Does it get more meta than this? Right-wingers are eager for a presidential run by a guy who's best known for talking tough on a fictional TV show, and now that guy tries to show his foreign-policy chops to those right-wing voters by talking tough about … a movie.
Here's Fred Thompson at Pajamas Media:
The comic book movie "300" about the Spartans and the Persians in 480 BC is still breaking box-office records. Now it seems the rulers of modern-day Persia, Iran, are not amused.
"300," shows a small band of Spartans saving the lives of their countrymen AND the seeds of modern Democracy by kicking the much larger Persians forces effectively in the backside at Thermopylae until the sheer numbers overwhelmed them. If I remember my history, that's exactly what happened.
But the Iranians have filed a flurry of complaints with the United Nations, claiming "300" is "cultural and psychological warfare."
Who are these guys who are getting all flushed over our cultural insensitivity?
People who want to blow Jews off the face of the earth. The regime that stormed our embassy in 1979 and kept Americans captive for 444 days. Iran's Hezbollah puppets have killed more Americans, than any other terrorist group except Al Qaeda. Explosive devices from Iran are being used right now against our soldiers in Iraq. They're clearly more skittish about cultural warfare than the sort that actually kills people -- like the one against Israel that Iran financed just a few months ago.
I must say that I'm impressed that Hollywood took on a politically incorrect villain. Must have run out of neo-Nazis. So now these sensitive souls in Iran think that Hollywood is part of a U.S. government conspiracy to humiliate them into submission. I can only wish we were that effective.
Fred Thompson is a former US Senator from Tennessee, an actor, and -- many say -- a potential candidate for President of the United States.
I've said before that Republicans are much more focused on Hollywood than Democrats -- they seem obsessed with glamorous Hollywood types who are evil liberals, and they think an ex-actor is the greatest president we've ever had.
But I think their Fred Thompson and 300 fixations are about something other than glamour. I think they see the "global war on terror" as a movie: It's something they experience vicariously, and they really believe it ought to progress according to Hollywood-movie plot conventions -- which means, at a certain point, the Good Guys are supposed to summon their resolve and start "kicking ass," after which Bad Guys are supposed to start dropping like flies.
Rudolph Giuliani is polling well among GOP because he played a terrorism-fighter on TV (albeit in a reality series, not a fictional one). The Fred Thompson groundswell is more of the same -- yeah, he was a lawyer and a senator, but he's still best known as that guy on TV. Republicans love that.
And as for 300, check out this Free Republic thread:
300 - "This is Sparta" Clip & How TO Deal With The Islamic Fascists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtDx9s0OF8k&mode=related&search=^
This is how you handle the Islamic Fascists. Click on link to see….
It's not just a movie clip -- it's a military strategy! In real life, we should do stuff like this! We should yell patriotic slogans in a really loud, stagy voice, then kick a messenger down a well! It would work!
These people scare me.
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