Whatever happened to the villains??

A Boston Globe opinion piece on how political correctness has snuffed out evil.

Today, things are different. Hollywood can't risk offending an entire religious group, much less one they want to market films to. Nor do they want to encourage anti-Americanism abroad by employing such a typically broad, and broadly ignorant, brush. So what does Hollywood do instead? In the new film ''Kingdom of Heaven," where Christian fights Muslim to recapture Jerusalem during the Crusades, Saladin -- long a symbol of Christian angst and Islamic fortitude -- gets the virtuous Morgan Freeman treatment. No villain potential there.

And, look what happened to this year's "24". It started out fine with muslim terrorists...but after the protests, they introduced a Chinese element to the story, and a variety of non-Muslim characters....which all just weakened the entire premise.