***UPDATE: Sonnie Johnson received an email apology from Kaufman. Unimpressed, she responds.

In the Wall Street Journal, film writer Anthony Kaufman did a fairly straight-forward interview with “The Undefeated” writer/director Steve Bannon. Fine. Good. Proper. Afterwards, though, Kaufman then took to his usual perch at indieWIRE to let his true feelings be known. Mostly, his indieWIRE piece reflects the usual nonsense-complaints coming from the Left over why a documentary specifically produced to tell the story of Governor Palin the MSM refused to tell doesn’t rehash everything the MSM has already rehashed ad nauseum for the last three years.

Blah-blah-blah. Whine-whine-whine. Boo-hoo-hoo. Heaven forbid the public learns the full truth and context about a potential presidential candidate minus everything they’ve already had tattooed on their brain. Then, however, Kaufman gets to this unbelievably offensive and revealing sentence:

For me, the most shocking moment in “The Undefeated,” however, comes with the appearance of a black person about two-thirds of the way through.

No matter how many times I read this (and there’s more), I’m left almost speechless.

Almost.

This “black person” Kaufman references does have a name … and it’s Sonnie Johnson. She’s a person, not a symbol, and she has a mind of her own.  A very good mind.

Before I let Ms. Johnson speak for herself, I’m going to go ahead and call Anthony Kaufman an elitist bigot. You see, the reason the arrival of a black face likely shocked him is probably due to the fact that he’s never bothered to attend a real Tea Party … or maybe Kaufman simply can’t bring himself to recognize Thomas Sowell, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Lloyd Marcus, Sonja Schmidt, Herman Cain, JC Watts, Alan Keyes, Michael Steele, Frances Rice, Jennifer Carroll, Allen West, Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, Tim Scott (need I go on…?) as “real black people” due to their awful, sell-out, Uncle Tomming Republican-ness.

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Click here for Part 1 on Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda, here for Part 2 on Roger L. Simon’s Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine and here for part 3 on David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge.

A new kind of film emerged in the late ‘80s and first half of the 1990s to as an alternative to the mind-numbing noise of the Boomer Blockbusters. Smaller studios like Miramax rose to champion independent films. Generation X auteurs shaped by obsessive home video viewing – Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Darren Aronofsky – passed on the Hollywood path and instead built careers through low budget, DIY productions. “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sydney,” “El Mariachi,” “Clerks,” and “Pi” launched careers that would lead to Academy Awards and some of the most exciting films of the 1990s and 2000s.

These filmmakers’ origins are true to the generational temperament of their peers.

Children born in the ‘60s and ‘70s did not grow up in the affluence and tranquility of the 1950s consensus. Instead they took a backseat as the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s raged. It was now when the younger Silent and Boomer Generations rose up to challenge the cultural institutions built and maintained by the GI Generation who fought World War II.

The children of this era were forced to become independent, entrepreneurial, and innovative early on. Unlike the Boomers growing up in the ‘50s and the Millennials in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Gen-Xers were not protected. The adults were too busy with the cultural chaos of the ‘60s and ‘70s to be the parents they should have been. Thus, Gen X knew that they had no one to rely on except for themselves. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in their histories of American generations, this is standard for “Reactive” generations – and equips them for crises come middle-age. George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman were all part of “Reactive” generations too. (more…)

SCENE: Two of the most amusing people in politics sit on a poorly lit set for a fledgling d-list network founded by the man who claims to have invented the Internet (who also has four kids but wants everyone else to keep their knees kissing). They talk about how the tea party is racist — and in the next breath shrug off the political leanings of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as being nothing more than views of a back man too stupid to see that he’s being used by his white masters.

“Explain that one to me now, you have an African American gentlemen married to a white woman who is in cahoots with a group that has a lot of racists in it. Is that Scotkhom Syndrome on his part or what’s going on?”

Olbermann says:

“You can be 100% white and not be racist … you don’t have to be integrated.”

Because he went from an all-white network to an all-white show, he was quick to slip his backside from that sling.

Garofalo:

“If it was a white Democrat, you couldn’t get so many Tea Party people so upset whatever it is they’re upset about – showing up armed to town hall meetings,” she said. “By the way, if a black person showed up armed at a town hall meeting where a white politician was speaking, it would be on lockdown martial law and we’d never hear the end of it.”

No, it was the media who went into lockdown mode when an armed, law-abiding conservative black American showed up to a rally exercising his Second Amendment rights — in fact they went beyond lockdown and tried to erase his existence by omitting his race.

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If you tuned in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, you probably caught El Rushbo talking about Andrew’s new book.  Rush reminds us that Andrew, yes, Andrew Breitbart, “was a big lefty until he heard me.”  Me, meaning…Rush Limbaugh.

YouTube

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

John Hawkins of RightWing News recently interviewed Andrew Breitbart about his new book.  It’s a fun interview and a great read!

I always find it fascinating when people who used to be liberal say they turned to the right. That happened with you. Can you tell us about it?

Well, it’s a cliché from the left to the right. And it’s usually a story of opportunism in those few cases where the people move from the right to the left. It’s almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible. It was go-along to get-along social. It was living in Los Angeles, being young, and single, and flowing with the trendy liberal crowd.

When I started to work in Hollywood at a fairly low level delivering scripts around town, listening to AM talk radio, I at first listened to it as a novelty. But I started to have certain things in my life going on such as living in a rent controlled apartment, having listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, the OJ Simpson trial — I just started to see trends in my personal experiences that ran so contrary to what the media narratives were. At first I was flummoxed by it and then I just started to listen to certain people on the radio who were more clear thinking than the professors that I had in college.

I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose high lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense but I thought that was my problem. So when I started to listen to conservative thinkers and to read conservative thinkers, there was a clarity of thought. It wasn’t muddled. It wasn’t confusing. It started to make sense at an intellectual level and tie into the values that my parents gave me when I was a young kid that I diverted from when I was in high school.

So it was basically a reconnecting with everything that my parents attempted to instill in me in my youth. It has made me sleep a lot better at night, being centered and oriented with human nature as opposed to living in a world of self loathing nihilism, trying to undo human nature, and trying to create a path towards an unrealistic utopia.

Now, you were recently banned from the front page of The Huffington Post….

Oh, the tragedy of my life.

(Laughs) It is, it is. Apparently you made some sort of ad hominem attack on Van Jones and The Huffington Post has a policy against that. It must have been in place for at least two minutes or so before you were banned. Can you talk about that?

Read the entire review at RightWing News.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

——

Rep. Anthony Weiner and Bill Maher are both, obviously, looking down the road towards the inevitable ObamaCare fight in the Supreme Court and desperately hoping to craft some sort of conflict of interest narrative that might remove Justice Clarence Thomas – a likely vote for overturning that pile of steaming socialism – from the case. The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund not only destroys that desperate talking point with inconvenient facts about a judge on the notorious Ninth Circuit, but in a beautiful act of intellectual judo, he effectively throws down the feminist card … twice. 

Argue with that, Lefties!

I must say that with all the personal vitriol and venom we’ve seen directed towards conservative women and Blacks lately, it was impressive to see (outside of a couple of harmless jokes) a substance-based debate surrounding Mr. and Mrs. Thomas. Maher can talk about Glenn Beck’s behavior all he wants, but all of America knows that the only person melting down on cable right now is Chris Matthews. One can only imagine the spectacle that spittle-flecked ball of Bachmann rage would’ve made of himself had he been on the “Real Time” panel last night. Just hearing the names Clarence and Ginni Thomas would’ve likely split his skull wide open as he screamed “APOSTATE!”  Thankfully, Matthews wasn’t there, though, and this ended up being a pretty good discussion.  

It’s also worth noting that on the very same evening Maher declared an end to Palin’s political ascent, she was giving the speech of her life.

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Today’s L.A. Times:

The command center of Andrew Breitbart’s growing media empire is a suite of offices on Sawtelle Boulevard in West Los Angeles with the temporary feel of a campaign office. Only the computers seem firmly anchored.

On a recent summer day, just weeks after he posted video clips that touched off a national furor over race, Breitbart was swigging a bottled Frappuccino at his desk. In a Lacoste shirt, cargo shorts and laceless Converse All-Stars, he looked every bit the 41-year-old industry player he might have been, but for a political awakening that transformed this liberal, West Side child of privilege into a Hollywood-hating, mainstream-media-loathing conservative.

Breitbart, who has emerged as a star of the “tea party” movement, loves telling his apostate’s tale in the italicized, frequently profane manner that is his trademark. Three epiphanies stand out:

1. The Black Dorm Moment. In 1986, Breitbart was a freshman at Tulane University when his friend Larry Solov, a sophomore at Stanford, happened to mention his school’s African-American-themed residence hall.

“He just matter-of-factly said there was a black dorm and I was like, ‘What the friggin’ hell? Are you kidding me?’” said Breitbart, who is now business partners with Solov, a former corporate litigator. “And then, when I found out that it was not segregation in the sense of white people doing it, I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Why aren’t we working toward the colorblind ideal?’” (more…)

So some gay groups are upset over a photo the Wall Street Journal ran of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan:

It was also a picture we ran on Monday. It’s of her playing softball. The beef? That the shot is meant to provoke questions about her sexuality.

Gay and lesbian advocates, like Cathy Renna, believe it “clearly is an allusion to her being gay,” even though the paper never mentioned her orientation.

And that’s my point: The only time Kagan gets outed, is by gays. The bottom line: most of America doesn’t care who Kagan likes to cuddle with. In fact, most of America doesn’t even care about the Supreme Court period. The fact is, this so-called “whispering campaign” over Kagan’s sexuality wasn’t started by an average Joe or even an angry right wing preacher. It was launched by busy-body bloggers, mostly on the left, who have too much time on their hands and too much identity politics in their heads. My favorite line, for example, comes from a major liberal blog. In it, the writer says that Kagan’s friends say she is not gay. But adds: “And yet, the rumor persists.” (more…)

—–

And now… Ladies and gentemen, I give you Gary Graham…

UPDATE: The bounty is now $100,000 for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled at Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson.

***

After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

The first sign that a plan was in place was the ham-fisted, high-camp posturing of the most controversial members of the Democratic caucus walking through the peaceful but animated “Tea Party” demonstrators on Capitol Hill. There is no reason for these elected officials to walk above ground through the media circus amid their ideological foes. The natural route is the tunnels between the House office buildings and the Capitol. By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up.

The proof that the N-word wasn’t said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter — even though the press dutifully reported it as truth — Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd – the Speaker – to put herself in harm’s way.

That crowd was a sea of new-media equipment. Not only were tens of thousands people armed with handicams, BlackBerrys and iPods, so also was the mainstream media there, covering every inch of the event. Why did not one mainstream media outlet raise the specter that perhaps a video would exist to prove the events occurred? I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.) Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences.

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So as you know, I often end my Gregalogues with the phrase, “if you disagree with me, then you’re worse than Hitler.” At times I’ve changed it to “You’re probably a racist,” “You’re probably a homophobe,” and my favorite “you’re probably a racist homophobe who wears denim cutoffs.”

A lot of people get it, some don’t. Especially clueless – those lefties outraged that I would compare people to Hitler, amazingly ignorant that I was mocking them for doing the same thing with Bush or Cheney.

Anyway, I assumed that by now, the left would finally stop with this crap, now that they’ve got their Prog-God in charge.

But no.

Check out TheRoot.com, a blog owned by the Washington Post, which, in its list “Black Folks We’d Like To Remove From Black History” includes Clarence Thomas and Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele alongside Idi Amin, the “DC Sniper” John Allen Muhammad, Zimbabwe thug Robert Mugabe and Haitian dictators “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier. (more…)

Continued after the jump. (more…)

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Last night, David “I’m No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal” Mamet’s “Oleanna” opened on Broadway.  The production (a transfer from Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum) stars Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles.  As discussed on these pages Friday, this play was originally produced off-Broadway 18 years ago and is now receiving its first, official Broadway production. “Oleanna” and the upcoming “Race” are two opportunities for Mr. Mamet’s work to be evaluated by the heavily-left-leaning theatre critics.

The play received quite positive reviews.  Here are some interesting things I read in the reviews…

In Elysa Gardner’s positive review in USA Today, she refers to the contrasting times in which the play is now produced versus the original production:

When David Mamet’s Oleanna premiered in 1992, it was widely perceived as a response to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in which Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by former assistant Anita Hill.  It has been 18 years since that real-life drama played out. But as the very different controversy now surrounding David Letterman reminds us, the debate over what constitutes an abuse of power between a male authority figure and a female subordinate isn’t going away. (more…)

When a toolbag dies… How are you supposed to handle it? Are you supposed to honor them? Post-mortem, does a pedophile become the “greatest musician of all time”? Does a killer become an “American Icon”? Does death in itself wipe the slate clean, exempting the deceased from all judgment?  Or are you supposed to view them just as you did in life (be it good or bad)?

In my humble opinion… None of the above. Death is not only a passing on, but a time for everyone else to truthfully reflect on one’s life. To skim through the unsavory parts (or in Kennedy/MJ’s case, skip entire chapters all together) is to do the world a disservice. How are the rest of us shmucks supposed to learn from past mistakes if we can’t even acknowledge them to begin with?

The fact that the media decided to smooch the Kennedys’ rears through the death of Ted is appalling. Not only was there no mention of the Chappaquiddick river “incident” or his character assassination of Clarence Thomas, but the coverage was carried out in a way that assumed everyone was in agreement with the man’s misguided agenda. (more…)

Summer is the slow time on Broadway as theatre pros recover from their Tony Award hang-overs and try to rush out to the Island for a few days of R & R before the new season begins.  This year it seems there are a few plays aiming for early fall openings hoping to ride a crest of popularity into the always-lucrative holiday season.

Just as last season brought a record number of plays as well as stellar gross sales (despite doom-sayers in the industry) this season already looks locked and loaded with a huge number of shows scheduled to open between October 1st and the first week of May (the traditional Tony nomination cut-off).  So to help the readers of Big Hollywood plan their trip to the Great White Way (we can still say that, can’t we?), I submit the top 10 things to look for from the center/right perspective:

10.  ”Superior Donuts” – A transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (one of my personal favorite regional houses in America), the play stars “Spinal Tap”’s Michael McKean as an aging hippie who owns a donut shop in a largely black neighborhood and Jon Michael Hill (do all young Broadway actors HAVE to go by three names now?) as a 21-year-old from the neighborhood who talks his way into a job at the shop.  From the New York Times review:  ”In one of the play’s most amusing exchanges Franco challenges Arthur to name 10 black poets. Arthur names a few, then stands dumb, a look of deep concentration on his face. “It’s like watching George Bush on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Franco cracks.” (more…)

Twenty-four year-old Susan La Muse has god-like powers. Actually, her powers surpass those of God since she can reconstitute dead people from scraps of debris and restore them to full health and cognizance. She waves her arms and AIDS disappears from Africa. Every internal combustion engine changes to electric (although the question of what is generating this electricity is never answered.)  She makes disparaging remarks about being a “white girl” while celebrating every other race. And she solves most of her problems through sex. 

Straight sex, gay, bi, group, it doesn’t matter to the sexually omnivorous Susan whose libido knows no bounds. In her most asinine encounter, which becomes key to “world peace,” Susan pulls a train of skinhead Nazis who quickly see the light, accept their “bi-curious” strains and copulate with her and one another. Thereafter, anyone who views her sex tape becomes one with the world and all living things. And “Kumbaya” was heard in the land.   (more…)

Lately it seems like most of what the left considers intellectualism is just condescending arrogance based mostly on talking points and ungrounded assumptions.

Take, for instance, the debate over marijuana legalization. It is always assumed that the Democrats are in favor of legalization while the Republicans want to keep it verboten. Perhaps the explanation is that there are a lot more potheads in the Democrat Party, not that they have genuine intellectual curiosity. Democrats are the political home for the chronically lazy–given enough pot, your average Democrat will go on a long extended conspiracy rant about how hemp can feed, clothe, and fuel the entire earth, how it can grow without water, pesticides or fertilizer, and how the corporations paid off Republicans to make it illegal because it’s impossible to make a profit selling it. (more…)

If someone like Beethoven had a vision of the future and realized the impact his music had on humanity, would he be able to compose with the same fortitude and confidence, or rather, would the pressure of the realization of his own importance would eventually render him dysfunctional? 

I don’t confuse this hypothetical inquiry with Beethoven’s realization of his genius. I’m sure he knew of his own greatness. This is different, though, from the pressure that one may experience if his or her genius is also perceived in its historic context and significance. 

In other words, would Beethoven be able to remain Beethoven if, well, he was conscious of the fact that he was Beethoven, (or Beethoven the way he is perceived today)?

These musings of mine could easily be dismissed as exercises in futility or outbursts of excessive if not useless imagination if they were not so coincidental with the policies and style of our current government and prevailing cultural mindset.  (more…)