Liberal Indy?

I grew up watching Indiana Jones films, so I was excited to see that they are beginning work on a fourth installment. It has been said that they are going to use old-fashioned stunt work and camera tricks instead of computer-generated special effects, so that the film will have the same “feel” as the first three. I like the sound of that, but I’m worried that they might ruin the franchise anyway. You see, Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg has become increasingly liberal.

I think there’s something in the water in Hollywood (and Capital Hill) that makes you more of a liberal loony, the longer you’re there. When Spielberg released "E.T." on DVD he went back and digitally removed all those nasty, evil guns from the film. Now the federal agents that chase E.T. and Elliot are toting innocuous things like walkie-talkies, rather than guns. (By the way, Janet Reno has been toiling away in the studio for the last several years trying to do the same thing to the tapes of the Waco non-assault, digitally replacing agents' sub-machineguns with teddy bears, teargas canisters with cans of “chicken and stars” soup and replacing tanks with large, Seuss-looking “tickle-machines.” But I digress.)

Spielberg also recently released his much-heralded film “Munich” in which the Israeli agents sent to kill the terrorists who murdered the Israeli Olympics team are portrayed as being no better than the terrorists they dispatch. As I said, he’s been getting loonier and loonier.

So I thought I’d help Spielberg out and give him some ideas on how he could make the fourth Indiana Jones film more compatible with his liberal world view. I present(with apologies to David Letterman):

Ben’s Top 10
Ways Spielberg Can Liberalize Indiana Jones 4

10) Indy gets disemboweled by an Arab swordsman while struggling with the mandatory trigger-lock and bio-metric identifier on his pistol.

9) Short-Round insists on being called “Vertically Challenged.”

8) After jumping from a flying airplane in an inflatable raft, rather than landing on a snow-cushioned slope, Indy splatters into bare rock due to global warming.

7) Indy realizes that there are no such thing as “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys,” only cultural misunderstanding. Indy lays down his arms and tells the Nazis that he means them no harm. (In return, they torture him with a red-hot poker and shoot him in the head.)

6) When Indy finds himself in a fight, he “redeploys” himself in the opposite direction, just as fast as his legs will carry him.

5) Indy ditches his leather jacket in favor of a “Meat Is Murder” tie-dyed tee-shirt.

4) Indy and Sallah do it.

3) Instead of fighting the Nazis, Indy attempts to teach that little monkey sign language so he can ask it how to heal our Earth.

2) When government agents ask Indy to capture a religious artifact before the Nazis do, Indy refuses, explaining that there is a “wall of separation” between church and state.

And the number one way Spielberg can liberalize Indiana Jones 4 is… UP TO YOU. Post your suggestions below.