’Make him stop’
“I decided to flip on Al Gore’s ’Live Earth’ concert on Saturday. … About two hours after stapling my eyelids to my forehead to ensure that I didn’t miss a single epiphanous second, I got bothered. …
“Reminiscing about a 1975 Newsweek cover story entitled ’The Cooling World’ in which the scientific community was then allegedly predicting the next Ice Age and suggesting that, among the options, we consider purposely melting the Arctic ice cap, and now 30 years later we’re to believe that after 3.5 billion years of life (and 1 million years of human life) on this planet, we are collectively on the verge of going up like a Roman candle because of the amount of Aqua Net consumed by Bon Jovi groupies — no, the fickle nature of the global alarmists didn’t bother me either.
“What bothered me, what truly bothered me was three words uttered by Al Gore, ’Thank you, Leo.’ ’Leo’ as in Leonardo DiCaprio who introduced Gore to the global audience.
“I’ll sign Gore’s 7-point pledge. I’ll install CFL light bulbs in my home. I’ll buy a car that runs entirely on switchgrass. I’ll even stop clubbing baby seals. I’ll do anything they want me to do as long as Al Gore stops his ’hep cat’ routine. Watching Gore keep it real with his Hollywood friends is kind of like watching your dad shake his groove thing at a wedding.
“Global cooling, global warming, sign me up for whatever. Just make him stop.”
— Dan Proft, writing on “A Deal for Gore, ’Live Earth’ Artists,” Tuesday at Humanevents.com
Vigilante theme
” ’You won’t hurt me,’ says a confident Tony, a blonde, sweat-suit-clad terrorist, who is holding a Los Angeles office building hostage, as he stares down the barrel of a pistol at the beginning of the original, 1988 installment of Die Hard. ’There are rules for policemen.’
” ’Yeah,’ answers a shirtless, sweat-drenched Bruce Willis, or rather his character, police officer John McClane, as he punches him in the face. ’That’s what my Captain keeps telling me.’
“So begins the vigilantism of ’Die Hard,’ a movie that grossed $83 million and spawned three sequels, the latest of which [is] ’Live Free or Die Hard.’ …
“But what, exactly, are conservatives supposed to make of this series? Are we supposed to appreciate a cop who plays by his own rules, unfettered by government restrictions, or lament the unchecked power of law enforcement? …
“[W]hat is the message of a movie in which the police who follow procedure are depicted as bumbling, incompetent fools, and the one who breaks the law, and endangers the public, and oversteps the role of a policeman, is depicted as a hero?”
— Dorian Davis, writing on “Vigilantes and ’Live Free or Die Hard,’ ” June 27 in Brainwash at www.affbrainwash.com
Hatchet job
“Since Alan Wolfe’s hatchet job on [conservative philosopher Russell] Kirk appeared in [the New Republic], I’ve had several people remark to me … that they really liked Wolfe’s essay, but of course haven’t read any Kirk themselves. …
“Wolfe’s essay is an intellectual embarrassment of the first order: Smug, dishonest, slipshod, ignorant, and willfully obtuse. Like much of what its author has produced of late, it’s less interested in discrediting Kirk than in discrediting the political persuasion he represents, an American conservatism that Wolfe considers either ’irrelevant in the face of history,’ borderline fascist, or (most likely) both. It’s also about 6,000 words long.”
— Ross Douthat, writing on “The Long Sneer,” Tuesday in the Atlantic Online at www.theatlantic.com
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