This would seem a disaster custom made for Hollywood liberal involvement. Look at the elements: A Big Ugly Corporation, the environment, animals suffering, and a chance to jump up and down and say we were right about off-shore drilling.

However speaking out on this disaster would perhaps mean taking a position where one might have to criticize the President. I have also noticed that most of Hollywood’s liberal elite’s never seem to take a position in opposition to the current administration. For example, how much outrage have we heard about Guantanamo lately? Answer: none. How many anti-war demonstrations have we seen since President Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan? Answer: very few. Now that I’m thinking about it, how much media coverage do we see about far left true believers like Cindy Sheehan who are still protesting since the new administration took over? Answer: darn little.

Since drawing attention to the situation in the Gulf of Mexico would also draw attention to the lack of leadership by the President, Hollywood has been laying low. However, I believe there’s another reason: Hollywood hates the South!

Why, would liberal Hollywood types hate the South?  Because they are indulging in an out of date stereotype about the people who choose to live there. You see, Hollywood liberals get most of their information about life from the movies they make. They think of the South as the South from 1956. In their world anyone who is white, conservative and from the South is obviously a Bible-thumping, uneducated, red neck, racist with a white robe and hood stashed away somewhere nearby. When it comes to politics Southern States are deep red except for New Orleans, an area worthy of their charity. Think I’m wrong? Look at the imbalance between Hollywood’s help to The Big Easy and the rest of the area affected by Katrina.

In the Hollywood stereotype, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi are the center of the GOP stronghold called “the solid South” and that area deserves whatever karmic destruction is sent their way.  Maybe when the oil starts hitting Florida in mass quantities they will begin to show up to clean some pelicans. Then again, that is the state that cheated Al Gore out of the White House.

 Hey, speaking of Vice President Green Jeans, where has he been through all this. Isn’t he the Nobel Prize winning expert on the environment?

Except Ms. Sheehan’s protest really wasn’t all that huge. It looked like Cindy and about seven or eight of her aging hipster friends had gotten some gas money together, made a few signs and a rented U Haul truck for a trip from the Bay Area up to Sacto. I sometimes confuse Cindy’s pals in Code Pink with the pink hats my mother’s old friends in the Red Hat Society wore. Except the Red Hat ladies are out for fun and the Code Pink gals seem to have gotten out of bed on the wrong side. To be honest, I felt a little sad for Cindy. I think I could get more people over to my house for an Amway meeting. I didn’t see how less than a dozen people doing anything would rate national news time. However, Ms. Cindy was getting more airtime on HLN than the entire 9/12 weekend demonstration did, and though we may disagree about how many folks were there, I think we can all agree it was a little more than twelve.

Maybe she was getting face time because there was a counter protest? One old veteran put on his uniform and came out to confront Ms. Sheehan. This guy of about 80 was giving the protesters a severe tongue lashing. To try to silence his dissent, Ms. Peace and Love put her bullhorn about an inch from his face and started shouting. The old guy batted it away was and was instantly demonized for “slapping” Ms. Sheehan. She was demanding to anyone who would listen that he be arrested for assault. Apparently on Planet Sheehan only she has the right to protest.

Then something odd struck me, she and her Code Pink friends weren’t really protesting the war. They were protesting the use of unmanned drones to kill enemy scumbags. To Ms. Sheehan’s credit, until then she had never quit protesting the war. What happened was that she quit getting coverage. When she would show up in Crawford with her ragtag band of merry pranksters they would be outnumbered by adoring media types ten-to-one. She got her sour puss on all the CNN and MSNBC chat fests. Then Obama, the anti- war President happened and all of the media went away. Her camp out at Martha’s Vineyard this past summer during Mr. Obama’s vacation brought one mention and that was on the evil Fox News.

Now her protest isn’t primarily against the President’s lack of action on his promises to the hard left — oh no! Nor is it against the war itself. Her protest is now Obama friendly! In order to get back in the limelight she isn’t protesting the war per se, she is protesting “drones.” I think she actually said something to the effect that the use of unmanned drones weren’t fair. I guess Ms. Sheehan thinks if we need to clean out some rat hole of terrorists we should do it in a more sporting manner.

Now that she isn’t protesting “the war,” which on Tuesday became President Obama’s war, she is back on the good list with the liberal media. I expect to see Cindy and company all around the liberal media on her tour protesting that mean old Air Force and their use of unfair drones. And I wouldn’t hold my breath for any anti-Obama rhetoric making the edit on the mainstream media outlets!

–

And the film’s producers are showing academia the way with “The People Speak College Tour,” which launched at Boston University November 4th and ends right here at UCLA this coming Friday.

Turning Zinn’s textbook poison into an even more powerful brew of sound and fury has been a goal of producer Damon’s for going on a decade now. When I first heard that this skewed, leftist dwelling on America’s sins (some real, most imagined, all delivered without historical context) had received the seal of approval from the History Channel it was a shocker – until I remembered the History Channel is owned by NBC – a network now working like a propaganda war machine to boost every leftist cause imaginable.

There’s an older preview here. Should be interesting to see if the now inconvenient history of Cindy Sheehan made the final cut.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: President Obama, ACORN, Congressional  Budget Office, Death Panels, Cindy Sheehan, Tufts University, Burger King, Michael Moore, Elton John, Lindsay Lohan, and Burritos.

Outside a short article by the AP there is very little coverage of Cindy Sheehan. The woman who once couldn’t go anywhere without a spate of cameras in tow, is now wandering the streets of Martha’s Vineyard completely alone. Her name is as forgotten by the locals as Mary Jo Kopechne. This despite the Island being packed full of journalists right now; journalists who couldn’t resist an all expense paid trip to the Vineyard to cover the vacation of His Presidency. I’m fairly certain there were a lot more journalists already on the island than there were in that ditch outside of Crawford four years ago.

Which incidentally makes a great point: which President is really a “man of the people?” While President Bush did a stay-cation at his humble ranch in Texas, President Obama has decided to bring the entire family and entourage (at great expense to the US taxpayers) to one of the most exclusive vacation spots in America.

And this will probably be Sheehan’s downfall. There really wasn’t much expense camping out in a ditch (along with hundreds of supporters) but there is a really good chance, that the Vineyard’s Finest will eventually ask her to leave the island. I highly doubt there are going to be any wealthy supporters buying her a piece of property to pitch a tent this time around.

Most remarkably silent is the once anti-war Huffington Post. As of this writing, there is not a single mention of Cindy Sheehan visiting Martha’s Vineyard on the entire website. When Cindy set up camp in Crawford four years ago the HuffPo was on fire. Bloggers even dedicated an entire day to cover the grieving woman, who just wanted peace in memory of her son. In fact, Big Hollywood blogger, Greg Gutfeld, wrote a very funny article (that is still up there, and will probably be deleted shortly) about how he was the only blogger who didn’t write a Cindy Sheehan piece and how it made him feel “like showing up at a costume party, and everyone [else] came dressed as a blood-sucking ghoul!”

If there ever was a need to prove the bias of the Left and the media, this is certainly it.  Most of us knew the fascination with Sheehan was politically motivated. Those protests had nothing to do with the war. They were about bringing down the President. And the saturation coverage by the media had nothing to with current events, it was activism disguised as news.

Meanwhile, in the face of 10% unemployment and multi-trillion dollar deficits, their handpicked successor to the White House has done something that everybody thought was impossible: He’s made America nostalgic for President Bush.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness…” Sounds familiar. That would be one of the Ten Commandments liberal judges say cannot be posted in public schools, or on government monuments because that would be an establishment of religion by the US Government.

Here’s the President of this pluralist, secular, democracy paraphrasing Cain and Abel found in the book of Genesis: “…what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper.”

We have a moral obligation? So now we can legislate morality. Check.

I’m not even sure what Obama means by this, “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” I was kind of hoping he still thought it was above his pay grade.

“Should” is a moral word —a philosophical one. You can’t weigh it in a lab, it cannot be found in the materials. So to tell America’s (liberal) religious leaders to spread the word that we should pass the President’s health care plan, he’s pushing a value from his office as the president.

I love it.

He’s actually living out what the left has railed against when a Republican refuses to divorce their religion from their political decisions. I just wanted to mark this day that the POTUS used his state position to disperse a religious, philosophical point of view…and all I can hear from the ACLU are crickets chirping. NAMBLA-defending crickets.

I smell a rat. It’s implied that when Republicans call up religious support that we are just doing it to manipulate the Gods-n-guns folks. When Bush reaches out to faith leaders it’s duplicitous and inherently manipulative. But when the left does it, it’s genuine — they have somehow divined the true spirit of Christ in our political discourse. The right is pandering to faith communities while the left is reaching out to faith communities.

Obama even comports himself like a charismatic preacher. That’s his rhetorical style. Hillary channeled black preachers when speaking in the South. John Kerry took many a photo op in front of huge robed choirs when touting his own religion while running against Bush. Bill Clinton and the Baptist Al Gore did the same. So why is it that when Obama quotes the book of Matthew he’s not a threat but a journalist has a heart attack because he heard from a source who heard from a source who heard from a source that Bush had an active prayer life with Jesus?

The answer is simple, the true religion of the left is pragmatism, and even the Christianity they hate will be embraced so long as it gets them to their leftist, Utopian goals. That’s why a Republican can be gay, a woman, a black man, a poor fellow, and they are still demonized. The left doesn’t hate blacks. It’s that they love their own ends more than any standard, value or government. If turning a blind eye to the horrors of Islamists is useful, then so be it. But don’t think that they actually embrace Christianity. Because as soon as a Republican Christian is in office it will be back to “Jesusland” and “God-n-guns” rhetoric.

Cindy Sheehan told Byron York, “The ‘anti-war’ ‘left’ was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the “anti-Republican War’ movement.” But Cindy didn’t go far enough. Because they won’t just use the anti-war left, but the Democratic Party will use Christians, gays, Mormons, terrorists, body-counts, Republicans (Specter), southerners, high unemployment, low unemployment to achieve their means. And as soon as they’re done using any of these in the back seat of the Donkey Van the same groups are discarded. Cindy Sheehan who?

It’s not the practice of religion that the left hates about conservatives any more than it was the practice of war for why they hated Bush. It’s that they hate conservatives so much that their practice of religion, war or tiddlywinks will be cast in the darkest shade possible.

But as for me and my house, we welcome religion into our politics. I just want the left to remember this day where with this posting I supported the President’s reaching out to lefty religious people.

Religious politicians acting on their faith is not an establishment of a government church, nor was it when Bush did it.

Logan is trying to understand, but he is only four. His father’s plane went down in Iraq on Memorial Day of 2008. When asked about his dad, he puts his hand on his heart and says, “My daddy is a hero.” He goes to get his toy tool kit. He is going to fix the plane so that daddy can come home. Logan loves to hear the stories from the small group of Combat Controllers that knew his dad. Soon, a book will be out for him. The book is called “Letters for Logan.” It will tell the story of the soldier and the man. Logan is too young to understand the anger, bitterness, poor timing and judgment of Hollywood, California. Logan is not alone. On the plane that carried five good men to heaven that day, six children lost their dads. There are over 700 children of fallen Spec Ops Warriors to date.

The soldier is my son, Capt. Derek Argel. In the sixth grade, he made a decision that to serve God, Country and family was a privilege and not a right. He understood that the gifts he had been given in athletic and intellectual abilities were to be shared with his country. Less than 300 men did his job, worldwide. They were the elite of the elite.

At that time, he decided he would become the best officer and Special Ops Warrior he could for the freedoms and gifts this country gave him. He was the best son a mother could ask for. He was everyone’s best friend. Most felt he would become a General, then run for President.

On Memorial Day of 2005, Derek’s plane went down. There were four American AF Special Ops, and one Iraqi Captain that was fighting for a better Iraq for his family. There is no word for a Gold Star Mother, as there is no word to describe the pain. Derek was 28, and it took me months…. years to accept that he was not coming home. I wondered why people I had never met in Hollywood would want to add to my pain.

Only two weeks after Derek’s death, I was confronted with hateful emails and phone calls about my son’s service as a “commando.” My story and Logan’s was shared in the Santa Barbara News Press, and all over California. Many of Hollywood’s finest stood next to Cindy Sheehan, who had no relationship with her son, and offered, as Susan Serandin did, to play her part in a movie. Rush Limbaugh told my story on the radio, only to receive a call from Richard Dreyfuss claiming that “nobody was going to take his son into the military.” Sean Penn was making his counter productive statements to the press as well as others from Hollywood.

Can anyone imagine how this made the children of the fallen feel? I live only 60 minutes from Oprah, Barbara Streisand, and many others who make their living in Hollywood. Last summer, my husband and I rode 6,000 miles in one month on motorcycles to raise money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. They were formed in 1980 to send each child of a fallen Spec Ops Warrior to college and pay in full. Although this was advertised in Hollywood, as well as a plea for a spokesperson, we heard nothing. They know our story, it has been written in Santa Barbara Magazine, USA Today, and all over the country. It has been told five times on the Neil Cavuto Show.

Shortly after my son’s death, I went on Sean Hannity’s radio program to ask that Hollywood actors please stick to the entertainment industry unless they could do some good with their voices. I was trying to raise money for seven Gold Star parents to visit Iraq where our son’s were killed. Sean donated $10,000 to make our trip possible, but again there was no voice from Hollywood in a positive sense.

My husband and I were invited to the Hollywood screening of “An American Carol” this past year. We met the cast and crew and thanked Kevin Farley and Kelsey Grammer for their roles in this wonderful film. This was a risk for them, but was so appreciated by the families that attended.

For the past two years, we have attended and volunteered for Snowball Express in Los Angeles. This brings together the children who have lost their dad’s in the war for a time together and some fun and healing. Gary Sinise has participated in this effort and our families can never express our thanks and gratitude.

Please…. come out of the closet, Hollywood. There is so much good that many of you can do with your voices. Please think of our children like my little grandson Logan. Please, think before you use your voice. Please, for the sake of our families, speak to us before you speak to the media.

The freedom of this country depends on the men like my son, a true Officer and Gentleman. Think before you speak and hurt our families and the children of the fallen.

Debbie Argel-Bastian, proud Mother of Captain Derek Argel, May 30, 2005 Iraq

I don’t mean to judge them too harshly, but that’s what we’d say about a dude that flipped out in public like those two whack jobs at the White House Correspondence Dinner who harassed Donald Rumsfeld and his wife as they entered the building – as invited guests. I don’t know who these women are – and if they’ve lost family in Iraq or anywhere else, God Bless’em, but…damn. They’re the type of crazy that makes you realize the word crazy is overused.

Cindy Sheehan reportedly saw it and said, “That’s some crazy-ass women right there.” Roseanne Barr was heard to reply, “No sh*t Sheehan.”

Crazy women are more off-putting than crazy men. That’s why “Obsessed” was such a hit, men are scared of crazy women. Like the Rumsfeld-Code Pink video, it featured two women, one crazy from the get go. The other one was rational, but by the end, said, “I’ma show you crazy!!”

The news is dominated today by crazy women, and by one sane woman who’s being depicted as crazy – Carrie Prejean. Yeah, she’s as nutty as a Snickers, espousing crackpot beliefs that are in line with, oh, seventy-five percent of the population. Where’s the padded cell? Her situation and Alec Baldwin’s appearance on Letterman this week lead me to believe Right Wing Christian is the new gay. I know that was a fairly popular sentiment back when “The Passion of the Christ” came out, and I rejected it then. But the way Baldwin talked about his brother Stephen’s religious and political conversion, as if even knowing a Christian right winger was creepy, made me wonder if Alec thought his brother’s “condition” was contagious.

But back to crazy women and the lies they utter-stutter, and Nancy Pelosi’s stammering stuttering follow-up to her initial denial, which no one believes. She reminded me of the Mayor of Amity, repeating, “I was acting…I was acting in the town’s best interest. In the town’s best interest. I was acting in the town’s best interest!” She’s claiming now she was lied to. I sense that she’ll eventually crumble, admit she was briefed on EIT’s, and claim she was bullied into it. It will all come back to Bush.

After her two denials, can Democrats finally admit that Bush isn’t the first ineloquent politician in the world? Most are. The constant fawning over Obama because he is eloquent reeks of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Which inarticulate boob first used that phrase?

Back to the Shrill Patrol vs. Rumsfeld. I’ve always found the “war criminal” charge from the far left to be repetitive and redundant, not to mention repetitive and redundant. They think war’s a crime, anyway, so what’s a war criminal? I’m not looking for help from Webster’s on this – I won’t be swayed.

I hate when other people do this, but I’m gonna do it anyway. In their hearts, I don’t believe that these particular loons give a rip about “One million dead Iraqis.” A million sounds better than forty-three hundred, which would be roughly the number of Americans who have given their lives for their country in Iraq.

The left always embraces nuts like this, while we on the right are always put on the defensive when one of our likeminded cohorts does something ridiculous. Like in the case of Joe the Plumber, and his unwillingness to let his kids be around them thar “queers.” We distance, they embrace.

They’ve figured out, as evidenced by Obama’s Come to Jesus speech in Philadelphia, “A More Perfect Union” (Thanks, Obama, for only stealing the title this time). Wright was portrayed as his crazy uncle, the one who gets drunk and puts his you-know-what in the mashed potatoes. I know, Obama eventually had to denounce Wright, but he got way more chances than we tend to give our guys the boot the minute they signal the guy in the next stall over in a public restroom.

If we didn’t at least act as accomplices in the widespread shaming of Larry Craig, who knows? Maybe he’d be hassled to this day by hysterical crazies bellowing “AIRPORT CRIMINAL! AIRPORT CRIMINAL! HE PROPOSITIONED MILLIONS OF MEN IN THE PUBLIC RESTROOM!”

Here we go again. The latest poster conservative for political-correctness-run-amok in a country careening downhill on left-wing, Democratic cruise control is Republican congresswoman Virginia Foxx.

Mrs. Foxx’s impropriety: The thought crime of arguing against “hate crime” laws by pointing out that Matthew Shepard – the tragic icon attached to the legislation – represents a salient argument against enacting them.

Mr. Shepard, the gay Wyoming teenager robbed and savagely beaten to death by drug-addled thugs in 1998, is the emotionally charged posthumous force behind the movement to pass hate crime laws. He got that way after a relentless, decade long mainstream media, Madison Avenue and Hollywood propaganda campaign to make his death a symbol of just-beneath-the-surface sadistic intolerance toward homosexuals.

Three films, a documentary, a play and songs by Melissa Etheridge, Tori Amos and Elton John have made the gay-martyr case a high truth of pop culture. The thematically related “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Brokeback Mountain” reinforced the narrative that gays like Mr. Shepard are regularly isolated for cruel and unusual attacks.

But the congresswoman is not buying the Hollywood hype. “The hate crimes bill was named for [Shepard], but it’s really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills,” Mrs. Foxx said on the House floor last week. Immediately, Democrats sought out their unapologetic allies in the media to force Mrs. Foxx into a perfunctory, skin-saving apology.

“The term ‘hoax’ was a poor choice of words used in the discussion of the hate crimes bill,” she said. “Referencing these media accounts may have been a mistake, but if so, it was a mistake based on what I believed were reliable accounts.”

Even though she had the facts to make a strong case, Mrs. Foxx apologized. She realized that the PC media cabal had another sucker conservative in its cross-hairs. Yet apologies are never enough as the Democrat Media Complex trotted out Mr. Shepard’s mother, Judy, to make sure that no one else can raise an objection to the controversial legislation.

Mrs. Foxx has been “apologizing for semantics, but not her sentiment, her insensitivity or her ignorance,” Mrs. Shepard told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “Everyone knew Matthew’s murder was a hate crime, but it couldn’t be prosecuted as a hate crime. We couldn’t call it a hate crime. Getting this bill passed in the House brings gay rights up to the level of equality.”

Judy Shepard like other tragic symbols Cindy Sheehan, the Jersey Widows and Max Cleland are trotted out by Democrats to make their arguments not with facts and reason but with the threat that if you disagree with them, you will be publicly shamed as a “hater.” This pathetic strategy works as Mrs. Foxx’s instant apology illustrates.

You can read the column in full here.