Totally OT distraction,

[whometense]

but I found this article in yesterday's NY Times fascinating.

March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder

My favorite movie of the summer has been taken up by the wingnuts. Sheesh. Anyone else see it?

On the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie "verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it."

At a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made "a strong case for intelligent design."

The movie is "March of the Penguins," and of all the reactions it has evoked, perhaps the most surprising is its appeal to conservatives. They are hardly its only audience; the film is the second highest grossing documentary of all time, behind "Fahrenheit 9/11."

But conservative groups have turned its stirring depiction of the mating ordeals of emperor penguins into an unexpected battle anthem in the culture wars.

"March of the Penguins," the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."

Speaking of audiences who feel that movies ignore or belittle such themes, he added: "This is the first movie they've enjoyed since 'The Passion of the Christ.' This is 'The 'Passion of the Penguins.'

I'll say it again. Sheesh.

[ginnyinWI]

1. I'll second your "sheesh"

This must be what they do in those RW think tanks. Sigh.

I loved the movie and so did my husband and daughter when we saw it last June, I think it was. What do they say, I wonder, about the filmmaker being FRENCH, hmm?

[TayTay]

2. Ahm, This is proof of evolution not ID

I'm just switching religions anyway to Flying Sphaghetti Monsterism. The food is much better and no one sings.

[rockymountaindem]

3. What?

How does a movie on penguins endorse intelligent design? As I recall they even mentioned the world being millions of years old and the breakup of Pangea in March of the Penguins. How does that further the creationist cause?

What's more, there's obviously a strong argument for evolution to be made from that movie, but the fundies probably can't find what it is.

On edit... I've heard a lot of crazy fundamentalist lines about creationism etc. but this takes the cake. It even beats out "dinosaur fossils were put her by Satan to test our faith" and "carbon dating isn't reliable because of the great flood". I'm blown away...

[whometense]

4. I liked George Will's line

Not all conservatives find the movie a rebuke to Darwin's theory. "If an Intelligent Designer designed nature," the columnist George F. Will asked recently, "why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?"

And as for the monogamy thing, well, they made it pretty clear in the narration that the penguins' marriages ended as soon as the year's breeding was done. Is that what they are suggesting we should do as well?