War of the Penguins

“March of the Penguins” was on again the other night. For those of you who have not seen it the film depicts the yearly breeding cycle of a group of Emperor penguins in the Antarctic. Conservatives glommed onto the movie as revealing American family values, advocating monogamy and dedicated parenthood. Obviously they were not aware of the fact that penguins are monogamous only for the season, that they practice infanticide, and some are “gay” (at least when in New York). This demonstrates the pitfalls of imposing one’s ideology and agenda on a film.

We had already seen these cute tuxedoed tools of the patricians so instead we watched “War of the Worlds” (Tom Cruise version) where an alien machine erupts out of the ground in a blue-collar neighborhood and proceeds to vaporize the proletariat as they run screaming down the street. It was, for the most part, indistinguishable from the Dick Cheney Health Care Plan for America, except at the end there were working class survivors.

Strangely one of the aliens reminded me of Chimpy. I know it’s hard to believe, especially as they are super-intelligent. It was the one at the very end of the movie, crawling out of the crashed tripod who snarls and dies. It was something about the dull expression and empty, vacant eyes.

Back to “March of the Penguins.” There was a scene where the penguins huddled together against a howling blizzard. The penguins would take turns being exposed to the storm on the outside of the cluster, then move to the inside of the group to get warm again. In this way they all had a chance of surviving.

This was democracy in action. Where was the conservative commentary on this, where everyone shares the burden, where everyone shares the risk? Had those penguins been Republicans the warm snuggly center would have gone to the highest bidder and the poor stuck on the outside to freeze to death. Ring after ring of bodies would have fallen, and after the storm had passed the Emperors would have marched out and kicked them and squawked “Up you lazy stiffs, time to get us some fish!”