Timelessness, Not Political Timeliness, Makes the Best Stories

Timely. Relevant. Resonant.

These are the promotional watchwords for must-see TV and movies in our politics-saturated pop culture today. The New York Times recently published a piece about the “timeliness” of the new Amazon series American Gods, because of the show’s pro-immigration theme. The Times also advertised Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale as “newly resonant,” because of the widespread, unhinged fretting that President Trump is going to usher in a misogynistic theocracy in which women are stripped of their rights and reduced to being childbearing livestock.

There is more. Director Ron Howard revealed that a Nazi character in his Nat Geo series Genius was modeled after President Trump, and that an episode with an immigration theme had “vital resonance” with current events. The alt-history Amazon series The Man in the High Castle is seen as relevant because of the absurd fear-mongering over imaginary, “deeply disturbing parallels” between the Trump administration and the show’s depiction of a fascist America. Not even kids’ movies can escape this hysteria: analogies are actually being drawn between Trump and the titular character from the animated film The Boss Baby.

The list of examples could go on and on, but while the trend seems ubiquitous, it did not begin with the rise of Trump. Hyping the topical nature of a book, movie, or TV series is a common, longstanding promotional strategy, particularly if the story being advertised also promotes a particular political agenda. Every story that can be politically weaponized is marketed breathlessly as “timely.”

The Nightmare Reality of the Communist Dream

With a Republican in the White House threatening to – horrors! – make America great again, nostalgia for the Communist-utopia-that-could-have-been is running high among dejected leftists. Last Monday on May Day, otherwise known among Reds as International Workers’ Day, the New York Times actually published an encomium to those thrilling days of yesteryear “when Communism inspired Americans.” But it’s not just American communists keeping the dream alive; in the run up to May Day the week before, writing for the digital news publication Quartz, Australia’s Helen Razer explained “Why I’m a Communist—and Why You Should Be, Too.”

According to the website description, the chief focus of Razer’s work “has been what she sees as the crisis of liberalism.” The real crisis is that true liberalism has been shoved aside by a radical left that embraces violent totalitarianism, but that’s not Razer’s take. In her mind, the crisis is that pure communism hasn’t been given enough of a chance to succeed. “Communism is a system of social organization that has never been truly tried and, these days, never truly explained. Yet it inspires fear in some, derision in others, and an almost universal unconcern for what it is actually intended to convey.”

This is the excuse communists repeatedly trot out in the face of a tsunami of evidence that their ideology has indeed been tried all over the world and has proven to be arguably the most devastating, inhumane belief system ever imposed on mankind. Every country where communism has been “tried” has gone to hell because of it. That’s not a coincidence nor is it just a failed effort to get it right; that is the inevitable consequence of communism.

Are Kids' Movies Too Violent?

In a recent interview, beloved actor Dick Van Dyke, who is currently filming a Mary Poppins sequel scheduled for release next year, raised a concern that the graphic violence and scary intensity of today’s video games and movies are having a detrimental influence on generations of young viewers.

So many productions today are “all gunfire and killing,” said Van Dyke. “Violence and entertainment have almost became interchangeable.” He worries that this toxic ingredient incites violent behavior and affects impressionable young people who “idolize it as a romantic way of life.”

“When I was a teenager,” Van Dyke explained, “I modelled myself after the way Fred Astaire or Cary Grant dressed. Now kids emulate street gangs. They like to dress like hoods. That’s just a reversal. They’re picking the wrong role models.”  

‘Tough and Tender’ Mr. T’s Amazing Grace

Nothing tugs at the heartstrings quite as unexpectedly as when a stoic tough guy reveals his tender side, and there is no tougher guy than Mr. T. On last Monday night’s episode of Dancing With the Stars, a show normally notable for its sexy and flamboyant (if sometimes awkward) dance routines, the A-Team star moved everyone with a quiet, unassuming performance of praise and gratitude for the faith that got him through his bout with cancer.

In the episode called “Most Memorable Year Week,” the celebrity participants chose the most important year in their lives and danced to a song that represents that year for them. The 64-year-old Mr. T (“My first name is ‘Mr,’ my middle name is ‘period,’ last name is ‘T.’”) chose 1995, the year he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

Nonie Darwish Demolishes the False Equivalence Between Christianity and Islam

Several years ago I was expressing to a friend of mine what I assumed was the undeniable fact that the world has an Islam problem. Her kneejerk response, ingrained by years of Progressive indoctrination, was, “But don’t you think Christianity is just as bad?”

Tragically, this continues to be the instinct among the multiculturalist multitudes in the West: a reflexive defense of Islam and an equally swift condemnation of Christianity. As jihad in all its forms – violent, cultural, legal – advances in the West, willfully blind defenders of Islam keep insisting that it is one of the world’s great Abrahamic religions, that all religions have extremists, and that, if anything, the colonialism and intolerance of the Christian West is the bigger problem. Our cultural elites demonize and fear-monger about the Christian right in ways they would never dream of characterizing Muslims.

Husbands Are Not the Enemy

In the wake of a cascade of articles from The New York Times celebrating January’s Women’s March as a stirring symbol of feminist empowerment – as demonstrated by pussy hats, profane placards, unhinged celebrity poetry, and the rejection of pro-life women – that same paper hit a new low in the blatant bashing of American manhood.

The Times’ Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed recently with the outrageous title “Husbands Are Deadlier Than Terrorists” in which he compared the relative risks to Americans of “two critical issues: refugees and guns.” He concluded, predictably, that terrorists slipping in among an influx of refugees are a negligible threat, while guns are the pestilential scourge of our time.

The Brave New World of Publishing’s ‘Sensitivity Readers’

Nothing so surely kills artistic expression and the free spirit of the imagination as political dogma. When politics hijacks art the result is propaganda – a blunt instrument of control instead of a vehicle for transcendance.

The Chicago Tribune reports that book publishers have begun making increasing use of so-called “sensitivity readers” to examine manuscripts and to offer feedback in terms of any racist, sexist or otherwise offensive content. Such readers sometimes specialize in areas of expertise that an author might lack, such as “dealing with terminal illness,” “racial dynamics in Muslim communities within families,” or “transgender issues.”

What David Beckham Could Learn From Tim Tebow About Humility

Sports reveals character, it’s often said, but sometimes an athlete’s off-the-field actions can be even more revealing – and not always for the better.

Last weekend the Tim Tebow Foundation put on its annual Night to Shine prom experience for a whopping 75,000 people at 350 churches in 50 states and 11 countries. The event is for people ages 14 and older with special needs. “The Night to Shine movement is more than just a prom,” said Tebow. “It is a night where people with special needs shine and they are told that they matter, that they are important and that God has a plan for their life!”

In a promotional video, the former Heisman Trophy winner and NFL quarterback (and now a Mets outfielder) Tebow is shown flying to Haiti to kick off this year’s celebration and dance with some of the special needs kids before jetting off to other Night to Shine locations. “I love these kids and celebrate them,” Tebow says of the Haitian children, and you believe him.

Love him or hate him – and wearing his Christianity on his sleeve has earned him many from both camps – it’s difficult to doubt Tebow’s sincerity or joyful commitment to charitable works. In fact, Tebow is better known for his unusually forthright Christianity than his on-the-field achievements. And he almost certainly would prefer it that way. One gets the impression that he is unimpressed by his own celebrity status but uses it to serve others.

Speaking of status, very few former athletes have achieved the degree of celebrity of David Beckham. One of soccer’s all-time greats (though many would consider him a better ambassador for the sport than a player), Becks nonetheless is far more widely-known as an influential style icon and Spice Girl husband with a net worth of upwards of $350 million.

Be Like Library Man

A cellphone video recently uploaded to YouTube, which has been viewed over 750,000 times as of this writing, proves that heroes don’t always wear capes. Sometimes they come in button-down shirts and nerdy eyeglasses.

The video opens on a band of University of Washington student protesters gathered in the school library, reportedly about an hour after President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this month. Led by a woman wielding a megaphone (as if one were necessary in the quiet space) they begin chanting, 

“Who’s got the power?” “We’ve got the power!” “What kind of power?” “Equal power!”

A little uninspired as chants go, but anyway, just as the wannabe revolutionaries are finding their groove, we hear a lone voice off-camera shouting for their attention. The camera pans to a studious-looking, young Asian gentleman in button-down shirt and glasses, glaring at them in disapproval. “Hey… hey ... HEY!” he interrupts. The protesters, probably unaccustomed to being shushed, quiet down in confusion.

“This is library!” he scolds in accented English. Then he stalks away with a stern backward glance, clearly because he has work to do and no more time to waste on this motley crew. The protesters are left in stunned silence, although one woman among them lobs a feeble comment at his back suggesting something about him going back to Beijing – not a very inclusive or multicultural comment for a college protester demanding equality.

It's unclear if the young man actually works at the library, simply wanted to study in peace and quiet, or felt compelled to reprimand the protesters on behalf of others who were there to study, but in any case he swiftly became the subject of internet memes; the funniest is a video where he is Photoshopped into the famous scene from the movie 300 in which King Leonidas roars “This… is… Sparta!” before booting a Persian enemy into the abyss.

Kermit Gosnell, America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer

Masked by innocuous language like “pro-choice” and “reproductive care,” and protected by a media conspiracy of silence, the grim reality of abortion rarely surfaces in our cultural awareness, as it did with the recent undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s moral vacuum. But a new book about the chilling crimes of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, America’s most prolific serial killer, highlights that ugly reality in an even more horrifying but compelling fashion.

Part true-crime investigation, part social commentary, part courtroom drama, and part journey into the banality of evil, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer was written by investigative journalists and filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, well-known for their controversial documentaries FrackNation and Not Evil Just Wrong, as well as a play called Ferguson drawn entirely from testimony about the shooting of Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson. The husband-and-wife team have also miraculously crowdfunded a feature film based on the Gosnell story (it raised more money than any film project in Indiegogo history), directed by conservative actor and Twitter gadfly Nick Searcy (Justified), with the screenplay written by novelist and political commentator Andrew Klavan.

McElhinney begins the book with a confession that she had “never trusted or liked pro-life activists”; she resented the “emotional manipulation” of their demonstrations – until she began researching the Gosnell story, a process so “brutal” that at times she wept and prayed at her computer, not only over Gosnell’s evil but over “the reality of abortion” even when it’s performed properly and legally. Writing the book changed her dramatically, and it’s not an overstatement to say that reading this book will have the same effect on many readers as well.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell might still be butchering babies today if it weren’t for the dedication of a Philadelphia narcotics investigator named Jim Wood who followed up a lead about Gosnell’s lucrative illegal prescription scheme. The lead led to a raid on Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion clinic in February, 2010, where investigators discovered shockingly unsanitary conditions and incompetent, untrained assistants, as well as improperly medicated post-abortion patients sleeping or sitting together under bloodstained blankets, a few in need of hospitalization. The procedure room was even filthier. Fetal remains were found throughout, in empty water and milk jugs, cat food containers, and orange juice bottles with the necks cut off. One cupboard held five jars containing baby feet, which Gosnell apparently severed and kept for his own amusement.