By Matt Rooney
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Well, The Washington Post rightly got raked over the coals over the weekend for its inappropriately sunny obituary of ISIS leader and mass murderer Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In case you missed it, Save Jerseyans, the obit’s headline described al-Baghdadi as an ‘austere religious scholar.’ They’ve since changed it after the inevitable backlash.
Imagine if Hitler died in 2019; would today’s WashPo describe him as an “under-appreciated artist” and prolific author?
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Maybe.
You see, the al-Baghdadi obit headline wasn’t a failed attempt at journalistic neutrality when covering a major international figure. It’s a symptom of the moral relativism that is central tenant of the Left’s secular religion and which consequently pervades most aspects of modern western culture.
Here’s an example which seem benign on the surface: I recently became a father (yay!) which means I’m sleeping less and spending more times watching television at strange hours. So I decided to rent ‘Maleficent’ (the first reboot) in anticipation of the newly-released sequel. I’m 35 in November; I grew up watching and loving most of the Disney canon. To my surprise, the Angelina Jolie version of Disney’s biggest baddie was a lot different than the original evil sorceress from the 1959 classic cartoon.
The original fairy tale was straightforward: evil woods witch curses beautiful baby princess. Heroic prince saves her with true love’s kiss.
The new version: a jaded fairy (Maleficent) – who had a childhood romance with the future Sleeping Beauty’s father – sours on humanity after the human kingdom tries to conquer her magical woodland realm. Oh… and the future king (Sleeping Beauty’s pop) gets greedy and, to secure himself in the line of succession, cuts of Maleficence’s fairy wings as a demonstration of his abilities. The king is an ass. Maleficent’s turn to darkness is explainable, and her eventual redemption arc sets her up as a classic anti-hero. Neither bad nor good; just misunderstood.
She even supplies the kiss to wake up Sleeping Beauty (on the forehead, as a loving fairy godmother distressed at having cursed the child she’s grown to love); the handsome, dashing prince is thrown out on his ass by the pixies (adapted from the original story) for being a typical useless male. Because #SmashThePatriarcy.
Our culture has been moving in this direction for a long time. It might’ve started with the male soap opera that is professional wrestling as Hulk Hogan’s “say your prayers and eat your vitamins” patriotism was supplanted in the 90s by the “F- it all, fight the power” Stonecold Steve Austin anti-heroes.
It’s a predictable culture turn when you remember that it was about that time that the 60’s hippie generation assumed the reins of our entertainment culture and yes, media institutions like The Washington Post.
The end result: this past weekend’s box office blockbusters were Maleficent and Joker, the latest D.C. Comics reboot of the classic Batman villain. But like Maleficent, the new Joker is a product of poverty and social alienation. Jack Nicholson’s 1980s version of the clown prince of crime was a rotten-to-the-core gangster who slipped further into insanity after a trauma. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is what you’d expect from Boomers and the Gen X’ers and millennials they reared. Dark, complicated, not-black-and-white shades of gray. Breaking Bad. Sopranos. Dexter. I love some of these shows! We’d also be lost without a good redemption story. The Bible is full of them.
But what does a culture look like when it has NO straight-up heroes or heroines?
When you understand all of this history, Save Jerseyans, it’s no longer surprising when some WashPo editors and “journalists” assume al-Baghdadi must’ve been misunderstood at some level. Maybe his dad was an abusive drunk? His mother absent? Perhaps some colonial power’s imperial actions played a proximate role in precipitating his turn to religious extremism and mass murder? There must be more to him. No one is all bad or all good… right?
Wrong. Ironically, the Left’s obsession with moral relativism is in of itself an over-generalization. There is black-and-white in our world though it often takes concentrated thought to tease it out. Some people ARE born bad (sorry, psych students). For many more, causation is irrelevant. Evil is evil. Right is right, wrong is wrong. Wrong must be confronted with principle and conviction. And I think most Americans would agree that our culture was generally nicer, stronger, and better-adjusted when our art reflected reality as opposed to the Left’s bargain bin theories of sociology.
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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. He is a regular A+ Panelist on Chasing News with Bill Spadea every Wednesday on My9/Fox5NY. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).
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