Posts Tagged movies

The star power of the military

Without a doubt, the U.S. military is in the worst shape in recent memory. Because of the booming economy and skimpy pay for those in uniform, the military is unable to find enough young men and women to protect our nation.

The military solution to this tricky problem: Stars.

No, not the celestial bodies several light years away that populate our night sky, but those celestial beings that populate our movie and television shows.

Tom Cruise, star of 1986’s “Top Gun,” a film about a Navy pilot, has been approached to make a public service announcement according to The Associated Press. Other luminaries include Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg and James Brolin, who, for those ignorant individuals amongst us, are stars on “Pensacola: Wings of Gold.”

Traditionally, celebrities have been used to boost moral for our troops abroad — during World War II when Bob Hope entertained the troops in Europe (or the Korean War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War). Today, even Christie Brinkley has made the trip to Kosovo to entertain our troops.

This notion to use celebrities as a tool to recruit hasn’t been used recently, if ever. As such, I have a few other suggestions for Defense Secretary William Cohen, who has been recruiting these stars. John Travolta and Christian Slater, co-stars of “Broken Arrow” quickly come to mind. In my humble opinion, Jack Nicholson, as star of “A Few Good Men,” would also make an excellent recruiter.

The problem with using celebrities is that they can have mixed messages. Sure Tom Cruise was a hero in “Top Gun,” a shining example in “A Few Good Men,” but downright awful in “The Firm.”

Obviously this is not the optimal solution to this problem. I would hope a few individuals would decide to join the military because they saw Julia Roberts tell them that serving in the military was cool. I would be worried about any individual who decided to join the military because a celebrity told them it was cool. Imagine what our military would look like if Urkel started recruiting for the military.

But I don’t actually think that celebrity recruiters are going to work, especially if somebody gets around to investigating their military background.

The next best thing is for the military to change its advertising ways. The Army has used “Be all that you can be” for as long as I can remember, and, as a kid, I thought it actually meant, “Eat all that you can eat.” The Navy, Marines and Air Force have similar problems. I’m not sure how to fix the actual advertising problem because they could easily make the job look and sound more glamorous than it really is. That could have some undesirable consequences.

Just wait until Little Johnny signs up and discovers he’s spending the next two years slinging hash for the residents of a military prison, then we’ll have a really happy recruit.

The optimal solution is for Congress to raise the pay for servicemen and servicewomen who stay in the military. That, of course, will be extremely difficult to accomplish considering the Democrats’ unwillingness to support the military and the Republicans’ tightfistedness that stops them from spending money on anything except high-technology gizmos that fail when tested by the military. As such, we are left at an impasse.

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Carding not the answer

I was on my way to a friend’s house last Tuesday night when I heard the startling news — NATO is going to start carding youngsters.

NATO? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization needs to card youngsters? It seemed to me that having NATO card underaged kids trying to buy alcohol would be overkill: why do we need to send a bomber to do the job when the guard at Big Red Liquors already cards customers with unerring efficiency?

Besides, why on earth would NATO, an international organization currently concerned with preventing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic from committing more genocide, be interested in pausing from its efforts to card youngsters?

Naturally, I was intrigued with this breaking news story, so I turned the radio up and listened carefully.

To say the least, I was surprised to learn that there are actually two NATOs in existence. The first is the aforementioned North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The second is the National Association of Theater Owners, an organization of movie theater owners that represents, according to the New York Times, about two-thirds of the movie screens in the U.S.

It turns out that the latter organization is the one that will start carding teenagers, but not for alcohol. Instead, the theater NATO is going to start carding teenagers who try to attend R-rated movies without an adult. The theater NATO agreed to start carding teenagers after a meeting with President Clinton, one which took place in the aftermath of the Colorado school shooting.

Two words immediately sprang into my mind — good grief.

The entertainment industry is not responsible for violence in the schools of America. If this were the case, any place that American culture dominates the entertainment industry, we should find violence in the schools. Yet Europe and Asia remain free from violence in their schools.

We need to blame the people at fault, not the American entertainment industry whose products are distributed around the world without ill effects. Continuing to blame the entertainment industry instead of irresponsible parents, educators and law enforcement officials in Colorado who could miss a pink elephant standing in front of them, is pointless.

I want to know — when will the madness stop?

It’s been clearly demonstrated with the silly drinking age limits that banning products for certain age groups does not work. Because there is a thrill at the prospect of breaking the law for many, the prevalence of fake IDs among those under 21 is widespread and can, in some cases, lead to tragic consequences.

Applying the same treatment to movies will just mean that even younger kids will get fake IDs so that they can go and watch “Instinct” or “The Matrix.” But who really cares?

At least for watching R-rated movies, there are no long-term consequences for teenagers unless you count the possible nightmares they might get from seeing the many dumb and pointless R-rated movies out there.

If this theater NATO really wants to win friends, I think there are a few changes that would make the movie watch experience truly pleasurable.

First, all theaters need to lower their prices at the concession stand. $2.50 for a small bottle of water at Showplace 11 is too much. I won’t even mention the prices of everything else it tries to hawk. I realize that attendees are a “captive” audience, but that shouldn’t mean the theater can rook us on every aspect of the movie experience.

Secondly, ban small children from attending any movies except those rated G. I had the misfortune of sitting near a couple with their young child when I went to see the PG-13 rated movie “Entrapment.”

The child cried.

The child ran around.

The child talked.

“Entrapment” was a good flick. It would have been better without the kid.

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