Barack Obama’s attempt to defuse the crisis in his presidential campaign caused by videos of his “spiritual mentor’s” bigoted sermons has been spun as “the most significant public discussion of race in decades,” as The New York Times gushed. In fact, Obama merely recycled the tired received wisdom about race in America, the same clichés and nostrums peddled by television, government programs, movies, and just about every classroom in America. That this old racial script is being touted as some sort of fresh and “honest” discussion of race in America proves just the opposite. Liberal Americans, both black and white, apparently prefer gratifying, dishonest, and self-serving racial myths to the hard truth.

To correct the media’s packaging of Obama’s stale received ideas about race as some sort of epochal shift in our public conversation, a close analysis of the speech will be more useful and illuminating than a commentary based on sound-bite-sized quotations. The following is an attempt to provide such an analysis. [more]

Did ya see the Red Sea parting?  Water turned into wine? Loaves and Fishes? And to borrow from Islam, the Miraj/Night Journey?  None are so amazing as the media finally, FINALLY, FINALLY getting around to playing referee in a game which to date has been all-Obama all the time.
 
The web is filled with Obama-bashing – who knew it would ever happen?  The temptation is to say: It had to happen, it was overdue, it was inevitable. But, why now, instead of earlier?  Is it the hiatus between major primaries?  Did some magical critical mass develop, over the Reverend Wright issue? It had been in the public realm for over a year, yet it never met the tipping-point cascade of this past week. [more]

by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 3/14/08

Just a scan of the midpoint of an Ebony story on Obama’s campaign is worthy of your own examination to see if you notice what caught my eye:
 
The morning of the Iowa caucuses, Valerie Jarrett sat calmly sipping mint tea in front of a fireplace at a hotel in West Des Moines. As the CEO of one of the nation's largest real estate firms, The Habitat Company, a member of the University of Chicago's Board of Trustees, former chair of the board of the Chicago Stock Exchange, and former head of the Chicago Transit Authority, Jarrett already had plenty on her plate.

But the former adviser to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and longtime friend of Michelle and Barack Obama had made the decision to leave her position on the Federal Reserve Board and "come inside" to work full time on the campaign as a senior adviser. And, on that morning, she felt good. "This is such a unique opportunity to have two close personal friends embarking on this journey, I would regret this for the rest of my life [if I didn't participate]," she says. "I really think he has a chance to not just change our country but change the world ... When he wins, I'll feel like this is MY country again." [more]

by John Mark Reynolds [author, academic] 3/18/08

It is sad that I must caution readers about the content of this essay regarding Notre Dame University.

For any Christian academic, being critical of Notre Dame University feels like a Pop Warner coach explaining the West Coast offense to Mike Holmgren.

Notre Dame is a great educational home for American Christians. The philosophy department by itself is of importance to any “mere Christian.” Great good is done there and every Christian college and university could learn from this great institution’s successes. [more]

If it weren’t for the fact that some upstanding conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter had been so outspoken about their antipathy to John McCain, I would have suspected that the campaign being waged against the man had been entirely manufactured by James Carville and underwritten by George Soros.

As I’ve written elsewhere, Sen. McCain was not my first choice or even my second or third.  I would have preferred Newt Gingrich.  Of those who actually got into the race, I initially backed Giuliani, but once he dropped out, I wound up voting for Mitt Romney in the California primary.  I’m sorry my guys struck out, but I’ll be far more miserable if the Democrat wins in November, and, frankly, I don’t know why every Republican doesn’t feel the same way. [more]

A few years ago, I re-connected with a guy I hadn’t seen in about 50 years. We’d been friends in junior high, but once my family moved, Gary and I wound up attending different high schools. Which is pretty much like living on different planets.

After he came across my stuff on the Internet, Gary contacted me and suggested getting together for lunch. And so we did. While reminiscing about the old days, I told him that I was still grateful that he’d taught me to play tennis. He was surprised to hear that I still played. But his surprise was nothing compared to mine when he said that he was grateful that I’d introduced him to good books and great music. Quite honestly, I hadn’t realized I’d done that. Unlike his teaching me tennis, it wasn’t something I’d set out to do. But he assured me that I was the first person he’d ever known who read Steinbeck and Dickens, Salinger and Dostoyefsky, Benchley and S.J. Perelman, and who listened to classical music. [more]

by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 3/5/08

Meathead made a commercial. Meathead hasn’t scored in a while, and has recycled some out-takes from his long-past cinematic ripostes, into a pastiche for Hillary that has gotten attention from the media, now declaring in a news alert: Hollywood is now in the political ad business!
 
This ad is a barometer, a windsock, a tattletale of the pale in which the dems are stuck.  The ad of Jack Nicholson braying as a mad colonel, in the Marines of course, in “A Few Good Men” who is an incarnation of misogyny as ever in the movies, reveals much. The missing element is the realization – perhaps to be noted by the media [har har] or talk radio [more likely] – that the good colonel is trying to intimidate the lovely lady in sexy white Navy uniform.  The petite lt. Commander/legal beagle is the target of thinly veiled verbal threats, to derail her determined investigation of an errant military ‘code red’ on the base which led to an enlisted Marine’s death. [more]

by John Mark Reynolds [author, academic] 2/27/08

Senator Clinton will never be president. Obama would be a fool to put her on a ticket and he is no fool.

Against a weak field, cleared out for her, she failed. She is a phenomenally weak campaigner who is exhausted by crowds and people. She is smart, perhaps having the most book smarts in the race, but she has not “people intelligence.”

To give just one example of her bad ear for the “people” side of debate: [more]

For a long time, there has been a controversy brewing in America over whether or not to make English our official language.  The arguments in favor seem overwhelmingly compelling to me.  Doesn’t it seem absurd that when so many people living in foreign countries see obvious advantages in learning English, that millions of those who actually reside here, who make their livings and raise their children here, and who vote in our elections, can neither read nor write the language?

Yet, most Democratic politicians and even some Republicans balk at the idea.  All this time, I have assumed that their objection was predicated on their fear of being labeled racists, and worried that it might cost them votes in future elections.  But I am beginning to wonder if their reluctance isn’t based on the fact that for so many of those in public life, basic English skills are simply beyond them. [more]

I have a confession to make.  On many occasions, I have been one of those people who have ridiculed people for no other reason than that they’ve been lawyers.  I have generalized about them as if they were all a pack of ambulance chasers or, worse yet, politicians -- or, worst of all, ambulance-chasing politicians such as John Edwards.

But, it’s just not fair and I apologize.  After all, many lawyers serve a useful function as they go about drawing up contracts and wills.  However, that being said, I wouldn’t want any of you to assume that this is to be taken as my mea culpa to the entire legal profession.  There are still any number of law school grads who could teach snakes how to crawl.  There are still criminal defense attorneys who, while paying lip service to the notion that everyone deserves the best defense money can buy, will devote their lives to bamboozling juries into letting rapists, pedophiles and serial killers, go free. [more]

The war against Islamic jihad continues to be compromised in the West by the dominant narrative that supposedly makes sense of the conflict. In this scenario, the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful moderates, while the jihadists exploit a distortion of Islam fueled by modern discontents. To the left, these discontents are created by Western neo-imperialist and neo-colonialist adventurism, oil-industry greed, a culture-destroying globalization, irrational “Islamophobia” and “Orientalism,” and continuing support for Israel’s “occupation” of Muslim territory and thwarting of Palestinian nationalist aspirations. To the right, a lack of political freedom and economic development dashes Muslim hopes for a better life and leaves them prey to jihadist propaganda. Both interpretations, however, are based on unfounded assumptions.

The first assumption is the existence of large numbers of “Muslim moderates." [more]

Windrider: SundanceFestival's Spiritual Elements
by Marc T. Newman [media reviewer/critic] 1/25/08

It is a little ironic that at a festival called "Sundance" I have spent upwards of twelve hours a day, sitting in a sometimes-cramped seat, completely in the dark. But, rightly considered, the "Sun" – the truth claims embedded in the films shown here – represents the light the filmmakers possess, and the dance is the dialogue that follows between the creators and their audiences. Coming here is nothing like seeing a movie at your local cineplex. It is, at turns, more delightful and more dangerous (but more on that in the next installment).

I was invited to Sundance as part of a group of concerned Christian cultural analysts, and even though my Sundance experience is just beginning, I have discovered that what is covered by the entertainment press – the premiere parties and "beautiful people" – completely misses out on what makes Sundance important. They often overlook the relationships forged between those who have "made it" and those who want to, and the innovative new voices that have come to the festival to illumine the films with the Gospel, and, alternately to let the films shine a light on their faith. [more]

Some years ago, I was a movie reviewer.  I started out at UCLA, reviewing for the Daily Bruin, and then moved on to be the first critic for Los Angeles magazine.  All told, I stuck it out for about a dozen years. 

What I didn’t realize at the time was that, all in all, I had had it pretty good.  But it took seeing a rash of movies recently to drive that point home.  At least back then, the inflated egos of the director and the star didn’t make it inevitable that every movie would run well over two hours. [more]

Liberal Fascism
by Bruce Thornton [author] 1/10/08

The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods...

The incoherence of our political discourse results in part from sheer ignorance of political philosophy and its history. Abetted by a superficial media, we trade in sound-bite labels and epithets, free-floating signifiers that communicate not ideas but feelings or prejudices––“conservative,” “liberal,” “progressive,” and of course “fascist” are all terms that seldom have any accurate meaning. This sloppiness makes it more difficult to conduct the political debate where it should be: at the level of fundamental assumptions about human nature, the proper role of government, and the goods suitable for the state to pursue.

Liberal Fascism goes a long way to providing that lost history and recovering the true origins and meanings of our political principles and ideals. Goldberg, a syndicated columnist and editor at the National Review, modestly calls himself a journalist. But he has in fact written a well-documented, fast-paced history of modern politics and political philosophy. Along the way, he sweeps away self-serving liberal and progressive myths, and recovers the true roots of progressive/liberal politics––in the deification of the state as the instrument of utopian aspirations, the same dynamic of 20th century fascism. [more]

For the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat. [more]