Spongebob, Social Roles, and a Ticking Clock

James Dobson, who is, of course, probably always quoted out of context to the point that no context exists, is out to get a topless sexless member of the plant kingdom due to his hatred of '70s disco and the idea of tolerance. Focus On the Family and other "conservative" (I love the label "conservative"; attempting to save society in order to return it to the past, with the Klan, glass ceilings, McCarthyism, Stalin's Purges, Prohibition, and the Inquisition) evangelical groups are targeting Spongebob Squarepants for supposedly peddling a "pro-homosexual" lifestyle. What does it mean to be "pro-homosexual"? There's no such thing as a pro-homosexual lifestyle; people either are homo- or heterosexual or a variance in between, but no one lives a lifestyle in order to promote it or to evangelize to others, unless they're a member of James Dobson's group. I don't live my life and happily love my wife because I'm promoting a white leftist heterosexual middle-class thirty-something suburban lifestyle; I just live my life. What I really think is that Spongebob is promoting is the pro-YELLOW lifestyle. What this little aquatic plant is really trying to do is force us all to not only understand, merely not tolerate, but open our hearts and fully accept everything that is yellow: cheese, cowards, the moon, certain fungi, the sun and half-clothed animated kitchen cleaning products that on one side are happy but on the other are sometimes abrasive, rough, and often times a bit steely.

My wife and I (there I go again, pushing the "pro-heterosexual lifestyle - do I earn my Red-State membership now?) watched both versions of "The Stepford Wives" this weekend. The original 1975 campy romp was a perfect piece of social commentary aimed at exposing the emptiness and truly humanless existence of women living as slaves to their husbands. I'm not quite sure why NOW members missed the message; men built robots because their wives wouldn't treat them as masters and therefore only the "perfect" wife is one who has been programmed to behave the way she does. Satisfied in bed, happy in servile positions; women as housewives had no other options than being exterminated or else they would have wished to be treated like the humans that they are. A bit camp, a bit biting metaphor; we all have relatives who at least spent a weekend in Stepford or at least looked at the brochure. Times have changed, and in ways, for the better.
We immediately popped the 2004 Frank Oz version with Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick. This was an absolute trainwreck of a film; characters that were extreme caricatures of social stereotypes that were obnoxious, self-centered narcissistic tools that expressed the slightest displeasure whenever things didn't go their way: the bitchy career-driven reality-t.v. producer, the flaming queer with an eye for fashion, the frumpy slob of a "free-spirit" who is different strictly because she's short and quirky. The cookie cutouts continue and yet the movie is more of a reflection of reality t.v. than a commentary on real life. I've never, NEVER walked out of a movie, but I turned this one off less than a half-hour into it. What a waste of time to watch a film with characters that deserved everything bad that happened to them. Nicole Kidman needed only her husband to threaten a divorce and suddenly she saw the light, realized she hadn't loved her husband and promised to do all she could to keep him happy by keeping up their upper-class elitist lifestyle? Mr. Oz (who is one of the greatest muppeteers but one of the most inconsistent film directors out there), your movie itself speaks more about contemporary society than the slipshod message you attempt to convey. Shame on you for even releasing it, unless you were hoping for a cult-status male fantasy dvd-rental phenomenon solely based on the Barbie-perfect empty-headed bimbo myths you perpetuated. Go back and do some more Fozzie Bear. You're good at that.

God bless Sy Hersch and his article in the New Yorker. Only with the publication of his story has the White House denied its contents, espoused the virtue of its failed war in Iraq, threatened Iran with possible military strikes, and then all veiled this week in a smokescreen of "freedom" and "liberty." Misters Bush and Cheney, you have six days to ratchet up your efforts to even guarentee the slightest amount of those two ideals in the nation you've both destroyed. Georgie, you're focused on your legacy? It's staring at you in the face: hubris often topples leaders of great nations. You had the opportunity to capitalize (a word you only know the first definition of) on a situation that could catapult you to historical herodom and have instead given historians (who, by the way are not your enemies just because they ask questions, raise concerns, and arrive at damning analysis of your actions and policies) all the evidence they need to find you one of the most blind, ideological failures in the history of the presidency. Newsweek is comparing you to the Calvanistic Woodrow Wilson; I'm equating you to the myopic Andrew Johnson. See you in a week.