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Rick Moran

Rick Moran is PJ Media’s Chicago editor, Blog editor at The American Thinker, and a frequent contributor to FrontPage.com; his own blog is Right Wing Nut House.

Hypocrisy Writ Large in NFL ‘Bountygate’ Scandal

So, one NFL team got caught paying its players to inflict injury on key players on the opposing side. Be still my palpitating heart. You mean to tell me that pro football is a nasty, violent sport played for keeps and with no holds barred and where teams will do anything — up to and including trying to injure an opposing player — to win? Perish the thought.

The hypocrisy of the league, the teams, the fans, and especially the sanctimonious twits who style themselves “sportswriters” is incredible. The teams pay players to knock the snot out of the other fellow — the harder the hitter, the more dollars in his contract. The fans pay big bucks to watch them do it and cheer wildly at the mayhem. The league markets the game with not so subtle hints at the ferocity of its players. And sportswriters run out of adjectives describing hits on opposing players that, if delivered outside the lines of the field, would constitute probable cause for assault and battery.

The New Orleans Saints — specifically, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and 22 players — pooled their money to pay bounties for knocking opposing players out of the game. Williams, hired as defensive coordinator for the St. Louis Rams this past offseason, has been suspended by the league “indefinitely.” Head coach Sean Payton, who apparently tried to cover up the activity, got a one-year suspension. The team was also fined and lost a couple of draft picks.

The league took this action not so much because they are concerned about “sportsmanship” or “fair play” but because paying bounties is against the rules. There is a perfectly legal and far more elegant way for teams to accomplish the exact same thing the Saints managed to do: Pay massive contracts to players with a reputation for pulverizing opponents. Some of the highest paid players in the game are also some of its hardest hitters. Hitting an opponent like a ton of bricks is likely to cause some kind of injury whether it slows the player down or puts him on the sideline for a couple of games. Bone, sinew, muscle, tendons, cartilage — the human body, no matter how well conditioned, did not evolve over the last 2 million years to be crunched by a 260 pound linebacker who runs a 4.4 40 yard dash. The collisions rattle bones, and even brains, as concussions are at an all time high in the NFL.

And there is a far more effective way to police this kind of thing: let the players and opposing teams deal with it in their own way.

Warren Sapp, former all-pro defensive lineman:

“We don’t keep many secrets in the NFL, if you knocking a dude out, you getting paid — that’s going to get around,” Sapp said on CBS This Morning. “Once that gets out, the league’s going to come down on you even more then. Teams are going to start coming after your guys.”

There you have it: mutually assured destruction. You take out our guy, we go after two of yours. It worked in baseball for 100 years until the league began to butt its nose into the nuances of the game. If a pitcher threw at the head of an opposing player, he had best be ready to duck when it was his turn to bat. Or sometimes the payback would come in the form of a bean ball thrown at the other team’s best player. A balance of power was maintained in this imperfect manner, and it protected players and pitchers as well.

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Posted at 3:37 pm on April 5th, 2012 by Rick Moran

John Carter Headed For $200 Million Loss

For those of us who are fans — and always will be fans — of the marvelous Edgar Rice Burroughs series John Carter of Mars, the news that the film version will lose somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million is depressing. The BBC critic Mark Kermode summed up the movie’s major problem:

The storytelling is incomprehensible, the characterization is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it’s a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long.

The film cost a staggering $250 million to make and another $100 million to promote.  A Disney spokesman confirmed to the Daily Mail the bad news, saying, “In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter, we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million.”

What went wrong? One of the most beloved sci-fi series of all time is set to become the biggest financial flop in Hollywood history.

Some critics point to the director and producers as being in over their heads. That’s one of those criticisms that is impossible to prove, but sounds like the critic knows something about making movies. In fact, the director, Andrew Stanton, was no stranger to blockbuster projects, and treated the source material with respect — even reverence.

But I agree with this notion from Rick Liebling,the Creative Culturalist at Y&R New York:

Indiana Jones on Mars? Sequels and theme park attractions? That’s why movies like this (or just about any other “blockbuster”) suck. They are viewed as franchise vehicles or cross-promotional, money-spinning opportunities. I’m not opposed to those things by the way, but when they are the raison d’etre, well all you’re going to get is a steaming turd.

Beyond the Hollywoodisms and other inside-industry explanations, there is the cultural chasm between the world in which John Carter was originally created by Burroughs and the less literate, less imaginative, more realistic world into which the film was released.

Chris Queen did an excellent job of fleshing out the history and background of the John Carter novels for PJ Media prior to the film’s release. In 1911 when the first story appeared in in the pulp magazine The All Story, the Civil War had been over less than 50 years. Almost everyone knew a veteran from that war, or saw them during parades and other patriotic events. The war was still alive for kids and young adults at that time, making the character John Carter live in ways that we can’t even imagine.

While Burroughs’ time was more literate, it was the imagination that forged a connection to the stories and characters and created such a powerful hold on our affections. In an age before film, before TV, before radio, there was only the reader, the written word, and however we imagined the world being created by the author. Burroughs’ prose could be turgid at times — to our ears anyway –  but the compelling way in which he described his world of Barsoom far surpassed any attempts we might make today to translate the author’s imagined adventures to the screen. There are simply no cultural touchstones that connect the world of Burroughs with our world today. A young boy living in pre-World War I America imagined Barsoom far differently that I did in the 1960s. And it is likely that most kids today hadn’t even read the books, waiting instead for the video game.

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Posted at 8:54 am on March 21st, 2012 by Rick Moran

Mainstreaming Wild-Ass Liberalism

What would the liberal intelligentsia say about David Duke being given an anchor job on Fox? Or Michael Savage? Or Alex Jones?

Already the proud purveyors of loony-toons leftism by featuring the unbalanced rants of Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow, MSNBC has jumped into the deep end of demented derangement by hiring the race baiting, self promoting Reverend Al Sharpton for its 6:00 PM anchor slot.

New York Times:

After giving a nearly six-month tryout for the Internet talk show host Cenk Uygur, the cable news channel MSNBC is preparing to instead hand its 6 p.m. time slot to the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Mr. Sharpton’s imminent hiring, which was acknowledged by three people at the channel on condition of anonymity because the contract had not been signed, is significant in part because MSNBC and other news channels have been criticized for a paucity of minority hosts in prominent time slots. Mr. Sharpton, who is black and is a well-known civil rights activist and radio host, has been guest hosting in the 6 p.m. time slot for the last three weeks.

There had been uncertainty about the 6 p.m. slot ever since the channel’s marquee anchor, Keith Olbermann, departed in January, prompting Ed Schultz to be moved to 10 p.m. from 6. Suddenly Mr. Uygur, who had been made a paid contributor to MSNBC months earlier, was handed 6 p.m., a big coup given that he had earlier campaigned to have his progressive Web show “The Young Turks” picked up by MSNBC.

He earned solid but not stand-out ratings; in late June the channel’s president, Phil Griffin, decided to try out Mr. Sharpton, and offered Mr. Uygur a new contract that included a weekend show, but not a higher-profile weekday show.

By any definition, Al Sharpton is an extremist. He has proven himself an inveterate race baiter, a nauseating anti-Semite, a convicted libeler, a crook, and a class warfare demagogue of the first order.

I know that MSNBC was looking to hire loud, opinionated, leftists who will deliver spittle-flecked rants against the Republicans and the right, but Jeez…

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Posted at 9:12 am on July 21st, 2011 by Rick Moran

First Look: John Carter (of Mars) Trailer

The much anticipated trailer for the Disney treatment of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi adventure series John Carter of Mars was released yesterday.

YouTube Preview Image

How cool is that? Love those Barsoomian ships. But after drooling over Frank Franzetta’s voluptuous renderings of “the incomparable” Dejah Thoris on book covers for years, the shock of seeing her with a top on will take some getting used to.

Fans of the last major series by Burroughs not butchered by Hollywood are holding their breath that for once, Tinsel Town will get it right and capture the vision of one of the most imaginative writers of the 20th century.

So far, there are signs that cause both trepidation and hope. Most worrisome is dropping “of Mars” from the original title. Now it is simply John Carter set for release on March 9, 2012. Disney – marketing geniuses? Maybe they know something the rest of us don’t.

They are also being coy about the look of some of the fantastical Martian beasts – especially the humanoid Tharks. John Carter’s experiences with the 15 foot tall green skinned, 4 armed, be-tusked “hordes” is a central part of the story. Also wondering about Carter’s Calot (dog) Woola who stands as tall as a Shetland pony with 10 legs and the head of a frog.

What about Carter’s superior strength and agility, bulging muscles and giant “thews?” Carter could leap 30 feat at a time in the weaker Martian gravity, which gave him an enormous advantage over any adversary. It’s the reason he’s dominant on the planet so you wonder if  they can remain true to that part of Carter’s personae.

And they better not screw up the thoats. (great Wiki on Barsoom here).

On the good side, Andrew Stanton (Wall-E and Finding Nemo) is helming the project which is already into post-production. Stanton, who also penned the script, swears that he has made a “true Martian movie.” Famous last words. And judging from the trailer, there doesn’t appear to be anything cheesy about the backdrops — a fault that ruined The Martian Chronicles.

The stars are a mixed lot. I’m dubious of Willem Dafoe playing Carter’s best friend, the Thark Tars Tarkas. But Lynn Collins (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as Dejah Thoris seems fine. Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) as John Carter is going to be hit or miss. I think he’s too young (Carter was a Civil War hero) but he looks great in the trailer – suitably heroic. Hard to think of who might have played the role today. Contemporary action heroes just wouldn’t fill the bill. How about Robert Taylor or Victor Mature? Errol Flynn might have been OK too.

I apologize if my cynicism is showing through but so many films have disappointed upon being transferred from literature to celluloid that I am fully expecting disaster. I think the best those of us who are fans of the series can hope for is that they stick to the story and not overload the film with a lot of syrupy exposition and non-essential romance.

IMDB page here.

 

 

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Posted at 11:22 am on July 15th, 2011 by Rick Moran

Is Falling Skies going to go all PC on us?

[Some Spoilers Below]

There’s so little good sci-fi on TV anymore (the “SyFy” channel lost me at the 10th anaconda movie they produced) that when a decent series comes along, you want to get up out of your Enterprise captain’s chair and cheer them on.

TNT’s Falling Skies has a heavyweight production team, a monster budget, and just the right mix of terror and wonder that all good sci-fi shows should have. It’s an ancient story line but why reinvent the wheel if it isn’t creaking?

The series begins in medias res with the aliens well on their way to wiping humans off the face of the earth. The beasts are suitably icky and, well, beastly — especially since they capture children as slave laborers, controlling them by putting an icky wormlike critter that attaches itself to the backs of the kids and makes them into automatons.

As you might expect, there is a resistance — poorly equipped and hardly a real soldier among them. The main character, Tom Mason (played by Noah Wylie), is an ex-military history professor whose knowledge of war doesn’t impress hard-bitten Captain Weaver (Will Patton), but whose respect he is gaining as his missions get ever more dangerous. Mason has a kid in one of the alien labor brigades and most of the first three episodes revolved around his efforts to get him back.

Mason became a hero in Episode Two when he actually captured an alien (called “Skitters”) alive. And herein lies the seeds of the show’s possible destruction. Mason’s putative love interest is Anne Glass (Moon Bloodgood). While Dr. Michael Harris (Stephen Weber) is busy trying to dissect the creature, Anne wants to study the beast. Who knows, maybe it has feelings? Actually, she has a good idea — getting to know the enemy — but the way she goes about it is a little strange. She gives the beastie water. She talks nicey-nicely to it. She asks it what it wants from us. She actually protects it from Harris who sees a lab rat, while Anne sees…what? A kindred spirit? You get the feeling that she sees the Skitter as a minority.

Meanwhile, the Skitter doesn’t know what to think. Not enamored of Anne’s obvious anatomical gifts, he can’t ply her with nylons, perfume, and other stuff with which GI’s would bribe their guards in WW II movies. So he tries the next best thing: He makes a grab for her and tries to eat her.

Anne gets away but later, Harris isn’t so lucky. The Beastie grabs the doc as he is trying to prevent one of the Skitter’s former slaves from releasing it and makes literal mincemeat of him.

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Posted at 3:41 pm on July 13th, 2011 by Rick Moran
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