Mock the Conservative

I'm not one of those who believe that we need to bomb Hollywood to save America. Okay, many of the stars are loudmouthed lefties: Sarandon, Sheen, Penn, Streisand. We have the First Amendment, it's within their rights to say whatever they please. They often end up looking like idiots anyhow.

Usually I can watch my chosen entertainment without getting ambushed by some writer or director. I don't look too deeply for hidden messages, and I don't take offense at jokes on Saturday Night Live or the Daily Show. I can laugh at the creepy Dick Cheney character without violating my political ethos. If I rent an An Inconvenient Truth or anything by Michael Moore, I know what I'm getting and I take it as it is. Recently I ran across two cases where I thought the anti-conservative sentiment was in bad taste.

I'm a sci-fi fan, and I'm working my way through the first season of Dark Angel. I watched the show when it first aired back in 2000-01, but I didn't see every episode. In one of the early episodes the character who runs Jam Pony bicycle courier, "Normal", mentions that his idol is G.H.W. Bush (a.k.a. Bush 41). Up to that point, I thought that Normal was just an effort at creating a bossman character that everybody loves to hate. Keep in mind that this was written well before bashing Bush 43 became a national pastime. So the secret in-joke is that Normal is a conservative. He is constantly ridiculed by the other cool (stereotypically ethnic) side characters for the sin of, um, ASKING THEM TO ACTUALLY WORK FOR THEIR PAY. If you look him up on IMDB, the character's full name is actually Reagan 'Normal' Ronald. It would be excusable if it were actually funny, but most of these "comic relief" efforts could be cut out completely and the episode would probably improve.

The second incident is much more serious, and occurred while watching the documentary film Crossing the Line. I like the documentary and I highly recommend it, but afterward I made the mistake of watching the interview with director Daniel Gordon. He talks about his epiphany that the U.S. and North Korea both have statues and lots of flags in common. In particular, he implies that James Dresnok is "like a Republican sitting on his porch" spouting nationalist propaganda, except that he happens to be sitting in Pyongyang. Excuse me? The flags that fly on porches in the U.S. are flown because its citizens have that freedom to express themselves. The flags that fly in North Korea, not so much. The fact that many Republicans in the U.S. still have a sense of national pride is a good thing, nothing to be ashamed of. Gordon (who is British) might not understand that concept. The Brits, whose empire has shrunk alittle lately, don't have much national pride left. They also share a uniquely European fear of nationalism brought on by WWI and WWII.

Gordon drew parallels between Richmond, Virginia and Pyongyang because they both have statues of men with their arm out. Wow, I guess that Britain, France and any other country that has advanced to the bronze age doesn't have such incredibly unique statues? North Korea has an estimated 800 statues of Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. The Great Leader and Eternal President created a cult around his own persona. I live near Richmond, and I can tell you that we don't have a nuclear-armed cult following of Arthur Ashe or Matthew Fontaine Maury.