The Washington Post Disses the Right

Back in the 1980s, the Wall Street Journal editorial page's most effective and devastating right-wing columnist was left-wing nut-boy Alexander Cockburn: everyone (well, almost everyone) reading his columns would think, "If that's the left, I belong on the right."

Now comes the Washington Post pulling the same trick: hiring Ben Domenech--a man with no policy or analytic or reportorial qualifications save a couple years as a right-wing speechwriter, an unarmed man in a battle of wits--to be its right-wing weblogger. It's funny:

Red America: Since the election of 1992, the extreme political left has fought a losing battle. Their views on the economy, marriage, abortion, guns, the death penalty, health care, welfare, taxes, and a dozen other major domestic policy issues have been exposed as unpopular, unmarketable and unquestioned losers at the ballot box.... [T]he mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist - an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.

During the discussions about the launch of this new blog, the good folks at washingtonpost.com spent far too much time in sessions with markers and whiteboard, trying to settle on a name for the column. The suggestions were all over the map - but one suggestion provided a reminder of the sociopolitical divide in this country. "What about 'Red Dawn'?" said one helpful editor.

"Well, only if you want to make people think it was a gun blog," I said, to puzzled faces.

"Red Dawn? You must know it - the greatest pro-gun movie ever? I mean, they actually show the jackbooted communist thugs prying the guns from cold dead hands."

Any red-blooded American conservative, even those who hold a dim view of Patrick Swayze's acting "talent," knows a Red Dawn reference. For all the talk of left wing cultural political correctness, the right has such things, too (DO shop at Wal-Mart, DON'T buy gas from Citgo). But in the progressive halls of the mainstream media, such things prompt little or no recognition. For the MSM, Dan Rather is just another TV anchor, France is just another country and Red Dawn is just another cheesy throwaway Sunday afternoon movie...

Hate to break it to you, Ben, but "Red Dawn" is just another cheesy throwaway Sunday afternoon movie--and one that's not nearly as visually interesting as "Dirty Dancing." "Red Dawn" is currently #2883 with a bullet among amazon DVDs, behind such wonders of the cinematic art as "Don Knotts 4 Movie Reluctant Hero Pack (The Ghost And Mr. Chicken / The Reluctant Astronaut / The Shakiest Gun In The West / The Love God?)," "Simple Life 3 - The Interns," and "Arrested Development--Season 2."

This is going to be fun.

Comments

[Arthur]

Hey, don't knock Arrested Development!

[trotsky]

There was a letter to the editor of my local paper just a few weeks ago from a woman who suggested that too many Americans don't get what we're fighting about and that they should watch "Red Dawn." I kid you not.

It's Amazon ranking might reflect the fact that it's 20 years old and all the true-blue (or -red) fans already know it by heart.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15herbert.html?ex=1255579200&en=c6d0a53544563b0e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

October 15, 2004

Paralyzed, a Soldier Asks Why
By BOB HERBERT

DALE CITY, Va.

Sunlight was pouring through the doorway to the furnished basement of the neat two-story home on Reardon Lane. The doorway had been widened to accommodate the wheelchair of Army Staff Sgt. Eugene Simpson Jr., who was once a star athlete but now, at age 27, spends a lot of time in his parents' basement, watching the large flat-screen TV.

I asked the sergeant whether he ever gets depressed. "No," he said quickly, before adding, "I mean, I could say I was sad for a while. But it didn't really last long."

Sergeant Simpson's expertise is tank warfare. But the Army is stretched thin, and the nation's war plans at times have all the coherence of football plays drawn up in the schoolyard. When Sergeant Simpson's unit was deployed from Germany to Iraq, the tanks were left behind and the sergeant ended up bouncing around Tikrit in a Humvee, on the lookout for weapons smugglers and other vaguely defined "bad guys."

He said he felt more like a cop than a soldier.

One evening last April, Sergeant Simpson was the passenger in the lead vehicle of a four-vehicle convoy on a routine patrol in Tikrit. "It was a little housing area," he said. "We were just there to show a presence."

Iraqi soldiers were in the second vehicle of the convoy.

"I looked back and the Iraqi truck had stopped for some reason," Sergeant Simpson said.

He waved the driver forward, but the truck remained motionless. "That was odd," he said. "They wouldn't follow us. Then I happened to look down between two houses and I saw an Iraqi guy standing in the alley with like a remote control key for a car. And that was odd because there were like no cars in the whole little housing area."

Sergeant Simpson had been taught that key remotes can be used by insurgents to set off explosives. "So I knew right then something was wrong, and I raised up my gun to fire at him. But before I could get my weapon all the way up he pushed the button."

The bomb hidden in the road exploded with terrific force just a few feet from Sergeant Simpson.

"When I saw the explosion go off, I tried to jump back into the center of the Humvee for more protection," he said. "Everything went in slow motion for about 15 seconds. I saw scrap metal and dust and everything flying by me, and I felt it hitting me all in my legs and my back. It felt like hot metal burning my skin everywhere."

The driver of the Humvee fired at the attacker, who vanished. Sergeant Simpson was in agony. "It hurt so bad, I couldn't cry," he said....

[anne]

Dale City, Virginia, red enough for a columnist from the New York Times? How red would you have it, and, yes, I have never had a sane answer to "why?"

[anne]

Ah, I understand, all we need to learn to love this as other wars is more suitable propaganda, and physical and psychological suffering never counts in film so why should it count otherwise? Am I learning to love this war properly?

[WatchfulBabbler]

Actually, the term "Red Dawn" itself comes from Albert Rhys Williams' "Through the Russian Revolution," which makes Domenech's argument all the weaker. Do conservatives not actually bother to read history and philosophy anymore?

[FXKLM]

Season 2 of Arrested Development wasn't as good as season 1, but it's still quality entertainment. I demand a retraction.

[Ira Schwartz]

Ben reads like a Lucianne Goldberg's son or J.P. Normanson wannabe.

Light. Fluffy. Vapid.

Think Paris Hilton in drag.

[Ira Schwartz]

Don't forget Red Scorpion.

Famous pic.

Very Conservative.

Who produced the B-flick?

Jack Abramoff.

[anne]

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/03/fields_of_exper.html

March 21, 2006

Paul Krugman asks for reciprocal visiting rights into areas covered by other columnists and explains why he deserves to have them, by Mark Thoma:

Fields of Expertise, by Paul Krugman, Money Talks, NYT: Bruce Bartlett has posted a reply of sorts to my March 10 column, “The Conservative Epiphany.” It’s interesting, because he admits that for a time he was deterred from speaking up about the Bush administration’s flaws because he feared, correctly, that he would be fired from his think-tank job if he did. I won’t pass personal judgment on his behavior; I often tell people that one main reason I was willing to criticize Bush when he was still very popular, and when critics were routinely smeared and accused of being unpatriotic, was that I knew that I could always go back to just being a college professor — in Europe if necessary.

But I would like to respond to one point, because lots of people who criticize me say the same thing (and I occasionally hear it from people at The Times itself): that I should have stuck to economics, my field of expertise, rather than venturing into other areas. I could point out that as far as I can tell, every other op-ed columnist at the Times writes about economics. Don’t I get reciprocal visiting rights?

Anyway, what that criticism really means is that I shouldn’t have written about the Iraq war. But the sad fact is that I got things more nearly right on Iraq than the vast majority of opinion writers at major newspapers, including commentators who are supposed to be experts on foreign policy.

I call it a sad fact because I was a skeptic and a pessimist. At a time when most commentators, even liberals, believed that the Bush administration was making an honest case for war, I suggested that the administration was exaggerating the threat. At a time when quite a few commentators, again including liberals, were enthusiastic about the idea of throwing America’s military weight around, I argued that the occupation of Iraq would be much harder than the invasion; I predicted that the Bush administration would botch the occupation and the reconstruction; and I warned that the war would weaken America’s position in the world. I wish I hadn’t been right on all these points, but I was.

Why did I get it right, when so few other commentators did? Partly because, as Mr. Bartlett suggests, I wasn’t afraid of losing my job. But mainly, I think, because I was able to apply to foreign policy the lessons about the administration’s character and competence that I had learned from covering economic policy.

[liberal]

Brad DeLong wrote, " left-wing nut-boy Alexander Cockburn: everyone (well, almost everyone) reading his columns would think, 'If that's the left, I belong on the right.' "

Hardly.

I don't subscribe to all of his views, but oftentimes Cockburn is spot on.

[RKKA]

Yes, Red Dawn captures several elements of both the fears and the self-image of the radical Right, first that the USSR, being run at the time by a guy who was going to be dead of old age in a year, was going to invade and take our guns, and second, that the radical Right had what it took to run an unconventional war against the occupying Soviets/Cubans/Nicaraguans.

I don't know which is funnier, Konstantin Chernenko summoning the energy to be Supreme Warlord (an incredibly stressful, exhausting job that ages people tremendously), or Rush Limbaugh living off the land, evading Commie patrols, and striking blows for Freedom.

[Michael Drake]

"'Red Dawn' is currently #2883 with a bullet among amazon DVDs..."

But...but...but: How is it selling at Walmart?

[Diamond Jim]

Those who knock ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT are helping the terrorists.

As for RED DAWN, precious little about Red State America filters down to us here in Park Slope, but I've always had the impression that it was indeed iconic for a certain segment of the right. Didn't John Milius, its director, even intend that result?

[Steve]

It's clear that if your party gets 51% of the vote, you must have an electoral majority on EVERY ISSUE WHATSOEVER, and an enduring majority at that!

This proposition is so self-evident I'm surprised Domenech even wasted column space by starting off with it. Oh well, he'll learn.

[dale]

At the time, I thought Red Dawn must be an alegory about US involvement in Central America. Back then it didn't occur to me that it was a right wing warning of the- it can happen here -variety.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Red Dawn is one of the greatest bad movies of all time, sort of Swayze's practice for Road House.

Ben whatever-his-name-is gets one thing almost right, until blue collar pro-lifers are allowed back into the Democratic Party they are going to have a tough time winning, even with Bush-the-Vile in office.

[Delicious Pundit]

Don't knock Don Knotts either. That stuff's hard to do. In fact, I submit that there is more comic life in one good Barney Fife-centric episode of Andy Griffith than in all of season 2 of Arrested Development.

[moonbiter]

Re: the scene in Red Dawn where they show the .45 being pried from the dead dude's cold, dead fingers. I always though that was a gag on pro-gun types, suggesting that rednecks with handguns weren't worth two-sh*ts if real soldiers with military-grade weapons invaded.

Certainly the movie was a "rah-rah, USA! USA! USA!" bit of agitprop, but the greatest pro-gun movie ever? I think that'd be something like Patriot, or Lethal Weapon, or Predator, or Read Heat, or Commando, or Rambo or ... etc ...

[Ereshkigal]

The Don Knotts oeuvre beating out a conservative's darling B-movie?

How funny. I haven't laughed so hard at a dead man's victory since Carnahan's ghost beat John Ashcroft in Missouri.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Hell, the MSM thinks those Don Knotts movies are just more cheesy throwaway Sunday latenite movies.

[ethan]

what kind of a right-wing tard knocks arrested development?

sheesh.

[camus]

By adding Red America to its line up, the Washington Post editors have finally shown their true colors as the new Amerika Pravda!

Just what we need more polarizing propaganda.

[Draco]

My favorite paranoid little touch in "Red Dawn": The invaders of the US were Soviets, Cubans (!) and...Nicaraguans (!?!).

That's some projection, as the US has invaded all three of those nations, but never has the revers occurred.

The pre-dementia C. Hitchens drily described Operation Archangel as "The first attempt in history to invade Russia from the north."

[Dumbo]

That's too bad about Red Dawn. I really liked it.

I like to use it as the clincher in arguments with right-wingers about the war in Iraq, because the Wolverines in Red Dawn were an insurgency fighting against an occupying army (Soviets and Cubans) in the United States. By the standards of our government, we would call the Wolverines terrorists. And yet, a question remains: if Saddam Hussein had invaded and occupied America, how many of us wouldn't be rooting for the Wolverines every time they blew up an Iraqi convoy rolling down South Central LA?

[Bragan]

And I thought we had reached the conventional media's nadir when the LA Times added Jonah Goldberg to its stable of columnists.

Compared to this Domenech, the Doughy Pantload's scribblings are almost Buckleyesque (William F.)

[d]

Holy Crap! Red Dawn!? Is that why the stereotypical Red-Staters think they need guns!?

I like to think I have the ability to empathize with almost anyone, but I cannot begin to understand how a mind that speaks highly of "Red Dawn" without oozing sarcasm functions.

[Jeremy]

...No really, I know of at least three people here in W. Michigan who own "Red Dawn". Educated, middle-class people who don't shop at Walmart but would never give up their second ammendment rights. Guns are part of the midwestern culture, plain and simple.

[bill]

"Q" the Enchanter said:""'Red Dawn' is currently #2883 with a bullet among amazon DVDs.."
But...but...but: How is it selling at Walmart?"

How is it selling? Maybe VHS? We're talking Red State (e.g., Alabama) Wal-Mart shoppers here.

[sqealer]

I forgot to check CounterPunch today. Thanks for reminding me.

[bill]

Trotsky:"It's Amazon ranking might reflect the fact that it's 20 years old and all the true-blue (or -red) fans already know it by heart."

But then why is "The Lost Boys" on DVD at #1706, nearly 1200 places higher?

The one thing I never could stomach about living in America is all the damn Republicans.

[IMU]

I love Red Dawn. Sure that love is tinged with irony. Sure it is warm with nostalgia of a cold war up bringing, where you could shoot commies and hurt Soviet wrestlers without worrying about it. In the opening scene, the Soviet and Cuban troops parachute into that most crucial strategic goal: the local highschool! You can't take it too seriously.

But it is a masterpiece of schlocky, black & white, good v evil hero story. And it has Patrick Swazye, star of Dirty Dancing and Rode House (the best bouncer in america!). Modern melodrama at its finest.

WOLVERINES!!!

[Consul-At-Arms]

Mr. Domenich might also recognized the significance of Operation Red Dawn and Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2 as the homage they were from the ultimate Red Staters: The U.S. Army soldiers who captured Saddam Hussein (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3770218/).

[KevinNYC]

Wolverines!

[bncthor]

Tuesday, 03/21/06

By LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writer
The Tennessean

Shelbyville, Tenn., police say they had no other choice but to shoot back when a Hispanic businessman fired at them and that the case has led to death threats against the veteran officer who pulled the trigger.

But relatives of the late Fermin Estrada, 47, reiterated their claim that police Officer James Wilkerson shot and killed their patriarch Saturday without provocation in front of his family at a backyard barbecue.

Police Chief Austin Swing said yesterday that Wilkerson, a 15-year veteran, and Patrolman Bruce Davis, a police officer for seven years, reported that Estrada had fired at them once, maybe twice, before Wilkerson took aim and felled Estrada with a single shot from his .223-caliber police rifle.

The family also says the officers did not announce their presence.

"They just shot,'' said Fermin Estrada Jr., 17, who was minding the family's downtown store, Tienda Mexicana Paty, yesterday.

Swing acknowledged that he could not conclusively say his officers had identified themselves as police.

"I think they just started yelling at him, 'Hey, hey, stop, stop, drop the gun, whatever,' " the chief said during an interview at his office.

"I think they more or less just started yelling at him. I do not know if they said, 'We are police,' or not. But they did yell at him and he never acknowledged them. Either he didn't hear them or didn't want to hear them,'' Swing said.

When the senior Estrada began firing rounds from his .45-caliber pistol into the ground, the officers became alarmed, the chief said.

"The minute he started firing into the ground they were already in a threatening situation," Swing said. When Estrada turned and fired at the officers, as Swing claimed, "they didn't have a lot of choice."

The Estrada family disputes that. William Estrada, another son of the dead man, said his father never raised his gun toward the officers.

However, both sides agree that the senior Estrada had fired several rounds into the ground. The Estradas said this is a custom their father brought to America from his rural Mexico.

"You fire a gun into the ground when you have something to celebrate or when you hear a piece of music you like,'' Fermin Estrada Jr. said.

Swing said he was concerned about the Hispanic community's reaction. "We've had good relations. I hope this doesn't set us back,'' he said.

But in several markets that cater to the town's large Hispanic population, donation boxes were set up at the counters. A letter in Spanish asked for contributions in memory of Estrada killed by "policia" at his "casa."

And since the shooting, Wilkerson has received death threats, Swing said.

The chief said his department is "very concerned" about the threats. Wilkerson was the senior of two officers who responded to a Cedar River Road resident's report of three Hispanic men, one with a handgun. He fired once, killing Fermin Estrada with a shot to the head.

"He's been devastated by this. Receiving the death threats has made him concerned for his own family,'' Swing said.

Wilkerson and Davis have been placed on administrative leave since the shooting and have received counseling. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is handling the matter. •
Leon Alligood can be reached at 259-8279.

*****
I don't feel that guns - Red Dawn not with standing - make us any safer in person or property.

[Hedley Lamarr]

Red Dawn: Better than The Dell Interns, episode #4.

[jerry]

Jennifer Grey at 24.

Don't be dissing Red Dawn!

[Stuart Thiel]

Doesn't amazon.com readjust its ratings almost hourly? That would explain Don Knotts's high position, inasmuch as he died last week. Perhaps a better index of Red Dawn's popularity would be how often it's shown on the late-late show.

And lighten up on Patrick Swayze. I don't know what he's doing now, but then he was just another kid trying to break into the movies. You think he'd dare turn down a role, on political or any other grounds?

[theorajones]

Submission of comments? 11/12 linked trackbacks point to conservatives?

Typical right-wing blog. Doing everything in their power to lock out anyone who might bring in actual, you know, facts.

[ogmb]

>> "'Red Dawn' is currently #2883 with a bullet among amazon DVDs..."

> But...but...but: How is it selling at Walmart?

I heard it's also extremely popular on the black markets in Baghdad and Fallujah.

[Brian C.B.]

People, the Commies don't just invade anywhere, they invade Colorado. Or, at least someplace in British Columbia or California where the signs were rigged to read "Colorado." They were after our wheat, people! Why not just trade oil to Argentina for wheat? Well...because you're not screenwriters, you'll never understand.

God knows they weren't after our Coors. We'd have paid them to take that shit away. As one critic said at the time, "In real life, wouldn't someone wake the president up if Soviet transport aircraft were circling Stapleton?" I completely resented MST3K being cancelled before the show had a chance to spoof "Red Dawn."

Also, liberal me knew the reference. I smell a joke into which ol' Ben hasn't been clued, yet.

[Alopex Lagopus]

I also think the WaPo staffer was joking and also probing just how earnestly stupid Mr. Ben really is. Mission accomplished!

Then Mr. Trevino shows up here all huffy that people are making fun of his favorite movie evah.

This could be fun.

Oh and thanks Mr. Ben, star columnist; I hadn't realized shopping at Walmart was some kind of ideological Good Deed and purity test for right wing radicals. I'm sure the Chinese communists appreciate your money.

[DavidNYC]

OMG OMG it's like that awesome Josh "Tacitus" Trevino! What a brilliant dude! I've totally reconsidered everything I've ever believed in thanks to his snark! He sure knows how to get people to change their minds!

Oh wait, I'm a mind-reader, I can even anticipate his response: He doesn't bother trying to change our moonbat minds because we're too enthralled in our hard-left ideology to ever listen!

May I remind you that it was a Bush administration official who derided the reality-based community. If you're with Bush, then you reject the virtues of being reality-based.

[renato]

I'm so thrilled that the closest gas station to me is a Citgo.

It takes a little bit of the sting out of gas prices, to know that every time I fill up there, a right-winger cries.

[FlipYrWhig]

Um -- one guy in the room actually *came up with* the "Red Dawn" idea. How exactly does that prove the gaping cultural disconnect hypothesis?

[WatchfulBabbler]

People, the Commies don't just invade anywhere, they invade Colorado. Or, at least someplace in British Columbia or California where the signs were rigged to read "Colorado."

Nevada or Utah, I seem to recall. The script was also pretty tortured on the backstory -- some kind of limited nuclear exchange, major cities wiped out, and the Soviet Union invades to capture our ... wheat fields? Evidently there was no Nixon wheat deal in that parallel universe -- or else Carter was re-elected and never lifted the grain embargo.

[Barry]

"Wow, you managed to negate every adjective in your blog's subhead in that one post.

I'd say screeching ill becomes you, but it's actually sort of apt here."

Posted by: Josh Trevino

Are we graced with an appearance by *Tacitus*?!?!??! One of the few people who can screech with a calm voice.

[Emma Anne]

Watchful: "People, the Commies don't just invade anywhere, they invade Colorado. "

Perhaps they like to ski?

And liberal, I've got to agree with Brad on Cockburn. I read the Nation, and I have to skip his columns. He might be correct about things sometimes, but he is *exactly* the kind of writer to make folks think that if he's left, they'll be right, thank you.

[WatchfulBabbler]

That was actually a quote from a post further up on the page, but the comments page eats HTML formatting.

Personally, I always thought that Cockburn (and his apologias for the Serbian state) occupied a space on the left that was more or less the mirror of where Robert Welch lay on the right.

[DaveInSeattle]

AVENGE ME!!! AVENGE ME!!!

[Josh Koenig]

How to you spell "Wolverines!" in Farsi?

[Trained Auditor]

"John has a long mustache."

"The chair is against the wall."

You've got to hand it to him, Domenech really did pick the one movie loved by the kind of wing-nuts who are most loathed by moonbats.

I'd like to ask our liberal friends: Is there a representative liberal movie that is similarly loved by caricatured lefties?

[KevinNYC]

Wolverines!

[wjd123]

Has anyone noticed how the conservatives who supported Bush for the past five years are trying to label him a liberal now that their fiscal and foreign policies have come home to roost?

[WatchfulBabbler]

The Trial of Billy Jack?

[arles]

Red dawn in the morning sailor's warning, red dawn at night, sailors delight. I thought it was a simple nautical ditty.

But what's the origin of "pachyderms in the mist"? Is that like "gorrillas in the mist", but not in Africa and not an endangered species? But with elephants, coy indeed. Is this also a little known movie fave of conservatives? Forthcoming release? Do tell, I'm lost.

[vtconomist]

Why Citgo?

[DW]

I'll bet that Tom Tancredo owns a well-watched copy of Red Dawn, and uses it to guide his political strategery;>

[Ken Houghton]

What everyone else said about Arrested Development.

But, really, what's the problem with Citgo??

[paul lukasiak]

hey, any film with C Thomas Howell and Charlie Sheen doing their boy-candy pouts can't be all bad.....

[Irony Man]

"red dawn at night,"

Ummmm....red *dawn* at night?

You're thinking, "Red *sky* at night."

[trostky]

Citgo is owned by the Venzuelan government. The profits on your gas go to that nasty Hugo Chavez, unlike all the upstanding citizens who get the profits fro the other oil.

[Irony Man]

Oh, and about CITGO:

http://www.citgo.com/AboutCITGO/CompanyHistory.jsp

"In the 1990s, CITGO was purchased by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the national oil company of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela."

Read: Hugo Chavez.

[David in Milwaukee]

Red Dawn is a pretty good as far as giving the rest of us a window into the paranoid fantasies of the Conservative Right, but my favorite movie in this genre is Invasion U.S.A., straight out of 1985 starring (and co-written by) the one, the only, Chuck Norris.
Soviet forces invade America's coast on D-Day style amphibious vehicles (in broad daylight!) Chuck Norris wages a one-man battle against them with twin Uzi's. Best of all, at the end, Norris and the villian face off in the only bazooka duel I can ever recall being committed to film.

[Basharov]

"People, the Commies don't just invade anywhere, they invade Colorado. Or, at least someplace in British Columbia or California where the signs were rigged to read 'Colorado.'"

Actually, it was shot in New Mexico, but that's close enough for John Milius' hackwork.

"Why Citgo?"

It's owned by the government of Venezuela, home to Bush's Hitler-of-the-Month, Hugo Chavez.

[johne]

I believe Citgo is owned by Venezuela; besides that, it's making fuel available at low prices to some of the American poor. Makes a patriot's blood boil!

[tofubo]

red dawn, that's what's happening over in iraq, no ??

i mean, two countries invade, and the locals fight back

no, i'm sorry, i don't see any correlation

on an unrelated note, they're in pre-production of 'red dawn too', it's where russia gets its allies to invade canada

[anne]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402E2D71038F935A2575AC0A962948260

September 16, 1984

COCKEYED AT 'RED DAWN'
By VINCENT CANBY

As Leo McCarey's ''My Son John'' epitomized the anti-Communist paranoia of the 1950's, with sometimes unintentionally funny results, ''Red Dawn,'' John Milius's shoot-'em-up World War III fantasy, provides an unusual glimpse into the mind of a certain kind of contemporary archconservative. It's not, heaven knows, the intellectual kind of archconservative.

Rather, it exposes for all to see the cockeyed nightmares of those on the lunatic fringe, the self-styled patriots who might even embarrass the members of the John Birch Society. It's a movie that says that guns don't kill people, but people who kill people, without going that one step further to acknowledge that it's people with guns who kill people.

''Red Dawn'' is one of those rarely terrible movies that you cannot afford to miss - technically proficient, emotionally infantile and politically nuts, though not, I think, especially dangerous. It's too ludicrous.

''Red Dawn'' seems also to be the work of a man who is sick and tired of being on the receiving end of criticism aimed by the world's have-nots at the world's haves. Don't these people realize that it's not easy being rich and powerful and right? How about a little sympathy for the big guy?

To provide answers to these and a lot of other questions you perhaps never thought to ask, Mr. Milius, with Kevin Reynolds, has written an apocalyptic fable designed, among other things, to refurbish the United States's international image by showing it to be, in awful fact, the world's most misunderstood underdog.

There is no other way to interpret this vision of World War III, set in the small town of Calumet, Colo., at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in which most of middle America has been occupied by ''the armies of Cuba and Nicaragua, sweeping up through Mexico,'' apparently disguised as tourists and gardeners. The armies of Cuba and Nicaragua? ...

[liberal]

Emma Anne wrote, "And liberal, I've got to agree with Brad on Cockburn. I read the Nation, and I have to skip his columns."

Your loss. He's got an excellent column up on the web right now about the long-term giveaway of natural resource wealth to the oil companies:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/cockburn

[Dave]

Wingers take their "Red Dawn" seriously. I remember watching a PBS special about a North Carolina Congressional campaign. They did a segment where the locals would quiz the candidate, and when the topic turned to gun control, one winger earnestly asked the candidate if she had seen "Red Dawn."

[Big Time Patriot]

Everyone one knows that the only reason to rent Red Dawn is if all the "Caroline in the City" episodes are unavailable and you have to get your Lea Thompson fix...

Conservatism has nothing to do with it...

(But, Red Dawn is a good example of a conservative movie, it's ideas of the evil Communist invasion NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED, similar to so many other conservative ideas with no particular connection to the real world)

[Dustin R. Ridgeway]

"I've got to agree with Brad on Cockburn."

Ditto.

[sara]

Don't they also venerate Starship Troopers? and they think the Verhoeven film is not satire.

[A. Zarkov]

I guess I’m really out of it because I never heard of “Red Dawn.” Sounds like the counter part to “The Day After Tomorrow.” Nevertheless the left has fought a losing battle on the issue of gun control. Most people I know take a middle position, some degree of control is prudent, but an outright ban and confiscation of handguns is too extreme. I think that pretty much sums up the mainstream American attitude. If you want a taste of the slippery slope of gun control take a look at the UK where one can get a heaps of trouble over even a knife. The deeper issue is of course not so much guns, as it is limits self-defense. The attitude of the UK government as expressed by its laws is: “don’t defend yourself.” and “We insist on a state monopoly on the use of lethal force, and we fail to defend you, it’s just too bad.” I think that sums up the beliefs of the American left, and I fail to understand why they take such an extreme position.

[BC]

10 points for all those who made the wonderful point that Red Dawn would be a great rah-rah for the Iraqis if it had farsi subtitles. However, explaining this to a right whinger won't work. They have a small defect. Perspective originates from a single, fixed point. They *cannot* do relativity. Any attempts to explain relative concepts is akin to explaining your computer to the dog.

=my2c
BC

[Brad DeLong]

Jonathan Chait writes, in email, that I have no business denigrating "Arrested Development -- Season 2":

You’re simply demonstrating your own ignorance. I’m disappointed in you.

From the LA Times: Maybe Murdoch Doesn't Watch TV on Sunday Nights

BYLINE: JONATHAN CHAIT

BODY:

Rupert Murdoch has been described as a power-mad mogul, debasing the public discourse with the cheapest forms of entertainment and using right-wing propaganda masquerading as journalism to advance his nefarious ends. I used to think all that was true. Then I started watching "Arrested Development," which runs on Murdoch's Fox network on Sunday nights.

To say that it's the funniest program I've ever seen on television massively understates how good it is. Imagine if Shaquille O'Neal somehow joined a high school basketball team. You could say he's the best player on the squad, and it would be true, but it wouldn't quite capture the magnitude of the difference between him and everybody else.

Part of the genius of "Arrested Development" lies in its disdain for the conventions of television sitcoms. It's shot in pseudo-documentary style, with a hand-held camera, a narrator and no laugh track. It liberally employs flashbacks, which makes the jokes frequently run in reverse. (You see something funny, then you see something that happened anywhere from a minute to 20 years earlier and realize why what you just saw was even funnier than you thought.) Often there's something hilarious in the background of a scene you don't catch the first time. For all these reasons, the show avoids the drearily familiar set-up/punch-line rhythms of most mindless sitcoms.

It may seem odd that such a smart product would appear on a network known for winning the race to the cultural bottom, but perhaps it shouldn't be. After all, Fox also introduced "The Simpsons," which in its prime was also very edgy and innovative. More surprising is the fact that Fox has stuck with "Arrested Development" into its second season despite abysmal ratings.

What you really have to wonder is why Murdoch allows this artistically compelling ratings sinkhole to subvert his political agenda on a weekly basis. The program takes as an underlying assumption that the government and media are run by the same kind of buffoons found in the Bluth family, on whom the show centers.

In one episode, a photograph emerges that the authorities believe shows secret bunkers in Iraq. The Army -- whose manpower shortages have forced it to accept the enlistment of comically unprepared mama's boy Buster Bluth -- immediately deploys a new brigade to the region. A Fox News anchor announces, "Weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq! What does it mean for your weekend?" Unsurprisingly, the photograph turns out not to show weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the show's humor goes after the left. In one show from last year, various characters enmesh themselves in webs of comic deceit and treachery and, at the end, a teenage son tells his father: "It's just so hard to know what the right thing to do is." The father replies: "I know it. It's not like there's some list of rules handed down to us from on high." Meanwhile, unnoticed by both of them, a tablet of the Ten Commandments -- which his liberal activist sister has successfully crusaded to remove from a courthouse -- is dangling over their heads, suspended from a crane.

But the show's overall ideological thrust is plain. In another recent episode, idiot son George Oscar Bluth II ("G.O.B.") takes over the family housing development business and decides to clear the company name by building a new model home. G.O.B. insists, against the protestations of his brother, Michael, that he can build the new house in just two weeks. To meet his hasty deadline, G.O.B. builds the shaky facade of a house. He later appears at the ribbon-cutting with a "Mission Accomplished" banner draped across his chest and triumphantly declares, "My brother wasn't optimistic it could be done, but I wouldn't take 'not optimistic it could be done' for an answer!" G.O.B. then unveils the new company motto, "Solid as a Rock," the last two words of which he pronounces "Iraq." Of course, the house immediately collapses.

I'm guessing Murdoch and his minions have enough brains to grasp the symbolism here. And this suggests a subversive thought. Maybe Murdoch isn't as grand or as evil as liberals believe. Maybe he likes lowbrow fare and noxious right-wing populism but he doesn't insist that it permeate every corner of his empire. Maybe he doesn't want to be Citizen Kane after all.

Or maybe he does and "Arrested Development" is a sop to distract his critics. Who cares? If he keeps the show on the air, as far as I'm concerned, Murdoch can be as evil as he wants.

[Big Time Patriot]

Gara,
"Most people I know take a middle position, some degree of control is prudent, but an outright ban and confiscation of handguns is too extreme." Sounds like you side with the left on this issue.

If you were NOT on the left you would be giving the Republican point of view on guns, "50 caliber sniper rifles freely available, GREAT! Reading everyones library records, FINE, Reading their gun registrations? NEVER. The right to carry guns at work and school? OF COURSE." These kinds of things that conservatives seem to favor just don't seem prudent or responsible to me.

Thanks for joining us Liberals in our quest for some degree of prudent gun control, guess you won't be able to vote Republican any more, eh?

[liberal]

A. Zarkov wrote, "Nevertheless the left has fought a losing battle on the issue of gun control. Most people I know take a middle position, some degree of control is prudent, but an outright ban and confiscation of handguns is too extreme. ... I think that sums up the beliefs of the American left, and I fail to understand why they take such an extreme position."

Except that they don't take that position.

[p.lukasiak]

I'd forgotten that Red Dawn was co-written by Kevin (Waterworld) Reynolds....

[Timothy Burke]

Brad:

Seriously, I think knocking "Arrested Development" might be the most significant mistake you've ever made on this blog. Ever.

You have only one choice for penance: go BUY "Arrested Development" BOTH SEASONS (and the 3rd when it's available) and watch them. Right away.

"Red Dawn" is also highly amusing as a bad movie, btw. But implying equivalent marginality or low quality to "Arrested Development" by sales proximity is really kind of clueless.

[tequila]

RED DAWN is an '80s classic! It doesn't get better than Lea Thompson firing a DShK 12.7mm heavy machine gun.

Most overlooked scene by pro-Iraq War conservatives: as Patrick Swayze executes a captured Russian commando, Charlie Sheen asks, "What's the difference between us and them?"

Swayze: "Because WE LIVE HERE!"

Why this scene hasn't ended up on some Islamic Army of Iraq recruiting video, I don't know.

[monocle]

Movie trivia: "Red Dawn" was the first movie to receive the new (at the time) PG-13 rating.

[ogmb]

"You’re simply demonstrating your own ignorance. I’m disappointed in you."

Huh?

[Brad DeLong]

Jonathan Chait is mock-outraged at my failure to appreciate "Red Dawn" properly. We're in fafblog territory here.

[Tom Maguire]

NRO ought to know - as of 1994, "Red Dawn" was number 37 on their "Best Conservative Movies" list (Heartbreak Ridge was at 41, and "Knute Rockne, All American, with the Gipper, is at 46).

http://www.nationalreview.com/conservative_movies/conservative_movies.shtml

[CBBB]

Arrested Developement is pure comic genius!

[Brian G]

As someone who grew up in the real Calumet, CO (which is really Las Vegas, New Mexico) I have to say I am very sad that the wapo is trying to rob me of the only meaningful memory of my childhood. Nothing says "freedom" like emilio and company running through the parking lot of your middle school. I'm also sad that I've actually made people watch the #37 conservative movie of all time. Come on, yo, don't y'all remember the cold war? it was hard.

And to answer the "leftie" movie question. Yes.
Farenheit 9/11
Outfoxed
The Corporation
...
or Dune
or LoTR
or Minority Report
or Enemy of the State
... oh you mean one of FICTION

How bout The Last Supper?

[Coot]

Most people I know take a middle position, some degree of control is prudent, but an outright ban and confiscation of handguns is too extreme. I think that pretty much sums up the mainstream American attitude.

[Ouish]

There's lots of interesting background information on the making of Red Dawn in Peter Bart's book, Fade to Black. Did you know that the film's military advisor was Al Haig?

According to Bart, Kevin Reynolds had nothing to do with the final film. He had written a very different original screenplay that John Milius completely reworked.

[A. Zarkov]

liberal:

“Except that they don't take that position.”

I’m afraid they do. Perhaps not everywhere, but certainly in places like Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco, and Berkeley. DC and NY ban possession of a handgun even in your own home.

Big Time Patriot:

Of course some people take a ridiculously extreme position on both sides of most issues. One of the reasons some on the right oppose any control whatsoever is they are afraid even a little control is a slippery slope towards a outright ban. That’s a reasonable fear given the UK experience, the avowed mission of gun control organizations and the laws passed by a few states in the US.

As I said before, the real issue is the limits of self defense.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

The pre-dementia C. Hitchens drily described Operation Archangel as "The first attempt in history to invade Russia from the north."

Wasn't there a case where George Bush gave some speech next to the Russian Prime Minister where he commented that "our countries have never invaded each other", and the Russki just gave him this *look*?...

[Derek Lowe]

First off, "Red Dawn" is an absurd movie, even by the standards of the 1980s.

Speaking as an evil right-winger, though, I don't recall Patrick Swayze et al. blowing themselves up in the middle of a supermarket or trying to incite (say) a Methodist-Catholic war by blasting the top off a cathedral.

Which means that I don't consider the attacks on US troops to be terrorism. (That's as opposed to the car-bombs in crowded streets or attacks on shrines, etc.) Guerrilla warfare is as old as warfare itself. That said, I don't want the insurgents to win, because (a) they're killing US troops and (b) I think that Iraq will be in far better shape if they lose. but I understand what they're up to when they plant IEDs and the like.

As for "Red Dawn", I grew up in Arkansas, so I sympathize with the attachment to owning guns, although I don't own any myself these days. And though I'm from the South, I'm glad that the South lost the Civil War, and I admire Robert E. Lee's decision at the end of it not to engage in (in his case, pointless) guerrilla warfare.

By the way, those up-thread who talked about subtitling the movie in Farsi probably mean Arabic. Iraqis, though most of them are Shiite, aren't Iranians.

[rvman]

>But, Red Dawn is a good example of a
>conservative movie, it's ideas of the evil
>Communist invasion NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED,
>similar to so many other conservative ideas
>with no particular connection to the real >world.

Hence its status as "fiction".

Kinda like "Silent Spring" or "The Population Bomb" in that regard, only those are regarded by the left as NON-fiction.

[ElamBend]

Certainly someone in the U.S. Army was a fan of "Red Dawn." The raid that lead to the capture of Saddam Hussein was rife with Red Dawn references. At the time the press was saying that Task Force Wolverine was named after the cartoon character, but they missed they it was part of Operation Red Dawn. That movie was pretty popular with all the rural types and has no *intentional* irony in it.

In the scene where the pistol is taken from the dead man's hand, the back window of his pick-up can be seen with a bumper sticker that states: "You can have my gun, when you take it from my cold dead hand." Drive around any blacktop road in any state, and you'll see that bumper sticker.

Also, Chicago and some of its neighboring cities ban the possession of handguns in the home. However, a couple of years ago the State of Illinois passed a law stating that if you shoot someone with a handgun illegally in your home, while they are breaking into your home, you cannot be prosecuted for having that gun in your home.

[Alexander Wolfe]

Dammit! Red Dawn is a good movie, and you don't have to be a conservative to like it! Is there nothing liberals and conservatives WON'T fight about? Sigh...

[shinypenny]

If we're discussing conservative movie "classics", does anyone else out there remember Amerika, the 1987 TV series?

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/amerika/amerika.htm http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1256262&displaytype=printable

Slave labor camps in the heartland, lol. Ah, the wasted hours of childhood.

[FreeDem]

Speaking as an evil right-winger, though, I don't recall Patrick Swayze et al. blowing themselves up in the middle of a supermarket or trying to incite (say) a Methodist-Catholic war by blasting the top off a cathedral.

I do recall American right wingers:

Trying to start a race war

setting up bunkers for a religious war (their concept of Christian vs Other)

Blowing up buildings full of children, among others.

Blowing up Olympics

Blowing up medical centers

Attacking with WMD (Anthrax)

Blowing up ships in port.

Blowing up Airliners

stocking huge arms caches, including huge cyanide bombs.

And all that without an actual war.

Yep sounds like Right wingers in Iraq, Afganistan, and most other places.

[liberal]

A. Zarkov wrote, "I’m afraid they do. Perhaps not everywhere, but certainly in places like Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco, and Berkeley. DC and NY ban possession of a handgun even in your own home."

Last I checked , "DC" and "NY" =/= "the left". A more appropriate comparison would be what the major groups supporting gun control say.

Furthermore, suppose it's true that you can't have a handgun in your own home. Why would you want a handgun anyway, when a shotgun is the most effective home defense weapon? (After owning a dog, of course, if we include deterrent effects in "defense".)

[Marcus]

Red Dawn movie rating on Amazon: 2,535. Broadcast News movie rating on Amazon: 4,268.

[A. Zarkov]

liberal:

Last I checked , "DC" and "NY" =/= "the left".

You don’t think the left has more influence over legislation, and policy in these cities than the right?

“Furthermore, suppose it's true that you can't have a handgun in your own home. Why would you want a handgun anyway, when a shotgun is the most effective home defense weapon?”

First off, I believe at least in DC you can’t possess a rifle or shotgun in your home unless it’s disassembled rendering it useless for defense. Second it’s not true that a shotgun is the most effective home defense weapon for the following reasons.

1. It’s harder to practice with a shotgun than a handgun because most gun ranges don’t allow shotgun use. Practice is a very important part of self-defense. You need to know your weapon, know how to use it, and acquire some degree of training to fall back on in a high stress situation.

2. A handgun can be stored and used more easily in a panic situation.

3. You can change the aim point with a handgun more quickly and easily than a shotgun. It’s true that a shotgun has the advantage of scatter and less need for accuracy, but that can also be problem with collateral damage to others in the home. A single buckshot can penetrate drywall and injure someone on the other side.

Finally shotguns can be cut down to a size that would fit in a shopping bag. I would rather have low caliber handguns in the hands of criminals than sawed-off shotguns, which are far more lethal.