January 4, 2006 by s.z.

I  Human Events Online While flashy wingnut sites like WorldNetDaily,  RenewAmerica, and Power Line seem to get most of the attention,  today I want to pay tribute to  HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE, which is just as wingnutty as the others, and which also possesses its own special charm. So, here's just a sampler of the delights that HEO has to offer. 1.  The Top 10 Movies Conservative College Students are Watching -- ("Ranked by the staff of the Leadership Institute’s Campus Leadership Program"). 1. The Passion of the Christ The testament of Christ, the basis of all Western thought and tradition, the most important moment in history. ALL Western thought and tradition are based on the New Testament?  Maybe the Campus Leadership Institute's staff should spend less time leading and more time going to class. 5. Death Wish After his family is destroyed by thugs, Charles Bronson decides to teach criminals the lesson that the liberals can’t through courtrooms or mediation. 6. Red Dawn Communists invade the heartland, and a band of boys take to the hills and start an insurgency against the invaders. 7. Dirty Harry Much in the same vein as Death Wish, Clint Eastwood is a police officer doing what it takes to fight crime against the liberals who worry more about defendant rights than the victims. 8. The Outlaw Josey Wales Clint Eastwood is a soldier who fights those who took everything he cared about. Conservative college students are really into violent revenge fantasies (fantasies that the liberals won't make true), aren't they? This makes me wonder if the #1 Conservative College Student movie of next year will be something like: Death Wish 23: Jesus's Revenge After he's crucified by thugs, Jesus resurrects himself and teaches the perps the lesson that the liberals can’t through courtrooms or mediation.  Then he and chief apostle Dirty Harry take to the hills and start an insurgency against the Roman invaders.    Maybe Jack Abramoff could produce it. 2.  Now here's Don Feder with The 10 Best Conservative Movies of 2005. What is a conservative film? Let’s start with what it isn’t. It’s not about men with bulging biceps and even bigger guns. It’s not cartoonish action heroes. It isn’t revenge tales masquerading as heroism. Uh oh.  I guess the conservative college students didn't get the word. Conservative cinema does more than entertain; movies that do no more are visual candy. It instructs and inspires. So, conservative cinema is didactic is purpose, and one attends a conservative film not to be entertained, but to become a better person.  It's like church, only with popcorn. Conservative films celebrate virtue. They tell timeless tales of individuals overcoming all manner of adversity to achieve true greatness. They’re about honesty, loyalty, courage and patriotism. They’re concerned with conservatism’s cardinal values – faith, family and freedom. Um, okay,  What are some of Don's picks for this year's timeless tales of adversity, faith, family, and no sex? 2.     King Kong – [...] Superficially, it’s a fine action film. On a deeper level, its characters exemplify feminine virtue, masculine heroism and romantic love. The movie describes a hopeless romance and makes us care for its computer-generated title character. I guess the Naomi Watts character exemplifies feminine virtue by letting men take care of her (and by not having sex with the giant ape). The guys who shoot at King Kong exemplify masculine heroism by trying to rescue a dame.  And the relationship between Naomi and the monkey exemplifies romantic love, in that it ends badly for everyone. 3.     The Island – Reviewers despised it. Audiences treated it as just another sci-fi flick. But “The Island” is a forceful and compelling pro-life statement. The statement that cloning people, letting the clones grow up in ignorance in secret underground complexes, and then killing them and harvesting their organs isn't very nice.  (Obviously, if this were a liberal movie, the good guys would be the wealthy politicians who own the clones, and have them carved up for their own benefit.) 10.  Memoirs Of A Geisha – Surprised you, didn’t I? Reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the film  -- based on the 1997 bestseller by Arthur Golden -- is not about prostitution in the Land of the Rising Sun.. (As the film explains, a geisha isn’t a hooker in a kimono, but an “artist of the floating world” – though there is a sexual element to this world.) Hey, that's not what fellow conservative Debbie Schlussel said in her review of the film, which she entitled "Memoirs of a Whore in a Kimona." The heroine, Sayuri, is sold as a child to a geisha house. Her choices – to become a menial and spend the rest of her life working off her contract to “mother,” or embrace her destiny. She chooses the latter only when the kindness of a handsome businessman makes her yearn for a way to enter his world. Sayuri is brave, determined and compassionate. It’s touching to see a child form an attachment that lasts a lifetime. Touching, or kind of creepy?  YOU make the call!  (And wasn't that basically the plot of Gigi, except that the handsome older guy ended up marrying her instead of taking her as his "artist"?  I wonder why Gigi didn't make the conservative college students top 10 list?) [F]ocus on the story of a little girl who falls in love with a man, and endures much for the sake of that love. Take your little girls to see it -- they might learn some tips on how to win the love of rich, old men ... and that's certainly one of conservatism's core values. And that's Human Events Online On Film.   A little later we'll explore what they have to say about other stuff. 3:03:17 AM

'Law & Order' Watch: Roger Ailes Edition Last night's "Law & Order: Sexy Victims Unit" ripped the Dick Dasen story from the headlines -- well, if not from the headlines, then from pages of the Roger Ailes blog.  Yes, the perp was a Christian do-gooder who gave large "loans" to poor women addicted to crystal meth in exchange for sex, just like in the Dasen case.  L&O's bad guy had coerced sex with an underage girl, just like Dick (but the TV perv was only involved with one teen, and didn't take any illegal photos of her).  There was a meth-head who set up "dates" for Dick.  There were millions spent on sex (however, in an effort to make the story appear more believable, the L&O creep only spent $2 million, instead of the over $5 million that the city attorney figured Dasen actually spent).  There was the righteous, enabling, head-in-the-sand wife.  And we had not one, but TWO, dead women.  But in this version of the story, Dasen got shot before he could be convicted.  Of course, since this was SVU, one story wasn't enough to fill up a whole episode (you'd have thought that the Dick Dasen story would be enough for a mini-series, but not even the Terri Schiavo case provided enough content for an SVU ep, and so Dick "Scott Peterson" Cain had to also be a speed-dating serial rapist).  Therefore, we also had the "Lost" boy as a victim's son who caught gun violence fever from hearing his mother get shot.*  And there was a slimy lawyer for an evil pro-gun lobbying group trying to keep the judge from accepting a plea deal from the boy.  And other twists and turns. But they key thing is, I predict that NBC is going to hire blogger Roger Ailes to create a new series for them:  "Law & Order: Grand Old Police Blotter Files." The first story on the docket will be about a guy who greatly resembles Jack Abramoff who gets caught bribing public officials. He agrees to squeal on some of his associates in exchange for a reduced sentence, but before he can name names, he is shot in his home by a call-boy, one Jim Guckert, who refuses to answer any questions unless they're asked by George Bush himself. Guckert dies mysteriously before he can be interogated by the feds.  Guckert was obviously paid to do the job, but by whom? Was it Bob Ney? An Indian tribe that got ripped off and then mocked by Abramoff in his emails? Grover Norquist? Ralph Reed? Dennis Hastert? Dolph Lundgren? Tom DeLay? Karl Rove? Lynne Cheney? You'll have to wait for the Law & Order twist in the last ten minutes to find out . . . unless you bribe Roger Ailes to disclose it to you ahead of time. * BTW, you can read about the theory about gun violence cited by defense attorney Annie Potts here -- it's not nearly as silly as what the scriptwriter made it sound, even though he or she apparently thought the researcher who conducted the study was on to something.  I hope they get a better writer for the Abramoff ep. 1:28:44 AM