We saw the movie "2016 Obama's America" in Madison, Wisconsin.

Of all places. There were about 50 people in the audience for the 12:40 show. I talked to a couple women who thought they'd arrived at a pro-Obama movie and then, half way through, realized it was against him. One wisecracked "I'm a Republican now." And then, again, in a humorous tone, "It almost makes you pro-colonialism."

I said Dinesh D'Souza was not against anti-colonialism but against the kind of anti-colonialism that developed in the 20th century and involved left-wing, collectivist ideology unlike the anti-colonialism of the American founding. One of the women said, "That's pretty complex," as if that wasn't the idea spelled out extremely clearly over the course of the 90-minute movie they'd just watched.

The movie is doing quite well:

Mr. D'Souza's co-director, John Sullivan, said in an interview that even he was surprised by the strong weekend showing. He credited talk radio, a bastion of conservative thought, as a key megaphone for the film....

Mr. Sullivan said that, perhaps counterintuitively, some of the movie's strongest earnings have originated at a theater in Manhattan's Union Square, far from any conservative stronghold. 

Don't exclude the possibility that people are wandering in there under the impression that they're going to a pro-Obama show. Why else would it be playing in Madison/Manhattan/Leftytown?

It fits with the movie's theme that Americans didn't try to learn more about Obama before voting him into the Presidency. If we didn't take much care about that, why would you expect us to pay any attention to what movie seat we're plunking our asses into?

ADDED: Here's what I think is the key clip that's used in the movie:

"Althouse and her followers being expelled from the Garden of Bloggen to the Land of HuffPo."

Writes Meade, after I say "So let me slink away and contemplate my own offenses against The Creator." Here's the illustration he sends us to:


(Enlarge.)

What an amazing image! It's an 1880 painting called "Cain flying before Jehovah's Curse," by Fernand Cormon. It's at the Musée d'Orsay (in Paris), so I guess I've seen it, but I don't remember it.

Despite his moment of glory as a Beaux-Arts professor..., [Cormon] was almost forgotten by 1924 when he was run over by a taxi outside his studio, and is barely remembered today save as the teacher of more illustrious pupils.

Here's the relevant passage in the Bible, Genesis 4:16: "And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden." I don't know where he got all those other people going with him or why they looks like cave-folk. I'm guessing Cormon was stoking our doubts — making it look especially bizarre to make us think about how bizarre the Biblical account really is.

"Now that Tampa is out of harm's way, mostly from Isaac, I'm alarmed to see what might happen in New Orleans."

"Head's up, all you central Gulf Coasters!" says MadisonMan, in the comments on the Crist thread, and Meade points me to this map, showing the predicted storm path as of 11 EDT:



First, MadisonMan's syntax makes me see a joke I don't think he intended. "Now that Tampa is out of harm's way, mostly from Isaac..." Didn't he only mean to say "Now that Tampa is mostly out of harm's way from Isaac"? Or did he mean to say that Tampa is still in harm's way? The major harm aimed its way was Isaac, and that's now going elsewhere, but Tampa is nevertheless in the path of the approaching the GOP convention.

But, anyway, let's move on to those people who have thought it was acceptable and funny to joke about God taking aim at the Republican convention. For example, at the Isthmus forum, which I linked to in the Crist thread, a commenter using the pseudonym Henry Vilas said "I wonder if Pat Robinson will claim that God is sending a hurricane to Tampa in order to punish the GOP."

Notice that Vilas is himself thinking of the hurricane as God's punishment, but he dredges up "Robinson"[sic-- it's Robertson] to put the vile observation into the mouth of someone who is not a liberal. But liberals were not refraining from joking about God's wrath aimed at the GOP. Remember that Dana Milbank's column.

Of course, the liberals are only joking about God. God is a joke. Robertson was (presumably) genuinely wondering about the things a God he believes in might do to punish sinful human beings. I don't know which is worse, but if you care about sin — or good and evil — you should give priority to the things you do, not to whether other people are offending God (and how God is assessing and reacting to these various offenses). If a hurricane is coming, that's a serious matter, and real people are in danger. That's not great material for your political jokes, even though it just seems so delicious that a hurricane is was pointed at the GOP convention.

And, I know, I'm violating my own principle in saying that you should look to your own sins. So let me slink away and contemplate my own offenses against The Creator.

"So if you were to pick one up, you'd be like, 'Oh! This is a homemade Mounds bar.' "

"Basically it's coconut and sugar dipped in chocolate"... but it's not, because it's got potatoes, and it's a needham, the food from Maine that you haven't heard of... or have you?

The origin of needhams is hazy, but lore centers around the late 1800s and a Rev. Needham....

I don't taste the potato, but [some guy in Maine] says that's the idea.

"It's less about tasting potato," he says, "and more about that it's just not really gummy and cloyingly sweet."

This is one article in a series over at NPR — "Americandy: Sweet Land Of Liberty'We're taking a cross-country tour of candies from around the U.S., sampling hometown sweets that deliver a nostalgic sugar rush." I was just looking at the NPR home page and said out loud: "Whatever happened to NPR? It's pretty much irrelevant politically, and all the news seems to be soft news about nice things that feel good to people who don't want to hear about politics. Maybe it's something about what works on the radio." And the next thing you know, I was swept into an article about using Maine potatoes to concoct some Mounds-like candy that not so gummy and sweet, and then on to a whole series of articles about local candy: Buffalo Sponge, Chukar Cherries, Valomilks, etc. etc.

"His only hope is a convention reinvention..." — a faux movie trailer from the Obama campaign...

... presenting Romney as the main character in a movie — "in a world..." — facing a terrible challenge and having very little hope....



I don't know if you're rolling on the floor laughing at all that comedy, but here's what I think. In the stereotypical "in a world..." movie trailer presenting one man who's up against a seemingly insurmountable challenge, that character is a hero, and in the movie, we identify with him and he wins.

AND: Some background on those "in a world" trailers (originated and implemented by "The Voice" Don LaFontaine):

Crist comes out for Obama because of "his vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class..."

"... in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility."

Crist's editorialidentifies him as "Charlie Crist is the former Republican governor of Florida" — and "former Republican" is unwittingly apt.

Speaking of apt, here's Meade, contributing to The Forum at our local Madison alternative paper Isthmus (quoting Crist's statement first):

"I applaud and share [Obama's] vision of a future built by a strong and confident middle class in an economy that gives us the opportunity to reap prosperity through hard work and personal responsibility. It is a vision of the future proven right by our history."

Yeah, Romney's vision is of a weak and frightened middle class in an economy without opportunity for prosperity.

Of course, that vision, unfortunately, comes from looking at the last four years of the Obama administration.

"[D]evelopments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects."

Writes Arthur S. Brisbane, in his last column as the NYT "Public Editor."

Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.

Engaging in a trend called "Trash the Dress" — "where recent brides playfully destroy their wedding dress"...

... a beautiful woman dies:

The distraught photographer, Louis Pagakis, told CTV Montreal that he did everything he could to save [30-year-old Maria] Pantazopoulos after she got into danger.

She had her wedding dress on and she said, ‘take some pictures of me while I swim a little bit in the lake,’ she went in and her dress got heavy, I tried everything I could to save her,” he told the station, visibly emotional....

'She was doing the photo shoot in about 6 inches or 1-foot of water when part of her wedding dress got soaked and became extremely heavy,' [police spokesman Sgt. Ronald[ McInnis told MailOnline.

She was found 100 feet from the photo spot, sunk to the bottom, dragged down by the wedding dress.

"I was mostly looking for a symbol that wasn’t used much."

"And there weren’t a lot of options — an exclamation point or a comma. I could have used an equal sign, but that wouldn’t have made much sense."

The story of @.

"Ultimately the question is, does 'mankind' really need men?"

"With human cloning technology just around the corner and enough frozen sperm in the world to already populate many generations, perhaps we should perform a cost-benefit analysis."

[W]omen live longer, are healthier and are far less likely to commit a violent offense. If men were cars, who would buy the model that doesn’t last as long, is given to lethal incidents and ends up impounded more often?

That's from the NYT, which is, of course, written for women. Stuff like this is considered light entertainment. It will be interspersed with serious articles about the "war on women." Enjoy!

***

That last link goes to a search within the NYT for "war on women." I was amused by the old things that popped up.

From 1927: "Berlin Men War on Women Who 'Doll Up' at Meals."

Also 1927: "Stanley (Wis.) Bachelors War On Nuptial Lures by Women." (I don't want to buy the article, but I can see this snippet: "... of Stanley have declared 'war on women.' An organization has been tentatively for 'mutual protection from devices now used by the fair sex to entangle single...'")

1911: "WAR ON WOMEN GAMBLERS.; Chicago Detective Visits Fashionable Houses to Stop Poker Games." ("Chief of Police McWeeny declared war to-day on poker playing by women in private.")

1972: "The Church's War on Women." ("Pope Paul VI has reaffirmed the rules of priestly celibacy and debarred women from formal investiture by bishops in Roman Catholic orders. There were to be no female deacons, let alone female priests.")

1943: "Dr. Mead, Anthropologist, Reports On Effect of War on Women's Garb; She Tells Members of Fashion Group, Inc., That Utility Clothes in England Will Do Much to Reduce Class Consciousness." (What? Again I'm not paying to get to the article, but, Googling, I found a Smithsonian article saying that during WWII, the U.S. and British commands commissioned Margaret Mead to try to figure out why American and British soldiers had trouble understanding each other. She discovered that the British couldn't answer the question what's your favorite color without getting all complicated about it and concluded it had to do with their class consciousness.)

Most apt, when it comes to the 2012 election, is this February 2011 editorial, "The War on Women."

These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.

I'm guessing that the current usage of the term began right there.

"Neil Armstrong was... a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job."

Good job!

"Tropical Storm Isaac Crashes Party-Crasher Joe Biden's Party Crashing."

I'm crushed.

"You went from very boxy clothes to the slim fit... Those shirts are a little tighter than the usual Paul Ryan shirts."

"The girls at our studio notice."/"Some of 'em are big and some of 'em fit real well."

At the Alpine Café...

... we notice the small things too.

"Your 'Pregnant' Other."

#1 on a list of "The Five Worst Pregnancy Trends on Pinterest."

(You'll love the photo!)

"How does an agency that is supposed to regulate drug testing strip a guy of seven titles without a single positive drug test?"

"How is it that an American agency can decide to invalidate somebody’s results achieved in Europe, in a sport it doesn’t control?"

Why is Bill Clinton appearing at the Democratic Convention and George Bush not appearing at the GOP Convention?

Just a question.

At the Empire State Building yesterday, the 9 bystanders who got shot were all shot by the police.

"Officers fired a total of 16 rounds; one officer shot nine while another one shot seven."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the bystanders were not hit directly by police, but rather the officers' struck "flowerpots and other objects around, so ... their bullets fragmented and, in essence, that's what caused the wounds."

ADDED: More evidence of the need for gun control!

Obama's campaign is nothing but negativity against Romney.

Observes Toby Harnden, noting a corresponding crankiness in the crowds that come out to see him.

... Obama is on the defensive and knows the only way he can win re-election is by the narrowest of margins, by ‘slicing and dicing’ – his own pejorative term – and eking out a 51 to 49 per cent victory, crawling across the line to 270 electoral college votes.

Via Rush Limbaugh, who says

Let me ask you this, any of you paying attention to Obama at these campaign appearances: Have you heard him say what he wants to do the next four years?... Have you heard anything that would qualify as a second-term agenda?...

[H]is entire campaign consists of trying to scare everybody in his pathetic base of voters about what a bad guy Romney is. That's all he's got. His agenda is to try to get people to hate Mitt Romney....

There is nothing comparable in this year's campaign to what Obama was getting away with in 2008. That was lofty....

He's implicitly saying that we should stay the course, but I can see why he's not leaning on that message. He can't do the old hope-and-change message, because he's the status quo. Getting us excited about hope and change could only push us toward Romney (and Ryan).

"Their goal is to dehumanize everyone’s sexuality and reduce us to using sex for the sole purpose of perpetuating our species."

"To that end, they will criminalize your entire sex life..."

"They" = those who oppose same-sex marriage.