Can someone please apply crazy glue to the lips of Michael Medved?

He reminds me of one of my Hebrew school teachers, Ray, who can also go to hell.

By the way, Jews call hell Gehenna, and it's not really scriptural. More of a folk belief.

if medved runs for office his bumper stickers should read "medved: what a dolt"

(The first vol was credited solely to Harry, as Michael thought if his name was on them, he'd never work in Hollywood again. But after the book was a hit, he was OK with it.)

He had a short season of presenting the "worst" films on Channel 4 over here, usually with unnecessary additions (Comedy subtitles etc) and a preamble that was usually funny/wacky but bearable.

As far as mixing the love with the contempt for low cinema goes, I'll take MST3K anyday. I think Ned would back me up on that one.

Today, I went on the Michael Medved radio show for an hour. What a riot.

I'm talking on the show and explaining why I don't think privatization would help young people---He starts hollering about how it is an outright lie that anyone supports "privatization."

This one really gets me going. I don't care what they want to call it. But I just can't stand to hear people yell and accuse me of lying because I refer to private accounts/personal accounts/personal-property accounts/if-you-can't-tell-we-are-messing-with-your-head-by-now-then-you-are-a-complete-idiot accounts as privatization. I mean really.

So anyway, Medved is like, and this is a paraphrase, "you are a liar, you are a liar, President Bush's plan would not privatize Social Security."

So, I read this quote from George W. Bush as reported by ABC News on October 30, 2002: "What privatization does is allows the individual worker - his or her choice - to set aside money in a managed account with parameters in the marketplace."

I had to read it about 5 times before it sunk in. That is Mr. Bush, describing his own plan, calling in privatization.

So then he starts calling me a liar for saying that there are politicians who want to get rid of Social Security entirely (an accusation that has been made here in the comments at this blog, and where I suspect Medved got the question). He's like, I dare you to name one politician who supports phasing out Social Security. My reaction was, I don't want to get into naming names. But he kept harping on me so I had to dig into my files.

So I read him this quote from Congressman Chris Chocola: "Bush's plan of individual investment of 2 percent of the money is a start. Eventually, I'd like to see the entire system privatized."

At that point, Medved just lost it and started saying that Chocola was not a real Congressman.

Repeat: When confronted with the facts once again he accused me of lying and said he doubted that there was really a member of Congress named Chris Chocola.

Wow.

I may be partly confusing them with the two volumes of "cult movies" which covered/crossed over some of the same movies, but I would sy, he had some perspectives about the people who made "bad" movies, and that their stories were still interesting and should be told. Which, as a result, they did (Ed Wood and so on).

Although some of the references have been proved to be mistakes (Bela Lugosi "Ah he's as harmless as kitchen" never happened, for one)

um, upthread there were a few posts that speculated about Jewish beliefs in hell- somebody said that the "jewish hell" is called Gehenna- I'm just curious here- what about the references to "Sheol" (which I think means "the pit")- is that Gehenna? Or are they different?

I'm no expert, nor do I play one on the telly, but I did find this essay via a quick G--gle: "Attempting to piece together the cultural, historical, and theological significance of “Gehenna” can be a daunting task if one is only familiar with the King James (or similar) translation of the N&O T because of its incompleteness and inconsistency. The word “Hell” is used at least once to translate each of the following terms, each bearing significant differences from the others: Tartaroo (Taratarus), Gehenna, Sheol, and Hades. Gehenna (occurring twelve times) and Tartaroo (occurring only once in 2 Peter 2 :4) are always translated as “Hell,” whereas Sheol is translated as “Hell” 30 (31?) times, “grave” 31 times, and “pit” three times. “Hades” is likewise inconsistently translated; as “Hell” 10 times and “grave” once. This could lead to the impression that references to a “pit” a “grave” and “Hell” are three unique things, while they would all be “Sheol” in the Hebrew."

there's a U.S. Congressman whose last name is ... CHOCOLA!

pride of place, y'all!

:-)

I think the purpose of *that* inclusion (as well as Last Year at Marienbad) was to show that, hey, the drive-ins don't have a monopoly on crap: a nice gesture, sure, but I dunno if either film really qualifies as being super-bad.

The worst films are middle brow 'issue' films. I admit that they would make a boring book.

John Waters accomplished this idea so much more amusingly (and with genuine affection) when he showed Divine reading an issue of Cahiers du cinema at Tab Hunter's Drive-In movie theater... you know, the one showing the Marguerite Duras triple feature.

i don't think any particular kind of films make the 'worst' films. there are a lot of good 'issue' films just as there are good genre films and good art films.

and i think talking about bad (let alone 'worst') films is kind of boring, actually.

that said, marienbad is kind of awesome.

I just saw it for the first time a couple weeks ago and I'm still finding myself cornering my own body against my bed. I'm not wearing Chanel feather boas, though.

American slavery: not actually all that bad

Slavery: At least it's not genocide!

Those who want to discredit the United States and to deny our role as history’s most powerful and pre-eminent force for freedom

stopped reading here

when you began to suspect it wasn't the reasonable, well-founded argument you were expecting?

The whole point of shit like this is to rebuild our national myth, and the writer wants to do that either because 1) He is a mental child, or 2) He understands the role of national myths in mustering support for wars and rallying folk around the flag

Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean.

Even in context I can't figure this out--the Most Horrifying aspect is that slave traders lost money?

Yes, in fact it was as horrifying for the slave traders as for the slaves!

BTW Hitler didn't invent genocide either.

Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean.

IF ONLY THEY HAD SOME WAY TO AVOID DOING THAT

While slavery represented an undeniable horror in our nation's early history, the slave population never exceeded 20% of the national total (amounting to 12% at the time of the Civil War). This means that at least 80% of the work force remained free laborers.

lol I see why he is a film critic and not a mathemetician/historian

A lot of Jews survived the Holocaust so ya know that wasn't so bad either.

So frustratingly undeniable

Hey, only 20% of my food is made of poison!

His argument is actually, "A lot of people didn't die in the Holocaust so ya know that wasn't so bad either."

my favorite part is the "at least"

barring the possibility that, with 20% of the population slaves, there may be more than 80% of the remaining non-slave population working as free laborers

And as with their horses and cows, slave owners took pride and care in breeding as many new slaves as possible. Rather than eliminating the slave population, profit-oriented masters wanted to produce as many new, young slaves as they could. This hardly represents a compassionate or decent way to treat your fellow human beings, but it does amount to the very opposite of genocide.

i like how slavery "isn't so bad" when it comes to praising slaveowners for their sensible “profit-oriented” entrepreneurship but it suddenly becomes bad here:

Thomas Jefferson included a bitter condemnation of slavery in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. This remarkable passage saw African bondage as “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty” and described “a market where MEN should be bought and sold” as constituting “piratical warfare” and “execrable commerce.”

This reminds me of the old Dave Allen routine about 20% of road accidents being caused by drunk drivers and since that means that 80% of road accidents are caused by sober drivers then obviously we should be taking all the sober drivers off the road.

The man's clearly unhinged.