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In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on February 22, 2018 at 12:05 am
Bullies do not like to be mocked.
Anyone who doubts this need only examine the Right’s reaction to actor Jim Carrey’s March, 2013 “Cold Dead Hand” music video.
In this, Carrey—–a strong advocate of gun control—mocked the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its right-wing allies.
These included rural America and (for the video’s purposes) the late actor Charlton Heston, who served as the NRA’s five-term president (1998-2003).
Jim Carrey as Charlton Heston
The video featured Carrey and alt-rock band Eels as “Lonesome Earl And The Clutterbusters,” a country band on a TV set modeled after the 1960s variety show, “Hee Haw.” Carrey also portrayed Heston as a dim-witted, teeth-clenching champion of the NRA.
“I find the gun problem frustrating,” Carrey said in a press release, “and ‘Cold Dead Hand’ is my fun little way of expressing that frustration.”
Carrey’s frustration triggered NRA outrage.
Click here: Jim Carrey’s Pro-Gun Control Stance Angers Conservatives
Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld ranted: “He is probably the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth and I hope his career is dead and I hope he ends up sleeping in a car.
“This video made me want to go out and buy a gun. He thinks this is biting satire going after rural America and a dead man… He’s a dirty, stinking coward… He’s such a pathetic, sad, little freak. He’s a gibbering mess. He’s a modern bigot.”
Columnist Larry Elder spared no venom in attacking Carrey: “Let’s be charitable—call Carrey ignorant, not stupid.”
Click here: Jim Carrey: Not ‘Dumb & Dumber,’ Just Ignorant
Much of his March 29 column centered on defending Heston, who died at 84 in 2008.
A lyric in Carrey’s song says “Charlton Heston’s movies are no longer in demand.” This prompted Elder to defend the continuing popularity of Heston’s 1956 movie, “The Ten Commandments,” where he played Moses.
Elder felt compelled to defend Heston’s off-screen persona as well, citing his 64-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Lydia.
On the other hand, writes Elder, Carrey, “followed the well-worn Hollywood path: Get famous; get rich; dump the first wife/mother of your kid(s), who stood by you during the tough times; and act out your social life in the tabs to the embarrassment of your kid(s).”
Clearly, Carrey’s video struck a nerve with Right-wing gun fanatics. But why?
Start with Gutfield’s accusation that Carry was “going after rural America.”
Rural America—home of the most superstitious, ignorant and knee-jerk Fascistic elements in American society—boastfully refers to itself as “The Heartland.”
In short: a prime NRA and Rightist constituency.
It was rural America to which Senator Barack Obama referred—accurately—during his 2008 Presidential campaign:
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Second, there’s Elder’s outrage that Carrey should dare to say that Heston’s movies “are no longer in demand.”
Among these movies: “Major Dundee,” “El Cid,” “Khartoum,” “The War Lord.” And even the hammiest film for which he is best-known: “The Ten Commandments.”
In a film career spanning 62 years, Heston vividly portrayed such historical characters as:
- Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar in “El Cid’:
- Mark Anthony in “Julius Caesar”;
- John the Baptist in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”;
- Andrew Jackson in “The President’s Lady” and “The Buccaneer”;
- Michaelangelo in “The Agony and the Ecstasy”;
- General Charles Gordon in “Khartoun.”
And he played fictitious characters, too:
- Civil War officers (“Major Dundee”);
- Norman knights (“The War Lord”);
- Ranchers (“Three Violent People”;
- Explorers (“The Naked Jungle”).
- Judah Ben-Hur (“Ben-Hur”); and
- Astronauts (“Planet of the Apes”)’
Heston was a widely respected actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1959 for “Ben Hur” and servecd as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1965 to 1971.
But it was not Heston’s film career that Carrey focused on—but his role as president of the NRA.
Charlton Heston at the NRA convention
Ironically, Heston had identified himself with liberal causes long before he became the face and voice of the gun lobby.
In 1961, he campaigned for Senator John F. Kennedy for President. In 1963, he took part in Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.
In 1968, after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, he joined actors Kirk Douglas, James Stewart and Gregory Peck in issuing a statement supporting President Lyndon Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968.
But over the coming decades, Heston became increasingly conservative:
- Reportedly voting for Richard Nixon in 1972;
- Supporting gun rights; and
- Campaigning for Republican Presidential candidates Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
When asked why he changed political alliances, Heston replied: “I didn’t change. The Democratic party changed.”
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 4, 2017 at 12:05 am
Every year, the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) bestow Golden Globe awards to recognize excellence in television and film, both inside and outside the United States.
And on Sunday, January 8, the presenters honored actress Meryl Streep with the Cecil B Demille lifetime achievement Award.
Since 1979, she’s been nominated for more Academy Awards than any other actor—15 nominations for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress.
She won Best Supporting Actress in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, Best Actress in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice and again in 2012 for The Iron Lady.
But when Streep appeared to accept her latest award, she had a nomination of her own to present: One for a performance that “broke my heart.”
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
It had come in real life, not a movie. And the performer she nominated was Donald Trump, for his mockery of a disabled New York Times reporter in 2015.
The reporter, Serge Kovaleski, suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.
Since declaring his Presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015, Trump had attacked the patriotism of America’s Islamic population. He claimed that he had seen Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
To prove this, Trump cited a September 18, 2001 article written by Kovaleski when he was a reporter for The Washington Post.
In this, Kovaleski wrote that police “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties.”
After Trump mentioned the story, Kovaleski said that the key word in it was “allegedly,” adding that there were no credible reports of such celebrations.
At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from his article.
To mock Kovaleski, he flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.’”
Attacked for mocking Kovaleski’s disability, Trump claimed: “Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago–if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.”
Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right
But Kovaleski quickly contradicted Trump: He had covered Trump as a reporter for the New York Daily News and had met him face-to-face on at least a dozen occasions.
So Meryl Streep knew what she was talking about when she said:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.
“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Kelleyanne Conway served as Trump’s mouthpiece during the 2016 Presidential campaign. She continued in that rule as he prepared to take office as President on January 20.
And she was thoroughly upset with Streep’s remarks.
Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.
“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”
What common ground she didn’t say. Agreeing on mocking the disabled?
Not to be outdone in “inciting people’s worst instincts,” President-elect Trump quickly took to Twitter—his preferred mode of communication.
Since Twitter allows only 140 characters, Trump couldn’t say all he wanted in one tweet. So it took three:
Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..
Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him…….
“groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!
In 2015—before she insulted him—Trump told The Hollywood Reporter: “Julia Roberts is terrific, and many others. Meryl Streep is excellent; she’s a fine person, too.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 16, 2017 at 12:14 am
After being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, Meryl Streep criticized Donald Trump’s mocking of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.
Kovaleski suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.
At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from an article he had written four years earlier.
Trump had earlier said the article proved that New Jersey Muslims had celebrated the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Kovaleski had insisted there was no credible proof of such celebrations.
Angered at being contradicted, Trump mocked Kovaleski: He flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”
Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right
At the Golden Globe Awards on January 8, Streep denounced this behavior that “broke my heart.”
“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
Streep’s words outraged Trump’s supporters–especially his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway.
Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.
“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”
Conway didn’t say what common ground Streep should find with Trump. Perhaps agreeing on mocking the disabled?
Kelleyanne Conway
Then Conway visited CNN’s “New Day,” where she offered a “black-is-white” defense for Trump’s videotaped ridiculing of Kovaleski: It didn’t happen.
The host, Chris Cuomo, having seen the video, wasn’t buying it.
CUOMO: But is [Streep] wrong? Is she wrong that it was wrong for Trump to make gestures like that about a man with disabilities?
CONWAY: He didn’t–but that is not what he did and he has said that a thousand times. As he tweeted out today–
CUOMO: He can say it a million. Look at the video.
CONWAY: Why can’t you–wait, excuse me. Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt the way the benefit of the doubt was given to CNN’s polling, all of its analysts?
CUOMO: Because he’s making a disgusting gesture on video talking about Serge.
CONWAY: Not about that reporter and that’s just a fact. That is what he’s said. You should give him–
CUOMO: But how is it not about the reporter?
CONWAY: –the deference and respect if he says that it was–he was not mocking, he was mocking the groveling. He said it again this morning. He has three tweets out about it.
CUOMO: But he’s doing a gesture that goes right to the guy’s vulnerability.
CONWAY: You’re saying you don’t believe him. You’re calling him a liar and you shouldn’t.
CUOMO: Look, Kellyanne, to me that’s like you’re trying to scare me off the point and we both know it’s a waste of time.
CONWAY: I’m not going to scare you off anything.
CUOMO: He’s making a gesture that is so keenly tuned to what Serge’s vulnerability is.
CONWAY: And now you’re giving oxygen to what Meryl Streep said.
CUOMO: Forget about Meryl Streep. This happened before her. If our kids did that, could you imagine what we would say to them?
Conway said she would not bring her children into the discussion.
CUOMO: I will. If my kid did something like that, it’d be a really tough day.
CONWAY: You have to listen to what the president has said about that. Why don’t you believe him?
Conway tried to change the subject to Hillary Clinton: “She was given the benefit of the doubt here constantly.”
When Cuomo asked for specifics, she refused to give them. Then she returned to claiming that Trump had never mocked Kovaleski:
CONWAY: You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this, when he’s telling you what was in his heart? You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth, rather than look at what’s in his heart.
* * * * *
Previously, politicians had defended themselves with arguments like: “You can see right here on the tape, I did (or, I didn’t)….”
Trump has cast aside that logic–and the taped evidence–by demanding: “Believe what I’m telling you, not what you’ve just seen.”
By that rationale, if a security camera shows Trump robbing a bank at gunpoint, we’re supposed to believe him if he says: “No, I didn’t rob that bank. I was simply checking my bank balance.”
Such “logic” holds appeal for paid shills like Kelleyanne Conway. But most people will continue to judge by the evidence.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 13, 2017 at 12:02 am
For five years, Donald Trump, more than anyone else, popularized the slander that Barack Obama was born in Kenya–and was therefore an illegitimate President.
For more than a year during his 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump continued doing so.
As his popularity fell to less than 1% among blacks, the managers of his campaign urged: Put the “birther” issue behind you.
So, on September 16, 2016–10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–Trump made his version of a reversal.
Donald Trump: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States.”
He did so in about seven seconds and 40 words–after spending a half hour paying tribute to the military and promoting his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C.:
“Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
His tone made it clear that he felt uneasy making that statement–and wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
He refused to take questions from reporters covering the event. Nor did he apologize for his five-year campaign of slander.
On the evening of September 16, Hillary Clinton strongly responded to Trump’s comments:
“For five years, he has led the birther movement to de-legitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”
And First Lady Michelle Obama slammed Trump for his “birther” claims:
“Then, of course, there were those who questioned, and who continue to question for the past eight years, and up to this very day, whether my husband was even born in this country.
“Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the examples he set, by going high when they go low. And he’s answered these questions with the progress we’ve achieved together.”
Michelle Obama
But perhaps the best perspective on this event was provided by syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Each Friday they appear on the PBS Newshour to review the week’s major political events.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
On September 16, Shields (a liberal) and Brooks (a conservative) addressed Trump’s about-face on birtherism.
MARK SHIELDS: “I think it’s important to establish right at the outset that [Trump] wasn’t only the loudest and the highest-profile and the most persistent and the most well-publicized birther, he, Donald Trump. He lied. He lied consistently and persistently.
“And, today, without explanation or excuse, he just changed his position and tried to absolutely falsely shift the blame onto Hillary Clinton.
“And this was an appeal to–he debased democracy. He debased the national debate. He appealed to that which is most ignoble or least noble in all of us.”
DAVID BROOKS: “Usually, there’s some tangential relationship to the truth, but a corroding relationship to the truth, frankly, as politics has gone on over the years.
“But now we’re in a reverse, Orwellian inversion of the truth with this. And so we have a team of staffers and then the candidate himself who have taken the normal spin and smashed all the rules.
“And so we are really in Orwell land. We are in 1984. And it’s interesting that an authoritarian personality type comes in at the same time with a complete disrespect for even tangential relationship to the truth that words are unmoored.
“And so I do think this statement sort of shocked me with the purification of a lot of terrible trends that have been happening. And so what’s white is black, and what is up is down, what is down is up. And that really is something new in politics.
“And the fact that there is no penalty for it, apparently–he’s doing fantastic in the last two weeks in the polls–is just somehow where we have gotten.”
Less than two months later, Trump won the Presidency.
Since then, Trump has continued to inhabit what David Brooks called “Orwell land.”
The most recent example of this occurred on January 9, 2017.
The night before, Meryl Streep had enraged Trump and his mouthpiece, Kelleyanne Conway, at the Golden Globes Awards ceremony.
While being presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, she had criticized Trump’s mocking, on November 25, 2015, of disabled New York Times reporter Serve Kovaleski:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ACADEMY AWARDS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, BARACK OBAMA, BEST ACTRESS, BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, BIRTHERS, BULLYING, CBS NEWS, CENSORSHIP, CHRIS CUOMO, CNN, CREDIBILITY GAP, DAVID BROOKS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DISABILITY, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FOX AND FRIENDS, FRANK STANTON, FULL METAL JACKET, GEORGE MCGOVERN, GOLDEN GLOBES, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN F. KENNEDY, KELLEYANNE CONWAY, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MARK SHIELDS, MERYL STREEP, MORLEY SAFER, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, NAVY SEALS, NBC NEWS, NEEWSWEEK, NEW DAY, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PETER ARNETT, POLITICO, RICHARD NIXON, RONALD ZIEGLER, SALON, SERGE KOVALESKI, SLATE, SOPHIE'S CHOICE, STANLEY KUBRICK, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE IRON LADY, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 12, 2017 at 12:10 am
In 2011, Donald Trump, host of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” was thinking of running for President against Barack Obama.
Seeking to gain popularity among America’s Right-wing, Trump almost singlehandedly created the popular fiction that the President was born in Kenya–and was not an American citizen.
His motive: To convince Americans that Obama was an illegitimate President.
Donald Trump
Among the statements Trump made:
February 10, 2011: “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”
March 23, 2011: “I want him to show his birth certificate. I want him to show his birth certificate. … There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.”
March 28, 2011: “I am really concerned” [that Obama wasn’t born in the United States]. He said that the birth announcement for Obama in a Hawaii newspaper could have been planted “for whatever reason.”
March 30, 2011: “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was. … He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”
April 7, 2011: “I have people that have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding. You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. Right now I have real doubts.”
April 25, 2011: “I’ve been told very recently…that the birth certificate is missing. I’ve been told that it’s not there or it doesn’t exist. And if that’s the case, it’s a big problem.”
On April 27, President Obama released his original, long-form Hawiian birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” said Obama at a press conference, speaking as a father might to a roomful of spiteful children. “We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve.
“We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other…if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.”
And on May 1, he announced the solving of one of those “big problems”: Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had been tracked down and shot dead by elite U.S. Navy SEALS in Pakistan.
SEALS attacking bin Laden’s compound in the 2012 movie, “Zero Dark Thirty”
And how did Trump respond? With the following series of Tweets on Twitter:
May 18, 2012: “Let’s take a closer look at that birth certificate.@BarackObama was described in 2003 as being “born in Kenya.” http://bit.ly/Klc9Uu
August 6, 2012: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama‘s birth certificate is a fraud.”
August 27, 2012: “Why do the Republicans keep apologizing on the so called “birther” issue? No more apologies–take the offensive!”
September 13, 2012: “Wake Up America! See article: “Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake”
June 30, 2013: “@davidrhythmguit: @realDonaldTrump @Chuffman48 Mark Cuban accepts the fact that the President of the United States was born here. Doubt it”
August 22, 2013: “Why are people upset w/ me over Pres Obama’s birth certificate? I got him to release it, or whatever it was, when nobody else could!”
December 12, 2013: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived”
November 23, 2014: “@futureicon: @pinksugar61 Obama also fabricated his own birth certificate after being pressured to produce one by @realDonaldTrump“
Even after declaring his candidacy for President on June 16, 2015, Trump continued to insist that Barack Obama was an illegitimate President.
Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity among blacks had steadily fallen. In June, 2016, a Quinnipiac poll revealed that Trump had 1% of support from black voters. By comparison, 91% of black voters backed Hillary Clinton.
Among the reasons for this:
- His enthusiastic support by racist white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party.
- His “birther” attacks on President Obama as a non-citizen from Kenya–and thus ineligible to hold the Presidency.
- His attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and calling on his supporters at rallies to rough up minority protesters.
Even the managers of Trump’s campaign urged him to put the “birther” issue behind him.
And so, on September 16–10 days before his scheduled first debate with Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton–Trump made his version of a reversal.
In doing so, he entered into what conservative New York Times political columnist David Brooks called “Orwell land.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 11, 2017 at 12:02 am
“Credibility gap” is a term that came into use during the mid-1960s to describe public and journalistic distrust of President Lyndon B. Johnson. In particular, the term was applied to his administration’s conduct of the Vietnam war.
It was, in short, a euphemism for accusing government officials of outright lying.
An example of the credibility gap in full swing appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1987 Vietnam war movie, Full Metal Jacket.
Vietnam was a war where military and political officials spewed a gung-ho version of constant American progress against a tough enemy.
And where civilian reporters like David Halberstam and Walter Cronkite saw–and labeled–the war as a brutal, wasteful and ultimately doomed effort.
Midway through the film, there’s an editorial meeting of The Sea Tiger, the official Marine newspaper.
Lieutenant Lockhart is presiding–and he is determined to give his superiors an endless stream of “all-systems-go” propaganda reports. He reads a series of stories that have been published:
Story #1: DIPLOMATS IN DUNGAREES–MARINE ENGINEERS LEND A HELPING HAND REBUILDING DONG PHUC VILLAGES.
LOCKHART: “Chili, “if we move Vietnamese, they are evacuees. If they come to us to be evacuated, they are refugees.”
Story #2: N.V.A. SOLDIER DESERTS AFTER READING PAMPHLETS.
LOCKHART: “A young North Vietnamese Army regular, who realized his side could not win the war, deserted from his unit after reading Open Arms program pamphlets.”
Story #3: NOT WHILE WE’RE EATING: N.V.A. LEARN MARINES ON A SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSION DON’T LIKE TO BE INTERRUPTED WHILE EATING CHOW.
LOCKHART: “‘Search and destroy.’ Uh, we have a new directive on this. In the future, in place of ‘search and destroy,’ substitute the phrase ‘sweep and clear.’ Got it?”
Lt. Lockhart, editor of The Sea Tiger
LOCKHART: “And, Joker–where’s the weenie?”
JOKER: “Sir?”
LOCKHART “The Kill, Joker. I mean, all that fire, the grunts must’ve hit something.”
JOKER: “Didn’t see ’em.”
LOCKHART: “Joker, I’ve told you, we run two basic stories here: Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants–winning of hearts and Minds–okay? And combat action that results in a kill–Winning the War. Now you must have seen blood trails … drag marks?”
JOKER: “It was raining, sir.”
LOCKHART: “Well, that’s why God passed the law of probability. Now rewrite it and give it a happy ending–say, uh, one kill. Make it a sapper or an officer. Grunts like reading about dead officers.”
JOKER: “Okay, an officer. How about a general?”
LOCKHART: “Joker, maybe you’d like our guys to read the paper and feel bad. I mean, in case you didn’t know it, this is not a particularly popular war. Now, it is our job to report the news that these why-are-we-here civilian newsmen ignore.”
So great became the divide between truth and lies during military “press briefings” that reporters started calling them “The Five O’clock Follies.” And even some soldiers took to wearing buttons that said: “Ambushed at Credibility Gap.”
Reporters who dared to write truthfully about the military’s crimes and failures–like David Halberstam of the New York Times and Peter Arnett of the Associated Press–were regarded as traitors by military and political officials.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy became enraged by Halberstam’s reporting on the corruption of the South Vietnamese government. He pressured New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to transfer Halberstam to another locale. Sulzberger politely refused–and then extended Halberstam’s stay in Vietnam another six months.
David Halberstam
In 1965, when CBS Correspondent Morley Safer filmed Marines setting fire to the village of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters, President Lyndon B. Johnson was similarly outraged.
He placed an early-morning call to CBS News President Frank Stanton and shouted: “Your boys shat on the American flag!”
The trail of deceit and attempted censorship continued right up to the end of the war–in April, 1975. That was when North Vietnamese forces invaded the South and quickly overwhelmed the incompetent defenses arrayed against them.
And while America was still bogged down in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal erupted on June 17, 1972.
Watergate Hotel
Members of the Nixon administration’s secret “Plumbers Unit” burglarized the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel.
Obsessed with re-electing Richard Nixon, they sought incriminating information to discredit U.S. Senator George McGovern, the Democrats’ nominee for President.
When the burglars were caught, President Richard M. Nixon and his topmost officials lied and stonewalled both reporters and investigators seeking the truth.
Nixon’s press secretary, Ronald Ziegler, repeatedly slandered the integrity of The Washington Post for its coverage of the mushrooming Watergate scandal. He called the Watergate break-in “a third-rate burglary” and attacked the Post for “shabby journalism.”
Finally, on April 17, 1973, Ziegler, announced at a press conference: “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.”
In short: We’ve been lying to you for the last 10 months. But now we’re telling the truth.
Like Vietnam, the Watergate scandal destroyed the reputations of many of its chief architects. Forty government officials were indicted or jailed.
Vietnam and Watergate were seminal events for Americans coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They taught an entire generation: Don’t trust the government. Its officials routinely lie, and their lies can be deadly.
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 10, 2017 at 12:06 am
Every year, the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) bestow Golden Globe awards to recognize excellence in television and film, both inside and outside the United States.
And on Sunday, January 8, the presenters honored actress Meryl Streep with the Cecil B Demille lifetime achievement Award.
Since 1979, she’s been nominated for more Academy Awards than any other actor–15 nominations for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress.
She won Best Supporting Actress in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, Best Actress in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice and again in 2012 for The Iron Lady.
But when Streep appeared to accept her latest award, she had a nomination of her own to present: One for a performance that “broke my heart.”
Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes
It had come in real life, not a movie. And the performer she nominated was Donald Trump, for his mockery of a disabled New York Times reporter in 2015.
The reporter, Serge Kovaleski, suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.
Since declaring his Presidential candidacy on June 16, Trump had attacked the patriotism of America’s Islamic population. He claimed that he had seen Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.
To prove this, Trump cited a September 18, 2001 article written by Kovaleski when he was a reporter for The Washington Post.
In this, Kovaleski wrote that police “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties.”
After Trump mentioned the story, Kovaleski said that the key word in it was “allegedly,” adding that there were no credible reports of such celebrations.
At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from his article.
To mock Kovaleski, he flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”
Click here: Donald Trump mocks disabled New York Times reporter – Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability – YouTube
Attacked for mocking Kovaleski’s disability, Trump claimed: “Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago–if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.”
Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right
But Kovaleski quickly contradicted Trump: He had covered Trump as a reporter for the New York Daily News and had met him face-to-face on at least a dozen occasions.
So Meryl Streep knew what she was talking about when she said:
“There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
“It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.
“And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Kelleyanne Conway served as Trump’s mouthpiece during the 2016 Presidential campaign. She continues in that rule as he prepares to take office as President on January 20.
And she was thoroughly upset with Streep’s remarks.
Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.
“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”
What common ground she didn’t say. Agreeing on mocking the disabled?
Not to be outdone in “inciting people’s worst instincts,” President-elect Trump quickly took to Twitter–his preferred mode of communication.
Since Twitter allows only 140 characters, Trump couldn’t say all he wanted in one tweet. So it took three:
Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..
Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him…….
“groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!
In 2015–before she insulted him–Trump told The Hollywood Reporter: “Julia Roberts is terrific, and many others. Meryl Streep is excellent; she’s a fine person, too.”
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Politics on June 17, 2016 at 12:05 am
In March, 2013, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its Right-wing allies declared war on comedian Jim Carrey.
The reason: His music parody video: “Cold Dead Hand,” which mocked gun fanatics and the late Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA.
Click here: Jim Carrey’s Pro-Gun Control Stance Angers Conservatives
Among its lyrics:
Charlton Heston movies are no longer in demand
And his immortal soul may lay forever in the sand.
The angels wouldn’t take him up to heaven like he’d planned.
’Cause they couldn’t pry that gun from his cold, dead hand.
The phrase, “cold dead hand,” originated with Heston himself.
Charlton Heston in his prime
On May 20, 2000, the actor and then-president of the NRA addressed the organization at its 129th convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.
He warned that then-Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidade Al Gore “is going to smear you as the enemy,” and concluded:
“So, as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: ‘From my cold, dead hands!’”
Carrey’s stance on gun control couldn’t have been more opposite.
In in February, 2013, he outraged Right-wingers by tweeting: “Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after the Newton massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting.”
Jim Carrey
Fox Nation referred to the tweet as “nasty.”
Red Alert Politics writer Erin Brown dismissed it as “a careless remark …rooted in the shallow, parroted talking points so commonly espoused by liberal elites.”
But that was nothing compared to the rage that has greeted “Cold Dead Hand.” Reason TV’s Remy offered a parody rebuttal to Carrey’s song. Its lyrics included:
It takes a talking ass
to oppose a vaccination
when your PhD is in
making funny faces.
None of which bothered Carrey. In fact, he exulted in Right-wing outrage, tweeting: “Cold Dead Hand’ is abt u heartless motherf%ckers unwilling 2 bend 4 the safety of our kids. Sorry if you’re offended…”
Among its lyrics:
It takes a cold, dead hand to decide to pull the trigger.
Takes a cold, dead heart and as near as I can figger.
With your cold, dead aim you’re tryin’ to prove your dick is bigger …..
Many psychologists have long theorized that a fascination with firearms can compensate for inadequate sexual performance.
But it’s one thing for an unknown psychologist to write this in an obscure medical journal and another for a famous comedian to splash it across the Internet.
Carrey is especially ruthless in attacking those who–like the NRA–make a lucrative living off gun sales:
Imagine if the Lord were here…
And on the ones
Who sell the guns
He’d sic the vultures and coyotes
Only the devil’s true devotees
Could profiteer
From pain and fear.
Many Rightists attacked Carrey for parodying a man–Heston–who died in 2008 and could not defend himself. But Heston had appeared several times on “Saturday Night Live” to spoof his granite-hard image.
In his video, Carrey dares to attack not simply the masculinity of the Rightist NRA crowd, but even its courage:
You don’t want to get caught
With your trousers down
When the psycho killer
Comes around
So you make your home
Like a Thunderdome
And you’re always packin’
Everywhere you roam.
Perhaps that’s what most outraged the Right–the accusation that its members live in fear and do their best to generate needless fear in others.
Fear that can supposedly be abated by turning America into a society where everyone packs a weapon and every moment holds a potential High Noon.
Carrey was not shy in responding to his Rightist critics. On March 29, 2013, he issued this statement:
“Since I released my “Cold Dead Hand” video on Funny or Die this week, I have watched Fux News rant, rave, bare its fangs and viciously slander me because of my stand against large magazines and assault rifles.
“I would take them to task legally if I felt they were worth my time or that anyone with a brain in their head could actually fall for such irresponsible buffoonery. That would gain them far too much attention which is all they really care about.
“I’ll just say this: in my opinion Fux News is a last resort for kinda-sorta-almost-journalists whose options have been severely limited by their extreme and intolerant views; a media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams and should be emptied before it becomes a public health issue.”
The NRA has spent decades bribing and intimidating its way through Congress. Those members who subscribe to its “guns for everyone” agenda get legalized bribes (i.e., “campaign contributions”).
Those who refuse to do so face the threat–if not the reality–of being ousted.
Bullies are conspicuously vulnerable to ridicule. Their only “defense” is to smash anyone who dares to mock their folly, brutality or pretense to omnipotence.
Or, as Ernest Hemingway once put it: “Fascism is a lie told by bullies.”
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In Entertainment, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 16, 2016 at 12:06 am
Bullies do not like to be mocked.
Anyone who doubts this need only examine the Right’s reaction to actor Jim Carrey’s March, 2013 “Cold Dead Hand” music video.
In this, Carrey–a strong advocate of gun control–mocked the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its right-wing allies.
These included rural America and (for the video’s purposes) the late actor Charlton Heston, who served as the NRA’s five-term president (1998-2003).
Jim Carrey as Charlton Heston
The video featured Carrey and alt-rock band Eels as “Lonesome Earl And The Clutterbusters,” a country band on a TV set modeled after the 1960s variety show, “Hee Haw.” Carrey also portrayed Heston as a dim-witted, teeth-clenching champion of the NRA.
“I find the gun problem frustrating,” Carrey said in a press release, “and ‘Cold Dead Hand’ is my fun little way of expressing that frustration.”
Carrey’s frustration triggered NRA outrage.
Click here: Jim Carrey’s Pro-Gun Control Stance Angers Conservatives
Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld ranted: “He is probably the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth and I hope his career is dead and I hope he ends up sleeping in a car.
“This video made me want to go out and buy a gun. He thinks this is biting satire going after rural America and a dead man… He’s a dirty, stinking coward… He’s such a pathetic, sad, little freak. He’s a gibbering mess. He’s a modern bigot.”
Columnist Larry Elder spared no venom in attacking Carrey: “Let’s be charitable–call Carrey ignorant, not stupid.”
Click here: Jim Carrey: Not ‘Dumb & Dumber,’ Just Ignorant
Much of his March 29 column centered on defending Heston, who died at 84 in 2008.
A lyric in Carrey’s song says “Charlton Heston’s movies are no longer in demand.” This prompted Elder to defend the continuing popularity of Heston’s 1956 movie, “The Ten Commandments,” where he played Moses.
Elder felt compelled to defend Heston’s off-screen persona as well, citing his 64-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Lydia.
On the other hand, writes Elder, Carrey, “followed the well-worn Hollywood path: Get famous; get rich; dump the first wife/mother of your kid(s), who stood by you during the tough times; and act out your social life in the tabs to the embarrassment of your kid(s).”
Clearly, Carrey’s video struck a nerve with Right-wing gun fanatics. But why?
Start with Gutfield’s accusation that Carry was “going after rural America.”
Rural America–home of the most superstitious, ignorant and knee-jerk Fascist elements in American society–boastfully refers to itself as “The Heartland.”
In short: a prime NRA and Rightist constituency.
It was rural America to which Senator Barack Obama referred–accurately–during his 2008 Presidential campaign:
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Second, there’s Elder’s outrage that Carrey should dare to say that Heston’s movies “are no longer in demand.”
Among these movies: “Major Dundee,” “El Cid,” “Khartoum,” “The War Lord.” And even the hammiest film for which he is best-known: “The Ten Commandments.”
In a film career spanning 62 years, Heston vividly portrayed such historical characters as:
- Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar in “El Cid’:
- Mark Anthony in “Julius Caesar”;
- John the Baptist in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”;
- Andrew Jackson in “The President’s Lady” and “The Buccaneer”;
- Michaelangelo in “The Agony and the Ecstasy”;
- General Charles Gordon in “Khartoun.”
And he played fictitious characters, too:
- Civil War officers (“Major Dundee”);
- Norman knights (“The War Lord”);
- ranchers (“Three Violent People”;
- explorers (“The Naked Jungle”).
- Judah Ben-Hur (“Ben-Hur”);
- astronauts (“Planet of the Apes”)’
Heston was a widely respected actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1959 for “Ben Hur” and servecd as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1965 to 1971.
But it was not Heston’s film career that Carrey focused on–but his role as president of the NRA.
Charlton Heston at the NRA convention
Ironically, Heston had identified himself with liberal causes long before he became the face and voice of the gun lobby.
In 1961, he campaigned for Senator John F. Kennedy for President. In 1963, he took part in Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.
In 1968, after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, he joined actors Kirk Douglas, James Stewart and Gregory Peck in issuing a statement supporting President Lyndon Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968.
But over the coming decades, Heston became increasingly conservative:
- Reportedly voting for Richard Nixon in 1972;
- Supporting gun rights; and
- Campaigning for Republican Presidential candidates Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
When asked why he changed political alliances, Heston replied: “I didn’t change. The Democratic party changed.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on October 22, 2015 at 12:04 am
Argo was selected as Best Picture at the 2013 Academy Awards. But it is Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln that will be cherished far longer.
Among the reasons for this:
- Daniel Day-Lewis’ brilliant portrayal as Abraham Lincoln; and
- Its timely depiction of a truth that has long been obscured by past and current Southern lies.
And that truth: From first to last, the cause of the Civil War was slavery.
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, arguments over “states’ rights” or economic conflict between North and South didn’t lead 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61.
It was their demand for “respect” of their “peculiar institution”–i.e., slavery.
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it.
But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do. Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860.
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery-–and slaveholders-–as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
The British author, Anthony Trollope, explained to his readers:
“It is no light thing to be told daily, by our fellow citizens…that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven.
“All this [Southerners] could partly moderate, partly rebuke and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands.” [Italics added]
It is to Spielberg’s credit that he forces his audience to look directly at the real cause of the bloodiest conflict on the North American continent.
At the heart of Spielberg’s film: Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to win ratification of what will be the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. An amendment that will forever ban slavery.
But, almost four years into the war, slavery still has powerful friends–in both the North and South.
Many of those friends belong to the House of Representatives, which must ratify the amendment for it to become law.
Other members–white men all–are hostile to the idea of “equality between the races.”
To them, ending slavery means opening the door to interracial marriage–especially marriage between black men and white women. Perhaps even worse, it means possibly giving blacks–or women–the right to vote.
After the amendment wins ratification, Lincoln agrees to meet with a “peace delegation” from the Confederate States of America.
At the top of their list of concerns: If they persuade the seceded states to return to the Union, will those states be allowed to nullify the amendment?
No, says Lincoln. He’s willing to make peace with the South, and on highly generous terms. But not at the cost of allowing slavery to live on.
Too many men–North and South–have died in a conflict whose root cause is slavery. Those lives must count for more than simply reuniting the Union.
For the Southern “peace commissioners,” this is totally unacceptable.
The South has lost thousands of men (260,000 is the generally accepted figure for its total casualties) and the war is clearly lost. But for its die-hard leaders, parting with slavery is simply unthinkable.
Like Nazi Germany 80 years into the future, the high command of the South won’t surrender until their armies are too beaten down to fight any more.
The major difference between the defeated South of 1865 and the defeated Germany of 1945 is this: The South was allowed to build a beautiful myth of a glorious “Lost Cause,” epitomized by the Margaret Mitchell novel, Gone With the Wind.
In that telling, dutiful slaves are well-treated by kindly masters. Southern aristocrats wear white suits and their slender-waisted ladies wear long dresses, carry parisols and say “fiddle-dee-dee” to young, handsome suitors.
One million people attended the premier of the movie version in Atlanta on December 15, 1939.
The celebration featured stars from the film, receptions, thousands of Confederate flags, false antebellum fronts on stores and homes, and a costume ball.
In keeping with Southern racial tradition, Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors from the film were barred from attending the premiere. Upon learning this, Clark Gable threatened to boycott the event. McDaniel convinced him to attend.
When today’s Southerners fly Confederate flags and speak of “preserving our traditions,” they are actually celebrating their long-banned peculiar” institution.”
By contrast, post-World War II Germany outlawed symbols from the Nazi-era, such as the swastika and the “Heil Hitler” salute, and made Holocaust denial punishable by imprisonment.
America has refused to confront its own shameful past so directly. But Americans can be grateful that Steven Spielberg has had the courage to serve up a long-overdue and much needed lesson in past–and still current–history.
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HUMOR VS. HITMEN: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Humor, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on February 22, 2018 at 12:05 amBullies do not like to be mocked.
Anyone who doubts this need only examine the Right’s reaction to actor Jim Carrey’s March, 2013 “Cold Dead Hand” music video.
In this, Carrey—–a strong advocate of gun control—mocked the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its right-wing allies.
These included rural America and (for the video’s purposes) the late actor Charlton Heston, who served as the NRA’s five-term president (1998-2003).
Jim Carrey as Charlton Heston
The video featured Carrey and alt-rock band Eels as “Lonesome Earl And The Clutterbusters,” a country band on a TV set modeled after the 1960s variety show, “Hee Haw.” Carrey also portrayed Heston as a dim-witted, teeth-clenching champion of the NRA.
“I find the gun problem frustrating,” Carrey said in a press release, “and ‘Cold Dead Hand’ is my fun little way of expressing that frustration.”
Carrey’s frustration triggered NRA outrage.
Click here: Jim Carrey’s Pro-Gun Control Stance Angers Conservatives
Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld ranted: “He is probably the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth and I hope his career is dead and I hope he ends up sleeping in a car.
“This video made me want to go out and buy a gun. He thinks this is biting satire going after rural America and a dead man… He’s a dirty, stinking coward… He’s such a pathetic, sad, little freak. He’s a gibbering mess. He’s a modern bigot.”
Columnist Larry Elder spared no venom in attacking Carrey: “Let’s be charitable—call Carrey ignorant, not stupid.”
Click here: Jim Carrey: Not ‘Dumb & Dumber,’ Just Ignorant
Much of his March 29 column centered on defending Heston, who died at 84 in 2008.
A lyric in Carrey’s song says “Charlton Heston’s movies are no longer in demand.” This prompted Elder to defend the continuing popularity of Heston’s 1956 movie, “The Ten Commandments,” where he played Moses.
Elder felt compelled to defend Heston’s off-screen persona as well, citing his 64-year marriage to his college sweetheart, Lydia.
On the other hand, writes Elder, Carrey, “followed the well-worn Hollywood path: Get famous; get rich; dump the first wife/mother of your kid(s), who stood by you during the tough times; and act out your social life in the tabs to the embarrassment of your kid(s).”
Clearly, Carrey’s video struck a nerve with Right-wing gun fanatics. But why?
Start with Gutfield’s accusation that Carry was “going after rural America.”
Rural America—home of the most superstitious, ignorant and knee-jerk Fascistic elements in American society—boastfully refers to itself as “The Heartland.”
In short: a prime NRA and Rightist constituency.
It was rural America to which Senator Barack Obama referred—accurately—during his 2008 Presidential campaign:
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Second, there’s Elder’s outrage that Carrey should dare to say that Heston’s movies “are no longer in demand.”
Among these movies: “Major Dundee,” “El Cid,” “Khartoum,” “The War Lord.” And even the hammiest film for which he is best-known: “The Ten Commandments.”
In a film career spanning 62 years, Heston vividly portrayed such historical characters as:
And he played fictitious characters, too:
Heston was a widely respected actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1959 for “Ben Hur” and servecd as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1965 to 1971.
But it was not Heston’s film career that Carrey focused on—but his role as president of the NRA.
Charlton Heston at the NRA convention
Ironically, Heston had identified himself with liberal causes long before he became the face and voice of the gun lobby.
In 1961, he campaigned for Senator John F. Kennedy for President. In 1963, he took part in Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.
In 1968, after the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, he joined actors Kirk Douglas, James Stewart and Gregory Peck in issuing a statement supporting President Lyndon Johnson’s Gun Control Act of 1968.
But over the coming decades, Heston became increasingly conservative:
When asked why he changed political alliances, Heston replied: “I didn’t change. The Democratic party changed.”
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