When Hollywood Yells "Leftward Ho!"

Last week, there was an amusing piece in Slate on the alleged conservatism of John Hughes, the man who launched a thousand brat-pack actors in the 1980s:

It should have come as no surprise, then, that a faint smirk of family-values-friendly subversion stamped itself on all of late Hughes, which is to say his even more establishment period as a filmmaker. From The Great Outdoors (in-laws sure are difficult) to Home Alone (towheaded McMansion latchkey kid foils robbery, saves Christmas) to Dennis the Menace (overall-wearing scamp of the manicured lawns sling-shoots his way straight into your heart)