Hoisting Whoopi

Scott Johnson underlines so well the vacuity of the obsessions of the left in his quote of Mark Steyn's column:

Deflating the Whoopi cushion

Mark Steyn devotes his Sunday Sun-Times column to the pitiful condition of Hollywood's product: "Hollywood's PC perversion stifles storytelling." The column's lowlight is Steyn's report on the DVD "Looney Tunes Golden Collection":

I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection." Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we're not meant to find funny: "Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups," she tells us sternly. "These jokes were wrong then and they're wrong today" -- unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg's most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There's a gag for the ages.

I don't know what Whoopi's making such a meal about. It's true you don't see many positive images of people of color on "Looney Tunes," but then the images of people of non-color aren't terribly positive either (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam). Instead, you see positive images of ducks of color, roadrunners of color and tweety birds of color. How weirdly reductive to be so obsessed about something so peripheral to these cartoons that you stick the same damn Whoopi Goldberg health warning on all four DVDs in the box. And don't think about hitting the "Next" button and skipping to the cartoons: You can't; you gotta sit through it.

A Hollywood that's ashamed of one of its few universally acknowledged genuine artistic achievements is hardly likely to come up with any new artistic achievements. As the instant deflation of that Whoopi cushion reminds us, the movies are now so constrained by political correctness the very act of storytelling is itself endangered. That's something slightly more ominous than the feeble limousine liberalism many conservatives blame for the alleged box-office slump.

Doing what is right

Much has been made of the GOP's forcing of a vote on the question of withdrawing from Iraq. It has been called grandstanding. The caterwauling from the Democrats has been echoed by some in the press. But these are not times in which Representative Murtha's histrionics about troop withdrawal can be allowed to just lie there and smell like a rotting fish. Dr. Sanity provides some good summation and insight, as is her wont.