{"id":5259,"date":"2005-09-14T13:48:52","date_gmt":"2005-09-14T17:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/5259.html"},"modified":"2005-09-14T13:48:52","modified_gmt":"2005-09-14T17:48:52","slug":"politicized-penguins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/politicized-penguins\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicized penguins"},"content":{"rendered":"

I knew March of the Penguins<\/a> is a popular documentary, and considering that it’s tame content (no profanity, no nudity), I figured it’d be popular among conservatives as well. I just didn’t realize how much<\/i> the right would embrace the film as its own<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie “verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it.” <\/p>\n

At a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy. A widely circulated Christian magazine said it made “a strong case for intelligent design.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Michael Medved said, “This is the first movie [conservative families have] enjoyed since ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ This is ‘The ‘Passion of the Penguins.’ ”<\/p>\n

I haven’t seen the movie, but I have a hunch this conservative enthusiasm is misplaced.<\/p>\n

First, the filmmakers are active proponents of evolutionary biology and the film acknowledges that the penguins have been engaging in the same patterns for “millions of years.” Second, those same filmmakers acknowledge that “it’s obvious that global warming has an impact on the reproduction of the penguins.” Both of these points are completely at odds with the right-wing worldview.<\/p>\n

And as for making a case for intelligent-design creationism, we’re talking about birds that can’t fly traveling mindlessly back and forth over 70 miles of ice. This<\/i> is evidence of intelligent design?<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: The same NYT piece suggests the penguins help undermine the idea of gay marriage. From comments<\/a>, there’s reason<\/a> to believe the conservatives are wrong about this too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I knew March of the Penguins is a popular documentary, and considering that it’s tame content (no profanity, no nudity), I figured it’d be popular among conservatives as well. I just didn’t realize how much the right would embrace the film as its own. On the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}