On Harry Potter and the Incredibly Conservative Aristocratic Children's Club
The idea that "success comes with hard work" is a conservative, not a liberal, notion. It's the bedrock of conservatives' contempt for the less fortunate -- if you work hard, you achieve success, so if you're poor, it's because you deserve to be. The proper liberal stance, therefore, is to acknowledge that the system unfairly favors a few over the rest. Not only that, but it acknowledges the role of unearned advantages through privileged relationships (instead of the idea of the meritocracy -- again, a deeply conservative notion).
Ironically, if the Harry Potter books were more "liberal" in the way that would satisfy Bustillos, they would be fantastic conservative propaganda. Hey, kids! You, too, can be a super-special wizard, if you just work at it hard enough! And everyone who gets special breaks from the establishment, gets them because they DESERVE them! And people don't just happen into fantastic wealth merely for being the child of wealthy parents -- they obviously earned and are completely entitled to 100% of that wealth!
Personally, I'd rather my kids read books that show them the world as it is, rather than instilling in them some bogus capitalist fantasy world view.
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On Horror Chick: 'Devil': The Further Fall of the House of M. Night Shyamalan
Who could have anticipated that a movie called "Devil" would have supernatural themes? It's like when I saw "Gandhi" and the whole thing was just about some skinny dude in a loincloth.
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On The Feminist 'Daily Show' Wars Just Got Serious And I'm Scared
I'm sure there's a perfectly good mansplanation for this.
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On Flicked Off: 'Toy Story 3' Provokes Mass Audience Sobbing
The wife and I tried to inoculate ourselves before seeing Toy Story 3 by imagining all the sad/poignant things that could happen in the movie, and pre-crying so we'd be all drained and wouldn't cry during the movie.
Didn't work.
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On Honey Is The New Turtle Wax
I wish BP had been in the honey-gathering business. Then their recent misfortune would have been the most DELICIOUS man-made global ecological catastrophe ever!
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On The Woodchipper, by Claude Vordell, Former Manager of the Applebee's in Bozeman, MT
This "no problem" thing is being horribly overthought by all parties involved. Whatever mental gymnastics one has to come up with in order to justify their dislike of the phrase, what it boils down to is the word "problem." Merely uttering the word, even in the context of denying its existence, rings a sour note. Imagine if a waiter set a plate in front of you and said, "There is absolutely no fecal material in this dish." While literally true, and reassuring knowledge, it's not something most diners really want to hear.
That's why the best response to "thank you" in a restaurant is "my pleasure." Whether literally true or not (I'm guessing it's generally not -- what would probably most pleasure the waiter is the diners finishing their fucking food and getting out of there, after leaving a gigantic tip), the utterance of the word "pleasure" gives the diner a little frisson of warmth.
These phrases are pleasantries -- not meant to be thought about in any depth, but tossed back and forth and immediately forgotten. The literal meaning of these words doesn't matter so much as their superficial "mouth feel."
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On Hashfic: Studio 60's Odd Second Life On Twitter
The sad thing about "Studio 60" is that people consider it a failed comedy about TV comedy, when it was actually a drama about producing TV comedy.