Posted on 02/20/2006 11:52:55 AM PST by LdSentinal
Mickey Kaus at Kausfiles.com says that the gay-cowboy movie Brokeback Mountain has the same marketing strategy as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Both, he says, have been hyped as blue-state movies that are reaching and changing minds in the cities of red America. He calls this the "Heartland Breakout Meme”. ("Meme" refers to a cultural copying unit that hops from brain to brain without much thought or any at all). What Kaus means is that the mainstream media keep reinforcing ideas liberals want to believe, whether they are true or not. But the alleged breakout of Fahrenheit appears to be myth, as Byron York shows by revealing some confidential movie-industry data in his new book, The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.
Kaus thinks preliminary box office numbers indicate that Brokeback isn't reaching red America either. His point is that liberals delude themselves into overconfidence and harm the Democratic Party by projecting a false view of political reality. He writes: "If you think the visceral straight male reaction against male homosexual sex has effectively disappeared...you won't spend a lot of time trying to figure out the possible deep-seated, even innate, sources of resistance to liberalization... At worst, you'll pass them off as sheer redneck bigotry-a proven way to lose the red states for good".
A version of the “Heartland Breakout Meme” appeared when Bill Clinton, under pressure from the gay lobby, agreed to accept declared homosexuals into the armed services. The polls were mixed, and if read carefully, showed that much resistance seemed strong. But liberals thought it would be a low-cost initiative for Clinton. A few howls from the right and it would all be over. Liberals were stunned when the resistance inflicted considerable political damage on the new presidency and resulted in a policy that none had even imagined -- don't-ask-don't-tell.
A related meme is that marriage is a civil right that a just society must extend to gays. "Equality in marriage" reinforces the liberal belief that an entitlement is being arbitrarily withheld from an aggrieved group; again stoking the feeling that anyone who disagrees is a redneck. But societies around the world-maybe all of them-- have disagreed with this allegedly obvious idea for thousands of years because they never concluded that an arrangement built on same-sex love qualifies as a real marriage. Polls show that tolerance and respect for gays are climbing much more rapidly than approval of gay marriage, indicating for a considerable number of Americans, the major sticking point is not bigotry, but a liberal-conservative difference on the meaning of marriage.
"Samuel Alito is out of the mainstream" was one of the strangest of recent liberal memes, relentlessly spread by the media, all with little effect. As U.C.L.A. law professor Eugene Volokh wrote, Alito's views "are majority views, by a wide margin". Legal columnist Stuart Taylor Jr., a centrist and no fan of President Bush, called attention to the large role of reporters in spreading the meme. He showed in some detail that "systematic slanting, conscious or unconscious " in many mainstream press reports "helped fuel a disingenuous campaign by liberal groups and senators to caricature Alito as a conservative ideologue”.
Even worse was the "racist response to Katrina" meme. Mostly this was aimed at George Bush, who botched the crisis badly, though not on any racial basis. The idea was to peel away growing Republican support among blacks by playing the race card. It worked. The rapid spread of the meme was the reason why a bland one-liner by entertainer Kanye West-- "George Bush doesn't care about black people"-- unexpectedly became a famous quote. And there was a broader campaign to indict whites in general, who were busy sending in most of the $1 billion in voluntary contributions to Katrina victims, for failing to care about the suffering of New Orleans blacks.
This meme was wildly promoted by the mainstream media, but ultimately it failed, as Democratic pollster Celinda Lake made clear in a recent speech. She said, "It is certainly true that people very quickly got off any analysis that...the patterns of Katrina were due to race”. One reason was that people were pointing to New Orlean's corruption and the city's incompetent black mayor as explanations for much of the post-Katrina mess. Another factor was that the power structure in this black-run city signed off on an explicit arrangement to abandon 100,000 poor residents in case of disaster. That was the city's plan and it worked. No wonder the racism meme faded. “Far from Katrina promoting very much," Lake said, "if anything Katrina is backfiring a little bit". That happens now and then to memes that the public can figure out aren't true.
Still, it's a useful metaphor, especially when describing mass delusions. My favorite example of a meme based on falsehood and fallacies is the left's belief that they are the reality-based community.
butintheback mountain is NOT a romance movie, it is a propaganda piece to justify a the sex fetish behavior. It is strictly that.
Homosexual behavior is ONLY about sex no matter how "fuffy" the homosexuals of hollyweird tries to dress it up.
Yes. For 20 years the two sneak off three or four times a year to "go fishing". Jack, who lives in Texas and is the less masculine of the two, wants Ennis-- who lives in Wyoming-- to come live with him on his parents' ranch.
But Ennis is afraid because when he was a kid, he knew of two men who lived together and one of them was eventually murdered by the locals. He also seems to want to stay near his two daughters, even after the divorce. The affair goes on until one day Ennis learns that Jack has been... guess what? Murdered by the locals.
If you hear about police "hasseling" homosexuals is is almost always related to homosexuals seeking sex in public restrooms or vandalizing rest rooms in some way to facilitate sex.
It is their behavior in public rest rooms not their skin color that is the problem.
Like poor old Walter Jenkins. By and large, gays used to be treated pretty much the same way as sex offenders. I knoiw of one kid at my old high school who was caught making out with a fellow football player. It costs him scholarships etc. but mostly it was kept quiet like a girl getting an abortion.
The big difference is that the psychpotherapy crowed has managed to turn around public opinion, so that something like sexual perversion has been narrowed to a few categories such as pedophilia.
No they have NOT turned around public opinion.
Homosexuality is and always will be a mental abnormality no matter what the PC shrinks try to BS.
It was correct to cost him. He was a sexual deviant and had no place in a gym room until and if he had mental treatment.
Homosexuality is no different than any other sexual fetish. The only thing that has changed it that it has been decriminalized and now the NEA encourages homosexuals to cultivate child victims in the public schools.
Beg to differ. They have convinced the public that gays are harmless. This is especially true of the younger set.
You were probably manipulated to feel sorry for everyone in the movie, especially since I hear the main character was murdered at the end for being gay.
No they have not given the amount of people voting to pass defense of marriage acts.
Additionally, the parents I know do not want homosexuals around their children.
It has be stated repeatedly that people will say one thing to pollsters but keep their unPC opinions from pollsters.
People under thirty are far more tolerant of homosexual behavior, more inclined to think it a matter of personal taste. I agree that most find it, to a degree, disgusting. Ironically, there are probably more "incidenst of violence against gays than when I wsas in high school, becayse themn they concealed their "orientation" and now express it more openly. But increasingly it is becoming government policy to protect this behavior.
You must not hang out with the thirty and under crowd.
Homosexuality is no more accepted now than it ever was.
I noticed increased tolerance of homosexuals among high school kids about the time that Clinton came into office. This was at a school which taught military dependents. It was quite a change from ten years before.They used the AIDs epidemic to create sympathy. Brilliant PR campaign.
Yes, one of the irritating things about Hollywood is their constant insistence that if you are gay, you will eventually be murdered by rednecks. But actually, they glossed that over. It was a very short scene. The emphasis, or the tragedy of the story seemed more about Jack's frustrated desire to get Ennis to come and be with him. When he couldn't, Jack did start occasionally hooking up with other men. Interestingly, neither of them considered being with women to be "cheating," but near the end when Jack hints that he has gone down into Mexico on forays, and Ennis knows that to mean "other men," he is enraged.
What was affecting wasn't so much the two-lovers-kept-apart angle. It was more the difference between the two of them. Jack really wanted Ennis around all the time. Ennis was able to focus on his regular life when they weren't together. He was very matter-of-fact about things.
After Jack is dead, Ennis goes to Jack's parents hoping to take Jack's ashes and scatter them on Brokeback, but the father refuses to hand them over. He tells Ennis that Jack had been hooking up with some other man that last year, and it's kind of interesting that they portrayed Jack as rather weak and plaintive. Ennis is much stronger, or more stubborn.
Dems are deluded .. they produce fake and skewerd polls - and end up believing them.
You can't get much more deluded than that!
It's also a recruitment tool, no pun intended.
What a barfer. A five-year-old could develop a deeper plot.
Just curious why you went to see Brokeback...I wouldn't want to help it make money. Aside from the gay aspect, I've been avoiding R-rated movies in general.
Did you see Walk the Line and Cinderella Man?
I haven't seen Cinderella Man yet, though I want to, but I did indeed see Walk the Line and I was really impressed. I thought the singing in particular was great.
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