At other times, though, the consumer of such a meal may feel as much like a victim as a guest. The reservation is hard won, the night is exhausting, the food is cold, the interruptions are frequent. The courses blur, the palate flags and the check stings.
Who knew Sesame Street is as corrosive as any other cultural product? Sheesh...This excerpt is crazy but I love the writing.
Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood — the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling. That is not unrelated to the infantilization of our society. Marinate three generations of Americans in that pabulum and it's no surprise you wind up with unprotected diplomats dragged to their deaths from their "safe house" in Benghazi. Or as J. Scott Gration, the president's special envoy to Sudan, said in 2009, in the most explicit Sesamization of American foreign policy: "We've got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes . . . " The butchers of Darfur aren't blood-drenched machete-wielding genocidal killers but just Cookie Monsters whom we haven't given enough cookies. I'm not saying there's a direct line between Bert & Ernie and Barack & Hillary . . . well, actually I am.
From
Gawker
From a
biting review of Taken 2:
So yeah. Taken 2 also features Neeson saying, "I need you to listen to me very carefully" about 50 times, the obligatory torture scene where an Albanian tough erotically sniffs at Famke Janssen's face, and some of the worst expository dialog ever crafted by producer and co-screenwriter Luc Besson, which — as anyone who has seen, say, last year'sColombiana knows — is really saying something. The film is directed by the Besson acolyte Olivier Megaton, who is to his mentor approximately what a scarecrow is to a real man. It is among the worst movies I've seen all year, though its bad taste and overwhelming trashiness are so total as to be sort of entertaining. That is, as long you are entertained by things that conform to every known stereotype about our blissfully ignorant American selves and those who might one day come for our wives and daughters.
Muse brought it on SNL...I love it when the horns kick in...
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