Secretariat - What Conservatism Looks Like When Running Against Liberalism

Really?

While giving the film credit for its beautiful cinematography, O'Hehir is convinced that it's a propaganda piece for the Tea Party movement. It's a Disney movie, for crying out loud! But liberals are so upset about the trouncing they're about to receive in November that they see Tea Party infiltration in anything not overtly liberal.

Again it's a Disney movie about an underdog athlete. It's guaranteed to have corny elements, which this one did. But it's also about one of the greatest equine athletes who ever lived and the people who made his fantastic Triple Crown win a reality. The movie doesn't make you think too critically, but it does bring out emotions that unite people in a common exultancy, then and now.

What Conservatism Looks Like When Running Against Liberalism

O'Hehir criticizes it as "a honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past as the Tea Party would like to imagine it, loaded with uplift and glory and scrubbed clean of multiculturalism and social discord." For him and his fellow liberals, the American past is merely a long line of screw-ups and both domestic and international conflict (until Obama the savior came along of course!) He just can't believe that the film doesn't mention Nixon or Vietnam. It is the early 70s after all. But I'm sure if Secretariat won in 1984, O'Hehir would be upset they didn't mention Reagan's second landslide…right? That caused some dismay and "social discord" in liberal circles, at least.

And yet, he's simultaneously upset that the groom is a black man and the villainous rival trainer is Hispanic, calling the situation a "troubling racial subtext." Eddie Sweat was a real person, and he was black. Frank Pancho Martin was a real person, and he was Hispanic. If the producers had "scrubbed clean" that element of the movie, wouldn't they then be called white supremacists? Yes, and they would be. O'Hehir complains they have scrubbed, and then that they haven't scrubbed enough.

And yes, leftist activism is exactly what O'Hehir calls it: "an endearing cute phase your kids go through (until they learn the hard truth about inheritance taxes)." And those taxes are only going to rise under Obama.

Hehir proves the Tea Party scares him when he says this: "I can't help thinking that 'Secretariat' is meant as a comforting allegory, like Glenn Beck's sentimental Christmas yarn: The real America has been here all along, and we can get it back. If we just believe in--well, in something unspecified but probably pretty scary."

How vague and cryptic. If it's unspecified, how can it be scary? In fact, plenty of people currently think that both the pop and political cultures are headed in the wrong direction. Those hundreds of thousands of people who show up at Tea Parties are scared of socialism, of failed liberal policies embodied by Obama, of a degradation of culture. They're tired of being demeaned and disrespected because they're religious. They know what they're afraid of, while O'Hehir sits comfortably, writing for a self-righteous web site and complaining about something wicked this way comes embodied by traditional values and their evil, stupid proponents. I think. He doesn't seem sure about why he's so scared either.

Not only was Secretariat an underdog, giving people several weeks of excitement and anticipation far removed from Vietnam and Watergate in the spring of 1973. It all came about through the perseverance of a Colorado housewife. As Rush Limbaugh asked, where are the feminists coming out to support her? While she brings the horse along in Virginia, in a male-dominated sport that remains so today, her husband is upset that she's not back in Colorado taking care of the kids (because he can barely handle getting his own shirts to the cleaners!) But again, it's a classic example of feminist hypocrisy: They only support women who are outwardly liberal, not those who may be a bit more conservative and family-centered.

O'Hehir's vitriol over a Disney movie just shows how unhinged the left has become. They're trembling over the election (as well they should be). The film probably won't end up in the annals of great cinema, but Secretariat proves he still has the power to bring Americans together in a common consciousness. It was, and still is, uplifting and glorious and exciting, and there's nothing wrong with celebrating that.