(HT: Prof. Jacobson @ Legal Insurrection)
Not only does arrogant Hollywood seriously believe they can preach gun banning/control to us, but they demand we stop pointing out all the violence promoted, glamorized, and widely sold in the entertainment industry’s (their) finished products. But truth be told, it is not so much Hollywood’s use of guns in movies as much as it is their completely blurring of the good/evil, right/wrong lines over the last few decades.
That said, here is the Hollywood Hypocrisy I want to point out…
Have you noticed how hard Hollywood and the liberals are coming down on previous Oscar winner, director Kathryn Bigelow (the first and ONLY female to win a Best Director Oscar) and her “Zero Dark Thirty”? Even a struggling feminist sister hoisted the victorious woman, who defied the Hollywood all boy’s club, to the ranks of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl for this latest movie. And it is not over ‘gun violence’ … but waterboarding. (Oh, yeah, and remember, while bashing Bush over the war(s) for eight years Hollywood insisted they supported the troops, but not the mission … and why haven’t we caught and killed Osama Bin Laden, and … and … and … Shut up!)
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas) member David Clennon said last week he would not be voting for Kathryn Bigelow’s film, which has been nominated for five Oscars, and urged others to snub a movie that he said “promotes the acceptance of the crime of torture, as a legitimate weapon in America’s so-called War on Terror”. Writing on the truth-out.org website, he added: “I cannot vote for a film that makes heroes of Americans who commit the crime of torture.”
In response, Sony president Amy Pascal said she was “outraged” that an Academy member would try to influence the voting process. “Zero Dark Thirty does not advocate torture,” she said on Friday. “To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate. We fully support Kathryn Bigelow and [screenwriter] Mark Boal and stand behind this extraordinary movie. We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in Ampas as a platform to advance their own political agenda.”
While Zero Dark Thirty remains in the running for five Oscars, it already appears to have slipped behind frontrunners such as Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi owing to the ongoing controversy over whether Bigelow and Boal endorsed torture by their depiction of its use in the film, and whether that depiction was accurate. Bigelow surprisingly failed to receive a nod for best director when the Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday, and Zero Dark Thirty will compete only for best film, best original screenwriting, best actress (Jessica Chastain) and two editing prizes.
The furore over the film, which also stars Jason Clarke and Joel Edgerton, seems to have had a more positive effect on its potential profitability, however. Zero Dark Thirty went to No 1 at the US box office at the weekend with $24m. Bigelow and Boal’s previous film, the multiple Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, took just $17m throughout its entire US box-office run, despite the Academy’s accolades.
Question for self-righteous David Clennon: In 1995 Mel Gibson won the Best Picture Oscar for “Braveheart”. Did you see the last scene William Wallace (Gibson) was in? It is because Bigelow’s production shows America as the winner, and the Che T-shirt-wearing left cannot have that, ever. Now then, if only Bigelow had portrayed U.S. troops being tortured, or going all “Platoon” on an innocent village…
Anyway, nobody puts Spielberg and the left’s usurping of Abe with their neo-southern reconstructionism in the corner.
I think I’ll see it this weekend … “Zero Dark Thirty”, that is.
One more thing, I am hoping Bigelow is currently working on a script for a “Fast and Furious” movie … and not one involving Vin Diesel and street race cars.
Obama supported civilian uprisings in Syria, Egypt and Libya… now he asks why people need assault rifles in America.
He KNOWS why.
If anybody shouldn’t be even PLAYacting self-righteous, it’s the Hollywood crowd. Hollywood morality is an oxymoron, and this kind of sanctimonious posturing is extremely offensive. It is a testament to the incredible presumptuousness and arrogance of these absurdly overestimated and often dysfunctional hypocrites, whose careers are based on creating and selling illusions and make-believe. Striking poses and telling tales is OK as long as everybody’s up front about it, but trying to assume outsized roles in real life for which there’s no actual basis is an insult to the intelligence of anyone with half a brain.
I repeat yet again: Nobody really needs these people or what they’re selling (and I’m talking about what they’re more or less qualified to sell, not about their grandiose visions of themselves). They are all dispensable FRILLS. Do NOT enable them unless they mind their own business, which is entertainment, and you find said entertainment desirable as well as acceptable. I’m not paying a dime to people I don’t need if I find them at all objectionable–it’s not only irrational but demeaning to support them.
Luis –
So much so he supplied them with guns in Libya, and more likely than not Syria.
As a matter of fact, you notice Benghazi is being treated with as much importance of covering-up as “Fast and Furious”?