Dr. Strangelove in Beijing

The Beijing Hilton has some interesting Cold War-era Chinese porcelain on the second floor. This one reminds me of the scene in the movie Dr. Strangelove in which Slim Pickens rides the H-Bomb down to global destruction.


Perhaps on e of Chinese friends can tell me what the Chinese writing says on the side of the missile.

This one is a little tamer but the happy workers raising the Little Red Book seem out of place in the increasingly capitalist city Beijing in a five-star hotel catering to Western business travelers like me.

Conservative Rock Songs ?

I have a pair of headphone-style noise protectors with a built-in FM radio that I wear while mowing the grass and weedeating. When I was working in the yard this week I heard about a conservative journalist named John J. Miller at the National Review who came up with a list of The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock songs.

The third song on the list was the one that amused me the most. The journalist picked "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones as the 3rd greatest conservative rock-n-roll song of all time. The reason? He calls the song The Screwtape Letters of rock, a reference to the classic book of Christian apologetics by C.S. Lewis (also of The Chronicles of Narnia fame.)

John Miller made some good points on the radio about how in the songs lyrics, the Devil took credit for such things as Pilate sending Jesus to be crucified, the Nazi blitzkrieg and the killing of the Czar and his family which came with the start of communism in Russia.

Copyright © 2006 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved