So it was with caution that I approached his new independent film ‘Amigo,’ very loosely based around 1901 events during the Philippine Insurrection in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. The Philippine Insurrection was a kind of American Victorian Vietnam where issues of friendlies mixed in among foe, bolo knife ambushes and waterboarding interrogations (yes, it’s been around that long) reared their uncomfortable heads.

‘Civilize ‘em with a Krag,” the standard American military rifle of the period, was a lyric to a song popular with American troops of the time, and ugly racial epithets like “GuGu” were a common reference to the native Filipinos.

‘Amigo’ is not a bad film, and surprisingly nowhere near as Anti-American as one would expect.

The story revolves around the benevolent mayor of an island village who finds himself caught between the occupying American troops and opposing local guerillas that include his own son and brother. ‘Amigo’ does labor under an obviously limited budget. Sayles learned his early filmmaking trade under the same “B” movie legend that I did – we both wrote scripts for Roger Corman.

Despite its small budget, ‘Amigo’ has some excellent performances mainly by the Filipino actors, including the film’s star and co-producer Joel Torre. The best known member of the cast, Sayles’ stock company member Chris Cooper, draws the unfortunate part of a fictionalized version of a ranting U.S. Army general that seems typical, though in this case is a somewhat fair depiction. Two of my favorite characters in the film are a pair of crusty Filipino villagers who delight in facing off with each other during the villages’ annual fiesta cock fight. The loser’s rooster winds up in the cooking pot of the winner.

Oops, you think Sayles may have lost the PETA crowd at this point in the film?

Sayles’ previous independent historical films show he usually buys into some of radical left-wing historian Howard Zinn’s take on America.  Zinn was the biggest proponent that minorities and the disenfranchised completely built America on the backs of the over-privileged elites, a class warfare theme that sounds suspiciously contemporary and familiar.  Not that there weren’t social, racial and labor inequities in our past, but someone had to come up with all of those new innovative industries and businesses to employ much of the population. Some of the wealthy supposed robber barons were actually fair-minded generous philanthropists, and others were not. These were the days when even the richest had no air conditioning, modern medical services and God forbid – no cell phones, laptops or the Internet! How did the rich ever cope back then?

Sayles’ American soldiers in ‘Amigo’ are not a bunch of grossly inaccurate, evil fools and crazed killers like in so many other Vietnam and modern war on terror films. His Victorian-era troopers are real flesh and blood human beings a long, long way from home. Garrett Dillahunt’s young American lieutenant even does what good officers in hostile foreign lands have always done, he sincerely attempts to understand the locals and their culture. When one soldier is ordered to fashion a noose for an execution because he claimed to have taken part in the lynching of black American back home, he embarrassingly admits that he didn’t actually participate in the lynching.

Though structured well, ‘Amigo’ is a very slow film without much explanation or context of roots of the actual conflict. Its small budget and storyline unfortunately give it a discounted look and feel. My guess is that all of the costumes, props and weapons were made on the cheap, and it shows. I worked as director John Milius’ historical advisor and produced the opening credit sequence for the 1997 TNT ‘Rough Riders’ mini-series on Teddy Roosevelt and the Spanish-American War.  I know the period well, and even have two original Krag rifles and other period artifacts in my own collection.

The real reason America was in the Philippines after kicking Spain out of the islands was not just to get in on the end of the last of the imperial land grabs by the European super powers, but also to stem the tide of German, French, British and Japanese ambitions in the Pacific. The common Victorian racial attitudes of the European powers at the time, as well as our own, dictated that it was the “white man’s burden“ to bring civilization to their “little brown brothers.” That is just the way it was in those far less enlightened times.

‘Amigo’ is actually quite the lost opportunity, and the talented Sayles’ personal focus and left-wing views wouldn’t allow him to pursue the real epic story he very loosely based his film around, but not on – the 1901 Balangiga Massacre. On the morning of September 28, 1901 forty-eight American soldiers were ambushed in their tents and killed by 500 Filipino villagers and guerillas many disguised as women. Balangiga was then the worst such incident since Custer’s loss of 212 men at the Little Bighorn in 1876.

The American retaliation by Major Littleton Waller’s battalion of U.S. Marines, and that officer’s unjust court martial and his subsequent acquittal, are an incredibly unsung and dramatic story. Waller refused to carry out killing Filipino males over the age of ten; illegal orders directly given to him by Chris Cooper’s real life inspiration, U.S. Army General Jacob Smith. Waller’s rugged battles and eventual starvation march through the dangerous interior of the island of Samar became such a legend in the Marine Corps that whenever a Marine who served there was present at a function the order was always given, “Stand gentlemen, he served on Samar.” Waller stood the course, stood up for what was right, was brought to task for it and proved his innocence. General Smith was then court martialed, convicted and finally dismissed from the army.

Now that’s the other, far more fascinating side missing from ‘Amigo.’

In the middle of this political storm sat ”24″ producer Joel Surnow, whose only sin is his open conservatism and who obviously did everything he was asked of by every historian thrown his way in order to meet The Howard Zinn Channel’s lofty historical standards. In return, the goal posts were moved time and again until the inevitable came true. Here are some snips, but you’ll want to read the whole thing:

“They were down to specific words,” Surnow says. Producers, for instance, had wanted Jack Kennedy to go to Hyannis Port, Mass., before his father had a stroke, but the historians nixed that. “We had a magnifying glass over every line.”

Surnow reaches across the table, opens a computer and reveals an e-mail dated May 25 from Gillon to him, Koch and McKillop: “I have approved the latest version of episode one for historical accuracy. Congratulations.” Surnow has similar e-mails for all the other episodes.

But the fight wasn’t over. Even after shooting the miniseries in Toronto from June through September 2010, producers felt additional pressure over historical accuracy. After the project was canceled, The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, wrote that when History historians viewed the edited version of the miniseries, they complained that it still contained several scenes of questionable factuality, including depictions of the family’s sex lives.

“That’s not true,” Surnow responds. “The historians went through and asked us a couple questions, just crossing-every-t, dotting-every-i stuff, but they were just notes. Nothing of any historical substance.”

For instance, Surnow says the advisers asked producers to prove that a rifle hung on the wall of the White House. “It was literally that specific,” he says. “The level of scrutiny was intense.” …

“Because I am a known conservative, it appears that I was deemed unfit to be the person to produce this miniseries,” Surnow says, breaking his silence on the controversy during a lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter at his Woodland Hills home. “This is despite the fact that I’m American, and John F. Kennedy was my president as much as anybody else’s president. I am a proud American, proud of the Kennedys for their accomplishments and their place in history, but none of that was given voice. I wasn’t Emmy Award-winning Joel Surnow, I was Rush Limbaugh’s and Roger Ailes’ friend Joel Surnow. And that’s all that mattered.” …

Surnow believes the proof that the decision was made for personal rather than business reasons can be found in the U.K., where the History Channel, co-owned there by AETN and BSkyB, will air The Kennedys in its entirety, beginning April 7, even though the BBC offered a multimillion dollar deal to take it off their hands. In Surnow’s eyes, political pressure made the miniseries good enough for AETN to fight for it in the U.K., but “not a fit” for the History brand in the U.S.

It is incredible to believe that this actually happened in a town that takes pride in being defined by the blacklist of the 1950s. The mind reels at the irony.  This is a very troubling story, to say the least; a warning to right-of-center artists everywhere that there are two sets of rules, two standards of accountability. In Hollywood, it’s just a fact that some artists are more equal than others.

In closing, let me add that while no one is harder on the entertainment media than I am, the reporting coming from the Hollywood Reporter lately has been exemplary. This well-researched, very well-written, just-the-facts-ma’am article was written by Matthew Belloni. He tells the story as he knows it, gets out of the way of his interview subjects, and leaves the conclusions up to the reader. Doesn’t get any better than that.

“The Kennedys” airs April 3rd on Reelz.

But then in 2007, a double-whammy hit him when his “Bruce” sequel “Evan Almighty” became one of the biggest comedic box-office bombs of all time, and then he suffered severe head trauma in a bicycle-riding accident. The side effects included blurred vision and severe migraines that never seemed to go away, and Shadyac – who had been a lifelong Catholic – thought he was going to die.

Then suddenly, his life-threatening symptoms miraculously healed, and Shadyac decided to radically transform his lifestyle. He embarked on a spiritual and philosophical quest that took him around the planet while he explored the answers that the various world religions and most famous philosophers had to offer. And as a result, he wound up feeling that his wealth and extravagant professions were a form of mental illness in a world where millions of people go to sleep hungry every day.

Shadyac decided to take radical measures to change his life and his mindset, and wound up selling off his land and his house – as well as his private jet – and downsized to live in a mobile home at a community on the Malibu coastline. He gave away most of his wealth, but also spent $1 million of it to finance a highly personal documentary called “I Am,” which put his quest on film and offers a heady yet often compelling mix of insights and analysis into the meaning of life and whether there’s an afterlife.

“I Am” is playing in Los Angeles and New York City now, but will be rolling out to theaters around the country in coming weeks. It’s a compelling look at Shadyac’s big changes, and offers plenty of fodder for viewers to consider their own lives as well. However, be warned that a lot of his interview segments are with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and the like. They aren’t focusing on bashing America but talk about the excesses of wealth in the West.

Shadyac sat down with BIG HOLLYWOOD recently to discuss his films and their meanings.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: Of all the great thinkers you spoke to, all but one of them hadn’t seen “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”?

SHADYAC: I agree. I agree! What is wrong with these people? They’re just busy solving apartheid, writing a People’s History. Chomsky was on a different path, man. When he was 12 years old, I think he was writing his first book about the Spanish American War while I was watching Brady Bunch reruns and snacking on Cheetos. But that’s why they’re doing the work they do. I was surprised and wonderfully fine with it. I think it was the way that ego left the room. We all want to come with our resume – I’ve written this, directed that – and they had no idea what it all was. So I was dealing with them without the crutch.

—–

BIG HOLLYWOOD: What I found interesting was that you start the film asking what’s wrong with the world and what do we do about it, and then you turn the tables and ask what’s right with the world and everything in it. Were you a person who was glass half-full before the project, and what do you consider yourself now?

SHADYAC: I think both perspectives – half-full, half-empty – can be valuable, but I just want to know what’s the truth. Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there’s a truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed. I moved from hope to faith. Hope is the belief we might get it done, and faith is the knowledge we will get it done. When you see the underlying story of who people really are and what the nature of reality is, I think it tells a very positive story.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: For you, having gone through a tragedy yourself to motivate you on this path, what do you think society will need to move forward?

SHADYAC: That’s why M. Scott Peck defined laziness as the first sin in the Garden of Eden. What you put off today you’re going to have to deal with at some point. We’ve put it off long enough. I had to deal with my own near-death, which is classic dark night of the soul experience. And I think that we’re seeing death in the world around us, the death of the natural world and we’re seeing such problems that we continue to pollute and to poison. We’re seeing a continual running stream of wars, a continual gap between the rich and the poor, we have an economy that’s broken. I think the crises are all around us. I don’t think that an individual has to face their own death, other than their death of perspective and the way they see things. Ray Anderson in the movie says we’re gonna have shock after shock after shock, and we are having that right now. You couldn’t see Egypt coming, but enough people have woken up to the idea of a different way for the Egyptian people, and suddenly like the Berlin Wall it fell. We don’t know how many people are shifting their viewpoints, and then one day the ideology like the Berlin Wall will fall.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: Some people resist this conversation. Have you run into haters or naysayers?

SHADYAC: I wouldn’t say haters, but people who don’t see eye to eye. And that’s to be expected and welcome. My father himself, whom I loved dearly, thought much of my vision might be Utopian. My father was a lawyer and I used his own life as an argument in court against his idea that it was Utopian and that we couldn’t build a compassionate world or business structure because he did it. My father built a huge business – forget charity – that takes care of people first, cures cancer first, ahead of profit motive.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: To that end, why did you go almost solely to left-wing radicals like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky who have a negative view of America and its history and not consult conservative or libertarian thinkers or Christian thinkers who could put the context of the quotes on love in a way that wasn’t just New Age?

SHADYAC: First of all, I don’t think any of the content is New Age. I think it talks about ancient ideologies and ancient ideas. I don’t consider the film liberal or conservative, and I didn’t go to people who were liberal or conservative, but to people who had moved me in some way and helped to change my life. I don’t know if you consider Desmond Tutu a liberal or conservative, or a clergyman or not, but I went to him because he walked in a powerful way that changed me. I didn’t go to Zinn for a left view or a right view, but because he woke me up to a certain kind of history that I was unaware of, and it helped to change me. I never viewed anyone in the film as having a political ideology, and I don’t think the film has a political ideology. It’s about my own personal journey.

 I read a book called “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn that Morgan Freeman recommended to me, and it shattered a paradigm that I’d been walking in and showed me a different way. I just did an interview with Michael Medved, the conservative talk show host. and we met eye to eye on many of the principles in the film. When you start to look at things politically, that’s where you put walls up. When you look at things in principle, that’s where we build bridges. Michael and I had a wonderful hour on the show, he welcomed me to his home, and we stand differently but we both edify each other. He said you should have a different point of view, and I said that’s the film you could make. I see the differing point of view everyday when I turn on the TV, and it’s not liberal or conservative. It’s a philosophy that we are all separate, and we’re not brothers and sisters. I happen to believe we are. The human genome research shows we are. We’re all brothers and sisters in our DNA, and I choose to take care of my brothers and sisters. I think it’s that utopia, that this is wishful thinking and I don’t think it’s wishful. Gandhi said he chooses to walk in the meat and marrow of life, and that nonviolent change isn’t wishful, it’s more powerful and it’s lasting way of getting conflict resolved. Gandhi says it’s more powerful and long-lasting. When you do something in a non-violent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you’re taking a different point of view that has a power. There are many causes I’d die for and that death will have a power, but I’m not willing to kill you to say that I believe in peace. .

There’s a reason we talk about Jesus still today, and it’s not in a dogmatic way. It’s because He said ‘no, you cannot kill me. There’s something in the meat and marrow of life, my spirit, who I am – the I AM – that you can’t kill. We wouldn’t have that story if we took our culturally accepted story, that somebody’s about to kill me, so I’m going to kill them first.

BIG HOLLYWOOD: What sort of spiritual practice do you have now – you used to be Catholic. And how does this change affect your career now – are you going back to comedies, are you looking for it, and is there a backlash from Hollywood for doing this?

SHADYAC: In my experience, the Hollywood people have been unbelievably supportive. My agency doesn’t stand to make a nickel off it, but they’re giving me the use of their screening room, their phone list and client list, people like Will.I.Am and Peter Gabriel who saw the film and were then incredibly generous in giving their songs at a great rate when I couldn’t afford their music normally. I’ll simply tell great stories and will gladly go back to studios, and I want to do stories that affect me. With how I view films, I think films are ways that we talk to each other and we deepen the conversation about who we are. I think laughter is a sacred act, I’d do a comedy again – if you’ve got an idea for “Ace 3,” I’m all ears.

I’ve been for years doing something I call Lectio Divino. If I had a previous life, I was a monk or a poet because I’ll read a poem and meditate on a passage that moves me. I try to eat what I call real food everyday, and that’s not buying into what the culture says is cool or wise but tuning into your heart for truth.

Our contributors did a marvelous job documenting Zinn’s profane legacy and now, thanks to Josh Brolin, we’re reminded that we’ve arrived at the one-year anniversary of Zinn’s death:

By: Josh Brolin
February 2, 2011

It was a year this past January 27th that my friend, Howard Zinn, passed away in Santa Monica, California. …

The impact that Howard Zinn has had on the world of fair, conscientious people is profound, and the impact that he had as a friend will be forever felt by me and by all those that knew him with the deepest, most visceral tickle imaginable. He was mischievous, fun, childlike, and an appreciator of all things beautiful. My wife was so smitten with him and he knew, in that classy old-school way, how to sustain it. We had spoken about women and how we both felt that they are, ultimately, the keepers of all things good. He was a smart man, a gentle man, and a gentleman.

To admit: I still speak with him at times when I am alone. He brings that kind of solace. It’s not exclusive to crisis, no – it’s as a friend, as someone I could always have a laugh with, and as someone who could inspire with the simplest glance. He understood that to bring a smile to someone’s face was as important to our well being as was protesting the myriad issues that Howard did. His motive, how it resonated in me, was simply to carve a more loving life for our children and those to follow.

You are so missed dear Howard, but your smiles will always live on.

On background, someone told me Brolin’s original draft was written in longhand and that all the i’s were dotted with little hearts.

This is how the Ministry of Truth operates, though. You take a wickedly dishonest historian who happens to look kindly and grandfatherly, and turn him into some kind of folk hero. You use him to continue to rewrite the past so you can steal the present. You can never let a Howard Zinn truly die because he’s too useful to the Leftist cause. Better still, you blow him up into another Che Guevera, a chic commodity more attractive than truth and decency.

Think about it. We actually live in a world where a multi-millionaire movie star born in a stretch limo with NEPOTISM license plates can preach this shit and not be guffawed off the face of the earth.

I’m not someone who believes in the magic of controversy to automatically drive people to watch something they normally wouldn’t, but there’s always been public interest in the Kennedy family and at the very least this uproar has upped the profile of the mini. You also have this built-in interest backed by respected talent with successful track records. “24″ co-creator Joel Surnow is the Executive Producer and there’s a number of high-profile, critically acclaimed actors in lead roles, including Greg Kinnear as President Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Bobby and Tom Wilkinson as Joe Sr. Furthermore, some real good can come out this and not just for the miniseries.

The Kennedys | Movie Trailer | Review

The four-year old independent ReelzChannel now has an opportunity with a product they normally wouldn’t have been considered for, to break out and and make a name and brand for themselves. The more entertainment outlets not owned by politically-connected multi-nationals (AETN is owned by NBC-Universal, Disney, etc.), the better it is for our democracy. This is also an opportunity for 60 million people to see the mini. That might be a smaller pool than the History Channel has, but it’s more than double the number of HBO subscribers, a network that passed on the project.

The other good to come out of this is that now we know for certain that the The History Channel really isn’t The History Channel. The same network that said “The Kennedys” didn’t meet their standards is is the same network that attempted to mainstream that degenerate anti-American liar of a historian we call Howard Zinn. No institution with any kind of accuracy standards would do such a thing and so now we know they are The Left-Wing History Channel.

As a history buff and someone who remains awed by Joel Surnow’s ability to tell a compelling multi-part story, I would be looking forward to seeing this even if there hadn’t been controversy. But now what we have here is the delicious opportunity to not only get lost in what promises to be damn good television but also to stick a subversive finger in the eye of The Man while doing so. 

 Just try and keep me away.

The Hollywood Reporter:

The controversial miniseries will have its world premiere on April 3.

After a three-week journey, The Kennedys has found a home.

The controversial miniseries will world premiere on April 3 on the ReelzChannel, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Producers of the ambitious project from 24 executive producer Joel Surnow and writer Stephen Kronish have struck a deal with the independent, family-owned cable network to air the 8-part miniseires, which was abruptly yanked from the History channel on January 7 amid pressure from the Kennedys over its depiction of the political family. At the time, History owner A&E Television Networks told THR that “after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.”

But it is certainly a fit for ReelzChannel, a 4-year old independent cable channel owned by Minnesota-based Hubbard Communications that is available in 60 million homes nationwide on services including DirecTV, Dish Network, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Charter Communications.

Sources say the company stepped up with a big financial commitment for the lavish $30 million miniseries starring Greg Kinnear and Katie Holmes and produced by Asylum Entertainment and Muse Entertainment.

Full story here.

Soros is also bankrolling a documentary that celebrates left-wing terrorists who plotted to napalm Republicans at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota. Even worse, you too are bankrolling the film through your taxes.

A trailer for the left-wing film Better This World suggests that it depicts David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder as idealistic activists who, according to the official blurb, “set out to prove the strength of their political convictions to themselves and their mentor.” In fact McKay and Crowder are convicted domestic terrorists who manufactured instruments of death calculated to inflict maximum pain and bodily harm on people whose political views they disagreed with.

You can be sure that if it was right-wing terrorists who were plotting to attack the Democratic National Convention, whoever foiled the conspiracy would be immortalized in film, literature and song as a savior of democracy.

“If you flip the equation around and it had been a group of conservatives threatening to use force to prevent those on the Left from meeting, everyone would expect the government to infiltrate them and they would also expect the FBI to stop them and charge them with crimes,” said Brandon Darby, who helped the FBI thwart the planned attack. (Darby’s essay on political violence appeared on Big Government over the past weekend. Read it here.)

The movie, which is expected to be released this year, attacks Darby, a true American hero who undermined the conspiracy by alerting the FBI. Filmmakers Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega twist the facts to argue that Darby, a former revolutionary activist, manipulated McKay and Crowder into becoming would-be mass murderers.

It’s an easily disproved lie. During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis went out of his way to make a specific legal finding that McKay obstructed justice by falsely accusing Darby of inducing him to manufacture the incendiary devices.

McKay and Crowder had made homemade riot shields and were ready to use them in St. Paul to help demonstrators block streets near the Xcel Energy Center. The goal was to shut down the democratic process by preventing GOP delegates from participating in the convention. The shields were discovered and confiscated.

During a search of a residence, police found gas masks, slingshots, helmets, knee pads and eight Molotov cocktails consisting of bottles filled with gasoline with attached wicks made from tampons. “They mixed gasoline with oil so it would stick to clothing and skin and burn longer,” Darby said.

Thanks to Darby’s cooperation with the FBI, the two aspiring bomb throwers are now languishing in prison. McKay entered a “guilty” plea and was sentenced in May 2009 to 48 months in prison plus three years of supervised release for possession of an unregistered “firearm,” illegal manufacture of a firearm and possession of a firearm with no serial number. A week before, Crowder cut a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 24 months in prison for possession of an unregistered firearm. McKay received the stiffer sentence in part because he fabricated the tall tale about Darby’s involvement in the plot.

Of course, it should surprise no one that Hollywood loves this kind of story with its anti-American overtones. HBO gave a grant to the filmmakers to produce their pro-terrorist propaganda. So did the Soros-funded Sundance Institute. After Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), gave Sundance’s Documentary Film Program $4.6 million in 2002, it gave the institute another $5 million in 2009.

Taxpayers also underwrite Sundance’s adventures in social justice indoctrination. According to nonprofit tax returns (known as IRS Form 990s), the Sundance Institute has taken in $11,240,081 in government grants since 1997. It is unclear which governments made the grants because the 990 forms lump all the grant-making governments together.

The federal government has given $1,350,000 to the institute since 2000, according to USAspending.gov. All but $5,000 of the money was from the National Endowment for the Arts. (The $5,000 grant was from the State Department.) It’s not clear if the $1,350,000 is part of the $11 million-plus figure for all government grants.

Upon receiving the most recent OSI grant, Sundance founder Robert Redford obediently genuflected before Soros. “Sundance Institute has supported documentary storytellers since its beginning,” said Redford. “The recognition of that history by George Soros and the Open Society Institute, and the continuation of our relationship over time, speaks to our shared belief that culture—in this case documentary film—is having a profound impact in shaping progressive change.”

Soros himself has acknowledged he is interested in the movies because “[d]ocumentary films raise awareness and inspire action.” He hails cinema for its power to manipulate audiences. OSI has been underwriting “social justice” documentaries since 1996. In 2001 Soros let Redford’s Sundance Institute take over management of his Soros Documentary Fund, which has since rechristened the Soros/Sundance Documentary Fund. (See Foundation Watch, March 2008).

In 2005 Soros acquired 2.6 million shares of the huge diversified media company Time Warner. In 2006 his companies, Soros Strategic Partners and Dune Capital Management, paid $900 million to buy the DreamWorks SKG film library from Viacom, a move that gave Soros the DVD and rebroadcasting rights to films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), Gladiator (2000), and American Beauty (1999). As James Hirsen noted, the transaction gives Soros “some highly desirable film rights at a time when the marketing and distribution model is changing to video on demand, video iPods and other forms of digital distribution.” But more importantly, it gives Soros “a presence in Hollywood where likeminded libs are ready, willing and able to collaborate in cinematic social engineering.”

Soros is also venturing into media overseas. In 2008 Soros Fund Management plunked down $100 million for 3% of India’s Reliance Entertainment, a $3 billion conglomerate that aims to provide Internet-based TV programs in India. Reliance also churns out movies and owns movie houses, radio stations and social networking websites in the country with one of the fastest growing economies in the world. When in the 1980s Soros set up offices in Eastern Europe for OSI, he helped to finance publishers, independent TV and radio outlets, and political parties.

As writer Rondi Adamson observed, “most of the documentaries that receive Sundance funding are highly critical of some aspect of American life, capitalism or Western culture. The projects generally share Soros’s worldview that America is a troubling if not sinister influence in the world, that the War on Terror is a fraud and terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters, and that markets are fundamentally unjust.”

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival screened the documentary Disturbing the Universe. The recently deceased Communist historian Howard Zinn described the movie about radical anti-American lawyer William Kunstler as “a wonderful, inspiring film.”

Putting America in its Place

Undermining America and promoting radicalism is what Soros is all about.

Soros seems to want Communist China to become a superpower, throwing its weight around on the world stage. Weeks before President Obama’s visit to China a year ago the Financial Times asked Soros, “What sort of a financial deal should Obama be seeking to strike when he travels to China next month?” He replied:

I think this would be time because you really need to bring China into the creation of a new world order, a financial world order. They are kind of reluctant members of the IMF. They play along, but they don’t make much of a contribution because it’s not their institution. Their share is not commensurate, their voting rights are not commensurate to their weight, so I think you need a new world order that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in. [emphasis added]

In November 2010 Soros praised China effusively. “Today China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States,” he said.

It’s all in a day’s work for George Soros. And now he’s trying to control the media in America.

(Parts one and two of this comprehensive series can be read at Big Government)

(The full article appears in the January 2011 issue of Organization Trends, a monthly publication of Capital Research Center.)

Already, Zinn’s far-left sympathizers are poking holes, some more credibly than others, in the 430 pages of documents, and trying to draw focus away from Zinn’s alleged membership in the Kremlin-controlled Communist Party USA and onto the fact that a Boston University administrator turned FBI informant once plotted to have him fired in the 1970s.

To the radical left, trying to interfere with an extremist professor as he dutifully decries his country as a police state is a far more egregious crime than belonging to a political organization allied with and controlled by the sworn enemy of the United States.

It’s all about perspective…

Still, Zinn’s apologists are not incorrect in pointing out that the evidence to support the claims that the professor was a card-carrying member of the CPUSA is hardly conclusive, or as J. Edgar Hoover had requested – admissible.

Despite the breadth of documentation in the file – the interviews with Zinn, the statements made by confidential informants claiming to have attended CPUSA meetings at which Zinn taught on “Basic Marxism” and encouraged participants to adhere to the tenants of Marx and Lenin, the suggestions that these meetings often took place in Zinn’s own home – proof of the kind the right might hope for is just not to be found.

That Zinn was a leftist is clear by his own admission. That he belonged to groups infiltrated by Communists is well-established, but that he was an actual, card-carrying member of the Communist Party is just not proven.

Which is not to say there is not a compelling case made. It is just not an iron-clad one.

Of course, the right’s desire to prove Zinn’s membership in the Communist Party in the late 1940s and early 1950s is certainly understandable. After all, this was long after the idealistic 1930s when the already liberal American media churned out stories to Americans wrecked by the Great Depression of a Utopian revolution occurring in the east. It was after the subjugation of Eastern Europe, the Russian bomb, and Stalin’s gulags.

To prove that Zinn was a member of the organization during this period would go a long way toward validating the animosity and distrust the right has for Zinn’s work, both as an anti-war activist, influential author and professor, and sainted historian of the left.

But it is a mistake to focus too closely on Zinn’s status as a member of CPUSA.

Proving it is difficult, and even if it could be proven – what does it prove? Undoubtedly many people in their twenties made poor choices and joined organizations that as adults they would shun. To judge Zinn’s life and career by how he spent his youth, the Eddie Vedders and Danny Glovers of the world would argue, ignores the larger question of how he spent the rest of his life.

And it is that question – how Howard Zinn spent his life – that the right should desire.

The left undoubtedly loves dancing around such myopic questions as, “Was Zinn a member of the Communist Party,” expressly because it detracts from the larger question of, “Was Zinn a communist?”

Did Howard Zinn espouse communist philosophy? Did he openly sympathize with America’s communist enemies? Did he seek to use his influence in academia and the media to convert America’s young to the cause of communism?

These questions do not require the kind of definitive proof the left can demand of the more precise issue of Zinn’s actual political affiliation. They only require the smell test, and Howard Zinn cannot pass the communist smell test.

From his well-known early work on behalf of infiltrated, trans-national labor and civil-rights organizations, to his radical anti-war activism, his seminal and revisionist historical work, The People’s History of the United States, and his lesser known entries into literature, the theater, and television – like his play Marx in Soho, or The People Speak – Zinn continually championed a view of America, capitalism, and the west in general that was utterly sympathetic to the views of Marx and Lenin.

Where he departed from their views was only in the nuanced world of implementation, the ultimate fate of the Bolshevik Revolution, and questions regarding the scale – regional or global – of the communist cause.

That our Hollywood betters continued to promote Zinn’s work is not a testament to their naivety about his official party membership status; it is a testimony to the fact that they agree with his broader communist views – at least as far as they safely can from their positions in the upper echelon of the bourgeois elite.

Consider these words from Zinn’s forward to a compilation of Anarcho-Communist activist and philosopher Alexander Berkman’s work titled Life of an Anarchist.

“Alexander Berkman is one of those lost heros of American radicalism, a rare pure voice of rebellion against the state, against capitalism, against war. …[He] is an inspiring example of living an honest life, as well as a vision of a better society.”

It might be worth here noting that Berkman did fifteen years in prison for the attempted murder of businessman Henry Clay Frick in 1892, opposed American intervention in World War One, and was eventually deported to Russia where he was a first hand observer of the revolution. So inspiring… At least to Howard Zinn, who imported hundreds of copies of his work, The ABC of Anarchist Communism into the United States, “for my students to use” and wrote a play about him.

It is Zinn’s conclusion to the introduction that is the most illuminating though.

“[Life of an Anarchist] is a welcome introduction to the ideas of anarchism,” specifically Anarchist Communism, “which appear more and more relevant in this era of bullying governments, corporate ruthlessness, and endless war.”

Viva la Revolution!

In the end, Zinn’s own words damn him, and his Hollywood appostles, far more than anything J. Edgar Hoover ever dreamt of.

“Don’t obey the rules… you have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired… You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians.”

Zinn, Josh Brolin, Chris Moore, Matt Damon

 Of course, that doesn’t stop schoolteachers everywhere from teaching Zinn.  According to the Oxnard Union High School District, Zinn’s on the California Department of Education Recommended Reading List.   

He’s taught at the San Lorenzo Unified School District Re-Entry Intervention Program, which targets kids coming back to school after being expelled, students with ten or more days of suspension who are on track for expulsion, students coming back to school from Juvenile Hall – in short, the worst of the worst.  This makes perfect sense – after all, what better way is there to teach borderline-criminal kids about good citizenship than pillorying America and giving them delusions of victimhood? 

He’s taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District, at the Stern Math and Science School, where teacher Benjamin Weber’s curriculum is designed to focus on various minority groups struggling against the repressive evil of the American system. 

He’s taught throughout the Seattle School District; in 2002, pressure from liberal interest groups forced the school district to adopt Zinn’s work in a stated attempt to include “cultural diversity” in the curriculum.  Not coincidentally, the district came up with an action plan that included “more aggressive recruitment of minority teachers, better training of teachers about students’ varied cultural backgrounds, and racially proportionate admissions of students to special education and ‘highly capable’ programs.”  He’s also taught in the Philadelphia School District, which recommends all of his books. 

The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. 

Our public schools can’t get kids to read, write or do math.  But they can teach them to be victims, to hate religion, and to despise America’s history. 

There’s no question that teaching Zinn violates school codes all over the country.  The truth is that it should also violate current understanding of the First Amendment Establishment Clause.  

First, the Establishment Clause.  The Establishment Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  The original meaning of this clear dictate has been obscured by a century of bad Supreme Court law, so there’s no reason to go into it.  Instead, let’s focus on what the Supreme Court currently says the Establishment Clause means.  Under Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), state and federal governments have no business participating in any activity unless (1) the action has a secular legislative purpose; or (2) it does not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; or (3) it does not result in “excessive government entanglement” with religion.  The easy argument here is that Zinn’s Education Project has a primary effect of inhibiting religion – as I’ve explained in the past, the Project targets religion in particularly pernicious ways.  

But there’s another argument that deserves an airing here.  That is the argument that Zinn’s form of propaganda truly amounts to religious proselytizing.  

The Supreme Court has never actually settled what constitutes a “religion” under the Establishment Clause.  The Court has, however, worked around the edges of what constitutes religion.  Most relevant in this context is a footnote from Justice Hugo Black in the 1961 decision Torcaso v. Watkins, in which he stated:

“Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.”  

The courts have backed away from this pronouncement for Establishment Clause purposes, however; in Kalka v. Hawk (D.C. Circuit, 2000), for example, the court declared, “The Court’s statement in Torcaso does not stand for the proposition that humanism, no matter in what form and no matter how practiced, amounts to a religion under the First Amendment.  The Court offered no test for determining what system of beliefs qualified as a ‘religion’ under the First Amendment.”  This is weak tea at best – no doubt the Court would declare reconstructionist Judaism just as much a religion as Orthodox Judaism, despite reconstructionism’s lack of an active God, any real ritual, and any formalized belief system. 

The fact is that Howard Zinn’s philosophy has direct parentage in formalized secular humanism.  His philosophy, reflected in his writing, was a self-described combination of “anarchism” and “democratic socialism.”  Here’s how he described it:

“I believe that we need a society where the motive for the economic system is not corporate profit, but the motive is the welfare of people … Where there is a greater equalization of wealth, and a society which is peaceful, which devotes its resources to helping people in the country and elsewhere.  And I believe in a world where war is no longer the recourse for the settling of grievances and problems.  I believe in the wiping out of national boundaries … I think we need to move toward a global society.” 

Further, he stated:

“I am an anarchist, and according to anarchist principles nation states become obstacles to a true humanistic globalization … [The world should be organized] of collectives of different sizes ….”  

As you can see, this is basically a jumbled translation of Auguste Comte, who predated Marx.  As Comte wrote, “Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all.  Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality.”  Comte recognized the religious nature of his philosophy so deeply that he attempted to found a “religion of humanity,” including rituals and saints.  

Zinn had no rituals (other than reflexive America-bashing) or saints (other than those who dislike America intensely).  But that does not mean that his philosophy isn’t a religious one, any more than reconstructionist Judaism isn’t a religion.  He believed in a utopian one-world vision where war ends and wealth is distributed equally, certainly an ideal that must be taken as a religious end-time fantasy.  He sought to impose his utopia through the schools. 

Not all religion is right wing or God-fearing.  Some is left-wing and humanity worshipping.  Zinn’s education was in the latter mold.  Under the Establishment Clause, it should certainly be just as suspect and (and morally speaking, far more suspect than) teaching the Ten Commandments in class or allowing silent prayer.  

Zinn’s advocates suggest that the First Amendment should allow Zinn into the classroom, no matter whether his material violates the Establishment Clause or educational codes, simply because it is a “point of view.”  This is illogical.  As Justice Rehnquist states in his dissent in Board of Education v. Pico (1982): 

Education consists of the selective presentation and explanation of ideas. The effective acquisition of knowledge depends upon an orderly exposure to relevant information. Nowhere is this more true than in elementary and secondary schools, where, unlike the broad-ranging inquiry available to university students, the courses taught are those thought most relevant to the young students’ individual development. Of necessity, elementary and secondary educators must separate the relevant from the irrelevant, the appropriate from the inappropriate. Determining what information not to present to the students is often as important as identifying relevant material. This winnowing process necessarily leaves much information to be discovered by students at another time or in another place, and is fundamentally inconsistent with any constitutionally required eclecticism in public education.

Rehnquist is correct.  School boards routinely throw right wing and religious perspectives out of the classroom using the Rehnquist justification; there is far more reason to throw Zinn out of the classroom using that same justification.  Sadly, the fact is that it is far more probable nowadays that school districts will discard Bill Bennett on the curriculum than Howard Zinn.  Public schools have become hotbeds of anti-American indoctrination over the last four decades.  It is about time that they restored the will of the people when it comes to public education, and embrace the dictates of their own education codes – the same education codes that state, in relevant part: 

Section 52720.  In every public elementary school each day during the school year at the beginning of the first regularly scheduled class or activity period at which the majority of the pupils of the school normally begin the schoolday, there shall be conducted appropriate patriotic exercises. The giving of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America shall satisfy the requirements of this section. In every public secondary school there shall be conducted daily appropriate patriotic exercises. The giving of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America shall satisfy such requirement. Such patriotic exercises for secondary schools shall be conducted in accordance with the regulations which shall be adopted by the governing board of the district maintaining the secondary school. 

52730.  (a) Providing instruction that promotes understanding the concepts of “pledge,” “allegiance,” “republic,” and “indivisible,” and understanding the importance of the pledge as an expression of patriotism, love of country, and pride in the United States of America shall satisfy the requirement of Section 52720. 

Americans are still patriotic, even if the public schools aren’t.  And if the public schools refuse to abide by education codes or the dictates of grooming future citizens, we should stand on our legal rights to force them to do so.

Public school children are innocent victims of a radical “guerrilla warfare” being waged by the late professor Howard Zinn’s Zinn Education Project (ZEP), Rethinking Schools Magazine, and Teaching for Change. 

These anti-establishment educators’ mission includes curriculum-subversion in order to radically transform schools into centers of social justice wherein  students are trained to become global citizen change agents. 

Perpetuating Zinn’s revolutionary mission, his surviving business partners proclaimed: 

Howard Zinn, in honor of the marvelous victory of your life, we will act in defiance of all that is bad around us and attempt to spin the world towards justice. 

With the national spotlight on History Channel’s “The People Speak” and its ZEP curriculum — parents, teachers, school boards and administrators should beware of the celebrity-opiate being dealt to their schoolchildren by way of Zinn-doctrination. 

ZEP is the brainchild of the late Boston University professor Howard Zinn and Bill Bigelow, Curriculum Director for Rethinking Schools. 

On Jan. 19, 2010, Harper Perennial Publications (HPP) and ZEP presented “Ask Howard: A Conversation with Howard Zinn on Teaching ‘A People’s History of the United States’” on Blog Talk Radio. 

Questions from teachers and students across America already familiar with ZEP were solicited and presented to the professor. 

HPP Marketing Director Amy Baker and moderator Bigelow put the questions to professor Zinn. 

During the broadcast: 

• Professor Zinn explicitly advised teachers: “Don’t obey the rules… you have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired… You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians.” 
• Dr. Bigelow confirmed that ZEP’s materials have been smuggled into classrooms throughout the country by teachers who astro-turf Zinn’s “guerrilla warfare with the establishment.” 
• Dr. Bigelow boasted: “Whether or not ZEP materials have been adopted by school districts formally or anything like that, we’re not even going that route. We’re going for a more grassroots approach.” 
• Prof. Zinn mocked as “antiquated thinking” the professionalism of teachers who comply with state Education Codes. He advocated his teachers “win over” peers to either look the other way, or join ZEP ‘guerrilla warfare’ against established, lawful curriculums. 

ZEP collaborators provide aid and comfort to teacher-agents-of-change on its websites: 

Jennifer Rogar, a middle-school History/Social Science/Guitar teacher in the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) provides an operational example of ZEP-style guerrilla warfare: 

Observing Columbus Day 2008, in SCUSD’s School of Engineering and Sciences] Ms. Rogar obtained — and distributed without authorization to her 8th-grade students — instructional materials from ZEP’s now deceased patriarch: “’Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress: excerpted from a ‘People’s History of the United States’ by Howard Zinn.” 

—–

Ms. Rogar, a law school graduate, administered Zinn’s lesson plan to her students. She assigned hours of classroom discussion, study, testing and writing assignments that are non-compliant with established California State Content Standards. 

Alarmed parents found her materials objectionable and complained to the school principal. The principal investigated the complaint and ordered Ms. Rogar to cease and desist. 

Ms. Rogar, has since been reassigned, and continues teaching for change as a Social Science/Guitar instructor in SCUSD’s Capital City School.

Parents are unclear as to what disciplinary action, if any, was filed against Ms. Rogar, or what measures are now being enforced to ensure that current and future ZEP violations do not occur in SCUSD and elsewhere. (Zoe Weil — wrong that “all education is political” — please call your office). 

The nationwide infiltration ZEP marketing intends and has achieved in public schools is alarming. Parents, students and interested community members must not wait for further violations to occur, or presume that principals and district administrators are ready and willing to enforce established regulations. 

Education Codes are democratically established to ensure religious/philosophical/political neutrality in curriculums, to prevent abuses and to punish actual violations thereof. 

Concerned citizens should familiarize themselves with Content Standards, state and local school district board policies, Administrative Regulations, or professional educators’ ethical conduct guidelines and/or teachers union collective bargaining agreements’ Articles of Academic Freedom. 

These guidelines and curriculums are all mutually agreed upon. But ZEP’s proudly self-proclaimed biased-curriculum is deliberately not. 

As with the scrapping of President Obama’s infamous U.S. Department of Education (ED) Lesson Plan: the Zinn Education Project, and any other such sectarian political activist groups’ unauthorized curriculums and propaganda should be exposed and prohibited. 

ZEP’s ideological call to arms is, however, a two way street. 

American parents, elected representatives and the professional educator employees entrusted with schoolchildren have options: Surrender the classroom and their children to Zinn’s radical ideological warfare, or engage and defeat Zinn’s re-thinking change-agent guerillas. 

If you discover teachers using ZEP materials in your school, protest to the school principal. Consider filing written complaints with the district’s superintendent. Send copies (emails are sufficient) to the school board president, vice president, city council members, and state school board president. 

Standardized Uniform Complaint forms are required to be easily accessible on either school district websites, or upon request at main offices. 

Avoid retaliation by school staff by being collaborative yet firm, but never confrontational. When used appropriately, written complaints can be very powerful agents of change themselves. Feel free to use them. 

When possible, find fellow parents who will join in the complaints. Safety in numbers is unfortunately a necessary precaution when challenging the practices of a government bureaucracy. 

Request that written parental notification and permission slips be required for all outside advocacy groups’ supplemental curriculums.  

Finally, other stories of specific teachers, principals, and district staff using ZEP in schools that readers might wish to submit for publication to Big Hollywood will of course be treated with strictest journalistic confidence. 

Contact BH’s ZEP Hotline.

Prof. Zinn never hid the fact that he wrote “A People’s History” not as a reference book to collect dust on the shelf but as a field guide for the re-making of our society.  In a 1988 interview with the University of Georgia, he summed up the legacy of his work better than anyone.

A quiet revolution is a good way of putting it. From the bottom up. Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives. It would be a democratic socialism.

In the wake of his death, conservative commentators who had been critical of Zinn’s lifework were accused of “spitting on his grave” when responding to interview requests about Zinn’s legacy.  At Big Hollywood we have less interest in trashing Howard Zinn, the man, as we have in shining a light on what his actual beliefs and agenda were, and still are.

Yes, his agenda lives on in the form of the Zinn Education Project (ZEP).  And if there was any reluctance to expose the true agenda of Zinn and the Education Project that bears his name it was absolved with this bold statement on the ZEP website issued on the occasion of Zinn’s passing:

Howard Zinn, in honor of the marvelous victory of your life, we will act in defiance of all that is bad around us and attempt to spin the world towards justice.

In the war of ideas our nation is currently waging, unilateral disarmament for the sake of respect for the dead is not an option.  Especially knowing that our opponents “will act in defiance of all that is bad around (them) and attempt to spin the world towards justice”.

The attempt at Zinn hagiography is in the works and when big celebrities come out to embrace him as an intellectual and humanitarian they must also take responsibility for the entirety of his legacy.  A legacy that he, himself, in his own words laid out just eight days before his passing.

On January 19th, Blog Talk Radio presented an interview with Professor Zinn.  This interview is a great chance for us to really hear Zinn describe, in his own words, his world view, what motivated him, his views on America, and to hear his advice to history teachers all across our country.

The first fifteen minutes were spent discussing the tragic events in Haiti and how, ultimately it was America’s historic neglect and imperial stance toward the tiny nation that led to its poverty and despair.  It seems that no world event ever took place without Zinn jumping to the fore and blaming America for it.

Next, after some self-serving discussion about what set him apart from his peers when he was a teen (Zinn claimed that what made him different was that he read books) he then revealed his early influence in the realm of class and economic disparity.

Then we get to the crux of the real reason behind Zinn’s book and the film “The People Speak”: To promote the Zinn Education Project (ZEP).  The host of the show, Bill Bigelow, explains why ZEP was created.  “To offer teachers around the country alternatives to the official story that was being presented in text book…”

The naïve among you might ask yourselves “History is history, what do they mean by ‘alternatives to the official story’?”  Well, my “sheeple,” Bigelow explains it all for you in this remarkable and revealing clip:

This all sounds like Zinn’s history is anti-American and biased, right?  Zinn’s response to that charge might surprise you.

Here was his response to the Anti-American charge:

And here he responded to the idea that his version of history is biased:

Later, Zinn was asked what he thought the singular narrative of American history is.  His answer, “the continual struggle of people for their rights”:

Later, a caller asked how the ZEP materials were making their way into the public school curriculum:

There will be more than enough time for our commentary on these words.  For now, listen and learn what ideas are behind the trendy Hollywood movement to help educate your children.