Moron Movie

Infesting movie theaters this month is An American Carol, a movie financed - and acted - by right-wing extremists. The movie concerns a Michael Moore-type character who goes around making movies showing how bad America is and leads a campaign to have Independence Day abolished as federal holiday because it acknowledges the creation of an evil nation. As in Dickens's story "A Christmas Carol, he's visited by four spirits - the ghosts of John F. Kennedy, George S. Patton, and George Washington, along with an Angel of Death -to show how America was always on the side of freedom and liberty and how Muslim extremists will get atomic bombs and use them to destroy the American homeland if he doesn't cut it out. The Moore surrogate renounces his leftist views and vows never to criticize America again.

Did I spoil the ending for you? Good, then you won't see it. :-p

The movie - which conveniently ignores the fact that no one on the left ever called for Independence Day to be abolished as a federal holiday (Columbus Day, maybe, but that's another issue) - was not screened for critics, its producers saying that too many critics have a liberal bias and would not review it fairly, though I don't recall Michael Medved ever being a threat to their cinematic aspirations.

Hollywood is supposed to have a liberal bias, but I don't see how liberals - who advocate thought, education, and intellect - could appreciate the thought-deprived, intellectually bankrupt fare for the uneducated that the studios routinely put out in the form of violent action movies, frat-boy comedies, franchise blockbusters, and the inevitable sequels to same. But maybe that's just me. Usually, it seems that the closest Hollywood ever comes to being liberal is when they make a chick flick with a mostly black cast.

Speaking of which, such a movie - The Secret Life of Bees, based on the novel of the same name - comes out Friday, and it's sure to infuriate the right for its message of love and warmth and not having enough white men in it. It's about a young white woman cared for by three black sisters in a beekeeping family. My local paper printed an unfortunate preview of the movie last week. It noted the roles of Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson in the movie, and added that it "opens wide."

Bad choice of words! :-O

By the way, the only black star of An American Carol is Gary Coleman. :-p