The Big 4-0!

My wife and I usually go to movies on Thursdays or Fridays.

That is our Date night.

Sometimes we run out of a decent movie to see and consequently we tend to lower our standards..sometimes way lower.

Recently we saw Turning 40, a romantic comedy about a married couple with two young daughters.

The crux of the plot was that both partners were turning the big 4-0 within days of one another.

Each was having troubles serious difficulty coping with staying perennial young as is the American obsession with aging and ultimately death.

Starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, the film had a great supporting cast, led by Albert Brooks and John Lithgow.

Also turned the big 4-0

While it was mildly entertaining, the raw language, some of it even used by their 13 year-old daughter, started to grate on us.

I understand that kind of thing is standard in films today but Turning 40 took it to a new low.

I don’t like or enjoy profanity but I tolerate it as I would a spot on my pants or a newspaper with ink blotches on one page.

But this was so pervasive, it not only got boring but it made us feel embarrassed to be in the theater.

I would say that it could arguably be the worst film we saw last year but we actually saw it the first weekend of January.

So it almost has a lock on this year’s worst film for us.

A movie has to be beyond the pale for us to get up and leave…so we stuck it out.

The only movies my wife and I have ever walked out on, oddly enough, had one of the Redgrave sisters, Lynn and Vanessa in it.

They were both b&w films from the sixties—Morgan and Georgie Girl.

When I am watching a bad movie, I try to look for some redeeming social value.

In this case, I am glad I did.

While it came near the end of the movie, one of the complexities of their turning 40 was the fact that Leslie’s character became pregnant.

Now this was just one unexpected, unwanted challenge that was lumped in with his failing business, her employee’s theft, school problems, a sibling rivalry, strained relations with each of their fathers and so on.

In today’s mores, a quick and easy abortion would have solved that problem.

But surprising there was none of the hand-wringing and gut wrenching drama that has always led to the abattoir.

As in his other gross film, Knocked Up Judd Apatow has a similar sequence, where the baby is, after a few nervous moments of surprise, welcomed.

A director with a trend?

I don’t know if this is a trend but it is certainly a vast improvement over the 1991 film, Cider House Rules, adapted from the militant pro-abortion John Irving’s book, which vigorously advances abortion as the cure-all for any unwanted pregnancy.

Funny thing happened on the way to the clinic.

In the real world, legalized abortion in all 50 states, also turns 40 this year.

And it seems that their big 4-0 is riven with as many problems and challenges as the couple in the Turning 40 movie.

A recent column by NYT’s writer Gail Collins, entitled The Woes of Roe,  lamented that Gallup polls suggest support for abortion rights is fading, particularly among young Americans, and that more people now regard themselves as pro-life than pro-choice.

Defending Roe’s legacy

While she tries to obfuscate the findings in a cover of obtuse legerdemain, the bottom line is that most Americans are conflicted about killing unborn babies.

Remember this is a nation that bends over backwards to protect the dour existences of such vitally important species, such as the snail darter and every variety of gnat.

However the absolute evil of killing a human baby, in utero is often easily dismissed by the mental gymnastics of a soul that is able to delegate its moral reasoning to the chaotic filing system of cognitive dissonance.

Collins cites a libertarian faction within the pro-choice movement that just wants to be left alone.

They want the decision to abort or not-to-abort to be strictly that between them and their doctors.

She stresses leaving the politicians out of this decision when it was the left-wing politicians who created the situation more than 40 years ago.

While Collins does her level best to shroud the 40 years of bloody fetal tissue in all the niceties of a debutante tea dance, where over 55 million have perished, the bottom line is that abortion has done an uncalculated harm to the female gender.

All women have been tainted by the decision 40 years ago that turned their wombs into potential battlegrounds.

It is not surprising that so many have had their feminine psyches twisted into caricature of the worst science fiction about a future America where men have become feminized and women have grown testicles.

Dripping with such sexual irony was the recent flap with sports announcer, Brent Musburger and his comments  during the National Championship game between Notre Dame and Alabama University.

Because the game quickly became an Alabama rout, Musburger looked for some interesting diversions.

In the first quarter, ESPN showed Alabama quarterback, AJ McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who was sitting with his parents.

Musburger called the 23-year-old Webb, the current Miss Alabama, a lovely lady and beautiful and said to his broadcast partner, Kirk Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Ohio State, You quarterbacks get all the good-looking women.

A moral eye for feminine beauty

The criticism came quickly with such words as creepy, awkward, uncomfortable and heteronormative.

Heteronormative?

Musburger had better see his doctor.

The radical feminists, most of whom man a college post, teaching young, impressionable women, now had another example of how men oppress women.

It’s extraordinarily inappropriate to focus on an individual’s looks, said Sue Carter, a professor of journalism at Michigan State.

WHY PRAY TELL?

In this instance, the appearance of the quarterback’s girlfriend had no bearing on the outcome of the game.

Webb, who is indeed everything the 73-year old Musberger said she was and then some, was the only woman quoted who showed any sense or maturity.

It was kind of nice, Webb told The Associated Press after the game.

I didn’t look at it as ‘creepy’ at all.

A little avuncular advice

For a woman to be called beautiful, I don’t see how that’s an issue.

I would add that Musburger’s comments taken on face value were not vulgar or profane.

With a bit of an elderly sigh, he appreciated the natural beauty that God has blessed this particular woman with.

I think if the late Pope John Paul II had been watching the game…maybe he was–he would have said something like…she is what she is…bellissima.

With the Church’s team playing, you know He was watching!

I think he would have added that…what Mr. Musburger said was exactly what I meant in my book about the Theology of the Body.

The TOB in action

Brent knows the moral way to look at one of God’s most beautiful creatures.

It is nice to know that there are still some real, normal women left like Ms. Webb, who can think for themselves.

I have a little avuncular advice for her.

O.K. make that grand-avuncular advice. 

Given the petulant, over-wrought personality of her relatively new boyfriend–ahead by  nearely a 1000 points, he starts a fight with his own teammate— alas, I can say, she can do better…much better!

Today most women can do better…but will always be enslaved by the male mentality that has given us Roe v. Wade.

Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist were the only two dissenting votes that day.

One of only two justices who saw the evil

These are just a few thoughts for you to ponder on this the darkest of all anniversaries.

I think 1/22 with its 55 million dead  will rank in infamy with 9/11 (3700 dead), and 12/7 (2700 dead).

Has choice been worth it to women?  Are they any happier?

To America?

What do you think?

 The Big 4-0! http://wp.me/pGH83-1ce

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Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Brent Musburger, Cider House Rules, Judd Apatow, Katherine Webb, The Woes of Roe, Turning 40