Stars Vow To Carry Out Good Deed To Mark 9/11 Anniversary
 

Oddly enough there’s nothing in this story about publicity-seeking celebs doing something that would truly mark 9/11; like killing a terrorist, donating to a military charity, or voting against Barack Obama.

Hey, how about demanding Sony Pictures NOT turn their killing Bin Laden film into a $50 million Obama 2012 campaign commercial! Oh wait, that would take principles AND the courage to back them up.

Kate Winslet Forms All-star Anti-cosmetic Surgery Group 

Winslet says: “I will never give in. It goes against my morals, the way that my parents brought me up and what I consider to be natural beauty.”

Obviously, I’m no fan of those who plastic surgery themselves into ghouls, but isn’t moderation the key? What in the world is wrong with wanting to look better and doing something about it? A tummy tuck, an eyebrow lift, having a mole removed…

Not everyone was born with the genetic make-up of a Kate Winslet. Furthermore, not everyone has the free time between pictures and the millions of dollars needed for the diet and exercise specialists many of today’s stars hire on to keep them, uhm, ”natural-looking.”

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How stupid do you have to be to not see 9/11 as an act of war? Willfully and intentionally stupid. And who in their right mind makes the fate of monsters a high enough priority to make an issue out of it, a crusade?

No compassion for the victims’ families who would only be victimized again by the media circus surrounding any kind of criminal trial and no respect for the rules of war or the integrity of our military to honorably conduct these trials. Personally, I’m relieved we still live in a  country where if a president wants to get re-elected he had better keep Gitmo open and hold tribunals. If it ever goes the other way, we are lost.

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Neil LaBute’s work is often concerned with the morals and ethics of selfish people, characters that all-too-often resemble ourselves.  It’s precisely why the writer-director’s work is always engaging and challenging.

His 2002 play, “Mercy Seat,” offers yet another provocative scenario for audiences.  Ben, a husband and father to two children, is holed up in his mistress’ apartment.  His cell phone is incessantly ringing.  It’s his wife.  She’s trying to get in touch with him, because he works in the World Trade Center and it’s the morning of September 12th.  Ben stopped off to see his mistress, Abby (who also happens to be his boss), on the way to work on 9/11.   Ben sees this as an opportunity to be among the missing, to race off with Abby into a new life, avoiding the ugliness of divorce.

The play itself is challenging given its structure.  It’s a 90-minute two-hander, set in one place, with no intermission.   One can imagine that the original cast, Liev Schrieber and Sigourney Weaver on Broadway, were able to find enough in the writing to make it more explosive than the revival cast has.  I don’t fault these actors, however.  The writing isn’t Mr. LaBute’s stinging best, and the text of the play focuses on Ben’s selfishness and Abby’s assessment of their relationship — stuff we’ve seen before.  As a matter of fact, actors Johnny Clark and Michelle Clunie do very strong work amidst rather plodding direction.  When you’ve got a piece this confined and claustrophobic, it requires inspired work on everyone’s part.

Still, Mr. Clark, and Ms. Clunie are believable every step of the way.  There are painful revelations, guilt, anger and resentment that infuse their situation.  These two people make it perfectly clear why affairs ultimately never can work out.  They are living a fantasy life that is repeatedly, and in this case catastrophically, punctured by reality.  Indeed, the backdrop of 9/11 mirrors the state of this couple.  America was shocked out of its fantasy of being untouchable in a particularly spectacular way.  We were all in the rubble at Ground Zero, psychologically and emotionally.  So, too, this relationship.

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HBO just can’t help themselves.  Less than two weeks after the pay television giant announced Julianne Moore, 50, will play a 43 year old Sarah Palin during the 2008 Presidential election, the network announced its intentions to make another anti-GOP movie based on the 2008 Barton Gellman book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency as well as The Dark Side, a 2006 documentary which aired on Frontline, a PBS public affairs series.

There is no argument that Gellman’s book casts a very dark and negative shadow over Republican Vice President, Dick Cheney.  His own website describes the book as taking on “the full scope of Cheney’s work and its consequences, including his hidden role in the Bush administration’s most fateful choices in war: shifting focus from al Qaeda to Iraq, unleashing the National Security Agency to spy at home, and promoting ‘cruel and inhuman’ methods of interrogation.”  If you didn’t know any better, you might think that description fits a member of the KGB, or even the Gestapo.

The Dark Side, not to be confused with the UK horror film publication or as the general concept of evil in the Star Wars universe or the anthology horror TV series produced by George A. Romero or the DC comics super-villain, no The Dark Side is a documentary produced by David Fanning and Michael Kirk of Frontline.  The title of the documentary perverts a quote from Cheney a few days after the 9/11 attacks in which he stated that in order to defend America against future Osama bin Laden and al Queda attacks, we would have to work “sort of the dark side, if you will,” because, “That’s the world these folks operate in…” and depicts the struggle between the CIA and the vice president and how Cheney was the chief architect of the war on terror and invasion of Iraq.

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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…)

So, many people are calling for the de-funding of NPR. After all, why should Americans have to pay for something that’s so fundamentally anti-American?

Let’s face it: they didn’t fire Juan Williams for expressing an independent opinion, they fired Juan Williams for expressing an independent opinion that didn’t jibe with theirs. And it was worse, because he did it on Fox News – two words that bring a pained sneer across the faces of the already contorted NPR listener.

But, hell, everyone can see NPR’s duplicity. They never police their lefty employees, and suddenly, Juan Williams is fired? If it wasn’t because of his views, what was it then? Was it because he’s black? Or because he’s black and didn’t do what he was told?

Anyway, I’m one of the few to say, keep funding NPR.

Because if we don’t, they go away.

And we can’t have that. We need them around to remind ourselves what subsidized failure looks like. As long as NPR drones listlessly on, we can point to it and say, “yeah, we’re letting them live.” (more…)

If there’s one word I’m sick of these days, it’s “outreach.” It’s always used in sentences and leaflets that imply the general public isn’t doing enough to “reach out” to specific groups – whether they be differentiated by sexual orientation, race, height, back hair, or -in my case – gorgeousness.

But what I really hate most about “outreach?” It allows folks access to places that a schmuck like me can never get into.

Look – I’m a decent guy. No prison record. No weird tattoos. I don’t cross-dress (anymore). Yet I’ve never lunched as a guest at the Pentagon, in the name of “outreach.”

But get this: the first American on the CIA’s kill or capture list has.

Yep, according to documents obtained by Fox News, Anwar Al-Awlaki – the dude that seems to be involved in every act of terror, was taken to the Pentagon as part of an outreach attempt to the Muslim community – right after 9/11.

A Defense Department employee arranged the meeting, after “being impressed by this imam.” (more…)

Just two months after the murderous attacks of September 11th and on behalf of the Bush administration, Karl Rove went to left-wing Hollywood to meet with top entertainment executives in the hopes of enlisting them to help with America’s war effort. Though the politics of the situation were reversed, the same thing happened during WWII. Just after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the left-leaning Roosevelt administration asked for help from a Hollywood mostly run by right-leaning studio execs who were, to say the least, neither fans of the New Deal or the president. 

The contrast in what resulted from these two cinematic call to arms is as stark as it is revealing.

Paul Haggis and Julie Christie wear orange ribbons to the 2008 Oscars on behalf of the terrorists held at Gitmo.

In 1941, Hollywood both figuratively and literally went to war. Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Mickey Rooney and many of the biggest stars of the day would eventually serve in the military and do so with great distinction. With the help of others, Bette Davis and John Garfield worked tirelessly to organize and run the Hollywood Canteen to bring Hollywood directly to our servicemen. And when they weren’t selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of war bonds here at home, too many movie stars to count went overseas to give our boys a firsthand taste of celebrity glamour and home. 

And then there were the films… literally hundreds of them meant to boost stateside morale, meant to remind us Why We Fight, meant to help America win the war.

In every sense of the word, this was Hollywood’s finest moment, where a community that was largely run by conservatives willingly set aside their political differences and united to rally around their commander-in-chief for the cause of America and the defeat of tyranny.  (more…)

I think Craig Ferguson is the funniest, smartest most innovative host on any of the big three networks today. To me he has clearly been the star of  Late Night talk for a number of years. What those of you with day jobs may not realize: he is also an unapologetic American. 

In the entire gaggle of Late Night Hosts, I believe that Craig is the only one who comes close to filling the big empty shoes left behind when Johnny retired. While Leno and Letterman each have some of Carson’s characteristics, Ferguson is able to capture both sides of his genius. He is warm and goofy like Leno, but he’s also cool and sophisticated like Letterman. Like Johnny, he can handle a shy guest with disarming charm; hold his own against a tough guest; then put on the buck-teeth, the big fake ears, and do an impression of Prince Charles that is both ridiculously silly, and satirically eviscerating.

Craig Ferguson’s latest book is entitled “American on Purpose.” It’ spans his career  from the beginning as an alcoholic punk rock drummer, to becoming one of Late Night’s brightest stars. There are some marvelous insights about what it’s really like growing up in Europe, from a person who has seen the side that the tour buses usually avoid.

He grew up in one of the bleak concrete housing projects that popped up all over Europe in the wake of World War II. (You’d think a continent so ravaged by central planning, would have lost their affection for it.) Craig talks about his longing to be an American from the time he was very young, and made his first trip abroad; admiring the Americans for their beautiful straight teeth. Because he isn’t here by accident of birth, he is the only network talk host who recognizes American Exceptionalism. (He is also quite visibly the only host who actually had to pass a test on the U.S .Constitution.). (more…)

So I guess their radicals, beat our radicals. Think about it…

President Obama starts pleading with that nutty Florida minister to knock off his idiotic plan to burn Korans. 

Obama said the act would incite terrorists “to blow themselves up.” Maybe.

But… nobody burned Korans before 9/11, or the first World Trade Center attack in ‘93.

To me, the definition of radical extremism, is that its viciousness exists independent of anything you or I do.

Radicals blow up nice people and jerks – and that includes innocent Muslims who coveted their Korans.

There was no Koran barbecue prior to terror attacks in Argentina, Kenya, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, London, Lebanon, Italy or Germany.

The victims there didn’t ask for it. And that defines an extremist. (more…)

According to yesterday’s Hollywood Reporter (more below the fold), even though actor James Brolin might have attempted to forever cement the world’s memory of Ronald Reagan as a “shallow thinker, indecisive, lost in the past and easily manipulated” through the incredible power of moving pictures via a disgraced mini-series, that was all just a big misunderstanding. In fact, Brolin’s a big Reagan fan! Now. Or maybe he always was. Or, as the Left always does, maybe he’s jumping on the history bandwagon that long ago left him far behind… Reagan was good, Communism was bad. Who knew?

Imagine how difficult it must have been for a fan like Brolin to portray his hero saying this of AIDS sufferers: “They that live in sin shall die in sin.” Of course Reagan never said any such thing and the line was eventually cut before the program aired. But Brolin loves the Gipper.

For those of you who don’t know, James Brolin’s Indian name is Creepy Truther Who Mocks 9/11: 

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And here here’s Creepy Truther Who Mocks 9/11 referring the “View” audience to a Creepy Truther website, which I’m sure fellow Creepy Truther, Rosie – fire can’t melt steel – O’Donnell, bookmarked immediately: (more…)

Since 1941, there is one question that was asked by an American president when a crisis broke out: “Where are the carriers?” 

Strike Group Reagan is intended to tell the story of one such potential conflict – with the challenges that might occur, and how American servicemen improvise solutions to problems, adapt to an enemy’s plans and tactics, and overcome obstacles to accomplish their mission. 

Even before 9/11, America’s “first responder” to an international crisis was usually a carrier strike group, sometimes teamed with a Marine Expeditionary Unit. This is not Cold War nostalgia. In the 1990s, carriers were sent to hot spots, the Taiwan crisis of 1996 being the most prominent. One of the reasons CIA and Special Operations personnel did so well in late 2001 was because of the support that came from USS Enterprise (CVN 65), which had turned around to arrive off Pakistan. 

Yet there has been little, if any coverage of this side of the tale from Hollywood – or even the carriers in general. It is something long-neglected since the end of Desert Storm. Covering a carrier strike group’s response to the initial stages of a conflict seemed like a natural focus for a movie. So, I began writing a screenplay, and used it as the outline for the novel that became Strike Group Reagan. And as the writing process continued, the need for Strike Group Reagan in my mind became greater and greater.  (more…)

Once again over at the HuffPo, Russell Simmons writes like a pretentious flower child begging to have his guitar smashed. Here are the ridicule-able highlights:

It is said in the yogic scripture that in or order to really change the mind of another person, you must first learn to love them. …

What journalists like Michelle Malkin, Andrew Breitbert and countless other conservatives have made their money on, is the ability to distract their audiences from the real issue, by focusing on the most insignificant portion of the opposing argument. This is exactly what they did when I spoke on Larry King last week about the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, Park 51, as they harped on a ten-second mistake I made from a twenty minute interview[.] …

But when the bombs came from the Right Wing media and public opinion turned, I saw many Democrats, including Sen. Reid, former Gov. Dean and even Gov. Paterson turn political and become sheep to the growing American trend of Islamophobia. … (more…)

Roger Ebert is nothing if he isn’t a knee-jerk leftist, absolutely without a single original political or cultural thought in his head and his latest meandering post on the Sun-Times hosted Roger Ebert’s Journal is a perfect example. His piece is titled “Ten things I know about the mosque” but it doesn’t seem like there really are ten things. One is tempted to believe that the only reason he posted it was to find an excuse to attack Sarah Palin.

The Past

Let’s deal with Ebert’s off-topic attack on Palin first. For a piece that is supposed to be about the Ground Zero Mosque (and by the way, he never once calls it the Ground Zero Mosque, even though the Imam planning the thing has called it that) Palin’s appearance at point six on his list makes no sense. Not only that, but Ebert goes off on a tangent of a tangent by discussing Palin’s interaction with Dr. Laura and her “N” word controversy. What do Palin and Dr. Laura have to do with the mosque?

Even more absurdly, Ebert’s first few points are filled with his ruminations on the First Amendment. Then he attacks Palin for employing her own freedom of speech? It’s a whiplash-inducing tangent, for sure.

Plus, in essence, he calls Palin a liar by assuming that some right-wing “anonymous genius” is writing all her Tweets and Facebook posts. Ebert has to reach into the dim corners of his conspiracy-laden mind for that one because there is no hint anywhere in the rest of the world that Palin isn’t writing her own stuff. It’s just Ebert’s hatred of Palin informing his belief that she’s too stupid to put two words together. (more…)

When Mr. Funny Clownface Man tars Ground Zero Mosque opponents as ignorant bigots, here are some of the people Mr. Stewart includes in that superior, thoughtless snark. These are also the people Nancy Pelosi would like to see investigated:

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As these awful leftists preen with a moral superiority they think they’ve discovered in a new-found respect for religious rights, these same moral cowards never mention the victims of 9/11 or the families of the victims who oppose this mosque. Well, at least not by name. But every time these demagogues lash out at Ground Zero Mosque opponents as bigots or anything else, the 9/11 families are the collateral damage in their unforgivably divisive, hateful and racially-charged demagoguery.

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A few weeks ago I was extended a great privilege from Gary Williams, the author of SEAL of Honor: Operation Red Wings and the Life of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, USN. Williams has written a superb new biography of Murphy, who was killed in action on June 28, 2005 during Operation Red Wings and received from President George W. Bush the Medal of Honor for his gallantry in combat.

Gary asked me to deliver a speech during a SEAL of Honor book event this May. Of course, I readily accepted. I never pass up an opportunity to praise our men and women in uniform, but I am Army not Navy, I am a paratrooper not a SEAL, and I had never had the privilege of meeting Michael Murphy.

So I had some work to do to get to know this man on my own terms before I could speak with the authenticity that I desired. I already knew that Lieutenant Murphy and I shared one significant thing in common, which was that we both fought the Taliban in the Korengal Valley. (more…)

[Rosie] O’Donnell said she wanted to “build on what Oprah began and excelled at for 25 years, in my own style and with new adaptations and ideas.”

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[Rosie] O’Donnell said she wanted to “build on what Oprah began and excelled at for 25 years, in my own style and with new adaptations and ideas.”

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[Rosie] O’Donnell said she wanted to “build on what Oprah began and excelled at for 25 years, in my own style and with new adaptations and ideas.”

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