The Muppets Are Communist, Fox Business Network Says

From the Huffington Post:

Last week, on the network's "Follow the Money" program, host Eric Bolling went McCarthy on the new, Disney-released film, "The Muppets," insisting that its storyline featuring an evil oil baron made it the latest example of Hollywood's so-called liberal agenda.

Bolling, who took issue with the baron's name, Tex Richman, was joined by Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center, who was uninhibited with his criticism.

"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message," he said.

"They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry," Gainor continued. "They hate corporate America. And so you'll see all these movies attacking it, whether it was 'Cars 2,' which was another kids' movie, the George Clooney movie 'Syriana,' 'There Will Be Blood,' all these movies attacking the oil industry, none of them reminding people what oil means for most people: fuel to light a hospital, heat your home, fuel an ambulance to get you to the hospital if you need that. And they don't want to tell that story."

More here, with video.

Oh god, where do I even start with this?

It's tempting to put this in the same category with the gay-baiting of Tinky Winky, or the accusation that Mighty Mouse snorted cocaine during his 80s revival. I mean, this Muppet thing is easily as absurd. But there's a bit more going on here than with the standard psychotic fundamentalist penchant for seeing Satan in the shadows.

For starters, Hollywood is not anti-corporate or anti-business. Hollywood is corporate. Hollywood is business. And it will do anything it can to make a whole lot of money. If that means bashing capitalism, fine. If it means glorifying capitalism, that's fine, too. Just as long as it makes a whole lot of money. So to assert that Hollywood consciously pushes any sort of anti-business agenda at all is ludicrous. They're just trying to make money, and, to be fair, I have my own problems with that, but from a leftist perspective. The long and short is that it is impossible for Hollywood to be anti-business.

But wait, there's more!

The way these Fox guys spin it, if you're going to criticize negatively the oil industry in a movie, you also have to present the other side, the pro-oil side, as though Muppet movies were trying to adhere to some journalistic standard. Of course, that's fucking stupid. Muppet movies aren't CNN or ABC News projects; they're entertainment vehicles. But getting outside the movie business and into general argumentation, the whole notion of having to include praise with your criticism is just patronizing bullshit: why the fuck should I make your arguments for you?

I'm reminded of a discussion thread for a post I made here at Real Art a few years ago about Vidor, Texas. In it, I pointed out Vidor's longstanding Klan presence, and a few commenters took great issue with my characterization of the town's problems with racism. It got to the point that I was being strongly urged to point out that racism exists everywhere and that not everybody in Vidor is a racist. Finally, I was, like, must I always dilute my arguments in this way just because you're uncomfortable with your town's racism? Indeed, to point out that racism exists everywhere automatically takes the focus away from the point I was trying to make. And that's pretty fucking stupid.

Same thing with these Fox people discussing the new Muppet movie. They offer totally invented rules for argumentation that do nothing to make an argument better, and everything to make it confusing and less effective. If I'm trying to make people aware of how the oil industry is destroying the planet, I'm not going to go into a fifteen minute diversion to talk about how oil helps us all, and is actually a good thing. I mean, oil helps us all only because we've constructed the entire economy to depend on it, not because it's the magic substance that helps us all live better lives--we could just as easily base our economy on solar and wind.

And this Muppet movie apparently doesn't even go into any real issues concerning oil; all they did was make the bad guy an oil baron.

I guess the lesson here is that you should never accept conservative rules for debating: such rules are always stupid, and are created on the fly for the express purpose of undermining their opponents. But that's no real surprise. If the situation were reversed, with liberals condemning a movie with some sort of conservative message, conservatives would be insisting on entirely different rules, which, of course, would benefit their position, and only their position.

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