Brokeback = Bestiality: Fundie LTTE that will make ya go "huh"?

It's at http://www.fayettevillenc.com; click on Opinion, then the Tuesday button in the 7 Day Opinion Archive, then find the LTTE. I don't feel like going over there (I read it in the fiddy-cent version of the paper), but that's how to find it.

Daniel Barton is Fayetteville's Second Best Christian. He's the one who fought a five-year battle to get the porn out of the library (they had a copy of "History Laid Bare"); if it kept up too much longer I was highly considering buying the library a subscription to Hustler Magazine. After all, if this guy really thinks there's porn in the library, perhaps the library should have some high-quality porn. (The "Asshole of the Month" feature is well worth the subscription price.)

Okay, this six-week period he's going off on Brokeback Mountain. The newspaper's Oscar-predictions-story writer said Brokeback should win the Oscar for best picture because it was a love story--too bad about the controversy over the nature of the lovers. Mr. Barton asked if the writer would similarly recommend a movie featuring pedophilia or bestiality. (Which means he's seen the horse-fucker parody that's circulating the Internet...)

Then he pointed out that last year's Jesus Chainsaw Massacre and this year's Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe both had ticket sales an order of magnitude higher than Brokeback, which meant that the moviegoing public rejected this "homosexual movie." (His words, not mine.) Well, Danny Boy, no, it doesn't mean that. It does mean that the majority of the moviegoing public prefers high-budget, high-action epics to plodding art house fare. Which, of course, is why those movies are in the art houses to begin with--they don't make enough money to attract exhibitors like Carmike and Loews with thousands of screens to put people in front of. (Brokeback was the exception that proved the rule--the hype surrounding this movie was enough to move it into multiplexes where it did okay, but the genre Brokeback inhabits generally doesn't get into wide distribution. When the movie attendance figures come out and a particular film has "opened on twelve screens" in the data, it's probably not gonna make a billion dollars in worldwide release.)

Okay, so the guy's full of shit, especially the stuff about bestiality. (Yeah, I wondered that too.) But there was an interesting item in there. I noticed the term "ilk" applied to his opponents--a psychologist who wrote a LTTE about homosexuality being something you're born with, and the Oscar-feature writer, this time. The fundies are starting to call their adversaries "ilk" more and more. And I think this is good. It's so good we need to do it ourselves. As in "Fred Phelps and his ilk..." or "Pat Robertson, who served his nation as a liquor officer, James Dobson, who served Jack Abramoff, and their ilk..."

Ilk. It's fun and it's free. And lots of cool people are ilk, like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

It does mean that the majority of the moviegoing public prefers high-budget, high-action epics to plodding art house fare. Which, of course, is why those movies are in the art houses to begin with--they don't make enough money to attract exhibitors like Carmike and Loews with thousands of screens to put people in front of.

Actually, what it means is that a G or PG-13 movie has a few million more potential customers than an R-rated movie. The former two can appeal to kids and adults; only adults can (at least theoretically) get into an R-rated film with ID checks.