I know I said I was abandoning pop culture for the moment, but I can't seem to leave the pop culture well without one more tiny sip.

What amuses me today is the way in which both sides of the political fence can take the same idea and see in it the machinations of their opposite numbers. The specific example being the film Juno.

Besides the praise from the film community, Juno also seems to be receiving considerable praise from the just hit puberty set, who find its precociously obnoxious protagonist some sort of idol. However, while I was checking out the comments on IMDB, the negative comments raised a smile.

You see, the subject matter, a pregnant teen who chooses to give the baby up for adoption, is just begging for politicized reactions. And, sure enough, we get it from both sides. On the right, I have read several people complaining about the film's tendency to glorify teen pregnancy, to show sex and even pregnancy as having no negative effects. Most often these posts do not contain any explicit political content, but there are a few who postulate that the movie, while not explicitly propagandizing, is symptomatic of our left-leaning culture, or at least the left-wing, "non judgmental" culture of Hollywood.

Which makes it doubly amusing to find someone who claims that the film is  a piece of neo-con propaganda because it does not advocate abortion. I would summarize, but since it is such a gem of paranoia, let me quote some:

However, the underlying message is such neo-con propaganda, and is so in line with the present-day-neocon culture of today (Thou Shalt Not Commit Abortion In Film Unless It Leads To Mental Breakdown) that I want to give this a 6. Now that self-censorship on a somewhat positively portrayed teen pregnancy has stretched it's vile claws to indie productions as well, we must fear that even with Hillary Clinton as president we'll have an abortion ban in less than 3 years. I've seen over 2500 films. Only in ONE a pregnant woman had an abortion: Holly Hunter in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her". And yes, this was of the "You-think-you-can-have-an-abortion-just-like- that-but-you'll-be-sorry-in-the-end" - type. In all other films, they give the baby up for adoption, or keep it in the end (Sex in the City???). This, is HIGHLY unrealistic. Okay there's one other North American show that dealt realistically with teen pregnancy: Degrassi High, were a 14 year old girl got pregnant by a 15 or 16 year old boy, and in the end had the courage to tell her mother and they decided that it was irresponsible to let her have it, so she had an abortion. But ... of course this episode was censored by NBC or the N! channel. And of course... the girl had a mental breakdown!

As the mention of President Clinton shows, clearly this writer is of the leftist persuasion, and continues on in the same vein for a few more paragraphs, finding in the movie quite a few hints of right-wing propaganda. (And, to correct the post writer, The Last American Virgin (1982), to provide just one example, did both have an abortion and one which, though difficult, did not result in a breakdown. So she seems to simply be watching the wrong films if she has a need to find guilt-free abortions on film.)

Now, my own take on the movie, which I admit is entirely formed from reviews as I wasn't about to waste time on such a self-consciously "clever" film, is that the film is a middle of the road (for Hollywood) leftist film which forsakes abortion either to avoid controversy or, more likely, because an abortion would make for a short film.  I don't think it is intentional left-wing propaganda, just a film which so clearly exhibits the views of the Hollywood left that right wing critics see it as propaganda. Those of us on the right just can't seem to grasp that this film is not meant as propaganda, it si simply that the people to whom it is aimed don't see teen pregnancy as a moral question, just a logistical one. And so we tend to view it as more meaningful than those who made it do. It is not propaganda, just a symptom.

But the most absurd claim has to be the claim from the left that the lack of an abortion shows a propaganda effort from the right. I can say with confidence the author, ex-stripper and wannabe hipster "Diablo Cody" is not a mouthpiece for Bush and Cheney, nor does she have a hot line to Brent Bozell. As I said before, she seems to have chosen adoption over abortion simply because it gave her catty proxy more time to snark her way through life.

But there actually is a point to this post, more than simply taking potshots at pop culture, and that is that we need to be careful of the fights we pick. Just as the left leaning critic is absurd to find it right wing propaganda because of the lack of abortions, we on the right are too quick to take the Bozell route and find everything to be propaganda. Yes, both sides do put out entertainment which tries to change the way people view the world around them. Clearly the left does it much more, as they have much more access to the entertainment industry. But then again, not every bit of entertainment is propaganda. As I said about this film, it is simply a symptom, not an effort to change anyone's point of view. And we would do well to recognize the difference. The battle for acceptance of teen pregnancy, as far as Hollywood is concerned, has been won, just as the battle for single motherhood was won after Murphy Brown. They no longer feel the need to justify teen pregnancy, and so they do not make propaganda supporting it.

However, when we mistake such entertainment as propaganda we end up wasting efforts trying to "disprove" films that no one else sees as arguments, and end up looking a bit silly in the bargain. Yes, we can use them as lessons, we can use such films to point out how mainstream teen pregnancy has become, or to show that the Hollywood image is unrealistic, but when we mistake them for propaganda and try to fight them as such, we end up looking out of touch. Hollywood did not intend Juno to promote a cause, so fighting against it is the ultimate exercise in tilting at windmills.

We would do well to save our energy for fighting real propaganda. Or, of we must fight such films, at least fight them on the proper terms. To do otherwise is to waste our efforts and to end up alienating those we hope to win over.