Junto Boys

The Cartoons

Mark Steyn has a poignant take on the matter.

Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Hollywood can still muster the effort to make a film of the Joe McCarthy Era, but they can't even say word one about the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

Islamo-Fascism now is the equivalent to communism in the 1950s. The Russians were once a scary enemy to those on the left and the right. They did exist once, actual cold war liberals, but you wouldn't know it from the history as told in Hollywood. That Bobby Kennedy was a close friend of Joe McCarthy and Joe was the godfather of Bobby’s daughter the recent governor of Maryland doesn't fit the frame very well.

Even in the early 1960s, when McCarthy was long dead, the McCarthy tactics were treated as buffoonery in MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, but communism wasn't treated lightly at all. The McCarthy character was the communist. This point is always lost on modern day critics that simply refer to the movie as an indictment on McCarthy.

See, you have to win the war to make light of those that won it. The Democrats and the media have been trying to do something similar lately. They have criticized Bush's surveillance program, because the success of it has allowed them to portray it as unnecessary. Although they won't show a simple cartoon out of fear, the Bush Administration is being alarmist or draconian or unconstitutional for having the same fear.

Unlike some puffed up Hollywood pontificators, I’ve always had respect for George Clooney. He may have a conspiratorial liberal belief system, but at least he has a sense of humor about himself. Sean Penn can’t even let the South Park guys poke fun. I tend to like Clooney movies and the Murrow one is probably well done, though I figure he won’t be treated as the buffoon like in the 1960s, but a real menace.

But one has to ask what exactly do liberals find offensive about McCarthy? If it’s his tactics, the great Mark Levin reminds us that they’re not above using those tactics themselves. If it’s the anti-communism, what did they find so endearing about the Berlin Wall? The composite answer is something like communism would have fallen on its own and some good Hollywood writers were "terrorized." Just listen to the language and you'll see they talk about screenwriters using psuedonyms the way mainstream Americans talk about flight 93.

Between the silence on Theo Van Gogh and the unwillingness of NBC to show Islam in a way they’d gladly show Christianity, you realize that what the cultural left really lacks is seriousness. Their act is one of day-to-day class clown, but we don’t always see it, because they don’t always smile.

We’ll win the war against terrorists and we’ll do so fighting the intelligencia the entire way. And once the enemy is good and beat, and the media can safely make fun of Muslims without threat of death, they’ll be making movies about how unnecessary the whole thing really was and how Bush violated civil liberties for nothing. For now though, the critics of the administration are secretly happy that Bush has the guts that they lack.