Sometimes goodness doesn’t hide behind its gates.

I had an argument last night with Jett over my assertion that conservative righties are essentially defined by selfishness. Because they’re basically the party of “me first, taking care of my own family, the less fortunate need to get their act together and work harder, darker-skinned people are entitled to the good life but a lot of them don’t seem to really get it like we do, I-don’t-know-about-that-global-warming-stuff, I like to play golf and drive my SUV to the hardware store or the country club and do whatever the hell I want within the bounds of reason because that’s what rugged American individualists get to do,” etc.

There are wrinkles and variations and exceptions among them but righties are basically bastards and social Darwinians who live by their belief that the world is for the few, I said. And Jett felt I was talking like a demagogue.

I then said that while I don’t like to use absolute moralist terms like “good” and “evil,” one has to at least define them and use them as reference terms if you want to communicate with people. One can therefore say that the essential core quality that has to exist as a behavioral platform for evil to flourish is selfishness. Selfishness — “not them but me, not the greater good but mine” — is where all bad and ugly things begin.

It can therefore be said that in this day and age, righties are, by their relentless me-first attitudes and by certain lights and after a certain fashion, evil.

Because they only care about their own rice bowl. Because they’re still stone cold in love with the idea of being John Wayne on horseback with a rifle at the ready, and because their party is the house that welcomes and pays lip service to all the ignorant crazies out there — the beer-gut yahoos and birthers and anti-stem-cell researchers, Minutemen and hee-haw Christians (which is to say fantasists who need to believe in absurd mythology in order to embrace morality). They are the party of “hey, what about the way things used to be when rock-solid white people basically controlled everything?”

Because in an era that cries out for measures that address social inequities and benefit the greater good, for deeds and legislation that will address the financial plundering of the last 30 years and keep the buccaneers who’ve brought this country to the brink of financial Armageddon from ever again revelling in insanely lavish profiteering to the detriment of Average Joes, and which will institute policies that will stop or least slow the advance of global pollution and ruination, the righties are still in love with the idea of “get government off our backs so we can hold onto more and live lavishly and hold high the torch of Ronald Reagan and have sleazy affairs with assistants if we so choose.”

In a perfect liberal world the selfishness of the truly obstinate righties (recognizing that some righties live by a certain Barry Goldwater-ish integrity that warrants a certain respect) would simply not be tolerated any more. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh or rash but any home-owner who’s dealt with crabgrass will understand. We don’t, of course, live in a perfect world. But we can dream.

Jett was appalled. You can’t rashly define conservatives as being evil, he said. I’m not precisely doing that, I said. I’m saying that their core instincts and beliefs allow for a behavioral climate and philosophy that feeds and winks at the essence of evil.

And that this way of seeing and living life has no place in a world that’s been all but ruined by selfish plundering that has done little but fortify the lifestyles of the tennis-playing, rifle-toting, red-tie-wearing and cowboy-hatted Cheney elite. I’m saying that while everyone is basically selfish and grappling on a constant daily basis with out-for-ourselves urges, at least liberals don’t embrace a theology that celebrates selfishness — i.e., “greed is good.”

Exterminate, forbid or significantly reduce selfishness in our society and we’re obviously looking at a better world. Therefore the extermination of the right would theoretically be a reasonably good thing. Not that this is possible. I understand that. But if I ran things they would all be rounded up and sent to green internment camps for reeducation. All right, I’m kidding.

This is what people say over beers. But the only way you learn what people really think is over beers. Or when they let go with a Freudian slip or words in passing (obiter dicta) that give the game away. Or when they’re angry and arguing with their families. People are basically one-eyed jacks. The world only sees the the palatable/reasonable side of their faces and natures.

This G.I. Joe spoof trailer gets down to the adolescent heart of the matter. The only bothersome thing is that it was posted three days ago.

An antagonistic prick-father-and-pissed-off-son relationship (Jeff Bridges, Justin Timberlake) and a road trip taken with Kate Mara (i.e., Heath Ledger‘s daughter in Brokeback Mountain) in which it all gets hashed out. And with a title like The Open Road (Anchor Bay, 8.28)…well, how can it miss?

Nora Ephron‘s Julie & Julia isn’t half bad for a female-market foodie movie. What doesn’t work then? A baseball analogy obviously doesn’t fit but I’m going to use one anyway. Meryl Streep‘s almost musical performance as Julia Child amounts to a series of ground-rule doubles. Strong swing, crack of the bat but not homer-level. And Ephron’s direction is technically smooth and error-free — she’s a good manager. But Amy Adams has been given a thankless role, that of an agitated and shrewish Child devotee named Julie Powell, and she hasn’t been given the dialogue or the emotional range with which to hit a serious slammer. So what happens is that every time Streep makes it to second base, Adams comes along and whiffs or pops out or hits a fast grounder to the shortstop. So while Julie & Julia doesn’t lose the game, it never really scores.

It won’t help but there’s a save-LACMA’s-film-screening-program petition circulating online that some may want to sign and pass along. The honest truth is that over the last three or four years I’ve gone to see films at LACMA maybe twice a year, if that. If a Los Angeleno with a fanatical film-loving personality doesn’t attend a sophisticated venue like LACMA’s more than that, something’s wrong. When I’ve gone to theatrical screenings of classics films I went to the American Cinematheque theatres in Hollywood and Santa Monica. The last seriously cool LACMA event I attended was watching Rififi and listening to Jules Dassin talk about it.

It was announced today that Jean-Marc Vallee‘s The Young Victoria, in which Emily Blunt portrays the twentyish 19th Century queen-to-be, will close next month’s Toronto Film Festival. Atom Egoyan‘s Chloe, a hothouse drama about marital infidelity with Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore, will also unspool at a TIFF gala.

Bill Clinton‘s feat in getting those two journalists released from prison in North Korea is one of the most admirable things he’s ever done, either during his Presidency or following it or whenever. It almost erases all the cheap b.s. he was spewing around on Hilary’s behalf during the ’08 Demcratic primaries. Let’s say it balances them out. 11:30 pm Update: Clinton and the two journalists left Pyongyang on a jet to Los Angeles at 8:30 am North Korean time, or about four hours ago.

HE’s Moises Chiullan is reporting that 101 Distribution, a Canadian DVD outfit, is releasing both parts of Steven Soderbergh’s Che on Region 1 DVD tomorrow (i.e., @Wednesday, 8.5) for $27.99 each. Here are Amazon links to Part 1 and Part 2.

The East German Stasi agents running the marketing for the Criterion Co. are still keeping their plans for issuing their Che Blu-ray disc[s] under wraps. Not a hint, no mentions of a possible month or season for release, not even a wishin and hopin’ statement…zip.