March Of The (Conservative) Penguins?

Hmm, just last week I posted my reviews of March Of The Penguins and Bowling for Columbine and was commenting about the dearth of quality documentaries made by conservatives.

Now I picked up today’s New York Times and read in an article that some conservatives are hailing March of the Penguins as a statement against evolution and a good conservative film. An excerpt:

“March of the Penguins”, the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is “the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.”

Speaking of audiences who feel that movies ignore or belittle such themes, he added: “This is the first movie they’ve enjoyed since The Passion of the Christ. This is The Passion of the Penguins.”

Just a few problems with that, the article continues:

Not all conservatives find the movie a rebuke to Darwin’s theory. “If an Intelligent Designer designed nature,” the columnist George F. Will asked recently, “why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?”

The American distributors of the film, Warner Independent Pictures and National Geographic Feature Films, insist that the movie is simply a tale about penguins and that any attempt to divine a deeper meaning is misguided. “We did not have discussions of what should be in from a social, cultural or political perspective at all,” said Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films. “We just wanted to make sure that it was accurate.”

Or as Laura Kim, a vice president of Warner Independent, put it: “You know what? They’re just birds.”

But then maybe the conservative movement remains confused and in a tizzy in the wake of Katrina and Bush’ poor handling of it.

But even the toughest critic has to admit this new title for Bush is a bit harsh.

Ed/Pub:LM