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“John Hughes Was an Avid Republican”
By Kyle | August 7, 2009
Says who? Why, Ben Stein, who adds that Hughes was “a genius and a poet….he was to them what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan age.” Frustrating, though: Because as far as I can tell Hughes didn’t sneak any particularly conservative messages into his nonpolitical movies the way liberal filmmakers often do. Though as Stein says, Ferris Bueller had a line about being forced to study European Socialism: “I’m not European, I don’t plan to be European. I’m not a Socialist, don’t plan to be a Socialist.” Stein, a pro-capitalist economist, says he used to get wickedly funny emails about the political scene from Hughes.
Topics: Economics, Movies, Politics |
August 7th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Some of Stein’s economic positions are inconsistent. And he donated to Al Franken’s campaign, too.
August 7th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Conservatives generally do not feel the need to bludgeon people with their beliefs as liberals do since we incorrectly assume common sense is a shared trait of all people. Conversely liberals beliefs must be trumpeted this is why they have to have 112 bumper stickers. That and if they forget what cause is trendy this week they can look at the back of their car to see what they’re supposed to be believing in.
August 7th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
“Conservatives generally do not feel the need to bludgeon people with their beliefs as liberals do since we incorrectly assume common sense is a shared trait of all people.”
Guess you don’t listen to talk radio much (or watch 24).
Stein is pretty much dead to me after the anti-evolution crap.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Hey Brandon, I’ve seen a lot of Conservative bumper stickers too. Too bad the owners can’t read what they say.
August 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Kyle’s movie critic cohort Jeff Wells on why Conservatives are evil:
“Conservative righties are essentially defined by selfishness. Because they’re basically the party of “me first, taking care of my own family, the less fortunate need to get their act together and work harder, darker-skinned people are entitled to the good life but a lot of them don’t seem to really get it like we do, I-don’t-know-about-that-global-warming-stuff, I like to play golf and drive my SUV to the hardware store or the country club and do whatever the hell I want within the bounds of reason because that’s what rugged American individualists get to do,” etc.
There are wrinkles and variations and exceptions among them but righties are basically bastards and social Darwinians who live by their belief that the world is for the few.
One can therefore say that the essential core quality that has to exist as a behavioral platform for evil to flourish is selfishness. Selfishness — “not them but me, not the greater good but mine” — is where all bad and ugly things begin.
It can therefore be said that in this day and age, righties are, by their relentless me-first attitudes and by certain lights and after a certain fashion, evil.”
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/08/argument_over_b.php
August 8th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
@Hunter
Exactly….which is why I like it. I don’t want to give anything to someone as ill-informed and delusional as you.
Taking care of your “own” means your family..guess what, the rest of humanity can go jump off a cliff. I take care of my own first and foremost.
I live near some welfare junkies and I wouldn’t give them my last nickel.
Here’s one thing your friend misses, as a conservative, I also don’t believe that I have the right to tell you how to live, how to act, how to eat, how to wrestle naked with your pet Ferret….you do that creppy sh*t if you want. Just don’t come into my house telling me how to live…I’ll send anyone who does that out with a Wii-mote embedded in their skull.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Oh, sure, like you can do that wearing that straitjacket. Did it hurt your nose tapping that post out?
August 8th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
“It can therefore be said that in this day and age, righties are, by their relentless me-first attitudes and by certain lights and after a certain fashion, evil.”
So driving SUVs and believing people should take care of themselves is inherently evil. No wonder Hunter hates conservatives more than terrorists.
August 8th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
What are you talking about? I was just singing George Will’s praises the other day. I have no problem whatsoever with intellectual conservatives. Just stupid ones.
August 8th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
So you say, after posting Wells comments that all right-wingers are inherently selfish and evil. Make up your mind.
August 9th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Hunter is the classic case of liberalism…sprinkle some elitism with a dash of snobbery (also a tablespoon of “nolifeexperience”) and viola!
He lives by the teachings of Alinsky..notice how he’s the guy on the boards doing most of the labeling and namecalling..besides me. I enjoy getting in liberals faces..most are absolute cowards when confronted with a brutish, angry conservative.
August 9th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I am merely following on from an earlier observation of about a fortnight ago that right wingers in America are considered evil by the general public. I thought this piece by Wells, whatever you think of it personally, went some way towards explaining why there is such an attitude abroad in the land.
August 9th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Leave it to an intellectual lightweight like Wells to rehash the dreadfully tired “conservatives are greedy” claptrap that was played out quite a while before I was even born. What’s next, an envelope-pushing discussion about how whether or not liberals are all secretly communists (at least that can be objectively measured)? Liberals might get a bit more mileage with that nonsense if their leaders weren’t all fabulously wealthy and gallingly unconcerned about the well-being of their constituents. Does anybody, and I mean anybody, really believe that a woman like Nancy Pelosi gives a flip about people who can’t travel across the country in a private jet?
Arguments about greediness and such things are all but irrelevant when discussing politicans by ideology, because personalities and intentions are just too different. The real question isn’t what they’re thinking, but what are they doing?
August 9th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
So the “general public” considers 40-percent of its population to be evil? That’s news to me. Do you have any actual factual evidence to back that up, besides some ad hominem from a liberal blogger (whose idea of the general public is probably Ashbury in San Francisco)? I’m an open conservative in a media establishment that’s voted well over 90-percent for Obama, I’ve yet to have anyone come at me with a crucifix or throw holy water.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
I stopped reading Wells a while ago … he truly seems like an angry, sad soul, and it served no purpose to read his ravings.
Hunter isn’t as grotesque as Wells, but he is just as sloppy and ill-informed. His comment strand here proves it.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Christian: I am sloppy and ill-informed? That’s rich coming from a person whose website has all the puerile perspicacity and intellectual rigour of the ranting of the town drunk.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I am sloppy and ill-informed?
Predictable too.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Since Hunter likes the Dictionary so much and touts his superior intellect…tell us Hunter how would you talk to Osama Bin Laden if you ran into him?
That’s before you got hog-tied and beheaded by his band of merry men.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
@ KIshke. So true. Big of you to admit it though.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
@ PaulM. There is no need to capitalize the word dictionary. Osama, who is a better educated man than yourself, would have a chuckle over that. I guess we would have chat together over tea about Mad magazine’s great Don Heck, George MacDonald Frazer’s Flashman novels, imperialism, cricket and the upcoming Hobbit pictures. Oh, and James Bond movies. I’ll bet Osama likes a good Bond picture. Are you a Connery or a Roger Moore man, PaulM?
August 10th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
I’m more of a Remo Williams type Hunter.
Osama is sure as spitfire smarter than me and my trailer park mentality…ya got me there.
I’ll just go grab a beer, beat my wife/sister and leave solving the worlds issues to you as I watch He-Haw reruns.
August 10th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
…actually Hunter, now that I think of it, you’re a load that should have been swallowed.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Sorry, PaulM,I don’t go for guys. Go swallow some other chaps. load.
August 10th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
@ KIshke. So true. Big of you to admit it though.
See? I knew you would say that. Predictable.
August 10th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
What can I say, Kishke? You hand me a custard pie and stand there grinning. Splat!
August 10th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Just saw “Pretty in Pink” at a tribute event in LA Saturday night, and i can’t remember the line but there’s a distinctly pro-Republican joke in there and Annie Potts’ character finally finds true love with a Republican.
Sorry that John didn’t make “Red Dawn” instead of “Pretty in Pink,” but as a writer above said, conservatives have more class than liberals and don’t feel a need to bludgeon.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Hunter, you’re a model of positive thinking! You sit on a fresh cow patty and call it a custard pie.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:21 am
…I would have but when I got to your house, your dad said he needed a break. You have too much stamina.
Again, I am pro-life, but in your case..I’ll make an exception. Swine flu maybe? I could only hope.
August 11th, 2009 at 5:12 am
Yeah, your momma wears combat shoes too. Jeez, grow up.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Hughes wrote the story for Maid in Manhattan, in which Ralph Fiennes plays a Republican politician who is also a good guy.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
The foul-mouthed, hateful, narcissistic Obama-worshipper Hunter tells someone to grow up. Take your own advice before you dish it out to someone else, you washed-up hack
August 11th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@ Sean. Your mother wears combat boots, too. Come to think of it, you and PaulM post from the same ISP. Could you by any chance be related?
August 11th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I am sloppy and ill-informed? That’s rich coming from a person whose website has all the puerile perspicacity and intellectual rigour of the ranting of the town drunk.
And I find it ironic you call Christian’s site “puerile” and “ranting” after injecting Wells and your own ad hominem into this thread (and many others) repeatedly. Christian is a professional journalist, you’re a failed attempt at an amateur troll.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:34 am
I wonder if someone will win this argument? I sit at the edge of my seat waiting for one of you, any one of you, to not sound like a teenager arguing from your computer in your mom’s basement…
September 1st, 2009 at 1:36 am
Oh, and for the record, every hit Hughes had was because it was dumbed down enough for the masses to “get” it. So I do buy that he was an avid Republican. Republicans have one thing right: they assume their audiences are stupid.