Thursday, December 15, 2005

Have a burning desire to know what movies conservative college students are watching? Here, I'm told, are the Top Five:

1. The Passion of the Christ
2. A Man for All Seasons
3. Lean on Me
4. Cheaper by the Dozen
5. Death Wish


Wow. One of these things is not like the others.

That's a rather neck-snapping U-turn at #5; after that the list continues, and we linger in the Action-Adventure section of the video store:

6. Red Dawn
7. Dirty Harry
8. The Outlaw Josey Wales


Then, bizarrely, we get

9. Zulu

(I'd barely heard of it either. Capsule description: "Heroism in the face of overwhelming odds, 139 Welshmen fight off 4,000 Zulu soldiers.")

Then, another U-turn:

10. PCU

("The state of modern colleges, summed up in an excellent comedy showing the ridiculousness of the politically correct mob.")


OK -- I'm looking at a list that includes Cheaper by the Dozen and Zulu and I'm struggling to find the common thread. Then I recall these lyrics by Randy Newman:

Americans dream of gypsies, I have found
Gypsy knives and gypsy thighs
That pound and pound and pound and pound
And African appendages that almost reach the ground
And little boys playing baseball in the rain


Yup, I think that just about sums up the mindset of the kids surveyed for this list -- assuming they exist and the list isn't just some middle-aged right-wing content generator's idea of what virtuous kids should be watching. The list, by the way, is courtesy of the Campus Leadership Program, a division of Morton (Purple Heart Band-Aids) Blackwell's Leadership Institute.

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