"Prager...would rather explore politics and the joys of marriage than complain about...our feminized culture."

Actually, in the time I've listened to Prager, the feminization of our culture has been a recurring topic of his.

Ben Shapiro "Tina Fey made her career far more by imitating Palin than by writing a show nobody watches called '30 Rock.'”

This trope ("Nobody watches '30 Rock'") is starting to become a little cloying. It's one thing when Nolte starts his little obsessions, like naming Meryl Streep America's worst actress, but when his rhetorical points are parroted by other writers on the site, it starts sounding like toeing the line of party orthodoxy.

When the left attacks Sarah Palin viciously while simultaneously claiming she is of no importance, perspicacious observers on the right correctly point out that there is no need to attack the unimportant. Palin is attacked because the left fears her. The attacks themselves are evidence of her importance. There is a logical equivalency here.

I believe that the "event zero" that began the whole avalanche that we today know as outspoken leftist Hollywood was Vanessa Redgrave's "Zionist hoodlums" speech at the 1978 Oscars.

This morning I submitted a post regarding the idea that bundling was not a new phenomenon and that it was not exclusive to cable/satellite providers. It apparently has been deleted. It contained no profanity or attacks on any person, place or thing. Does anyone have any insight into what might lead to a deletion?

I'm not particularly upset, but I spent some time composing the post, as I do with almost all my posts and if I understand what might lead to its being deleted, I can avoid the waste of time that composing a deletion-eligible post would entail.

In 1988, I got cable TV. From 1979 until then, I didn't own a TV. For a decade, I hadn't seen a single episode of 99% of the shows that aired during that interval. The only television I saw was whatever was on when I visited a friend or went to a bar. Aside from missing out on some water-cooler talk ("Who shot J.R.? I don't know and I couldn't care less.") I didn't feel the least bit deprived. During those nine-plus years, I read voraciously and went back to school. Despite owning a business, I was able to earn a full-ride mathematics scholarship to Rutgers. I also became familiar with and started to love classical and bebop music. It was a very fulfilling time.

Then I got cable. I was living in an apartment building at the time and my neighbors complained to me how shoddy the cable company's customer service was. There was only one cable company; it was an absolute monopoly. I had to sacrifice a day's work to wait for the installer to show up. (They told me he'd be there between 8:00am and 5:00pm. Naturally he showed up at 5:00. Who was the lucky stiff who saw him at 8:00?) Then, when I finally had cable TV, the problems started. I needn't go into the details of them, which, after over twenty years, are pretty hazy anyway. The point is that the cable company would barely lift a finger to address them and when the finger was lifted, it was entirely at their convenience and not at all at mine.

I related all this to my friends and neighbors and they unanimously echoed my experiences with theirs. I told them that such a situation was intolerable. In no other business could such contemptuous disregard for the customer lead to success. I told them, especially those other folks who lived in my building, that if we all, en mass, canceled our cable service, that would send a clear signal that the cable service's policies would have to change or their business would begin to face failure. Everyone I spoke to agreed with me in principle, but they were lying to themselves. After only a couple of months of cable TV, I canceled my subscription. No one else I spoke to did. Their situation vis-a-vis the cable company was not intolerable. After all, one does not tolerate the intolerable, especially when there is a simple alternative.

No, it was in fact the alternative that to them was intolerable. They would rather have the bundling, the terrible service and adjusting their lives to fit the cable company's schedule than to go without TV. That was their prerogative, but it was like the old joke: "Doc, it hurts when I move my hand this way." "Don't move your hand that way."

What I really like about this movie and other movies from the era is the straightforwardness of the story. There are no laboriously contrived twists; there's no protracted mano-a-mano face-off; the villain doesn't come back from the dead for a last-second jump scare; there's no coincidental connection between the villain and the hero (can't you just hear it in a current movie: "Hey, my daughter's on that train!") or any of the other nonsense that passes for story in today's movies.

Movies in the 70's were compact; they began, developed and got the hell out. I'm reminded of the differences in storytelling on television between then and now, as well. Today's style relies on intrigues, subplots, twists, improbable subplots, coincidences, ellipses, ridiculous subplots, self-conscious technique and distracting subplots. Contrast a show like "Combat" with, say "Person of Interest." I'll take "Combat" any day, just as I'll take the original "Pelham" over any of its remakes.

Regarding "This Means War," I haven't seen it, but when we saw the commercial for it, I turned to my wife and said, "I'll bet the big twist is that she's a CIA agent, too."

Both Cosby and Lee are late to the party (though welcome.) Larry Elder has been banging this drum for over fifteen years and has been called every loathsome racist name in the book for his efforts. The times are finally catching up to his ideas.

Zachary Leeman - ”The studio also dumbly...replaced [Norton] with Mark Ruffalo. Here was their explanation:
We have made the decision to not bring Ed Norton back...Our decision is definitely not one based on monetary factors, but instead rooted in the need for an actor who embodies the...collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members...who thrive working as part of an ensemble...
I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I can read between the lines. Basically, they needed someone who was more of a puppet than Norton and whose voice would not interrupt theirs.

I can read between the lines, too. They needed someone who could, in the famous words of Quincy Jones, check his ego at the door. Norton wouldn’t. Therefore, good-bye Norton. Where is the evidence that Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johannson are “puppets?”

Zachary Leeman - "The same guy [to direct 'Captain America!' ] who was quoted time and time again wanting to downplay the patriotic side of Captain America. What? I thought these guys were trying to be more faithful to the characters they showed on screen. His name is Captain America! The film was awful. The special effects showing Chris Evans as a scrawny pre-Captain America were just sad and awkward. The action scenes were so cardboard that the film felt like it had no personality. And it all just felt like one big rush to the setup for 'The Avengers' at the end."

Virtually every point made here is wrong. While the director did make some pre-release comments that had conservatives' antennae extended, the movie itself proved that the worry was unwarranted.

There had similarly been much talk of the scrawny Steve Rogers effects being distracting and unconvincing. I went into the movie prepared to overlook them for the sake of my suspension of disbelief. To my surprise, I found them absolutely naturalistic and convincing. I can only conclude that those who found it otherwise were so aware of Chris Evans's actual physique that seeing him in the scrawny state was in-and-of-itself bizarre and distracting, regardless of the quality of the technical effect.

The acting was uniformly character-driven in precisely the way that Mickey Rourke described it should be in his rant. Additionally, the characters' attitudes and positions were consistent with a 1940s verisimilitude, not naive in the way that young people always believe previous generations were but innocent in a pre-"post-ironic" way that is not steeped in the strong tea of cynicism of today.

The story was perfectly functional, having both to tell the origin of the character and to set him on an adventure and to do so with comic-book abandon. We take impossible characters like Cap and Red Skull on faith and ask only that their inherent impossibility be handled in as earthbound a way as possible. This movie did that.

Likewise the action sequences were exciting and character-driven, most notably the early chase scene which had Cap diving into water after a submarine. This scene established forcefully, excitingly and humorously how absolutely determined Steve Rogers was. His determination to join the army was not a one-off trait that was disposed of after his transformation, but was shown to be part-and-parcel of his being. It was an expertly conceived and executed sequence.

My disappointment with "Thor" is another story.