Ice Melting From Under "Happy Feet"

You have to love it when a kids movie is the focus of a poltical debate. Let me first say that I haven't seen the movie and until I saw the above news clips, said picture didn't even register in my mind. The previews that I had seen featured a tap dancing penguin and some wise-cracking animated characters; not much else. Seeing as my wife is not a big fan of animated kids films I had resigned myself to not seeing the film for no other reason than time and interest.

However, as I was surfing blogs today I found that a fair number of liberal blogs were upset that some conservatives criticized the movie for being a ham-handed commercial against BIG business and global warming. I believe they referred to it as an animated "Inconvenient Truth." So of course in these peoples minds, the conservatives are automatically wrong because you are not supposed to be against anything that shows how BIG business creates greenhouse gases and wrecks the environment.

I find it ironic how when conservatives complain about something, justified or not, there are always liberals there to say they are wrong for speaking out but when somebody is being obnoxious and vulgar, that's protected speech. Anywho, nobody was calling for the picture to removed from theaters or trying to start a boycott. They were saying that as parents they want to know if they are bringing their children to a simply kids movie or an animated political commercial. Many might go anyway or even because of it but at least they knew what they were paying for.

The other issue is that children shouldn't be learning life lessons strictly from movies. It is the parents job to teach their children right from wrong, not Hollywoods. And if Hollywood is going to lecture people then you have to show both sides of the argument or Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck and I have the right to call you a propagandist.

For the record, one my fairly liberal friends did see this picture and she is even agreed that the jump from tap dancing penguin in search of his identity to global warming commercial is a bit non-sequiter but as an adult, she could handle it. Children on the other hand should not be forcefully exposed to one persons opinion without the active consent of the parent. In closing, let me add that if the producers of this film told people ahead of time that this was a childish look at global warming for kids, I would not have written this post. However, if you try to sell me a movie about a tap dancing penguin, then that's what I should get. Not a tap dancing Al Gore in a penguin suit.

And for the liberals that think that this is an overblown issue, remind me to make a movie lamenting how abandoning the Church has destroyed civil American society in the guise of breakdancing bears and see how much you like me forcing my opinions on your children.