Obama Speech Unleashes Critics

From Philip Sherwell in Britain's The Telegraph:
President Barack Obama's unprecedented critique of past American behaviour towards Europe aroused predictable ire among his conservative foes and praise from liberals in the US.
Phone lines to Right-wing talk radio shows were buzzing with angry attacks on the commander-in-chief for alleged "treachery".
Mr Obama may be rebuilding some frayed alliances abroad but his comments are the latest blow to his erstwhile aspirations of developing a post-partisan political atmosphere at home.
His references to American "arrogance" and its "dismissive" attitude were viewed by some commentators as an unwarranted attack on his homeland while travelling abroad.
In a speech in France, a country that has been a bastion of anti-US sentiment in recent years, the President said: "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.
"But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognising the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad. On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common."
Despite the balance in the speech, Charles Krauthammer was indignant on Fox News. "When Kennedy arrived in Paris, he didn't attack Eisenhower... if you want to attack the US, you do it at home."
Mr Krauthammer was particularly critical of Mr Obama for knocking previous American policies while struggling to win support from European countries to commit extra troops to Afghanistan. "He steps all over America and gets nothing for it," he said scornfully.

Remembering Ron Silver

Ron Silver was a great American.

Not because he was a great actor (though he was).

Not because he was a liberal turned conservative (wisely, he was).

And not because he was a fellow blogger (at Pajamas Media).

He was a great American because he he had the courage of his convictions. He acted on his highest principles; both as an actor and as a citizen. He was a patriot.

From David Germain of the Associated Press:

Actor Ron Silver, who won a Tony Award as a take-no-prisoners Hollywood producer in David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow" and did a political about-face from loyal Democrat to Republican activist after the Sept. 11 attacks, died Sunday at the age of 62.
"Ron Silver died peacefully in his sleep with his family around him early Sunday morning" in New York City, said Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which Silver helped found. "He had been fighting esophageal cancer for two years."
Silver, an Emmy nominee for a recurring role as a slick strategist for liberal President Jed Bartlet on "The West Wing," had a long history of balancing acting with left-leaning social and political causes.
But after the 2001 terrorist attacks, longtime Democrat Silver turned heads in Hollywood with outspoken support of President George W. Bush over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Silver spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention, began referring to himself as a "9/11 Republican" and reregistered as an independent.
In an interview with The Associated Press a month later, Silver said his support for the war on terror was costing him work in liberal-minded Hollywood.
"It's affected me very badly. I can't point to a person or a job I've lost, but this community is not very pluralistic," Silver told the AP. "I haven't worked for 10 months."
His switch to a more conservative image threatened to overshadow an esteemed career on stage, television and film, along with his long history of activism, which included co-founding the nonpartisan Creative Coalition, an advocacy group for entertainers.
"He was a talented actor, a scholar and a great believer in participatory democracy," Bronk said Sunday evening. "He was an activist who became a great artist and his contributions will never be forgotten."
His big-screen credits included "Ali," "Reversal of Fortune," "Enemies: A Love Story," "Silkwood" and "Semi-Tough."
Besides "The West Wing," Silver was a regular or had recurring roles on such TV shows as "Veronica's Closet," "Chicago Hope" and "Wiseguy." He directed and costarred in the 1993 TV movie "Lifepod," a science-fiction update of Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat."
Silver's Tony for "Speed-the-Plow" came in 1988, a year after he earned his first Emmy nomination, for the murder thriller "Billionaire Boys Club."
Silver still found work despite his conservative shift, appearing in episodes of "Law & Order" and "Crossing Jordan" and such movies as "Find Me Guilty" and the Ten Commandments comedy "The Ten."
He continued his recurring role on "The West Wing," joking that he faced some taunting over his views from co-workers on the show which took place in a fiercely liberal White House administration.
"Often when I walked onto the set of 'The West Wing' some of my colleagues would greet me with a chanting of 'Ron, Ron, the neo-con.' It was all done in fun but it had an edge," Silver wrote in a Nov. 15, 2007, entry of his blog on the Pajamas Media Web site.
Silver's on-screen work rankled liberals, too. He narrated 2004's "Fahrenhype 9/11," a deconstruction of Michael Moore's Bush-bashing hit documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11."
"Michael Moore and that faction of the party was one of the factors that did not let me support the Democratic nominee this year," Silver told the AP in 2004. "He is a charlatan in a clown suit." . . .
Whichever end of the political spectrum his activism fell, Silver viewed such involvement as something of a duty for entertainers.
"I think there's almost an obligation," he said in a 1991 interview with the AP. "Many of us are very well compensated for work which a lot of people would love to do. And we also have a lot of leisure time in between jobs. ...
"They say that Hollywood is sex without substance, and Washington is substance without sex, so maybe the marriage of the two is mutually intriguing."

There are so few conservatives in the world of movies or the theatre that when one passes it is always a great loss. But the loss of Ron Silver is mammoth. Let's hope that his life inspires others in the arts to come forward and speak out on behalf of what is right.

Top Ten Conservative Movies

National Review has selecetd the best conservative movies as chosen by readers and noted conservative film buffs. here are the top ten:

1. The Lives of Others (2007): “I think that this is the best movie I ever saw,” said William F. Buckley Jr. upon leaving the theater (according to his column on the film). The tale, set in East Germany in 1984, is one part romantic drama, one part political thriller. It chronicles life under a totalitarian regime as the Stasi secretly monitors the activities of a playwright who is suspected of harboring doubts about Communism. Critics showered the movie with praise and it won an Oscar for best foreign-language film (it’s in German). More Buckley: “The tension mounts to heart-stopping pitch and I felt the impulse to rush out into the street and drag passersby in to watch the story unfold.” — John J. Miller

2. The Incredibles (2004): This animated film skips pop-culture references and gross jokes in favor of a story that celebrates marriage, courage, responsibility, and high achievement. A family of superheroes — Mr. Incredible, his wife Elastigirl, and their children — are living an anonymous life in the suburbs, thanks to a society that doesn’t appreciate their unique talents. Then it comes to need them. In one scene, son Dash, a super-speedy runner, wants to try out for track. Mom claims it wouldn’t be fair. “Dad says our powers make us special!” Dash objects. “Everyone is special,” Mom demurs, to which Dash mutters, “Which means nobody is.” — Frederica Mathewes-Greene writes for Beliefnet.com.

3. Metropolitan (1990): Whit Stillman’s Oscar-nominated debut takes a red-headed outsider into the luxurious drawing rooms and debutante balls of New York’s Upper East Side elite. One character, a committed socialist, falls for the discreet charm of the urban haute bourgeoisie. Another plaintively theorizes the inevitable doom of his class. A reader of Jane Austen wonders what’s wrong with a novel’s having a virtuous heroine. And a roguish defender of standards and detachable collars delivers more sophisticated conservative one-liners than a year’s worth of Yale Party of the Right debates. With mocking affection, gentle irony, and a blizzard of witty dialogue, Stillman manages the impossible: He brings us to see what is admirable and necessary in the customs and conventions of America’s upper class. — Mark Henrie is the editor of Doomed Bourgeois in Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman.

4. Forrest Gump (1994): It won an Oscar for best picture — beating Pulp Fiction, a movie that’s far more expressive of Hollywood’s worldview. Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s. The love of his life, wonderfully played by Robin Wright Penn, chooses a different path; she becomes a drug-addled hippie, with disastrous results. Forrest’s IQ may be room temperature, but he serves as an unexpected font of wisdom. Put ’em on a Whitman’s Sampler, but Mama Gump’s famous words about life’s being like a box of chocolates ring true. — Charlotte Hays is co-author of Somebody Is Going to Die If Lilly Beth Doesn’t Catch That Bouquet.

5. 300 (2007): During the Bush years, Hollywood neglected the heroism of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan — but it did release this action film about martial honor, unflinching courage, and the oft-ignored truth that freedom isn’t free. Beneath a layer of egregious non-history — including goblin-like creatures that belong in a fantasy epic — is a stylized story about the ancient battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan defense of the West’s fledgling institutions. It contrasts a small band of Spartans, motivated by their convictions and a commitment to the law, with a Persian horde that is driven forward by whips. In the words recorded by the real-life Herodotus: “Law is their master, which they fear more than your men[, Xerxes,] fear you.” — Michael Poliakoff, a classicist, is vice president for academic affairs at the University of Colorado.

6. Groundhog Day (1993): This putatively wacky comedy about Bill Murray as an obnoxious weatherman cursed to relive the same day over and over in a small Pennsylvania town, perhaps for eternity, is in fact a sophisticated commentary on the good and true. Theologians and philosophers across the ideological spectrum have embraced it. For the conservative, the moral of the tale is that redemption and meaning are derived not from indulging your “authentic” instincts and drives, but from striving to live up to external and timeless ideals. Murray begins the film as an irony-soaked narcissist, contemptuous of beauty, art, and commitment. His journey of self-discovery leads him to understand that the fads of modernity are no substitute for the permanent things. — Jonah Goldberg

7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006): Based on the life of self-made millionaire Chris Gardner (Will Smith), this film provides the perfect antidote to Wall Street and other Hollywood diatribes depicting the world of finance as filled with nothing but greed. After his wife leaves him, Gardner can barely pay the rent. He accepts an unpaid internship at a San Francisco brokerage, with the promise of a real job if he outperforms the other interns and passes his exams. Gardner never succumbs to self-pity, even when he and his young son take refuge in a homeless shelter. They’re black, but there’s no racial undertone or subtext. Gardner is just an incredibly hard-working, ambitious, and smart man who wants to do better for himself and his son. — Linda Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

8. Juno (2007): The best pro-life movies reach beyond the church choirs and influence the wider public. Juno was a critical and commercial success. It didn’t set out to deliver a message on abortion, but much of its audience discovered one anyway. The story revolves around a 16-year-old who finds a home for her unplanned baby. The film has its faults, including a number of crass moments and a pregnant high-school student with an unrealistic level of self-confidence. Yet it also exposes a broken culture in which teen sex is dehumanizing, girls struggle with “choice,” and boys aimlessly try — and sometimes downright fail — to become men. The movie doesn’t glamorize much of anything but leaves audiences with an open-ended chance for redemption. — Kathryn Jean Lopez

9. Blast from the Past (1999): Revolutionary Road is only the latest big-screen portrayal of 1950s America as boring, conformist, repressive, and soul-destroying. A decade ago, Hugh Wilson’s Blast from the Past defied the party line, seeing the values, customs, manners, and even music of the period with nostalgic longing. Brendan Fraser plays an innocent who has grown up in a fallout shelter and doesn’t know the era of Sputnik and Perry Como is over. Alicia Silverstone is a post-feminist woman who learns from him that pre-feminist women had some things going for them. Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek as Fraser’s parents are comic gems. — James Bowman is a movie critic.

10. Ghostbusters (1984): This comedy might not get Russell Kirk’s endorsement as a worthy treatment of the supernatural, but you have to like a movie in which the bad guy (William Atherton at his loathsome best) is a regulation-happy buffoon from the EPA, and the solution to a public menace comes from the private sector. This last fact is the other reason to love Ghostbusters: When Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) gets kicked out of the university lab and ponders pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, a nervous Dr. Raymond Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) replies: “I don’t know about that. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!” — Steven F. Hayward is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

What Is Limbaugh's Appeal?

Why was Rush Limbaugh such a hit at that conservative conference in Washington over the weekend?

Was it because he told them what they wanted to hear? Naahhh . . . pretty much all the speakers did that.

Was it because he's always been a good conservative soldier? Naahhh . . . the other speakers were hardly "converts."

Was it because he has a mastery of the language? Naahhh . . . nearly all the the speakers were articulate, to say the least.

None of those account for Limbaugh's astounding success with the crowd. None account for his incredible ability to attract and hold an audience.

Limbaugh scored because he spoke from the heart.

That's the real secret of his appeal. He really believes it. He really cares.

He is himself and he speaks what he feels - clearly, directly, passionately.

Limbaugh had no teleprompter on Saturday and he had few notes. Yet he held the crowd spellbound for more than an hour.

Few speakers could have accomplished this.

Here's part of the story from CNN:

Rush Limbaugh brought a cheering crowd to its feet several times Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington as he called on fellow conservatives to take back the country.
"We conservatives have not done a good enough job of just laying out basically who we are, because we make the mistake of assuming that people know. What they know is largely incorrect, based on the way we're portrayed in pop culture, in the drive-by media, by the Democrat party," the conservative talk show host told a mostly young crowd of energized supporters.
"We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We believe that the preamble of the Constitution contains an inarguable truth, that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, freedom -- and the pursuit of happiness," he said, pausing several times for enthusiastic applause.
Looking ahead to the 2012 election, Limbaugh said conservatives will have to choose the right candidate to take the country back.
Limbaugh's impassioned keynote speech, punctuated by chest-thumping, fist-pumping and chants of "USA" from the crowd, capped off three days of talk at CPAC focusing on rebuilding the Republican Party.
"He played to his crowd here," CNN political editor Mark Preston said. "And this crowd is now energized, something we haven't seen from Republicans, certainly not conservatives, since the November election."

Forget what his most virulent critics say about Limbaugh.

Stop, look and listen to Limbaugh fairly and attentively. Make an honest effort to decide for yourself.

But be careful: You just might find yourself agreeing with him.

Coulter Strikes Again!

Some lively quotes from the redoubtable Ann Coulter delivered at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee confab sponsored by the American Conservative Union:

“I’ve been watching the MSNBC coverage of CPAC. Is there any other network where you know every host was at the alternative prom?”

“The media compared Obama to Jesus. I lost a bet. They do know who Jesus is. But as the leader of twelve apostles, even Jesus had more executive experience than Obama.”

“Obama voted present over 100 times. The only time he wasn’t present was when Rev. Wright gave one of those hate filled speeches.”

“The press called Lincoln a baboon. If only Al Sharpton had been around, Lincoln would have known he was a victim of racism.”

“The one thing the press knows about Lincoln is that he put rivals on his cabinet. I’m not sure buying Clinton’s cabinet at fire sale prices is the same thing.”

“Obama’s basic message . . . was bringing people together. I’ve heard that speech since I was about nine years old. Even Richard Nixon . . . gave a speech in 1968 saying he saw a little girl holding a sign that read ‘bring us together again.’”

“If Obama thinks the people really want change, wait till 2012.”

“Obama has the entire media, the European Union, and Oprah on his side. A poll in Germany said 80% of Germans liked Obama over McCain and we all know how infallible Germans are at picking leaders.”

“It’s amazing the media keeps comparing Obama to Lincoln and Reagan. The press apparently can’t think of a Democrat worthy enough to compare him to.”

Jindal: The Antidote?

From Marina Jimenez in Toronto's Globe and Mail:

He is the Republican party's wunderkind. His family's triumph-over-adversity narrative is nearly as powerful as that of U.S. President Barack Obama's. And now, Bobby Jindal, the 37-year-old Governor of Louisiana, is . . . becoming a household name — [launched] onto the national platform on prime-time television . . . as the Republican party's rebuttal to the President's address to Congress.
It's a moment in history that's being compared to the keynote address a then-unknown Mr. Obama delivered in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
And like Mr. Obama, Mr. Jindal's political star is on the rise — as are the odds of a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. . . .

Born Piyush Jindal in Baton Rouge, La., Mr. Jindal adopted the name Bobby as a child, apparently after the character in the Brady Bunch, according to his family.
His parents immigrated from the Punjab to the United States so that his mother, pregnant with him at the time, could continue her graduate work in nuclear physics. His father, an engineer, was one of nine children from a poor rural family in Indian Punjab.
A graduate of Brown University, Mr. Jindal was a Rhodes Scholar and went on to work for the elite consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
Born a Hindu, he converted to Roman Catholicism in high school, and also has links to Baptist and Pentecostal congregations. At 25, he was named secretary of Louisiana's department of health. Mr. Jindal ran for governor in 2003 and lost. The following year he was elected to Congress, and in 2007, made a successful bid for governor. He and his wife Supriya Jolly have three young children.
He is widely considered to be an effective leader, his response to last fall's Hurricane Gustav praised for its efficiency. His biggest challenge has been to deal with a legislature that voted to more than double its take-home pay from $16,800 to $37,500.
Aside from their visible minority backgrounds and young families, Mr. Obama and Mr. Jindal differ markedly in style and substance.
While Mr. Obama projects a relaxed demeanour and had an unconventional upbringing, Mr. Jindal is meticulous, and very conservative. His campaign platform centred on a promise to cut taxes, ban abortion and introduce ethics reform. He opposes embryonic stem cell research and same-sex marriage.
Mr. Jindal has travelled quite a bit outside the state raising funds and is routinely named as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. He hasn't officially declared his interest — nor has he ruled it out. His unofficial campaign just received an unprecedented boost, a prime-time television appearance that may catapult him ahead of his rivals.

GOP Goin Hip-Hop?

From Ralph Z. Hallow at the Washington Times:
Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”
The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.
Having been elected to the job that the Bush White House and its political guru, Karl Rove, once denied him, Mr. Steele is running the show his way. To those who claimed he can't make the trains run on time, he has this message: “Stuff it.”
He stiff-armed an attempt to get him to elaborate on his public relations effort, saying he would be an idiot to give his opponents too much information, but indicated the Republican Party needs to break out of being considered a regional party.
”There was underlying concerns we had become too regionalized and the party needed to reach beyond our comfort” zones, he said, citing defeats in such states as Virginia and North Carolina. “We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings.”
See related story: GOP surpasses Dems on Twitter

Stealth Conservatism

From Andrew Klaven at Big Hollywood:
I finally got around to watching Frost/Nixon, and I was struck by how often the conservative view of the world—that is to say, reality—snuck in past the filmmakers’ strenuous attempts to bar the door against it. We see, for instance, that Nixon was right: the media was out to get him. The bitter hate-filled James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) is shown as obsessed with destroying the already-disgraced former President. In the end, Reston’s childish triumph is that television was able to reduce Nixon to a single image of guilt, thus eradicating all the complexities of his legacy. Then there’s ABC’s Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt). Zelnick ridicules Nixon’s complaints that a lovestruck media Obamanized John F. Kennedy. But in that ridicule the facts come out: the mob-linked, priapic Kennedy started the Vietnam war and made enough tactical Cold War errors to drive the world to the very brink of extinction. No, the bias of the mainstream media—and its smallness, meanness and dishonesty—are well on display for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

WFB, 1925 - 2008

As the father of the modern conservative movement in America William F. Buckley did more to advance the positive values of individual liberty, decency and simple common sense than anyone of his generation. He was more than a great thinker and communicator. He was also a consummate liver of life - a passionate man who was fully engaged; someone who showed us that an American could, indeed be a Renaissance man. Though his scholarly language often challenged us, the thoughts behind his words were rooted in the most basic American notions and virtues. He mainstreamed conservatism and made it meaningful and accessible to everyone. And, he showed us how to live an honorable life. He took to heart the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes: "A man should share in the action and the passion of his times at the cost of being judged not to have lived." He lived.