Actually, the attendance was easily in the tens of thousands, but sometimes it’s fun to take a cue from the MSM and just understate any fact that doesn’t serve your narrative.

Still, despite the impressive numbers, the predominately white rally does differ from Glenn Beck’s recent Restore Honor rally, and the Tea Party movement in general, in one way that illuminates the core difference between left and right.

Specifically, the Tea Party tends to be a movement of individuals, each pursuing their own interests, self-organizing in defense of their own rights, whereas the One Nation Working Together rally was the product of partnerships between over 400 labor, civil-rights, and other liberal organizations, many of whom bussed in their members by the thousands to bolster their numbers.

If there is any better picture of the top-down, coercive nature of liberalism than their approach to “grass roots” organizing, I’m not sure what it is.

These organizations use intimidation and the power of law to demand workers join their ranks in order to be employed in their sectors, then confiscate money from them in the form of mandatory dues, and then use that money to promote political causes that represent the interests of the organizations themselves – not necessarily their members.

Then they encourage those members to get on the busses their dues already paid for and go spend their weekend marching around to demand that politicians give the organizations even more power over them.

For actors plying their trade in Hollywood, it is an oft-recited axiom that in order to get work, you must be union, but in order to be union, you must get work.

Being a union actor, and therefore employable in Hollywood, means belonging to either the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or their sometimes-sister/sometimes-bitter-rival union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA).

Either way, your union dues and infrastructure are being used to support One Nation Working Together – regardless of whether you personally support liberal policies or not.

Both unions sent out official emails to their members encouraging them to participate in the activities in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles this weekend.

SAG says that it supports One Nation Working Together, and that it will be marching in solidarity with its fellows.

AFTRA is an official Endorsing Organization, along with groups like Communist Party USA, MOVE ON, National Council of La Raza (National Council of The Race, for those who don’t understand bi-lingual racism), Code Pink, Rainbow Push, and the International Socialist Organization.

If you belong to SAG or AFTRA and yet happen to be one those racist, mean-spirited, divisive Tea Partiers, or are just generally opposed to bolstering the politics of race-baiters, international communists, or anti-war activists, you certainly don’t have to march in the protest, but you’re still obliged to finance your union’s promotion of it.

* For the record, AFTRA says general member dues were not used to support One Nation Working Together, but that some AFTRA Locals may help to pay for buses.  This misses the point, however, that the entire organizational structure that allows AFTRA to promote these sorts of events is the product of member dues.

Of course, you are always perfectly free to just leave the union if you disagree with its political affiliations.  The fact that might mean effectively quitting your profession and giving up your livelihood makes this exactly the kind of freedom the left loves to support.

This is just one more reason it is so difficult for conservatives in Hollywood.  When you are required to financially support liberal political organizations as a prerequisite for employment in a business where being rejected for a job without explanation is necessarily a daily occurrence, it is hard to believe your conformity to the party line is not itself a requirement.

Iraq War vets who complain of discrimination and recrimination by casting directors seem a bit more credible when their own union declares solidarity with Code Pink, and Republicans afraid to voice their beliefs on set for fear of being blacklisted seem less hyperbolic when their own union declares solidarity with LA Grassroots for Obama, SEIU, and the Democratic Socialists of America.  At the same time, writers bemoaning the witch-hunts of McCarthyism in screenplay after screenplay seem somehow less credible when both major acting unions declare solidarity with the Communist Party USA.

In matters of racial or sexual discrimination, the left is quick to point out that discrimination is not just about reality, it is about perception.  A person can be coerced into conformity by just the appearance of consequences for going their own way, even if no explicit threat is made.  So consider for yourself whether the two emails below lend credibility to the fears of conservatives in Hollywood, and ask yourself how you might feel if you were in their shoes.

SAG EMAIL:

AFTRA EMAIL:

Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans, Hugo Chavez and Medea Benjamin

The Great Melanie Morgan is putting together a protest for tomorrow and according to Variety’s Wilshire & Washington, it looks as though the protest will also be an opportunity to do a little star-gazing:

Jerry Brown will be at the Venice home of Jodie Evans for a $500-per-person event on Saturday, with a host list that includes Frank Gehry, Sally Kellerman, Bill Press, Stanley Sheinbaum, Hope Warschaw and Gail Zappa.

That’s Pritzker Prize winning architect Frank Gehry…
Oscar-nominee and “M*A*S*H” star Sally Kellerman…
Left-wing columnist and talk radio host Bill Press…
Funder of left-wing causes Stanley Sheinbaum…
Someone named Hope Warschaw…
and Frank Zappa’s second wife, Gail…

Hey, so what if Jodie Evans and her Code Pinksters likes to partner up with Hamas to donate $600,000 in “humanitarian aid” to the same terrorists out on a rampage to kill our military in Iraq? These prominent Hollywoodists and their moneyed ilk are just trying to be open-minded and tolerant. It’s not like she’s Sarah Palin.

Melanie Morgan and her fellow patriots will be at Evans’ home before the event which begins at 4 p.m.Saturday at 757 Palms Blvd., Venice, Calif.

For more information go to www.moveamericaforward.com.

Like Hollywood itself, founded early in the 20th century by immigrant Jewish imagineers of the American Dream, the prominent U.S. inventors of comic strip heroes Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Captain Marvel, Hulk, and Captain America, were Jewish dreamers who promoted and projected American success. 

Blair Kramer wrote of Superman: 

After Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and proceeded to distort Nietzsche’s concept of Superman, (Siegel and Shuster) decided to rethink their own concept of Superman’s character. They changed their Jewish-created Superman to a force for good. Possessing superhuman powers, Superman leaped tall buildings in a single bound and bullets bounced off his chest as he lifted automobiles and ripped steel doors from their hinges. In the first issue, Superman even rescued battered wives from abusive husbands. 

When America entered World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Superman’s character evolved into a combat hero. He destroyed Nazi armor, Japanese submarines and everything else that was thrown at the Allies. In fact, the cover of a 1944 issue of Superman featured the Man of Steel throttling Hitler and Tojo by the collar. 

Kramer further notes: 

Despite his superhuman powers, Superman shared some characteristic traits with a majority of American Jews in the 1940s. Like them, he had arrived in America from a foreign world. His entire family = in fact his entire race – had been wiped out in a holocaust-like disaster on his home planet, Krypton. Like German Jewish parents who sent their children on the kindertransports, or the baby Moses set adrift in the bull rushes, Superman’s parents launched him to Earth in hopes that he would survive. 

And while the mild-mannered Clark Kent held a white collar job as a reporter by day, the “real” man behind Kent’s meek exterior was a virile, indestructible crusader for justice. This fantasy must have resonated among American Jews, who felt powerless to help their brethren in the death camps of Europe. 

Superman obeys the Talmudic injunction to do good for its own sake and heal the world where he can. Siegel and Shuster had created a mythic character who reflected their own Jewish values. 

But the heroic vision of a confident defense of liberty, and the World War II era celebration of American strength, did not last long in Hollywood, or in the comics. By the 1960’s, new age shapers of our culture became its severest critics. Many artists, academics, and news analysts came to despise the establishment, and turned against the American founding, free enterprise system, and traditional foreign policy.The left has been moving farther and farther away from admiration, or even tolerance, of the Judeo-Christian roots and national mission of the United States ever since. 

At the extreme left fringe, Oliver Stone, along with Code Pink activists and religious leftists like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright, go so far as to side with our enemies. Some travel to stand by terrorists in Gaza, tyrants in the Middle East, and dictators in Central and South America. They drink their liquor, smoke their cigars, and pronounce themselves opponents of American foreign policy.

Fortunately, most Americans still roll their eyes, and laugh at Michael Moore’s claims that health care in Cuba is better than in the United States, which produces medicines for the planet and significantly cleaner hospital bed sheets than the disgusting conditions throughout Castro’s hell-hole. 

Sadly though, when radical American stars cover for human rights abusers, ignore the suffering of millions under Jihad, and collaborate with autocrats, they dampen the hopes of dissidents and freedom fighters. Sean Penn could have reversed years of boneheaded moves by standing up for the Green Movement students protesting the Mullahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council in Tehran. 

In fact, where was anyone from Hollywood, much less the White House, in June, 2009, during one of the most compelling human rights moments since 1989’s Tienanmen Square? 

There is not much new here. Stalin had his apologists, Mao had his defenders, and so did Pol Pot and many other mass murderers. 

The liberal imagination has long promoted utopianism, socialism, progressivism. These belief systems all promote the power of the government over the individual, control by the state over the entrepreneur, elite hostility to personal liberty and achievement, economic re-distributionism over private property rights, and an aggressive agenda to control the hearts and minds of children in society. Urban moms and dads are noticing: Who is against school choice and competition today ?

Another major feature of the left is extreme antipathy to Jews. Voltaire and Marx were bitter Jew-haters, labeling the Jews as capitalists and particularists, and religionists faithful to a Creator greater than the State. 

Socialism and communism, all about group-think and uniformity, became brutal opponents of Jewish identity and culture, memory and education. In its fullest form, the USSR locked away Jewish teachers, denied the celebration of Jewish holidays, and came to harshly oppose the Jewish state of Israel. 

This is all well understood. But no matter. With his contempt for western civilization, Oliver Stone has found a global marketing niche: anti-American media product.  He has a new documentary celebrating the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, he is working with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he wants to let everyone know that “Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.” 

The Los Angeles based Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the famed Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter, issued a press release on July 26, 2010: 

WIESENTHAL CENTER CALLS ON ENTERTAINMENT COMMUNITY TO BLAST OLIVER STONE FOR HIS BELITTLEMENT OF THE HOLOCAUST AND ANTI-SEMITIC REMARKS 

In London’s Sunday Times (July 25, 2010), Stone claimed that the Holocaust is overemphasized in our culture because Jews “control the media” and that “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.” 

“Oliver Stone is bent on trivializing the Nazi Holocaust and “contextualizing” both Hitler and Stalin as not-such- terrible-guys with whom we should empathize, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center. “He parrots the anti-Semitic chorus led by Iran’s genocide-wannabe Ahmadinejad, by attributing the world’s focus on the Shoah – in his money quote, sure to be enshrined in every Islamist Google search (to) “The Jewish domination of the media….”

“We hope that Oliver Stone’s reckless and outrageous rhetoric will be condemned by his peers in the entertainment community,” Cooper concluded. 

Three questions arise, one for Hollywood, one for American consumers, and one for Jews. 

a) Will Hollywood begin to reject Oliver Stone and his fellow travelers who stand beside, apologize for, and party with America’s enemies? 

b) Will US audiences reject Stone’s anti-Americanism and Jew hatred? Will we vote with our feet, wallets, and viewing choices and deny Stone our market share? 

c) Will American Jews continue their incremental political awakening and reject the left, which is hostile to Israel, Jewish identity and nationhood, and support American counter-terrorism policies that are necessary in the face of the third Jihad, a political ideology bent on conquest over women’s rights through Shariah law, over modern religious freedom and pluralism, and over secular, humane values as well. 

Perhaps. But while some still hope for the women’s movement, gay rights advocates, and the self-proclaimed human rights community to begin standing up to the genital mutilation, honor killings, and religious based murder that marks radical Islamism, many others have stopped expecting much moral action or thought from the bright lights of American culture. 

Prolific Hollywood film director and screenwriter Oliver Stone makes controversial movies, often criticized for their historical inaccuracies and invention, seeking not truth but dramatic story.

But Stone figured out long ago how to leverage radical politics into profits. He succeeds because his ideology has an audience. He may not reach the American majority, but his movies pays the bills and keep him going. 

Stone is a fantasist. A modern cartoonist. A dreamer of dark dreams. 

Just know, though, that he takes the other side of the American dream. Instead of fighting Hitlerism, he insults Hitler’s victims with Nazi rhetoric about Jewish power and influence and control of the media. Instead of complimenting anti-communism, he apologizes for Stalin. Instead of standing up for freedom and human rights, Stone reaches out to the holocaust denier and promiser of genocide, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

And instead of celebrating free market capitalism, which provides him his wealth and platform, he mocks it. A frequent drug user, Stone even managed to promote the terrorists FARC in the Colombian drug wars.

Stone’s biggest fantasy is that somehow he is the necessary story teller, the one who speaks truth to power. 

But he should be pleased, not angry. His worldview has won. 

President Obama bows to Saudi Kings, repeatedly apologizes for America, rejects American Exceptionalism, hugs thugs, and abandons and offends friends like Honduras, Poland, the Czech Republic, India, Israel, Panama, Columbia, and South Korea, and many more. 

Obama has adopted the Arab narrative regarding Israel, and the third world narrative of America’s original sins, colonial power and nefarious empire building.

The Obama doctrine features the simultaneously absurd claims that the United States was not founded as a Christina nation but was somehow instead deeply benefited by Muslim influence. He never quite got it that President Jefferson had a Koran, but it was underlined to study how and why to defeat the Barbary pirates in the Tripolitan wars of the early 19th century. 

Mr. Stone is therefore not alone in his post-American and anti-American worldview. He should stop his tortured “truth-teller” shtick. He is the zeitgeist. 

Stones even gets to have his own foreign policy. He is writing and producing his own “secret” history of the United States, coming to the small screen near you this fall. 

What’s chic and out of the mainstream today are honorable artists and critics who actually admire America and whose criticisms, liberal or conservative, sincerely come from love of the nation which grants so much cultural, economic, and religious liberty. They are the counter-cultural heroes now. 

However the political world turns, Hollywood directors, political and cultural cartoonists, and even Museum curators will continue to develop their own fantasies. 

At the entrance to the Jewish Museum Berlin, there is a large sculpture of Superman, upside down, with his head smashed into the ground, blood everywhere. It’s another statement against American leadership, goodness, nobility, service, and liberation. 

It is also a deep insult to the American spirit and nation, and the heroes of D-Day and their sacrificing homeland countrymen of World War II, as well as the rescuers of the Berlin Airlift of the late 1940’s, and the American leaders, from JFK to Ronald Reagan, who stood by a free Berlin and shouted “Tear Down This Wall”. 

Oliver Stone would be pleased. His mother was French, his third wife is Korean; only his disappointed Jewish father was the American he came to despise. 

Stone has become the anti-John Ford, who was the greatest director of American cinema, featuring strong Western heroes, like John Wayne, who were lovers of our land and were honorable truth-tellers. 

Stone is the anti-Ronald Reagan, the Hollywood actor and good-natured mid-Westerner who fought tyranny and opposed the evil empire of the Soviet Union. 

And Stone is the anti-Superman. He is the alienated artist, the leftist radical, the promoter of Stalin, the buddy of Chavez, and Castro, the apologist for Shiite Jihad. 

He is now also the Jew-baiting cartoonist of today, seeking alliance with those who fight not for, but for the destruction of, truth, justice, and the American way.

[Ed. Note: Earlier today, director Oliver Stone issued an apology for his remarks through his publicist.]

The truth is, it was State Department official Richard Armitage – a Bush critic, not an evil neocon – who leaked Plame’s name. Yet Armitage’s name never appears in the script. And how could it? That would defuse the filmmakers’ intent to demonize Rove and Bush and to condemn the war as shameful, unjust American aggression.

Coming soon to a theater near you: a movie starring Sean Penn as a great American patriot taking a courageous stand against a tyrannical power. No, it’s not a biopic about Penn’s South American idol, Hugo Chavez, facing down the imperialistic Goliath of the United States. It’s a dramatization of “Plamegate,” the affair of the CIA operative whose identity was outed in the run-up to the Iraq War, ostensibly by a vindictive Bush administration. Fair Game, based on Valerie Plame Wilson’s autobiographical book of the same name, stars Naomi Watts as the aggrieved Plame and Penn as her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, in a role apparently already gaining Oscar buzz.

(By the way, what Oscar voters in recent years refer to as “buzz” is actually the sound of audiences all across this country snoring – such is the disconnect between Oscar winners and what Americans usually like to see).

But the thought of bringing Fair Game to a theater near you or anyone else must have the producers quaking in their Kenneth Coles. After all, they’re facing the almost certain prospect of their political thriller going down in flames a là the recent cinematic Hindenburg known as The Green Zone, which many are claiming is the final nail in the coffin of Iraq-war-themed movies. The Plame project is a joint production of Abu Dhabi’s Imagenation Entertainment and Participant Media, which describes itself as focusing on “socially relevant, commercially viable” projects.

I think they need to adjust their focus. Fair Game not only is socially irrelevant to everyone except obsessive Bush-haters, but isn’t commercially viable either, since American moviegoers have rejected Hollywood’s anti-war propaganda over and over again. Actually, “anti-war” is a misnomer, since if the Hollywood Left were truly anti-war, they would denounce the actual aggressors like bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas et al. But they’re usually too busy heaping moral condemnation on the U.S. and its allies to protest against real evil in the world.

And the concept of evil is too simplistic anyway for the Hollywood Left, which believes the world is more nuanced than conservatives are capable of comprehending, much less admitting. “There are no bad guys or good guys,” say writer/director Stephan Gaghan and George Clooney about their 2005 movie Syriana, in which Americans are clearly the bad guys and radicalized Muslims are the moral center. That’s the hypocrisy of Hollywood’s morally inverted view of the world, in which leftists are pillars of truth and integrity, bad guys are simply misunderstood, and conservatives are utterly Satanic. “Bush lied, people died” – you know, nuance.

This isn’t the place for a thorough re-examination of Plamegate or of the justification for going to war with Iraq, which have been written about exhaustively elsewhere: check out Kenneth Timmerman’s book Shadow Warriors, for example, in which he discusses the scandal and eviscerates the Wilsons in the process, or Party of Defeat, in which David Horowitz and Ben Johnson concisely lay out the reasons for going after Saddam. But in case you didn’t keep up with the mainstream media’s four-year, off-and-on front-page obsession with the Plame scandal, here’s a quick recap:

In 2003, the White House sent former ambassador Joe Wilson to follow up on a lead that Iraqi maniac Saddam was trying to purchase fissionable materials from Niger. Wilson reported back that the rumor wasn’t credible; but when the Bush administration proceeded to put forth the suspicion as part of the case for going to war, Wilson wrote a controversial editorial entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” in the wake of which journalist Robert Novak revealed that Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. The Wilsons believed that Novak’s White House source was Karl “The Architect” Rove and that her identity was leaked as revenge for Wilson exposing the administration’s “duplicity.” The anti-war Left and the left-leaning media latched onto this affair and milked it throughout the early years of the war, undermining morale and the war effort, although a Senate investigation ultimately discredited the Wilsons’ accusations.

Not to be dissuaded by the facts, Hollywood is dipping into the well again in Fair Game. My own undercover source deep in the belly of the Hollywood beast (okay, it’s Big Hollywood editor John Nolte and his Whistleblower) has slipped me a copy of the script, written by Jez and John Butterworth. I don’t know whether this is a first draft or the final shooting script or some version in-between, but based on what I’ve read, the movie is more than just a desperate attempt to turn this already overblown scandal into a nail-biting political thriller; Fair Game is a full-out assault on Bush’s “war of choice” and on what Roger Ebert, whose career has degenerated into making petty insults toward decent Americans, calls “neocon evildoing.” (There’s that nuance again).

Must I issue a spoiler alert for this one? Would it really come as a surprise to hear that the script paints the entire Bush administration as power-mad schemers, and the Wilsons as courageous patriots putting themselves on the line to save the lives of American soldiers and defend our Constitutional rights? That it asserts that Bush’s abuses, not Saddam Hussein’s central role in international terrorism, constituted the real threat to this country? That a whole slew of critical CIA operations was abandoned, thanks to the vengeful outing of Valerie Plame, leaving many agents exposed in the field? And that as a result, Iraqi nuclear scientists (“the real WMDs,” as Watts/Plame says) defected to a welcoming Iran instead? If so, then I have some property in Death Valley I’d like to sell you.

President Bush and other top level White House figures appear in the movie only in actual news footage, selectively chosen to suggest that they are conspiring in a “coordinated” coverup. But lesser players Rove and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff, are more central to the script, which shows Libby intimidating CIA analysts so intensely that they burst into sweat and waves of nausea. He and Rove are also shown engaging in backroom manipulations to “bury” Plame and Wilson (the title itself comes from a quote which Hardball host Chris Matthews attributed to Rove, about Valerie being “fair game” – a phrase Rove says came from Matthews).

But the truth is, it was State Department official Richard Armitage – a Bush critic, not an evil neocon – who leaked Plame’s name, and who hid his involvement for many months while Rove and others unfairly bore the brunt of the investigation and of the public excoriation. In other words, as Horowitz writes in Party of Defeat, “the entire affair was concocted out of whole cloth by opponents of the war.” Rove, Libby, Cheney, Bush – the whole criminal pantheon of the Left’s fevered imagination – were not responsible for Plame’s outing (Libby was found guilty, though, of perjuring himself during the investigation). Yet Armitage’s name never appears in the script. And how could it? That would defuse the filmmakers’ intent to demonize Rove and Bush and to condemn the war as shameful, unjust American aggression.

Penn and Watts play the Wilsons as a couple whose only character flaws are their unshakeable professional integrity, love of country, and willingness to risk everything to speak truth to power. The script highlights the personal cost to Valerie Plame; even her friends turn on her for the “betrayal” of keeping her CIA job secret. “You lied to me for 20 years,” says her best friend in the script. “Who are you?”

Except that this isn’t what happened. Valerie says in her own autobiography that her close friends, without exception, were generously supportive and understanding, and that even old friends, distant relatives and long-lost acquaintances came out of the woodwork to offer their support. But hey, in fairness, the filmmakers have to ramp up the drama somehow.

Meanwhile, Penn’s worldly-wise Joe Wilson is busy speculating about government lies, fending off vicious “right-wing reporters” and lecturing captive audiences about having fearlessly confronted Saddam himself. “Have you met Saddam?” Wilson snaps at dinner guests casually discussing the Iraqi threat. “Have you looked him in the eye? Did he threaten to kill you? You don’t know Saddam. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Later, Penn/Wilson complains to the press that “those in the Highest Office sought to destroy the career of a public servant to punish me for speaking the truth.” If Penn, an actor who says journalists should be jailed for criticizing Hugo Chavez, can deliver a line like this with conviction, then perhaps he should get another Oscar.

To make sure we get the message that Penn’s Joe Wilson is a true American hero, one character tells him, “You’re a true American hero.” And modest too: “The real heroes,” he replies, ”are in Iraq right now fighting a war which was prosecuted on lies and falsehoods.” He got that half-right – the real heroes are fighting in Iraq (and Afghanistan), not here in the comfort of home undermining the war effort.

The anti-war Bush-bashing (yawn) continues to pile up. While driving Penn/Wilson in a taxi to the White House, a West African immigrant expresses his gratitude at being in the “Land of the Brave, Home of the Free” and out of war-torn Sierra Leone: “Over there we have no truth. Just power. Over here it’s a different world.” Apparently this praise for America wasn’t “nuanced” enough for Penn/Wilson, who tells the driver, “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Leave it to an immigrant from an anarchic hellhole to appreciate America’s freedoms, while the comfortable leftist broods about the “threat” of “right-wing reporters” and speechifies about imaginary Republican abuses of power. In a later scene, Valerie’s father tells her, “One day this country is gonna look back on these years, and it’s gonna hang its head. It’s gonna weep. Then it’s gonna stand up straight and walk on.” That “stand up and walk on” bit feels tacked on, considering that the Left seems to think America should be in a perpetual state of shame and apology.

Coincidentally, Valerie Plame Wilson is back on the fringes of the news again, thanks to the release of politico Rove’s memoir Courage and Consequence. This prompted terrorist sympathizer and Code Pink founder Jodie Evans to attempt to handcuff Rove at a recent book signing, shouting, “Look what you did! You outed a CIA officer! You lied to take us to war!” (Um, if Evans is going to attempt citizen’s arrests of war criminals, perhaps she could start with her associates in the Taliban and Hamas). Rather than just trashing the book with a one-star Amazon.com review, the Wilsons actually released a statement, dismissing Rove’s book as

a pathetically weak defense of the disastrous policies pursued by the Bush administration, involving our country in a war of choice based on false intelligence and badly tarnishing the good name of the United States of America.

Yes, very nuanced. But ultimately it’s hard to see the real-life Wilsons as victims. They ended up as the toast of the elitist, anti-war Left, with a glamorous Vanity Fair spread, a $2.5 million book deal for Valerie, and a feature film glorification starring Hollywood A-listers – albeit a film that seems destined to sputter and die right out of the gate.

One has to wonder if Sean Penn simply doesn’t care whether this movie does well at the box office – after all, how could he expect it to?  Back when anti-war activist Robert Redford directed the 2007 talky bore Lions for Lambs, it was still possible for Hollywood to delude itself into thinking that America would flock to see such superstars as Redford, Cruise and Streep in a sanctimonious plea for pacifism.

But Lions for Lambs fizzled, as did every other Hollywood attempt to flagellate America for the supposedly pointless waste of Bush’s wars, all the way up to last month’s disastrous The Green Zone. (Meanwhile, the 2006 movie 300, an unabashed celebration of warrior virtues and love of country, has racked up $457 million without a single bankable star). If the American people can’t be lured into cinemas to sit through Hollywood’s leftist morality tales even by a Bourne-style thriller featuring proven action star Matt Damon, then what chance at box office success does another smug, elitist, anti-war diatribe featuring the unlikable Sean Penn have?

Americans aren’t buying it. They simply aren’t the morally unsophisticated, uninformed dullards that a condescending Hollywood believes them to be. Or is that too nuanced for the Hollywood Left to grasp?

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!

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

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Robert Avrech’s lovely paean to the patriotism of Old Hollywood reminds me, by way of contrast, of a blink-and-you-missed-it scandal from seventeen months ago. Even in a cultural arena rife with liberal outrages against military families, it marked a new low. And although it was but one small battle in the culture war, it is worth recalling in the wake of Memorial Day as a reminder of just how far our popular media has fallen from the sterling ideals of our forefathers.

What does NBC stand for again? National Broadcasters against Conservatives? No Blessings for the Corps? On December 7, 2007, as the country solemnly remembered Pearl Harbor and the timeless sacrifices of soldiers long dead, one of our major television networks decided that running ads praising today’s modern armed forces constituted a bridge too far. The two thirty-second spots had been produced by Freedom’s Watch, a now-defunct conservative action group which aspired to be the MoveOn.org of the right, using “grassroots lobbying, education and information campaigns, and issue advocacy” to fight the good fight against the legion of hippy-dippy protesters, nihilists, and ideological bullies that perpetually rage (and increasingly reign) throughout blue-state America.

For years, organizations like Code Pink, A.N.S.W.E.R., and MEChA have inflicted lunatic be-ins on a horrified public, the collective psychedelic derangement of which makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show look like A Room With a View. But then Freedom’s Watch arrived on the scene — let’s call them Code Red, White and Blue — and they came determined to honor our troops, damn the cost. In August of ‘07, they first attempted to buy ad-time on major networks to run commercials supporting the war in Iraq. While Fox and CNN broadcast them without issue, NBC and its sister networks deemed them too controversial, which is liberal Pig Latin for too partisan, too outside the mainstream — in a word, too conservative. At the time, Freedom’s Watch president Bradley A. Blakeman wrote a polite letter to NBC, pointing out that the network has a long record of accepting ads from nakedly progressive groups without the slightest qualm.

(The Bob Hope display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.)

He might also have added, “That plaintive whining sound you hear is Bob Hope spinning in his grave.” As Hollywood’s most beloved wartime icon, the British-born comedian spent a half-century enriching NBC’s coffers while praising our military at every turn. His 1970 and ‘71 Christmas Specials, filmed on the ground in Vietnam, still rank among the most-watched television shows of all-time. But save for an impressive schiltron of American flags displayed on holidays, Hope’s legacy long ago faded from 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In the end, the network’s wingtipped, Armani-clad Brahmins never deigned to answer Blakeman’s letter, quietly consigning his request for ad-time to the good ol’ circular filing cabinet, one with a metaphorical temperature edging dangerously close to Ray Bradbury’s dystopian 451 degrees.

Then in December of ‘07, Freedom’s Watch tried again with a pair of innocuous commercials that, to this viewer, soothed and fortified like exquisite mouthfuls of Mom’s home cooking. These new spots depicted people from all walks of life offering simple, heartfelt benedictions to our troops, and while their aura of optimism recalled Reagan’s “It’s Morning in America” ads, the underlying message was, by any reasonable standard, universal. Judge for yourself:

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Astoundingly, these too were rejected by a sober-faced NBC. The problem this time? Including FW’s web address on the tail-end of each ad, an act which apparently violated the network’s Standards and Practices.

Standards and Practices…boy, that’s rich. In recent years, NBC’s practices have famously included living the high life at the expense of the companies they cover, as well as manufacturing stories on everything from anti-Muslim hate crimes to exploding cars. In the process, they’ve degenerated from a once-proud news bastion into the peacock battalion of America’s fifth column, force-feeding viewers doom-and-gloom propaganda slickly masqueraded as unbiased news. Running a sincere message of hope in a time of war would indeed appear to go against everything they stand for these days, although — who knows? — it might help them reverse their agonizing slide into their lowest news ratings in over twenty years.

Freedom’s Watch president Blakeman promptly fired off a new letter of protest, but few believed he’d have better luck than last time — that is, until storm clouds started to form on the public-relations horizon. Cruising the conservative blogosphere in the days following the rejection, I could sense astonishment quickly hardening into genuine outrage. In forum after forum, the network began getting an earful from Americans with friends and family in the armed services. Soon the cacophony had grown to the point where NBC announced that it was reversing course and amending its (allow me to gird myself to say the words with a straight face) Standards and Practices.

And so, just like that, Freedom’s Watch won. Not an election or a court case, but merely the simple right to buy, at great expense, the time with which to say “thank you” to our heroic fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and spouses fighting and dying in faraway lands. This confrontation proved instructive. As Robert Avrech’s Memorial Day post here at Big Hollywood showed, conservatives often pine for the olden days when America was largely united on patriotic matters. It seems possible to at least partially resurrect that (semi-mythical) time, but only if we insist on more from our shared broadcast media than the desiccated “standards and practices” of a corrupt liberal thugocracy.

During that holiday season of 2007, the NBC show with the most cultural buzz was Heroes, a sleeper hit about ordinary people mysteriously imbued with comic-book superpowers. It’s nice to know that — courtesy of Freedom’s Watch — America’s real-life heroes were honored on NBC during that Christmas as well. Granted, we only got it in precious little windows of thirty seconds each, but it was a start on the long road toward cultural recovery and renewal.

Freedom’s Watch was a victim of the collapsing economy of 2008, and there will be no new Christmas commercials from them thanking our troops. But one imagines that in December of 2007, somewhere in the heavens, Bob Hope cracked a smile at all of the people who twisted NBC’s corporate arm and said, “Thanks for the Memory.”

Those conservatives pining for a bit of that ol’ time patriotism can buy Bob Hope: The Vietnam Years (1964-1972).

President Obama — David Axelrod

You know. Like Wanda Sykes, Sandra Bernhard and the Teabag-loving MSM.

As to Mr. Axelrod’s crude and lame attempt at insulting humor that should be beneath the dignity of any presidential advisor, I can only conclude that he made that derogatory comment about Carrie Prejean because Miss California shares his boss’s negative attitude  toward gay marriage.

During this live interview, in which Hot Seat host Peter Sagal referred to Mr. Axelrod as ‘the moustache behind the throne’ and the ‘Rasputin of the Magic Kingdom’ (my personal favorite, for reasons you shall soon know), Mr. Axelrod also slammed a comparison to his predecessor, former Bush advisor Karl Rove: “I always reject that. I’d like to think we’re better than that.”

Mr. Axelrod may like to think he’s better than Karl Rove, but he’s actually far worse than Karl Rove ever was in both class and principle.  Example. In the wake of the controversial DHS Right Wing Extremism report, and as the Tea Parties were happening, Mr. Axelrod said the following in a Face The Nation interview: “Any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy.” Hint hint.

Mr. Axelrod also also added this qualifying disqualifier: “We value our liberties and our values of liberty and to express ourselves, and so far, these are just expressions.” So far. Does anyone else notice how closely Mr. Axelrod adheres to the controversial blanket statements of the DHS RWE report? Show me one instance in which Karl Rove implied Leftie demonstrators were a potential threat to the Republic, even when joking of President Bush’s assassination had become chic.

Yet for Mr. Axelrod, throw one peaceful nationwide Tea Party and it’s a national security concern.

Like Rush Limbaugh, for example, whom Mr. Axelrod helped coordinate a political campaign against with the power, resources, authority and consent of the White House. Can you imagine the uproar if President Bush and Karl Rove orchestrated a political campaign against Al Franken or Michael Moore from directly within the Oval Office? The Left would have been foaming at the mouth about death camps and Nixon’s enemies’ lists.

Yet, like Rasputin and unlike Karl Rove, President Obama’s ‘Mad Monk’ is fast accumulating enemies across the political spectrum. Mr. Axelrod’s defense of the President’s blocking of the detainee photos, along with the Obama administration’s plan to restore military tribunals of Gitmo detainees, is riling everyone on the Left from the ACLU to Code Pink. One member of Code Pink now wonders when she should start calling President Obama a war criminal.

Also like Karl Rove, David Axelrod has accumulated no shortage of political enemies. But unlike Rove, the Mad Monk’s political adversaries now run the gamut from the ACLU’s Anthony Romero to Dick Cheney. That’s quite an achievement, to piss everybody off in a short three months!

Anyone who knows the story of Rasputin can see the rich similarities here. A wild-eyed True Believer and political loose cannon with extraordinary influence having a derogatory effect on Tsar Obama’s kingdom, making enemies everywhere. Though I doubt Obama’s Mad Monk will suffer the same poisoned wine and tea cakes and multiple gunshots before being bagged and tossed into a river as his freaky Russian progenitor, I expect Mr. Axelrod’s big mouth will sooner or later bear the treadmarks of Obama’s political bus tires.

Then again, the President has been loathe to toss those closest to him where they belong. Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers were major political albatrosses, and candidate Obama didn’t give them the heave-ho until it was nearly too late in the campaign. That being the case, and knowing the Mad Monk’s close association with President Obama, maybe he’ll be allowed to just keep on spouting insults, innuendo, vitriol and hypocritical excuses to extend Bush-era national security policies, and continue to offend even more millions of Americans of all political stripes.

He certainly hasn’t failed to disappoint to date. And I’m hoping he continues to do just that. I am a Republican, after all. By the way, Politico’s Alex Conant concurs with my assessment. Only he uses a different historical point of reference: Machiavelli.  His analysis is well worth the read, yet I disagree with Mr. Conant on one Point of Parliamentary Procedure. Machiavelli believed that you should “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

Obama’s Mad Monk is making no friends, except for the intellectual retards in NPR’s Hot Seat audiences. And his enemies are closing in from all sides. NPR can’t save him there. And with President Obama’s flip-flopping on national security issues and other disastrous policies, the Mad Monk’s inevitable pretzel-twisting logic to justify measures candidate Obama ran against, and the political backlash sure to follow as it has to date, I can only imagine the poisoned wine and tea cakes will start looking real good to Rasputin II as his Magic Kingdom turns to shite.