The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria

This book briefly flared into the limelight this campaign season when Barack Obama was seen reading it. It also inspired yet another dumbshit chain email asserting that the book was “a Muslim’s view of a defeated America!” Like most of the dreck which comes out of this specious subculture of conservative email forwarding, it’s utter nonsense.

Fareed Zakaria was born in India and raised Muslim, though he says he is “not a religious guy.” He’s an American citizen, and, among other things, was an editor of Newsweek magazine in 2000.

Politically speaking, Zakaria is best described as a moderate, unless you’re a liberal/conservative who things that anybody to the right/left of you is necessarily an extremist conservative/liberal. Mostly, Zakaria tends to be a realist and pragmatist (similar to economists), which puts him on the wrong side of liberals when he starts talking about free trade and globalization and such; otherwise, he falls afoul of conservatives when he’s not their cheerleader.

The Post-American World might raise the ire of knee-jerk nationalists who don’t do so much as read the jacket flap. In fact, one of the first things Zakaria does is qualify the somewhat sensational title by warning his readers that the book is not about the decline of America, but rather the rise of everyone else. Especially in Asia (and to a lesser extent Africa and South America), countries which are beginning to build up strong economies and relatively free, democratic societies (this is all relative, mind you). In the last few decades, countries that the West had long relegated as somewhat Third-World had quietly become major economic contenders—and, as is generally the case, strong free-market economies tend to encourage democracy (tend, mind you). Suddenly, the United States is sharing global economic power with many more countries than ever before, and that changes the political landscape as well. It is no wonder that Zakaria’s conclusions from this arouse ire from the aforementioned nutty conservatives: the sort of people who like to engage in dick-shaking contests w.r.t. their gods and governments don’t like being told that maybe a “Eh, Fuck You!” foreign policy maybe isn’t the best tactic now that we can no longer afford to be politically and economically solipsistic. The passive-aggressive Bush approach to global political support doesn’t fly with Zakaria, and he makes no secret of it, though his general agreement with the power of free markets and self-directed governments in developing countries ought to at least earn a nod of approval from orthodox conservatives.

I finished Post-American World, however, feeling as though I had just waded through a book of bullet points, politics and economics abstracted of all their nuance—similar to the way I must analogize and speak slowly when explaining complicated computer concepts to unsavvy people. I suppose such a book needed to be written, but I wish I had known beforehand that it would be as broadly-termed (and, honestly, just a bit jingoistic) as it was. I’m a little surprised that Obama read it.

The Truth (With Jokes) by Al Franken

I read this book once in 2005 when it came out, and then again in 2006.

As this is my third time reading The Truth (With Jokes) since this meme began, it holds a record (as of now) as my most frequently-read book in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks meme. Why read it a third time? Well, if it wasn’t obvious enough, the recent election had something to do with it. I remembered Franken’s last chapter, modeled as a letter to his eventual grandchildren, about the 2008 election (the book was written in 2005) and how it represented a tipping point in the way the United States did business—read: the conservatives were out, the liberals were in, and everybody lived happily ever after.

Let me set the record straight: while an Obama supporter, I’d like to think that I’m not the sort of starry-eyed fool who thinks that he will sweep into office on swath of pixie dust and happy thoughts and magically right every wrong, effectively excise racism from our national collective conscience, and possibly heal leprosy. At the same time, I can’t help but feel frustrated with 8 years of increasingly cynical government by the right, which is about as two-faced on the national level as I think it’s possible for a political movement to be in the context of a valid democracy; so I’m happy for the change, and feel sprightly and excited in spite of myself. It is from this motivation that I picked up The Truth (With Jokes) again. Also, Franken’s being in the news with respect to the extraordinarily-close Senate race in Minnesota did much to rekindle my interest.

Here’s the thing you have to remember about Franken: though he is a comedian by trade (I don’t find him all that funny, actually), reading one of his books is not like reading one of Bill Maher’s books, for instance, which is a lot of opining and jokes. Franken likes to couch a lot of snarky jabs in humorous paragraphs, yes, but he is in actuality a rather devastating political writer: his facts are generally rock-solid (even his detractors often note the quality of his research, though of course they generally don’t acknowledge the validity of his conclusions). As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, The Truth finds Franken a little more cynical and angry for the events of the 2004 election. All of the grassroots movements of 2003-2004 were not quite enough for a changing of the guard in January 2005, and Franken like most liberals suffered from a general malaise for much of that year—though not enough to keep him from writing this book. It’s very topical as a result, dealing largely with all the detritus littered in a ring around the explosion of the 2004 campaign. That, for instance, the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth were anything but is not surprisingly to me, since all of this was obvious in 2004, but it’s satisfying to watch Franken leave large ragged holes in so many of these ridiculous canards that conservatives like to trot out at election time—especially Karl Rove, Bush’s own personal Mephistopheles, who still manages to take the cake for below-the-belt blows.

In brief reprieves from the proximate timeline, Franken takes us on trips to the mid-90s, when Gingrich’s tidal wave of eager conservatives swept into the legislative branch and proceeded to bust Clinton’s balls for the next six years. Special attention is paid to Jack Abramoff (this before Abramoff was formally indicted in 2006, and some of his friends with him) and the Marianas Islands, a moral black eye on the conservatives prized free-market incubator.

Like MediaMatters (which Bill O’Reilly likes to characterize as a “smear” site), Franken’s most damning passages usually come in the form of the pairing of two quotes: one in which a conservative says something asinine, and then another where they deny that they ever said such a thing. At best, it proves a fundamental dishonesty on the part of politicians in general and conservatives in particular (or so the theory goes); but the regularity and obvious crassness with which the lying is done is enough to disgust you. In comparison to, say, Anne Coulter, whose noxious screeds consist mostly of excoriating liberals and intellectuals for holding differing opinions, Franken tends to focus less on simply slinging mud across an aisle and more on underlining blatant hypocrisy, opportunism, or political cynicism wherever he sees it (granted, usually on the right, as is the thesis of the book).

I still don’t get the whole Franken qua Comedian thing, since I so rarely find his writing funny as opposed to insightful and compelling; but I do enjoy his books, and admit to being more than a little sad that writing has taken a back seat to his Senate campaign in Minnesota. Though a little angrier and (if possible) a little more partisan, The Truth (With Jokes) is a good read, and a solid piece of political journalism.

The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank

I read Thomas Frank’s first book, What’s the Matter With Kansas?, after the first year of the second Bush II presidential term, when liberals were still morning the inarguable reelection of an arch-conservative. At the time, I remember marveling at how simply Frank managed to turn the crux of the last few elections into an easily-read book. The issue was this: why do people vote against their interests?

Frank’s new books, The Wrecking Crew, attempts to describe another phenomenon which is intrinsic to the daily operations of conservatism—that is, the simultaneous dismantlement of just about every government apparatus in existence (in deference to the holy, towering monolith of Free Markets) and the thumping of shrill moralism. And, of course, the fact that conservatives are so very rarely called on these shenanigans.

So much of the book is Frank touring the metaphorical sausage grinder of government: it’s a trope we’re all familiar with, since cynicism about the inherent bloat and corruption of state and federal apparatuses has been common to the public’s collective consciousness since—well, probably since the initial institution of government… not to mention its sudden rocketship to prominence with Reagan and his posse of belligerent bureaucrats. But come now, you’re saying: we already familiar with these truisms/canards; why a book? Frank is decidedly one-sided about this issue, flat-out refuting the idea that this kind of corruption is simply a chronic disease of all organs of government, some endemic to all political parties; no, he insists, while most political parties have bandied about with such things, the sort of exaggerated corruption and rampant corporate control of Washington is a relatively modern trait, unique to the new face of the conservative movement, and tied permanently to its crass ideology-driven destruction of government (while, you may notice, using these same organs of government to feed itself).

Here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s really a secret that modern conservatism seeks above all else the drastic reduction of government. Neither, I think, would many such conservatives deny that an important function of government is feeding the free market business that creates wealth; certainly, pro-business conservatives don’t simply try to throw off the yolk of regulation whenever possible, but also to throw lucrative government contracts and other such stimuli at whatever business interests said politicians/lobbyists are allied with.

But while Norquist or De Lay or other altar boys of the Church of Free Markets may believe this, they also know that saying such bluntly to the American public is probably not a wise idea; it is therefore usually couched in language of personal liberty, marketed in such a way that anti-government conservative collusion with business appears as an issue of Freedom and Liberty and Patriotism, all with capital letters.

On some level, I can appreciate the conservative argument for free markets: they are, even liberal economists will tell you, pretty good about regulating themselves. But here’s the crux of the issue: free markets are entirely amoral—that is, they operate irrespective of what we may describe as good, and usually tack only to the side of efficiency—and yet they are espoused by people who claim morality as their political territory. Frank begins to show the divides here by focusing much of his attention on the deposed Jack Abramhoff, chronicling his rise as a smart, talented political go-getter who quickly bubbled to the top of the Republican Party, waving the double standard for free markets and forming a sweaty, incestuous network of alliances with some of majors players in the conservative movement. Abramoff, the G.O.P. writ small, managed to bet on all the wrong horses simply because they tacked toward free markets and away from socialism, and so was left holding his vocal support for Apartheid, for instance, long after it had become distasteful to everyone with a conscience.

Most everyone is familiar with Abramoff’s splashy political death, but one of his least proud moments was his work in supporting/bilking the island of Saipan in the Marianas islands, a U.S. territory with none of our labor laws. I had first heard of Saipan in Al Franken’s wonderful The Truth (With Jokes), and it disgusted me then. In short (read either book if you want more detail), it’s an island full of sweatshops, where immigrants—basically slaves—work in dismal conditions—making clothes for American companies of if they’re lucky, and forced into the sex trade (as young as age 14) if they aren’t. And, while Frank doesn’t mention it, Franken does: all these hapless Chinese and Filipino girls who are forced to have sex with horny Japanese and American businessmen are usually (always?) forced to have abortions.

Lobbyists like Abramoff make it happen; politicians like Tom De Lay support it in the Senate (it’s a U.S. territory, remember) praise as the perfect example of free markets at work. I’ll let that sink in: moralistic, pro-life conservatives like Tom De Lay ardently support what is essentially a squalid labor camp that encourages (more likely demands) forced abortions for its barely-teenage sex workers. On the other hand, Banana Republic has such great shirts……

So you see that modern conservatism exists in a place that would seem logically untenable, but which is usually a case of amoral libertarians making kissy faces at earnest moral conservatives, who are happy to parrot lines about low taxes and free markets so long as Jesus is mentioned a minimum number of times every election cycle. Frank, as usual, is excellent is peeling away the layers of the issue until it starts to make more sense. Like his previous book, this is an issue I have long held in my mind, but was never able to full explain; Frank has done an excellent job of getting to the bottom of it; I was a little taken aback by his uncompromising tone at first, but began to understand its source as I read on. What’s the Matter With Kansas, while somewhat bitter at the large snowjob that was the 2000 and 2004 election cycles, was more genuinely inquisitive as to the puzzling nature of conservative success in working class states; Wrecking Crew, but contrast, is more like taking a sandblaster to the neocon edifice. Frank’s mad, and he’s guaranteed to make you mad as well.

While much of its initial incarnation focused on debunking the oldest of the old—”escaped serial killer with a hook” kind of stories, for instance—it has evolved, especially in the last 6 or 7 years, to be an invaluable resource for debunking all the nonsense emails that get forwarded around. I know I use it to rebut these sorts of emails all the time, especially during election years when my conservative extended family forwards these sorts of spurious rumors. It was only a matter of time, then, before Snopes itself came to be labeled as liberal.

Snopes is not always telling the truth.

Check it out at ( http://www.truthorfiction.com/)

Please forward this to all on your E-mail list.

I have suspected this for quite some time. I often check the source of Snopes’s verification. Many times it is a liberal source. I have just accessed truthorfiction.com and believe it is a good alternative to Snopes and will be giving it a try. You might want to check it out and decide for yourselves…

A good freind sent me this Email

I have suspected some problems with snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths. If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder. I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not trust Snopes.com….ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don’t even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.

A few conservative speakers on Myspace told me about snopes.com a few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if what they were saying was true. Well, I found out for myself that they were correct. Snopes is backing Obama and is covering up for him. They will say anything that makes him look bad is a hoax and they also tell lies on the other side about McCain and Palin.

Truth or fiction.com http://www.truthorfiction.com/ is the better source for verification, in my opinion.
Anyway just FYI please don’t use Snopes.com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself. Please pass this on.

As most of its followers can attest, the site is impeccably researched: each entry has citations listed at the bottom. Unlike some of the other popular debunking sites, like the listed TruthOrFiction or BreakTheChain, Snopes generally goes to extra mile to add context to the rumor; they pull in additional quotes, they call companies and individuals for verification.

This quoted email forward is another example of spurious email forwards with no basis in any sort of reality. Note the tell-tale signs:

• The language is extreme (note that the owner isn’t simply described as left-leaning, but rather is a “flaming liberal”)
• It was sent by “a freind” [sic] whose identity remains a mystery
• It mentions “research” but doesn’t actually cite any sources or examples

What seems obvious to me is that the same sorts of nescient people who still persist in believing that Obama is Muslim (and that he recently said as much in an interview with George Stephanopoulous) simply don’t like that Snopes continues to undermine their happy delusions. If you really believe that any news source besides Fox News Channel is liberal, then I suppose you really can’t trust the citations on Snopes, which, after all, are from well-known Leftist organizations like the Associated Press. The hysterical conservatives who will continue to point to an edited YouTube video and scream that it uncovers the “truth” about Obama (or whomever else you use an as example) are the same sort who look at Snopes, see the whole video put in context, and shout themselves hoarse about how Snopes is run by Obama apologists, or a secret cabal of gay atheist Communist Jews trying to undermine America by covering up evidence of Obama’s faith-hating or perhaps Bill Clinton’s murders.

And of course TruthOrFiction will tell you much of the same things as Snopes, though it’s a tremendously ugly site and it doesn’t cite its sources.

For all this hue and cry, what we have here is little more than one idiot spilling forth his mental offal into an email, and then far too many entirely credulous conservatives forwarding it because they very much wish it to be true. Nothing apparently gives such people greater satisfaction than to label something anathema and then tell all their friends about it. It’s an impulse I will never understand.

Let me reiterate in case you’ve skipped most of the explanation:

1. Snopes is not inaccurate, nor is it biased (though it’s been baselessly accused of just about every bias under the sun, by moronic liberals as well)
2. That email forward (any email forward) you just got? It’s probably wrong.

1. A bailout plan, created in the White House and pushed extensively by President Bush, is sent to Congress.
2. A majority (≈60%) of Democrats voted for the bill.
3. A majority (≈67%) of Republicans voted against the bill.
4. “Republicans blamed [Nancy Pelosi]… for the vote’s failure.”

What?

I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert

Living perpetually in Jon Stewart’s shadow, Stephen Colbert now throws his hat into a ring already occupied by America the Book with his own, an impressive looking tome bafflingly titled I Am America (And So Can You!).

I should first qualify my own thoughts by saying that while I am a fan of The Daily Show, I’ve never really gotten into The Colbert Report. Stephen makes a good right-wing blowhard, but the schtick gets tired when it’s repeated for 30 minutes, Monday through Thursday, without fail. There’s only so far you can take it.

Now, while America the Book spoofed a social sciences textbook, and did a truly excellent job, I Am America (And So Can You!) struggles to find its genre. It’s part satirical autobiography (when it remembers) and part random punditry. What I think was most off-putting was how inconsistent Colbert’s character seems. Maybe I’ve just never noticed it on his show, but playing a conservative evangelical Republican who happens to be an arrogant Catholic. As well, the literary wink-wink-nudge-nudge of Colbert’s satire is sometimes so overt that one wonders what the point of the persona is. And the direction of the humor is more or less always the same: The Daily Show, and similarly America the Book were Equal Opportunity lampooners, taking aim at government folly on both sides of the aisle. But Colbert, in show and book, flogs this “I Am Bill O’Reilly” horse long after it’s dead. The humor doesn’t last.

That all being said, there are good things to say about the book. It has some funny parts: the entire book is annotated in a style reminiscent of the on-screen text in his “The Word” segment, and the witty repartee between the text proper and more mischievous annotator is pretty consistently funny. Also, the production qualities on this book are extraordinarily high. Not as high as its cousin, necessarily, but high nonetheless.

I feel bad thrashing Colbert’s book, because I know he’s a talented satirist. But I can’t help but feel as though this book was reaching farther than the schtick could successfully go. By the time the book finished up with a transcript of Colbert’s controversial 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner act, I just wanted the book to be over with. That doesn’t speak very well of the book’s qualities.

When I’m passed an e-mail that is obviously false, my usual reaction is to reply with a link to Snopes: the source is trustworthy enough that the sender believes it, if somewhat resentfully.

When I’m passed National Review, my tendency is to simply ignore them, as stuff from that magazine isn’t particularly opprobrious, but—in my estimation—still wrong.

However, I can’t resist tearing this latest one to pieces. It comes from Investors Business Daily, which seems to me like a less prestigious version of the Wall Street Journal, replete with the conservative ideologues manning the editorial page. But this particular article reads like some awful tripe from Town Hall—it’s that bad.

War On Terror: The party of John Murtha shamelessly seeks to defund and defeat U.S. troops on the battlefield and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Congress the terrorists wanted is doing their bidding.

Really? Are we still dancing with this strawman? I think it should be obvious that it’s not just Democrats calling for troop withdrawal anymore. Everybody wants to get out of there—everybody except Bush. Bush who wants to cut social welfare programs while giving that money to the nation’s billionaires. Bush, the fearless leader who might squander more than a trillion dollars for this nonsense.

Notice how quickly this author (whoever it may be) trots out with the “Terrorists like Democrats” canard that Karl Rove mastered in 2004. He’s not done with it, either.

Now it’s the House of Representatives’ turn, led by Rep. John Murtha, who believes the fine young men and women we send to defeat terror and our sworn enemies are cold-blooded killers.

Yes, like that other traitor, John Kerry, Murtha—like all Democratic veterans—harbor a deep-seated loathing for the men and women of the armed services, which is why they insult and undercut them as much as humanly possible. In fact, I heard that Murtha eats veterans’ babies.

Murtha plans to stop the Iraq War by placing four conditions on combat funds through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The Pentagon would have to certify that troops being sent to Iraq are “fully combat ready” with training and equipment, troops must have at least one year at home between combat deployments, combat deployments cannot be longer than a year, and extending tours of duty would be prohibited.

“We’re trying to force a redeployment not by taking money away, (but) by redirecting money,” explained Murtha.

Further evidence that Murtha hates our troops: he’s insisting that we can’t keep sending them there unless they’re equipped and trained, and we can’t pull any contractual shenanigans by keeping them there past their original tour of duty. Has the man no shame?

As we’ve noted on several occasions, Democratic talk of “redeployment” has encouraged terrorist groups around the world.

Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said before the 2006 vote: “Americans should vote Democratic,” adding that “it is time the American people support those who want to take them out of the Iraqi mud.” The statement could have come from Murtha, Kerry, Hillary or any number of Democrats.

We find it scary that the Democratic and terrorist game plans are indistinguishable.

The rhetoric gets thicker. You’ll notice that this author goes beyond the usual “Terrorists like Democrats” canard insinuating that Democrats are Terrorists. Notice also that he or she does this by turning “Getting the hell out of the Middle East” as a “terrorist game plan.” Might I point out that nobody wanted us to be there in the first place, including us? And might I also point out the countless polls and studies indicating that our presence in Iraq has actually worsened Islamic terrorism rather than mitigating it [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]?

As for the story of Jihad Jaara: all you need to know is that this quote came from Aaron Klein, a Bureau Chief for WorldNetDaily, a far-right rag with as much journalistic integrity as FNC. Moreover, the quote is a 2006 recasting of scurrilous 2004 chain e-mail which claimed that Osama bin Laden wanted John Kerry to win the election. Take from that what you will.

You can’t throw a stone without hitting a conservative who still insists that everything that Democrats or anti-war voters do emboldens our enemies. I think it’s clear at this point that the only thing emboldening our enemies is our presence in the Middle East. If we had a “set” enemy, like Nazi Germany, for instance, or some kind of established nation-state, then we wouldn’t be having this problem. But our “enemy” is an amorphous concept spread throughout the Middle East, and the fact is that every day we stay in Iraq, that concept grows in number.

Clinton would leave us with an Iraq as the new base camp for terror, replacing Afghanistan under the Taliban. She has already warned the Bush administration that it must come to the Democratic majority in Congress for permission to deal with an Iran that is providing high-tech explosives to kill American soldiers and developing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.

Iraq, a new base camp for terror? As opposed to right now, when it’s a lovely, manicured garden of Democracy-with-a-capital-D?

I agree that Iran is in all likelihood a threat—at least, its entrenched, fundamentalist leadership is. Good thing we nipped that in the bud, hunh? Oh, wait…

It’s not that the Democrats think we’re losing or that the war is unwinnable. They simply don’t want to win it.

OK, I’ll admit it: they discovered our secret. The entire Democratic party is a secret cabal of terrorists who want America to lose its military engagements. And then we all want to have gay sex and abortions for fun, because we also like to chase people around with butt plugs and coathangers—you know, just for kicks.

Neville Chamberlain’s naivete may have helped bring on World War II, but at least he supported his country when war began. Norway’s Vidkun Quisling and France’s Vichy government under Marshal Petain may have collaborated with the Nazi enemy, but after their countries’ defeats, not before.

We’d have to go back to Benedict Arnold to find Americans as eager as Murtha & Co. to see an American defeat on the battlefield.

It took a bit, but Godwin’s Law has been fulfilled—the author has finally compared Democrats to Nazis (or Nazi collaborators). You’ll notice the deliberate conflation between withdrawal and defeat. In fact, I do believe it was Bush who said “Mission Accomplished.” So if our job in Iraq isn’t done, when will it be done? At what magical point will our continued presence change the simmering resentment Arabia, like a light switch, into one that causes the population to drop their AKs and start bombarding us with flowers and kisses? Oh, can we bring the troops home then?

A special note about the article’s “poll” data:

You may have noticed that the article attempts to confute “common wisdom” by insisting that not only do a majority of Americans think that winning the War in Iraq is important, but also that a majority think that we can. Also that about 30% more Republicans than Democrats feel this way. But if look at the bottom of their cute little graphic, you’ll notice that it’s a poll of only 925 people, and it’s a “IBD/TIPP” poll. TIPP is a legitimate, if unknown, polling service (they also work with the Christian Science Monitor, which I respect), but IBD is, of course, the extremely biased creator of this editorial. Since they offer no other clues as to their methodology, one can only assume that they polled their (925) readers and attempted to pass that off as a representative poll of “most Americans.”

I did not see every second of it, but my wife did, and she joins me in noting that there was not one word of tribute, not one breath, to our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan or to their families or their widows or orphans. There were pitifully dishonest calls for peace — as if the people we are fighting were interested in any peace for us but the peace of the grave. But not one word for the hundreds of thousands who have served and are serving, not one prayer or moment of silence for the dead and maimed.

If he didn’t see one second of it, and his wife did, then she doesn’t “join” him in noting anything. She does the noting, and he accepts her report as genuine. But that’s just semantics. As to the lack of wellwishing to our troops overseas, well, it’s the Oscars. Any of that sentiment would have been as forced as the film montages. It’s a masturbatory award ceremony: what do you want? A large American flag backdrop and heartfelt renditions of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”?

The idea that it is brave to stand up for gays in Hollywood, to stand up against Joe McCarthy in Hollywood (fifty years after his death), to say that rich white people are bad, that oil companies are evil — this is nonsense. All of these are mainstream ideas in Hollywood, always have been, always will be. For the people who made movies denouncing Big Oil, worshiping gays, mocking the rich to think of themselves as brave — this is pathetic, childish narcissism

Does Ben Stein think that George Clooney’s movie “stands up against” Joe McCarthy because they fear that he’ll rise, zombie-like, from the grave and attract his faithful legions? Or maybe—just possibly—because the issue of the media vs. the government is somehow a relevant topic? Oh, but wait, there’s more:

The brave guy in Hollywood will be the one who says that this is a fabulously great country where we treat gays, blacks, and everyone else as equal. The courageous writer in Hollywood will be the one who says the oil companies do their best in a very hostile world to bring us energy cheaply and efficiently and with a minimum of corruption. The producer who really has guts will be the one who says that Wall Street, despite its flaws, has done the best job of democratizing wealth ever in the history of mankind.

Except…. we don’t treat gays and blacks as equal. Oh, and oil companies somehow manage to reap obscene profits even in a stale economic period. Oh, and America has one of the greatest wealth gaps in the world. A guy who says these things isn’t brave; he’s shamefully dishonest.

No doubt the men and women who came to the Oscars in gowns that cost more than an Army Sergeant makes in a year, in limousines with champagne in the back seat, think they are working class heroes to attack America — which has made it all possible for them. They are not. They would be heroes if they said that Moslem extremists are the worst threat to human decency since Hitler and Stalin. But someone might yell at them or even attack them with a knife if they said that, so they never will.

No doubt. Certainly, rich actors who think that they are working class heroes would be sadly mistaken, although those that portray working class heroes may be celebrated for their bringing the issue to the fore. Of course, there’s a big difference, not just semantically, between “attack[ing] America” and pointing out America’s flaws. If I pretended that America was just dandy, well, I’d not only be an idiot, but I’d be failing my civic duty as well. A movie that points out crooked politicians or bigotry is not attacking America in a malicious sense; it’s only pointing out flaws that need to be fixed, just as we have been fixing flaws since our inception as a nation. It’s no more honest for Stein to call Goodnight, and Good Luck a cowardly attack than it would be to call Mr. Smith Goes to Washington a cowardly attack. Or maybe it is: damn the 1920s and their liberal media!

And no doubt many people—Hollywood included—understand the grave, looming threat of Islamic terrorism and its primacy. No doubt there are celebrities making asses of themselves by proclaiming otherwise, though I have yet to hear of any. The fact that liberals try so desperately to fix America domestically is because they want to make it worth saving.

Hollywood is above all about self: self-congratulation, self-promotion, and above all, self-protection. This is human and basic, but let’s not kid ourselves. There is no greatness there in the Kodak theater. The greatness is on patrol in Kirkuk. The greatness lies unable to sleep worrying about her man in Mosul. The greatness sleeps at Arlington National Cemetery and lies waiting for death in VA Hospitals. God help us that we have sunk so low as to confuse foolish and petty boasting with the real courage that keeps this nation and the many fools in it alive and flourishing on national TV.

All very valid points, though I would nitpick insofar as there was greatness in the Kodak theatre, because there is an incredible power in cinema, even if the Oscars turns it into a carnival. But I don’t ever recall calling a celebrity “brave,” only talented. Perhaps Ben Stein is chasing a ghost.