Say, What?

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Movies make plenty of noise, but don’t speak to us.

Aug 1, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 43 • By JOHN PODHORETZ

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I don’t know that there was anything especially noble or praiseworthy about how movies mattered back when I was a kid. Their enthusiastic depictions of casual sex and extreme violence and their dismissal of traditional mores leached into the aquifer and helped create the poisoned swamp that now offends the sensibilities of culturally interested people across the political spectrum—the swamp in which the Jersey Shores and the Saws flourish.

But at least they were better.

John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic.