Posted on 12/23/2004 3:10:12 PM PST by quidnunc
Put this one in your back pocket for the next Christmas party. A gift from us to you. After a few cocktails, when the office bore turns the conversation to Moral Values and Religious Freaks who elected that Liar In The White House and this country’s Backward Obsession with Guns and Wal-Marts…. Yeah, when that guy goes into blowhard mode, quote him a little P. J. O’Rourke.
Specifically, pull out this O’Rourkian rejoinder and perfect-for-any-political-occasion comeback: This country was founded by religious nuts with guns.
It always seems to come as a surprise to some folks that this country is full of religious freaks. Which are not necessarily to be confused with zealots or the devout. Religious freaks are those fascinated by the divine. And by even less-than-divine attempts to explain the divine.
Comes now the Christmas season. Excuse us, the holiday season. And the newsweeklies have all got religion. Why not? It sells. Note the cover stories on two recent issues of Time and Newsweek, which can use the attention — as irrelevant and newsless as they’ve become in the world of 24/7 cable television, the blogosphere, and the Net. Not to mention another niche, daily newspapers.
Here’s Time for December 13th: "Secrets of the Nativity: Why the story of Jesus’ birth inspires so much scholarly interest — and faith."
And here’s Newsweek, also for December 13th: "The Birth of Jesus: From Mary to the manger, how the Gospels mix faith and history to tell the Christmas story and make the case for Christ."
For these newsweeklies, the nativity is news. Surely the editors at Time and Newsweek aren’t just now finding out about His birth. But, hey, you can bet these two issues sold like video games at Christmastime. Religion — even quasi-religion — sells in this country. A couple of obvious examples:
(1) Dan Brown’s factually challenged but rip-roaringly entertaining book, The Da Vinci Code. Among other SHOCKING REVELATIONS!, the Code "uncovers" a centuries-old plot to conceal the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. At last count, more than 9 million hardcover copies of Author Brown’s book were in print. And on the New York Times ’ best-seller list the other week, Da Vinci ranked No. 2 — right behind Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet In Heaven.
(2) That movie. You know, the film that launched a thousand new arguments, re-opened a thousand old ones, and raked in millions. Here are the latest box-office numbers on Mel Gibson’s little $30-million expenditure, The Passion of The Christ: a total domestic gross of $370 million and a total overseas gross of $239 million for a total worldwide gross of $609 million. (Not including DVD sales, rentals, and, well, Lord knows what.) Mel’s movie ought to make a great franchise, cashing in every lenten season.
So why should anybody be surprised (here we go again) that Moral Values — belief in or fascination with — played a role in the last national election? Americans can’t get enough of religion, religious conspiracies, religious fantasies, religious controversies... not to mention age-old morality plays. Religious Freaks R Us. Or, what P. J. said.
• The thought occurred the other night while watching a few scenes from It’s a Wonderful Life. Which takes some doing these days. Because NBC now owns the exclusive rights. Time was, you could catch Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed back in Bedford Falls any December night of the week.
But there it was on the tube, and there we were mesmerized by it once again. And the thought struck: They don’t make movies like this any more. We didn’t say it was an original thought. And we’re not talking about clean, sappy, black-andwhite, simply plotted, happily-ever-after movies — but movies about a certain American culture that Hollywood once reflected (invented?) but now seems able only to make fun of.
Strange. We the American Viewing Public still recognize the America we see in a movie like It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s a stereotypical America — full of honest people fighting dishonest ones and good winning out in the end. But just because it’s a stereotype doesn’t make it fiction. Despite the kind of movies that aren’t an artistic success unless you leave the theater ready either to commit suicide or move to Canada, not just nightmares come true in America. So do sweet dreams — dreams of success, of independence, of freedom, of self-respect earned and the good fight fought.
Hollywood may no longer necessarily recognize this idealized America, but lots of Americans shamelessly do. For some of us, it’s not Bedford Falls and the values of a George Bailey that seem out of touch.
• Hilaire Belloc once wrote about The Barbarian. He’s the man who "will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers…."
He is the bore at the cocktail party. He is the one who doesn’t get It’s a Wonderful Life and certainly doesn’t want to get it. Indeed, he abhors the idea of it. He is the critic who rationalizes the results of the last election as the work of the ignorant, dumb, culturally backward and, worse, religious. There is something about his unabated fury weeks after election day that still amuses, even delights. He’s harmless, we tell ourselves. This, too, will pass....
"We sit by and watch the Barbarian," wrote Belloc. "We tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."
Which is why I will not tolerate RINO fence sitters. Pretend the Regressives aren't dangerous at your peril.
And a Merry Christmas to ye.
ping for later.
Merry Christmas quidnunc...Thanks for the post!
Great quote...who said it/ wrote it?
Guns are objects. They do nothing on their own.
Your post makes no sense.
They never do because they are written by freaks who can't write a sentence without using foul language. I guess they don't have anyone to talk to over at DU these days.
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