… can't see itself living in a house without mirrors.
Jan
18
2011
A Fortuitous Juxtaposition
Sometimes my web-reading habits work out. No sooner did I read
David
French:
How wonderful it must be to feel the self-righteousness glow
that one gets by calling for civility while -- at the same time
-- implicitly accusing your fellow citizens of inciting murder.
Leave it to the Left to create an entirely new form of political
discourse: vicious civility.
… when almost immediately I read an example of
the that very thing, from Washington Post editorial columnist
Eugene Robinson:
In the spirit of civil discourse, I'd like to humbly suggest that Sarah
Palin please consider being quiet for a while. Perhaps a great while.
It's very reminiscent of President Obama's urging Americans to
"more civility in our public discourse", which came barely a month after
he referred to Republicans as "hostage takers" and deemed John Boehner
a "bomb thrower."
Maybe instead of quoting Psalm
46:4-5, the President might have spent a few minutes meditating on Matthew 7:5.
My own inclinations are similar to those of Don
Surber:
A fun movie about major family dysfunction. Nothing earth-shattering,
but a decent excuse to avoid broadcast TV for an evening.
All members of the Rizzo family are hiding major secrets from each
other. Andy Garcia plays the father:
he is a prison guard who sneaks off to acting classes. He's
also father to one more son that nobody else in the family knows about.
And said son winds up—guess where?—in the very slammer at
which
Dad works. There are two other kids: one is a secret ecdysiast, earning
money so that she can return to the college from which
she was bounced. The other is hiding a (relatively innocent) fetish,
involving food and high-BMI women. And everyone has a nasty cigarette
habit, which they (of course) hide from each other.
In addition to Andy Garcia, there are a number of other name actors,
and they all turn in solid performances:
Julianna Margulies as the mom, Emily Mortimer as another wannabe
actor (with secrets of her own), and Alan Arkin as the acting
teacher. But everyone else does a fine job too. It may not be very realistic,
because 99 times out of a hundred, the upshot
of this level of mutual familial dishonesty wouldn't be funny at all.
The movie dances right up to that, and then (probably wisely)
dances right back again.
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