Should NPR and PBS Continue to Get Federal Funding?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Everyone is talking about the situation that commentator Juan Williams found himself in when National Public Radio fired him over comments he made on Fox News about Muslims. And whether you think Williams’s situation was properly handled or not, a second discussion has been raised in conjunction with it: the propriety of federal funding of NPR and PBS.

On the funding issue, no more convoluted argument about the necessity of federal money being spent on NPR can be found than an article that appeared in the New York Daily News penned by the executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, Michael Meyers. His op ed stood four-square in favor of continued federal funding of public radio and public television but his reason was simply illogical and impossible to understand.

Saying that those that support Juan Williams’s supporters, “vindictively want to totally de-fund the left-leaning NPR” because of Williams’s firing. He felt that those that want to take away federal funding from NPR are making a “big mistake.”

But check out the absurd reasoning why he thinks this:
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Should NPR and PBS Continue to Get Federal Funding?”


‘Call Me Madam’: Let This Video Be My Apology for Once Supporting Sen. Boxer

-By Warner Todd Huston

David Zucker has made a great video slamming Barbara “Senator Ma’am” Boxer. It is very funny.

Call Me Madam Joe from RightChange on Vimeo.

Zucker says on BigHollywood.com, “I was motivated to do something on this after I saw the video of Barbara Boxer interrogating the General.”

I remember immediately feeling embarrassed that a member of Congress would treat an officer of the U.S. military like that. And doubly embarrassed that back in the early 90’s I had contributed to Barbara Boxer’s campaign. I was so outraged at the pure arrogance of that moment, that I sat down to write the spot, highlighting the pure absurdity of our California Senator dressing down a General for calling her “Ma’am.” No Naked Gun or Scary Movie ever had an opportunity as good as that one for pure ridicule. Never mind that the military are instructed to call their superiors including members of congress ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’, including specifically, Members of Congress!

I thought an apology would have been appropriate, but to my knowledge, none has ever been made by Senator Boxer. This I find distressing, since apologies from public figures nowadays are the norm. I mean, it’s not as if she texted her junk to Brett Favre. This was just arrogantly insulting an army officer. But I guess that’s okay with her.

This odious woman deserves to be fired from the Senate. Come on California. Are you going to allow this arrogant cuss to be returned?


CBS’s ‘Medium’ Present A Sheriff Joe Arpaio-Like Character As Rapist-Murderer

-By Warner Todd Huston

On October 15, the Whodunnit/Psychic series “Medium,” which is set in Phoenix, Arizona, featured a character obviously based on tough-on-crime, real-life Sheriff Joe Arpaio. But instead of presenting him as a tough, but serious lawman, this TV show depicted its Arpaio-like character as a rapist of teen girls as well as a murderer.

I guess CBS couldn’t possibly present its Sheriff Arpaio-styled character as a good man. Their Arpaio-like character had to be seen as a sicko, rapist, and murderer. It is just another example of how Hollywood and the TV industry can’t stand it that there are real men out there that the voters love because they are public servants that are tough-minded, but fair. No, to TV, anyone that isn’t a liberal must be a rapist, a murderer, or a mentally deranged cretin.
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CBS’s ‘Medium’ Present A Sheriff Joe Arpaio-Like Character As Rapist-Murderer”


A Hollywood-Like Casting Call for Obama’s Oct. ‘Townhall’ in D.C.?

-By Warner Todd Huston

What is this? Obama is sponsoring a Hollywood-like casting call for a “diverse” audience for his upcoming October 14 townhall to be held in D.C? But, I thought everyone loved The One and would fall all over themselves to turn out in droves for an Obammessiah “townhall”? Why do they have to resort to a manufactured casting call to fill his audience?

The ad appears in the casting call section of an entertainment jobs board called BackStage.com. There Obama and his handlers, agents, writers, re-inventors, and fantasy-stylists are asking for an audience of “diverse interests and political views.” And if you believe that last bit, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya!

Here is what the ad looks like:
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A Hollywood-Like Casting Call for Obama’s Oct. ‘Townhall’ in D.C.?”


Michelle Obama on ‘World’s Most Powerful Women’ List. Why?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Forbes has published its world’s most powerful women list and on that list, in the top slot no less, is Michelle Obama, the wife of the President of the United States of America. Along with Obama a few singers and entertainers made the list. It all goes to prove that apparently no one knows what “powerful” means anymore.

On the most powerful list – after Obama at number one — Lady Gaga comes in at seventh place, in ninth singer Beyonce Knowles appears, and bringing up the rear is entertainer Ellen DeGeneres. Oprah Winfrey makes it in as number three.

There is no reason that any of these women (well, I’ll give you Oprah) belong on a “most powerful women” list — or a most powerful anybody list, for that matter.
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Michelle Obama on ‘World’s Most Powerful Women’ List. Why?”


Colorado: Art Depicting Christ in Gay Sex Causes Christians to Riot, Many Killed… Or Not

-By Warner Todd Huston

An art exhibit sponsored by the City of Loveland, Colorado that depicts Jesus Christ engaging in gay sex is causing some heartburn among local Christians.

The piece by a 10-artist group going under the title, “The Legend of Bud Shark and His Indelible Ink,” depicts Jesus receiving oral sex from a man.

Christian groups have protested the exhibit and are pressuring the city to pull this particular piece from display in the museum.

One of the reasons that Christians are asking that this piece be pulled is that the exhibit hall is open to all ages — children included. Protesters point out the sexual, perhaps pornographic, nature of the art and contend it is unfit for an all-ages showing.
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Colorado: Art Depicting Christ in Gay Sex Causes Christians to Riot, Many Killed… Or Not”


Unable to solve real problems, Congress takes on loud commercials

-By Chris Slavens

(Ed’s note: Welcome Chris Slavens as a new contributor to Publius Forum.)

With the unemployment rate at a depressing 9.5 percent, millions of Americans are stuck at home every day, unable to afford a tank of gas, left with no choice but to endure the injustices of daytime television. The Democrat-controlled Congress couldn’t care less about getting them back to work, but never fear; last week, it tackled a controversial issue that is at least as important as rising unemployment: the volume of television commercials.

The reader probably expects a punch line at this point, but it’s no joke. The Senate’s version of The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (The CALM Act) will require television stations and cable companies to broadcast commercials at the same volume as that of the programs they interrupt. The differences between the conflicting House and Senate versions of the legislation are expected to be worked out during the post-election “lame duck” session, in which Democrats who will have been rejected by their constituents will enact controversial legislation.
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Unable to solve real problems, Congress takes on loud commercials”


Rick Sanchez And The Showbiz Third Rail

-By Warner Todd Huston

Bob Parks of Black&Right is talking about that “third rail” of the entertainment industry: them Joooos. Bob is a bit mystified as to why it’s such a no-no to say that the entertainment industry is filled with folks of the Talmud?

Unless Jews are hired into the business based primarily on their ethnicity and not relevant prior experience (and there’s no proof of this), I don’t see why people are canned for making an observation that any other group would be proud of?

I can see Bob’s point, actually. Jews fill the entertainment industry at every level and always have, at least since the days of film and radio began. Their particular aptitude for understanding the humor and pathos of human existence leaves them in good stead to create fine entertainment, for sure.

Parks also wonders why idiot CNNer Rick Sanchez was fired from CNN for his rant on the radio last week if the unvarnished truth that Jews fill the entertainment industry is such common sense.
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Rick Sanchez And The Showbiz Third Rail”


Actors Union Acting a ‘Bully Boy’ Over Aussie Lord of the Rings Sequels

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions are the scourge of Middle Earth, or at least the upcoming filmed version of Tolkien’s Hobbit set in that mythical land, anyway. Peter Jackson, heir to the Tolkien legacy on film, is trying to produce a two-part Hobbit film but the local actors union is standing athwart him Sauron-like and casting its evil union eye upon the project frustrating everyone.

Jackson accused the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance of being an “Australian bully boy” after the union spurred actors to boycott the production over unmet union demands.

In a public letter, Jackson railed against the union demands.
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Actors Union Acting a ‘Bully Boy’ Over Aussie Lord of the Rings Sequels”


The Coming Staples Mausoleum/Stadium

-By Warner Todd Huston

Even as supporters claim they won’t need subsidies, it is more likely that L.A. is about to plunge itself forever into debt with a new stadium, the Staples Center. A look at just about any other convention center, or stadium in the country easily shows that these projects seldom pay for themselves as builders insist that they will do. Yet, every time you turn around another city is falling for this false hope.

Unfortunately it is almost impossible for the average citizen to track where the budget money is going in any particular city budget. As we learned from Bell, California people have even been duped into making city politicians millionaires and millions have been misspent.

Cities shift funds from one department to another with such regularity that tracking it is difficult. If the City of Bell is any lesson we need far more transparency in city budgeting.

But it shouldn’t be any surprise to the city fathers of LA that the Staples Center will never pay for itself. After all, the Convention Center has lost millions every year, too, and now they intend to tear down part of that losing venture to build yet another losing venture. According to the L.A. Almanac, in 2005 the convention center brought in $9,130,000. Appropriations for the convention center, however, were 21,608,518. That is an operating loss.
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The Coming Staples Mausoleum/Stadium”


Movie Trailer: True Grit Gets Grittier

-By Warner Todd Huston

Joel and Ethan Cohen have taken the book that the 1970 John Wayne vehicle of the same name was based on and given it a new treatment. The book was published in 1969 and written by Charles Portis and related the tale of a young girl determined to avenge the death of her father by teaming up with a seedy, aging gunfighter named Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn and a greedy Texas Ranger named La Boeuf.

I am all in for this one, I have to tell you! But it sure seems like Jeff Bridges and especially Matt Damon are in every other movie these days! For that matter, Josh Brolin has done quite a lot of work lately, too.

But this trailer looks great.


Movie Review: Newt Gingrich’s America At Risk

-By Warner Todd Huston

In Washington D.C. on Sept. 12 I attended the star studded premiere of the new film America at Risk: The War With No Name, featuring Newt and Callista Gingrich and a dozen well respected experts on the subject of the War on Terror. The event was held at the Newseum, a block or so from the National Mall.

America At Risk clearly reveals the dangers that radical Islam still presents to American security and safety. We are still at war with radical Islam and it is a war we are at best treading water on and at worst actually losing. The biggest problem, according to the film, is our current president. Obama refuses even to recognize that we are at war and is constantly undermining our past efforts and leaving us open for future attack.

In fact, the movie makes a strong case that the U.S.A. doesn’t even have a serious global strategy to fight radical Islam and that the only reason we haven’t had a new major attack is because we’ve been lucky more than we’ve been good at preventing them. The film says that it isn’t a matter of “if” we get hit again, but when.
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Movie Review: Newt Gingrich’s America At Risk”


Stadium Deal in LA a Moneypit

-By Warner Todd Huston

Whenever I think of this new Staples sports stadium deal going down in Los Angeles I can’t help but think of the “bread and circuses” that contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. Here is the City of L.A. sinking millions into this entertainment project leaving the people destitute and all for what? After all, as I wrote in the last column, these stadiums don’t seem to pay for themselves. So why is LA doing this? Is it just the prestige of having a football franchise?

Is having a football franchise enough of a palladium to justify sinking millions of tax dollars into a project like this? The city and the state it is in are going bankrupt, yet the city fathers of Los Angeles are pursing this football team with stars in their eyes. Is this the sort of hard-nosed, grown-ups we want leading our government?

Even more ridiculous is the plan to tear down a portion of the convention center to build the stadium. In a city starving for revenue does it make any sense to tear down a facility that brings in money and to leave that space fallow until the new stadium is finally finished years later?
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Stadium Deal in LA a Moneypit”


1970, Rod Serling: Television Has Little Relevance

-By Warner Todd Huston

In 1970 University of Kansas Professor James Gunn interviewed famed “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling and what he said about how badly the subject of race was handled on TV in his day is particularly trenchant.

Gunn, a science fiction writer in his own right having won many awards for his work, asked Mr. Serling if he felt that any current television fiction was relevant to the human condition. Rod was discouraged that it was, especially where it concerns the issue of race.

“Most television fiction that I watch has very little relevance. I think it’s one thing to say that we will now have a program called ModSquad, say, and we will have one black man and one oriental and one Hawaiian to show this marvelous melting-pot concept. But I think, Jim, that’s altogether phony. I don’t think that’s… I think at best condescension and at worst exploitation. The fact is that we have so distorted the pure ethnic minority over the years by making every black man a banjo player, and a village idiot, and a coward, that suddenly we are going to reverse switch, he is now a brain scientist or an atomic scientist or any one of an equal distortion at the other end. Needless to say I’d much prefer the distortion on the good side of the scale… but all television fiction I find quite irrelevant and quite unrelated.”

That was a pretty dismissive view for Rod Serling to think of the medium that made him famous, but on the other hand it’s hard to argue with his logic. For all the ballyhooing about TV it has rarely been relevant to much of anything.

The interview is about 20 minutes long and is quite interesting.

Things haven’t gotten much better, have they?

The sad thing about this great bit of film history is to realize that this genius, Rod Serling, had only five more years to live after the shooting of this interview.
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1970, Rod Serling: Television Has Little Relevance”


New Film ‘Machete’: Cynical Exploitation of America’s Racial Troubles

-By Warner Todd Huston

The new film Machete is born of a joke. No, really. In 2006 when Quentin Tarantino was gearing up for his double feature movie experience Grindhouse, he solicited other directors and even the fans to make fake trailers for bad 70’s exploitation moves. These trailers were shown between the two features in a takeoff of the coming attractions shown between movie features in those old 70s era B-picture film houses Tarantino was spoofing with Grindhouse. Machete was one of these over the top, fake movie trailers and it featured the catch phrase, “This time they f**ked with the wrong Mexican.” It got such a rousing reception from Tarantino’s fans that he and director and partner Robert Rodriguez thought it would make a great sendup film of its own.

But the joke has soured. In this film white America is the enemy and the United States is an oppressive force. It gets so extreme that in one scene a pair of white men shoot to death a pregnant Mexican woman merely so that her baby won’t be born in the USA. The pair then cruelly say, “Welcome to America,” to the dead woman’s Mexican husband.

That is some pretty harsh stuff.
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New Film ‘Machete’: Cynical Exploitation of America’s Racial Troubles”


Reminder: Obama’s Played More Golf in 2 Yrs. Than Bush Did Both Terms

-By Warner Todd Huston

Between 2000 and 2008 one of the left’s most cherished ways to ridicule President Bush was to point out how often he went golfing. Bush’s golfing was a clear sign that he was ignoring the work he had to do in Washington and that he just didn’t care they claimed. He was a playboy, a goof off, a time waster. But now that Barack Obama has come to office all of a sudden the left has found that golf isn’t worth noting, even as Obama has played the game more in just under two years than Bush did during his entire eight-year term.

The word hypocrisy comes to mind.

In 2003 President Bush decided to give up golfing because he did not want families of wounded and KIA soldiers to see him playing a game while they served and died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being seen on the golf course in wartime hasn’t seemed to deter President Obama, however.
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Reminder: Obama’s Played More Golf in 2 Yrs. Than Bush Did Both Terms”


Here is Why Philosophy is Often Filled With Pinheads

-By Warner Todd Huston

OK, you read that headline and assume I’m some anti-intellectual, backwoods rube, right? Don’t jump to conclusions yet. I am not saying that all philosophy is foolish, pointless, or idiotic. But often times people that study philosophy end up more interested in absurd postulations mounting on an always increasing scale until they are simply babbling nonsensically — but using big words to do it.

Take the so-called Sorites Paradox, for instance. Here is the claptrap that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lays on us to define the idea.

The sorites paradox is the name given to a class of paradoxical arguments, also known as little-by-little arguments, which arise as a result of the indeterminacy surrounding limits of application of the predicates involved. For example, the concept of a heap appears to lack sharp boundaries and, as a consequence of the subsequent indeterminacy surrounding the extension of the predicate ‘is a heap’, no one grain of wheat can be identified as making the difference between being a heap and not being a heap. Given then that one grain of wheat does not make a heap, it would seem to follow that two do not, thus three do not, and so on. In the end it would appear that no amount of wheat can make a heap. We are faced with paradox since from apparently true premises by seemingly uncontroversial reasoning we arrive at an apparently false conclusion.

This phenomenon at the heart of the paradox is now recognised as the phenomenon of vagueness (see the entry on vagueness). Once identified, vagueness can be seen to be a feature of syntactic categories other than predicates, nonetheless one speaks primarily of the vagueness of predicates. Names, adjectives, adverbs and so on are only susceptible to paradoxical sorites reasoning in a derivative sense.

This is an idiotically longwinded way to say that the Sorites Paradox tries to address this interesting question: at what point does a “heap” stop being a heap as things are removed from it?

Naturally the original question is not from our modern times. It is taken from the paradoxes associated with the ancient Greek philosopher Eubulides of Miletus, a contemporary of Aristotle.
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Here is Why Philosophy is Often Filled With Pinheads”


The Maudlin Nonsense of Sports ‘Heroes’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Good Lord, what is it with you sports goofballs that have to raise baseball or football players — or ANY sportsman — to the status of national heroes?

Some guy named Bobbie Thomason died yesterday and as a result we get absurd, maudlin prose such as the piece by John Steele Gordon in Commentary Magazine, or the over-the-top New York Times slosh telling us why he was so important to America.

Apparently this Bobby Thompson fellow hit a baseball once and because of it people think he cured cancer or saved the whales or something.
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The Maudlin Nonsense of Sports ‘Heroes’”


Sci Fi Giant Ray Bradbury Slams Obama’s Era of Big Government

-By Warner Todd Huston

The L.A. Times has a heartwarming story of literary giant Ray Bradbury who at 90 is not afraid to tell everyone exactly what he thinks. A gathering of admirers got an earful of Bradburyisms on the verge of his Aug 22 90th birthday celebration in Los Angeles. Bradbury railed against the “too many machines” that we surround ourselves with, lamented that we hadn’t colonized the moon by now, and said that the U.S. is in need of a revolution because “there is too much government today.”

You have to hand it to this wizened sage. He hit the nail on the head with every statement. Bradbury is so right to point out that we are losing our American soul and character.

Here are his statements as reported by the Times:
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Sci Fi Giant Ray Bradbury Slams Obama’s Era of Big Government”


New Father Pfleger Reality TV Show: Blessing The Mayor’s Office

-By Warner Todd Huston

Those chickens have come home to roost… or at least they will during the upcoming mayoral election in the Windy City if the new reality TV show being shopped by Chicago’s incendiary Father Michael Pfleger is concerned.

Chicago’s gadfly Father Pfleger, close friend of Minister Louis Farrakhan, outspoken anti-gun crusader, sanctuary city supporter, and liberation theologist is the Southside religious leader who once openly wished for the death of a local businessman and also once said, “America is the greatest sin against God.” Pfleger has been the subject of many “reviews” by the Catholic Church and was once suspended after attacking Hillary Clinton as a “white person” who felt privileged because of her race.

New show producer, Bud Billikin of Chicago’s South Side Productions, Inc., has announced that the new show will follow the Father Pfleger as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime, a run for Mayor of Chicago.

On Friday Pfleger is expected to announce his run against long-time Democrat strongman Richard Daley whose father, a Mayor before him, was famed for having “helped” JFK win the White House in 1960.
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New Father Pfleger Reality TV Show: Blessing The Mayor’s Office”


Rosie O’Donnell Says Her Marriage was a Political Protest, Gays Treated Like Holocaust in America

-By Warner Todd Huston

In yet one more example among thousands, we see why loud-mouth, extreme left-wing talker Rosie O’Donnell is wholly unworthy of a national forum. In a recent segment of her satellite radio show Rosie Radio, O’Donnell idiotically claimed that gays were being “rounded up” in America so that a “pink triangle” could be slapped on them just like they were during the Holocaust. But just as obscenely, O’Donnell admitted that her marriage to Kelly Carpenter was only a political statement, one of “civil disobedience,” instead of a marriage of love proving that the whole issue of “gay marriage” has nothing at all to do with rights or “love” but is solely one of politics.

On her show, O’Donnell said of her 2004 marriage:

George Bush, in the middle of a war, had an all-station news conference to announce how horrible it was for the safety of America that gay people were getting married in San Francisco, which pissed me off enough to get on a plane and go get married.

Of course, as in most of what this hack says, O’Donnell lied about what George W. Bush said in 2004. As Tim Graham reminds us, Bush did not call any “all-station” press conferences but in truth only issued a statement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
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Rosie O’Donnell Says Her Marriage was a Political Protest, Gays Treated Like Holocaust in America”


Prominent Democrat’s Hubby Buys Newsweek for $1

-By Warner Todd Huston

Sidney Harman, the 91-year-old retired business executive and husband of California Rep. Democrat Jane Harman, purchased the flailing news magazine Newsweek yesterday. The price tag rang in at an astonishing $1.

Granted one dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, but that is quite a price for a whole business operation, isn’t it?

Still, I don’t blame Mr. Harman for not wanting to put real money toward buying a magazine that has been losing millions on a yearly basis. In fact, $1 might be an exorbitant cost as things stand right now.
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Prominent Democrat’s Hubby Buys Newsweek for $1″


Lt. Col. Allen West: Now THIS is a Real American

Lt. Col. Allen West (Army, retired) is running for Congress in Florida’s Second Congressional District.

This video speaks for itself, but I just have to say that THIS man is a perfect example America’s best and brightest…

www.allenwestforcongress.com

Colonel West’s YouTube Channel

On FaceBook

On Twitter


It’s The End of Days: A Hanna Montana Tribute Act??

-By Warner Todd Huston

For a Sunday headshaker, My Chicago friend Pat Hickey has alerted us to a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. The Seventh Seal is broken, he says. Why is it the end of days? Because there is now a Hannah Montana tribute Act out there plying your local Summerfests and carnivals.

Seriously. A Hanna Montana tribute band? If it isn’t the end of days it’s at least the end of entertainment. Here we have a young girl recreating a fake girl, in fake hair, doing a fake act, for a non-existent band. It is so many levels of manufactured “entertainment” that it boggles the mind.
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It’s The End of Days: A Hanna Montana Tribute Act??”


A Tale of Two Anti-Semitic Rants: Oliver Stone’s Not So Bad, Mel Gibson’s Horrible

-By Warner Todd Huston

Some of you may recall that early in the morning of July 28 of 2006 actor Mel Gibson was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in Los Angeles, California. During that arrest, it was reported that Gibson was alleged to have launched into a brief but vehement denunciation of Jews that were “responsible for all the wars in the world.” Famed at the time for having produced and directed the film The Passion of the Christ (2004), Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade was the feature of news reports throughout the media for weeks after the incident.

The same cannot be said, however, for Oliver Stone who just last weekend launched into his own anti-Semitic rant. Coverage of Stone’s outrageous comments, arguably as bad as Gibson’s, has been met with a virtual shrug from the Old Media, especially the TV newsers.
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A Tale of Two Anti-Semitic Rants: Oliver Stone’s Not So Bad, Mel Gibson’s Horrible”


The U.S. Department of [Social] Just Us

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

In the 2006 movie, Superman Returns, viewers were jarred out of their childhood memories when actor Frank Langella, as Daily Planet editor, Perry White, mangled Superman’s comfortingly familiar patriotism of “Truth, justice and the America Way” to “Truth, justice…and all that other stuff.” When confronted about this near-sacrilegious change in dialogue, screen writers Mike Doughtery and Dan Harris and Director Bryan Singer smugly blew off the outrage using the justification that Superman was an alien without papers, here to save the world, not just America and that the 1945 version of the “American Way” was irrelevant in a new century.

To them, Superman was a world citizen and transnationalist, here to make them a movie profit in Abu Dhabi as well as Peoria, IL.
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The U.S. Department of [Social] Just Us”