‘In Time’ takes place in a future where physical aging has been genetically altered to end at 25. At that time, a year begins to count down on your arm. When your time runs out, you die. If you can earn or steal more time, you can extend your life infinitely. In this world, people are divided in time zones based on their wealth, and Timekeepers – half cop, half agents of order – ensure that no one breaks the rules and advances illegally.

Justin Timberlake plays Will, a struggling factory worker who has been gifted over a century of time by Henry (Matt Bomer), a man who has grown tired of living. With his new wealth and knowledge, Will goes to New Greenwich, the lap of luxury, intent on stealing time from the wealthy to distribute to the masses – time that has been stolen from them through manipulated markets that ensure the rich earn more time while the poor continually struggle to make it through each day. There, he meets Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), the daughter of Philippe (‘Mad Men’s’ Vincent Kartheiser), who owns an eternity of time. When Timekeepers track Will to New Greenwich and try to arrest him for supposedly stealing the minutes and murdering Henry, he kidnaps Sylvia and goes on the run, racing against not only the Timekeepers but a dwindling clock.

Niccol both wrote and directed the film. There’s been some scandal over whether the premise was his or borrowed from a short story, but I’m inclined to believe it’s originally his. He has a history of writing provoking films, including ‘Gattaca,’ ‘Lord of War’ and ‘The Truman Show.’ Regardless of where it came from, ‘In Time’ is an intriguing and generally well-crafted story.

The film has a timeless aura, amplified by cars and clothes that could fit as easily in the 1920s as the 2010s. The story takes time to develop, and it matures along the way, as does Timberlake’s acting. Seyfried deserves kudos for taking the cliché role of a sheltered heiress and turning her into a sexy Patty Hearst-Bonnie Parker sidekick. Kartheiser is basically himself from ‘Mad Men,’ but wealth suits him, and he’s a good choice to play the villain.

The best character in the story is the Timekeeper Raymond (Cillian Murphy), whose unflinching dedication to his job, like that of Inspecter Javert in ‘Les Miserables,’ drives the film. Murphy is not the creepy Scarecrow here; instead he’s obsessed with the status quo.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you already know the basic political thrust of the film. The rich have gamed the system and the poor can’t survive in it. The mantra of the upper class is a Darwinian one – the many must die so the few may live forever. Will’s response is simple: If even one must die, then none should live forever. Accepted at its face value, the film seems to assert the liberal notion that we need to spread the wealth around because greedy corporations are hogging it all. In the film though, time is a finite, scarce resource. There’s a limited amount of it, and so letting anyone live forever means that many must suffer because of it. But with wealth, there’s no need for others to suffer, because wealth is generated through work, not just redistributed.

Then there’s Levi (August Emerson), a priest who runs a time bank where he literally gives his time away to those who need it. He’s the moral compass of the film, showing that good people exist in this dog-eat-dog future, and he also serves as Will’s Friar Tuck, his point-main in distributing stolen time to the needy.

Coupled with the fact that the film doesn’t really address whether it’s a one-world government or a series of businesses running the time-stealing scam, the film’s political message is cloudy. In the end, it’s really just a decent story that you can either discuss with your friends long after or simply write off as time that was – for the most part – well spent.

My father has spent his life keeping fighter jets flying in the Air Force, fixing your cars, keeping your nursing homes up to code, and remodeling your homes. At 72, there’s still nothing he can’t do, and that includes building a three-car garage from scratch and doing so all by himself. Over fifty-plus years, my father’s hands have been dirty and yet the idea of joining a union is unthinkable to him. He’s self-taught and too disgusted by the very idea of receiving something for nothing to want anything to do with the spoiled, entitled, collective mindset that infects most unions today. Therefore, I was shocked to learn that, because he felt it looked at the world of those who do physical labor for a living in a very entertaining and respectful way, there was a reality show he was enthused about .

If you recall, things were a lot different in pop culturedom in the year of our Lord 2005. This recent flurry of reality programming that portrays working class Americans and entrepreneurs as the everyday heroes they are were still on the horizon, and popular culture was still very much enamored by young, hip urbanites. When you saw blue collar men on television or in films, they were usually the butt of the joke — the moron, the buffoon, the clueless, the creep, the ignorant, the guy with the butt crack who  fixed Rachel, Monica and Phoebe’s sink to hysterical canned laughter.

I was so sick of this, so tired and disgusted with elitist Hollywood and their heroic lawyers, professors, and journalists, that the thought of watching some snarky, superior television host mock and belittle those doing “dirty jobs” — or as I like to call it, the work that keeps the world turning — was the last thing I wanted to see.

Imagine my surprise as the show unfurled and I watched host Mike Rowe display a genuine respect for the intelligence and work ethic of those who do some of the most difficult work in our country. Furthermore, Rowe understood — and this can’t be emphasized enough — the importance of this work within the context of our world, how these people feed, clothe, shelter, heat and in general add to the quality of our lives.

This is my long way of saying that Mr. Rowe’s classy and respectful critique or President Obama’s craven class warfare found in a discussion thread on his Web site was not at all surprising:

(cough cough)

“My fellow Americans. I know that many of you are suffering. And I know that many of you look around and see a country where not all things appear to be equal. Well, guess what? They aren’t. They never have been, and I can assure you, as long as liberty and freedom remain supreme, they never will be. Let’s be honest – looking for equality is a democracy is like looking for love in a wh0re house. You might see something that comes close, but in the end, that dog don’t hunt.

No, my fellow Americans, I believe our best hope for a true recovery will come not from a temptation to make all things more equal, but rather, to make all things more possible. To do that, we must rethink everything we currently hold dear in our modern economy, beginning with our obscene relationship with Debt and Spending. These are the true enemies of prosperity – not your neighbor. Our problems today were not caused by the success of others. They were caused by the mistaken belief that we could have some things we wanted – but in fact, could simply not afford.

I look now to the wealthiest among us. To the ones who have in the past, provided the jobs we need so desperately today. To the innovators and risk takers that truly drive our economy. We need your help. Even though just 1% of you pay nearly 30% of all the Federal Taxes we collect, I must now ask you to pay even more. It pains me to ask those of you who have already given so much because as any fool can plainly see – it simply isn’t fair. Alas, I believe that I must. Our country is suffering, and we need you.”

Rowe not only sees through Obama’s cynical tactics…

He wants people to see “the rich” as the problem – not him, not spending, not debt, and not some other failed policy. He wants the Rich to be the scapegoat.

…and understands the math….

What you are proposing Meg, would result in a MASSIVE tax cut for the richest people in the world. If the government asks me to “do my part” in the same way that teachers, public sector workers, policeman and fireman “do their part, then my federal tax rate will drop from 36% to 28%. So will lots of others. This will cost the government hundreds of billions in tax revenue.

The truth is simple, but really hard for people to say. It goes like this. “We don’t really want the rich to pay their fair share. We want them to pay an unfair share. We just don’t like to say it that way because it makes us sound kind of unreasonable.”

…but he’s not a big fan of unions either, though, like many of us, he admires individual union-members:

Personally, I find all of those vocations [teacher, bus driver, health care professional in a psychiatric hospital, sanitation worker, policeman, fireman] to be noble in the extreme. And I respect the people who do the work very much. But if you’re asking why public sentiment seemed to turn against them, I would suggest that it had to do with their respective Unions, and their absolute failure to persuade the masses. They took the same sort of aggressive posture that their private counterparts often do with management. In this sort of economy, that just isn’t persuasive to a lot of concerned voters. The entire country is struggling, and the issues facing public servants were old news for people in the private sector. They made a loud, strident, and unproductive case.

You can read the entire thread here.

My takeaway from this is that Rowe is as advertised, a thoughtful, intelligent man who knows of what he speaks. And while I’m sure others could make a different case, I’ve always credited ”Dirty Jobs” (and “American Chopper”) for bringing the working class hero back to television.

This has been one of the most important cultural shifts in the pop culture landscape of the last 20 years — important enough that I’ve been writing about it for a few years now.

Funny how this cynical new ABC series (produced and starring the rich, no doubt) assumes average Americans are more interested in taking revenge on the rich instead of becoming rich themselves. It’s also also interesting that the show is set in the Hamptons as  opposed to, say… Hollywood?

Revenge, which ABC entertainment Group Paul Lee called one of “our internal favorites” earlier in the day, is billed as a contemporary reimagining of The Count of Monte Cristo. The drama centers on a mysterious young woman, played by Emily VanCamp, who is welcomed into a rich Hamptons community filled with people who don’t know she’s there to exact revenge on the people who had destroyed her family.

“We’re dealing in a particular time right now in American history where I think the average American is going to want to see a takedown of the rich,” says star Madeleine Stowe.

Added creator/executive producer Mike Kelley, “Revenge is such a great story engine. It’s really a jumping off point.”

Is everyone on the show working for minimum wage? Gee, I hope so. Otherwise, that would be hypocritical.

How about this pitch for a new ABC series…

Title: “OPERATION: MATT DAMON”

Like: “Mission: Impossible” meets Rush Limbaugh

Logline: Tired of the human wreckage they leave behind, a group of Tea Partiers surgically removes the hypocrisy from wealthy, elitist class warriors.

Synopisis: After a group of “average Americans” finally wakes up to that fact that a particular segment of the Wealthy Elitist Class (Leftists) have been using a relentless stream of class warfare propaganda designed to fuel resentment as a means to keep everyone else down, out, and poor –they join forces and use their own particular skills to take revenge on these flaming hypocrites in a number of inventive and diabolical ways that always ends with the Class Warrior being left unharmed but penniless. 

Season one will be set in the studios of Hollywood. Season two in Washington DC. Season three in Manhattan. 

The series will end on a happy note when the only wealthy left in America are those who inspire others to take the risks and put in the effort necessary to join them.

Brokaw explained this upsurge as a bunch of scared lemmings stockpiling their guns in “underground bunkers” in case new laws arrive to ban them.

He elaborated somewhat…

“In Arizona they have a wide open system. I would be nervous about going into a bar or restaurant in Arizona on a Saturday night where people can carry concealed without permits.”

You would be nervous?

That’s the point, Tom.

You should be nervous. And by “you,” I really mean, generally, any jerk who comes in to start trouble at the bar. That’s the beauty of guns, or the threat of guns – it’s a natural motivator to lighten up, back off, and mind your own beeswax.

And let’s not forget, people bought those guns, to protect themselves. As John Lott Jr., points out, a major factor in determining how many people are harmed by a lunatic killer is the time frame between the start of the attack and when another gun arrives. The quicker it gets there, the faster the crime spree ends.

To me, this debate over gun ownership seems like class warfare. People like Brokaw just don’t know anybody who owns guns. Except of course, the security around him when he visits NBC. He’s safe and sound, spouting his opinions – not like everyone else at campuses and supermarkets.

So, from his perch, he stereotypes gun owners as gun nuts, hunkering in bunkers. It would be the same, if I said all newscasters were egocentric, aloof elitists who can’t pronounce the letter L.

No offense, Tom.

And if you disagree with me you’re a racist homophobe.

Tonight

S.E Cupp

Joe De Rosa

National Review’s Kevin Williamson

Class warfare rests on the assumption, usually well disguised and used very selectively, that capitalist profits are a rip-off, a heist, “unearned.” In his recent health-care pitch, President Obama declared insurance companies are “making record profits,” a questionable claim but presumably identifying both the evil enemy and the room for government to save money, if you buy that the government can deliver something as good for the same cost.  

This selective economic demonization serves two purposes. First, it attempts to write current history.  During the debates, candidate Obama asserted that the economic crisis was the result of the lack of regulation, presumably of Wall Street speculators gone wild. It was a time of frightening mystery, with the pipes of the financial system seemingly clogged. It was evident that exotic financial instruments, like bundled mortgages and credit default swaps, were the clogs. But the meal was the housing bubble, caused mostly by government policies. It was a policy, not a regulatory, crisis. Read Thomas Sowell. 

Second, demonizing Wall Street gins up class warfare, an even more reliable tool of progressive demagoguery than those tricky diversity cards. If diversity pieties are likely winners so long as we are different, then class war is surefire so long as those schmucks up there take big scores while we inevitably stew in our envy. 

If there is any group that should recognize this hustle, it’s the entertainment community, which lives in a marketplace as clearly defined as Wall Street. Big stars take down big scores; last year Harrison Ford got $65 million, Adam Sandler $55 million, Will Smith about $50 million, and Eddie Murphy about $40 million.  The reason: being a true star involves a mystical chemistry between player, camera, and audience, and it’s very scarce in this risky business. Since the demise of the classical, vertically integrated studio, only a star and/or a sequel can secure ticket sales on an opening weekend. 

Same story in TV: Oprah made a colossal $225 million, her pal Dr. Phil took home $45 million, Letterman $40 million. To this list, add star athletes (they’re also entertainers): Tiger Woods banked $110 million, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Finnish Formula One racer Kimi Raik $45 million, Manny Pacquiao $30 million. Maybe Barnie Frank could deem some of Harrison Ford’s pay as unearned or try to take Pac-Man’s money back for taking excessive risk. 

Perhaps you think the Wall Streeters deserve more regulation because the government had to bail them out, though some have repaid and the House bill would regulate even non-borrowers. But as John Nolte has pointed out, Hollywood itself, like the film industry worldwide, has long been up to its neck in public subsidies (tax breaks, film offices, use of public spaces), as have TV and professional sports (airwaves, stadiums, transportation, etc.).    

A sidelight to all this: most movie and TV stars, super-jocks, and hedge fund managers supported Obama, suggesting that cultural identification trumps economic interest.     

Whatever stars and moguls say or do in public, privately they understand the way capitalism works. It’s centripetal, a car wreck that throws off money and progress and wreckage unequally, in many directions (Schumpeter’s “creative destruction“). But even if you’re not a star, you want to be in on the deal. A carpenter or seamstress or driver in the industry, especially attached to a successful crew, makes more than their counterpart in the regular economy, not to mention sharing the freedom and spiritual rewards of the creative life. This is what John Kennedy meant when he said a rising tide lifts all ships. 

Demonizing the market economy in the interest of government regulation to equalize things can only screw things up for everybody.