This is how low America has gone. Foreign people are coming into the country and asking the president "Why can't you just take away the rights of those annoying citizens of yours!"

nice little reality check there....

dear god.

I think the fact, alone, that the Coen Brothers' movies are now becoming big headline attractions and fighting for Oscars, shows how low Hollywood has gone. If those preening, inane, self-absorbed dorks are amongst the best things they've got, then, well, sometimes I think there's no way back for the industry. Those guys are about as interesting and talented as two videogame nerds. They should be at home playing WoW, not directing anything.

I see two main features of/causes of this sad decline. They both involve different manifestations of chronic laziness and uncreativity.

One - Bashing Bush. I know any lefties reading this will say "Well you're just saying that because you're a conservative and this is a conservative website!!". That's not the point. I'm not even a big fan of Bush. The point is it's a disaster when you stop being passionate about entertaining and connecting with the audience, and just start phoning it in because you've got some excuse about "i'm trying to do good by preaching against bad things!". All the tedious movies about the War on Terror being evil or wrong. . I'm not even saying left wing movies can't be entertaining. Just recently on this website they had a list of the "Top 25 Leftist Movies". Apocalypse Now was an anti-war movie that was extremely entertaining. But "Lions for Lambs", "Green Zone" and "W." are certainly not. They were in fact cringingly awful and smugly self-satisfied pieces of bilge. But in Hollywood they are still proud of these pieces of crap. That's a big problem. The point is, any institution or culture can just give up and start backslapping and preaching "morality", and when that wears out you're left with nothing. This is what has happened to Hollywood. It was stunningly apparent as far back as "Crash", that people were just phoning it in, and putting out the most lugubrious, lethargically written crap, with the most tin-eared dialogue knowing that people will praise it for its "message". They are just using faux-"justice" appeals as an excuse to not do their jobs properly.

Unfortunately I knew many people who actually thought that movie was brilliant, and the same for other similar "message movies" that were about as artistically accomplished as the deleted scenes from Battlefield Earth. But that doesn't prove anything. There are millions of people out there who went to see the Police Academy sequels (god bless 'em)! Of course the difference is that Crash actually won Best Picture. So you see how standards are actually getting lower and Hollywood is becoming more destructively self-congratulating instead of honestly and healthily self-critical.

The other: COMIC BOOKS AND VIDEO GAMES.

The video game mentality, and movies based off of comic books. Two different problems, but sort of related. Basing your movie on a comic book is yet another way for lazy uncreative marketing people to "guarantee" at least a cult audience will buy into the movie. As mentioned in the article that the poster linked to, we have endless comic book movies lined up over the next few years.

And the video game mentality is where producers and directors think all you need is big flashy special effects or an edge of "coolness" to succeed. That's how you get all these tedious CGI-fest movies, and awful movies like "Public Enemies", where the brilliant Michael Mann who made one of my favourite movies of the 2000s, the fantastic "Collateral", somehow managed to make a movie about John Dillinger that was stunningly bland and vacuous, offering no actual insight into why he was a folk hero, or even a brief nod to the realities of the depression, we were simply invited to marvel at how "cool" Johnny Depp looked with a Tommy Gun. For 140 minutes. Even Beavis and Butthead would have hated it. Think about it, they actually shot a crime movie set in the 1930s on VIDEO instead of film. How stupid can you get. The only thing I can think of that is kind of similar but stupider, would be a remake of a Sergio Leone flick directed by the Wachowskis.

This is just the things we know about. Imagine all the ones which have been covered up - many of the people who work for the NHS are fanatical socialists dedicated to the "ideal" of the NHS. And we know socialists are conniving rats.

Brilliant!

Trump is such a RINO, you can hear his thundering feet coming from 3 miles away. I'm suprised he doesnt have visible horns.

And the fact that he's actually "smacking down" Paul is in fact a huge complement to him, it shows that more people actually ARE taking him more seriously than last time. People dont generally bother dissing people who they don't view as serious or as a threat.

I'm speaking as British observer of both European and American politics and culture -

I think a scary reality has emerged that a lot of people seemingly have not grasped yet - there are many forces on the left who are, whether consciously or not, engaging in efforts that will bring America full circle to become a monarchy-type nation again. And perhaps the wider western world too. Look at the Huffington Post, barely a day goes by where they haven't got some article detailing Michelle Obama's latest fashionwear, with literally thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of fawning comments posted by readers. It's actually startling. I feel sick when I read those comments, and other similar comments where readers fawn over the likes of Anderson Cooper ("He's a Vanderbilt!") and other rich figures from the North East and/or California. It sickens me because the left claims to care about helping poor people, and is always demonising the Republicans as the "party of the rich", and yet readers and staffers at HuffPo, frequently engage in this kind of mindless worship of wealthy people. It's not just HuffPo of course, it's also all the celebrity gossip sites where millions fawn over meaningless trivia about "famous" people. But HuffPo alarms me in particular, because it is the undeniable icon and crossroads of a new kind of mainstream leftism which did not exist before the mid 2000s, and could not have happened without the tidal wave of Hollywood leftist activism and propaganda which seemingly came out of nowhere, popularising the demonisation of Bush. For all the talk of Marxists and Communists, those old fashioned "intellectuals" (the likes of Zinn) who are on that side of the aisle, seem to be perfectly happy to tag along with and welcome this new kind of Democrat voter - the HuffPo reader and the Oprah watcher and the TMZ reader who has absolutely NO clue about the practical effects of Obama's policies, and are totally historically ignorant. And even more than that, they would probably suggest I'm just a "bitter old fashioned white person" or even a racist for questioning these people's qualifications to participate in democracy.

Something should have been done about this when this movement of the mind(less) was merely limited to the fawning media coverage of the Kennedys ("American royalty" they were called. Americans should have never tolerated such pap even for a second).

And yes the success of these two movies mentioned is astonishing and alarming. Like the author said, who gives a flying crap about insanely rich, inconsequential figureheads whose biggest problems are public relations? I could not possibly care less. You want to talk about the speeches that REALLY inspired the British public in the 20th century? Make a movie about Churchill for christ's sake.

I remember here in Britain there used to be a very strong strain of anti-monarchy sentiment. During the 80s and 90s they were often seen as a joke who, surely, were heading for the scrap heap of history. But now it's just gone. I can't believe it's gone. Now suddenly our cultural "masters" in London seem to have either a totally inexplicable admiration, or an aversion to challenging, uninteresting figures of triviality. Many people working in the London media complex today are simply neophites who've never known anything other than celebrity worship. But even more sickeningly, a lot of them are comedians and writers who once upon a time used to mock royalty. Most of them still claim to be edgy - I'm thinking of the likes of Charlie Brooker, Chris Morris, Ian Hislop, David Mitchell, just to name a few but there are hundreds - they still claim to be edgy but I'm almost 1000% sure they would much rather, if they could be forced to choose - side with Oprah watchers and Huffpo readers fawning over Obama and how "cool" his presidential campaign was, shake the hand of Shepard Fairey, and comment how fabulous Michelle Obama is, than dare side with me and my contempt for celebrity worship of Obama which is no better than the old days of monarchs and Middle Ages feudalism.

If I had been around to witness the era of Reagan and Thatcher, two people from fairly humble backgrounds, who had strode across the world stage, and won election with true eloquence, bold words and practical solutions, rather than the platitudes of Obama and Blair, I never could have conceived that we would be plunged into an abyss of fawning worship of rich people, and X-factor style elections but it has happened, and it's truly frightening to witness.

Like, I'm sure Bush takes accusations of being a man-child like REALLY seriously when they come from... a man-child.

By the way Josh, at least Bush could address a class of little kids without the use of a teleprompter.

When you're in a hole you're supposed to stop digging!

“I hear of this guy, and he’s got a cool name, Che Guevara! Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics! So I came across a picture of Che, smiling, in fatigues, I thought, ‘Dammit, this guy is cool-looking!’”

I had to google that to check it was real. And I still don't believe it.

It's ironic because the only time anyone watches SNL is when they've got the wrong channel.