World O' Crap Remembers Roy

While Time's Arrow flies in but one direction, History is a circle, as Sheri reminded me today with this post from August, 2011.  We were celebrating the eighth anniversary of World O' Crap by rooting through the first week's postings, which were mostly concerned with helping then-Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore for proving that he's dumb as a rock. I mean, a literal rock. Like, two tons of granite worth of dumb.

So I thought I'd repost this, for the benefit of newbies who only think of Roy as a hebephile:
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Just two days after the publication of her founding manifesto, s.z. took on the Judge Roy Moore-Big Rock Candy Commandments Controversy, which was just then coming to a head.  For those who may not recall the details, Moore was the newly elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who felt the wooden Ten Commandments plaque that hung in the Courthouse wasn't ostentatious enough.  So he commissioned a 2½-ton granite monument carved with a graven image of the Decalogue, and had it delivered to the Rotunda after business hours.  Chief Justice Moore seems to have anticipated that his actions might be regarded as irregular, if not downright illegal by the Federal judiciary, since, according to Wikipedia:

The installation was filmed, and videotapes of the event were sold by Coral Ridge Ministries, an evangelical media outlet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which later used proceeds from the film's sales to pay Moore's ensuing legal expenses. Coral Ridge was the operation of the late Reverend D. James Kennedy, a staunch Moore supporter.

Moore also had a Copyright notice chiseled into the monument, presumably so he could help fund his extra-Constitutional activities by selling paperweight reproductions in the Supreme Court Gift Shop. 

The next morning, Moore held a press conference in the central rotunda to officially unveil the monument [and] declared, "Today a cry has gone out across our land for the acknowledgment of that God upon whom this nation and our laws were founded....May this day mark the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people and the return to the knowledge of God in our land."

 While most bloggers discussed the First Amendment implications of Moore's actions, s.z. decided to go directly to the top:

God Comments On Alabama Ten Commandments Rock 

It seems that this guy Rob Moore is just not going to get his rock out of the rotunda -- at least, not until the media stops covering this story.

And while there have been a lot of people interviewed about the situation (Rob, his supporters, the Alabama State Attorney General, the ACLU, Jerry Falwell, etc.), it seems that nobody has talked to perhaps the key player in all of this: God.

So, I got in touch with God's press secretary and managed to set up a short lunch meeting. Here's a transcript of our conversation:

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Me: Thanks for agreeing to talk with me.

God: No problem. I meet so few reporters these days that I felt it was my duty.

Me: Hey, was that a slam?!? But let's move on. As you know . . .

God: Yes. I'm omniscient.

Me: . . .Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has said "he would be guilty of treason" if he didn't fight to keep a monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state judicial building. Do you agree?

God: Yes. But since Ann Coulter branded everybody she doesn't like (Democrats, liberals, women, airport baggage screeners, all the kids who made fun of her girlish crush on Joe McCarthy, etc.) as traitors, treason is now cool and hip.

Me: Moore has also said that he needs to keep the monument in the rotunda "to fulfill the campaign promise that he made to the citizens of Alabama to restore the moral foundation of law." What do you think he means by this?

God: That he wants to do Law & Order, Old Testement-style. You know, stoning homosexuals. Stoning adulteresses. Stoning kids who sass their parents. Stuff like that.

Me: And do you agree with him on this?

God: Hell, no! I sent you people my son and licensed representative to give you Commandments Version 2.0, which has a root code of "Love thy neighbor as thyself." I don't see anybody putting a two-ton granite block of THAT in any state buildings!

Me: So, what do you think of Reverend Falwell's comparison of Moore "with slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who defied segregation laws in the white-dominated U.S. South in the 1950s and 1960s"?

God: Well, I hardly need Moore or Falwell to fight for MY desegregation. I AM omnipresent, you know.

Me: I think Falwell meant that it's okay to break "man's law when needed to preserve God's law."

God: I knew that. (Might I remind you of that omniscience thing?) I just thought it was a stupid analogy. And by the way, my law was never "Put a big granite monument of the Ten Commandments in a public place." My law was "Obey the damn commandments, and even more than that, love your enemies. Oh, and don't make a public spectacle of yourself by trumpeting your good deeds in the street or praying to be seen of men. And no worshipping of graven images!" But I guess it's my fault that I didn't package this stuff as "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Commandments."

Me: And what do you think of Alan Keyes urging of Moore's supporters to "take back America from the unruly courts"?

God: I think that Keyes and Moore should first work on taking back daytime television from those unruly court TV shows! They are annoying, irresponsible, and demeaning to all involved. Plus, they take up valuable air time that could be used for reruns of "Highway to Heaven" and "Touched by an Angel." And "Perry Mason"--I've always liked that one. Oh, and speaking of sedition, don't you think that what Keyes is advocating comes close?

Me: Um, I really couldn't comment--except that if being a traitor is now cool, I don't think Keyes is one. One last question: what do you think of Moore's vow to file a formal appeal with the high court “to defend our constitutional right to acknowledge God"?

God: Being omniscient and all, I'm pretty sure that the constitution doesn't say that one has the right to acknowledge ANYTHING by sneaking 5,300-pound slabs of granite into public buildings in the dead of night. Unless perhaps Moore is speaking of the "Pranksters, Hazers, and Practical Jokesters Constitution."  

As for acknowledging ME, I would prefer it if people would, you know, visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and keep themselves unspotted from the world. Sure, it's easier to lug around big rocks, but it's not really the way I want to be worshipped. The big chunk o' granite thing just makes me look stupid in front of my friends.

Me: I'll pass that along. Well, thanks for your time. And best of luck to you in your future endeavors.

God. Same to you. See you at the second coming. Um, wear something nonflammable! 

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There you have it. I hope this ends this little contretemps, and we don't have to read anymore about it ever again. Because it only encourages Moore and rewards him for acting out, and we don't want that. Or the next time he's up for reelection he'll lug the Dome of the Rock into the court house parking lot and refuse to move it, even though it's in a handicapped space, as a way of showing his constituents that he's a moron.

And then a week or so later, s.z. very kindly tossed me the keys and let me take her blog for a spin:

DON’T KNOCK THE ROCK! 

Roy Moore Draws Support of Rock-Worshipping Cults

By World O'Crap Special Correspondent Scott C.

The recent debate over Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s monument to the Ten Commandments has exposed and to some degree exacerbated the tensions that exist between mainstream and fundamentalist Christianity. At the same time, however, the 5,300 pound cause celebre has also served to unite several previously hostile religious movements.

"Initially, church elders declined to take a position on this controversy," said Ronald Zietlow, Chief Mameluke of the Igneous Brotherhood. "We mistakenly believed that Chief Justice Moore and his followers worshipped an omniscient, omnipresent, but non-corporeal diety, and that the granite monument was merely symbolic. 

"Naturally, that sort of abstract cosmotheism doesn’t interest us, since we worship the sturdy and tangible Three Stones of Fintoozler. But once we heard the protesters screaming, 'Get your hands off our god, god-haters!' (Protesters React Angrily to Monument Removal ) we realized that the granite carving was in fact their diety. Naturally, we felt obliged to offer our support in the spirit of stone-worshipping ecumenism. Plus, we admired their forethought in placing a copyright notice on their god. Many’s the time I wish that the High Prophet had taken a moment to visit the Trademark Office, since we’re losing quite a bit of potential merchandising revenue at the Three Stones. Particularly sales of T-shirts and those foam drink sleeves."

This sentiment was echoed by Timothy DeLongpre, a deacon at Our Lady of Feldspar in Sterling, Virginia. "As a minority faith which reveres consecrated sandstone, we are firm believers in defending the right to practice one’s religion, free of interference by Federal bureaucrats. We are also staunch supporters of anything which strengthens the ecumenical bonds of friendship and respect among the world’s leading rock-worshipping cults, because, frankly, some of them practice human sacrifice and they scare the crap out of me." DeLongpre added that many in his congregation have admired the way Chief Justice Moore championed his faith by hiring workmen to sneak his god onto public property in the middle of the night, and the way he boldly secured a copyright on his own Maker. "In our own parish, the poor often go hungry because our product line has been diluted by the unlicensed theme mugs of third party heretics."

Father Rodolfo, pastor of the First Church of Mexican Wrestlers Who Worship Rock Men From the Moon has closely followed the contretemps in Alabama, and believes that whether Moore’s effort succeeds or fails, he will long be honored as a peacemaker.

"Ours is a very inclusive church," said the priest as he took a break from calling Bingo on a recent Wednesday night. "And we are saddened by all this factionalism: Shale versus gypsum, sedimentary versus metamorphic. These doctrinal squabbles threaten to overwhelm our faith and blind us to the one thing we should never lose sight of: that despite our different beliefs and customs, we are all children of a big rock."

Rawiri Gaia, priestess of Rapa Nui agrees. "I believe that Moore’s crusade can already be counted a success, for it has helped to heal the theological divisions within my own faith." She gestured eloquently toward a towering head carved from the native rock.

"For countless generations we have venerated these enormous graven images of Richard Kiel. Or possibly Ted Cassidy. That’s another doctrinal sore point. But the fact is, in recent years we’ve seen a graying of our congregations. We needed to modernize our services, do something to appeal to the younger set, so we began outfitting our monoliths with gigantic Devo hats from the ‘Whip It!’ video.

"Some of our more traditional members threatened a schism, but fortunately Judge Moore’s timely stand on behalf of boulder fetishists everywhere reminded us that when it comes to eternal salvation, it doesn’t really matter what accessories your god is wearing. Only that he was carved with loving care, and legally trademarked."

Not all devotees of stone deities welcome the attention brought by the Ten Commandments imbroglio. Dave Bradley of Appleton, Wisconsin, who worships marble ("I like a smooth god," he says) claims that all the publicity has brought "kooks and whackos" flooding to his faith.

 "None Dare Call It Necrophilia"

Still, whether Moore’s Take Your God to Work Day program is successful may prove less important in the end than the comfort and inspiration it has provided to hundreds of pagan Alabamians. "It’s like the Stonewall Riot," said protester Cyrus Fletcher of Mobile. "Except with a big rock. And fewer drag queens."

So there you have it.  On November 13, 2003, less than three months after World O' Crap published a series of whimsical japes on the Ten Commandments Controversy, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary voted unanimously to defrock Chief Justice Moore.  The connection is inescapable.

Wondah Womaaaaan!

[Note: I just found this in my Drafts folder, where it's been sitting since November. Not sure why I never posted it, but it's probably because I'm a post-modern moron.]

No, Wonder Woman is not queer. You’re just a post-modern moron

See? Thanks for clearing that up, Steve Deace.

Wait..."Who's Steve Deace?" I hear you ask. "Never mind!" I hear you add, but a fraction of a second too late, because I've already got his bio here:

“[Steve Deace] is a rising star” that represents “the next generation in conservative media."

And here he is now, in thoughtful repose.  Hmmm...Is he picking his nose? Or just thinking? Or just thinking about picking his nose? The world may never know...

Anyway, Steve's the host of one of those vein-bursting right wing monologue shows, a frequent "guest pundit" on TV, and a "prolific writer" for a bunch of sites like Townhall (which auto correct desperately wants to render as "Downhill"), WorldNetDaily, Breitbart, etc. "His youth combined with his writing and broadcast ability makes him uniquely positioned for today’s multimedia environment."

In other words, he's a nerd who's well qualified to recruit evolved Pokémon for the conservative cause!

"Deace lives in Iowa with his wife, Amy, and three young children Ana, Zoe, and Noah. He feels that living in the heartland provides him with a grassroots conservative perspective often lacking in a beltway media culture that treats Middle America like flyover country."

Hey, no need to feel defensive about living in the Corn Belt, Steve. Our own Heydave is a Hawkeye, which just goes to prove that for every blustery, insecure jerk stinkin' up the prairie, there's a nice, smart, funny guy who volunteers at a soup kitchen (thank you for your service, Heydave).

The cost of being a superhero has been reflected upon in many of the recent DC and Marvel movie franchises.

Yep, it costs roughly $200 million a pop. $400 million when you include P&A.

The mighty responsibility of being able to avoid bad things happening to good people, but minus the transcendence of knowing whether you always should and what the collateral damage will be if you do.

With great power comes great responsibility to avoid bad things. (I dunno, maybe Uncle Ben should do a second draft...?)

Turns out no matter how cool these movies are visually, their true depth relies on something that isn’t remotely futuristic or cutting edge. These are profoundly human stories. These are stories filled with soul.

"You have the soul of a man who can cosplay a rodent."

The butler Alfred tells Bruce Wayne that the duty of Batman is to “endure” what others cannot. That’s a Christ-like sacrifice.

Except...Batman lived. For your analogy to work, Christ would have to be waging a one man war to avenge the death of his Father and Mary, which either means Nietzsche was right, or you need to go to remedial Sunday School.

Kal-El/Clark Kent is a Mosaic exile from a doomed culture sent upstream to inspire humanity with his messianic altruism.

So...Judaism is a doomed culture? Somebody should tell Netanyahu he can ease off on the settlements, because what's the point? Just toss your babies into the river, Jews, and hope for the best!

Bruce Banner’s reality as the Hulk is he is “always angry.” He struggles to temper his perpetual wrath into a righteous indignation used for good.

If he fails to master his temper, all of humanity will suffer, but he'll probably get a show on FoxNews.

Even the straight-laced Steve Rogers tries to equivocate concerning his Captain America mission statement, before being called on his hypocrisy by the far more deeply conflicted Tony Stark/Ironman.

Whew. Okay, I co-host a podcast about geeky stuff, and even I want to beat this guy up for his lunch money.

All of these characters must bear their cross and suffer a Christ-like descent into hell to perform their service to humanity. That’s why their characters, even with their flaws, are cornerstones of the pop culture zeitgeist. They mirror both our Adamic frailty/sinfulness as well as the imago dei each of us possesses, which inspires us to be something more than a fallen son of Adam and a daughter of Eve.

Plus, they can thwart crime with Hostess Fruit Pies!

Alas, despite the Christ-like hell vacations and the light tender crust, Steve has gone limp with rage because Greg Rucka, writer of the Wonder Woman comic, suggested -- one might even say, "acknowledged" -- that a woman raised on an island of women might have banged a lady or two.

A recent Time magazine article delved into this ever-so-shallow pool of philosophical larceny, when comic book author Greg Rucka considered the nature of Diana Prince’s/Wonder Woman’s Amazonian heritage.

“When you start to think about giving the concept of [her female-only homeland] its due, the answer is, ‘How can they not all be in same-sex relationships?’ Right? It makes no logical sense otherwise. It’s supposed to be paradise. You’re supposed to be able to live happily. You’re supposed to be able … to have a fulfilling, romantic and sexual relationship. And the only options are women.

Now, are we saying Diana has been in love and had relationships with other women? As Nicole and I approach it, the answer is obviously yes.”

So, how much question-begging do you have time for? Because that is rubbish.

Enough time to point out, for the millionth time, that "question-begging" doesn't mean "raising a question"? No? Really? Okay, fine...

Only a hell-hole mistaken for a paradise— whose real-life source material insists that men in dresses pee in women’s bathrooms — could arrive at such a conclusion. 

So according to Steve, the reason Themyscira -- Diana's homeland -- was called "Paradise Island" is because it's the one spot on earth where only ladies use the Ladies Room. Problem solved!

Wait...I just had a thought. What if there are trans Amazons? Do they have to trudge all the way over to the Themyscira Target just to take a leak? That seems unfair.

That’s just another way of saying that this author’s definition of paradise may be partaking in one of the classic blunders: paving the road to hell with fake good intentions.

According to highway engineers, paving a heavily traveled roadway with fake good intentions can lead to a higher incidence of potholes, collapsed culverts, and uneven shoulder surfaces, making it 30% more likely that Jesus' road trip to hell will end with a broken axle.

First, the upcoming Wonder Woman movie makes clear that far from being without male influence, her very life and culture is owed to the male god Zeus.

STEVE TREVOR: Have you never met a man before? Well--what about your father?
DIANA: I had no father. I was brought to life by Zeus.

And since she's never seen him, Zeus is clearly a deadbeat dad. No wonder she became a lesbian.  But the point is, the Amazons don't have same-sex relationships, they're only sexually attracted to their daddy, which sounds creepy, but is apparently considered perfectly normal in Themyscira. And Trump Tower.

Might that not be the plumb line we should operate from in deciphering not only sexual relations but all morality within this universe? I don’t seem to recall any discussion in the Greek pantheon where Zeus must first check in with Bruce Jenner before making a ruling on matters of state from Mount Olympus.

Right. The rigid plumb line of ancient Greek heterosexuality. Anybody want to tell Steve? But please, break it to him easy. Maybe start him off with tales of the Sacred Band of Thebes -- you can tell him it's like a Peloponnesian Avengers movie -- then ease him into the pederasty.

Second, Rucka makes a weird and hypocritical plea for nuance in the quality of Wonder Woman’s “obvious” gayness: “We’ve had a long history of people—for a variety of reasons, including sometimes pure titillation, which I think is the worst reason—say, ‘Ooo. Look. It’s the Amazons. They’re gay!’”

Who are you to judge another culture’s titillation, Mr. Judgy Pants?

He's judging our culture, Mr. Clueless Culottes, with its predilection for faux lesbian porn. But Steve's larger points stands, because really, who are we to judge others? Maybe there's a radio host in the heartland who likes to put on his loose-fitting "Judgy Pants", rage about possible same sex subtext in comic books, then enjoy a well-deserved spanking from a Daddy figure he calls "Zeus". That's the kind of thing that can only make our moral plumb line all the straighter.

Is it Diana’s true identity to be freaky as she wants to be or not? Don’t shackle those poor Amazonians with all your self-important man-splaining. If an American kindergartener and his parents can insist, for any reason they want, that the boy is a girl, and the rest of us simply have to deal with it, then those Amazonians don’t have to fit into your obtuse categories, either. Just add another letter onto the end of the LGBTXYZ train and be done with it, you troglodyte.

TV DETECTIVE: What've we got?

CSI: Signs of a struggle between argument and tantrum. I'd put time of death of the metaphor at somewhere between midnight and two a.m.

TV DETECTIVE: Cause of death?

CSI: Looks like attempted satire.

Third, Rucka says Wonder Woman’s relationship with this world’s war hero, Steve Trevor, couldn’t possibly be uniquely characteristic of her sexuality. Why? Because if she was “only interested in men, then fans could interpret her departure from (her home world) as an attempt to pursue (that relationship).” That interpretation, he says, would undermine “both the sacrifice she makes leaving her home and her heroism.”

So if she’s straight, she’s a hypocrite. But if she’s gay, she’s Joan of Arc? Totally get it now. Wait, no I don’t. I thought love is love. Why won’t you jerks just let poor Diana be happy in her multi-world bi-curiousness? How is her not-totally gay, maybe-someday fictional marriage affecting you anyway?

Oh oh...Somebody's attempts to relieve the tedium of Iowa by sneaking Wonder Woman comics into the bathroom just hit a patch of auto-erotic black ice.

And lastly, why cast the drop-dead gorgeous Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman if the essence of being Amazonian is more connected to homosexuality than classical notions of femininity?

Yeah! Only classical notions of masculinity should be connected to homosexuality.

Why not go full Ghostbusters? Cast Melissa McCarthy, put her in a baggy t-shirt and some sweatpants instead of a form-fitting suit of armor, and have her protest us to death?

Well, I guess Steve would ruin fewer sweat socks that way. Wait a second...What if Marvel and DC secretly controlled the global sweat sock cartel, and that's why they constantly feature busty women in skimpy outfits when it makes no sense, because Freshmen would rather buy another 12-pack of tubesox from K Mart than do a mid-week load of laundry!

Maybe because even though Wonder Woman is a fictional character, her actual muse is much closer to Almighty God’s truth of the stunning allure and glorious strength of the female design than the stupid lies our post-modern fantasies keep foisting on us? That there really is a feminine mystique after all? And it’s not here to be shamed by political correctness, or put down by a patriarchy. But rather to be celebrated and unleashed because it, too, is made in the image of the Creator.

So Wonder Woman was made in the image of William Moulton Marston? I frankly don't see the resemblance.

Anyway, now that Steve has turned a comic book character's sexuality into a religious issue, I assume Bible-bangers are done worshiping Mother Mary and have moved on to a feminine icon who gets with the program and shows a little skin.

A Creator who said “it is not good for man to be alone.” And when man first gazed upon that stunning allure and glorious strength of the female design he responded with a “wo-man, I’m totally all in for this. Anything she wants, and I’ll try to make it happen.”

Wow, history's first pick-up line sucked. He sounds like Ro-Man from Robot Monster. It's amazing we ever even got to Cane and Abel.

So here’s my challenge to Rucka and the charge of the light in the loafer’s brigade. 

"Come up with a worse bon mot than 'light in the loafer's brigade.' G'wan...I dare ya!"

Go ahead and tarnish the American legends you’ve inherited with your progressive hedonism, rather than honor their legacies as symbols urging us to be something more. And see how much you’re rewarded for it at the box office.

I notice Steve doesn't seem too upset that Captain America is now a nazi in the comics.

Cruz Says, "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

I was reading Roy's column on the rightblogger freakout over Donald Trump's abortion policy (the first one, where he agreed that women seeking abortion deserve "punishment," not the subsequent series of rapid fire amendments, evasions, and take-backs that made him sound like Hank Kimball from Green Acres).  As always, Roy covered the waterfront, but there was a quote toward the end that I thought offered the reader a remarkably revealing, if unwanted, glimpse into the Secret Life of Ted Cruz, Swinger:

The candidate also held a "Women for Cruz" event, gushingly covered by Tim Alberta at National Review: "Plush chairs. Stylish pillows. Purple flowers... in a gently-lit hotel ballroom, beneath elegant, glass-encased chandeliers, the man known for his hardball tactics and red-meat rhetoric attempted to show a softer side,"

So when Ted Cruz wants to talk to the ladies -- and this one's just for the ladies, sorry, fellas -- he eschews the usual noisy, fluorescent-lit hall with folding chairs and a coffee urn on a card table, and instead whisks them away to a bachelor pad straight out of the June, 1964 issue of Playboy. All that's missing is a reel-to-reel tape deck cued up with cocktail jazz, a tiger skin rug, and a collection of slightly risqué Harlequin lithographs he picked up on a business trip to Paris, but otherwise he's ready to press a highball into their hands and sweet talk them right out of their rights.

So I guess it just strikes me as odd (but somehow emblematic of this odd, odd year) that Donald Trump, the ostensible big city sophisticate has turned the abortion debate into a grungy Women in Prison movie from a 1970s drive-in ("This is gonna be a great new law, one of the best laws ever. We'll get Jess Franco to draft it in the Philippines -- legislating is cheaper there -- and we'll hire some Eurotrash blonde to star; but a classy one, like a beauty pageant winner who'll take her top off. And because this is gonna be a big, big law, we'll bring in Pam Grier to play 'Kat,' the sexually aggressive alpha female who runs the cellblock, and maybe get Dyanne Thorne for the warden."  Meanwhile, tribune of the common clay, Ted Cruz has somehow transformed into Christopher Walken as The Continental.

"Ah, tell me, my vision of pre-Raphaelite pulchritude...have you come here tonight to surrender the tender innocence of your civil liberties, or simply to break my heart?"

Go Do That Doo Doo That You Do So Well

The recent news that Ann Coulter will be playing the U.S. Vice President in Sharknado 3: Jumping the Sharknado got me thinking about that other tigress of the right wing, Pam Geller, and how she really paved the way for Ann with her own forays into visual media.

Spasm of passion, or passing a kidney stone?

For many, Pam is the Atlas Shrugs blogger who likes to videotape herself delivering anti-Islam maledictions in a bikini, presumably to taunt orthodox Muslims with what they're missing. To others, she's probably best known as one of the stop motion Harpies who torment Phineas in Jason and the Argonauts. But Pam is vast, she contains multitudes of shit (horseshit, dogshit, bullshit, etc.) and this month she's the cover girl for Scat Fancy magazine.

The Poo Generation 

Every generation has unintentional icons – whether it’s Rosie the Riveter, the American flag, Elvis Presley, the motorcycle jacket – ideas that best express the zeitgeist of a time, a generation.

"It's weird, Bob. You know that Rosie the Riveter gal?"

"Oh, you mean the one we painted in heroic, three-point perspective, bannered with an inspirational phrase, then printed up millions of posters and plastered her image all over the country?"

"Yeah. Somehow -- don't ask me how -- she's become an icon."

"Well, I'm sure it was unintentional."

The emoticon found on phones today, of a happily smiling pile of excrement, is just that. 

 It best exemplifies the low state of the world, of the culture, and of America itself in the age of the primitive. It signifies America’s rapid decay in the wake of the left’s decades-long war on Americanism, freedom, and individual rights. The absence of morality – and by morality I mean a code of values – has led to an absence of the good. And an abundance of poo.

Granted, this probably wouldn't have made the women of the Greatest Generation want to tie on a do-rag and attack the nearest B-24 with a pneumatic rivet gun, but I bet the Germans would have been so charmed by our wide-spread scheiße imagery that they would have promptly called off the war and subscribed to our newsletter.

Ayn Rand wrote that a nation’s culture is the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men, which their fellow citizens have accepted in whole or in part, and which have influenced the nation’s way of life. Poo.

Well, sure, if there's one word that sums up Ayn Rand's writing...

Post-9/11 America, and especially America in the Obama presidency, is a different world from America as she was before Obama, and before the left started its long march to destroy this nation.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with an emoticon.

 America today is increasingly anti-freedom, anti-truth, anti-ideas, anti-capitalsim – anti-reason.

To be fair, anti-capitalsim is probably the best edition of the Sims yet (pro-tip: always build a photography studio early on, so you'll have someone to airbrush Trotsky out of your May Day photos).

 A nation built on a morality of reason has all but abandoned its foundational principles.

If there's one thing our Enlightenment Era Founders distrusted, it was Reason, which is why today we live in a country where you can text your own mother a turd.

  Public schools and academia produce zombies – goose-steppers like the Hitler Youth – who are militant and violent in their imposition of the leftist/Islamic agenda.

I can't help but feel that the best a zombie could produce would be a goose-shuffle; maybe a goose-shamble if they were going downhill.

And when they do it, they congratulate themselves about how they have stood up against “fascism” and “intolerance,” when the intolerant fascists are they themselves.

It's The Walking Dead meets Dead Poets Society (which actually kinda sounds like a zombie film, now that I think about it...)

 Intellectually, young Americans are the most docile conformists, no matter how vocally and self-righteously they declare themselves free. They have accepted as dogma all the philosophical beliefs of their elders of the hard left without question or exploration. A continuing negation of life and self.

Pam's right. You kids should really embrace life more, maybe think about yourselves once in awhile. Regardless, she seems to be believe that today's youth are all slaves to Maoist Muslims in mortarboards because so few Millennials show up at her rallies, leaving her with the Pre-Cambrian demographic.

The culture is ugly. The music is ugly, violent, and misogynistic. Every crime drama and suspense series is rife with the most unimaginable gore. Game of Thrones, Law and Order (Sex Crimes), American Horror Story – they’re all devoid of humanity and morality. Devoid of goodness. It’s a cultural rout. It’s not that the line between good and evil has been blurred – it’s nonexistent. We are living in a cultural free-for-all, or more accurately, a free fall.

Remember, Pam got all this from an emoji.  And she's not done yet. We get a paragraph of harrumphery about Pharrell's performance at the Grammys, and how it sucked because he delivered a dirge-like tune rather than a high-steppin' cakewalk or something, then she holds us down and recites John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged until we say "Uncle."

By this point, it seems like the poop emoticon has been completely forgotten, but Pam is being subtle, even oblique in her approach to the topic, and the careful reader will note that her writing is actually a metaphor for shit.

A culture that would love such a thing is incapable of true humanity and love. Hollywood is incapable of writing or producing a Casablanca. There are no adults anymore – just petulant children who know nothing but to scream that they know everything and to heap contempt on anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their liberal fascism. Logic and facts are scorned and derided; myths (global warning, “Islamophobia”) and feelings are held up as fact and science.

Just to sum up: "liberal fascism" is a fact, "global warning [sic]" is a myth.

I was watching a movie not long ago, a dated fifties musical short on Turner Classic Movies. It was bursting with life. The kids in the room wanted me to put on something gory, negative, dark, and I said, no, no, watch this, this is great stuff – this is America. 

America: We're Dated, But At Least We're Short.

 And one of the teens replied, no it’s not, that’s from when America was happy. And that struck me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. The left has worked so hard to make us miserable, and has succeeded.

Yeah, Pam? I'm sure part of this anecdote is true -- I have no trouble at all in believing that you monopolized the TV and succeeded in boring a roomful of children -- but as long as we're on the topic of shit, I'm going to call the Bull variety, and say you put those words into that kid's mouth. And he immediately spat them out and pursed his lips and refused to let you feed him anymore, even when you did that "Here comes the choo-choo!" thing with the spoon.

If you had to boil the culture down to its essential oils, it would be last Sunday’s Oscars – oh, how that once mighty American art genre has fallen.

I tried boiling Pam's column down to its essential oils, and found it's primarily composed of two: sebaceous and crude.

American traitor Edward Snowden got an Oscar; American hero Chris Kyle got the middle finger.

I didn't realize that when a bio-pic wins an Oscar, it's the subject of the biography who actually collects it -- even when he's dead. I guess that explains the hubbub at the 1936 Academy Awards, when Paul Muni won for The Story of Louis Pasteur and his acceptance speech was interrupted by a moldy skeleton in pince-nez and and a morning coat that charged on stage and tried to wrestle away his statuette.

Anyway, Pam bitches about Hollywood for another three paragraphs before finally remembering what it was that originally pissed her off way back at the beginning of the column.

The Oscar show was typical Hollywood, epitomized by Neil Patirck Harris going on stage in his underwear. What’s next? Poo on the floor? 

No, I think under the circumstances the worst we might get is a skidmark.

On the bright side, Pam declared Lady Gaga's medley from The Sound of Music a highlight, but couldn't enjoy it because "leftists seek to impose that evil upon us all."

Ayn Rand said, “There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.” Both of which have all but been extinguished in the era of amoralism – reflected in cultural rot and the exaltation of the crank. 

If The Exaltation of the Crank isn't the title of Pam's autobiography, it really should be. Who's with me?

Unfortunately Our Theocracy Came From the Factory With The Wrong Theology

It's a brand new year, so out with the old First Amendment and in with the new State Religion: Homo-Orthodox! This is potentially bad news for those of us raised in less rigorous faith traditions -- I myself come from a long line of Scottish Presbyterian Reformed Church of Homo -- but I'll let WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah give you the details...

We secretly switched Joseph Farah's regular upper lip with this Daddy 'stache from a 1980 male porn film. Let's see if he notices...

THE EMERGING INTOLERANCE OF ENFORCED HOMO-ORTHODOXY

“Gay pride” is now the de facto state religion in America.

That's why I picked "Liza Minnelli" as my confirmation name.

If you even think homosexuality, lesbianism and “transgenderism” might be sinful, you are a modern-day heretic – worthy of scorn, ridicule, fines, abuse, even loss of your business or job.

If you listen to certain unmanly whiners, getting bullied, gay-bashed, even murdered is some big ordeal, but Joseph faces ridicule! In fact, he's getting some right now!

And now, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has joined the witch hunt against Christians who take their Scriptures and faith seriously by throwing out lawsuits brought by two Providence firefighters who said their constitutional rights were violated when they were ordered to drive a truck in a gay pride parade despite their religious objections.

Did they have religious objections to driving a truck, or to driving a truck in a parade? Or was it a more narrow theological scruple against driving a truck in a parade with gays in the vicinity, because if that's the basis of their objection, then I wonder how they'd handle a fire in a gay bar. "All right, men, the Captain has ordered us to run inside and search for survivors, so let's put on our gear and file a lawsuit."

The saddest part of all this to me, though, is the way witch hunts have really hit the point of diminishing returns. In the 1600s, witch hunters burned you at the stake, but now they just toss out your nuisance lawsuit. Who the hell's gonna make a gruesome woodcut about that?

The firefighters, Theodore Fabrizio and Stephen Deninno, argued that they are Roman Catholics and, therefore, do not and cannot support or condone homosexuality.

Truck driving implies consent. This is why I never drove my old Ford Ranger to a NASCAR event.

Seemed like a reasonable request given the First Amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances; or of the right of municipal employees to get pissy about driving their work vehicles near a guy in chaps and a banana hammock."

But to add insult to injury, the firefighters said they experienced sexual harassment from parade-goers and their co-workers.

I'm not sure how someone standing along a parade route would even begin to sexually harass two guys in a moving, 65,000 pound truck -- the logistics just seem daunting -- but what really interests me is the claim that they were also victimized by their co-workers as a result of this parade.  Was the mere fact that the plaintiffs operated heavy machinery within earshot of a marching band playing "Poker Face" enough to convince previously closeted members of their engine company to invite them to "handle my hose" or "slide down my pole"?

Any sane, rational, moral person who has been in the vicinity of a “gay pride” parade knows exactly what these firefighters were alleging. I’ve seen it firsthand. I once had the misfortune of spending Father’s Day with my wife and small children in a city celebrating “gay pride.” 

We were subjected to public nudity, crudity and rudity with impunity and incredulity.

Ah, so the Bigot to English translation of "sexually harassed" is "saw a drag queen and a shirtless guy with a rainbow flag."

After the parade was over and I thought it was safe to go outside, I took my young girls for a walk – one of them was in a stroller at the time. A group of about a half-dozen lesbians approached us with catcalls of “breeder, breeder!” I mean you can’t make this stuff up.

Apparently you can. You just can't do it well.

 It’s amazing the straightjacket America is forcing on its people in the phony names of “diversity” and “tolerance.”

I'm pretty sure the names "diversity" and "tolerance" aren't phony so much as they're just stage names. However, I can't tell if "straightjacket" is attempted irony or just a successful misspelling.  Anyway, you'll excuse me, I have to go file a lawsuit against Joseph's mustache for giving me PTSD and flashbacks to Cruising and Can't Stop the Music.

E Pluribus Asterisk

Rebecca Hagelin is an author, Townhall columnist, and a frequent source of carbon dioxide on FoxNews. Admittedly, none of that really matters, but she's invaluable if you've ever wanted to know what the Children of the Damned look like all grown up.

Fashions by Forever Cuckoo, at the Midwich Mall.

Like a lot of people, Rebecca is very concerned about public health issues, and warns of a coming epidemic:

The Challenge: Pornography Pandemic

Okay, so it's more an epidemic of coming she's worried about.

Pornography is everywhere. 

It's in the closet!  It's under your bed!  It's -- wait. It actually is in both those places. Okay, carry on.

It’s an evil with far-reaching affects that damage many layers of society. But no one is hurt more by the overwhelming presence of pornography in our society than children.

Especially when your dad catches you with his stash and smacks you with a rolled up copy of Juggs.

According to a study by the London School of Economics, nine out of ten children who go online (by the way, many of them just doing their homework) will view pornography. 

Call me a prude, but I don't think teachers should be assigning porn as homework. That's really more of a leisure time activity.

Even when kids are acting responsibly and innocently, adults in the pornography business are so fixated on creating new porn addicts that they have made it virtually impossible for children to escape their grasp. Think about it—90 percent of all kids on the Internet will be subjected to the sexual images and values of perverted pornographers.

And 73% of all Townhall readers will be subjected to pundits who pull 87% of their statistics out of their ass -- slowly, like Thai anal beads.

There should be a protected space in childhood where kids don’t have sex forced upon them—physically or mentally. 

So for a child, the experience of being molested is exactly the same as stumbling upon a supercut of all the boob shots on Game of Thrones?  The scales have fallen from my eyes. In fact, thinking back on my own childhood,  I used to hang around my dad's trucking company in summer, and I see now that he really deserved to do hard time for that Parts Pups calendar in the men's room.

Mere exposure to pornography inflicts a great deal of damage to developing attitudes, psyches and morality.

And then sometimes it just inflicts a great deal of orgasms. Or do you also consider that "damage," and if so, have you ever considered that maybe you're doing it wrong?

Donna Rice Hughes, CEO of Enough Is Enough (EIE), a non-profit organization determined to make the Internet safer for children and families said,

That would be this Donna Rice (Hughes):

“For 20 years, children have been spoon-fed a steady diet of online pornography, with few laws or barriers of entry.

Still, it's gotta be better than that Mott's applesauce my mom used to spoon-feed me.

Recent peer-reviewed research shows the extreme nature of Internet pornography is having a destructive impact on the mental, emotional and sexual health of adolescents, including addictive and even criminal behavior. “ (You can learn more about the work of Enough is Enough atwww.InternetSafety101.org)

I checked Donna's Wiki entry, just to make sure it was the same person, and discovered that "she has worked [with Enough is Enough] since 1994, whose mission is to make the Internet safer for families and children."

So she's been on a crusade against internet porn basically since the first year the World Wide Web went world wide. I imagine she began by campaigning against the introduction of the 14.4 modem because it would allow adolescent males to download Cindy Crawford GIFs from Compuserve in only an hour and a half!

Many parents today know the sad truth and have already taken the necessary steps to protect their children when they are at home. (You can protect your kids by installing Internet filters on computers and mobile devices, by teaching them how to be safe online and by monitoring their online activity until they demonstrate the maturity needed to navigate the treacherous territory on their own.)

Okay then, problem solved! Anyone for coffee and pie?

 However, when kids are out of the house, the protective barriers parents put up come down. Tech-savvy kids often figure out how to get around filters and, to further complicate the matter, public Wi-Fi in restaurants and cafes allows unprotected and unchecked Internet browsing.

Until your child grows up, we're going to have to treat all grown-ups like children, so grab those outlet covers and toilet seat lid-locks and let's babyproof the planet! Oh, and we're also going to need to take down Rebecca's column, since it's a choking hazard.

But kids getting around filters or accidentally stumbling upon negative images isn’t all we have to worry about. Public Wi-Fi provided by many businesses also serves as a safe haven where perverted criminals can anonymously view, post and share child pornography, which only leads to further sexual solicitation and abuse of children.

You know, when I'm at Starbucks it does creep me out a bit to know that the person at the next table with the blueberry scone could be looking at pornography or worse, writing about it for Townhall.

As Mrs. Hughes said, “Now is the time for corporate America to take a stand against Internet pornography and child pornography that is damaging children. This is now a global public health issue that must be addressed holistically. Parents, corporate America and law enforcement must share the responsibility to protect the younger generations, and we must do so now—together.”

Because despite conservatives' success in spreading abstinence-only "sex education," there remain some cracks in the wall where evidence for the existence of sex might still leak through.

EIE has been on the front-lines of Internet safety since 1994 and has recently launched a new campaign called “P*rn Free Wi-Fi” to encourage corporate America to join the fight to prevent the Internet-initiated sexual exploitation of children.

Bit of trivia: the asterisk is "P*rn" is pronounced "asterisqué."

 (Rebecca served on the original steering committee of, and helped launch Enough is Enough way back in 1992 - incidentally, when she was pregnant with Kristin.)

Really? You were fed up with Internet porn in 1992?  What, was somebody sending you bukkake videos by Telex?

Specifically, EIE is asking McDonald’s and Starbucks to start using pornography filters in their establishments across the United States, hoping that many other businesses will follow suit. Both companies have pornography filters in their establishments in the United Kingdom (due to a self-regulation initiative begun by Prime Minster David Cameron).

You know what the UK doesn't have? A First Amendment. And is it really "self-regulation" when it's imposed by the Prime Minister?

 Hughes said, “If McDonald’s and Starbucks can protect children from pornography and child pornography in other nations, they should do so here in the US. Offering safe Wi-Fi is in alignment with both McDonald’s and Starbucks’ corporate best practices and family-friendly policies. This would be a win-win for families and the companies’ respective brands. It’s not about censorship;

N-o-o-o....

 it’s about corporate responsibility and good corporate citizenship.”

This might be tougher than you think, Donna. Now that corporations are recognized by the courts as persons with a legal right to religious freedom, they're probably developing sentience, and becoming self-aware, and you know what the next step is: learning to masturbate.

But here's the thing...Anyone who's worked in an office with a content filter knows that it strains out a lot more than just sexually explicit material.  And I'm curious to know what the difference is between someone reading explicit Suits fanfic on his laptop, and someone else reading 50 Shades of Grey? Neither one of them is likely to start jerking off in Starbucks, but if Donna and Rebecca succeed in bowdlerizing what you can access on your tablet, they'll have to do the same to your Kindle -- because porn cannot be allowed to exist in the public sphere with hypothetical children, regardless of whether the beholder's eye regards his reading material as such -- and then they'll have to crack down on the Mommy Porn paperback book du jour, because every slope is equally slippery, so we must be prevented from lubricating them with our gooey bodily fluids.

As Hughes said, “Parents need to be the first line of defense to safeguard their children online. However, they cannot shoulder the entire responsibility alone. If parents understand that strangers can view hard-core pornography and child pornography in front of their kids in these establishments, I believe they would join us in saying, ‘Enough is enough!’”

I'm a little queasy about the idea of recruiting strangers as co-parents for your kids, but then as someone who's occasionally posted vintage typewriter erotica and other images that might be considered NSFW, I'm even more leery of giving bluenoses like Donna and Rebecca veto power over who gets to read my blog.  Their fears, in my opinion, are overblown, a veneer for a pathological discomfort with human sexuality.

However...

Recently a friend has been browbeating me about watching The Blacklist, going on and on about its many virtues and how I really should jump in now that the first season is on Netflix. I resisted, because I have a fear of commitment, but then the billboards and the bus shelter ads starting ganging up on me too, so I finally said "Enough is enough!" and tried to program the DVR to record it. I couldn't remember what channel it was on, so I used the search feature, and didn't get more than four letters in before I was HOGPILED BY PORN!

Frankly, "Wet, Swollen Vulvas Ravaged In All Black Orgies" sounds like something your server would say when reciting the daily specials ("Six pounds of Black Shaft served in Gooey Holes with a distinctive sauce"), but the rest of these seem as if they were translated literally from the Japanese. Except maybe "A Black Mom, Dad & The Naked Babysitter," which sounds like a 1980 TV movie starring Robert Hayes and Pam Dawber.

So maybe porn is everywhere, and like those fracking chemicals in our water table, we just need to get used to it. Hm...I wonder how Suezboo deals with this at her Internet cafe, and what the laws regarding online naughtiness are like in her native South Africa?

What do the rest of you guys think about all this?  And who do you think would win in a fight between White Dong and Monster Black Schlong?

Happy Birthday, Weird Dave! Eat a Firearms-Free Yankee Fan!

Anyone who's read our friend Weird Dave's comments over the years would have to agree that he has a rather droll sense of the absurd. So when it came time to go gift shopping for his birthday, I had to look no further than the work of Townhall "Tipsheet" blogger Cortney O'Brien, who saw the recent Sharknado sequel, not through 3-D glasses or even just a glass darkly, but through Kulturkampf! Brand X-Ray Spex (cuz she's a Kulturkampf BAMF!), and determined that beneath its urbane veneer, it's actually a feeding frenzy of pro-Second Amendment advocacy.

"Ain't that just like a New Yorker? Brings a bat to a sharkfight."

Now, the results of her deep textural analysis may surprise some viewers, and perhaps even a few of the filmmakers -- particularly the sharks, who deny any political motivation for their involvement in the project, claiming the producers assured them the movie was just going to be a light, fun piece of super-bloody snuff porn -- because a cascade of homicidal cartilage seems like a curious basis for the argument that open carry laws to lead to less crime.  Typically, when confronted by a shark, you can't stand your ground; the best you can do is tread your water.  However, if a Great White travels by twister into your neighborhood, and the cops don't pull it over for Flying While Shark, then you're totally entitled to gun it down. Unless you live in New York...

I never thought I’d praise the filmmakers who brought us ‘Sharknado.’ But, according to the Twitterverse, ‘Sharknado 2: The Second One,’ which premiered Wednesday night on Syfy, took a much-needed jab at New York City’s anti-gun agenda.

As Birth of a Nation was to the Klan, so Sharknado 2: The Second One is to the NRA.  Anyway, I'm old fashioned, and prefer that a critic actually watch a movie before she begins to laboriously tease out its subtle themes like so many threads from a Persian carpet, but obviously Cortney was on Twitter, saw gun enthusiasts making their usual pre-verbal vocalizations and thought, "There's a free column!" Which, to be fair, is pretty much what I thought when I saw her post, because it's the Circle of Blog. And frankly, I'm in no position to make an informed counter-argument, since everything I know about the film I learned from Sheri's tweet on the subject:

To protect themselves from the sharks falling from the sky, the film's protagonists needed weapons.

Or a roof.

But, a character begrudgingly informed them, there were no gun shops in the city.

Try, if you can, to disregard the ridiculous plot and focus on the point: A machine gun would stop these sharks in their tracks a whole lot quicker than a chainsaw or a baseball bat.

"Hmmm...Shark tracks.  Two, three days old..."

Yes, you do have to step gingerly over a few ridiculous potholes in the plot to reach the film's meaty and not at all ridiculous philosophical center, and like Cortney I find this a bit sad.  One of the most important sociopolitical issues of the day -- the right of American citizens to shoot it out in the street with sharks -- is finally dramatized, and Hollywood doesn't treat it with the gravitas it deserves.

Still, awareness has been raised, and the issue is in the Zeitgeist now, rotating at speeds up to 318 mph and sucking up attention and cows, so I say, when life gives you Sharknado, you make Sharknade.

I don't mean to question Mr. Johanson's martial acumen -- he speaks with great authority, and I'm sure he's war-gamed out various scenarios involving an attack on an urban environment by fish (Scenario No 2A: Airborne Sharks Take Manhattan. Result: High Collateral Damage due to a decrease in pawn shop firearms sales; Scenario 8H: Volga River Sturgeons Parasail into Palm Beach in Red Dawn-style Sneak Attack: Result: Invaders gut Rush Limbaugh and harvest his roe; Scenario 4J: Stealth Insertion of Helium-Filled Puffer Fish into Boston. Result: Attacking force casualties are minimal, assuming the local PBS station can be captured in the first 30 minutes of fighting) -- but if tough local gun laws are the key to victory by the Shark-Stormfront axis, wouldn't Washington D.C. make an even more perfect target? I mean, it's like these sharks aren't even bothering to think strategically. On the other hand, there are a lot of no-fly zones in the capital, and while sharks are unafraid to kill and disembowel indiscriminately, even they don't want the FAA up in their shit.

It’s not just these fictional characters upset with the Empire State's anti-gun policies. Actual New Yorkers have taken to the streets to give these politicians apiece of their mind. Their message? “Hands off our guns”.

True, they're a small minority of New Yorkers, but if you add in their fictional allies, then it's almost a plurality.

Good to see Hollywood joining these freedom-loving New Yorkers and not being afraid to slam policies that aren’t working.

Well, they had to do something to make up for their failure to grant equal time to both sides of the fracking controversy in Arachnoquake.

Click here to read some of last night's best pro-gun, anti-shark tweets.

I can only presume these people will be shooting out their TV screens like Elvis during Shark Week.

Anyway, please join me in wishing our buddy Weird Dave a very happy birthday. And remember: Guns don't kill people. Airborne sharks with a high resistance to vertigo kill people.

Happy Birthday Heydave! I Got You Jesus, The First Avenger!

Today is the natal anniversary of our good friend Heydave, who in the past I have affectionately, if unfairly depicted as a bit of a hick: wheat-straw betwixt his tobacco-stained teeth and thumbs hooked in the shoulder straps of his bib overalls as he surveys the vast, corn-smothered, scarecrow-haunted plains of Iowa.  In reality, Dave was born in Chicago, in the shadow of its mighty steel mills, and grew up astride the railroad tracks that were the lifeblood of that brawny, breezy town. Which makes selecting an appropriate cheesecake photo difficult, since most of our birthday boys and girls like, well, boys and/or girls, but Dave has an oft-expressed fondness for choo-choos, so I guess I'll go with Raymond Loewy's S-1 locomotive for the Pennsylvania Railroad:

But what about the gift?  I have a hard time knowing what to give a boy for his special day, but I guess toys are usually a safe choice, especially toys that tie-in to a major movie franchise -- at least if the robust sales of Happy Meals are any indication. Still, the options, while extensive, are fraught with disadvantages, and when shopping for Heydave's birthday I considered and rejected a multitude of superhero-related amusements: Iron Man action figures (too many accessories sold separately), X-Men video games (wasn't sure which console platform he preferred) and Spider-Man™brand insect foggers (I don't like to enable Peter Parker's self-hating of own his homo-hexapodism).  Fortunately, Dr. Ted Baehr has stepped in to offer us some expert advice.

Dr. Baehr is "Founder and Publisher of MOVIEGUIDE®: The Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment," which is kind of the upscale version of the ChildCare Action Project or CAPAlert (see here and here for previous appearances on Wo'C). We've dropped in on Movieguide® in the past, but for those who may not be familiar with Dr. Baehr himself, "His life’s purpose is to be used of God to redeem the values of the media while educating audiences on how to use discernment in selecting their entertainment." Also, his motto is “He who controls the media controls the culture” -- and while certain liberal wags may claim the doctor's credo sounds like something Joseph Goebbels might have said, I say Pshaw! Goebbels only wishes he'd thought of that!

So with his bona fides established, I'm taking Movieguide®'s guidance and getting Dave an X-(Son of) Man action figure!

In the 1970s, the people of the United States went into a grand funk of stupendous proportions.

In Dave's case, it was a Grand Funk Railroad.

Hollywood and the news media kept telling us that the government was thoroughly corrupt, that society’s religious and cultural traditions were simple-minded and destructive, and that we were on the wrong side of the war against the evil communist tyrannies of North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union.

To be fair, around this same time Hollywood was also telling us that the Bugaloos were "in the air and everywhere," and if George W. Bush had been in office they would have rightly been declared an imminent threat, and we would have shocked and awed the shit out of Tranquility Forest.

Then, in 1976 and 1977, something extraordinary happened. 

Two men, Sylvester Stallone and George Lucas, released two movies about underdog heroes who battle incredible odds, ROCKY and a “little” $11 million movie called STAR WARS. 

Hollywood hasn’t been the same since. 

ROCKY and STAR WARS showed the Hollywood establishment that people love heartwarming, heroic stories about courage and righteousness overcoming fear and evil.

I would go even farther. In 1975, Jaws opened, showing the Hollywood establishment that people love to see drunken men comparing skin blemishes, and heartwarming, heroic stories about sharks getting their heads blown off by tanks of compressed air.

But let's examine Dr. Baehr's thesis that box office receipts correlate to a society's spiritual health. The top five grossing movies in 1976 were, in order:

1. Rocky (courage and righteousness! Also loan-sharking and premarital sex!)

2. To Fly! (documentary about the history of manned flight, clearly a sign that people love to slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God, although would it kill the stewardess to hurry up with that drinks cart?)

3. A Star is Born (showing that people love to see Kris Kristofferson get high and ambiguously commit suicide)

4. All the President's Men (Hollywood's message that "the government was thoroughly corrupt," while phony, was clearly a crowd-pleaser)

5.  The Omen (People love heartwarming, heroic stories about the Anti-Christ)

1977's top five box office winners:

1. Star Wars (Courage! Righteousness! Not quite as incesty as it later got!)

2.  Smokey and the Bandit (showing that people love to see shitty beer smuggled across state lines for immoral purposes)

3. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (This one might be a little dicy for Dr. Baehr, because it suggests that people -- who really aren't all that different from us -- live on other planets, so if any Christian denomination is actually correct, it's probably the Mormons. Interestingly, while our Bible doesn't mention aliens, their Bible does mention us; unfortunately -- it's a cookbook!

4.  The Goodbye Girl (Single mother serially cohabitates with strange men without benefit of clergy)

5.  Saturday Night Fever (People love falsetto, synthetic fibers, abortion, and disco)

In recent years, the popular culture’s focus on heroes has led to a huge interest in bringing the renowned superheroes of the comic book world to the big screen. [...] This notion of sacrifice has become a frequent theme in many recent superhero stories, from SPIDER-MAN 2 to CAPTAIN AMERICA and THE GREEN LANTERN. In fact, one might say that sacrifice is in the very DNA of nearly all stories about superheroes and heroes.

Well, I sacrificed two hours of my life to Green Lantern, and it neither improved my harvest nor slew a tenth of my enemy's kine, so I was thinking about switching gods anyway.

As such, the theme of sacrifice is part of a narrative structure that reflects the “greatest story ever told” – the story of Jesus Christ’s birth, teaching, suffering, sacrifice, death, and resurrection. The whole structure may be outlined as follows: 

Promise, Birth, Suffering, Sacrifice, and Resurrection/Redemption.

Merchandising tie-in.

In this way, therefore, Jesus Christ is the “Greatest Superhero of Them All,” ... So, while you’re enjoying THE AVENGERS this weekend with your family or friends (or anytime in the future, for that matter) please remember your “great God and Savior, Jesus Christ

And that Dazzler died for your sins*

*Your sin being Disco, which you gave a papal dispensation to by seeing Saturday Night Fever instead of Star Wars for the seventh time. Now say three Hail Mary Marvels, and sin no more.

And please join me in wishing Heydave a very happy birthday!

UPDATE: I didn't want to overload this post with images, but since we're getting some bad Yelp reviews from South Africa, I guess I'd better stick with tradition and add a...

Sexy Birthday Lizard (Railroadus Hoboensus)!