Thursday, January 27, 2005

UPCOMING FILM EXPOSING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

On the road with Mr. Maloney across the country, the viewer watches an economics professor from Mr. Maloney's alma mater, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, explain to the filmmaker that most white students at the school are "unconsciously racist" and that much of the "cutting-edge" work in his field is "being done in feminist economics."

Mr. Maloney then turns his camera to the case of Steve Hinkle. A student at California Polytechnic State University, he was disciplined by school officials after posting a flyer promoting an upcoming speech by a black conservative who equated welfare and slavery. The school dropped charges against Mr. Hinkle only after a civil-liberties organization sued, saying the university was violating freedom of speech.

To top it off, Mr. Maloney interviews Sukhmani Singh Khalsa of the University of Tennessee, a Sikh convert who received a death threat by e-mail from another student angry over his conservative opinion pieces in the student newspaper. The university refused to punish the author of the e-mail, who called Mr. Khalsa a "towel head" and reportedly urged students to shoot the student in the "face."

"The problem on campus becomes who defines harassment," Mr. Maloney said in a recent interview with The New York Sun. "Who on campus is going to stand up to a multicultural office or a diversity office?"

One of the more amusing scenes in the film comes when Mr. Maloney stops by the office of Cal Poly's president, Warren Baker - in a "Roger and Me" moment - for an impromptu interview, only to be herded away by a grouchy assistant. Not a single university administrator has agreed to appear in the New Yorker's film....

At the time, Mr. Maloney had already gained some notice from the press with his 6- or 7-minute documentary shorts on left-wing protesters. He videotaped antiwar demonstrators in New York in 2003 providing silly answers to questions about how America ought to deal with Iraq. He recorded a rowdy pro-Palestinian protest at Rutgers University, where one speaker screamed, "Long live the intifada," and another protester whispered to Mr. Maloney on camera: "Are you nervous?"....

When he's interviewing on campuses, he wears a black T-shirt, loose-fitting Gap jeans, Rockport shoes, and, sometimes, a Yankees baseball cap that makes him look like an Irish version of the pitcher Mike Mussina. When he interviews would-be hostile subjects, Mr. Maloney puts on a blank face and speaks with a deadpan, dry delivery. "The most effective way is to ask very simple, basic questions, so they don't think I dislike them," he said, "because I don't dislike them as people. I may not agree with their viewpoints."

It's an interview tactic he used effectively on a Bucknell professor, Geoffrey Schneider, the faculty member who spoke about his students' unconscious racism. In an interview with the Sun, Mr. Schneider said he was "basically manipulated into appearing" in Mr. Maloney's film. "I was told originally I was going to be interviewed for a film about professors' academic freedom and attempts to censor professors," he said.... "It's silly to say our curriculum is politically correct and biased in favor of liberal ideas, and then to use as an example what is taught in one day, in one course," Mr. Schneider said.

He stands by his comments on student racism: "Everybody comes from a specific background, and Bucknell students tend to be white upper-income. If they are white upper-income, they come with certain baggage" - such as negative stereotypes about black Americans. "One of the things we try to do, which so angers conservative students, is to unpack these biases that we all have, to try to analyze them for what they are," he told the Sun.

For Mr. Maloney, the professor's comments are the type of thinking that provoked him into making the film in the first place. "He doesn't see political correctness as a problem," Mr. Maloney said.

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POLITICALLY CORRECT RACISM

Ridiculing the Japanese is OK

I only recently noticed the campaign charging racism in Lost in Translation, the 2003 film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. The allegations were a complete surprise to me because I rather enjoyed this movie about a story of two Americans lost in Tokyo - without even suspecting such vocal objections could be raised.....

Obsessively criticizing Bill Murray's passing comment about the Japanese mixing up L's and R's is absurd. The scene lasted a few seconds in the film. I did notice some stereotypical scenes in the beginning, like the tall Murray surrounded by drab-looking Japanese businessmen in the elevator. But overall, the film was almost devoid of the cliches I've grown sick of, such as the obligatory crowded-train scene and "Japanophile" proverbs. In particular, the film depicted Tokyo as a vast, superclean, high-tech metropolis. The Tokyo I know is uglier and more cluttered than that. And its portrayal of fun-loving youth singing and drinking was refreshing.

Some newspaper and web reviews criticize Lost in Translation as if it were a new monument in anti-Japanese stereotyping. When the film Rising Sun opened in 1993, it was immediately seen, correctly, as a propagandistic portrayal selling the derogation of the Japanese as entertainment, and it drew protestors. The film stands, as did Breakfast at Tiffany's of the 1960s, as a touchstone of cinematic stereotyping.

To overly focus on Coppola's film is unwise because it tends to divert attention from films that require it, like Steven Spielberg's new Memoirs of a Geisha. It is based on the bestselling 1997 novel in which every plot component was designed to demonize the Japanese. Professor Anne Allison of Duke University wrote that the book "inspired [readers] to see Japanese men as sexual perverts."

Cross burnings and racially motivated hate crimes are easy to recognize, but a form of prejudice that is becoming increasingly prevalent is "politically correct racism" - a more sophisticated version that disguises itself as "concern for human rights," "equality for women," "historical justice," etc. The New York Times has refined the technique of turning Japan-bashing into often-entertaining articles, until it finally elicited a book-length rebuttal from American and Japanese scholars and journalists, entitled Japan Made in the U.S.A.

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PREACHER SEEKS FREE SPEECH

During oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals this morning, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund asked the justices to declare the University of Arkansas' restrictions on outside speakers unconstitutional. "We believe that where a person is lawfully upon public property, that person has a legal right to speak," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Nathan Kellum. "We are optimistic that the judges understood our issues, and we look forward to their ruling on this important free speech case."

The case, Gary Bowman v. Dr. John A. White, et al., originally filed October 1, 2003, involves a Christian man, Gary Bowman, who has shared his faith with passersby on public grounds at the university since 1998. Though the university has always required permits for his speech, school officials implemented a stricter policy in August 2001. "The university apparently implemented its more restrictive policy specifically to curb the frequency of Bowman's speech on the campus of the U of A," Kellum explained. "Under these regulations, Mr. Bowman may exercise his First Amendment rights just 15 days a year, and then only if the university says he may."

The school's policy imposes a cap of five visits per semester without student sponsorship and requires advance notice of three days. In addition, the university may cancel or modify any reservation and completely bans non-university speech during designated "dead days" of the university's choosing.

Kellum explained that, under the Constitution, Bowman should be allowed to hand out literature and hold a sign on public plazas, malls, and sidewalks, including the three areas the university has designated as "speech areas." ... "For fear of arrest, Mr. Bowman has been forced to stop speaking at the U of A. That's not the sort of thing that should happen on a public university campus in America," Kellum said. "ADF is fighting to ensure that Bowman and all people of faith in this country are able to exercise their right to free speech and religious expression without excessive government interference," Kellum added. "Americans should not be forced to relinquish their first liberty."

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