Thank You, Glenn

J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader is not worth wasting too much ink over. Still, the opening sentence of his Dark Knight review is an impressive non sequitur:

As the Bush era drags on, I seem to be developing an irrational hatred of summer blockbusters, those gas-guzzling, road-hogging, radio-blasting Hummers of the entertainment business.

He continues, trying to make sense of it all, but merely going from nutty to nasty:

The fact that they get worse and worse and still make tons of money doesn’t say much for the national character. New York Times columnist Frank Rich recently conjured up an image of Americans flocking to the movies this summer to escape their woes, as if we were all dust bowl farmers hoping to banish the Great Depression from our thoughts with flickering images of Clark Gable and Mickey Mouse. But while our leaders are waging preemptive wars, torturing innocent people to death, tossing out habeas corpus, and gutting the Fourth Amendment, we probably don’t need to escape as much as the rest of the world needs to escape from us.

The website allows comments. Most of them were about how he shouldn't have had spoilers in the review. I agree, but only because the spoilers were used for more lamebrained philosophizing. Happily, there's someone called Glenn Fancher, who said what needed to be said:

Please include more left wing talking points and Anti Bush rhetoric at the top of your reviews. Frankly, they add an intellectual weight to cinematic discourse. At the same time confirming that we are an evil country with an evil president that has stripped us all of our civil rights. Thanks for framing the nature of the summer blockbuster against the dark times of the Bush era