The Good Cultural News Is . . .

The "Borat" movie topped the weekend boxoffice charts on less than a quarter of the screens than its nearest competitors, a "Santa Clause" sequel and a talking rodent cartoon, each debuted on.
This means that a comedy which actually bothered to create a complete sociological and inner world for its hero, gleefully attacked current political issues, pioneered new frontiers in ambush comedy and is-it-real-or-is-it-staged film form, and of course broke every joke-making taboo in the book found an avid audience. Unheard of! - although I think more people went to laugh at racist gags and watch two unattractive men wrestle nude than to appreciate Sacha Baron Cohen's more intelligent touches.
Of course, those who don't think rude humor is good for the nation probably view this as bad cultural news. But lately, those guys have been clogging too much of the media with reports of their own drug-buying and same-sex hooker-hiring, so we're bot listening.
Me personally? I know this may sound perverse, but remember that I'm generally against anything that reinforces the already massive infantilization of American cinema. So when I express joy over "Borat" unexpectedly trouncing the two new kiddie films, it isn't because I prefer comic pyschopathy to innocent family entertainment (well, not too much more, anyway). It's because smart rule-breakers are generally better movies than formula juvenile fare.
That said, I'd caution that the genuinely bad cultural news is that, together, "Clause 3" and "Flushed Away " earned more than $39 million. That's a good $13 million more than what moviegoers spent on "Borat," and it indicates that the audience appetite for childish things isn't waning in the least.
And even "Borat" has a toilet training sequence, so I guess Hollywood's crib-brain common denominator is pervasively impossible to escape. But at least with the knockoff Kazakh import, there's so much more.