Culture Briefs

Sports icon

“If there’s a lesson filmmakers are taking away from the success of the football movie ’The Blind Side,’ it’s this: stick to the formula and keep the sports leagues happy. The Oscar-nominated film about offensive lineman Michael Oher and the family that adopted him has raked in nearly $250 million and is a candidate to win the Best Picture award. But like most sports films — especially those that require the approval of sports leagues to get made — the movie follows a familiar theme: clean-cut all-American athlete overcomes great obstacles to achieve his dream.

“It’s a formula that works, critics say, but the result is that the dark side of sports is generally left unexamined. Teammates doing drugs? Nope. The long-term effects of concussions on football players? Not a chance. Guns in the locker room? Womanizing? Not in ’The Blind Side’ — or in any sports movie these days. Sports on the silver screen are sanitized now, both because of leagues looking to protect their image and the reality of what attracts a mass audience. …

“Sports leagues may play as much a role in pushing this formula as market pressures. Any filmmaker wishing to use official team names and logos — such as the numerous college teams and the NFL Baltimore Ravens in ’The Blind Side’ — must first get approval from leagues that have proven to be far more likely to sack projects than let them through.”

— Tim Lemke, writing on “Playbook for Sports Films? Don’t Tick Off Pro Leagues,” Friday at Fox News

Chavez icon

“We easily forget that the era we call ’the Sixties’ was not only a time of vast civic disaffection; it was also a time of religious idealism. At the forefront of what amounted to the religious revival of America in those years were the black Protestant ministers of the civil rights movement, ministers who insisted upon a moral dimension to the rituals of everyday American life — eating at a lunch counter, riding a bus, going to school.

“Cesar Chavez similarly cast his campaign for better wages and living conditions for farm workers as a religious movement. He became for many Americans, especially Mexican Americans (my parents among them), a figure of spiritual authority. I remember a small brown man with an Indian aspect leading labor protests that were also medieval religious processions of women, children, nuns, college students, burnt old men — under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

— Richard Rodriguez, writing on “Saint Cesar of Delano,” in the Winter issue of the Wilson Quarterly

Victim icon

“Why don’t the Palestinians learn their lesson? Why won’t they accept the grant of statehood? To repeat, perhaps because they don’t really want their own country? There are, after all, many bounties attached to their current status, perks that would disappear under the condition of statehood.

“This is the age of the sanctified victim; and any person or group who can claim that title is automatically in a state of grace. Nobody is allowed to ’blame the victim,’ and so these lucky unfortunates can follow any course, however bloody, so long as they can blame their violence on their victimized condition. Convincing much of the world — including too many Jews — that they were the embodiment of the new Christ, the latest targets of Jewish savagery in the holy land, the Palestinians years ago captured the victim’s high-ground, and have since worked their claim for great profit.

“They are the darlings of the UN and of European elites: The West Bank hums with idealistic foreign youth eager to interpose their bodies between Palestinian flesh and Israeli tanks, as well as with foreign NGOs eager to drip healing valuta over the physical, psychological and financial wounds of this martyred folk. Unable to beat the Jews militarily, the Palestinians are winning the moral victories, and these are leading to decisive political victories as an outraged world threatens to sanction and boycott Israel.”

— David Gutmann, writing on “Why the Palestinians Don’t Want a State” on Friday at the American Spectator