My Thanksgiving viewing this year—selected, as usual, from the laser-discs my brother buys and trades—was a little untraditional. Let’s face it, Victor Frankenstein transplanting brains doesn’t exactly scream “Thanksgiving” (though give Peter Cushing a scalpel and I’m sure he could slice up a turkey smooth as silk) but when confronted with a huge pile of Hammer horror films, it’s hard to resist.
Christmas, though, I’m strictly a traditionalist. So as the season begins Dec. 1 (no matter how much the radio stations try to fool me into thinking it’s already started), here’s some of my favorites:
•Christmas in Connecticut. The ever delightful Barbara Stanwyck plays a columnist, “America’s most beloved homemaker,” who has successfully hidden the fact that instead of a farm-wife, mother and accomplished cook, she’s really a kitchen-illiterate single woman living in a New York apartment. Then overbearing publisher Sidney Greenstreet announces she’s going to take a lonely, wounded soldier into the heart of her family for Christmas …
•A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (no, no, no, NOT the movie!). Need anything be said?
•Scrooge. Albert Finney plays Scrooge in a musical of which I’m extremely fond, possibly more than the film deserves.
•A Christmas Carol. Alistair Sim plays the definitive Scrooge in this fine British version, showing him as a greedy miser but also a human being in need of redemption.
•The Real Ghostbusters: Xmas Marks the Spot. In this cartoon spinoff of the Ghostbusters, the guys are transported to the 1800s and save an old man from three ghosts tormenting him on Christmas Eve … And when they return to the present, they discover Scrooge was so inspired by the defeat of the ghosts, he went on to convince the entire world to give up Christmas.
•Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Jim Backus plays shortsighted Mr. Magoo in an animated version of Dickens. Cheap animation, but this is a surprisingly good musical.
•A Christmas Story. “It was—soap poisoning!”
Okay, you out there—what are your favorites?

The blogger Patterico, on waterboarding: “It’s 2 1/2 minutes of a mild form of torture with no lasting physical effects, performed on an undoubtedly evil terrorist and mass murderer, to obtain information certain to obtain thousands of lives. When someone says that such mild torture would be morally unjustified, that answer to me lacks common sense.”

I know Patterico isn’t the only one to share that view, but what I’m wondering is, doesn’t this also justify some other country torturing our people when they’re captured?

Suppose Iran captures a spec ops units inside their borders. They know there are highly-placed people in America advocating for an attack on Iran; they know the attack could cost thousands of lives; and while our soldiers aren’t evil, it’s quite possible the Iranians would see them as such under the circumstances. So by Patterico’s logic, wouldn’t the Iranians be justified in waterboarding our military to learn what they know about any imminent attack? And if not, why not?

While I think that’s a valid question, I also think the whole hypothetical discussion is irrelevant. As I’ve noted before, the “ticking bomb scenario” has nothing to do with any torture case that’s turned up so far in the War on Terror, so it doesn’t serve any real point. I could probably come up with a hypothetical situation in which a suicide bomber saves thousands of lives by his actions, but that would say absolutely nothing about the way suicide bombing is used in the real world.

“Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” — Rainer Maria Rilke.