2009-07-08

Steyn on movies and politics together

Mark Steyn replayed his column in the Spectator regarding the movie Ice Age.

Check out the opening paragraph:

A prehistoric squirrel has a problem: he's got a fabulous acorn, but how to bury it? The ground is frozen solid, and the twitchy little feller scampers from spot to spot in the vast icy wilderness, issuing baffled grunts through his snaggleteeth and growing ever more frenzied in his efforts to jam the thing into the earth. Finally he jumps up and down on it, hammering it into the frost, and setting off an avalanche.

Doesn't that sound like a good summary of the 2008 Presidential Election?
he's got a fabulous ACORN, but how to bury it?
That's as quick a summary on President Monkey's campaign I can think of. The Democrats and their media handlers reaction to Sarah Palin?
baffled grunts through his snaggleteeth and growing ever more frenzied in his efforts to jam the thing into the earth
And finally, what's the impact on the economy of Obama's election win?
Finally he jumps up and down on it, hammering it into the frost, and setting off an avalanche.
Hammering government money into General Motors and the banks and whoever's in line this week is certainly at risk of setting off an avalanche of economic ruin.

So how does the article end?
You know where it's going to go and, sure enough, pretty soon the mammoth, sloth and sabre-tooth are all helping each other out because 'that's what you do in a herd'. And, even though the sloth concedes 'we are the weirdest herd I've ever seen', that doesn't matter: just because you're an alternative herd doesn't mean you don't embody the best in traditional herd values. Is it a pitch for gay parenting? Probably. Is it anti-hunting? Definitely. 'If we save the baby, who do you think he's gonna hunt?' asks the sabre-tooth. 'Maybe if we save him he won't hunt us, ' suggests the sloth. But the tedious PC overlay is strangely poignant here, as if the characters are freighted with a sense of their own impending extinction. Yeah, I know that's not what most parents are looking for in a kids' cartoon, but it's something to think about in between the neurotic squirrel sequences.