McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Revised Corporate E-Mail Signature.

This transmission is confidential and intended solely for the person or organization to which it is addressed. It may contain privileged and confidential information. This transmission may make mention of the affair Steven C. Hill, director of sales, is having most nights and especially when business travel occurs. This transmission may also lament the feeling of dying that pervades this small and sensibly decorated workspace, while days tick by on computer calendars and the sun only briefly and barely brushes the edges of the windows in the conference room. This transmission may go on to say that, for the last year, this job hasn't felt right: cheerful on the surface, but faceless and cold. Our bosses are Germanic almost, a sadly administrative and glum gaggle of malcontents. This transmission aches to be substantial. To be the work of art the sender knows is inside him or her....

FROM
JOHN MOE'S
CONSERVATIZE ME:
CAN THESE MOVIES MAKE
YOU A CONSERVATIVE?
BY JOHN MOE

- - - -

Red Dawn (1984)

SUMMARY

A bad wheat harvest has meant the Soviets are hungry, and so, because the Green Party has gained control of West Germany, the Soviets set off on a long-rumored program of global conquest. In a unique tactical decision, a coalition of Soviet and Cuban forces decides to begin its invasion of the United States in rural Colorado. While the town's citizens are either shot or herded into detention camps, teenagers led by Patrick Swayze (supposedly a recent high-school grad but looking every one of his 32 years) launch a series of guerrilla attacks against the occupying forces.

CONSERVATIVE MESSAGES

Communists want to come to your town—airdrop in, actually—and shoot your teacher.

A gun is literally pried from the cold dead hands of its proud American gun owner, thus proving claims made on the bumper stickers on vehicles owned by conservatives.

Hotties like Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson can be found in root cellars and are willing to run off with gun-toting teens rather than take their chances with communists. So, if you want to get with Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson, toss away that copy of Das Kapital, comrade, and pack some dried deer meat instead.

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE MESSAGES

It is impossible, in the context of the current American situation in Iraq, to not think how easy it would be to recast the entire movie with Iraqis as the Wolverines and American troops in the part of the communists.

Reagan had been president for four years by this point. So whatever he was doing in that time obviously wasn't doing a whole lot of good.

Any country that depends on Patrick Swayze to save it probably isn't worth saving.

OVERALL PERSUASIVENESS SCORE

34

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