David Wade Editorial Could Have Said More: A Citizen's View

In last week’s “Citizen’s View” David Wade decried the preponderance of leftist/liberal/lefty/left-leaning/left-wing/Hollywood-liberal movies like “Crash” at the Academy Awards. “Conservative films,” he proclaimed, “can also be thoughtful and compelling!” Okay... name one, I thought. But Mr. Wade declined to do so.

“Come on conservatives and independent thinkers!” he implored. “Stop grousing and step up to the plate and fight” for “films which challenge their (Hollywood liberals) comfortable beliefs!” After pausing momentarily to note the first-ever concurrence of the words “conservatives” and “independent thinkers” in the same sentence, I read on, curious to know which of the many undesirable (I guess) “comfortable liberal beliefs” Mr. Wade would have us “step up” and cinematically challenge. Tolerance? Civil rights? Religious freedom? Environmental protection? Fiscal responsibility? Public education? Liberty and justice for all? Mr. Wade wouldn’t commit.

Apparently, Mr. Wade is unaware that there are conservative films aplenty coming out of Hollywood every day. For example, the most conservative movie of last year was “Brokeback Mountain”. That’s right – conservative! Though widely hailed as ultra-liberal, “Brokeback Mountain” actually delivers this ultra-conservative message: “If you adopt the gay-cowboy lifestyle, you will lose your job, your family and your friends, and in the end (spoiler alert!) a mob of rednecks will beat you to death and toss your body into a ditch.” Now, if that isn’t “thoughtful and compelling” pro-conservative content, I don’t know what is!

Actually, I do know what is, and there’s a red-white-and-blue load of it in another recent patriotic right-wing film “Good Night and Good Luck”, as this conservative-friendly blurb illustrates: “At the height of the Red Scare, heroic conservative Senator Joseph McCarthy’s tireless efforts to save America from communist infiltration are subverted by infamous liberal-media attack-dog Edward R. Murrow.”

See? When bathed in the properly biased light, any movie, even an old, Hollywood classic like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, proves to be overwhelmingly conservative: “The inspiring story of a rich free-market capitalist (Lionel Barrymore) who dreams of trickling-down his enormous wealth to buy up the entire town of Bedford Falls. One day, an Angel grants him a gift – the chance to see what the world would be like without George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), the only small-business owner (i.e. anti-corporation liberal) standing in his way. Now free of competition, our hero raises mortgage-interest rates to force out “the discontented rabble” (low-income homeowners) and turns Bedford Falls into Pottersville, a corporately-controlled, money-making (for him) empire. Tragically, his dream ends when George Bailey comes back to life, but, like all typical liberal failures, George ends up with nothing more than a big, old house teaming with working-class friends and family, a basket filled with just enough borrowed money to get by...and Zuzu’s petals.”

Here’s another – “The Grapes of Wrath”: “Foreclosures by compassionate depression-era conservative bankers free thousands of Oklahoma farmers from the burdens of family-farm ownership, allowing them to travel as migrant workers to California, where beneficent orchard owners, unrestricted by communist labor unions, liberal child-labor laws, minimum-wage laws and even socialistic Social Security taxes, charitably house the desperate families in character-building abject squalor while exploiting them for handsome monetary gains.”

And finally, heeding Mr. Wade’s call for more conservative Hollywood films in the future, here is my pitch for what I’m sure will be a conservative feel-good box-office-hit-of-the-year -- “The Wonderful Life of George W. Bush”: “Bio-pic about an unremarkable boy from a dynastic American family who uses his name and wealth to buy his way out of business failures, alcohol addiction and military service, and who eventually, with the complicity of his father’s political cronies and Supreme Court appointees, rises to the throne of the American Presidency.”

I hope this helps you in your quest, Mr. Wade, though I’m still curious to know what your definitive conservative movie would be. Just don’t lay claim to “Passion of the Christ”, which, as we all know, is: “The story of history’s most famous separation-of-church-and-state liberal...”)