After Aniston’s ill-advised political posturing, Bill O’Reilly picked up on the quote and riffed off it on his FoxNews show.  Key quote:

Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad, OK? And Dads bring a psychology to children that is, in this society, I believe, underemphasized. I think men get hosed all day long in the parental arena.

This is, of course, right on the money.  Since the right to abort a fetus was dubbed “a woman’s right to choose,” feminists, the welfare state, and deadbeat dads across America have done their level best to marginalize the role a father plays in a child’s life.  And finally, in 2010, Jennifer Aniston proclaims that men are officially unnecessary for child rearing.

So, Aniston billed the Switch as a tale of 21st Century girl power and was rewarded with nightmare-ish press from America’s number one cable news show.  Lo and behold, the movie takes an abysmal seventh place at its opening weekend box office behind “Julia Roberts Eats Gelato on a Park Bench” as well as movies called “Lottery Ticket” and “Vampire Sucks” which I first heard of just now.

**MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**

Before we go any further, I’d like to suggest you stop reading this post right now because I am about to give away the plot of one of the best films of the year.  No kidding.  But if you need your culture war fix, read on.

Kassie, played by Aniston, is a successful, man-less career woman whose child-bearing years are numbered.  So, she decides to do what any 21st century progressive feminist would do and get artificially inseminated, bringing another child into the world who won’t get the benefit of the unique qualities only a father can provide.  She plans to do so at a soirée celebrating this act of supreme narcissism.  So far it sounds like required viewing for new NOW membership.  But not so fast…

At the party, we first meet the sperm-donating hunk Roland (played by the talented Patrick Wilson), donning a ridiculous Viking helmet.  Meanwhile, the doctor who will perform the insemination is preparing for the procedure by partying as hard as anyone.  Then comes the Switch’s riotous kid-humps-a-pie-iconic scene where Aniston’s jealous best friend Wally (a top-notch Jason Bateman) switches The Viking’s semen with his own.  The switch is made unbeknownst to Kassie (and even Wally, who was inebriated at the time), and the end result is Sebastian (played unforgettably by Thomas Robinson).  Later on we’ll learn that instead of taking after the upbeat Adonis Roland, Sebastian is the spitting image of hyper-analytical, hyper-cynical, hand-wringer Wally.  By the end of the party it’s clear the single-mom getting artificially inseminated idea is being mocked.  Here’s more proof:

Yup, Ms. Aniston, it’s satire, and the joke’s on feministas like you.

Aniston moves away and years later she returns for the second act.  It’s in this act that we learn the film isn’t about feminism at all, and it isn’t even about Kassie.  The Switch ultimately is about the relationship that develops between Wally and his biological son Sebastian who he’s just now meeting for the first time at age seven.  Their union is blissful; the kindred spirits fill obvious voids in each others’ lives, and contrary to everything you’re taught in college about fathers, Sebastian needs Wally.  For example, Sebastian begins to gravitate towards his new adult male role model, not his mother, when he’s getting bullied at school.

In the final act, Wally drunkenly stumbles to his friend Leonard’s house at 4am, miserable after finally spilling the beans about the switch to Kassie and fearing he’s lost her and Sebastian forever.  Leonard, played by a very funny Jeff Goldblum, implores him to “go home.”  To that Wally says, “they are my home.”

As you could guess by now, the traditional family is united in the end and it’s smiles all around.

I saw the Switch against my will.  Between Aniston’s insistence this was a film that was culturally relevant in it’s rejection of the traditional family and an ad campaign that centered on billboards of Jason Bateman staring into a cup of male ejaculate, I came into it expecting something akin to an Enhanced Interrogation Technique.  As it turns out, the Switch has a clever plot executed with brisk pacing, complete with memorable performances, and an optimism in the traditional family structure that rises above the chaos of 21st century progressive foolishness.

Aniston’s assessment that the film was a revelation about how men are unnecessary was 180-degrees off the mark.  It’s as if she didn’t see the movie herself.  And that’s sad, not because she cost the film money, but because she deterred a lot of people from a real 21st century novelty: a deep and deeply funny movie-going experience.

There are a lot of other things in this story that make me question Mark Sanford’s judgment. How can any sane man think that he can jet off to South America for a week and have it go unnoticed? My brother runs a pizza joint and if he shows up fifteen minutes late the place is in chaos. How can a guy who runs a state think he can go off the grid for a week? I have long believed that a secret is only a secret if just one person knows it. How did the Governor’s love email get out? Gov. Sanford’s mistress claims her account was hacked. That means someone knew where to look for these love letters.

Here is another problem: Almost no one gets caught the first time they break a rule or a law. I am gonna guess that Governor Stanford has had another girlfriend or two in his past. I believe in forgiveness and that people can change but you do that in private and not while you are trying to fend off the liberals who are trying to ruin our country while your ex-mistresses are popping out of the woodwork. Mark Stanford needs to make some apologies and a quick exit from the political stage.

When he turns in his papers, I have the perfect person to replace him: his wife Jenny Sanford. She has been reported to be one of his top advisors and has experience in business and government. I also think she gives the other Republican Party hottie, Sarah Palin, a run for her money in the looks department. Here is what I like most about Jenny Sanford; she was not standing next to her husband when he gave his apology for his Argentine adventure. I have often wondered where these politicians find women who are willing to walk out behind them after they have been treated like doormats. She gave her husband a chance to straighten up when she found out about the affair a few months ago but now she is telling him to go suck eggs. She cares more about herself, herself self-respect and her values than the power of being First Lady of South Carolina with the possibility of moving up in a few years. If Hillary Clinton had that kind of spine, she would be sitting in the big chair right now instead of hoping that she can hang on and get her shot in 2016.

I happened to catch Cameron “My Career is Over Thanks to HD” Diaz discussing the intricacies of marriage on “Real Time with Bill Maher” this week. A lot of tinseltown jibber jabber ensued but you needn’t be bored with the self-indulgent details. Cameron basically proclaimed that she’s glad that she’d never gotten married because she “definitely would have been divorced (multiple times).”  She just needed to do what was right for her and that that was constantly changing. Maher, of course, agreed and praised Cameron in her wisdom for having learned to put herself first and foremost, before all others in her life. Marriage can’t work because you have to look out for “Numero Uno”… That’s the Hollywood way!

Besides, haven’t you listened to all of the celebrity preachings? Marriage is nothing but a silly piece of paper… And you don’t need that to prove your love. Also, affairs and coke-bender-induced hooker orgies are cool and allowed… I think that’s in the fine print of a “legal union.”

Diaz then went on to say, “Anyone will tell you that like, when I’m in a relationship I’m committed like… a thousand percent!”

Firstly, don’t judge her mathematical shortcomings too harshly, as it’s beside the point. The real kicker here is that much like all of Hollywood, Cameron Diaz has no idea as to what commitment really means. What good is commitment to a relationship if it’s only temporary?

The problem is that the people of Hollywood are so wrapped up in themselves that they’ve confused their movies with real life relationships. In real life, your short-term commitment is of no good. Because unlike in the motion pictures, when the montage of naked horseback riding and fornication under the waterfall ends… The story is far from over.

The relationship will go on to be tested through ups, downs, loop-dee-loops and unexpected hardships. Once that “feeling” of initial passion is gone, you’re left with each other, your relationship, and the moral fortitude on which it was built. No longer is it the director’s (or cameraman’s or lighting guy’s) job to keep the spark alive, it’s yours and your spouse’s alone.

I wouldn’t expect the “immediate gratification” crowd of Hollywood to understand the true concept of love, however, as that would actually require them to look outside of themselves for a change.  Esteeming others first… What a concept!

Am I off-base in my point of view? Do you ladies (or guys) out there feel that the “growing and cultivating” view of love is completely void of romance and has no place in the talkies? How about the real world?

All I’m saying is that I rarely find myself pointing to Sean Penn’s love life thinking, “I want to be like that.”

But as I’ve often noted in the past (most recently here), getting too caught up in the surfaces of cultural products often causes one to fail to see their true meaning. That’s the case with “Family Values.”

Certainly the story seems calculated to make a particular religious belief look bad, specifically evangelical Christianity. It concerns a serial killer who is a evidently devout Christian. (And indeed, the numerous promos on the USA Network leading up to the airing of the episode highlighted that sensationalistic concept.) In addition, the episode’s title, “Family Values,” seems calculated to annoy evangelical Christians, in an obvious sardonic reference to former Vice President Dan Quayle’s most famous political quest.

The man, apparently happily married and the father of a teenage girl, has set out on a campaign of murders after being fired as a scapegoat after his bank lost money on subprime loans they had forced him to make.

Thus the villain is a twofer: a murdering Christian driven to it by evil, rapacious capitalists. He’s a an anti-Christian socialist’s dream, and hence a superb bogeyman for our contemporary elites.

This mad–though seemingly normal-seeming–villain is “killing people to send them to Heaven,” as the police captain puts it. In the course of the episode we are shown several murders he commits, and realize that he’s seriously deranged. In the dramatic climax of the episode, the show’s main character, NYPD detective Bobby Goren, discusses religion with the killer, in order to get under his skin and lure him into confessing his crimes. That’s one of the show’s formula elements, Goren’s use of psychology to trap the killer.

Thus Goren debates conceptions of God with the killer, and on the surface it seems clear that he’s doing it just to trap him. There’s more to the scene, however, which makes it more sopisticated–and much more sympathetic to Christianity and to the idea of a caring, benevolent God–than is apparent on the surface.

The killer’sconception of God is as a distant, unforgiving deity, one who expects us to pay for our own sins. Goren homes in on that notion and attacks it astutely. In doing so, he argues exactly as a Christian would; the idea of God that Goren presents is quite biblically accurate, whereas that of the fanatic is a perversion of the Gospel (and indeed something of an inversion of it).

Ultimately, Goren says that the killer does not serve God, he serves Satan, “the liar, the trickster; . . . You serve the deceiver,” he says.

Now, Goren clearly is not presenting himself as a Christian but instead using theology to accomplish the same sort of psychological manipulation he employs against all the criminals he faces. In the end, however, his arguments show a very sound understanding of the Jewish and Christian conception of God and effectively convey it to the audience. It’s a very interesting episode in that way, and much more favorable to religion than a mere surface look may reveal.