  By a whopping margin, they said not a chance.

The ladies, it seems, aren’t the great romantic nest-builders their publicists would have us think they are.  I choose, however, to believe that most of these money-grubbing,  embittered females are liberals.  After all, in spite of all the whining about sexual harassment in the work place, you never heard liberal women complaining about serial womanizers such as Sen. Robert Packwood, Sen. Ted Kennedy or President Bill Clinton.  In fact, they delighted in nailing the hides of such female whistle-blowers as Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Gennifer Flowers to the barn door.  And when it came to Sarah Palin, they happily provided the lynch rope.

Another thing about liberals that points out their hypocritical double-standard is how they rejoice in canonizing whistle-blowers, but only when the whistle is blown on someone whose politics they oppose.  When they thought they could use Valerie Plame to bring down Karl Rove or Dick Cheney, the New York Times covered the story as if it was the crime of the century.  When it came out that the minor culprit was Richard Armitage, the story vanished along with the morning dew.

It is ever thus with liberals.  Years ago, actor Cliff Robertson blew the whistle on studio executive David Begelman, who had forged Robertson’s name on a check.  It later turned out that Begelman had victimized several other people along the way.  So, naturally, Hollywood, a town with a pimp’s sense of decency, rallied to Begelman’s defense and turned on Robertson with a vengeance, blacklisting him as a warning to others.

Even if you gave liberals the answers on an ethics exam, they’d fail.  Take the United Nations for example.  Fifty-seven percent of those on the left regard the U.N. as an ally of America, while only 15% of conservatives share that delusion.

Overall, a mere 53% of Americans think capitalism is a better system than socialism.  One out of five actually favors socialism, while 27% can’t make up what passes for their minds.  I think it’s a pretty safe guess that the overwhelming majority of the 53% are conservatives who were wise enough to recognize Barack Obama for what he has proven to be.

One of the scariest numbers I came across the other day was that 9% of Americans believe that Congress has the constitutional right to raise taxes retroactively.  I realize that means 91% disagree, but 9% translates to nearly 30 million people and, I’m willing to wager, includes just about everyone in academia and the mainstream media!

When you see numbers like that, it’s no wonder that there wasn’t greater outrage when President Obama, after declaring how arrogant America is, said nice things to Mahmud Ahmadinejad, reached out to “moderates” in the Taliban, and curtsied to King Abdullah.

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com