Never mind Santorum’s stunning upsets in the midwest.  Don’t even mind the Giants win at the Super Bowl. The real victory today that the Mainstream Media doesn’t want you to think about:  Baby Jonah’s triumph over all in the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter. Doubtless boosted by a flood of voters from this blog, the Doritos ad Sling Baby won the poll for most beloved Super Bowl commercial.  Justin Folk – the mastermind behind the visuals on PJTV’s Klavan on the Culture – worked on the ad’s SFX. He also worked on the star of the commercial, his son, Baby Jonah, who appeared as a reasonable facsimile of himself. Justin will share in a cash prize, and I’ll be hitting him up for a loan.

Pundits will be talking about the ramifications of this amazing victory for years, but one thing is certain. Klavan on the Culture voters have it within their gnarled and palsied hands to make the difference in any election anywhere any time. Let us then, with our hearts high and our eyes on the future, begin to collect as much money in political bribes as is humanly possible.  Why should Democrats have all the fun?

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I have no doubt it was readers of this blog whose Chicago-Democrat-style multiple voting helped send the “Sling Baby” Doritios ad to the Super Bowl. You’ll recall the folks who worked on the Sling Baby ad included two Folks — namely Justin Folk, who did some of the SFX and his son Jonah folk, who played the role of the baby magnificently. Hard to believe the kid’s thirty, I know.

Though he doesn’t like to admit it for fear of arrest, Justin was also the brilliant and prize-winning visuals fellow who did the backgrounds of my Klavan on the Culture videos at PJTV.

Anyway, I think there’s still time to drop in at the USA Today Ad Meter site and give the ad five stars. If Sling Baby ends up the most popular Super Bowl ad, the team gets a cash prize a portion of which will help keep Baby Jonah in the chips until his father can think of something else to do.

You did it once; please do it again. Go to the site and give five stars to Doritos’ “Sling Baby.”

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The Obama administration is insisting that church-affiliated employers pay for birth control in their health care plans. This especially violates the Catholic Church’s doctrine prohibiting the use of contraception. As such, it’s an act of tyranny — an insidious attempt to bring down one of the load-bearing walls of liberty.

The idea that churches stand to a great degree apart from the power of the state has its beginning — in my reading of history — in an incident that involved Pontius Pilate before he entered the Gospel stories. Appointed the Roman governor of Judaea in 26 AD, Pilate set up (according to the account of the historian Josephus) a set of Roman standards in the city of Jerusalem. The Romans were famously tolerant about the religions of the people they conquered. They didn’t care if you worshipped your gods — as long as you also worshipped their gods. To ask this was to ask no more than loyalty to Rome, whose gods and government were as one.

This was good conqueror policy and worked well — except in Judaea. The Jews had only one God and he was a jealous one. They felt the Roman display constituted idolatry and a violation of God’s law. They protested to Pilate. Pilate enticed the rabble rousers into the great stadium at Caesarea, then surrounded them with soldiers, swords drawn: Either accept the Roman symbols in the Holy City or die. The Jews, as one, flung themselves on the ground and extended their necks: better to die than to break God’s law.

Pontius Pilate, meet the Jews. With his emperor furious at the mess he’d made, Pilate was forced to back down and remove the symbols.

About 45 years later, the Jews tried to secure their religious freedom through violent revolt. The Romans crushed them, sacked Jerusalem, and destroyed the Jewish temple. But God’s irony never sleeps. By destroying its Jewish centers, the Roman conquest of Palestine accelerated the spread of a Jewish cult throughout the Roman world — a cult that would eventually transform Rome into its instrument.

According to theologians like N.T. Wright, the founder of this cult, Jesus of Nazareth, had been trying to warn zealous Jews off the disastrous path that led to the revolt. He preached a more patient and pacific but nonetheless unyielding religiosity, pointing to a way that involved neither religious surrender nor political violence: Give Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give God what belongs to God. It may have been the best political advice anyone ever gave anyone, and was wholly in keeping with the actions of the men who bared their necks at the stadium in Caesarea.

Throughout the so-called Dark and Middle ages, as Christianity helped shape Rome’s savage conquerors into the nations of Europe, church and state battled over how to actualize Jesus’s doctrine. In clash after clash, crisis after crisis, kings and popes vied over which was the ultimate arbiter of what power where. Did these clashes involve perfect people versus evil people? Pristine institutions versus corrupt ones? Don’t be ridiculous. They involved only men, sinful, self-interested, and violent. But out of their clashes, there evolved an idea that was better than the mere mortals who shaped it.

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It seems there are a lot of people around trying to count the Tea Party out. The media has hyped the thugs from the various Occupy movements as if they represented a mainstream uprising instead of an outlying collection of rag-tag nobodies. The same media has tried to portray the widespread grassroots Tea Party as rife with a bigotry and anger that are nowhere evident. And even the Republican establishment seems to wish the conscience of the party would just go away. But the truth is: they’re not going anywhere. Take a look at this:

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I read the list of this year’s Oscar nominations and thought at once, “The movies are over.”

This is not to say that the movies are bad. Not to say that the people making them are untalented. Not to say that some films don’t make money. It’s simply to point out that the form is sinking into social irrelevance.

Every art form has peaks and valleys of relevance. Shakespeare could say of stage actors that they were “the abstract and brief chronicles of the time,” whose portrayals could destroy a reputation. Percy Bysshe Shelley could declare with a straight face that poets were “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” James Joyce could have a budding intellectual novelist proclaim — with youthful grandiosity but not without legitimacy—that he was setting out on his career, “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Which stage actor — which poet — which intellectual novelist — could say such things today and be taken seriously by anyone but his doting mother?

So too, there was a generation of movie makers—several generations—who brought the dreams of the world to life. Neal Gabler in Empire of Their Own talked about how movies once “colonized the American imagination,” and in the same vein Geoffrey O’Brien called film The Phantom Empire because it captured — in more senses than one — the way people thought and felt about their country and the world. But the list of nine Oscar nominees shows how far the art form has receded from its imperial moment. As John Nolte at Big Hollywood pointed out, only one of the nine nominees — The Help — was a major hit, and the films of the year that were major hits — Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: First Class — weren’t Oscar-worthy. In other words, Hollywood is less and less capable of making important pictures of high quality that the general public wants to see.

In a wonderful post earlier this year, Nolte offered his advice for how to bring the movies back to full vigor: give us real movie stars, stop insulting America and Americans, emulate the NFL’s respect for its audience, etc. But I wonder if Doctor John might be writing a prescription for a patient who has already died.

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I usually like to include as many cultural reviews as possible on this blog. I think people who think about politics tend to think about politics too much. It’s not good for you. It makes you crazy. You get inflated with a sense of your own rightness and righteousness, start accusing your opponents of being evil…  I know: it’s fun. And it feels good. But it really is unhealthy. You’re not that great. They’re not quite as bad as all that. Trust me on this. As one of our priests said in church last week, “God loves you — and all the people you can’t stand.” Amen.

Unfortunately, that said, I don’t have much to report on the cultural front this week for various reasons. I’ll try to write my Monday column about the Oscar nominations. Which leaves only politics for now …  and politics this week has been just plain depressing.

By now it seems reasonable to assume that every single sentient being in America if not the universe has listened to this week’s Ricochet podcast or at least has fast-forwarded through to my parts. Thus you’ll have heard me challenge GOP political consultant Mike Murphy on his support for Mitt Romney, who is either running for president or selling cigars out in front of the drugstore, I’m never sure which. Murphy, a witty and intelligent guy with a lot of wonky information at his fingertips, seemed to me the very incarnation of the much-talked-about Republican establishment. As such, he says a lot of sensible things — and also seems completely unaware that a libertarian revolution is brewing in this country, that it gave the Republicans the only relevance they have left by returning them to power in the House in 2010, and that if GOP centrist types like him succeed in putting up a Bushian only-sort-of-conservative like Romney and then lose to Obama, the consequences for them may include treatment last seen during the Inquisition.

Like Murphy, like just about everyone who thinks, I’m not convinced that Gingrich is a viable alternative to Romney either.  I’m not even convinced he’s the more conservative of the two. (I don’t think Santorum is that conservative either, by the way. Aside from the social values stuff, which won’t matter a damn if the country goes bankrupt, he seems to have backed a lot of W’s big spending.) When I turn to the best pundits, I find Ann Coulter making a brilliant case against Gingrich and for Romney, and Thomas Sowell making a brilliant case against Romney and for Gingrich. From this, I deduce that Coulter and Sowell are brilliant people capable of making brilliant cases. In fact, if I’m ever arrested for stalking some beautiful intelligent blonde conservative pundit, I may hire Coulter to defend me…  although on consideration, I can think of several reasons why that might not work.

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I knew I’d be doing a Ricochet podcast this (Wednesday) morning on the State of the Union, so I watched the entire speech straight through.  By the end of it, I was offering to betray our military’s field positions, change my religion and sign a statement demanding the U.S. get out of Viet Nam if they would just make it stop. What a cynical and disingenuous blowhard this president is! The speech seemed to me a complete fantasy, existing as it did in a world in which our country was NOT currently borrowing more money than it produces and in which “paying your fair share,” meant having your money taken away from you to fund things you don’t want and the government has no right to buy. GOP Governor Mitch Daniels’ response was like having water splashed in my face, waking me from a dream. Listen, I know he’s short and boring, but Daniels not only would have made a better candidate than Mitt or Newt, he’s a better executive than either Mitt or Barack could ever be. And here’s another thing: the social conservatives who beat up on Daniels because he said we needed to call a truce on their issues in order to bring people together to deal with the debt? They were wrong and he was right. Let me be more exact: they were a hundred per cent wrong and he was a hundred per cent right. They should make a pilgrimage to his state house on their knees, like the old women who climb the Sacred Steps in Rome, in order to apologize and beg him to reconsider getting into the race. You don’t like abortion? Who do you think your best president would be? Obama, Mitt or Daniels? Right, me too. Go stand in the corner.

You can hear me wax incredibly eloquent on these and other topics together with people who actually know what they’re talking about like Peter Robinson, Rob Long, James Lileks and Mike Murphy on the Ricochet podcast for 1/25.

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"The tide of war is receding," he lied.

The Taliban is pissed off at getting pissed on. After four U.S. Marines apparently urinated on the faces of their dead enemies in Afghanistan—and after the event was captured on video and spread on YouTube—the Taliban condemned the action as “inhuman.” And listen, if anyone knows inhuman it’s the Taliban.

The Obama administration made a great show of condemning the Marines’ actions. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called the pissing “utterly deplorable,” and promised an investigation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “total dismay.”

In angry response, commentators and politicians on the right puffed up and got their macho on. “Shut your mouth. War is hell,” said the wonderful congressman and war hero Allen West wonderfully. The adorable pundit Dana Loesch added adorably, “I’d drop trou and do it too.”

But let’s face it, it is an infraction: the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice forbids such shenanigans. The Corps must maintain decorum with its corpses. (For Obama supporters: that’s a joke, because corps and corpse are pronounced differently.)

Most organizations have a time-honored way of dealing with this sort of thing. In this case, some high-ranking superior officer ought to call the piss-men onto his hopefully plastic-covered carpet and say something to the effect of: “I rebuke thee! Go thou forth and urinate upon thine enemy no more.” After which, there would be a brief period of embarrassed feet-shuffling, a brisk and coordinated “Yes, sir!”and then off the chastised men would go to kill and piss on more Taliban, only without the video guy this time.

But the Obama administration can’t afford to behave with that sort of decency and common sense. They have to over-react—they have no choice.  They are desperate to appease these Islamist murderers in order to hold together an attempt to negotiate a phony settlement with them. Only then can they pull our troops out of the country with some display of make-believe honor before the wild slaughter there starts again.

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While some of you have been wasting your time watching Newt McLovin’ debate the Capitalist Crash Dummy, I’ve been attending to the important business of preparing for the football championships this weekend. First I gather the hops to make the beer. Then I peel and fry the potato chips.  Then I place the finished chips snugly in cardboard cylinders.  And finally, I prepare my flying Clydesdales to deliver the goodies to little boys and bigger boys across the country. Or maybe I’ll just turn on my TV.

I’m not big on making predictions about anything because I can’t help noticing that people who make predictions are wrong about fifty percent of the time. Obviously, if there’s any justice in the world, Tom Brady and the Pats will destroy the Ravens but there’s not any justice in the world, so who knows? The Ravens are a fine defensive team but seem to have perfected what you’d have to call the Godot Offense in that you wait and wait for it to show up but it never does. The Patriots’ defense is something less than spectacular—or good—but they don’t have to do much besides give Brady some time on the field. Still, on any given Sunday…

The Giants vs San Francisco game is more interesting on paper—but they probably won’t play it on paper because that would be, you know, sort of silly. Forty-niner QB Alex Smith has certainly proved his mettle, and then crammed his mettle down the throats of the home crowds who booed him as a second rater right up until he beat just about every grade A quarterback who made the mistake of coming near him. Eli Manning has to learn that “elite quarterback” is something other people are supposed to say about you, not something you say about yourself. Still, he may have been right, and his team has overcome the injuries that left them short against the niners in November and come together with the sort of timing that makes the angels sing, if the angels happen to be Giants fans.

Since I blogged repeatedly about the inspiring faith and play of Tim Tebow, I should also make a comment about Brady’s evisceration of the Broncos last weekend. I take it as a sign that the Gospels are false and there’s no God. No, I’m kidding. Religion aside, Tebow is one of the most interesting and off-beat players I’ve ever seen. For all the attacks on his style and quarterbacking talent, this is a guy who won two college championships and the Heisman trophy.  Yet, it’s undeniable that when he loses,  as he lost last week, he barely looks like a professional at all. Even when he wins, he makes me feel like I’m watching some lousy comedy film about an ordinary guy who wins a contest to be an NFL quarterback for a day and then, through a series of hilarious mishaps, leads his team to victory. Well, anyway, the comedy is over for this year, and we’ll see if Tebow can make it happen for real when he returns next season. As I say, I’m not much on making predictions, but I’m betting that, given the chance, Tebow will get better and better and ultimately take a Super Bowl.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get in my sleigh and go to work.

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One of the signs of America’s cultural shift out of the revolutionary sixties and seventies was Hollywood’s changeover from offbeat, often ethnic, actors like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson to almost identical bland, blonde pretty boys like Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio. I’ve sometimes wondered if director Martin Scorsese was making an ironic commentary on the trend in The Departed in which the virtually identical Damon and DiCaprio play mirror image cops (with Mark Wahlberg, another ringer, thrown in) who are manipulated by the aging Nicholson.

Not that these cookie cutter blond boys don’t do good work sometimes but, for my money, the only one who has developed into a really top-flight actor is Pitt. Despite the pretty looks and a rather dull, muddy instrument of a voice, he’s not only chosen interesting and challenging roles throughout his career, but he’s managed to inhabit them to the point where you actually forget whether he left Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie or the other way around.

Moneyball is a good example of his work—and a really good film too, based on the nonfiction book by Michael Lewis.  Pitt plays never-was baseball player Billy Beane, who has now become the GM of the underfunded Oakland A’s. The film follows Beane through the 2002 season as he teams up with Yale economist Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to try to invent a new way of constructing a winning team on the cheap.  The script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Zorkin is quick, tight and smart. Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as manager Art Howe give great support. And 14-year-old Kerris Dorsey, who plays Beane’s daughter, is a genuine revelation. She steals every scene she’s in.

But it’s Pitt who holds the whole thing together. He plays Beane as a man who is smart but not that smart, sad but not that sad, desperate but not that desperate—it’s not an easy mark to hit and he hits it exactly. It’s not just a wonderfully quiet, self-contained performance, it’s also a modest one without unnecessary flash. As he’s gotten older—and less pretty—Pitt has actually developed more charisma. Like Nicole Kidman in her prime, he can dominate a scene in silence and on the sidelines. You can see what he’s thinking. Whole plot points play out in his eyes. It’s impressive to see.

Not that it matters, but I notice this picture got skunked at the Golden Globes. I didn’t see most of the films that won, but it’s hard for me to imagine they were better than this.  Midnight in Paris, which won best screenplay and which I did see, was another in what seems like an endless series of Woody Allen bagatelles, pleasant enough but so tiny in theme and scope it was barely visible. Moneyball‘s script is far, far superior, not really even in the same category of quality. And as for George Clooney taking best actor…  well, listen, I enjoy watching Clooney.  He’s a fun movie star.  But actor-wise, Pitt is the genuine article and Moneyball is one of his most all-around successful ventures.

It’s now out on DVD and definitely worth your time, even if you’re not a baseball fan.

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