Smells like dinner!

Happy Saturday Musical Tribute; or, as Seal once put it: "It's Loneliness That's The Killer"

Lazlo Bane.




Some Readers may not be aware of Harrogate's recently emergent obsession with Scrubs. But, as the show plunges into its final season Harrogate has been Nexflixing seasons in order, taking in each episode as though he never knew about the show until this summer.

But, the song is really great, regardless of what ye think of Braff and company. Who has never experienced the mood at stake in this song. The loneliness of it verging on despair, and yet somehow, the song manages to retain a fundamental faith that things will work out.

Yea, one might even say that thematically, the song hits the same chord as the Beatles' Masterpiece, "With a Little Help From My Friends," appropriately situated in their appropriately titled stroke of effervescent genius, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Enjoy.

Headline of the Day: "Cinderella, others arrested in Disneyland labor protest"

Some of Harrogate's Readers are going to be shocked at the following effusion, but: WAY TO GO AP! That there's a priceless photograph. (O how Harrogate wishes there was a photograph circulating of WALL-E in handcuffs, too!).

Also, it's always good when labor protests make it into Mainstream News, so Harrogate reluctantly offers a Tip of the Hat to CNN (now he needs a shower)

Linky link

The arrest of the 32 protesters, many of whom wore costumes representing famous Disney characters, came at the end of an hour-long march to Disneyland's gates from one of three Disney-owned hotels at the center of a labor dispute.

Those who were arrested sat in a circle on a busy intersection outside the park holding hands until they were placed in plastic handcuffs and led to two police vans while hundreds of hotel workers cheered and chanted.

And then:

Bewildered tourists in Disney T-shirts and caps, some pushing strollers, filed past the commotion and gawked at the costumed picketers getting hauled away. The protest shut down a major thoroughfare outside Disneyland and California Adventure for nearly an hour.

"It's changing my opinion of Disneyland," said tourist Amanda Kosato, who was visiting from north of Melbourne, Australia. "Taking away entitlements stinks."

The dispute involves about 2,300 maids, bell hops, cooks and dishwashers at three Disney-owned hotels: the Paradise Pier, the Grand Californian and the Disneyland Hotel.

UPDATE: Harrogate must extend his Tip of the Hat to Fox News also. One supposes that the sheer spectacle of the thing makes it an irresistable cover, even though the issue at stake is pretty anathematic to such coverage. How the Fox Pundits treat it is unsurprisingly smug and dismissive. Still, the video is there for viewers to see. Better than no coverage at all.

WALL-E Wars 4; or, the Jury is Now in, and WALL-E is an Ode to Classical Capitalism

Isn't this a really great picture of WALL-E????? What a cute robot.

But anywho. Harrogate's Pulitzer-Caliber coverage of the WALL-E Wars continues with Michael Gerson's latest write-up, which has confirmed Harrogate's growing sense that the WALL-E Wars are pretty much over. Conservative American pundits, social and economic, have claimed this movie for their own as a triumph of Can-Do American Sensibility. You know, sort of like the Horatio Alger novels, except with robots instead of thinly-veiled homosexual New York b'hoys at the center of the action.

For Gerson, WALL-E validates the brilliance of one whose Godlike Status is Secondary only to the Founding Fathers and Ronald Reagan. We speak, of course, of the great economic thinker Adam Smith, he of the Invisible Hand. He who foresaw all possible Contingencies and would have absolutely objected to anything but laissez-faire capitalism as we moveth deeper into the new century.

Smith, Gerson reminds us, had a heart. And WALL-E's purpose isn't any more complex than to remind us of exactly that:

Some conservatives have dismissed "WALL-E" as a crude critique of business and capitalism. This is only true if capitalism is identical to boundless consumerism -- a conviction that Adam Smith did not seem to share. Smith argued that human flourishing requires "good temper and moderation." Self-command and the prudent use of freedom are central to his moral theory. And these are precisely the virtues celebrated in "WALL-E." The end credits -- worth staying to see -- are a beautiful tribute to art and work, craft and cultivation.

"WALL-E" is partly an environmental parable, but its primary point is moral. The movie argues that human beings, aided by technology, can become imprisoned by their consumption. The pursuit of the latest style leads to conformity. The pursuit of pleasure displaces the deeper enjoyments of affection and friendship. The pursuit of our rhinestone desires manages to obscure our view of the stars.

Oh, yeah, Gerson is also pleased that WALL-E celebrates "Hello, Dolly," since apparently Show Tunes represent one of the great (lo! if not the greatest!) American Art forms.

WALL-E Wars The Third: Rod "Crunchy-Con" Dreher and Andrew "Reagan Was Awesome, But Gays Should Have Rights" Sullivan Weigh In

WALL-E, Oh Readers, has clearly pulled off the Cinematic Equivalent of a Hat Trick in Hockey: entertain masses of people, provide an insanely cute robot (the robot is really cute), and touch off a rainbow admix of intellectual, ideological, and political effusions all at the same time.

Saturday, "Crunchy Conservative" Rod Dreher contributed to the WALL-E discourses. If you have never heard of a "Crunchy Conservative" before, he's a good place to start, so they say, although Harrogate wouldn't exactly know, since he's been wondering, as it were, what a "Crunchy Conservative" is for the last several years. Maybe someone else can start with Dreher though, and from there will eventually be able to explain to Harrogate what a "Crunchy Conservative" is. (Surely it's more complicated than, "I support a consolidated media, the elimination of the IRS, the evisceration of public education, and global imperialism--but dude, lay off the trees!"?)

But Harrogate digresses. Dreher's post will be quite interesting to Readers who have been following Harrogate's Pulitzer-Caliber coverage of the WALL-E Wars over the political meanings embedded in the latest Pixar blockbuster. A Snippet from Dreher:

"Wall-E" says that humans have within themselves the freedom to rebel, to overthrow that which dominates and alienates us from our true selves, and our own nature. But you have to question the prime directive; that is, you have to become conscious of how they way you're living is destroying your body and killing your soul, and choose to resist. "Wall-E" contends that real life is hard, real life is struggle, and that we live most meaningfully not by avoiding pain and struggle, but by engaging it creatively, and sharing that struggle in community. It argues that rampant consumerism, technopoly and the exaltation of comfort is causing us to weaken our souls and bodies, and sell out our birthright of political freedom. Nobody is doing this to us; we're doing it to ourselves. It is the endgame of modernity, which began in part with the idea that Nature is the enemy to be subdued -- that man stands outside of Nature, and has nothing to learn about himself from Nature's deep logic.

As for Andrew Sullivan, by now Readers understand that alas, Harrogate subjects himself to Andrew Sullivan fairly regularly. Mostly due to the sacred principle that dictateth: "A Blind Groundhog Will Find an Acorn Every Now and Then."

Whatever shall Readers make of Sully's take on Dreher and, by extension, on WALL-E? Pleased with Dreher's fidelity to "Aristotelian conservatism" (now don't you feel intimidated by the sheer gravity of Dreher's and Sully's intellects, O Readers?) Sully is moved to write:

Like Rod, I keep thinking about the movie. It draws together a lot of amorphous feeling right now - the gnawing sense that modernity has begun to undermine the natural conditions of its flourishing - and focuses it. The two most powerful factors, to my mind, are the confluence of destructive technology and religious terrorism and climate change with highly unpredictable repercussions. It is hard not to feel a Babelian quality about our current moment; and Rod's crunchy conservatism speaks to it powerfully.

Finally, here is one of our own, Amy Reads, pithily encapsulating her WALL-E experience:

Yesterday we went to see Wall-E, which is, in Mr. Reads's words, a movie that will be a favorite for the rest of our lives.

WALL-E Wars II: All Early Noise to the Contrary,Perhaps the Movie is Actually an "Indictment of Liberalism"!

Ahhhh, Ambiguity, thy name is WALL-E!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Or as one of oxymoron's students once famously queried, "so you're saying there's lots of different ways to interpret it?"

Comes today's piece by the erudite Paul Edwards, entitled "WALL-E's Indictment of Liberalism".

Some fun snippets in a read that one can't quite believe actually exists, even though it is quite mainstream in its scope and intent:

WALL-E is the story of what results when a liberal vision of the future is achieved: government marries business in the interest of providing not only “the pursuit of happiness” but happiness itself, thus creating gluttonous citizens dependent on the government to sustain their lives. The result is a humanity consisting of self-absorbed, isolated individuals with no affection for others, who thus defy what it means to truly be human.

And a Much-Needed Bible Lesson, on the House:

One might immediately surmise that the creators of the movie received their inspiration from Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Not so fast. While in the storyline humans certainly have laid waste the planet, and the government’s answer to the crisis is the removal of humans (which is also Al Gore’s solution), 700 years after the last human has left the planet it becomes quite clear that the earth needs humans just as much as humans need the earth. After all, in the Bible we learn that humans were created as caretakers for the planet: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

Finally, in a comment perhaps more piercingly intellectual than any Harrogate has ever seen in the history of political and cultural debate:

WALL-E exposes a fundamental flaw in the liberal worldview. In their well-intended desire to lift people out of despair, liberals often fail to factor in the depravity of the human heart. Offer a man the opportunity to get something for little or nothing and the ultimate end will be a man who believes himself entitled to everything for little or nothing.

You get the idea. Capitalism is our God-Given way of neutralizing our own depravities and becoming instead warriors for the righteous and the good. Yea, forsooth, capitalist society in its undiluted form brings out the very best in all of us, rich, poor, everyone in between. The only time capitalism is even remotely problematic is when the government gets involved in it.

The essay, in short, is filled with one gynormous assertion after another, and really, ye don't have to have seen WALL-E (Harrogate, as of yet, still has not) to be entertained by its affect of reasonableness.

WALL-E Controversies

Harrogate has wanted to see this movie since he found out about it. The robot's cuteness is a big plus. Stories about loneliness are often very good as well. But now we find out, courtesy of Think Progress, that this movie has the conservatives pissed off.

This weekend, Pixar’s latest film “WALL-E” debuted at No. 1, earning $65 million at the box office. The film has been hailed by critics, scoring a whopping 97 percent “Fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.

The film portrays a lonely robot’s quest for love, as he is left to clean up a trashed earth. Meanwhile, the over-indulged humans wait it out aboard gigantic spaceships run by a monolithic corporation-turned-government that “resemble spas for the fat and lazy.”

Somehow, this touching love story has outraged the radical right

And then comes a litany of quotations from pundits, guaranteed to scare you off of the WALL-E, in case you were hitherto interested in seeing it.

Harrogate, for his part, is glad he didn't spend his hard-earned money on this leftist propaganda. Michael Moore may as well have made it. Enviro-consciousness, anti-corporate rhetoric. Blech. Pixar appears now to have capitulated to the Liberal Orthodoxy that runs this country with a firm and unforgiving grip.


BTW: If anyone makes it to the movie, Harrogate would like to know just how moonbatty it is.

WALL-E