Coming soon, to a city near me
Bookworm on Apr 01 2009 at 8:33 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
As a great fan of Walt Disney (not the studio, but the man himself), I’m delighted that the San Francisco Presidio, a short drive for me, will be home to a new Disney museum. I have no doubt that he was imperfect, but aren’t we all? And as we get bigger and more famous (I use that “we” rhetorically, being neither big nor famous myself), our faults and failures get magnified as well. Nevertheless, Walt Disney was also a tremendous visionary, a many of fantastic and humane imagination, and a true American original. You can bet that, when the museum finally opens, the kids and I will be there, with bells on.
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Tangential note (do I ever say anything non-tangential?) — I was at the beautiful Lucas theater in the Presidio last night for a preview of the San Francisco International Film Festival films, and they mentioned that their Member’s only surprise screening (they don’t tell you the film ahead if time) would be in that Disney facility, before it has been opened to the public.
A couple of other notes I can’t avoid making: The head of the festival referred to 9/11 as “the 9/11 disaster”, the first time I’ve noticed Obama-speak having infiltrated non-government discussion.
We’ve been going to the festival for quite a long time, and it’s an excellent chance to see films from around the world. Unfortunately, only one political point of view is recognized at the festival and all attendees are assumed to share it — it’s the point of view that worships Obama as the bringer of a New Enlightment, while worrying that he’s just a bit too conservative.
This spills onto all discussions and presentations, with the program notes (at least in past years) frequently noting how film X “shows the dark side of Capitalism”. This year for each film they list the “causes” the film represents, and there ate something like five versions of “justice” represented, with any film that contains poverty being labelled as “economic justice”.
It’s somewhat delicious go read them going on and on about the evils of capitalism (one “innovative” showing they are pushing hard is a guy who will be there live and his performance consists of yelling at the audience about capitalism and war), when their entire enterprise is a luxury good made possible by the generosity of rich business people in the Bay Area.
I’ll have to grit my teeth once again (we’re skipping the four films indicting the human race for global warming, including “The Age of Stupid”), because, really, it’s a great festival when all is said and done.
Ron:
You are an optimist and I applaud you for it. I, too, like to seek out the bright side of things.
But your statement above reminded me of the joke about the couple who had twin boys who were alike in every way except that one of them was an incurable optimist. No matter what bad fortune, or even calamity, that befell him or the family, he saw the bright side of things.
On the boys’ eighth birthday, the parents decide to cure the kid once and for all. In his brother’s bedroom they place a Shetland pony. In his room, they pile a 2-foot layer of horse manure.
The parents send the kids up the stairs to “open” their gifts. Soon they hear a shriek of joy from the kid who’s gotten the Shetland pony. But there’s only silence from the optimist.
However, within seconds he’s bounding down the stairs, a determined look on his face, and heading out the door to the tool shed.
He returns with a shovel, runs up the stairs to his room and begins frantically digging through the manure.
“Son,” his parents ask, “what are you doing? Can’t you see that your birthday gift is a pile of s**t?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he replies. “But with all this manure I just figured there’s got to be a pony buried in it somewhere!”
Yeah, choosing films to watch is not unlike shoveling through that pile… At least this year (who am I kidding, maybe next year at best) all post-film discussions won’t include Bush-bashing. America-bashing is probably a permanent feature even in the Age of Obama…though that will probably transition to Republican-bashing.
If only those damn Repubs weren’t screwing up Obama’s rebooting of the USSA!
If anyone around me uses the phrase “the 9-11 disaster” or “the 9-11 tragedy”, I cannot remain silent.
If it is a public speaker, I will issue at least a three-second boo.
If it is a private conversation, they’ll get at least my canned comment “9-11 was not a disaster nor a tragedy. It was murder.”
If they want to mix it up, get into a debate, I’m more than ready for that particular debate.
I’m okay with “tragedy”, as it was that unquestionably and it’s common to refer to a tragedy when one person visits violence on others. But “disaster” is explicitly removing cause and effect from the picture in an attempt at political-speak.
A tragedy is where the hero falls due to a character flaw and eventually ends up self-destructing.
You give absolute credence to every excuse for terrorist policies being the “reason” for the attack with that description.
I agree with Ymar. The secondary definition of ‘tragedy’ as ‘something bad that happened’ isn’t one I like. And it’s too close in flavor to ‘man-caused disaster’.
The use of shoddy construction materials leading to the collapse of a school is a ‘man-caused disaster’ if the collapse occurs when people, especially children, are inside.
Murderous terrorist attacks on people in hotels in Mumbai, India is not a ‘man-caused disaster’.
Calling something a disaster removes human motivation from the entire scene, making of it a formless natural event without cause. This may match the mindset of Obama. It does not match mine.
I have a powerful, deep resentment against the Orwellian wordsmithing these gutter, excrement-minded poets of the Obama adminstration are gleefully flinging against the wall of proper language, as giggling moronic children would fling paint at a wall and call that art.
I dare these freaks to say ‘man-caused evil’. I dare them to speak truth.
It is not even that I like or dislike one definition of tragedy over another. Rather, what is important here is that Leftist intellectuals are educated enough to know that definition and it is the definition they use when they use the word.
The people on the bottom, the dupes, the Democrat voting common class, or the educated college students, they will take their lead from the Leftist intellectuals that provide them all the justification in the world for their practice of their ideology.
Just because a person does not know a specific definition of a word, they can pick it up from context, and that is the context, I assure you, that the Left will use it as. So why does it matter that people vernacularly take tragedy to mean a great sadness when the Leftist talking heads and intellectuals juxtapose “tragedy” with “what did America do wrong to cause this”.
A separate channel has been added to the public discourse, one that you will never know about, and it was all based upon ambiguity and the exploitation of ignorance on the part of people defenseless against propaganda, real propaganda. In fact, judging by the evidence, people still don’t get it.
or the educated college students
Correction, that should be uneducated college students.
Ymar #8:
>> So why does it matter that people vernacularly take tragedy to mean a great sadness when the Leftist talking heads and intellectuals juxtapose “tragedy” with “what did America do wrong to cause this”.
How very true!
I hadn’t considered that the removal of human motivation from the attacks against us is part of the propaganda that allows our apologists to blame ourselves instead of blaming our enemies.
There isn’t an obvious step from using “man-caused disaster” as a description of Islamic jihadist terrorism, to “America is to blame”. But you have to remove the blame from the jihadists first before you can slip the “America is to blame” message into our national consciousness.