As a member of Generation X who grew up in the glory days of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to see an icon of my childhood politicized on CNN.

Liberal defenders of Kermit’s appearance  on CNN will dismiss this as a harmless joke.

Tell me, is it a coincidence that Kermit just helped Obama light the White House Christmas Tree?

There are no coincidences when you’ve made the rainbow connection, my friend. None whatsoever.

But it does make the point that PJTV alumnus Steven Crowder makes in his new video about the National Broadcasting Corporation sliming Michele Bachmann: for every person — or muppet — who slimes a conservative politician on the air, there are dozens more in meetings, behind the scenes, shouting, “way to go, keep up the good work!” rather than, as Crowder notes, questing if it might be such a good idea to trash a sitting congresswoman or, to tie in with the item above, politicize everybody’s favorite childhood memories:

Click here to view the embedded video.

While the left believes that “the personal is the political” — a euphemism for saying that everything is political — if there’s a sliver of good news in these sorts of stories, at Big Hollywood, John Nolte links to a rare more-or-less pro-conservative story in the Hollywood Reporter that asks, as John paraphrases, “Did Liberal Sucker Punches Kill ‘Happy Feet Two?’”

Director George Miller acknowledged five years ago that he reworked the script for the first Happy Feet to amplify the environmental themes, and conservatives who weren’t turned off by them the first time around expected similar messages in the sequel. Some, though, complain that Happy Feet Two ramped up the liberalism to the point of propaganda, and these disenchanted right wingers are getting the word out to like-minded moviegoers.

Kyle Smith at the NY Post, for example, says he loved the first Happy Feet but he wrote that the sequel promotes collectivism, feminism, international bailouts, vegetarianism, same-sex marriage, the United Nations and even Occupy Wall Street, which he acknowledges didn’t exist during the moviemaking process.

“Well played, lefties: This is Kiddie Karl Marx,” Smith writes of Happy Feet Two.

There’s about 123 million adult conservatives in the U.S., so if Hollywood insists on inserting liberal messages in its family fare, it risks alienating a huge chunk of its potential audience. And many conservatives are accusing Hollywood of doing just that.

After Pixar head honcho John Lasseter revealed ahead of the opening of Cars 2 that the oil industry would be the “uber bad guy,” a blogger at LonelyConservative.com wrote this: “We conservatives and believers in free markets are accused of being paranoid when we say the Hollywood industry is trying to indoctrinate our children with left-wing propaganda. But now movie directors and producers are coming out and admitting what they’re doing. I’m just glad I found this out before I allowed my kids to persuade me to take them to see the movie Cars 2.”

Cars 2 this year, by the way, took in 22 percent less at the domestic box office than its predecessor did in 2006.

I would have happily paid to see Cars 2 this past summer when it was playing at Santana Row, but I had read — and promoted — the sucker punch warnings and decided “Include me out.” As John Nolte responds at Big Hollywood:

Hollywood’s dealing with a whole new world. New Media can now get the word out days before the hugely important opening weekend begins. And if Hollywood thinks this right-of-center nation is outraged over the dozen-or-so box office bombs they produced in order to give aid and comfort to our jihadist enemies, the targeting of our children with their noxious leftist lies is going to be an even bigger problem.

“Happy Feet Two” cost 600 people their jobs.

Since it’s a global warming-themed movie, presumably the producers consider that to be good news, right?

Mr Phillips: Good afternoon.

Johnson: Good afternoon.

Landlady: It’s their third time here; we can’t keep you away, can we? And over there is Mr Hilter.

(In the corner are three German generals in full Nazi uniform, poring over a map.)

Hilter: Ach. Ha! Gut time, er, gut afternoon.

Landlady: Oho, planning a little excursion, eh, Mr Hilter?

Hilter: Ja, ja, ve haff a little… (to Bimmler) was ist Abweise bewegen?

Bimmler: Hiking.

Hilter: Ah yes, ve make a little hike for Bideford.

Johnson: Ah yes. Well, you’ll want the A39. Oh, no, you’ve got the wrong map there. This is Stalingrad. You want the Ilfracombe and Barnstaple section.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Via Kathy Shaidle, who writes, “There really IS a Python sketch for everything…”)

Because when you think of the Nazis, the phrase that invariably comes to mind is “Pro Life.”

So, how does one enjoy the transcendent clothing of John Galliano without feeling that one is somehow patronizing the bigot?

How to sanction the artist, while admitting that his art brings beauty and joy to the world?

The Manolo, who loves the poetry of Ezra Pound, the music of Wagner, and the clothing of John Galliano, has no easy answer to this question.

As Woody Allen once told biographer Eric Lax:

“Talent is absolutely luck,” he said one day while talking about his early fear of performing. “And no question that the most import thing in the world is courage. People worship talent and it’s so ridiculous. Talent is something you’re born with, like Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] is born tall. That’s why so many talented people are shitheels.”

And yes, that quote dates to a book released about five minutes before the layers of irony apparent within it would be obvious for everyone to see.

Update: Welcome to the readers of the Manolo — I only wish we were discussing a much more fun topic than this.

It’s here, at the Christian Science Monitor. Because it’s just not a real protest until someone whips out the Hitler card.  In this case, though, there is a strong Hitler connection, just not one that has anything to do with Mubarak.

Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. During the 1930s, the Brotherhood became more political in nature and an officially political group in 1939.

In 1942, during World War II, Hassan al Banna set up more Brotherhood branches in Transjordan and Palestine. The headquarters of the Syrian branch moved to Damascus in 1944. After World War II, Egyptian members took violent action against King Farouk’s government. When the organization was banned in Egypt, hundreds moved to Transjordan. Many also participated in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949.

You know what else this means, right? Lyndon LaRouche’s followers are everywhere.

Late Wednesday night I posted a brief comment to a 1990 Entertainment Weekly (EW) review by the late Walter Clemons of Gavin Lambert’s biography, Norma Shearerr. (The lack of any previous comments suggests that EW only recently posted the review on line.) My uncensored comment follows. [Bolding in original post -- Ed]

Mr. Clemons’ otherwise readable review is marred by two jarringly off uses of language: 1. “Her career was a triumph of will”; and 2. “We feel the impact of a sacred monster.”

For anyone of the reviewer’s generation, the phrase “triumph of [the] will,” was indelibly associated with Hitler. However, since Mr. Clemons did not depict Miss Shearer in a Hitlerian manner, his allusion was poorly chosen.

Likewise, though the reviewer was straining for irony, outside of his phrase, he in no way depicted Miss Shearer as monstrous. For that matter, he didn’t depict her as “sacred,” either.

Although the reviewer was a veteran writer, he twice strove for effect in a clumsy, amateurish manner.

The censorship filter or humanoid replaced “Hitler” with “*****.” (The censor even got the number of asterisks wrong!) Oddly enough, she/he/it left “Hitlerian” untouched.

I have no idea if the Chicago Sun-Times employs a similar strategy in its comments section. But while not actually dropping the H-word himself, Roger Ebert goes for the argumentum ad Hitlerum approach in his latest column, in which he once again eschews what he’s best at for wannabe political punditry, loaded with paranoia, including viewing Sarah Palin as a Crypto-Nazi speaking in code. Was Gore Vidal on vacation this week? [Bolding in text mine -- Ed]

5. The Bill of Rights has a parallel with pregnancy. You can’t be a little pregnant, and you can’t be a little free. Nor can you serve yourself from it cafeteria style.

6. Somewhere on the Right is an anonymous genius at creating memes. Sarah Palin floats a suspicious number of them: Death Panels, Ground Zero Mosque, 9/11 Mosque, Terror Babies. Her tweets are mine fields of coded words; for her, “patriot” is defined as, “those who agree with me.” When she says “Americans,” it is not inclusive. These two must have been carefully composed in advance to be tweeted within 60 seconds of each other:

[Screen caps of two tweets by Sarah Palin appear at this point in Ebert's column. Here's the text of them--Ed]

Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America!

Dr.Laura:don’t retreat…reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence”isn’t American,not fair”)

By using the evocative word “shackles” she associates Dr. Laura’s use of the N-word with the suffering of slaves. By implying Dr. Laura was silenced by “Constitutional obstructionists,” she employs the methodology of the Big Lie, defined in Mein Kampf as an untruth so colossal that “no one would believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” She uses the trigger word “reload” to evoke her support of Second Amendment activists while attacking “activists” for evoking the First.

7. Many Americans and a great many politicians have either never taken a civics class or disagree with what they should have learned there. The major opinion sources in America that seem to devote the most attention to the Bill of Rights are Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, all distorting it as an everyday practice. Bill O’Reilly, to his credit, doesn’t indulge in this.

8. A meme is infecting our society that Muslims are terrorists and hate America; they are the enemy. It is a cliche to say, “the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful,” but is true. When Muslim nations are bombed by America, can those nations be expected to applaud? In Iran after 9/11 there were candlelight marches in sympathy with the United States. [And in the Palestinian territories...there weren't. -- Ed]

Of course, when it comes to American democracy, Roger’s a staunch populist defender of the will of the people:

Meanwhile, regarding Ebert’s day job, Benjamin Kerstein reviews the legendary reviewer on the Pajamas homepage.

Related: “Hey! Remember last month, when we were hyper-sensitive about the problem of taking quotes out of context?”

Related: “Robert Reich Falsely Accuses Newt Gingrich Of Saying ‘Muslims Are Like Nazis.’”

As opposed to saying Alaskans are like Nazis, of course. But then, “In the present, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes…”

Related: Flypaper.

Update: In “Cinematic Illusions of Progress,” we look at Hollywood and Valerie Plame, an MIA Richard Armitage, the Big Lie and its forerunner, the Sorelian Myth.

Paul Berman takes the thesis of his outstanding new book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, to the pages of the Wall Street Journal and dubs the age we live in that of the Zipped Lip.

“You are not,” he writes, “supposed to observe that Islamism is a modern, instead of an ancient, political tendency, which arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the 1930s and ’40s. You are not supposed to point out that Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide.”

As he said to me on the phone when I interviewed him in May, the mere mention of Nazi Germany’s foreign policy in the Arab world and its lingering effects in our day “gets people red in the face.”

Lest you think there aren’t any lingering traces of Nazism in the Arab world, along comes Wiam Wahhab, a former member of Lebanon’s parliament, and confirms that there are. “I like the Germans,” he says in an interview on Al-Jadid/New TV, “because they hate the Jews and they burned them.” Then he laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard in a week.

Now, this man isn’t mainstream. He belongs (of course) to the Hezbollah-led “March 8″ coalition, which is apparently incapable of winning an election or getting its way except by using or threatening violence. And he claims that the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon — which was set up in 2005 to investigate the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri — is an Israeli-American plot to destroy the country. He’s firmly in the minority camp.

Still, can you imagine any American politician from either the House or the Senate, from either the Republican or Democratic party, saying something like that and yukking it up on TV? It would be the instantaneous mother of all career-enders. Wahhab’s career, though, won’t suffer one bit as a result of his saying this.

I used to be disgusted…Oh wait, unlike Elvis, I still am:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

• Jerry Brown Compares Meg Whitman To Joseph Goebbels...

• FLASHBACK: 'No Mudslinging,' Promises Jerry Brown...

Note that the journalist who stumbles over Jerry comparing Whitman to Goebbels has an old media resume an mile long. But doesn’t work Brown’s Bronsweiger moment into his headline, despite being handed a killer quote, but Drudge, reviled by a media which he helped to render increasingly sclerotic and antediluvian, does.

Keep rockin‘, MSM!

Ace made this same point earlier, but has the left ever claimed that it’s flatly wrong to kick the word “Nazi” around? It’s wrong to kick it at them, but when it comes to you, they’ll happily play hacky sack with it all the live-long day. In fact, among our thoughtful professional pundit class, the main challenge these days when writing about the right is whether to go the full Godwin or stop just short with some similar pejorative. Eugene Robinson was content to label Arizona’s law a racist abomination but Richard Cohen got more creative in calling it the “Anglos’ last stand.” Bolder still was Linda Greenhouse, who upped the ante with an apartheid analogy in her analysis of what turned out to be the wrong version of the bill. (Ahem.) With the bar set that high, can Frank Rich clear it on Sunday? If he does, he’ll be the Dick Fosbury of bottom-feeding left-wing demagogues.

Meanwhile, as Matthew Balan writes at Newsbusters, “Rick Sanchez Forwards CAIR’s Implication That Opponents of Islam are Nazis.”

And sometimes, so are their allies.