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IT'S GETTING UGLY

I haven't seen the movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST yet, but the reviews are starting to come in. I can't really comment until I've seen it, but I'm shocked at the wide chasm between opinions. Ebert and Roeper give the movie "two enthusiastic thumbs up" and say that they saw absolutely no signs of anti-semitism in the movie. Then, in this morning's Daily News (which continues to prove to be a hopeless rag of a paper with the worst film critics in the world) Jami Bernard writes this unbelievably harsh charge: "No child should see this movie. Even adults are at risk. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II."

That's a bold statement. I've seen some really ugly Nazi propaganda films, so comparing this movie to that is crazy. But I'll judge when I see it.

I'm annoyed that Ms. Bernard starts her review by saying that people shouldn't see the film. I hate when critics act as society's gatekeepers. Let the public see the film and decide for themselves.

posted by Nick at 12:05 PM [edit]

ARE THE YANKEES EVIL?

The Red Sox are pissed at George Steinbrenner because of the Alex Rodriguez trade. The Boss thinks it's just sour grapes. Yada yada yada. Are the Yankees truly the evil empire of baseball? Look, the system needs to be fixed but no one has the right solution yet. You can't look at football as a role model, it's like comparing apples and oranges. Baseball is a regional business. There's no nationwide baseball broadcasting deal that generates millions and millions of dollars that all teams can dip into. New York generates more dollars than Milwaukee. It's unfair and unAmerican now to take money of the Yankees pockets because other teams can't compete. Sadly, the only solution I can think of is to have a "tier" system, with the high-revenue teams playing each other and with the small-market teams playing each other, and the small markets getting incentives and money if they win and the high-revenue teams getting penalized if they lose and teams moving up and down the different tiers over the years as they improve or deteriorate. Sort of like the soccer leagues in Europe. But that probably won't happen.

Bottomline, it's easy for everyone to whine and blame the Yankees for all that's wrong with baseball, but the Yankees fill seats everywhere they go, the Yankees sell merchandise worldwide, people pay for the YES network, is all good business. But that doesn't guarantee a championship on the field. We had a great team in the 90s but we couldn't even make the playoffs in the 80s. Likewise, the Mets can spend millions and play in a great market, but they can't win. Similarly, the Red Sox have loyal fans, good marketing and merchandising, one of the highest payrolls in sports, and yet they can't win when it counts, even though they're competitive and have had plenty of opportunities to do so over the years. The fault lies not in the Yankees, but in themselves.

posted by Nick at 11:55 AM [edit]

MISS JACKSON AND THE SUPER BOWL

Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's breast during the half-time show of the Super Bowl and the nation is in a furor! People are making a mountain out of a molehill (although Janet Jackson's booby is a bit larger than a molehill but still not quite large enough to qualify as a mountain.)

Seriously, I think there's a place for everything, and free network broadcast TV still should abide by certain "rules" and avoid profanity, nudity, violence, etc. Still, it's just a nipple, people. American culture is so puritanical when it comes to natural human sexuality that sometimes I think it's no wonder there is so much pervisity in society -- if you treat the human body and the biological act of reproduction as some "unclean" "unholy" thing that needs to be repressed, then some people are going to grow up with some very serious problems, and then you end up with crazy kids and psycho adults -- not because they caught a glimpse of Miss Jackson's tit and were scarred, but because "society" taught them that that titty was a "bad bad" thing.

In the mean time, again people are making a big deal over nothing and avoiding real issues out there. It was the Super Bowl, they wanted to get bigger ratings, they wanted to get people talking, Janet wanted to hype up her new album which is ocming out this week, Justin wanted to out-shock the lesbian kiss between Madonna and his former-lover Britney. I hear people complaining about their kids being exposed to Janet's exposed breast. Pardon me, but that whole Half-Time Show was like everything else on MTV (who produced it, and who's owned by Viacom who also owns CBS which aired the Super Bowl) -- it had people wearing skimpy outfits and crawling on the stage simulating sex acts. Janet's song lyrics were risque to begin with. So why were these offended parents letting their little kids watch the Half-Time Show that long? They should have shut off the TV or changed the channel until the game came back on, because the nipple incident wasn't the only thing that wasn't appropriate for little kids. But we live in an age when people want to blame the media for everything and demand government censorship of content, and then when the governnment provide them with a tool like the V-Chip or when the entertainment industry self-regulates with a ratings system, nobody uses it or even acknowledges its existence. It's so much easier for them to continue blaming the media -- it IS an election year after all, so now pressure can be added to the FCC to increase fines and control content, while REAL issues are ignored.

If people were honestly offended by the Janet Nipple, fine, I can respect that. But I'm surprised nobody raises an equal uproar about the commercials for erectile disfunction or flatulating horses, which apparently are okay for the "family audience" -- the truth is, the target audience for the Super Bowl is MEN. The Super Bowl isn't so much about the sport of football, it's a marketing tool to sell beer, cars, Viagra, rap music, upcoming movies, etc. So why are people shocked?

And how come the public cares more about Janets ta-tas then they seem to care about the fact that we're still fighting a war overseas in which our soldiers are dying everyday (whose immediate justification before the war was an alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction which still haven't been discovered), or about the fact that NASA is planning to send more humans to the moon and eventually to Mars even though they have trouble with un-manned probes, or the fact that our nation will hold a presidential election this year but the biggest issue the media seemed to focus on when it comes to the potential candidates is Howard Dean's pro-wrestler-like scream speech.

Is it just me or does everyone have their priorities out of wack?




posted by Nick at 12:44 PM [edit]