THIS MODERN WORLD

Over at the Village Voice this week:

— my friend Tony Ortega has a pretty amazing story about John Steinbeck, mobsters, labor organizers, and how his graduate studies became unexpectedly personal.

— Jules Feiffer makes his second return appearance in the Voice after a ten year absence, here.

— In case you hadn’t noticed, Roy Edroso (of alicublog) is now blogging the news for the Voice, making him one of the half-dozen or so people in the country who actually make a living from this stuff.

So some things that I didn’t think would work out suddenly did work out, and it looks like I’ll be going to Denver in a week. I’ll actually be blogging it at the New Haven Advocate’s site — they’re footing the bill for this one — but I’ll post links from here to there.

Blogging will most likely remain sporadic until then.

Just want to add a thought to Greg’s post — he’s absolutely right about the abhorrent mindset typified by the “Got Ammo” and “Rope, Tree, Journalist” t-shirts you see advertised on so many right wing sites. But as he also notes, it’s too soon to jump to any definite conclusions at this point, as straightforward as they may seem.

… personally I look forward to the next round of “he could have just as easily used a knife! or heavy stones!”, from all the right wing gun nuts.

Or have we just been so thoroughly worn down by these senseless shootings that we don’t even bother with that debate any more?

Earlier today, I just got around to commenting on the recent shooting at a Unitarian church, noting :

I don’t think it’s fair to say that people like Limbaugh and O’Reilly are directly or even indirectly responsible for the shooting, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that the limits of what’s considered acceptable commentary among mainstream conservative commentators has moved to the extreme right over the past 10-15 years. Sean Hannity has a book titled “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism”, Michael Savage describes liberalism as a “mental disorder” and considers us “the enemy within”, Jonah Goldberg’s latest book features a Hitler-mustached happy face under the title “Liberal Fascism”, Ann Coulter’s best sellers describe liberals as being “Godless” and guilty of “Treason”, Bill O’Reilly routinely compares liberal activists to the KKK and Nazis, Glenn Beck describes Barack Obama as a “marxist”, etc. If this is the voice of mainstream conservatism, is it any wonder that the extremists on that side would grab a gun and shoot up a liberal church?

I’m starting to see a pattern here :

The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party died Wednesday, hours after a shooting at the party’s headquarters, police said. Police block off the streets surrounding the state Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday in Little Rock.

Chairman Bill Gwatney died at 3:59 Wednesday afternoon after a gunman entered his Little Rock office and shot him several times in the upper body, Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said.

While we should reserve judgment until we know more about the shooter, when a party chairman gets murdered by a stranger who walks into his workplace demanding to speak to him, I think it’s safe to assume politics might be involved. Moreover, regardless of whether or not this guy was a crazy loner, actions like these don’t occur in a vacuum. I mean, is anybody really surprised when violent lunatics erupt from a mindset in which this passes for humor? (h/t)

This movie may literally redefine what is meant by the word “comedy”:

I’m holding a palm card that was just given out at the Heritage Foundation to promote the new David Zucker film An American Carol. If I fill out the card, I can take one of four pledges, such as “Yes, I will send the trailer to my contacts” and “Yes, I want to be AN AMERICAN CAROLER or THEATER CAPTAIN.” It’s an induction to a movement, as the slogan on the card makes clear: “Finally, a movie for us.”

By “us,” of course, the filmmakers and promoters mean conservatives. Executive producer Myrna Sokoloff has put together a “pro-soldier, support our troops, pro-America” comedy, which Stephen Hayes previews in the new Weekly Standard. In it, filmmaker Michael Malone (Kevin “brother of Chris” Farley) and his organization MoveAlong.org are trying to repeal the Fourth of July when three angels—the Angel of Death, George S. Patton, and George Washington—come to him and convince him to change his ways.

he crowd at Heritage got to see a trailer and a few minutes of clips 24 hours before either of them will be generally released. I’m a huge fan of the Zucker-Leslie Nielsen canon, and not much of a fan of Zucker’s ads for Republicans. The footage we saw floated somewhere in the middle of those two projects, quality-wise. Fat-assed Malone travels to Cuba, pledges to destroy America, and takes advantage of the invisibility granted by ghost status by grabbing a protestor’s boobs. Bill O’Reilly appears out of nowhere to slap him. “I just like doing that,” he says. Terrorists led by everybody’s favorite pockmarked tough guy Robert Davi bitch that they’re low on suicide bombers (“All the good ones are gone!”) and all answer to the name Mohammed. In a scene that Sokoloff described, but didn’t bring, Patton and his soldiers storm a courthouse that’s about to remove the Ten Commandments and start opening fire on the people trying to stop them. “You can’t shoot these people!” Malone says. “They’re not people!” says Patton. “They’re the ACLU!” At this point we see that the ACLU members are unkillable George Romero zombies.

Details about the movie were kept secret, on purpose, until this month. In February, it was reported that Kelsey Grammar would be Scrooge in the new movie. He’s actually playing the ghost of George Patton, and Jon Voight is playing George Washington. In a clip we saw, Washington takes Malone to St. Paul’s Cathedral to lecture him on freedom of religion and “freedom of speech, which you abuse.” Malone is grossed out by dust in the priest’s box, so the doors open onto the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. “This is the dust of 3000 innocent human beings!” bellows Washington. Malone whimpers that he’s just making movies. Washington won’t have it. “Is that what you plan to say on Judgment Day?”

“That scene,” said Sokoloff, “is hard to put in a comedy. But we had to do it.”