Right Wing Nut House

As we all know, bloggers are a pretty diverse lot. There are mommy and daddy bloggers. There are teen-age girl bloggers who post on their little MySpace sites, sharing information about tampons, boys, and whatevah. There are people who blog about food, about books, about sex, about no sex, about great sex, and sex and sex…

You can tell where my mind is this morning…

Then there are the political bloggers. One would think that these would fall into three basic categories; liberal, conservative, and moderate. Not so. There is one other category of political blogger, usually liberal but conservatives are not without representation in this taxonomic classification; the Blowhards.

The Blowhard blogger is identifiable usually after reading the first two or three sentences of any post. That’s how long it takes to discover that the writer is an idiot. Don’t believe me? Read the first two sentences in any Debbie Schlussel post and I guarantee that you’ll either be laughing at the depth and breadth of her ignorance or weeping in disgust at the vileness of her spiteful rants.

A similar reaction can be gleaned from reading the liberal blogger TBogg. The writer is one of those lefties who finds it amusing to exaggerate the beliefs of his political opponents to the point that his rants move beyond the broadly satirical and come to rest in the realm of outright lying. Being a Blowhard, he realizes perfectly well that his lies anger his opponents which is why so few of us on the right even make an attempt to answer him. Trying to knock down a hundred strawmen, plus deal with his ignorance, and on top of that attempt to point out inconsistencies in his logic all add up to what usually would be a waste of precious time - time better spent picking the lint out of my navel or perhaps clipping my toenails. Either activity is more uplifting than paying much attention to this Blowhard of a blogger.

After reading this, however, I felt that someone should say something about this misanthrope’s assault on reason and a well-ordered mind.

For instance, after gleefully pointing out that “America stayed away in droves” from United 93 over the weekend, the Blowhard links to a site detailing the estimated box office totals for the weekend films. He first fails to point out that it finished a strong second to two films with huge advertising budgets. And then he failed to include the most important information contained in the linked article:

Though unique in its proximity to the real-life tragedy it depicts, the “too soon” refrain did not ground United 93. Outside of the Sept. 11 hook, the marketing was not compelling, with its flashes of small talk and shaky camera shots, nor did the picture appear that different from the TV recreations. People go to the movies to be entertained, which includes thoughts and emotions, not just laughs and thrills, but United 93 appealed more to a sense of duty or sacrifice rather than the inspirational heroism of the passengers.

Not many more, though, chose the weekend’s ostensibly fun option, RV. It was the top-grossing picture, but it took a massive 3,639 theaters to get to its estimated $16.4 million start. Distributor Sony reported that families accounted for 56 percent of the audience.

Celebrating ones ignorance about the movie industry should come as no surprise since Blowhards are usually so clueless they mistake their ostensible cleverness for deep thought. Even a cursory analysis shows how remarkable an opening weekend it was for U-93. It took in almost a third more money per screen as the Robin Williams vehicle RV - $4506 to $6465 for U-93. For a film with no big stars, no appeal to teenagers, and a large, still unknown segment of the population who either won’t see it because it brings up bad memories or, like TBogg, don’t want to be associated with their fellow Americans who eat “goobers,” this is an extraordinary number.

The profile of a U-93 viewer also suggests strong weekday numbers will be forthcoming as well. A similar phenomena was prevalent during Passion of the Christ, especially as word of mouth swept the country. Adults are much more likely to attend movies during the week than teenagers which should push U-93’s numbers even higher in the days ahead.

The key will be how much drop off there will be in weekend #2 and #3. If the film has similar numbers next weekend, the chances for a surprise hit are very good indeed.

And what does Blowhard TBooger have to say? Anything intelligent? Anything prescient?

Ever since 9/11 the Culture Commandos of the right have bitched because “Hollyweird” has failed to give them authentic Islamojihadhiricans to hate on the silver screen and now, when they get their chance, eh…they come down with social anxiety disorder or the theater seats are too hard on their pilonidal cysts.

I’m tempted to let that idiocy stand without comment as a testament to the Blowhard’s jaw dropping stupidity but allow me one minor observation:

THE FILM HAS BEEN OPEN THREE FRICKIN’ DAYS, NITWIT!

I suppose 60 million people who voted for Bush in 2004 (plus the several million Democratic “Culture Commandos” who view what happened on 9/11 as something more than the day they interrupted programming on The Cartoon Channel) could have squeezed into the 1795 theaters where U-93 was showing by doubling up in all of those seats. But then, there are all those “pilonidal cysts” which would have necessitated countless bloody trips to theater bathrooms as one after another, they would have burst causing untold discomfort for their seating companions.

Really now, Blowhard. To make a statement like that and expect anyone to take you for anything but a clown bespeaks a hubris of truly gargantuan proportions. You’re in Bill Clinton territory there, pal.

Not content with taking down his pants in public, Blowhard then removes his underwear:

We will stop here to point out that the other film about 9/11 pulled down $23,920,637 on 868 screens in its first weekend (insert your own ‘America hates America’ comment here).

Blowhard is writing about Michael Moore’s left wing wet dream Fahrenheit 9/11. What TBum doesn’t tell you is that more than $12 million of that opening was the take from theaters not located in the United States. Byron York:

Fahrenheit 9/11 also did well in Seattle, Montreal, Ottawa, Portland, Oregon, Monterey, California, and Burlington, Vermont. In all, two things stand out from those numbers. One is that the picture overperformed only in blue states, and even then only in the most urban parts of those blue states. And the second is that it did very well in Canada. Fahrenheit 9/11 consistently overperformed in Canadian cities; without that boffo business, the film’s gross would have been significantly smaller than it was.

That’s the upside of the story. The downside revealed by the Nielsen EDI numbers is that Fahrenheit 9/11, far from being the runaway nationwide hit that Moore claimed, underperformed in dozens of markets throughout red states and, most important — as far as the presidential election was concerned — swing states. Dallas/Fort Worth, the ninth-largest movie market, accounts for 2.07 percent of North American box office but made up just 1.21 percent of Fahrenheit 9/11 box office, for an underperformance of nearly 42 percent. In Phoenix, the tenth-largest market, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 29 percent. In Houston, ranked twelfth for movies, it underperformed by 38 percent. In Orlando, it underperformed by 38 percent; Tampa-St. Petersburg, by 41 percent; Salt Lake City, by 61 percent.

The list goes on for quite a while: Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, Norfolk, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, Jacksonville, Flint, Michigan (Michael Moore’s home turf), and many others. And in Fayetteville and Tulsa, where Moore boasted that his movie had sold out, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 41 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

York had access to the industry book that the studios rely on to see how their movies are doing; Neilson’s EDI. Not only that, that “other movie about 9/11″ had a $15 million promotional budget which just happens to be exactly how much it cost to make U-93. In other words, Moore spent as much to promote his film as Greengrass and Universal spent in making U-93.

Finally, TBlech reminds me why I’m not a liberal anymore; I don’t like having Stalinists as ideological compatriots:

Of course, Michelle Malkin didn’t attend because her local multiplex refuses to make brown people sit in the balcony, so I guess that’s a reason not to go too.

Fortunately for us Special Ed took time out from his busy weekend to face the enemy close-up (okay, they were actors on a movie screeen, but come on, at least he left the house) to file this special report.

The fact that this guy gets 10,000 visitors a day who read this kind of nauseating piffle says more about the left than anything my poor efforts can reveal. And since I’ve already spent far more time debunking this diseased, insufferable, dirty necked, loutish galoot than he’s worth, I’ll quit so that I can do something more productive with my time; like cleaning the litterbox.

At least I’ll be able to throw that kind of offal into the garbage.