Avatar "rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic"

This from the same man who, [URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/opinion/05brooks.html a few days ago[/URL] , essentially argued that political conservatives are uneducated. Didn’t come right out and say it, of course. His listed the talking points of left-wing politics and then equated them with the “educated class,” setting them in contrast to right-wing political beliefs and implying that political conservatives are fundamentally uneducated. In his effort to stay neutral (?) he ends up with black-and-white polarizations. And honestly, from what I’ve seen of the movie, this is far from the most egregious example. I can’t recommend it unless you want to thoroughly waste three hours of your life and never, ever get them back, but “Pathfinder” seems to me to be the worst offender in that category - the premise of the story is that Native Americans were completely helpless and would have been wiped out by Vikings if it hadn’t been for one shipwrecked Viking teen who was raised by the locals.

There’s so much hype about the movie now that any given “gotta be controversial” columnist feels the need to buck the gushing praise towards the movie. That’s fine, but frankly I gave up taking seriously anything David Brooks said a while ago. He has too much of a habit of reducing things to absolute black and white and missing a lot of subtlety along the way.