” Family friendly films make far more than the filth Hollywood vomits forth but how many family films do we get for each Brokeback Mountain?”

Ever heard of Pixar? Disney Studios?

Lets see . . . For each major Hollywood release with predominant homosexual theme (There’s Brokeback Mountain and, well . . . any others?) we have Cars, Shreck (I, II, III) High School Musical (I and II), Ratatouille, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Shark Tale, The Nanny Diaries, 13 Going on 30, The Incredible, Herbie the Love Bug, Prarie Home Companion, March of the Penguins, Surf’s Up, Shaggy D.A., Christmas with the Cranks, the Santa Clause. These I just pulled off the top of my head.

No, you’re right. The one gay movie (which was hugely controversial BECAUSE it was a gay movie) clearly is overwhelming the family friendly movie industry. It was so powerful, in fact, that there has not been a sequel, and there hasn’t been another major release that focuses on homosexual relationships primarily. Clearly an infection of hippie ideals designed to undermine American Values. After all, in Herbie the Love Bug, nobody sang God Bless America — Communists.

Why did everybody flip at Brokeback Mountain? Its a friggin’ movie!! I don’t like date flicks, but I’m not threatened when they come out — I just don’t watch them.

When one looks at the lossers Hollywood churns out one cannot help but make the connection that making money and making popular films are strictly accidential. Family friendly films make far more than the filth Hollywood vomits forth but how many family films do we get for each Brokeback Mountain? Look at the junk that Hollywood turns out for the boob tube and tell me that they are intereste4d in only making money rather than pushing an agenda.

If I wanted to destroy America’s image overseas the KGB could do no better than ask Hollywood to make a movie about America.

The media, academia, Hollywood, the music industry (except maybe Nashville) are dominated by the Left or at least the apathetic and a-political.

The chances of relying on the “free market” to balance things out in Hollywood is as realistic as believing that a company could enter the aircraft market and challenge Boeing and Airbus. Just ‘aint goin’ to happen.

“Real Conservatism is about the marketplace, not whining about how unfair things are, if the ‘300’ can make a profit then there is a place for Conservative movies. We will get the message out using our Conservative power of free markets. Grow a set of balls and stop whining.”

The ditto head would then realize the error of his ways and the two would race off in the Deficit Mobile, a vehicle powered by farm subsidies.

Very well said!! This site has some great threads.

@manning:

No doubt there is at least one CIA employee who has access, the ear of discreet reporters (or could get them), and the motive to harm the Administration. Probably at least two — there’s lots of employees.

“Faction” is one of those loaded words, and that’s the problem. It implies that there is an organized, cooperative, multi-party group. There’s absolutely no evidence for that, and that’s the part that seems far-fetched, at least to me. Labeling people in the CIA who discredit the Administration as a “faction” (or cabal, cell, etc.) implies that they are following orders. That implies that the motive for their action is loyalty to the faction, not loyalty to the truth (as in leaking because crimes are being covered up). Now, you can just discredit the information, because the source is an operative, instead of a whistleblower. Its a rethorical trick to undermine an opponents’ position, and its a dirty trick. THATS the objection I think d20 has.

Its the reverse of the “Theory of Intelligent Design” game. Whatever your stance on Intelligent Design, it clearly isn’t the science class definition of “theory.” It isn’t even “hopythesis.” Calling it a “theory” implies a weighty, tested-and-verified credibility that even its proponents concede is lacking. Or calling everybody who shoots at us in Iraq AQ — it makes them much more evil, and avoids having to consider whether or not we should consider their motivation (if they are AQ then the motive is to eat American babies, so we have to keep shooting until we run out of bullets).

Using loaded words like that is a trick to subconciously sends a message. In a frank discussion, its something that should be avoided at all costs.

“A faction at the agency has been attempting to undermine the Administration from day one. The fact that WSJ, WaPo, the New York Times, have all said exactly the same thing seems to have escaped your notice.”…“A “faction” is not the agency in general nor does it apply to the overwhelming percentage of employees who are loyal and leave politics out of their careers.

I’ve seen plenty of ACCUSATIONS in in the editorial pages of all three.

Look - I have no doubt that there are CIA employees who are political opponents of Bush and/or disagreed with his policies and I have NO doubt that some of them did things that objectively conflicted with the agenda of the President and that some of them even broke the law (leakers), but definition of this so-called “faction” is more elastic than Mearsheimer & Walt’s “Israel Lobby”.

Just like they defined the “Lobby” to include ANYONE who publicly advocated from pro-Israel policies, regardless of motive for doing so or their connection with one another, this “faction” is defined is defined such that it includes anyone who did ANYTHING that interfered the agenda of the Administration.

It incorporates everyone from those who illegally and unethically leaked classified information (they broke their oath and I support punishing them) to those who, like Joe Wilson, legally went public with Non-classified information critical of the Administration or its claims, all the way to CIA officials who didn’t leak or write an op-ed but merely reported unpleasant facts.

These allegations do NOT confine themselves to arguably “political” people like Joe Wilson, who I do not find sympathetic. They have been made almost ANY and EVERY time the CIA, or anyone in it, releases (not just “leaks”) information that does not support the Admins claims. When Dick Cheney claimed that there was evidence that just before 9/11, M. Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague, journalists naturally asked for confirmation from the intelligence agencies. When the CIA responded that it could NOT verify these claims because it simply did not have evidence that such a meeting ever took place, accusations about this “faction” and their “politically motivated undermining of the president” duly followed!

No one dispuited that the CIA answered the question truthfully - even if the meeting did happen the CIA had NO evidence for it and could not truthfully say otherwise. They didn’t say “the VP is lying” or even “the VP is wrong” - they just said “true or false, we have no evidence to confirm these claims”. If THAT is “undermining” then ANYTHING short of full support is too, and that means that 90%+ of the CIA is out to “undermine” the president.

What the f@#$% were they suppose to do? Lie to make the VP look better? Thats not their job. The organization may be part of the “executive branch” but their job is to gather, store, and analyze foreign intelligence, NOT to help generate domestic support for the Admins policies - which is their own damn job! CIA employees take an oath to protect the United States Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic and the only thing they are obligated to be loyal to is the Consitution - not the president, his policies, or members of his administration like the VP

— Furthermore —

I have assumed that you meant “faction” in the sense of “a Group within a larger organization, such as a political party, that has similar beliefs but different goals then the whole of the organization.”

Well, If you are going to talk about a “faction” in the CIA without being accused of smearing the whole organization, you had better have a coherent way of defining what makes a person a member of this “faction” - aka. what are their “different goals” and what standards of evidence can legitmately be used to prove that an individual shares these goals.

Right now it appears that main “goal” shared by all the so-far-designated members of this “faction” was to inform the public of facts that contradicted claims made by the Administration and the only standard of evidence that their actions were “politically motivated” is their party registration, ANY affiliation with traditionally Democratic organizations or causes, or ANYTHING LESS than being a 100% Pro-Administration Republican. By those criteria 90% of the CIA is in this “faction” and THAT would be a slander of the entire organization.

— Finally —

I assume you know that these accusations regarding the CIA are NOT NEW. They were being made at least 30 years ago when Rumsfeld & others formed “Team B” for the explicit purpose of discrediting the CIA because it would not support their allegations of new, incredibly advanced, soviet weapons and their plans to use them to attack America - because all the information the CIA had indicated that they did not exist!!

They made the same allegations then as they made now and for the same reason: The CIA will always be an albatross to agenda-driven idealogues because of the sheer volume of information it has access to will always include evidence that contradicts their claims - when the CIA has the ability to show (insofar as it can, given the nature of the intelligence business) that what you are saying is bullshit it becomes necessary to discredit the CIA! The people making these accusation know damn well that the CIA often cannot publically reveal the bulk of this evidence and so they know it will often come down to a he-said she-said where these kinds of smears can be effective.

PPS-
A private wrote some stories that purported to detail “rude” behavior by a few soldiers while NEVER claiming to be indicative of American Soldiers in general or any “faction” in the military, or anything other than a personal account of individual actions by individual soldiers. You and others claimed that, by doing so, he had knowingly and intentionally slandered the military and all his fellow servicemen - even though I heard stories of worse behavior by my Grandmother, and Army Nurse in the Euopean theater in WWII, including an attempted sexual assault, by GIs, that she narrowly escaped.

Now you (and others) are assert that there IS a coherent faction in the CIA that willfully jepordizes American security for the sole purpose of scoring political points against Bush and dismiss it when I say that this borders on slander.

Unlike you I will not “mind read” and assert that, because it makes no sense, you must be disingenous and have some ulterior motive. I think its much more simple; you simply have not examined some deeply held assumptions/stereotypes. You can believe the former because it agrees with the “liberals hate the troops” stereotype we both grew up with, but since there is no “Conservatives hate the CIA” stereotype you cannot even see that the “faction” talk is as slanderous as any of the conspiracy theories peddled by Hollywood liberals like Oliver Stone.

“Shareholders care about making money. But they have little leverage. Execs are canned and have such short spans (and significantly, don’t share in profits) so they need to find their next job by greenlighting anti-American projects that will lose money or not make much so they can be recommended by Steven or George when they get fired next year. Short-term focus makes network-building by catering to the hard-left and aristo pretensions of the Hollywood elite a slam-dunk.”

Damn! Now THATS a paranoid rant! You go, boy!

“should we hire Bob? He made the studio 200 million.”
“yeah, he made the studio money, but he hasn’t pissed on the flag in weeks.”
“oh well, then he’s off the list. “