Pandora's Box

You've really gotta hand it to today's avowed conservatives. There's no perceived boogeyman too ludicrous or contrived controversy too small for them to inflate into a full-on Extinction-of-America-Level Event. Case in point: Avatar.

Just bask in some of this hilarious horseshit:

"If Hollywood learns anything from Avatar it could be that James Cameron might have finally figured out a way to further leftist causes on film and make a profit while doing so. Rather than become another victim of the 100% failure rate enjoyed by pretentious, melodramatic, preachy, adult dramas designed to trash our military and undermine America — they now know they have to make pretentious, melodramatic, preachy $500 million, 3D, sci-fi event films that trash our military and undermine America... (Avatar) looks like a big-budget animated film with a garish color palette right off a hippie’s tie dye shirt.”

-- John Nolte in Andrew Breitbart's "Big Hollywood"

"Avatar is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism -- a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world."

-- Ross Douthat in an op-ed piece in the New York Times

"The conclusion does ask the audience to root for the defeat of American soldiers at the hands of an insurgency. So it is a deep expression of anti-Americanism."

-- John Podhoretz in the Weekly Standard

Actually, you know what's anti-American (besides openly hoping for the President of the United States to fail or, worse, praying for him to die)? Concerning yourself with this kind of fatuous crap when the economy's been clusterfucked, millions are unemployed and we're engaged in two wars. Clearly, if you spend your time worrying about whether James Cameron is pushing a liberal agenda in a 3D movie about blue aliens ("See? They're blue!") you deserve to be taken seriously. If these clowns choose to slam Avatar, though, they should at least get their facts straight: The invading force on Pandora isn't the U.S. Military; it's a Blackwater-style mercenary militia (although now that I think about it, in the ass-backward mind of the neo-con, Erik Prince's little army of highly paid, unaccountable Christian Soldiers is even further beyond reproach than our own troops).

By the way, ask the Native Americans if they think the story of an advanced military force moving in to purge the indigenous people from the land because it wants it all for itself is "anti-American."

Related:

DXM: The Right Stuff/2.17.09