Some members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), recently opposed passage of a bill that would outlaw antisemitic speech on college campuses. Their objection was that the bill would have labeled as antisemitic their constituents’ treasured belief that Jews murdered Christ.

This is not simply a belief that some Jews, thousands of years ago, were behind the crucifixion, but that somehow all Jews, everywhere and forever, are collectively responsible, a belief that has been an essential pretext for the mistreatment and massacre of Jews since the Middle Ages. Never mind that a certain expert on matters biblical, some guy named Pope Benedict XVI, concluded a few years ago that “there is no basis in Scripture for the argument that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus’ death.” The Hon. Rep. Greene apparently knows better than Mr. XVI. Maybe that’s why she left the Catholic Church.

For the record, Congresswoman, I never touched The Guy…I never even met Him!

When Roe v. Wade was overturned by a largely Trump-appointed Supreme Court, I was afraid that the new Republican Party was turning back progress in this country by fifty years. Now I fear it’s more like five hundred years.

What is the difference between a plain old movie director and an “auteur?” The past year has seen the release of two Hollywood comedies that lampoon the consumer culture of post-war, pre-Vietnam-protest baby-boom America: last summer’s Barbie from Greta Gerwing, and now, Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted.

Unfrosted is the more wide-open of the two. It takes aim at a wide swath of pop-culture icons, from junk food to toys to physical-fitness mania, and the crass commercialism behind them. It’s humor is also broader and more irreverent. Barbie is much more thematically focused, on the doll industry and how it fed or subverted the self-image and aspirations of little girls.

So why is Barbie so wonderfully entertaining, while Unfrosted turns out lame and just dull?

Unfrosted is the most densely packed with top-shelf comic talent, including Seinfeld himself, Amy Schumer, and Melissa McCarthy in the lead roles, along with Jim Gaffigan whom, I confess, I just don’t get. (He tries to fill an awkward lane between straight man and comic buffoon, and ends up just taking up space.) Scores of recognizable funny faces playing the minor parts. But the continual succession of disconnected throwaway gags quickly grows tiresome. It’s as if the creators sat around in the writers’ room, discussed funny ideas, and decided to keep…all of them. As in some of Mel Brooks’ weaker films, you can see how some ideas may have sounded hilarious in the concept phase, but you wonder why they were kept when they clearly flopped in the finished product. A whole extended subplot about a living ravioli doesn’t make even comic sense and is just unfunny.

But unfunniest of all is a bit in the movie’s final stretch, involving cereal mascots, led by Tony the Tiger (Hugh Grant), who are on strike. They attack Kellog’s headquarters in an attempt to prevent the FDA “certification” of the Pop Tart. The underlying gag is that the attack mimics the January 6, 2021 riot in Washington, D.C. It’s unfunny, both in the lack-of-comedic-substance sense as well as in the cringe-inducing sense. It attempts no discernible sense of irony or biting commentary relating to the actual event, in which some rioters and the forces behind them actually tried to end our democracy, and in which people on both sides were killed. It’s just the January 6 riot…with cartoon characters. Ha ha!

Then what makes Barbie not only more endearing, more touching, but also more fun? Apart from sheer craftsmanship, I think it is because Barbie is ultimately about something or some things: important, painful, anxiety inducing things. The fear of death. A woman’s power to determine her own destiny. A little girl’s fear of not fitting in. The elusive nature of beauty. A man’s insecurity over losing his dominant position in society. All of the jokes along the way serve to work out these anxieties. And the great comedic talent employed in the film both serves and is served by that end.  I’m thinking in particular about Will Ferrell as the obtusely chauvinistic head of the Mattel corporation, and the brilliant Kate McKinnon as the unapologetically “weird” Barbie.

So now you know the difference between a movie director and an auteur. In this case, it’s the difference between Jerry Seinfeld and Greta Gerwig.

(Some friendly advice, however, to both Mr. Seinfeld and Ms. Gerwig: when you want to portray our great country, even in parody, you might want to include some actual Black people.)