How hard is it to say, “Obama has done a lousy job as president so far?”

President Barack Obama’s celebrity backers simply refuse to pin any blame on him for a woeful economy or the litany of broken promises that have become the hallmark of his nearly three years in office.

Consider 50 Cent’s response when asked by the uber-low rated Piers Morgan about the president’s tenure in the White House:

“I think he inherited America in a terrible state and it’s pretty tough to get things right back into order.”

The bullet riddled rapper initially backed someone other than Obama during the 2008 presidential race, but not due to any conflicts with Obama or his campaign:

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Gilbert Gottfried isn’t the only celeb “joking” about Japan’s unthinkable tragedy.  Rapper 50 Cent:

“Wave will hit 8am them crazy white boys gonna try to go surfing,” the rapper wrote Friday morning, as the West Coast braced for a potential tsunami.

He followed it up with, “Look this is very serious people I had to evacuate all my hoess from LA, Hawaii and Japan. I had to do it. Lol.”

“Family Guy” writer/Producer Alec Sulkin (who later apologized):

“If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, google ‘Pearl Harbor death toll’,” he tweeted over the weekend.

From The Street we learn comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been fired by Aflac for his “jokes”:

Gilbert Gottfried was fired by Aflac on Monday after the comedian made a number of distasteful jokes about the devastation in Japan.

“Japan is really advanced,” Gottfried tweeted on Monday afternoon, “They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”

Aflac quickly cut ties with the comedian following a string of similar comments. 

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[Editor's Note: This list is arranged in no particular order. Read Part I here.]

6.  “Being exploited is different from being empowered ” – Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Often too-easily dismissed as a raunchy teen sex comedy, Fast Time was a tremendously influential and important mirror on young America in the early 1980s.  The fact that it is gut-bustlingly funny – Sean Penn’s turn as surfer/stoner Jeff Spicoli remains his only role where he doesn’t annoy me – seems to overshadow the serious undercurrents, as does the ample nudity culminating in the unforgettable swimming pool scene starring the glorious Phoebe Cates.

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However, there is a very, very dark undercurrent to this movie that provides a serious lesson to young people.  Jennifer Jason-Leigh’s Stacy is a pretty but not-so-bright 15/16 year old who does not understand the difference between love and sex.  In a world of absolutely no parents (not a single one is ever seen), she tries to find love (or at least attention) by basically trying to have tacky sex with every guy she meets – and it’s heartbreaking.  She’s not “empowered” – she’s used.  The ugly scene where she loses her virginity to a guy in his 20s in a Little League dug-out staring at graffiti reading “Surf Nazis Must Die” is a better repudiation of the “hook-up” culture than a hundred lectures.

After scaring off the one guy who actually likes her for herself by trying to bed him too, she seeks comfort underneath his skanky pal.  A grim, humiliating encounter in a pool house leaves her pregnant and she immediately seeks an abortion.  Regardless of one’s stand on the life issue, one cannot be anything other than horrified at how the fact she sees herself as literally nothing but a mere receptacle leads her to feel nothing at all about her decision. (more…)

We conservatives spend a lot of time criticizing Hollywood’s failings, calling out its errors and pointing to its hypocrisies – and this is entirely appropriate since so much of the crap spewing out of the Tinseltown cookie cutter is borderline commie nitwittery masquerading as profundity.  But if nothing good ever came out of Hollywood – if everything it produced hewed to the same lame party-line pinkoism rejected everywhere except in Westside L.A., university faculty lounges, and Washington, D.C. – we all would have stopped paying attention long ago.

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And many conservatives have.  Many of us have thrown our hands in the air and opted out of popular culture completely, exhausted from enduring liberal sucker punches buried within crummy flicks about magic robots battling Dick Cheney vampire clones that we pay $12.50 to see in theaters maintained at the hygiene level of your average bus station men’s room.  You can hardly blame them for giving up.

But as tempting as it is to withdraw from the battlefield, to dig in and hope it somehow changes, surrender was never an option.  This is our culture, not theirs.  And they don’t get to control it. 

The fact is that among the detritus of American popular culture, there are voices of sanity.  Sure, they are nearly drowned out by over-praised hacks like Aaron Sorkin and over-indulged clowns like Oliver Stone.  Yet, occasionally, Hollywood has allowed positive, conservative messages to slip through. (more…)

“Twelve” is the kind of movie where one wonders if the ending of the story was written before the beginning. The whole plot seems to be set up so that all the major characters end up in the same house at its conclusion for a manufactured and unrealistic climax that ties everything together. The film does have some interesting parts and a strong lead character, but “Twelve” greatly suffers from its own complacency and too many unnecessary characters. 

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As the movie begins, the audience is introduced to “White Mike,” played by Chace Crawford (“Gossip Girl”). Mike is a drug dealer who doesn’t use drugs. He’s smart enough not to take the drugs that he openly peddles to privileged but disillusioned New York teenagers looking for a good time during their break from school.

Near the beginning of the film and unbeknownst to Mike, his cousin Charlie is killed by a drug dealer named Lionel (Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent).  Lionel is Mike’s drug dealer who provides him with the merchandise that he sells to his teenage customers. Alongside other drugs, Lionel has also recently started  selling “twelve,” the newest drug on the market. (more…)

Those damn kids today and their strange and frightening music raise an important question for me:  When did I become my dad?

Back in the eighties – when popular music reached its pinnacle of achievement - I would be home from college, in my room, cranking cool tunes and my father would get home from work, peer in, scrunch up his face and ask how I could listen to that infernal racket.  The answer, of course, was that I had (and still have, dammit) really awesome taste in music.

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I actually pitied my Dad for being unable to appreciate the Midwestern-inflected post-punk glory of The Replacements, or the sonic frenzy of their Minneapolis brothers-in-noise Husker Du, or the soaring, roaring guitar heroics of The Clash.  I don’t know what music he actually liked.  There were some LPs lying around the house – kids, you can ask your parents what those are – but they were things like the Kingston Trio and the Sound of Music soundtrack.  This last one was a particular sore point for me since my mom got the idea to name me Kurt, which is the German equivalent of Melvin, from the little Von Trapp twerp who sang “Fa.” (more…)

My friend Jane’s church has two services every week. The Sunday service is called the Seeker Service. It’s light, and the focus is on music and the positive aspects of religion. Sometimes they even have an entertaining play as part of the service. The Wednesday service is when the fundamentalist gospel happens; the hardcore stuff that might chase away new converts still questioning their faith. The concept has been hugely successful and these churches boast millions of members nationwide.

I look at Big Hollywood as a Seeker site. We are here to attract people questioning their politics, and welcome them into the philosophy we call Conservatism. We want to be a political home for those strays: people who are uncomfortable with all the flags and Greek columns that the Left has recently embraced. We want to support the new stars of Hollywood, those who have suddenly found themselves in a tax bracket they never thought they could reach, and are suddenly questioning the injustice of a progressive tax code. We want to comfort those who have grown tired of being called a racist for simply questioning the wisdom of putting a community organizer into the most powerful office on earth. (more…)

I just finished reading Ben Shapiro’s Rap Is Crap and I can’t let it go.

I am not a huge fan of rap music. It is not the top rack choice on my iPod, and yet, I can appreciate its contribution to music and pop culture. Very few of the top 40 songs today don’t have at least a small rap section in bridge of the song.  It has now been over thirty years since rap made the leap from the inner city streets to the top of the pop charts, so it’s not going away anytime soon.

All of Ben’s complaints were once said about rock and roll: lack of melody and harmony, overemphasis on rhythm, vulgar, overly sexual lyrics… Rock and roll was also called a corrupter of youth and predictions of it’s quick demise abounded. There were record burnings and organized protests against this Satan music, and today, footage of these protests are viewed comedically. Do we really want this stigma attached to Republicans any longer?  Are we tired of being the punchline yet? (more…)