Are you nostalgic for old Hawaii? Are you also a rabid commie-hater?

Here’s the perfect movie for you: “Big Jim McLain,” starring John Wayne and James Arness, which aired last week on Turner Classic Movies. It’s simple, heavy-handed propaganda, a true black-and-white picture, filmed over six weeks in 1950s Hawaii. In its day, it was a big hit.

The movie is as uncomplicated as can be: Wayne and Arness play crack investigators for the House Un-American Activities Committee, hunting down communist bad guys. The communist cell, led by the heartless Sturak (Alan Napier), plot to take over the island by infiltrating, naturally, the labor unions. You’d think they would spend at least some time talking politics — Marxism, dictatorship of the proletariat, stuff like that — but that would just slow down the plot. Jim McLain’s got a lot of sightseeing to do before he breaks up the Party and punches the bad guy in the nose.

He visits the U.S.S. Arizona, before it included a big white memorial. He takes his love interest, Nancy Olson, to the Pali Lookout, when it was still part of the old Pali Highway. Kaneohe appears to be missing. He visits Hanauma Bay, a deserted beach that’s a perfect hideout for commie spies. He even visits Kalaupapa — well, not really — back when they still called it a leper colony and it had a maternity ward where babies were taken from their diseased parents and the nurse was a former communist who has repented her misguided ways.

It’s really quite a picture.

It’s also a reminder of how a serious matter — and in the 1950s, communism was a serious matter — can be embarrassingly reduced to a simple ideology that any right-wing talk-show host, or small child, can understand. Bad guys vs. good guys. Truth vs. lies. Victory in Iraq vs. Cut and Run.

Back then, it was noted that Jim McLain shared the same initials as the infamous Red-baiter Sen. Joe McCarthy. Wayne even attributed his film to helping elect McCarthy to his second term in 1952.

Right now you’re thinking: John McCain, Jim McLain…aha!

But no. The public debate seems more complicated now. The cinematic superstar of the moment, The Dark Knight, can’t decide whether to be the hero or the villain. We are negotiating politely with all three members of the so-called Axis of Evil. We have two presidential candidates who have been criticized by the extreme ends of their own constituencies: Barack Obama, for compromising on far-left liberal values, and John McCain, for doing the same to the far right. The campaign has been more nuanced, thoughtful and understanding of the complexities of the problems our country faces today.

In other words, so far so good. Let’s hope it continues. May the best man win.

Some excerpts from The Advertiser’s comment boards, rearranged in non-chronological order and taken completely out of context. Each comment comes from a separate post:

• HELLO!!!
• Too many people in this country travel with too much freakin’ baggage anyway, including their own bodies.
• YOU ARE GETTING IN AN ALUMINUM TUBE AND HURLING THROUGH THE SKY AT 25,000 FEET!
• Doesn’t that strike anyone else out there as, well….INSANE!
• You are so cute with your ignorant passion.
• What a fricken retard! Uhh, retard… hello? HEEEEEELLLOOOO?!? Anyone home?
• Boo hoo boo hoo. waaaah…. The mad baby is crying…. LOL!
• This going to get very angry, very soon.
• Must we endure such stupidity?
• What an unbelievable stupid reactions here.
• Bah… you just cannot reason with stupid.
• BACHI to you all
• I love it when you’re angry. It means you and your Fascist friends aren’t getting what they want.
• You really gotta stop smoking that stuff, its warping your thought process!!!!!!
• Sillies.
• ZIONISTS HAVE DONE A LOT OF HARM, WHETHER THEY ARE JEWISH OR CHRISTIAN!
• When the medication wears off, your welcome to rejoin the rest of us on planet Earth!
• Sounds like a bunch of crap to me.
• MORONS!
• Some of you people amaze me, disgust me.
• waaaah. waaaaah.
• HUGE mahalos to all you idiots who supported go!
• There are idiots on both sides … no doubt.
• I know you are an idiot but I thought you could read
• Panos is an Idiot lackey puppet controlled by idiots like Cliff Slater and GrassHoots
• I wish peoples quit posting such idiots and ignorant comments.
• George Bush is confident he will go down as one of the best presidents in U.S. history.
• Nice sarcasm there, jerk.

I’m on vacation, taking the teen on a little tour of potential college campuses, but on the way I find myself immersed in two topics of hot interest for our news crew and most other folks back home.

Ferries and rail transit.

Taking the first topic first: Yesterday it was a ferry-o-rama for my little clan. Three rides in one day. That’s not normal, perhaps, but that’s what comes from trying to do too much in a short span in the Pacific Northwest.

We started from Vancouver and headed for the British Columbia capital, Victoria, a 90-minute ride across relatively calm seas. That’s about half the sail time and much less turbulence than (I’m told) the riders of the Superferry experience.

At the end of it, I knew that riding the Superferry would be a fun occasional experience, and perhaps helpful for businesses and groups toting large vehicles, but not something I’d want to do repetitively.

After an afternoon in Victoria, we watched two enormous 18-wheeler trucks rumble aboard the next ferry before we rolled on with our compact rental, along with a long line of others.  One more 90-minute ride and we were back on U.S. soil.

Being completely overambitious as travelers can be, we decided to beat the morning rush by taking one more half-hour ride before crashing in a Edmonds, Wash., motel shortly before midnight.

The state of Washington and the neighboring reaches of British Columbia are crisscrossed with ferry routes. Except for the truly miserable coffee served on the Canada-to-U.S. leg, they clearly have the whole system down pat. And clearly, they couldn’t function without it.

Surely our multi-island state will find a way to make this waterway highway work for Hawai’i, as well.

As for the rail: More on that later.

– Vicki Viotti 

The U.S. Supreme Court is usually too far removed from Hawaii — literally and judicially — to make us sit up and take notice, except perhaps out of academic interest. Even one of the gut-wrenching decisions of this term — Kennedy v. Louisiana, which disallowed the death penalty for a brutal child rapist because the victim was not killed — does little to inform a state with no death penalty statute and little likelihood of getting one on the books.

But gun control? That’s a different matter. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court established for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun, distinct from the necessity of a “well-regulated Militia.” Hawaii’s attorney general, Mark Bennett, along with four other state attorneys general, had urged the court to rule in favor of giving a state broad latitude in regulating gun ownership, individual rights or not. This the court did not do. Nonetheless, by most accounts, the court provided enough room to challenge state laws but not enough to say with certainty that those laws are unconstitutional.

So it’s reasonable to expect that pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association will want to find out. It’s also reasonable to expect that Hawaii’s gun laws, which are fairly strict, will be challenged. So if you’ve ever felt the need to legally carry a concealed weapon, without the chief of police’s approval, you know were to go.

Hawaii’s near-shore waters share a couple of things in common with Alaska’s Prince William Sound. They are achingly beautiful, and oil tankers sail through them. Some twenty years after the Exxon Valdez dumped its load of crude into Prince William Sound, the Supreme Court, in Exxon Shipping v. Baker, reduced the punitive damages in the case to $500 million, down from the original jury award of $5 billion. This hardly seems punitive; it’s about four days of Exxon’s profits. Surely putting a lapsed alcoholic at the helm of a supertanker sailing through a major fishery and a treasured natural environment is worthy of real punishment, in light of the long-term destruction that decision wreaked. Punishment and deterrence are the point of punitive damages, after all.

The court also decided that, in general, punitive damages in maritime cases like this one should be equal to or less than compensatory damages. So if an oil tanker spills its contents off Hawaii waters — for whatever reason — don’t expect too much. Because apparently the plaintiffs in Alaska are learning that lesson the hard way.