by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The attacks on Lone Survivor, the movie about 4 Navy Seals caught in an operation gone lethally wrong in Afghanistan, illustrate once again the fossilized orthodoxy of the left. The L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson called the movie a “jingoistic snuff film” that “bleeds blood red, bone-fracture white, and bruise blue” …
The real national divide isn’t between red and blue states. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America’s big decisions are made. They remind us of two quite different Americas: one country along these coasts and …
Was the MTV performance meant to be repellent rather than enticing? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online An older generation used to call the boredom of bad habits “reaching rock bottom”; the present variant perhaps is “jumping the shark” — that moment when the tiresome gimmicks no longer work, and the show is over. …
Our elites would be right at home in Petronius’s world of debauchery and bored melodrama. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Sometime in the mid-first century a.d., an otherwise little known consular official, Gaius Petronius, wrote a brilliant satirical novel about the gross and pretentious new Roman-imperial elite. The Satyricon is an often-cruel parody about how the …
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Remember Howard Beale, the deranged anchorman from Network? During one broadcast he tells the viewers to turn off their televisions, go to the window, and yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” In one of the iconic scenes from American movies, thousands of New …
by Bruce S. Thornton // Acculturated.com In the early 80s my mom and her sister dropped by our condo while my wife and I were watching Payday on HBO. (If you’re unfamiliar with this movie and Rip Torn’s brilliant performance, just think Crazy Heart for grown-ups.) They happened to come in during a scene in which Rip Torn’s girlfriend …
In good times, the larger-than-life figure is an affront; in crisis, he is necessary. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Tragic heroes — from Sophocles’ Ajax and Antigone to the Western films’ Shane and Woodrow Call — can be defined in a variety of ways. But the common archetype is a larger-than-life figure. He …
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Chrysler’s Super Bowl Ram Truck commercial praising the American farmer was an unexpected big hit and is still being replayed around the country on talk radio. Rich Lowry[1] and Peggy Noonan[2] both contrasted the authenticity of that commercial fantasy with the falsity of the real event. Share This