Hollywood-pocrisy: Waterboarding Okay for Movie Criminals, Not Real Life Terrorists
by Debbie SchlusselToday, “The Last House on the Left” debuts in theaters. It’s a remake of Wes Craven’s 1972 movie of the same name. The movie–while infinitely better than the original (which was supposedly making an anti-war statement, but was just torture porn)–is still torture/snuff-porn, and I don’t recommend it (see my reviews of this weekend’s new movies, including “Last House”).
But one point in the movie bears noting–the use and applause for waterboarding.
The story of “Last House” is that of a girl and her friend tortured by a gang of criminals. The girl (Sara Paxton, who “graduated” from kids’ show “Darcy’s Wild Life” to snuff-porn–talk about regressing) is raped and left for dead. When her parents discover that the people they welcomed into their house are the perpetrators, they take revenge.
Among the revenge mechanisms the parents employ to kill these thugs is waterboarding. They waterboard one of the thugs in the kitchen sink (and do something else far more disturbing–a stunt that criminals committed in the William Devane vehicle, “Rolling Thunder“). I watched the audience rightfully applaud this. The guy was a brutal killer and accessory to rape. He deserved it. It’s the true justice we rarely see in our clogged, broken “justice” system. And I remember that the audience also applauded when Wesley Snipes waterboarded a (non-Muslim) terrorist hijacker in the airplane toilet in “Passenger 57.” He deserved it, too, and Snipes was trying to save the people on the flight.
So, I ask myself (and you), why do Hollywood liberals applaud the use of waterboarding on a criminal thug who only tortured and/or murdered two women and on a non-Muslim airplane hijacker, yet it’s not okay to do it to men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who murdered 3,000 Americans and knows of future plans to snuff out many more?
Yeah, I know, it’s “only a movie.”
But if it’s so bad and so noxious to Hollywood libs, maybe they should try to take it out of movies on which they make oodles of money, the way they’re being urged to do with smoking.
And if it’s so bad, why do American audiences cheer when criminal thug murderers get deservedly waterboarded onscreen? They cheer because they support it. This is what America wants us to do to save lives.
And I say, before President Obama closes Gitmo, let’s install a special “Passenger 57″ airplane toilet (and a “Last House on the Left” kitchen sink). We can send Wesley Snipes there to do his dirty work and work off the taxes he evaded (for which he was prosecuted).
That’s a criminal sentence I’d support.
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50 Comments
Liberals are against waterboarding even in these cases because the victims aren't conservatives. Waterboard Rush, W, most posters and readers here, and anyone else that is a conservative and the left would be ecstatic. But talk about waterboarding Gitmo detainees and liberals start spewing how the U.S. is no better than anyone else.
The funny thing about that is that liberals don't think the U.S. is any better than anyone else regardless.
htt://lonewolfarcher.blogspot.com/
Liberals are against waterboarding even in these cases because the victims aren't conservatives. Waterboard Rush, W, most posters and readers here, and anyone else that is a conservative and the left would be ecstatic. But talk about waterboarding Gitmo detainees and liberals start spewing how the U.S. is no better than anyone else.
The funny thing about that is that liberals don't think the U.S. is any better than anyone else regardless.
http://lonewolfarcher.blogspot.com/
Ah, but in this movie they can also use that other tired axiom, "But it was for the children!"
Obama has ordered the halt to calling Gitmo and others like them as 'enemy combatants'.
It doesn't fit with his prefered term: 'innocent bystanders'.
By some sick & twisted "logic" that (to me at least) is totally beyond comprehension and beneath contempt, liberals are hard-wired (by peer pressure, leftist professors, biased liberal media, etc.) to recoil at the very thought of waterboarding mass-murderous Muslim terrorist thugs- even when it leads to saving their own miserable hides.
It seems that the (vast) majority of the Western world has been successfully indoctrinated into worshiping the ludicrous doctrine of Political Correctness ABOVE ALL ELSE- even if it means that their own loved ones are at more of a risk.
One would think that this deranged collective mind-set would be a biological impossibility given the inborn instinct for self-survival, but alas.
I believe that waterboarding should only be reserved for terrorist "suspects", but when lunatic/homicidal Jihadis are actually caught red-handed, then a FAR worse fate should await them all.
My personal favorite is General "BlackJack" Pershing's solution:
"Just before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks on the United States forces in the Philippines by Muslim extremists. So General Pershing captured 50 terrorists, and had them tied to posts for execution. He then had his men bring in two pigs and slaughter them in front of the, now horrified, terrorists.
Muslims detest pork, because they believe pigs are filthy animals. Some of them simply refuse to eat it, while others won't even touch pigs at all, nor any of their by-products. To them, eating or touching a pig, its meat, its blood, etc., is to be instantly barred from Paradise (and those virgins), and doomed to hell.
The soldiers then soaked their bullets in the pigs' blood, and proceeded to execute 49 of the terrorists by firing squad. The soldiers then dug a big hole, dumped in the terrorist's bodies, and covered them in pig blood, entrails, etc. They let the 50th man go.
And for the next 42 years, there was not a single Muslim extremist attack anywhere in the world."
By some sick & twisted "logic" that (to me at least) is totally beyond comprehension and beneath contempt, liberals are hard-wired (by peer pressure, leftist professors, biased liberal media, etc.) to recoil at the very thought of waterboarding mass-murderous Muslim terrorist thugs- even when it leads to saving their own miserable hides.
It seems that the (vast) majority of the Western world has been successfully indoctrinated into worshiping the ludicrous doctrine of Political Correctness ABOVE ALL ELSE- even if it means that their own loved ones are at more of a risk.
One would think that this deranged collective mind-set would be a biological impossibility given the inborn instinct for self-survival, but alas.
I believe that waterboarding should only be reserved for terrorist "suspects", but when lunatic/homicidal Jihadis are actually caught red-handed, then a FAR worse fate should await them all.
Torture is wrong in all cases. It is proven to be an ineffective tool to gain information time and time again. Anybody in the world will say their own mother is the leader of a terrorist network if they torture them enough.
Torture also puts our own soldiers at risk by giving our enemies a moral "excuse" to their actions.
And people cheer when people get waterboarded because they are sick bastards that enjoy watching torture, not unlike the people that slow down to 5 mph to watch the blood coagulating on the side of the highway after an accident.
And torture isn't a liberal or conservative issue.
How do you know the makers of the movie _aren't_ conservative since they put that in the film? And have any 'liberals' complained about it being in the film? Also Passenger 57 is from 1992, when I daresay waterboarding wasn't part of the zeitgeist yet.(we just called it drowning) I just think this is a non-arguement. Is anyone complaining about this movie because of that?
Yeah, agreed. A lot of our thinking on Hollywood is like minorities are encouraged to think about Hollywood. You have no power, you can't win unless we show you favor. These films were probably made by conservatives, as were 300, Spiderman, Sin City, the Dark Knight and most of Hollywood's top movies. We ARE a definite minority in H'Wood. But our work keeps it in business.
How can you say anything is 'wrong' Most likely you adhere to tenets of moral relativism where there is no right or wrong, good or evil.
Many of the same folks who rabidly denounce torture support abortion rights – now there is an irony. Either life is sacred or it is not
Liberals think they can make friends with terrorists, but that conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh are the enemy! LOL
Wrong. Waterboarding works. Abu Zubayda broke after 35 seconds of being waterboarded. His confessions saved lives.
"Torture is wrong in all cases."
My, how arrogant you are! How certain! How intolerant of the opposition!
BTW, torture DOES work, if you're trying to extract information. Just ask anyone who's been trained to bear torture. Because the question isn't "Will you break?" but "When will you break?"
Part of your problem is that you make no distinction between torture used for intelligence collecting and torture used because the torturers are evil sadists who enjoy inflicting pain. Furthermore, you fail to define what constitutes torture–is waterboarding really torture to begin with? You don't even want to debate that issue. You just declare it is. And we're supposed to agree with you, otherwise we have to put up with your pantywaist whining that we're a bunch of meanies.
Furthermore, our enemies don't need a "moral excuse" for their actions. Did you see what happened in Abu Ghraib before the US got there? They don't need an excuse, and anyone who would pretend this gives them one is wilfully blinded by their own stupidity.
The original "Last House on the Left" was not "just torture-porn" as you describe it. It's idiotic to label something "torture porn" just because it is violent.. Passion of the Christ, a film which many religious people love, is also torture porn I guess, at least by your guidelines.
Also, calling a fictional film "snuff-porn" is just plain stupid. Do you know what snuff means?
Liberal pablum. katu ought voluteer for a session. See how fast it worked on KSM, "aledgedly". We board 'em, the Predator drones smoke 'em. Yo, liberals, weakness is a disease terrorists can smell. sniff, sniff…they can smell you katu.
Debbie, while I am not planning on seeing this movie, I must disagree with your labeling it "snuff porn". Snuff films are intended to titillate, while the rape scene in this film is clearly intended to disgust audiences and make them cheer for the bad guys to get their comeuppance at the end of the film. Not the same thing at all.
Liberals are against waterboarding of terrorists, not because it's torture (which it is not), but for two reasons:
(a) Because they are stringently anti-war, they see 9/11 as a great crime, not as the act of war that it was. So their attitude toward Al-Qaeda and other terrorists is no different than it would be toward other criminals. We don't waterboard other criminals, they reason, so we shouldn't waterboard terrorists either.
(b) They believe a country should be morally judged by how it treats its worst criminals and enemies. That is the ultimate standard for how a nation should behave, in their eyes. So if we refuse to waterboard terrorists, that shows that we are morally superior, and that makes liberals feel good about themselves. The fact that it may cost innocent lives is secondary to this "moral principle."
Of course torture works. Katu sounds like the sheep bleating "violence doesn't solve anything". The reality is that violence ALWAYS solves everything, just not the way the sheep would like.
Evidently you've never been tortured. Write me back if you want to know about real-life torture, way worse than water-boarding. I know a good deal about it. I lived it. And survived. It works wonderfully well.
"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue–and thoroughly immoral–doctrine that 'violence never solves anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."
- Robert Heinlein
"OMG!! Liberals did this then the they made a fictional movie about something!!!!!"
I don't think Debbie even knows the definition of "hypocrisy". A good start would be to find an actual example of someone behind this movie actually condemning water boarding. And then an example of that same person (not someone who knows that person. It has to be the same person) actually committing the act (not a fiction simulation of the act). That would be an act of hypocrisy.
Just more hollow irresponsible hate fueled hysteria from a profession scold and the worst critic on the internet.
and another thing:
@ "They believe a country should be morally judged by how it treats its worst criminals and enemies. That is the ultimate standard for how a nation should behave, in their eyes. So if we refuse to waterboard terrorists, that shows that we are morally superior, and that makes liberals feel good about themselves." – Jimmy C
yeah well
"Whatever you do unto the least of them, you do unto me." – Jesus C
Maybe that's why noted far left liberal The Pope condemns torture as well.
But you did call out Debbie for her ignorant and irresponsible use of the term "snuff porn" so I still like you.
[...] don’t know about you, but I would not hesitate torturing a person who had sufficient information for preventing the rape, totrure, beheading, etc. of one of my [...]
Umm, this is a movie, you right wing dumbasses. If this was the movie Friday the 13th the audience would cheer for young women getting cut up with a chain saw. Please try not to confuse this with an actual policy approval. Jeez.
Maybe the answer is to move the Gitmo prisoners to a Hollywood lot. Or Sean Penn's house.
http://the100mostannoyingthings.blogspot.com/
"Torture is wrong in all cases. It is proven to be an ineffective tool to gain information time and time again. "
Classic textbook orthodoxy. Our intelligence operatives employed waterboarding on 3 Al Quaeda members for a total of less than five minutes, and they spilled their guts, leading to a treasure trove of information which has kept us safe from attacks since 9/11.
For starters we need to get our terms right. Waterboarding involves reclining a person so his head is lowered and drizzling water onto his face. That's all. No danger is involved or damage done. Just a bodily reflex to sensory input. I'm sure it's scary but is something many of our own troops volunteer to go through in training. By all accounts it has only been used at GITMO three or four times anyway.
The Passion does not invite us to enjoy the brutality inflicted on Jesus, but to gain a deeper understanding of His suffering. Slasher films invite us to get vicarious satisfaction from watching somebody suffer.
If you are incapable of distinguishing between the torture depicted in Passion of the Christ and that depicted in slasher films like Last House on the Left, you seriously need to develop some critical thinking skills.
[...] “Watchmen” apart on grounds that it was too violent for kids (it’s rated R) has a completely unexpected take on the R-rated “Last House on the Left,” the sadistic, brutal, repellent (and [...]
Good lord…
Y'know, what I think I'm beginning to "enjoy" about Mrs. Schlussel is that she seems afflicted by the "conservative" version same tunnel vision that makes far-left "critics" so bloody insufferable – EVERYTHING has to be political. Just HAS to be, even if you have to force it to make the peg go through the hole.
I just saw this movie an hour ago. It's not bad. Better acted than it needs to be. NOBODY gets "water-boarded." No one. Not once. The guy in question at the sink isn't being water-boarded for information, he's a villian being DROWNED to prevent him from killing the good guys. Water-Boarding refers to a specific action: You bag the guy's head, then you dump water on him so that, deprived of a frame of reference, he feels LIKE he's drowning. In fact, the consistent Bush Administration defense of water-boarding was that it WASN'T drowning someone and therefore WASN'T a form of torture. (continued)
(continued)
I'm trying to be nice here but, Mrs. Schlussel… this movie has NOTHING to do with terrorism, the war on terror, al qaeda, anything. It's not even about torture – all the violence against the bad guys save a final (lame) add-on scene is in combat-survival scenarios. The only torture is done by the villians in act 1. I'm not even talking interpretation, I'm talking DEFINITIONS OF WORDS. The only explanation here is that you are startlingly ill-informed of certain subjects you speak on, or that you are deliberately misrepresenting facts (in this case, the content of the film) in order to make a seperate point and banking on your readership being startlingly ill-informed. Which is it?
People applaud torture in movies… because they're movies. You say you understand the distinction. Clearly you don't. Let me reiterate: the Dark Knight outsold any other movie that won oscars at the academy awards. Do people support a masked vigilante to go around and beat the pulp out of Blagoevich? No, they don't. Would we like to see it? Yes. Do we want to live with the consequences of ACTUALLY living in a system like that? No.
Have you ever read about catharsis? Look it up. A great term to be used here. Catharsis allows us to expel angry emotions, without actually causing harm by acting on these overwhelming feelings. That's what movies are.
Do you support John Rambo? Do you support Americans having (uncontrolled, BATF gatekeeper) access to automatic weapons and grenades? But in Rambo 1, John Rambo only killed those who could be seen as attacking him! Thus, we should follow movie logic! Right. So, because John Rambo went back to Vietnam in Rambo II: First Blood, that meant Americans supported going back to Vietnam. Yes or no? Very simple. If yes, explain the anti-war sentiments that DOMINATED debate, and the dropped approval of Reagan during the Contras. Were Americans sick of fighting? If not, what indication IS there that we were ready for another foreign engagement with American troops? Afghanistan had to have the Afghans WINNING before we were OK with overt support, but any chance of support that might draw us into a quagmire was nonexistent (from my perspective). Please, answer my questions logically and civilly. I will return the kindness.
Make no mistake. I make many liberals and party line Democrats sick. I do not fall into a party line, and support the crux of conservative ideology: Government does not make right. But also, I do NOT support Bush, or ANY of the big policies that he became the figurehead of. Some actions I agree with, and still do (Afghanistan, for starters). But toeing the party line, and undermining the constitution (4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th) makes you just as bad as liberals that want to do away with the 2nd amendment, the 1st (fairness doctrine), and the 9th and 10th (Roe, etc.) among others. I support the constitution. I support making an AMENDMENT to make future amendments easier. But until such time, we follow the constitution. Either we follow the constitution, or we are just as bad as Pakistan, China ("China's under martial law"), or other nations that we should have moral superiority to. I welcome thoughtful and non-personal comments. Any reactionary, personal attacks will result in disregarded responses.
Liberals actually don't care one way or another about "torture".
It was an issue that could be used as a bludgeon against Bush and the Republicans and that's it.
Now that Obama and the dems are in charge, the issue will fade away.
Does anyone remember back when Ron Silver was still a libtard (before 9/11)? At the first Clinton inauguration, he was there and there was an Air Force flyover. He started to get upset something like "How dare those dirty military so-and-sos taint our event with their jingoism". Then he stopped himself and said "Wait a minute, those are OUR planes now!" and he was cool with the bloody jingos in the USAF flying over.
Same thing with torture. "Its OUR CIA now, waterboard away boys!"
You know this story is an urban myth, right? It's cobbled from other military accounts (Sepoy Rebellion and others) and rumors, but it's highly doubtful Pershing himself ever did this. Also, while Muslims aren't supposed to eat or touch pork, it's not spiritual kryptonite–they shouldn't touch it, but it's not going to keep them out of heaven.
Debbie's hit on something here that also occurred to me when I saw the awful Seventies buddy cop film, "Freebie and the Bean" about a month ago at a Hollywood theater. In that movie, Alan Arkin and James Caan play a couple of lovable cops who don't play by the rules. In one scene they punch the crap out of a suspect and threaten to rape his girlfriend in order to get information out of him. The liberal Hollywood audience loved this scene, which is played for laughs, hooting and cheering with every punch. It occurred to me that these people undoubtedly opposed Bush and his policy of 'torture' yet they were all too happy to see illegal torture on screen. Maybe the fact that the suspect was an albino named "whitey" had something to do with it.
Well, you lost me at the tax evasion shtick, because the only legitimate thing a government can tax are transactions. Otherwise, pretty good. Bad guys meeting gruesome ends is one of my favorite movie formulas, but it has to be set up properly: We need to know just how irredeemably evil the bad guys are first, and then anything and everything goes. It actually sounds like LHotL does that, so I'll probably see it.
Well, if it IS merely an "urban myth" (which nobody knows for sure), it certainly SHOULDN'T be!
This tactic would be a most fitting deterrent to those lunatic Jihadis- whose ultimate goal is to enter "paradise" through martyrdom (e.g., slaughtering "infidels" like you and me!), and despite your assertion that it's not "spiritual kryptonite" to them , I'm quite sure that those fanatics WOULD regard it as such, and that they'd think twice about targeting "infidels" if they knew that such a fate awaited them.
Why don't we at least try it, and see who's right?
Ever seen REAL waterboarding? Go to Vanity Fair's site and look for the video on Christopher Hitchens voluntarily being waterboarded. Unbelievably short session, very simple, quiet and undramatic, very little water (several splashes), and very effective. It traumatized Hitch, who had been in favor of it.
And please don't go for "those tortured will say anything". Several hundred years ago the torturer inserted the proviso, "If we find out this is a lie, it will only make it worse later."
Now go to some violence site and watch the Sunnis behead someone, or see some raw footage of a market or school after Al Q has blown it up. It should help keep perspective. Something our free press has chosen to ignore, to our and the world's great detriment.
I'm a conservative and I think this is silly. One of the things about being conservative is strict interpretation of our laws and not the wishy-washy relativism liberals push on the constitution. Torture is against our own most sacred legal document. If we're dedicated to strict interpretation, we just can't do it.
I'd prefer the US to have the moral highground over even our friends anyway.
Actually, I think it would just inspire the crazies to more atrocities if they thought this was true. It would be proof of just how depraved and evil the non-islamic world is, and give more credence to why our way of life has to be destroyed. But by all means–go ahead. I ain't stoppin' ya!
"Inspire the crazies to MORE atrocities"? Not bloody likely my friend! What could possibly eclipse genital mutilation and stoning to death of their own women, chopping off limbs, and beheadings?
Once again, I have absolutely no beef whatsoever with "normal" (non-radicalized) Muslims, but the lunatic vermin that go by the names Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hisbollah, and their likeminded brethren in Pakistan, South East Asia and North Africa deserve everything we can throw at them- and THEN some!
All I'm saying is fanatics CAN'T be deterred, and the more brutal they perceive their enemies to be, the more righteousness it will give to their twisted cause. If they were rational, they'd look at the might of the United States and say "h*ll, this s*it isn't worth it," but they're not. If this were done to their compatriots they'd become martyrs-look at the sick culture that makes suicide bombers folk heroes complete with posters. I know we're not dealing with rational people; you're applying logic to people who inherently aren't logical. I'm not saying don't kill the scum, I just think the story, in addition to being apocryphal, is applying western thought to a non-western, not to mention insane mindset. Besides–they don't all live in caves. They have the internet. Don't you think the Pershing story has been forwarded to them by now? Do you think it's worked?
All this verve and enthusiasm for torture, the "I'd Rather Be Waterboarding!" t-shirts, the belief that people willing to shirk their humanity during a crisis will keep us safe… all of this is beyond self-parody. I mean, you're rooting… for torture. You are torture supporters. What the duck, homies?
Wow…you obviously no nothing about "Last House on the Left". It was not a "slasher" film in any sense of the term and it did not invite anyone to take pleasure in the brutality displayed. In fact, it was doing the exact opposite. The intended purpose was to show the horror and atrocity of real violence. In fact, the whole message behind the film was one against violence. So yes, it was as much "torture porn" as "The Passion" was.
You sir, have to develop some critical thinking skills. Or at least watch the movies you are condemning. You display a complete misunderstanding and ignorance of "The Last House on the Left", and I wouldn't be surprised if you know anything beyond the title.
Most Americans are for torture to save lives. I'll buy that. Waterboarding is not the issue. For that we need to hold the Treason Times and msm accountable for spilling state secrets. I want to see this move. Where partisan newspaper editors see their victims.
I would believe your rheotric maatkare if the Russian's hadn't of disproven it already. Back in the early 80's I believe a group of terrorist abducted a Russian offical and demanded the standard "get out of jail free card" for some of their companions. To which the Russians tracked down the family members of these men, took several hostage and sent the finger of one to them with the ultimatium that they release their man or the terrorists families would be executed. How many acts of terrorism do you see directed against them to this day?
It's called a movie. It's fictional…real life waterboarding isnt.
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