Posted on 02/20/2006 11:52:55 AM PST by LdSentinal
Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles.com says that the gay-cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain has the same marketing strategy as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Both, he says, have been hyped as blue-state movies that are reaching and changing minds in the cities of red America. He calls this the "Heartland Breakout Meme”. ("Meme" refers to a cultural copying unit that hops from brain to brain without much thought or any at all). What Kaus means is that the mainstream media keep reinforcing ideas liberals want to believe, whether they are true or not. But the alleged breakout of Fahrenheit appears to be myth, as Byron York shows by revealing some confidential movie-industry data in his new book, The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.
Kaus thinks preliminary box office numbers indicate that Brokeback isn't reaching red America either. His point is that liberals delude themselves into overconfidence and harm the Democratic Party by projecting a false view of political reality. He writes: "If you think the visceral straight male reaction against male homosexual sex has effectively disappeared...you won't spend a lot of time trying to figure out the possible deep-seated, even innate, sources of resistance to liberalization... At worst, you'll pass them off as sheer redneck bigotry-a proven way to lose the red states for good".
A version of the “Heartland Breakout Meme” appeared when Bill Clinton, under pressure from the gay lobby, agreed to accept declared homosexuals into the armed services. The polls were mixed, and if read carefully, showed that much resistance seemed strong. But liberals thought it would be a low-cost initiative for Clinton. A few howls from the right and it would all be over. Liberals were stunned when the resistance inflicted considerable political damage on the new presidency and resulted in a policy that none had even imagined -- don't-ask-don't-tell.
A related meme is that marriage is a civil right that a just society must extend to gays. "Equality in marriage" reinforces the liberal belief that an entitlement is being arbitrarily withheld from an aggrieved group; again stoking the feeling that anyone who disagrees is a redneck. But societies around the world-maybe all of them-- have disagreed with this allegedly obvious idea for thousands of years because they never concluded that an arrangement built on same-sex love qualifies as a real marriage. Polls show that tolerance and respect for gays are climbing much more rapidly than approval of gay marriage, indicating for a considerable number of Americans, the major sticking point is not bigotry, but a liberal-conservative difference on the meaning of marriage.
"Samuel Alito is out of the mainstream" was one of the strangest of recent liberal memes, relentlessly spread by the media, all with little effect. As U.C.L.A. law professor Eugene Volokh wrote, Alito's views "are majority views, by a wide margin". Legal columnist Stuart Taylor Jr., a centrist and no fan of President Bush, called attention to the large role of reporters in spreading the meme. He showed in some detail that "systematic slanting, conscious or unconscious " in many mainstream press reports "helped fuel a disingenuous campaign by liberal groups and senators to caricature Alito as a conservative ideologue”.
Even worse was the "racist response to Katrina" meme. Mostly this was aimed at George Bush, who botched the crisis badly, though not on any racial basis. The idea was to peel away growing Republican support among blacks by playing the race card. It worked. The rapid spread of the meme was the reason why a bland one-liner by entertainer Kanye West-- "George Bush doesn't care about black people"-- unexpectedly became a famous quote. And there was a broader campaign to indict whites in general, who were busy sending in most of the $1 billion in voluntary contributions to Katrina victims, for failing to care about the suffering of New Orleans blacks.
This meme was wildly promoted by the mainstream media, but ultimately it failed, as Democratic pollster Celinda Lake made clear in a recent speech. She said, "It is certainly true that people very quickly got off any analysis that...the patterns of Katrina were due to race”. One reason was that people were pointing to New Orlean's corruption and the city's incompetent black mayor as explanations for much of the post-Katrina mess. Another factor was that the power structure in this black-run city signed off on an explicit arrangement to abandon 100,000 poor residents in case of disaster. That was the city's plan and it worked. No wonder the racism meme faded. “Far from Katrina promoting very much," Lake said, "if anything Katrina is backfiring a little bit". That happens now and then to memes that the public can figure out aren't true.
My prediction: When it comes out at Blockbuster they will order tons of them to meet the "high demand", or will be pressured to anyway, and they will be all left on the shelf because no one wants to see it.
Just proof that willie nelson is still smoking too much pot and sombody has pictures of him with the result.
Me too, don't know a single soul who has seen it
"To: BigSkyFreeper
9 million out of 300 million in the USA?
That really deflates the 10% number, AGAIN. If anything I submit it shows there are even FEWER homsexuals than 2%.
Another "meme" shot down."
interesting..... maybe that should be brought up on a talk show or an interview somewhere.
Liberal democrats and their stenographers ( MSM reporters ) push endless crap ... and yeah, it's all starting to backfire. Odd how they've got the courage to stand up to everyday Americans, but not enough to print a cartoon critical of Radical Muslims.
The liberals have deluded themselves into thinking that Farenheit 911 was great and we all saw it in theaters and bought the video.
Given any other movie, nobody is going to bat an eyelash if you say you don't want to see it. I don't care that this movie is out there, but it pisses me off that not wanting to see it is equated with bigotry.
If your 2% is correct, and I believe it is, demonstrates that homosexuality is not exactly mainstream in this country. Despite the best efforts of the Hollyweird elite to produce such utter nonsense.
Liberals delude themselves on a great many things. It is because they do not value 'truth'.
And it sold out in some goober's basement in Fort Bragg, NC.
The left and especially the homosexual lifestyle advocates have their own "meme" of saying ALL opposition to homosexual behavior is strictly religious.
The do now want to allow the anti-meme truth of opposition to homosexual behavior can and is based on science and the fact it is a mental disorder.
It has just ruined cowboys for me, everytime I see a guy wearing a hat, I start checking out his pinky fingers.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to teach full-body massage to a stupid sheep??!!
That's where the Hillary Health Care initiative got its start. It was assumed that all America was crying out for health care reform. There was never any evidence that that was true; it was simply presented as axiomatic. Nor do Americans favor affirmative action, environmental extremism, or homosexuality. But the Left presents those values like they're already part and parcel of the mainstream.
Same with this movie. It is NOT successful; for cripes' sake, Dukes of Hazzard outgrossed it!
There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and then the looking-glass dreamworld liberals live in, where facts and numbers mean everything and nothing at the same time.
Meme seems to be the new mantra.
Yes, it would be considered racist if you did not like this movie. They may also get you labeled as mentally ill because, in psychiatrist and psyhcologist professional circles, there is a serious debate about adding homophobia as a psychiatric disorder on par with schizophrenia to the manual on mental illnesses. In other words, if you don't like 'queerness' you may be either arrested or picked up by the guys in white coats.
'Curiosity killed the cat,
Satisfaction brought him back' ?
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