Thom Thoughts

“There’s something about ‘Borat.’

2006-11-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

This faux documentary that exploits every stereotype and turns every phobia inside out has exposed not just the obvious—that some people are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic—but also has cast a light on a cultural pathology unique to our times. Show a mouse a camera, and he’ll want to be a star. That is, people apparently will allow anyone into their lives as long as there’s a shot at fame or celebrity. The photo-snapping, video-camming, MySpace, in-your-face narcissism of our media age became a perfect storm with ‘Borat.’ The joke isn’t on us. It is us. For those arriving late to Planet Earth, Borat is the fictional star of the runaway hit movie by the same name. Well-known to the under-30 crowd, Borat is one of several characters played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on HBO’s ‘Da Ali G Show.’ In the film, he pretends to be a Central Asian TV journalist making a documentary about ‘Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.’ Essentially, Borat plays a naive, lovable, optimistic, oversexed, anti-Semitic, Third World fool in search of America... Along the way, he interacts with ‘real Americans’ in their natural habitats—a rodeo, a Pentecostal church, an antique store, a bed-and-breakfast, a humor school, a dating service, etc.—and does whatever is necessary to provoke, embarrass, enrage and shock. In the process, he manages to disable some people’s inhibitors, cajoling them into admitting that shooting Jews, hanging homosexuals and running down gypsies are all pretty good ideas... While Borat may have revealed some of the worst of us, he also revealed some of the best. Americans can be credulous, obtuse and tiny-minded, but they also can be generous, kind and forgiving. Many have laughed at themselves upon realizing they’d been duped. Others not so much, as Borat would put it.” —Kathleen Parker

The Real Heroes

2006-11-11T07:23:00.000-08:00

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result being that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations, from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and from dependence back to bondage."
Sir Alexander Fraser Tyler (1742-1813)

Ben Stein's final column

For many years Ben Stein wrote a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben has terminated the column to move on to other things in his life.

Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...
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How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

We truly take a lot for granted.
Forget the Hollywood "stars" and the sports "heroes"...

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What happend to common sense?

2006-10-30T05:29:00.000-08:00

It says in the Bible there are signs that a nation is about to go out under Divine Discipline. One sign is "When right is wrong and wrong is right".

Not until the early 1900s were entertainers treated as anything more than what they were. A moments diversion from reality. They didn't produce anything or protect anyone. People would gather to listen to music or a story. Today entertainers are placed on pedestals and paid huge sums of money for a moments diversion and we think nothing of it or worse we envy them. Athletes are paid hideous amounts of money for a moments diversion and we are told don't worry endorsements will pay for it. Have you bought a pair of running shoes lately? Yet a raise for our military has to be debated in Congress. Nurses are not paid near their worth. The Police, Firemen the list is long. Do we have a problem sorting out priorities?

What is a Curmudgeon?

2006-10-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Merriam-Webster describes a Curmudgeon as: a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man.
The modern definition: Anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the courage to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out facts even when it irritates those around him.
I am somewhere between the two.
My blog is my forum, my soapbox to say the things many others avoid.

Todays installment, Common Sense and where did it go?

A fence to protect our southern border! What a concept. It's relativly cheap compared to say actually guarding our border with the military.

World history would have benefited greatly with this knowledge. The "Great Fence of China" could have been built in record time. I can hear the leader of the Mongels, "Whoa can't go over there, they have a fence", plus I doubt the "Maginot Fence" would have discouraged Hitler.

It has been said, "A good fence makes a good neighbor". But only if you have a good neighbor in the first place.