This is a good time to bring up something that’s been bothering me for a couple of years now. As someone who has made his way in the world all on my own and without the help of rich parents or family connections, do I resent the fact that Tim Russert’s son Luke has been shot by the cannon of nepotism into a job men twice his age and with ten times his experience only dream of?

Actually, no.

This is how the world works. Relationships matter and that’s life. I do, however, resent the fact that he’s not up to the job and that every time he’s on MSNBC talking about his Congressional beat I get “Bugsy Malone” flashbacks.

And just to keep the movie metaphors flowing, there’s also that whole “Vertigo” vibe, where Luke is Kim Novak and MSNBC is the sad and twisted Jimmy Stewart trying to creepily recreate someone they lost by dressing some wannabe up to look just like them. Whatever’s going on between MSNBC and Luke Russert. it’s not healthy.

And what better proof of that than this series of sanctimonious tweets from Russert where he laments how “sick” a video game commercial makes him feel because it doesn’t “reflect the costs of war”:

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While denizens of Hollywood are running around praising the Occupy-Whatevers as an articulate, non-violent example of “democracy in action” and adopting the Occupy rhetoric, a new anthem of sorts has been unveiled to inspire these “non-violent” folks to greater activism.

But, for a “non-violent” movement, their new theme song (running nearly nine minutes long) is full of bloodlust and childish name-calling belying that claim to thoughtful democracy.

The song, “We Stand as One,” created by Grammy nominee Joseph Arthur, seems to fall short of the mythical claim that the Occupy movement is a non-violent, thoughtful “movement.” Filled with deep lyrics such as calling Occupy enemies “pigs,” warnings that their homes will burn and that the blood of Occupy enemies will be the Occupiers’ “paint,” this song sounds more like a call to violence than an appeal to the better angels of our nature.

Arthur has worked with such rock notables as Michael Stipe of REM and Peter Gabriel, and his 1999 EP “Vacancy” was nominated for a Grammy.

As Dan Gainor says, this song lays out an “entire rationale of why ‘we Occupy Wall Street.’” But while the song mentions “taking back our soul,” country, control, health care and the like, it also indulges scenes of violence reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. (more…)

Ex-supermodel Carre Otis has been mostly silent about her high-profile marriage – and divorce – to Oscar-nominated actor Mickey Rourke. But when Rourke started bringing up their marriage again in the wake of his recent career resurgence, Otis refused to hold back.

“Beauty, Disrupted,” Otis’s revealing autobiography, attempts to set the record straight on her combustible marriage to “The Wrestler” star. The book is far more than the “she said” side of a shattered romance. Otis shares her tumultuous days as a young model, recounts the repeated sexual abuse she suffered through the years and tells how she conquered addiction through a sturdy application of Buddhism and inner strength.

Otis, a married mother of two who now calls a small Colorado town home, has been writing fiction for years based on her dysfunctional California upbringing before the notion of an autobiography came up.

”I actually created what I hoped would be a television show called ‘Marin Diaries,’” Otis says. Rourke’s public comments about their relationship convinced her to set that project aside to tell her own story.

“On one hand, it had nothing to do with Mickey, and on the other hand, it was, ‘oh, no you don’t,’” she says of Rourke’s media blitz, which she says included a false accusation that she was once gang raped. “I had been silent for so long and very diplomatic. In a way it’s very textbook abuse survivor, continue to protect and be silent about it.”

“Beauty, Disrupted” details how Rourke controlled Otis’s modeling career, physically abused her, and repeatedly put her in harm’s way. The latter ranged from an impromptu dinner with noted mobster John Gotti to the time when she shot herself in the shoulder after Rourke put a loaded gun in her purse.

Rourke is a big part of “Disrupted,” but “the theme of victim and perpetrator goes throughout that lifetime for me,” she says.

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The very same leftists who will describe to you the horrors of the self-imposed morality code Hollywood lived by for decades are now creating their very own morality codes. Heaven forbid gay people receive the same satiric treatment as white, Christian, conservative males or any other group. Heaven forbid we forget that gay men and women are inoculated from satire in this country.

There is absolutely no difference from what you’re about to read below and those who defended the Motion Picture Production Code. These people are prigs, censors, and humorless moralists of the highest order:

To me, the series premiere of ABC’s new, Tim Allen-led sitcom Last Man Standing seemed simply annoying, what with its low-brow and overly testosterone-fueled humor. Macho jokes about what it means to be a man? Simply not my cup of tea, I thought. I was going to turn it off a few minutes in, but I kept watching half-heartedly until the show’s lead character Mike — played by Allen — uttered a “joke” somewhere near the end of the first half hour. And that’s when I lost it.

Let me set up the “joke” for you: During a conversation about his grandson’s daycare, Mike Baxter (Allen) laments that his daughter’s choice of schools is “hippie-hippie rainbow.” Fine, sure, it’s a stupid comment, but it gets worse. Mike’s daughter Kristin (Alexandra Krosney) explains to her dad that the teacher at this school “teaches sensitivity and tolerance.” Then comes Allen’s seemingly homophobic bomb: “I just don’t think your kid should go to that school,” his character Mike says, filled with disdain. “You know how that ends up: Boyd dancing on a float.”

I’ll reiterate the offensive part: “You know how that ends up: Boyd dancing on a float,” said with total disgust, as if a boy dancing on a parade float is an unacceptable, bad thing. My response: Huh? How is a boy dancing on a parade float anything but a joyful thing?

And that’s just the beginning; this joyless crybaby goes on for SEVEN more paragraphs.

How is that joke any different than the sitcom shots taken every quarter-hour at conservatives, Christians, tea partiers, and anyone who refuses to worship the State?

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What you’re seeing through the use of celebrities like George Lopez, Janeane Garofalo, and now Harry Belafonte–all of whom have attacked Cain’s “blackness,” is more than just dumb, cruel Leftists spouting off.  This is a coordinated attack that, with the help of Obama’s MSM Palace Guards, is determined to undermine Cain’s ability to attract the black vote.

Cain isn’t just a threat to Barack Obama; he’s an existential threat to both the left and the corrupt media. If just 15% to 20% of Black Americans start voting Republican, the Democrats are done as a party. And with each passing day, as conservatives openly embrace Mr. Cain, the MSM’s immoral and cynical use of  the Race Card becomes less and less effective.

Those who remember how Caucasian liberals in the Senate and the MSM attempted to destroy Clarence Thomas also know things are going to get much uglier for Cain if he continues his political ascent. What we’ve seen so far are just scouting parties in preparation for what will surely be a ruthless ground assault on Mr. Cain’s identity.

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Now that George Clooney’s been involved in yet another high-profile, political box office disappointment, it’s predictably time for the Los Angeles — we read it so you don’t have to – Times to charge to the rescue with the absurd claim that the current 100% failure rate of left-wing films over the last few years has nothing to do with partisan politics. In fact, the L.A. Times practices the art of The Big Lie through the ridiculous claim that the lack of partisan politics might explain their failure.

Let’s start with this nonsense:

And yet [Clooney's] “Ides” seems bound for the same ephemeral status as so many other political allegories that have come and gone in recent years: “Man of the Year,” “Swing Vote,” “Bulworth,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Wag the Dog,” “Atlas Shrugged,” The Manchurian  Candidate.”  They’re movies that run the ideological gamut, yet most of them garnered middling reactions from both critics and the American public. And almost none of them have endured (with the possible, though only possible, exception of “Wag the Dog”).

There are plenty of challenges to dramatizing Washington these days. Among the much-digested issues: Real-life drama can seem so outlandish that no scripted entertainment can match it, while winds shift too quickly for comments on the process to be relevant by the time a film comes out. There may or may not have been something novel in “Ides’” message about the toll the system takes on idealism years ago, before Barack Obama’s presidency; there’s not much fresh nearly three years into his term.

So the theory here is that by the time these films come out, the subject matter they cover is no longer hot and therefore audiences have lost interest. How exactly does that theory apply to “The Manchurian Candidate” remake, “Bulworth,” and “Man of the Year?” Whatever your politics, those films aren’t ripped from the headlines or out to capture some political zeitgeist. There’s no stale date when it comes to “evil” weapons manufacturers, a politician who discovers the joy of telling (his version of) the truth, or the age-old tale of an everyman with a shot at the presidency. But the single most wrong-headed example here is “Lions for Lambs,” which actually was released in the heat of the political moment it wanted so desperately to capture: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, it starred three A-listers and still managed to flop.

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Here we go again. Prepare to be shocked, appalled — even offended! — by another attack on Christians, namely Catholics, by none other than pope hater Sinead O’Connor. I’m just kidding about being offended; it’s obvious she’s screaming for attention (killing the pope? bet it took her a few weeks to think up that one) and, unfortunately for her, this article won’t just be about her but all of Hollywood. Sorry, Sinead.

What the formerly relevant singer said is not surprising, but then again, it’s never surprising to hear a celebrity disparaging Christianity. Remember this gem from Rosie O’Donnell?

I have news for Hollywood. It’s not risque to attack Christians, and it’s long been a cliché even for our side to say it’s overdone. If you want to be risque, attack Islam, atheists, or agnostics. My husband is a cradle Catholic (meaning raised Catholic), and he says most of these attacks just roll off his back. Most don’t offend or bother him anymore because it’s simply become the norm. But that doesn’t mean it should be ignored or criticism should be spared for trite offense-mongering like Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” video.

If you don’t want to watch the video, I understand. Lady Gaga is dressed in a blood red habit and swallows a rosary. This desecration of the rosary is offensive to Catholics because of our veneration (not worship) of Mary, mother of God. The director of the video claims Lady Gaga just wanted to take in the Holy. As a lifelong Catholic, Miss Gaga should know better than that, and if she wanted to “take in the Holy,” there are ways of doing it that won’t cause as many digestive problems, like attending Mass and taking Communion. (more…)

Samuel L. Jackson is the latest actor of color to accuse the Tea Party of racism.

Late last month, Oscar winner Morgan Freeman blamed racism on the Republican party’s eagerness to see President Barack Obama defeated.

This week, Jackson told a reporter from New York Magazine (after said reporter used the scurrilous Washington Post story on Rick Perry’s so-called racist rock) that the reason Tea Partiers want Obama out because of his skin color, not his policies.

“The division of the country is not about the government having too much power. I think everything right now is geared toward getting that guy out of office, whatever that means,” he said, echoing Freeman. “It’s not politics. It is not economics. It all boils down to pretty much to race. It is a shame.”

Their collective proof is so poorly constructed even a half-asleep Chris Matthews could swat it aside without eyeballing a teleprompter.

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The artistic community is always ready to stand against censorship – and we know that because it constantly tells us so.  If you want to drape an American flag across a walkway to make a statement by letting goateed hipster art aficionados traipse across it, you’re a bold visionary.  If you want to write a novel about shooting a Republican president, you’re courageously speaking truth to power.  If you want to smear pachyderm dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary, you’re bravely facing down the forces of religious bigotry.

Hell, you not only have a right to do it, but you have a right to have it federally funded through the NEA by the very taxpayers whose collective mind you intend to blow by getting so darn real.   It’s right there in the Constitution, amid the emanations and adjacent to the penumbras.  Oh, but if you accurately depict the acts leading up to the murder of nearly 3000 Americans, you’ve got to be stopped.  After all, the artistic elite can’t let you upset the Krugman-esque party line that 9/11 was really about Bu$Hitler and Company’s wars for oil or something.

The artistic community is anti-censorship right up until the second it decides it wants something censored.  Then it piles on.

A little background.

Steve Reich is a Pulitzer-winning composer who lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center when the planes hit on September 11, 2001.  He was out of town at the time, but his family was home.  They barely escaped, but the experience was so emotionally traumatic that it was only as the 10th anniversary of this monstrous crime approached that he was able to finally express his feelings through his art.  You would think the artistic community would praise him – well, you would think that if you had not been paying attention and still believe that it possessed the capacity for shame at its own rank hypocrisy.

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The flashy headlines you’re seeing everywhere are grossly unfair. Read the full story for the full context:

Oscar-nominated actor Terrence Howard left a life-threatening message on a stranger’s voicemail, and RadarOnline.com has exclusively obtained the shocking audio.

In the message, left early in the morning of August 31, Terrence identifies himself before going off on an angry tirade about the source calling his wife.

“N**ga, you been calling my wife… If you call my wife again I’m going to come to your house and I’m going to cut your f***ing throat,” Terrence says in the message.

“Understand that. I’m gonna tell you this one time. You call my wife again, I’m going to kill you.”

Except… Howard was responding to a prank and a stupidly executed one at that. Upon realizing he had made a mistake, Howard called back and apologized:

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You don’t have to pay Newsday.com’s over-priced subscription fee to see that the New York publication has gone off the rails. A quick perusal of their free content shows a troubling number of racist, sexist, and insensitive postings. One posting told Hurricane Irene victims to “suck it up and stop bitching”.

The worst hate found in Newsday.com’s postings, though, is directed at President Obama. One posting called the President a “mutt,” another declared him a “clown,” “spineless,” and a “complete loser.” The more you read, however, the more troubling the rhetoric gets. One Newsday post declares  Obama “a socialist” who wants to “bring the country to its knees.”

But it’s the openly racist attacks occurring at Newsday that are the most disturbing. One of their postings accuses the President of being a glue sniffer who only speaks in “one or two word grunts.” The question “Do your knuckles bleed from dragging them on the ground all the time?” is asked.

Chaz Bono, who recently became a man after receiving a sex change operation,  isn’t spared either. One homophobic Newsday post mocks with “dude looks like a lady,” another wonders if Chaz received a “real penis and testicles.”

Why Newsday.com would post such openly hateful, racist and homophobic material is beyond explanation. But if Newsday.com is going to go out of their way to deceptively describe Big Hollywood comments as “postings” and be as staggeringly and shamelessly dishonest as this…

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Did you know that Texas Governor Rick Perry and President George W. Bush are just like the fictional, prehistoric, sword-wielding, mass murderer, Conan the Barbarian? Well, Time Magazine entertainment reporter Richard Corliss is here to inform you all about it in his review of the new action movie released this week based on the Robert E. Howard character. What is it with these people that they have to bring their hatred for Republicans into their reviews about films that have nothing whatever to do with politics?

It is clear that Corliss is not a fan of this flick, for sure. And he mixes metaphors and abuses sayings to beat the band to show his disdain. But it is his second, non-sequitur-filled paragraph that goes for Perry’s and W’s throats. Corliss features this attack prominently in the second paragraph of the review so that no one will miss it.

Portrait of George W. Bush?

Corliss describes how at the beginning of the movie a young Conan watches his entire family slaughtered in front of him. To Corliss, this seems somehow “kind of like” the way Saddam Hussein plotted to kill George W. Bush’s father, H.W. Bush.

As a boy (played by Leo Howard), he watches in horror while the ruthless warlord Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) humiliates and murders Conan’s father (Ron Perlman); it’s kind of like Saddam Hussein’s plot to assassinate George H.W. Bush, which supposedly led son W. to invade Iraq and chase down Saddam. Conan, though, grows up to be less like 43, the smiling tiger, and more like current Texas governor Rick Perry, with a compulsive appetite for red-meat rivalries. This barbarian has compiled an endless list of enemies and vows, as Perry did with Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, to make life pretty ugly for all of them.

Uh, sorry, Richie, it is not “kind of like” anything of the kind. In fact, it is just a left-wing trope that W. Bush invaded Iraq because he was trying to get even with Saddam for plotting to kill his daddy. There is no evidence at all of this nonsensical claim. W. laid out his reasons for going into Iraq pretty clearly through his discussions with the U.N. and the presentation that he had Secretary Colin Powell give. Revenge was nowhere in the mix. (more…)

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This NBC News deceptive edit had just started to take off in the left-wing mainstream media when Breitbart.TV’s Editor-in-Chief Larry O’Connor revealed the full context of the quote and stopped the smear in its tracks.

By the way, jobless claims are up this week to 408,000, and a concerned President Obama has just interrupted his vacation to release this statement from Martha’s Vineyard…

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It really is too bad Newsweek editor Tina Brown was unable to control her worst instincts.  With last month’s cover story of Sarah Palin — which was widely praised — it looked as though Brown might have decided to revive the leftist rag’s awful reputation for bias. But as the saying goes…

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Ooopsie. Looks like all is not honey and roses in the left-wing, out of the mainstream land of Huffington Post. When one of the site’s most popular bloggers and celebrities calls HuffyPo readers stupid, it makes for a tense atmosphere among the out of the stratosphere left.

Alec Baldiwn, famed for his left-wing diatribes — oh, and some acting here and there — took to Twitter once again to criticize the readers and commenters at HuffPo after a gaggle of negative comments posted at the tail end of one of his latest HuffPo screeds.

“The reading comprehension level of the HuffPo comments folks is alarmingly low. I mean, downright awful,” Baldwin lamented.

Now, usually when I write about things like this I go into why the comment by the writer was made, what misconceptions were evinced by his critics, and what his response was to those critics… but it’s Alec Baldwin and Huffington Post we are talking about here. Making sense of anything that goes on there is somewhat impossible, not to mention a waste of time.

Suffice to say, it is interesting to see leftists calling each other names. And this isn’t the only time Alec Baldwin has scolded readers of HuffPo. He’s done it on Twitter before. (more…)

Some of you might remember Indiewire’s Anthony Kaufman’s outrageously obscene and patronizing reaction when a *gasp* black conservative (Sonnie Johnson) appeared onscreen in support of Sarah Palin in “The Undefeated.” It was a revealing look at the dark side of an ideology that takes personal and comes out swinging with a vengeance whenever non-white, non-Christian, non-males escape the Liberal Plantation by daring to think independently of the Leftist collective.

Kaufman:

For me, the most shocking moment in “The Undefeated,” however, comes with the appearance of a black person about two-thirds of the way through. I’m not sure if it’s what Bannon had in mind when he wanted to seize the audience’s attention, but the arrival of black conservative female activist Sonnie Johnson made me realize just how white everyone appears to be, in both Palin’s Alaska and Bannon’s Tea Party.

Translation: Any black person who doesn’t think like I do is obviously a ”token” willing to be being used by the Right.

Kaufman did eventually apologize to Johnson (her memorable response is here), but like I said, his first reaction was very revealing.

Today, apparently because the writer/director is “a white Republican,” Kaufman attacks the integrity of a film he admits he hasn’t seen. And the title of the suspect film is – wait for it, wait for it — “Fear of a Black Republican.” 

Coincidence?

I think not.

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Though Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray links to a number of stories he considers to be acts of media spin surrounding the box office numbers attached to “The Undefeated’s” impressive opening weekend (yes, I stand by that), my analysis from last week is also included. Which is rather strange when you consider that I used Box Office Mojo’s own numbers to cut through the MSM’s dishonest ”flop” spin with a contextual apples-to-apples comparison to other films in the same genre.   

Essentially, Gray accuses me and others of going into sub-sub genres in order to make our case. Well, that was the whole point of my piece and I made no secret of the fact that I was doing just that. When you’re analyzing box office, you don’t compare Hugh Grant romcoms to James Cameron blockbusters and you don’t compare the biography of a political figure to “Madonna: Truth or Dare.” If comparing genres to genres is a dishonest way to judge a film’s box office performance, why does Gray’s own web site, uhm, compare genres to genres?

Ahem.

What’s interesting, however, is that after complaining about those of us who he all but accuses of  rooting around for numbers until we find ones we like, Gray then doubles down in this same vein, extrapolating the numbers he needs to make an alternate case … starting with this:

Within the minor political documentary sub-genre, The Undefeated’s $6,532 opening weekend per-theater average ranked 33rd out of the 91 limited openings tracked over the past 30 years, normalized for ticket price inflation. Among all documentaries, it was in the middle of the pack. Hardly worthy of hyperbole.

Well, now I’m really confused. If  ”normalizing for ticket price inflation” is important for box office analysis, why doesn’t a box office analysis site like, say, Box Office Mojo normalize for inflation? Moreover, comparing a specialty genre like a political documentary to “all documentaries” — which presumably includes films such as “March of the Penguins” — is bringing oranges to an apple party — comparing ”Two Weeks Notice” to “Avatar.” And again, if those distinctions don’t matter, why does Gray’s own box-office analysis site break sports films, for example, down into 16 different sub-genres — including two for football. 

Seems like an awful waste of energy over numbers that ultimately have no meaning.

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Man alive, when you require 2700 words to explain your way out of 900, maybe it’s best to just …. stay down.

Early on, even before Big Government opened, when Big Hollywood was still in its infancy, I was introduced to Conor Friedersdorf through an email he sent to Andrew Breitbart asking him for an editorial job. Without comment, Andrew forwarded Conor’s email and since I was still green, I didn’t really know what to make of someone who felt that he should be installed in a position where he would ensure the political arguments made by our contributors were intellectually sound (that was the crux of his inquiry — really). Did Andrew agree with him? Had he forwarded the email to make some sort of point?

Brei-i-i-i-itbaaaart!!!

But the more of Conor’s inquiry I read, the wider the smile reached across my face. It was obvious the  author was a young, arrogant, self-serious clown who thought he was pretty special but was really only blessed with the necessary lack of self-awareness required to allow him to keep on keeping on without ever noticing that the whole wide world was laughing at him — especially his liberal friends who only kept him around because he was useful. Just as Colonel Klink on “Hogan’s Heroes” was never aware he was being used by Colonel Hogan — that he was a walking joke respected by no one and only flattered when it was necessary to get him to help the other side – so too is Conor Friedersdorf.

If you read the opening paragraphs of Conor’s reactionary and defensive response to us (and Breitbart specifically — who Conor is somewhat obsessed with), this is how he presents his conservative bonifides:

I’ve shown that the DEA callously prevents sick people from getting useful therapy, highlighted work done by the Institute for Justice to advance economic freedom, called out the TSA for its harassment of air travelers, noted that kidney patients are dying needlessly, urged on efforts to rein in excessive public employee pensions in California, called for a repeal of the light-bulb law, highlighted Orwellian threats to privacy, and complained that federal prosecutors misallocate resources.

I’ve profiled Gary Johnson, formulated 11 questions all presidential candidates should be asked to test their civil liberties bonifides, urged the tea party movement to embrace Mitch Daniels, warned against the inexperience of Michele Bachmann, and even curated nearly 100 fantastic pieces of journalism!

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