I read today that a woman has launched a book-burning campaign to destroy all children’s books without happy endings. Apparently she’s afraid that the likes of A Series of Unfortunate Events might expose young ones to inappropriate concepts such as the complexity and ambiguity of morality, or the fact that life doesn’t always turn out to be complete care-free and happy. Sometimes our culture’s collective determination to protect people from themselves baffles me.
And then there are times that overbearing watchdog-types actually don’t seem so bad. For instance, the movie featured in today’s review, The Crippled Masters, could never be made in today’s culture of political correctness, since it ultimately exists for the sole purpose of staring and laughing at a man born without arms. (This review, however, is more along the lines of staring in bewilderment at the movie and wondering what its creators could possibly have been thinking.)
Hahahaha, WHAT? God save us all from the Sweetness and Light Brigade.
At least it’s not yet universally understood that setting books on fire is a great way to immediately stop gaining allies.
Someone should tell her that book-burning contributes to the unhappy ending of GLOBAL WARMING.
Feh, liberal alarmism.
Yeah, she should also know that famous book burner Adolf Hitler ended up commiting suicide. Pretty much the entire story of nazi germany ends with the phrase “and everyone died or went to jail. The End”.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that there were still millions of German citizens left afterwards.
Anyway, book burning fringe types tend to scream loud and do little else except have several hundred dollar bonfires in their backyards. I’m not worried at all.
Touché
“Goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them.” -Henry Jones, Sr.
Seriously… Even if it was vile, racist, hate speech, I wouldn’t be comfortable burning a book.
I’m absolutely certain that this is one book burning that should not be the cause of any particular concern.
Maybe, but in that case only because it seems to be a hoax: http://www.inkygirl.com/happy-endings-foundation-a-book-marketing-ploy/
That said, I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of burning a book, any book, particularly for such a trivial reason.
Although it may not be burning, per se, but it does warm the cockles of my heart.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10349028/
Obviously, this story is a bit old, but as we’re sharing something relating to books, thought I’d chime in. Also, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is infinitely fantastic.
Burning books is good. It’s the first step in the track to a future similar to that in V for Vendetta, which will end up eventually in every man, woman and child realizing that we should aim for freedom and dignity, no matter what. The mother of all “happy endings”… if you saw the movie.
The book? Chaos and despair. I better keep my copy in a vault before it gets burned.
“Burning books is good. It’s the first step in the track to a future similar to that in V for Vendetta, which will end up eventually in every man, woman and child realizing that we should aim for freedom and dignity, no matter what. The mother of all “happy endings”… if you saw the movie.”
Or read the book. Or read 1984, for that matter (which doesn’t have an actual happy ending, but you get the point).
Anyway, the fact that such a campaign is as believable as it is ridiculous tells us a lot about our world these days.
And what exactly is a happy ending anyway? Happy endings are stories that haven’t really ended. So, Cinderella got married, but what about when 10 years of marriage went by, when she found out the prince also liked other men and found him, you know, getting too friendly with the court jester and later she developed a huge mezcaline addiction that she got from a spanish sailor she slept with just to forget the horrible sight of the naked jester and the prince… in love.
Trailer on youtube for those who are too lazy to search themselves.
My mind is blown every time I see stubby twirl that bo staff around on his stub.
There is also another movie that have “acting” crippled martial artists who pretend to be deaf, blind, stupid and something else that can be faked.