Several times in the past your faithful correspondent has written about the apparent slow motion downfall of American civilization in the name of political correctness, being inclusive and just being great big suckers, and the contention that the downfall will benefit no one; either those being brought down or those doing the bringing down.
For such a stance this writer has been called a paleo-conservative. This is an inaccurate description. The classic definition of a conservative, whether vanilla or paleo, is of a man who stands across the march of time and "progress" shouting "Stop!" This writer is standing across the seeming irresistible tide of modernity and post-modernity shouting "Go back! Beyond this point are dragons that will eat you for hors d'ouerves, and your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren will curse you memory for abandoning the Western canon in favor of anarchism, barbarity and just bad taste."
What brings on this particular screed concerning the hole that our nations cultural elites are digging us into, whether with or without our permission, are several things. The first is the inordinate amount of coverage that the passing of Anna Nichole Smith has brought to the media. The second is a talk by Dr. James Hirsen concerning the corrosive effect of popular culture, specifically the cinema, on the culture at large.
Let's face it. Anna Nichole Smith, may she rest in peace and God have mercy on her soul through Our Lord Christ, was nothing but a, to use an old popular word, a hooch. She came to fame by allowing herself to be photographed naked. Granted, she had a lovely figure, but so do many other women, including the ever lovely Lady Nib who has never allowed herself to be photographed naked, and she maintained her fame by allowing herself to be photographed naked and by being incredibly dumb. She was a slow motion train wreck that, for some reason, the media, and note that this writer does not say "the public" (the public has access only to those things that the media covers), was fascinated with. This fascination with Miss Smith is really tantamount with a fascination with the strippers that one finds at one's local "Gentleman's Club." In fact, the women at the local strip joint probably have more interesting tales to tell than Miss Smith had to tell.
But for some reason the media have decided that Miss Smith's passing of this mortal coil deserves microscopic inspections of her life, her death, her children, her many assignations and her finances. In other words, your local news reader has spent the last week celebrating the life of a woman who's claim to fame was a pleasant form as if she were the leader of a major nation. To be crude, as far as the news media are concerned, boobs trump local, national or world events. That's what a degree in journalism is worth: the mentality of a fourteen year old boy drooling over a copy of Juggs magazine.
There are times when your faithful correspondent feels like sitting back in the chaise in the solarium and saying to the family maid, "Babette, sweet and lovely frogette, please bring me a G&T. And then bring me another in fifteen minutes and continue to do so every fifteen minutes until I am goggled-eyed. The you have my permission to sneak off to the pub and meet, and bill and coo with an honest young yeoman farmer as long as his name is Bill or Bob or Albert." Thinking of the state of the "entertainment" industry causes this writer to reach for the Bombay Gin and Schweppe's.
Dr. James Hirsen, who is/was a professor at Trinity College in Orange County and Biola University, in an interview on the radio program Apologetics.com this morning pointed out the intellectual dishonesty of the entertainment industry and its sense of privilege and oppose, philosophically, to the rest of us plebes who actually pay their wages.
If you, like this writer, are a conservative or reactionary, you might wonder why those in Hollywood seem so hell bound on proving to you what an idiot, dupe of the Man or sucker you are while the powers that be in the movie/television/ music industry seem to give themselves a pass for behaving badly and setting a bad example for your children. This writer has no answer except that the power in the entertainment industry is infect badly with post-modernism.
Could it be that they think that behaving badly is a good thing? Or to be more accurate, is their behaving badly is a good thing? One wonders if they would be happy knowing that the mechanic who is working on their Mercedes was so drunk that he mistook the oil filler cap for the brake fluid filler cap or stuffed an oxygen sensor into a spark plug hole. Behaving badly and showing and celebrating people proudly behaving badly is okay for them. But, of course, when their wives are caught in bed with the pool boy suddenly isn't as funny as it is in an episode of Desperate Housewives.
Consider the fact that the Hollywood elite considers itself the intellectual elite. They are above the norms of right and wrong, the moral and the immoral. Is it not a strange thing that the majority of the vocal persons in the entertainment industry oppose the death penalty while making films that celebrate murderers, sadism and sluttish behavior i.e., Saw I, II and III, Hostel, any Hannibal Lechter movie, Showgirls, Coyote Ugly. They entertainment elite denigrate the military during a time of war while the enemy, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or in secret wars, protect said elite from the very enemy that claims that Hollywood is polluting and corrupting their world and who would, if given the chance, behead the Hollywood elites before they would behead Jerry Falwell or the Christians, or whatever stripe, who try to uphold traditional Western values. The elites seem to believe that they are above the concerns of the rest of us and use their influence to ruin the very thing that holds them up.
Back in the 1970s a French writer wrote a novel entitled The Camp of the Saints which dealt with a sudden and mass immigration of people from the Third World into Europe. One of the concerns of the novel dealt with the corruption of Western culture by people who did not value Western culture and who did not understand the value of Western culture. In one chapter of the novel there is described the experience of a man sitting in his house overlooking the beach in southern France where many ships full of Third World immigrants have beached. He waits for the inundation while cooking a supper, making sure that his rifle is loaded and listening to Mozart, who the author of the novel calls the epitome of Western music and culture. A shaggy hair French man appears in his courtyard claiming that he is simpatico with the invasion and looks forward to the overtaking of Western civilization by people who not only fix a carburetor or understand the writings of Saint Augustine, but can't even start a car or read. The homeowner listen to the shaggy man's rant for a while and then calmly shoots him dead. Consider yourself the homeowner and the entertainment industry the shaggy man.Much of it is against you and your values. They worry more about the effects of second hand smoke on your daughter than they do about influencing your daughter to become a round heels. They worry more about the deleterious effects on your son by becoming a Marine than they do about your son becoming a serial murderer preying on the daughters of other. They are more worried about you being a devout Christian than they are about you being a jihadist Muslim. Your life, as a legal and productive member of the American culture, is worth less than an illegal alien drug dealer. You are normal. You are an American. You are a Christian or Jew. You pay your taxes. You try to get your children a good education and assure them of a good life. And thus, you are, in the eyes of Hollywood, a freak and the people you consider freaks, criminals or dangerous, are the heroes.
There was a time when movies urged the viewer up. Now the movies seem to try to pull the viewer down. There was a time when fidelity to God, country, marriage were considered good things. Now (actually for the past forty years) these virtues are considered non-inclusive and what were considered vices are considered avant-garde. White and black trash behavior are celebrated by the entertainment industry and any appeal to the old values is considered an appeal by hypocrites because back in the old days occasionally some one was caught doing the nasty with his neighbor's wife or drunk on a Saturday night. Nowadays the entertainment industry doesn't even go to the trouble of being hypocrites. The industry just acts as if there is no virtue. The old saying went something like, "Hypocrisy is the price that vice pays to virtue." Now, in Hollywood, there seems to be no virtue.
Babette, bring me another G&T!
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