Category Archives: Popular Culture

Farewell, Honey West

Anne Francis has died. She’s the first television star that I recall having a pre-teen attraction to. I thought the pre-Cindy-Crawford mole was kind of hot. I also thought her ocelot was cool. A little eerie that she died so soon after fellow Forbidden Planet star Leslie Neilsen.

Here’s one for the youngsters in the audience. I haven’t heard that theme song in decades.

The Christaphobia

of Hollywood and the elitist left:

Because those craaaazy red states are the places where you’re likely to find fundies, and the Westboro church is just the natural extrapolation of the red-state fundie ideas, right? RED STATE! OOHGABOOGA! Think of it: horror movies often have guys who A) kidnap victims, B) saw off their heads, and C) film it all for their own enjoyment. Oh, if only there really was a group of religious extremists who did these all things – it would give a movie a certain horrible topicality you just don’t get with unkillable bogeymen. But Smith would never do a movie about Al Qaeda in, say, a city in a blue state. No one would produce it; no one would distribute it. But a movie that links the Westboro church to something inherent in the ideological distinction of a “red state” will get you backslaps from all the right-thinking people. It’s lazy. It’s super-lazy.

A couple points. First, this is just more slander of Christians while ignoring the fact that Fred Phelps and his fellow vile cretinous loony tunes are Democrats. But as with Timothy McVeigh, they never let reality get in the way of an urban myth when they see an opportunity to smear conservatives and Christians.

Second, they’re both Christophobes and Islamaphobes. They’re Christaphobes in the same sense that they (projecting) accuse others of being “Islamaphobes,” that is, they have an irrational fear of Christians (at least as far as their remaining hale and hearty goes, though perhaps their fear that Christians will help undo the state that they worship is genuine). On the other hand, while those they call “Islamaphobes” have a quite reasonable concern about a foreign totalitarian ideology making a foothold in our own culture, the leftist elites have a simple and genuine fear of actual violence from Muslims (though they rarely state it explicitly), were they to ever give them the same treatment that they fearlessly mete out to peace-loving Christians (and conservatives) every day.

The Reality-Based Community

“Liberals” are more likely than conservatives to believe in ET.

One of the annoying things about being a space policy and technology expert is that many assume that you are knowledgeable about, and have in interest it, this topic. If you’re doing a call-in show on space, it’s inevitable that someone will call in about it.