News Roundup for 12/5/11

Hates America

-Headline of the Day-
"The Muppets Are Communist, Fox Business Network Says."

Muppets are commies! So says Fox Business' Eric Bolling (who, by the way, is just awful). According to the report, "Last week, on the network's Follow the Money program, host Eric Bolling went McCarthy on the new, Disney-released film, The Muppets, insisting that its storyline featuring an evil oil baron made it the latest example of Hollywood's so-called liberal agenda."

See, the new Muppet movie has a rich and powerful villain -- a totally new thing in fiction that no one has ever done before. And, since the villain is a rich oil man, that means the muppets are commies trying to brainwash our children, not that the villain is a movie cliché.

"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message," Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center told Bolling.

"They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry," Gainor continued. "They hate corporate America. And so you'll see all these movies attacking it, whether it was Cars 2, which was another kids' movie, the George Clooney movie Syriana, There Will Be Blood, all these movies attacking the oil industry, none of them reminding people what oil means for most people: fuel to light a hospital, heat your home, fuel an ambulance to get you to the hospital if you need that. And they don't want to tell that story."

I'll tell you why they don't want to tell that story -- it's crushingly dull and awful storytelling.

Look, it's a really simple and ancient literary formula; the stronger the villain, the greater the hero. That's why Sauron was a creature of almost godlike power and not just a guy with an argument for the beneficial aspects of magic rings. A rich guy is a guy with (in movie logic) unlimited resources -- who better to test the heroism of a bunch of carpet remnants?

But, as always, when the right sees an excuse to play the victim card, they play it. Proving, once again, that they don't get heroism at all. (Huffington Post)


-That's all, folks!-


Click to embiggen

(McClatchy)


-Bonus HotD-
"Kansas Is Spending $2,180 Per Day Defending Its Anti-Abortion Laws."

Republican "fiscal sanity" at work; defending clearly unconstitutional laws from their inevitable doom. (ThinkProgress)