More Quotes: War on Christmas 2007 & some gauzy gleaming that the next generation is being nurtured by better literature

First, there's a new character in Doonesbury whom I'm particularly excited about, introduced today - (click on it to read it, & you can always read today's strip here.)

“Who is your favorite author?” Aleya Deatsch, 7, of West Des Moines asked Mr. Huckabee in one of those posing-like-a-shopping-mall-Santa moments.

Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss.

In an interview afterward with the news media, Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level.

“My favorite author is C. S. Lewis,” she said.

-New York Times, 21 December 2007, "Huckabee, Back in Iowa, Brings Christmas Message" by Paul Vitello. What's with Republicans & children's books? Bush claimed his favorite book was the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, which came out when he was a teenager. And speaking of morality:

In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events.

-from the official Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, calling the film version of Pullman's The Golden Compass "the most anti-Christmas film possible."

Oh my God yes, they are protesting. They are pamphleting. The Catholic League and Focus on the Family and evangelical/fundamentalist Christian blogs from here to Colorado Springs, they are calling on their trembling armies to boycott the film because they believe that Pullman's brilliant books — which, by the way, if I had the power, I would place in the eager and lovely hands of every youngish human on the planet right now, but especially the girls — are not only aggressively anti-Christian, they ultimately describe, as their grand finale, nothing less than the death of God. This is what they say.

And here is the terrific thing: They are absolutely right.

-Mark Morford, "Jesus Loves His Dark Materials," 30 November 2007, San Francisco Chronicle.
At least this time, the Teletubby actually is gay.

If that's the case and Sweeney Todd works, there may be more. There's already talk of Mendes making a film of Sondheim's 1970 show Follies with a script by Aaron Sorkin. Meanwhile, in Hollywood to promote the movie, the composer found himself in conversation with Steven Spielberg. The director talked about wanting to film a musical himself. Sondheim's immediate response? 'Write one - don't take one from the stage.'

-David Benedict, "The singalong-a-slasher", The Gaurdian, 23 December 2007.
From the master himself: don't adapt, write your own.