Under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch’s Twentieth Century-Fox, a zillion dollar corporation with over a billion in annual box office, James Cameron makes a movie, Avatar, about an average, avaricious, American corporation backed-up by a Marine garrison which is out to exploit or destroy a forest full of “fly-bittin’ savages” who listen to voices from trees for precious “Unobtanium!”

Reality check: if you wish to assay the true value of “Unobtanium,” try getting a return call from James Cameron or a movie deal with 20th Century Fox!

Gee whiz! I grew up believing that Earth would be taken over by a Blob, or an “Invasion of Bodysnatchers,” or a “Brother from Another Planet!” Now, according to Cameron we, you and I, are the space menace! We’re the Romulans! Since when did the United States of America become a member of the Sci-Fi Axis of Evil? Where are Captian Kirk, Spock, and Bones?

Can anyone explain why Cameron and the Hollywood Industrial Complex is hell bent on characterizing our great nation as the embodiment of evil? Could it be that ticket sales overseas in general and in Muslim-tottering regions of the world grow in direct proportion to the level of self-flagellating anti-Americanism in American films?

Heinrich look! 

What is it, Brunhilda? 

Again zoze krazy Amerikaners are making fools of zemselves!

As a matter of fact, if I were a radical Iman with a Mosque in London, Paris, Hampsterdam, or any of the other capitals of the future Eurabia where political correctness trumps national security, I would screen “Avatar” in my Mosque’s main sanctuary every night with matinees daily during Ramadan.

“You see my little Fakhir? This ‘Avatar’ movie provides proof positive that the godless American Infidels have depleted their lands and are now secretly having their way with the gentle people of Pandora just as they have been raping our sacred lands for centuries! That is why we jihad! Do you understand?” 

“Yes, Inmam.” 

“When Allah, praise be he, reigns supreme, when a Fundamentalist Islamic Republic controls all the world’s natural resources, corporations, governments, and peoples only then will the tribes of Pandora and the tribes of desert be out of the Infidel’s reach.  

“But Imam, I think ‘Avatar’ is but a fairytale. Didn’t the Americans liberate Iraq? Enfranchise tens of millions of Muslims with the right to vote? And aren’t they about to do something about that madman running Iran?” 

“Do not speak such blasphemy again, Fakhir or by shariah I shall be obligated to gouge out your eyes and slice out your tongue!”  

It doesn’t have to be this way! If this writer had a $500M budget to make a movie about Omaticayians flying Banchees to protect their Hometree and the Unobtanian beneath it this might be the log line:

Avatar: US Marines liberate the Na’vi from an oppressive Muslim regime as a American business leader helps them to mine Unobtanium so that they may defend their forest nation, feed their Mountain Banshees and nourish their Tree of Souls.

Why is Cameron’s film, Avatar, an act of cultural suicide?

We humanoids, at least the vast majority of us, possess a region deep in the brain called the Limbic System. There, our feelings, thoughts, and actions are in large part processed instantaneously. When you pick up the handle of a hot frying pan, drop the pan, and swear, the combined reflexive response is a product of the Limbic System. The overwhelming majority of Hollywood auteures have lost touch with their Limbic Systems and may therefore be referred to as “Limbeciles.”

Limbeciles are unable to discern that walking off a cliff, shooting yourself in the head, or spending an hour listening to Bill Maher will probably result in death or severe brain damage. That’s why they make films which due damage to the free society and economy which pay them to do so. Is there really a difference between say drilling for oil in Iraq and selling Paul Blart: Mall Cop to unwitting audiences in Kampala, Sanan’a and Dhaka?

Question: What do you call people who benefit greatly with little or no sacrifice, are hateful of the very place and people which have showered them with almost absolute freedom of expression, adoration, and riches, and refuse to accept responsibility for their art and actions?

Answer: Adolescents!

Grow up Hollywood!

Is there a solution? Of course:

A)  Americans who love their country could stop buying tickets to movies that defame it.

B)   Hollywood Limbiciles could suffer a crisis of consciousness and begin making movies that cast less of a dark shadow on their blessed nation.

C)   Or we could scotch tape an I’M STUPID – KICK ME HERE sign with an arrow pointing south onto Lady Liberty’s derriere.

Until that time perhaps we should watch reruns of Buster Crabbe playing Flash Gordon in “The Purple Death From Outer Space.”

And now, you come out with this “Whatever Works” film. What, you think that shemdrick Larry David who plays that louse Yellnikoff can out match me with a formula? Never happen! I created formulas. In one of his rants he tried to pull a fast one on the audience about Job. Yellnikoff whined that all that Job got for his piousness was suffering. So, why suffer? Right? Wrong. I was teaching Job how to be patient! Something you, Yellnikoff, and apparently that David character have never learned.Let me tell you something, Woody, as your father who has tried to give you everything you would need to make a nice life, your attitude hurts me, and I might add your mother, to the quick.  What? I don’t have enough aggravation with this pedophile Michael Jackson who now thinks he’s going to moon-walk into heaven,  that thief Madoff, Obama’s spending spree, and that little rat with a beard, Ahmenijadh! Now, I need tsuris from you too?
 
What got into that head of yours? First, you make “Broadway Danny Rose,” with Mia Farrow, whom your mother and I loved. It was a nice little film that did well in the art houses. If I remember correctly, Mia Farrow’s character, Tina Vetali, starts off with a “Whatever Works” attitude but learns through her acquaintance with your character, that schlamazel, Danny Rose, for whom every good and loyal deed is punished, that there is no solace to be had from acting like an animal, from getting what you can when you can no matter who you hurt along the way. Don’t you remember how she came back to celebrate Thanksgiving with you, Herbie Jason and his parrot, Barnie Dunn the stuttering ventriloquist, and that blind xylophonist?
 
Now, you make this stinker, “Whatever Works.” This, this Yellnikoff character is you. I saw that. Your mother saw that and had to leave the theater before the film ended while it was still dark she was so embarrassed. Everyone in the theater knew the truth.  
 
What? You think you can marry your adopted daughter then absolve yourself by making a movie in which some miserable reprobate tells the audience they’re a bunch of no-good-niks who worry about their vitamins, cholesterol, and their retirement accounts for nothing because life is just a series of mathematical anomalies void of any meaning? That wasn’t what I meant in Ecclesiastics.
 
Where did you ever learn that happiness is found, by “filching” a little something here or a little something there, no matter what the consequences, no matter who is hurt? You know who filches? Pigeons!
 
And, let me ask you this; if “filching” has made you so happy then why is it that you felt it necessary to make such a cynical and angry film? Have you forgotten about the three “L’s,” “Love, Loyalty, and Longevity.”
 
You read Ecclesiastes the wrong way, Woody. Kohelet, the narrator, did not mean that everything we do is futile, vain, void of meaning. He meant that our works, our choices, are a matter for me to judge and that you should fear me and obey my commandments! And for that obedience you will be rewarded with life. In other words, choose life and love. That means turning away from lust and avarice at every opportunity. Look what it got Madoff! Believe me, Kohelet was not saying that you should marry your daughter, adopted or not. I know, I asked him! He was as shocked at the news as we all were.
 
I know you, you’re probably not reading this any more. But, by some miracle if you are, let me ask you something: Would it hurt you to make your mother and I proud  by making a movie about something nice like that gentile Disney or one of the other nice film makers?
 
Woody, you’re nearly seventy-five. You’re too old for this. Whatever we did wrong was in the past. It’s time to forgive and forget. Walking around with a chip on your shoulder will never ever result in you’re finding happiness, filching or no filching.
 
Remember son, a man devoid of religion is like a horse without a bridle!

Your loving father,
 
God

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and earth, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live… — Deuteronomy 30:19

It’s 11:57 in Hadleyville. The movie is “High Noon.” Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) seals an envelope containing his last will and testament. He writes, “To be opened in the event of my death,” on its front panel. A train carrying a freed murderer, Frank Miller, who wants to gun Kane down will arrive in just three minutes.

Marshall Kane has been abandoned by everyone. All that he believed is tarnished. He stands alone without a badge, with only his conscience. His new bride, the church, the state, old friends and allies have all turned their backs.

Suddenly, the train’s shrill whistle shrieks through Hadleyville’s deserted streets with the fury of a raging beast. Its engine passes the town’s church. Under its neat white steeple, the Parson and his flock sit in silent vigil, the congregation perched on their pews like black crows on telephone lines awaiting a hanging. 

The engine passes the barbershop. A carpenter hammers a nail into a fresh cut coffin. Kane’s coffin. Next door, in the Ramirez Saloon, mud crusted cowboys, Miller’s boys, hear the whistle. They pine for the return to the lawless debauchery they enjoyed when Miller ran things.

Sam Fuller, an old friend Kane thought he could trust, cowers in his house in his wife’s shadow. When Fuller hears the whistle he casts his eyes down with shame.

Every man who capitulates to evil has a rationale. Each rationale is a response to a basic human instinct. In Hadleyville, for those who turned their backs and hid, that instinct was fear.  

Winter, 2009, Washington, D.C. It is 11:57 once again. Our new President, Barack Obama, must now choose how he will lead us in our continued response to the menace of Islamic terror.  Will he appease the pacifists who believe the road to peace is paved with inane bumper stickers, humane treatment of savage killers, and good intentions?  Will we capitulate to a world view which celebrates terrorist regimes while demanding that our true democratic allies in the war on terror, who have defended themselves, be tried for war crimes? Or, will he lead us to choose darkness and evil? Will he allow his new attorney general, Eric Holder, a man who orchestrated the release of convicted Puerto Rican terrorists, to prosecute the very people who have risked their lives to successfully protect us these last eight years? Or will President Obama lead us to stand tall and fight, choose light and life?

Will we cower or will we fight? As Marshall Kane straps his holster and gun onto his hip a lonesome cowboy sings…

Do not forsake me,
Oh my darlin’
On this, our weddin’ day.
Do not forsake me,
Oh my darlin’
Wait,
Wait along.

The train arrives at the Hadleyville station. Marshall Kane’s new bride, Amy Fowler, a woman who turned pacifist and Quaker, who turned the other cheek after watching her father and brother gunned down by outlaws, boards the train as outlaw Frank Miller, the paroled murderer Kane arrested, steps onto the station’s platform and meets up with his brother and their men.

Will President Obama order the release of enemy combatants, who value death over life, to rejoin the fight to kill us and destroy our way of life?

Amy had pleaded with Kane to leave town with her, to run. She told him that he did not have to be a hero for her, told him that Miller and his outlaws were no longer his concern, and told him that they had time to get away, run, and move to a new town so that they could open a store and start a new life. She pleaded, “I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong, there’s got to be a better way for people to live.” There is … if all humankind repudiates evil. However, inasmuch as the choice to do good or evil is the most definitive quality of a free human spirit, the choice will be ever-present, people will choose – freely – to do evil. They worship evil.

Will we allow our great tradition of choosing between right and wrong and fighting for what is right to be wasted by those who avoid evil by turning their backs to it?

The cowboy continues his lament…

The noon day train
Will bring Frank Miller.
If I’m a man
I must be brave
And I must face that deadly killer
Or lie a coward,
A craven coward
or lie a coward in my grave

In the bliss filled moments after their wedding ceremony, Will Kane promised Amy that he would try his best, that he would hang up his badge and his gun and live a life of peace. After hearing the news that Miller was coming back, Kane acknowledged her feelings and agreed to run. But on the road out of Hadleyville Kane’s conscience caught up with him. He turned their wagon around and headed back to town and his fate.

He would not betray himself.

We now face the deadly threat of modern Frank Millers, fiends and murderers who have and will – if given the opportunity by our foolishly relaxing the anti-terror network constructed over the last eight years – sacrifice our lives for their vision of a world dominated by a macabre faith that like a cancerous tumor destroys everything in its path.

After receiving the telegram announcing Miller’s arrival, Kane believed he could call upon his “friends” in Hadleyville, form a posse and run Miller and his gang out of town. As Kane could not depend on them we should not depend on our international “friends,” nor shape our national defense policy to placate any other nation on earth. Why? We have liberated peoples from every nation on earth!

Marshall Kane walks alone and shadowless down Main Street to Judge Merrick’s storefront courtroom. The Judge has ripped the Stars and Stripes from the wall and is packing his saddle bags when Kane strides in. Upon seeing that Kane is back, the judge says, “You shouldn’t have returned Will, it was stupid.”

Will answers, “I figured I had to, I had to stay.”

In First Samuels, Chapter 2 Verse 3, Hannah, mother of Samuel, prays for her son:  “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.” Will Kane will be judged by his actions as we will be judged by ours. Evil feeds on equivocation, on appeasement, on the failure to recognize it and on the cowardice that prevents people of peace and goodwill from acting to swiftly destroy it. Will Kane was a man of action and not of words. Will President Obama’s actions speak louder than his words?

Now on his horse, Judge Merrick says, “I’ve been a judge many times in many towns and hope to be a judge again.” He then turns once more in the saddle and adds, “Look this is just a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that ever happens here is really important. Now get out…what a waste.” He rides away. By choosing to run from town to town the judge has chosen to live his life as a refugee. Will we stand and fight or will we become feckless refugees?

And the cowboy continues his song…

Oh, to be torn
betwixt love and duty.
Suposin’ I lose
My fair-haired beauty.
Look at that bid hand move along
Nearin’ high noon

We too are torn between our love of life and liberty, the selfish pursuit of pleasure and the personal sacrifices life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness require.  

Some agonize over the perceived potential for the loss of liberty and will not set aside their selfish concerns in order that our freedom, the freedom so many have sacrificed so very much to secure, may be passed on to future generations. They demand protection from anonymous telephone taps while willingly allowing themselves to be searched every time they arrive at an airport to board a plane, go to a concert or court, or visit a sports arena.

In Hadleyville there are as many reasons for not standing and fighting as there are citizens.

Kane’s young deputy, Harvey Pell, arrives at the Sheriff’s office with an ultimatum, “You want me to stick, you put the word in like I said.” Pell is angry that Will Kane did not tap him to become Marshall and now will stand and fight only if Kane will tell the City Fathers, “The Board of Selectmen,” to anoint him the next Marshall.

Kane answers: “Sure I do [want you to stick], but I’m not buying it [your offer], it’s up to you.” Kane is duty bound – a hero relic of an old Hollywood that celebrated patriotism, the American spirit, and the precious artistic freedom Hollywood owes to it. Harv’ Pell is the French, the Germans, the Russians et al, who enjoy unparalleled freedom brought about by the United States but will join the posse only if their political and financial aspirations are met.

Kane’s next visitor is Deputy Sheriff Herb Baker who stops by to pick up his badge and tell Kane that he can be counted on. But when Baker discovers that he is the only deputy who has re-volunteered to stand and fight, he backs out saying, “This is plain just committing suicide. This town ain’t that low [that so many would refuse to fight]…I ain’t no lawman – I got no stake in this – if you get more let me know.”

And the cowboy’s lament continues…

He made a vow
While in state prison.
Vowed it would be
My life or his’n.
I’m not afraid of death but oh
What will I do
If you leave me?

Kane returns to the Ramirez Saloon, owned by Ellen Ramirez his former lover, where he overhears the bartender saying, “I’ll give you odds Will Kane will be dead five minutes after Frank gets off the train.” Kane dry gulches the bartender. As the bartender wipes the blood from his cut lip he looks up from the barroom floor and says, “You carry a badge and a gun Marshall, you ain’t got no call to do that.” Will Kane answers, “You’re right,” and then asks the men in the saloon to join his posse. They refuse.

Kane enters the church. The Parson greets Kane with a reprimand for his failure to attend regularly.  The Parson is making Kane the enemy, the bad guy, just as many in our nation have made our intelligence and military services the enemy. When Kane announces that Frank Miller has returned the Parson steps aside and allows the Marshall to speak his piece. Marshall Kane asks the congregation for assistance, begs them, but the Sanctuary of the church becomes a chamber of detraction and finger pointing like the misguided, ineffectual and oft evil United Nations.

A man stands in his pew, grabs his lapel with one hand and gestures with the other as he argues in great oratorical style; “Let’s make sure we know what this is all about – he’s [Kane] not marshall any longer – and there are personal differences between them.”  Another shouts, “We put him away once but who stopped him from hanging – the politicians up North. Let them take care of it.” This voice is not unlike those in our nation who demand we do nothing without the approval and consent of the United Nations, an organization with Syria, a known terror state, on its Security Council and Libya, a totalitarian dictatorship, on its Human Rights Commission.

One parishioner seems to take Kane’s side: “If we don’t do what’s right we’re goin’ to have plenty more trouble – there’s only one thing to do and you know what it is.” But this man’s call for action is nullified by the next speaker: “Why didn’t you arrest those three [Miller's sidekicks]? Then we’d only have Frank Miller to deal with?” Had Kane arrested the sidekicks would these same people have protested that their civil rights had been violated inasmuch as they had yet to commit a crime? If Kane had arrested them would they demand release as the demand has been made for the release of war prisoners from Guantanamo?

These protests echo today’s. There are those who claim we should not be the world’s policeman. But, if we do not act in our own self-interest, who will? Who will fill the void? The Germans? Syrians? Russians? Japanese? The cowardly and ignominious French? 

A brave hearted woman in a back pew bolts up and protests, “Don’t you remember what this town was like? How can you sit there and talk and talk and talk.” But someone else stands and asks, “How do we know Miller is on that train anywise?” and the congregation erupts in a low grumble.

Kane looks to the Parson for help and guidance but religion in Hadleyville then was just as confused and misguided as religion is today. The Parson responds in pretzel logic, “Commandments say thou shalt not kill. The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here…If you’re asking me to tell my people to go out and kill or get themselves killed, I’m sorry I don’t know what to say.” In the ancient Hebrew text, the Talmud, it is written, “If your enemy comes to kill you then kill him first.” Of this there is no confusion.

Kane next visits his mentor, retired Marshall Howe. Howe’s response to Kane most illuminates the human condition both then and now. Howe’s a broken man who lives with a Mexican caretaker. On being a lawman he says, “You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so that they can come back and shoot at you again. (NOTE: This is exactly what had been happening in Iraq until the surge) If you’re honest, you’re poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dusty street for what? For nothing – for a tin star.” About Hadleyville’s citizens Howe says resignedly, “It [Miller's release and return] all happened so soon…people got to talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it, maybe because down deep they don’t care, they just don’t care. Get out Will, get out. It’s all for nothin’ Will, all for nothing.”

Has anything changed? Since 9-11 have not multitudes of hysterical Americans identified with the enemy and attacked our lawmen.

As Will Kane walks out onto Howe’s “dusty street” the cowboy resumes his song…

I do not know
What fate awaits me
I only know
I must be brave
And I must face a man
Who hates me…

The Hadleyville clock strikes twelve, ours too will strike again soon. Will Kane stands alone, as we must. Kane relinquishes his badge and says that he is the same man with or without a badge. He must overcome his fears and harden his resolve. He must fight his enemy with or without allies, as we must now.

Don’t think of leaving
Now that I need you by my side
Wait along, wait along
Wait along
Wait along
Wait along, wait along, wait along.

Amy, seated on the train with Ellen Ramirez, hears gunshots, races into town, and finds a body in the middle of the street. It is not Will. She hears more shots and runs to the Marshall’s office but Will is not there.  Amy runs to a window. Will’s holstered six shooter and badge hang next to it. More shots are fired. Amy looks across the street and sees that her husband is pinned down by Miller and his last man standing. Miller’s man runs to the side of the Marshall’s building, takes cover next to the window and continues firing but does not see Amy. Amy, now caught agonizingly between her vow of non-violence and her love for her husband chooses life, as Deuteronomy instructs. She removes Will’s revolver and shoots the outlaw in the back.  

In our little corner of the universe, on our small planet, in our small nation, in our homes, and in our hearts we too are faced with a choice. Since time immemorial we have had to choose between light and darkness, life and death, good and evil.  

In the above passage of Deuteronomy 30:19, God speaks through Moses to his people as they are about to enter Canaan: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

Like Kane and Amy, we must now chose life.

Classic and contemporary Hollywood feature films about America’s heroic contribution to victory in World War II are legion. My favorite three classics are “Casablanca,” the splendid “Victory at Sea” (NBC TV), and “The Longest Day.” During, and for some time after World War II, most American filmmakers celebrated the American fighting spirit which, once awakened, crushed Nazism, defanged the Imperialist Japanese and corralled Communism. Then, American film critics were generally supportive. A glance at reviews published about “Victory At Sea,” contemporary with the series’ release in 1952, are illuminative. The New York Times praised the series for its “rare power”; The New Yorker pronounced the combat footage “beyond compare;” Harper’s proclaimed that “‘Victory at Sea’ [has] created a new art form.” The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Harper’s sing praises of war! The horror, the horror.

American feature films about World War II and the American film critics’ responses reveal a radical shift in Hollywood.

With the bold exception of “Flight 93,” in which our heroic American fighting spirit shines, Hollywood films mock our war effort and worse. Warner Brothers’ “Syriana,” indicts American foreign policy and business interests as co-conspirators responsible for the murderous animus directed at us by otherwise benign leaders. In “Three Kings,” or “The Three Amigo’s Do Iraq,” George Clooney and his men must, as did Caballeros’ Dusty Bottoms, Lucky Day, and Ned Nederlander, decide whether they will take the money and run or stand and fight for the hapless souls they were duty bound to rescue. The Clooney platooney courageously decide to help their wards escape, to IRAN! (God, if you happen to read this essay, please, if I ever pray for help, whatever you do, don’t send George Clooney!)

“World Trade Center,” directed by that Ozymandian pillar of Hollywood morality Oliver Stone, offers up Americans as proud victims able to take a hit, pick themselves up, dust themselves off and in the end, survive. The heroes of Stone’s film are cops and firefighters. They are without doubt real-life heroes each and every time they put on a uniform and report for duty. It’s in their blood and they should be celebrated for it. The caveat here is that it took the destruction of two giant skyscrapers and the savage televised murder of thousands for truculent Hollywood liberals like Stone to acknowledge their heroism. Many people who’ve seen “World Trade Center,” including New York Times’ critic, A.O. Scott, who used “public tragedy,” to describe 9/11 in his review, left the theater feeling understandably sad. But public tragedies include plane crashes, hurricanes, tornadoes, the death of a beloved leader, etc. 9/11 is more than a public tragedy, it was a beastly and cowardly act of war! Where is the celluloid rage! Where are the celluloid heroes who will kill those who design to kill us?

“World Trade Center,” reviews appearing in national newspapers differ sharply from those written for “Victory at Sea.” They demure. The New Yorker magazine’s Film Critic David Dentry, praised “World Trade Center,” but only after constructing a blast proof wall between himself and conservative commentators who are waxing eloquent about the film. Richard Schickel of Time opined “’World Trade Center’ is…a hymn in plainsong that glorifies that which is best in the American spirit.” Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote, “…’World Trade Center’ celebrates the ties that bind us, the bonds that keep us going.” What has kept us going is the quality of “rare power,” which The New York Times ascribed to “Victory at Sea.”

We have to be more than tough victims, we have to be righteous victors.

The national buzz surrounding the releases of “Flight 93,” and “World Trade Center” has been characterized by the question: “Are we ready to revisit 9/11?” Just three years after Pearl Harbor, in 1944, Spencer Tracy as General James Doolittle was flying across motion picture screens with Van Johnson and Robert Mitchum en route to bomb Tokyo.

Where are our celluloid heroes when we need them?

One’s jumping up and down on daytime talk show sofas proclaiming that psychiatry is a pseudo science. Another helped hapless Iraqis, probably Sunnis, escape to Iran! One other, who would not fit into a tent let alone fatigues, roams about lambasting the very institutions which afford him the liberty to make millions discrediting them. I don’t think we’ll see an “Inman, Where’s My Mosque,” movie on Egyptian, Iranian, or Saudi movie theater screens soon. Movies are forbidden in Saudi Arabia.

Then, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Burton, Clark Gable, Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Sal Mineo, Gregory Peck, and John Wayne volunteered for screen action. Laurence Fishburne, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and others have portrayed World War II heroes as well. But the stars have not come out for this war. Where are Ben Affleck, Pierce Brosnan, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, Robert De Niro, Paul Giamatti, Samuel L. Jackson, Edward Norton, Sean Penn, and, again, Fishburne, Gooding, Hanks, and Washington? At the Ivy having lunch?

A sign once stood in a snowy Rocky Mountain meadow at the main gate of Camp Hale, Colorado – the training camp for the 10th Mountain Division, America’s first ski troops, citizen soldiers recruited by the National Ski Patrol! On this white sign there was a bold black caricature of Adolph Hitler. “WE’VE GOT A DATE WITH THIS SON OF A BITCH, LET’S BE ON TIME!” was the caption which ran in big bold black letters next to Hitler’s mug. Sadly, tragically, realistically, history has asked our nation on another date with destiny. Will Hollywood pacify us in order that we might behave like good victims or inspire us to fight for victory?

The boogie-woogie bugle boy of company “C” is playing his tune, Hollywood. Reveille! Reveille!