Remember back in the 1980s when the New York Times berated the former actor in the White House and his proposed missile defense program, which they named, with noses in the full locked and upturned position, after a recent blockbuster science fiction movie series with knockout special effects?
Hey, that was a long time ago. These days, the Times is totally onboard with some Anti-Industrial White Light & Washington Magic. Maureen Dowd, who in 2009 compared President Obama to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock (in a column presciently titled “Put Aside Logic”), kicks off the new year with yet another science fiction-themed motif, as Newsbusters’ Lachlan Markay writes:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd really wants a national security system that looks really nice and has lots of fancy bells and whistles, but is, beneath the shiny exterior, quite mediocre and extremely expensive.
Dowd implied as much when she asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a New Years Eve interview, “Why is it so hard for those charged with keeping us safe to be as imaginative and innovative as filmmakers like James Cameron?”
She knows it’s only a movie, right? Because there’s an Avatar-themed message board with this question on it:
I recently read on the Avatar TypePad Blog, that people are becoming depressed because of the movie. People are realizing that the dream can’t actually come true. I was trying to start a thread where people gave ideas on how to cope with it, as in reading Avatar stuff, Writing ( about avatar of course), painting, or whatever. Just give me some ideas and I’ll try and help them out. Maybe people reading might even get some good ideas that’ll help.
The message thread’s headline is “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible.”
No word yet if the person who posted that is actually MoDo.
On the other hand, I can see why the Times would favor more Hollywood involvement in our frontline defenses, given the root causes of the nation’s current terrorist threat.
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