RIGHT-WING RALPHING

The neo-Fascists among us have long railed against anything that does not comport with their world view. If if isn't echt Fascist than it must be (Heaven forefend!) Liberal which is, in their blinkered and jaundiced view, Progressive which is Socialist and also Communist! That is the formulation the neo-Fascists continually use to delude the rubes and, to borrow from the very apt H. L. Mencken, Boobouisie in the electorate. Of course, they don't like the Fascist or neo-Fascist label and have gone so far as to convince the ahistorical and semi-literate that Nazism and Communism are one in the same simply because Nazi is a contraction of Natzionatalische Socialistiche Partei. If the Nazi's abused the name of socialism to blinker German voters in the 1920s and 1930s then they must have been Leftists like the Liberals=Progressives=Socialists=Communists of today. Of course they must because CHRISTIAN preachers and their Volkische Beobachter, Fox News says so.

For 50 years we've had the neo-Fascists railing against "the Liberal Media" meaning all Non-Fascist Media. Dr. Goebbles'...I mean Rupert Murdock's...(so confusing trying to keep those two straight!) media outlets have recently had a guest on railing against Liberal and Feminist bias in the Disney animated film Ralph Breaks the Internet. The claim was that Disney's characters influence the good, seen-and-not-heard, obedient children of neo-Fascist parents to become disobedient "smart-mouthed children". We certainly can't have that! Why, children have never had such disobedient role models is the good, old Martin Dies/Joe McCarthy/Richard Nixon/Barry Goldwater days. It may also have something to do with the pernicious and insidious effect that the voice of smart-mouthed Liberal Democrat Feminist Sarah Silverman may have on children unaware that she is a Liberal, Feminist and Democrat or of what those terms mean.

In those good, old, kill-a-Commie-for-Christ days there never were smart-mouthed and disobedient children if you eliminate Nancy Drew, Nancy and Sluggo, the Hardy Boys, all the kids putting on shows with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Pippi Longstocking, the cartoon kids in Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, all those later kids on the beaches with Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon and Gidget, the Goonies and...well, the list goes on.

This active search for movies, books, radio and other media that offend the delicate sensibilities of the lunatic right-wing goes on from generation to generation. Why aren't these self-appointed guardians of public morality against all that ruffles their nether feathers called "special snowflakes"? They certainly are flaky enough! I vividly recall a similar right-wing hack railing against the 1964 movie, The Yellow Rolls Royce. That film's crime came in the third story regarding the eponymous automobile. You see its owner, played by Ingrid Bergman, found herself in Yugoslavia during the Nazi occupation and turns the car over to partisans fighting the Nazis. Anyone with any historical knowledge will know that the leader of the chief faction fighting for Balkan nationalism and against the Nazis was Josip Broz Tito a (shudder!) communist. Despite the leader of the movie partisans being played by Omar Sharif and there being no mention of any politics other than opposition to the Nazis the mere hint of support for someone who turned out to be an avowed communist was intolerable in the year that Barry Goldwater ran for president.

All of this is nonsense at best and insane even when given the benefit of the doubt. The neo-Fascist will never be satisfied unless the media of all sorts looks and sounds like a brown-shirted Nürnberg rally. If everyone isn't goosestepping on the march in straight-arm saluting conformity with them then those who have the temerity to question, to dissent and to be "smart-mouthed" will always be a danger to be expunged. I must, however, ask the question weren't Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and all the others, weren't they questioners, dissenters and "smart-mouthed" too? Isn't our Declaration of Independence one of the great "smart-mouthed" documents of all time? If the answer to those questions is, Yes, who should we conclude is opposed to the basic values of America?

P. S. Ralph Breaks the Internet's opening weekend had the highest gross of any movie currently in theatres. The best revenge on the neo-Fascists is beating them at capitalism.