Free-Dumb Fighters

There are two types of people in the world: Thinkers and Believers.

To my overseas readers: If you're ever struggling to understand why Americans behave like we do, it's primarily because our national psyche is fundamentally schizophrenic - we're a nation born in bottom-against-top revolution, and we still haven't quite figured out how to reconcile our self-image ("scrappy underdog") with our post-WWII "Superpower" status.

You can see this divided-mindset in the platform of the Republican Party as embodied (this week, anyway) by Mitt Romney; which bases it's political appeal entirely on telling white heterosexual Christian men - the least oppressed, most culturally-dominant, most unduly-priviliged class of human beings ever to walk the Earth - that other types of people becoming their social/cultural equals or no longer seeing their culture held as the only or most important qualify as acts of oppression against them.

If you've got cable, you've probably seen the trailers for "Last Ounce of Courage" and divined that it's a kind of sappy-looking family movie about the surviving relatives of a dead veteran (angsty teen son and aging-biker grandfather, primarily) getting their shit back together to fight some kind of local corruption. Well... those are the general-release "stealth" trailers - designed to make it look like a real movie when it's actually a Christian-Right propaganda piece. Here's the REAL trailer, in which we learn that the evil our heroes are fighting is one of the favorite boogeymen of make-believe oppression: "The War on Christmas."



I for one can't wait for the innevitable scene where assholes who insist on barking "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" back at anyone (particularly service employees) who dares to wish them "Happy Holidays" are lionized like they were freaking' MLK...

Speaking of which, gotta appreciate that they went all-out with "Sinister Black Politician" as the leader of the Christianity-smashing efforts - I can't imagine who THAT'S supposed to remind me of. I also love the little dipshit onstage holding up the American Flag in the middle of a High School Nativity play: A more perfect symbol of present-day religious conservatism I couldn't have imagined.

Film opens September 14th - unsurprisingly, it doesn't seem to be screening for us godless round-Earth-believin' science-lovin' critic types. Ah, well.