According to America Online, Andrew Breitbart will no longer be published on the Huffington Post front page due to a policy (no one knew about)  that HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz dropped completely out of nowhere on March 24. Among other things, Breitbart called 9/11 truther Van Jones a “commie punk” during an interview with the Daily Caller and now, according to Ruiz, AOL suddenly has a policy prohibiting front page placement on the Huffington Post whenever one of their contributors engages in what they consider to be ad hominem … even if it’s not on the Huffington Post.  

Fine. I totally disagree with the policy, but we live in a free country and AOL can choose to run their business however they like. There could be a problem, though, if what the publicly traded AOL is really up to here is a form of ideological blacklisting. Will only Breitbart be held to this standard? Will only conservatives? Or will every HuffPo contributor who engages in ad hominem be forced to sit in the back of the blog? Which brings me to…

All together now: How do you solve a problem like Bill Maher?

First, let’s back up just a bit.

Since AOL dropped this “Back of the Blog” policy on Breitbart, we and many others have had no problem gathering together glaring examples of AOL/HuffPo front page authors, not only participating in the worst kind of ad hominem elsewhere, but also — incredibly! — on the front page of the Huffington Post. Which means that only two possibilities exist for what’s going on here. Either 9/11 truther Van Jones has convinced AOL to single out individuals he doesn’t like for “Back of the Blog” discrimination, or he convinced AOL to start a brand new rule. 

Which brings us back to Mr. Maher…

Maher is a front page contributor to AOL/Huffpo and has been for quite some time. Ad hominem is not only the comedian’s weapon of choice, he’s famous for it. And yet, as far as we know, there has been no decision made by Van Jones to force AOL to take away Bill Maher’s front page privileges. To be fair, though, if the AOL rule regarding ad hominem is a new rule and not retroactive, this makes perfect sense. Which brings me to the tick-tock.

This is the statement HuffPo’s Mario Ruiz made on March 24:

Andrew Brietbart’s false ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

And this is the statement Bill Maher made three days later on March 27:

Sarah Palin’s a “cunt.”

There are maybe three words in the English language worse than “cunt,” and let me assure you, Breitbart didn’t come close to the Top 100 while pushing back against Van Jones’ crusade to have him silenced. So…

One more time! How do you solve a problem like Bill Maher?

In an attempt to get that very question answered, our friends at NewsBusters have sent no fewer than four emails to Arianna Huffington and other various editors asking how they intend to handle the Maher matter. Thus far there hasn’t been any kind of a response.

Let me close by being as clear as I possibly can about this issue. In no way do I, Andrew Breitbart, or anyone alse here at the BIGS want Bill Maher or anyone punished or shoved to the “Back of the Blog” for calling Sarah Palin or anyone anything. This is about AOL and ideological discrimination. This is about whether or not AOL’s decided to be a serious news outlet or just another polarizing left-wing  attack machine with this appalling man as their Editorial Director (please do click that link). 

The only smart move for AOL is to overrule Arianna’s Huffington’s thoughtlessly dumb knee-jerk policy. The only other choice they have is to either get wrapped endlessly around the axle of an unmanageable policy or prove to the whole wide world that they really are ideological bigots.

Maybe we should ask them? You can do just that here and here.

While you’re reading all those HuffPo articles filled with hand-wringing sanctimony about the current state of Republican political discourse, keep in mind that according to New York Magazine, the founder of the Huffington Post filmed a role in a sci-fi fantasy film where the two heroes of the film attempt to rid the world of evil by assassinating President George W. Bush:

The two soldiers’ relationship blossoms, and Butch begins to get to know his lover’s family. But after he inadvertently draws attention to their ancestral home, disaster strikes. This tragedy radicalizes the pair and they become convinced that the only way to rid the world of evil is to kill the architect of the invasion, the then-president of the United States, George W. Bush. And so, during one of the president’s secret sorties to Iraq, they attempt to assassinate him.

The sources for this information are those who have read the script, and the creators behind the film are no less than the directors of the “Matrix” trilogy, pictured above with their STAR….

It’s also worth pointing out that the Huffington Post is where Aaron Sorkin was allowed to savage Sarah Palin and talk about how it warms his heart when hunters like Palin shoot each other.

Before we go into the nitty gritty, can I just note the delicious irony of a website of repeatedly accused plagiarist like Arianna Huffington – who settled out of court for, what else, plagiarism! – falsely accusing another of plagiarism? Remember this?

Seemingly plagiarizing Larry King transcripts so she could crow about having a Clooney byline. The result was an embarrassing smackdown from an A-list celebrity and loss of credibility.

Her apology:

(Photo article link)

Then there are the repeated charges of plagarism:

Huffington was accused of plagiarism for copying material for her book Maria Callas (1981); the claims were settled out of court in 1981, with Callas biographer Gerald Fitzgerald being paid “in the low five figures.”^[21][22][23]

Lydia Gasman, an art history professor at the University of Virginia, claimed that Huffington’s 1988 biography of Pablo Picasso, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, included themes similar to those in her unpublished four-volume Ph.D. thesis. “What she did was steal twenty years of my work,” Gasman told Maureen Orth in 1994. Gasman did not file suit.^[24]

Maureen Orth also reported that Huffington “borrowed heavily for her 1993 book, The Gods of Greece.”^[25]

Huffpo itself was caught plagiarizing (the term comes from this Time magazine article) by lifting passages from Chicago publications. Huffington blamed it on an “intern.” (So interns write the copy at Huffpo?) The New Republic caught her taking material from someone else without attribution for one of her speeches.

Now Huffington blogger Ryan Grim over at Huffington Post has declared that George W. Bush is guilty of plagiarism. His evidence? Bush lived through events, which have been reported by Bob Woodward and some of his aides. Because Bush recounts the events in a similar fashion, he’s guilty of plagarism! The more simple and straightforward answer, that those previous books accurately recorded events, Grim never considers. Nor does he actually investigate whether the same thing occurred in books published by Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton.

This is nothing more than a nasty attempt to inject “Bush plagiarism” into the blogosphere. It’s actually one of the Post tags on the story. One can only wonder if he considered how his boss Arianna Huffington ever found herself in this situation. Did he ever ask whether she ever recounted a story that has been reported somewhere else in a similar fashion? Does she want to be held to that standard?

It takes a certain gall for the Huffington Post to run story about plagiarism, given Huffington’s history with the problem.

Even Gawker makes fun of HuffPo, even though they pay the progressive tithing of “he’s [Bush] probably stupid” so they can keep their classy O’Donnell-one-night-stand reputation:

For instance, Bush’s account of his remarks at a meeting in the situation room match up suspiciously, in Grim’s view, with Woodward’s account of the same meeting in Bush at War.

Bush:

At a National Security Council meeting the next morning, I said, ‘just want to make sure that all of us did agree to this plan, right?’ I went around the table and asked every member of the room.

Woodward:

The next morning, Bush arrived at the White House Situation Room for the NSC meeting…’I just want to make sure that all of us did agree to this plan, right?’ [Bush] said.

Well, what if that’s what he actually said? How is Bush supposed to communicate the events of that meeting? “As Bob Woodward first reported in Bush at War, I then said….”

[...]

But what’s wrong with that? Again, is Bush supposed to credit someone else for capturing his own words? It seems like small beer.

In their strenuous effort to not write about the Pigford scandal, the DOJ scandal, the Sestak scandal, has HuffPo jumped the shark in their deflections with this Bush tantrum?

P.S. Where was Huffington when Obama regurgitated Deval Patrick’s speech?

The danger of Stewart’s shedding his Daily Show mask of irony and becoming a full-fledged, Obama-style community-organizing activist is that in officially adopting the views of one political party over another, he devalues the only currency of the satirist—impartiality. Because human folly is an equal opportunity character flaw, the successful satirist must not take sides. He must be able to sling arrows in all directions, else the only thing he has to peddle—the precious honesty of his criticism—is called into question. A satirist who exposes the foibles of one political party and excuses those of the other is as useful as a bus that only goes in one direction. The bus company itself would soon also only go in one direction—out of business.

Those (I suspect Mr. Stewart is among them) who claim that the “Restoring Rally” was apolitical—just a modern-day Woodstock with shorter hair and fewer hallucinogens, a Peace Train plea for reason and temperance—are either dupes or practitioners of a cunning form of political artifice.

For if the event was indeed apolitical, then why didn’t Arianna Huffington (of eponymous Post fame) spend nearly a quarter of a million dollars bussing attendees to the Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally–as she did to Stewart’s rally? And where was Annabel Park and her Coffee Party on August 28^th?

No, apart from the sophomoric opportunity to show up Mr. Beck at his own game (as if that were worth anything), the clear intent of the “Restoring Sanity” rally was to perpetuate the liberal side of the aisle’s beloved myth du jour, du mois, de l’époque: that it—the Left—is the voice of Sanity with a capital S and that the Right is an aggregation of amorphous Anger with a capital A. Because anger can be dismissed as irrational.

The obvious implication of Stewart’s “Restoring Sanity” appellation is that the attendees of, and surely the speakers at, Beck’s rally are the voice of Insanity. These are the same people of whom Obama so flatteringly (and ungrammatically) said at a recent Massachussetts fundraiser

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.

This is a theme, possibly the only one, upon which Obama is never at a loss for a new variation. During the 2008 campaign the Right was clinging to its Bibles and guns. The Cambridge police department in 2009 “acted stupidly,” the Arizona police will soon be locking up ice-cream cone purchasers, and, well, now, it seems we’re all just genetically hardwired to cower in ignorance because our 401Ks are down.

Fortunately, we have liberals like Obama and Huffington and Stewart to lead us out of our folly and restore our sanity. These sole proprietors of Reason—a blessing bestowed on them alone, the same way Zeus gave the power of prophecy to blind Tiresias—will enlighten us. No hubris in that line of thinking.

The real purpose of the “Restoring Sanity” rally—not so much to taunt Beck, though it was indisputably that—was just one more, 11^th-hour, tired attempt to delegitimize the Tea Party’s very legitimate anger and marginalize the movement as irrational. Hence the involvement of Annabel Park’s Coffee Party, a group whose seeming purposelessness (other than not to be the Tea Party) I addressed in my previous Big Government “Who Put the Prozac…” column.

Striving mightily for grandiloquence, Stewart admonished “we can have animus without being enemies.” As if this self-evident truism were ever in dispute.

The fundamental flaw in Stewart’s, Park’s and their ilk’s logic is the belief that angry rhetoric is per se “insane.” They have confused sanity with civility. These people badly need to see a production of the Peter Stone-Sherman Edwards triple-Tony-Award-winning musical “1776.”

Being etymologically “civil”—from the Latin word “civis” or “citizen”—ironically does not entail behaving “sanely” at all. Impassioned angry rhetoric—even the Olbermann/Behar name-calling kind— is far from insane. It is an important safety-valve that prevents most people from inflicting physical violence on each other. The disadvantage of it, of course, is that it seldom persuades. Insanity, on the other hand, is loading PETN explosive into a toner cartridge and detonating airplanes with it.

Fear and anger are the smoke alarms of the soul. You still need a pail of water to put out the fire, but if the smoke alarm doesn’t go off, you can forget about the pail.

The country’s been ablaze for nearly two years now. Ironically, Colbert’s half of the rally—”Restoring Fear”—actually hit the nail on the head. Too bad the goofball was only kidding.

The left is afraid of the election of Marco Rubio as Senator of Florida in the exact same way as they were afraid of Sarah Palin when she was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee by John McCain. It has been clear from the beginning that both are ascendant as potential game-changing political stars and need to be destroyed. So it’s no surprise that Arianna Huffington tweeted the following:
The reason why so few Senators are chosen as Presidential nominees is that the job is not an executive position; Governors tend to be preferable because they have executive experience. Rubio was just elected to to vote “yes” or “no” on things, which is why Arianna’s analogy of “dictator” is incomprehensible and utterly unrelated to his leadership position. There is nothing dictator-like about a Senator. So what exactly was the Queen of social news media’s tweet really about?

Once the “dictator” part of Arianna’s insults is stripped away, what’s left is “Central American,” and that’s the crux of her tweet. She is playing the race card with Marco Rubio. Of course the mainstream media will fail to notice that this is a racist comment, which is no less racist than if a Republican compared Obama to Idi Amin. Is there any doubt that Arianna Huffington and her Huffington Post empire would not be leading the charge to destroy the person who uttered that unfortunate analogy? Her intent was to inject race, to play off of racial fears and ignorance, and in this hyper-sensitive era where the left demands blood and media silence at the slightest trace of intolerance, Arianna should, in the least, be forced to apologize to the Latin American community.

Let me remind you why Arianna took the low road:

You thought that the left was scared on Nov. 1, 2010, now imagine an America with a successful Marco Rubio and his beautiful family in the White House.

Even though I strongly disagree with the implications of her Loretta Sanchez-esque inflammatory racial statement, it would never dawn on me to try and push my readers to attempt to ban her from the nation’s television airwaves. So please, do not make phone calls or create an astroturf anti-free speech intimidation campaign against my former boss.

***

UPDATE: Arianna Huffington blames HuffPost blogger Dowd for racial Rubio quote:

Free rides to the Jon Stewart rally! 

The problem is that Stewart’s already cheating and intentionally gaming the numbers. His wealthy corporate backers and zillionaire media friends are currently pulling out all the stops to lay out a big red green carpet of astro-turf on his behalf – something this strange alliance of Unions and Big Media has had to do to show that Glenn Beck! ever since Beck-A-Palooza shocked everyone by drawing hundreds of thousands of people from every corner of America.

Think about it: One conservative holds one successful rally and now, by my count, that success has so flustered the Left that just a few weeks later they will have organized no less than four angry counter-rallies: 

1. BitterFest
2. Bitter-LitterFest
3. SmugFest
4. MiniMeSmugFest

But it’s all as phony as Jon Stewart’s assurances he has no political agenda.  

October 2nd’s Bitter-Litter Fest, aka One Nation Rally, was nothing more than an astro-turfed Unionstock with every radical left-wing organization in America spending a ton of money to bus in supporters in the desperate hope of avoiding an embarrassing crowd shot (Mission Not-Accomplished):

Progressives and radicals descended on Washington, DC Saturday demanding more government spending as the way to fix societal ills.  Groups including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, NAACP, Democratic Socialists of America, Organizing for America, Communist Party USA, American Federation of Teachers, Code Pink and National Education Association linked arms in a call for voters to keep Democrats in power. …

After milling in the crowd all day, I would estimate 80%-90% of attendees wore union-affiliated t-shirts. Some others wore ‘I Need a Job’ shirts. We talked to people who were bussed and actually flow in – the Tides Foundation spent a lot of money.

And now we discover that no less than media giant Viacom, through their MTV network, is muscling their employees to give up a Saturday in exchange for a grueling 11-hour round-trip bus ride in order to pack the Stewart crowd with corporate ringers and cheer on The Smug One as he expresses his state-approved contempt for everyday Americans (why else name his counter-rally “Restoring Sanity?”).

Also, as we reported earlier, there’s Arianna Huffington, who’s spending a cool quarter of a million dollars to bus in her own astro-turf, all in the hopes of making successful yet another glaring example of the Left’s open contempt for we everyday bitter-clingers. 

Look at how small and mean and petty these people are. We can’t even gather peaceably in large numbers and in a non-partisan way without them feeling so threatened (and inadequate), that beyond all reason, they’re compelled to boorishly bumble in afterwards to puff themselves up with mockery and to make sure they get the last word in. If God were to suddenly strike these fools with the gift of self-awareness, can you imagine how embarrassed they would be over how transparently desperate they are?

All this time, energy and money wasted – all this panicked thumb-on-the-scale organizing just to balm the open wounds of Beck-Envy.

I wonder, though…. Might this have been Beck’s devious, Rove-inspired, Cheney-approved Machiavellian plan the whole time? Does he understand these people so well that he knew a successful rally on his part would so enrage the elite left that they wouldn’t be able to control themselves from launching a whole series of resource-wasting counter-rallies thisclose to a crucial election?

Beck, you magnificent bastard.

—–

2. Lame Celebrity Tweet of the Day: Seth MacFarlane:

I wonder if anyone called him “Andrew Breitfart” in high school.

MacFarlane, radio host actress Amy Holmes, and Breitbart will meet this Friday night at the roundtable on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

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3. Fugitive child rapist attracts A-list cast

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4. “International human rights and climate change advocate” Bianca Jagger wants Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to stop an execution. I’d listen to her. She is a international human rights and climate change advocate.

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5. The most rewatchable movie ever “Goodfellas” is 20 years old today and might become a television series. GQ takes a look back with the cast and crew, including director Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta:

“Do I Amuse You?” and Other Happy Accidents

Schoonmaker: [editor] Scorsese wanted to show that as [Joe] Pesci gets angrier and angrier, the men around him and Ray [Liotta] stop laughing, and you see the look of dread come on their faces. The key moment was how long we waited before Ray says, “Get the fuck outta here, Tommy,” in an attempt to break it. We kept screening it over and over again to get just the right beat for that one incredible moment where Ray knows if he doesn’t make this work, he’s going to get shot. [laughs]

Liotta: It was supposed to end when I say, “Get the fuck outta here, Tommy.” But you let it breathe, just to see what happens. And for some reason I said, “You really are a funny guy!” and he gets the gun. We made that up in the moment, literally.

—–

6. More details on the ’Matrix’ Filmmakers’ Gay Iraq War romance complete with assassination plot targeting George W. Bush:

The heroes are indeed a gay American soldier named (with little irony) “Butch” and an Iraqi soldier turned militant. Butch is endearing, young, and a ravishingly handsome Marine. Our spies tell us that he “just wants to fuck and kill everything” in Iraq — until, that is, he falls in love with the Iraqi. …

[T]ragedy radicalizes the pair and they become convinced that the only way to rid the world of evil is to kill the architect of the invasion, the then-president of the United States, George W. Bush. And so, during one of the president’s secret sorties to Iraq, they attempt to assassinate him.

Set in the future and told partly in flashback, the $20 million production is called “Cobalt Neural 9.” Both Arianna Huffington and Jesse Ventura will appear in the film. No one knows if it will really get made but the Wachowskis certainly have the cash to do it on their own.

—–

7. The new “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” trailer:

“Harry Potter 7″ hits theatres November 19th.

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8. Interview with Tom Selleck about his new television series “Blue Bloods”:

“When I first saw the script, written by these terrific writers, Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green (“The Sopranos”), I felt New York could be a central character; the streets, the neighborhoods, things we don’t often see in a television series.”

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9. Turner Classic Movies weekend host Ben Mankiewicz counts down his top 25 favorite Bruce Springsteen songs and some bad choices are made due to their shared Bush Derangement Syndrome.

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10. Coming Soon: “Crazy Heart” with a sex change.

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11. Below are the trailers for the films the ”Smart Set” in the critical community have thus far chosen as this year’s top Oscar contenders:

“The King’s Speech” is scheduled for a November 26th release date.

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“The Social Network” hits theatres October 1.

The same cannot be said, however, for Oliver Stone who just last weekend launched into his own anti-Semitic rant. Coverage of Stone’s outrageous comments, arguably as bad as Gibson’s, has been met with a virtual shrug from the Old Media, especially the TV newsers.

On July 25, 2010, the London Sunday Times released an interview with Oliver Stone that featured his claim that Hitler is often treated too harshly by history because of the “Jewish domination of the media.” (The Sunday Times article is on a subscription only site)

Stone lamented the fact that few people are seemingly aware that Hitler killed “25 or 30 million” Russians saying, “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than [he did to] the Jewish people.” The reason no one knows this, according to Stone, is apparently because of powerful Jews in the US.

“There’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f_ _ _de up United States foreign policy for years.”

And it should be noted that Oliver Stone did not deliver his comments in a drunken rant as Mel Gibson did. Stone was stone cold sober when he made his remarks.

The media has minimally reported this incident, of course.

Now this Jews-control-the-media claim has a long pedigree and is still bandied about by racists in academia. Just in 2006, for instance, a study widely distributed — and widely attacked — based on this theme was released by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Harvard’s Stephen Walt. It goes back as far as there has been media to supposedly control.

Still, Stone’s claim that the “Jews control the media” has been met with a yawn by that same media. Stone’s absurd comments have barely caused a ripple on the national and international media scene.

The same cannot be said of Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant.

In the first few days after Gibson’s arrest was made public he was top news not just in the entertainment media, but also in the regular news media as well as the left-wing blogosphere.

Hollywood likey

The entertainment gossip site TMZ had the report of Gibson’s arrest on the very afternoon he was detained and immediately released his anti-Semitic statements. Over the next few days he was the top news at ABC, CBS, NBC, and all the cable stations. The story was also all over the print media as well as the foreign media.

Three days after the incident, media gadfly Arianna Huffington was demanding that Hollywood denounce Gibson for his remarks. A few days later “comedian” Bill Maher was doing the same thing, both on the left-wing blog site The Huffington Post. Many other prominent lefty bloggers immediately went after Gibson for his anti-Semitic remarks, as well.

In contrast it seems that in these three days after Stone’s anti-Semitic rant Huffington Post only has three posts on the left-wing director’s outrage and none of them are from a principle celebrity or a Huffington top blogger, much less Huffington chief, Arianna, herself. Further not many other high profile lefty bloggers seem too eager to launch into denunciations against Oliver Stone.

Back in 2006 Gibson was apologizing within a week saying he was “deeply ashamed” at his actions. The actor/director said that he was undergoing alcohol abuse treatment as a result of the incident. This, of course, caused a whole new slew of coverage that went on for another few days.

Again in contrast, the media today has also reported Stone’s day-after apology where he reverses himself saying, “Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry.” Interestingly, most of these stories are one, two and three paragraph shorties as opposed to the long report treatment that the Old Media doled out to Gibson’s altercation of four years previous.

There is also the equating of Gibson to Stone. Perhaps it is a natural comparison, but an LA Times blog by Patrick Goldstein is a typical example. As Stone apologized in his one paragraph press release, Goldstein couldn’t help himself but bring Mel Gibson into the Stone story in a recent post*. Also as amusingly, Goldstein tries to tar Andrew Breitbart with the whole incident, doing his best to obscure Oliver Stone’s guilt by making this whole thing an issue of conservatives overreacting instead of focusing on Stone’s outrageous comments.

Hollywood no likey

Goldstein gives Stone a pass because he apologized fairly quickly after the incident. He attacks Gibson, though, for having waited a week to issue his in 2006. I guess one can say anything at all but if one apologizes quick all is forgiven to such as Patrick Goldstein.

And typical of how the left-wing spins an incident, Goldstein characterizes Oliver Stone’s apology as a “quick, forceful apology” yet the thing is but one paragraph issued through his agent. On the other hand he lambastes Gibson’s apology even as he has said it repeatedly to all sorts of media folks (in person mind you) and even went to alcohol rehab over it all. It’s hard for any fair minded person to think that a one-paragraph press release if somehow more “forceful” than apologies made in person to multiple media outlets, but that is the spin that Goldstein is ridiculously proffering his readers.

Sadly, Goldstein is typical of how Hollywood will react to Stone and how they have reacted to Gibson. In fact, Goldstein gives Stone a “wry Jewish” wink and a nod letting the hatemongering Director know that it’s OK to smear Jews in the media. Goldstein writes, “it’s not considered out of bounds for Jewish filmmakers to josh among themselves about the decline in Jewish domination of the film industry,” so apparently no one should get too mad at Oliver Stone for his “joshing” and joining that self-hating club.

In the end we can all see the difference in treatment of similar incidents. Let Mel Gibson say something like he did in 2006 and we get a Goldstein finger wagging disgustedly, but when golden lefty Oliver Stone does it, we get a “wry Jewish” wink and a grin.

*Incidentally, in the same post Goldstein peddles the lie that Fox News got Shirley Sherrod fired, too. The truth is that Sherrod was fired long before Fox News even began to cover the story.

For seven months now, we’ve been hearing about the secret next-film for The Wachowski Brothers, a Hard-R rated ‘cinema verite-style gay romance Iraq war film set in the near future. We’ve been getting tidbits every couple months, but all we know is the film tells the story of a homosexual relationship between a US soldier and an Iraqi and that it is set in the near future, but then moves back in time to tell the bulk of the story, part of which includes the current Iraq War.  Last we heard, the script was completed and the Wachowskis want to direct.

Production Weekly is reporting that casting has begun for the project with Lora Kennedy, the casting director of Speed Racer, Romeo Must Die, Swordfish, The Boondock Saints, and Tombstone. …

You might recall that late last year, Arianna Huffington (co-founder of the liberal news website The Huffington Post) published a few tweets claiming that she was shooting a part in a secret Wachowskis Brothers film, a movie about the Iraq War, from the perspective of the future. We wouldn’t have believed it but Huffington posted photos from the set, one of which features Andy Wachowski and Wachowski brother turned sister Lana Wachowski.

Was it possible that the Wachowskis have actually sneaked their next film into production without anyone noticing? Or is this just part of a short film, commercial, or test footage for a potential future project? No one had any idea, and nothing more has been learned about the project until today. In May, professional wrestler turned actor turned governor Jesse Ventura dropped word on the Stern show that he just got done filming a movie for the Wachowskis.

Much more here.

In the comments, please explain again how Hollywood is purely money-driven and that those of us who accuse the industry of creating propaganda just don’t understand that.

The Freshmen is a standard situation comedy aimed at fans who enjoy watching single people talking about sex as they approach middle age. Three roommates share a house; only the twist here is that all three are freshmen congressmen learning about life in Washington DC. The central theme of the series is how their antics end up getting published on a website that looks remarkably like the Huffington Post.

I’m certain that’s not accidental, since Arianna Huffington is a producer of the show.

I’ve been a fan of the Huffington Post since  it’s inception. Next to Big Hollywood, it is probably one of Andrew Briethbart’s greatest creations. I’ve been “debating” the Huffers since May of 2005, and surprisingly only had my account suspended twice. I currently post as TimnySlagle. Tim Slagle and Timmy Slagle were both removed for making allegations that RFK Jr. is a junkie, the same way Rush is incessantly referred to there. But much like flirting in a men’s room and being a tax cheat or a philanderer, drug addiction is only wrong if you’re a Republican. (I also suspect that shortly after this article is released, I’ll be registering another new screen name.)

Predictably, the television pilot’s Democrat Congress-persons, Cameron and Jane, are two nice, decent people who only went to Washington to try and make a difference; while the Republican, Vince,  is corrupt, over-sexed, and only using his office to get rich. He’s a publicity whore willing to do anything for campaign contributions. Strangely, he acts like no Republican I’ve ever met. In fact, he seems more like a young Bill Clinton.

I’ve only read the pilot script, but I will bet a large sum of money that later in the season we’ll find out Vince is gay. It’s a plot twist only slightly less predictable than Avatar. He also tells the Democrat Congressman that there is no need to read a bill before you vote on it — you just vote with your party. Somewhat ironic, considering what just passed through the Democrat House like a greased burrito.

Sarah Chalke, formerly of Scrubs and Becky #2 from Rosanne, is Jane, the star of the show. She plays a successful promiscuous career woman who accidentally married a gay man and is currently infatuated with the President. The plot-line seems remarkably similar to the biography of Arianna Huffington. It’s quite obvious that Sarah Chalke is what Arianna sees in the mirror every morning. Either she cast the role herself or Hollywood has finally run out of Gabor sisters.

I’m sure that the critics are going to think the show is non-partisan, but the only joke against the Left is one small skit about how many different awareness wristbands Democrats have to wear. (This reminds me of a stunt Rush Limbaugh did years ago, when he appeared on his TV show with a lapel full of awareness ribbons.)

People looking for political satire will be quite disappointed since the show makes fun of homosexuality more than politics. It is amazing that a group of liberals are responsible for putting together such a show; one that would be considered homophobic if a conservative made it. Just another example of the privilege of language accorded the Left.

A running gag is that everyone refers to Jane as the “gay-husband lady.”  Her husband leaves her to sell jelly with his lover under the brand name “Two Fruits Fruit Preserves.” Gay jokes are a constant. Here’s a sample from just this one episode:

• Vince assures Jane that a dinner party will have have a number of eligible bachelors there and that less than half of them are secretly gay. 
• Talking about his wristbands, Cameron gushes accidentally that he’s the “Queen” of colored bracelets.
• When recommending Jane hit on a lawyer, Vince assures her the guy’s straight because his socks don’t match.
• When apologizing for suggesting a silly pick up line, Cameron suggests Jane ask her former husband how to pick up men. 

Finally, a wealthy fundamentalist constituent trying to get Vince to ban rainbows says that the rainbow is now a sign for gays and lesbians to dress outrageously and march in parades.

This last joke is obviously a patronizing nod to the gay community in the hopes of saying that we’re on your side even though we just made a lot of adolescent generalizations about you.  Much like the comment policies at the Huffington Post only allow you to make fun of Republican drug addiction issues, Arianna feels her liberalism  has guaranteed her the right to gay bash.

If this show continues to keep all the jokes below the belt and avoids touching any weightier subjects I’m certain it will be a big hit.

It even made me chuckle once or twice.