Jabba The Pod

One of the more amusing things about rightwing war whores is the relation between their avowed love for combat and the physical shape most of them are in. To hear the likes of Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter waxing delirious about killing and torturing Hajis is gloriously absurd. Neither one has served in the military, and so never went through basic training which, given their frames, would break them within a week. Hell, I doubt they have the stamina to shadow box. But they blather on, letting their lips do the fighting while their lessers do the dying.

To me, the biggest clown on this front has got to be John Podhoretz. Like his pa, Norman, J-Pod loves the thought of extended war. Killing and dying makes a man a man. And like his cohorts, J-Pod has no intention of doing this himself. The guy would have a massive heart attack were he to attempt any level of boot camp. But in his mind, J-Pod is one tough motherfucker. Oh how he hates pacifists and pussies! Even worse are the defeatists in Hollywood. How dare filmmakers extol the idea of negotiation, or worse, contemplation of non-violent alternatives! This won't do for a nation at war.

If you didn't know already, J-Pod fancies himself a film critic. Quite the serious cineaste. That he regularly misses the point of a certain film, or simply slams a movie if it doesn't reaffirm his ideological views, doesn't seem to concern him. Indeed, J-Pod is so in love with his cinematic insights that he's beyond embarrassment. I recall him on "Crossfire" debating the political merit of Oliver Stone's "Platoon" with Vietnam combat vet Bobby Muller. You would have thought that J-Pod would show a little respect to Muller, given that Muller had actually experienced action while J-Pod merely dreamed about it. Perhaps the fact that Muller was confined to a wheelchair might humble J-Pod just a touch. Uh uh. Not our boy. J-Pod predictably bashed "Platoon" for its pro-commie/anti-American slant, and worse, how it made war look like hell. Astonished, Muller turned to J-Pod and asked what the fuck did he know about war. J-Pod flashed a shit-eating grin and shook his head with condescending weariness. Didn't Muller know the cultural genius he was tangling with? Didn't he know his place?

While time, gravity and the dinner bell have altered J-Pod outwardly, inside he's the same faux-warrior blasting away peaceniks. In a post at the National Review's Corner, J-Pod reports that the new "Star Wars" film isn't up to his martial standards:

"Evidently 25 years into the Star Wars empire, George Lucas decided he just doesn't like war. Now he tells us. The whole confusion is reminiscent of the last Matrix movie, which is all about a noble truce between our heroes and the computers that have been using all of humanity as batteries. So that a few people could survive to have orgies in the underground city of Zion, billions of people had to remain in the Matrix. Inadvertently, both Lucas and the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and directed the Matrix movies) reveal with their brainless anti-Bushism the essential cowardly vapidity of pacifism."

Does Lucas, in his final installment, beat light sabers into glowing plowshares? I've yet to see the movie, but the possibility makes the series a little more interesting, esp in these times. But given that J-Pod completely misreads the ending of "The Matrix," I suspect it's a little more nuanced than that. (J-Pod seems to forget that the charred planet run by the machines is essentially unlivable for humans, which is why Zion exists underground. Where would all those billions, once unplugged, go? And if Neo hadn't forged a truce with the machines, at the cost of his own life, the unplugged humans of Zion would've been wiped out, thus eliminating any chance for future resistance or any hope of life at all. For J-Pod, like his pops, peace is linked to cowardice and by extension promiscuous, perverted sex. One wonders what the Pods fantasize of when they masturbate.)

But then again, maybe J-Pod is right. Maybe George Lucas made an anti-Bush epic. Once I see it with my son, I'll give my take. But until then, I'm happy that the very concept rankles J-Pod and his cadre of fantasy soldiers. Whatever keeps them grumbling in their air-conditioned Fox hole.