Take the Baby Out of the Movie!

Seeing a movie on Christmas Day brings my bother and I together during the holiday season. This Christmas we went to see Will Smith's I Am Legend - set in a futuristic world that relies soley on science to find a cure for cancer, but creates a global pandemic that destroys some 97% of all human life. What little life remains is either dark flesh-eating, super-charged hives of inhuman people, or normal survivors who have an immunity to the mutation.

Near the end of the film, when hope in the storyline gains a foothold, a little child from the audience fussed, and for a moment you thought it was part of the movie - it fit so well with the hope presented. Suddenly a fella's voice said really loudly: Take the baby out! In a high baritone pitch - that had a touch of vanity for its own tonality. It sounded metrosexual, single and self-righteous.

The child was fine really, but the mother dutifully took it out. Later another voice from the back of the theater rang out, at a quiet moment at the end of the film: And a child shall lead them! The baby... was fine! This other man's emphasis was on the irony of shutting up a child in a movie where an innocent child's voice was precisely what was needed! Sure, we want the writer's script to provide the sound FX, not the audience. However, it goes deeper than that.

When children get really fussy and make any film uncomfortably difficult to watch, parents should, without question, take the child out as soon as possible. And they should determine beforehand, whether their child will present a breach of etiquette for movie goers.

However, at the core of some of this is an ugly intolerance against children and those who have them, that seems extremely wrong to this observer - especially in this city: Salt Lake City, where Leftists and elites look down their noses at anything fertile. ("Ah hah," you might say, "that explains it all! Salt Lake!" Then, dear reader, it is to you I speak.)

Your disposable income, college educations and numerous dogs breed in you a short-sighted view that has its roots in the Me Generation of the 70s. It is a view that is economically unviable, and places many Western nations at risk of not being able to regenerate themselves, and to revitalize the democratic institutions that gave rise to the prosperity you enjoy. (Commentary, "Why Have Children?" Cohen, June 2006;and recent books: The Empty Cradle, Longman, 2004; Fewer, Wattenberg, 2004.)

You may have your view; it is your perogative. But when you begin to shout down a mother and a child - and you are a man, doing so. I will not stand idly by while you spew your metro-mindset.