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While billed merely as a home-invasion thriller, upon reading the plot description, my liberal propaganda radar was already on high alert. The story? Professional screenwriter David (“X-Men”’s James Marsden) and his wife Amy (“Blue Crush”’s Kate Bosworth) leave the confines of Los Angeles and head down south to Amy’s boondocks hometown so they can restore her deceased father’s house and David can focus on his writing.

Hmm, we already know where this is headed. Two enlightened, urban yuppies moving to a tiny Southern town? Forget the usual ‘fish out of water’ comedy hijinks; this is, of course, a liberal’s wet dream:  an opportunity to elevate blue-state dwellers while ridiculing the red. Moreover, you know you’re in for a dose of authenticity when Rod Lurie — its writer/producer/director — hails from the middle-America enclave known as… Greenwich, CT.

David and Amy slowly but surely clash with her high school ex-boyfriend, Charlie (“True Blood”’s Alexander Skarsgard) and his crew of “hillbilly miscreants,” culminating in a (yawn-inducing) home-invasion showdown.

Though the tiresome and wholly unoriginal exercise in liberal condescension towards middle America/the South is nothing new, I’ve yet to see it driven home as stubbornly and viciously as is done in this film. While “Deliverance” focused on a particular group of inbreds and thus doesn’t particularly skewer the South nor country-folk as a whole, “Straw Dogs”’ theme is much more sinister – that even the run-of-the-mill, ordinary citizens of middle America are narrow-minded simpletons at best and dangerously evil at worst.

Ready to run down how many stereotypes the film manages to work into 110 minutes?  Let’s go!

The town is called, wait for it… “Blackwater” (get it? a ‘backwater’ town? clever!).
Red pickup truck with the confederate flag? Check!
Shotguns galore? Check!
Ridiculous hillbilly names like ‘Bic’? Check!
Sexually depraved rapists? Let’s even throw that in! Check!
Our servicemen return from abroad emotionally destroyed and mentally impaired? Check!
They’re stuck on stupid? Check! Discussing the unbearable heat, one of Charlie’s hillbilly friends gnarls “it must be that global warming you educated guys keeping talkin’ ’bout.” And before you say: “But wait, Delgado:  the sarcastic slight on global warming (ahem! ‘climate change’) makes him smart, not dumb!”, remember that, in Hollyweird mentality, doubting global warming is prima-facie evidence of woeful ignorance — on par with flat-earth theorists.

Yet viewing this film through unbiased eyes, the left’s guffaws and eye-rolls towards this kind of town is what’s ridiculous. Let’s see:  in Blackwater there’s a sense of community, doors go unlocked, people dress up for church on Sunday and respect religion, still address employers and elders as “sir,” when you ask for a Bud Light the bartender insists on a Bud, they live and breathe football, they earn a living through the sweat of their brow, and the men know their cars and their guns? Sign me up! Did the studio intend to make an extended commercial for the “Southern Small Towns” tourism board?  ’Cause that’s what yours truly took from it. For Pete’s sake, the boys’ pickup truck sports a bumper sticker that reads: “Keep honkin’, I’m reloading.” What’s not to love?

But “Straw Dogs” is unique in that it does not merely slam the South; it attacks our notions of manliness. You see, most symbols associated with manliness (V8 engines, combat sports, hunting, guns, a healthy reverence for the Creator, a brave acceptance that sometimes confrontation/war is necessary) are kryptonite to the liberal agenda. At the very least, men who cling to these notions are, in liberals’ minds, Neanderthals who haven’t yet learned women don’t want doors opened for them. The left’s constant aim of gender-bending (boys should play with dolls! the sexes are no different!) is a new but quickly expanding method of theirs.

Folks, as a woman, allow me to demonstrate how David, the film’s modern, enlightened “hero,” is, sadly, a beta male:

David allows a mentally challenged man to be slapped around rather than risk a physical fight with the attacker… BETA!

David rolls into town in a ridiculous two-seater vintage Jag (need we even ruminate whether there was an Obama 08 bumper sticker on there?)… BETA!

When David veers off the road, causing a flat, he’s forced to take the car to a mechanic (oh, dear)… BETA!

David recoils in horror when Amy (who, apparently, has more cojones – and common sense — than her hubby) suggests they keep a gun in the house for protection… BETA!

Yet, as the audience, I’m supposed to be rooting for David? Hollywood’s glorification of the beta-male must have gone right over my head. What would happen in real life? “Au revoir, David! I’m jumping on the back of the pickup truck with Bic and the boys. It’s been real… see ya!”

Now, I’m certainly not saying every man has to be a UFC fighter, a hunter, or a hothead, but c’mon. This notion that the civilized, evolved male is essentially an anti-gun, anti-religion, peacenik, urban-dwelling beta? Try again, Hollywood.

Liberal-kowtowing bonus points? 1) A nod to the Commies:  David, who’s writing a screenplay on WW2’s turning-point battle, Stalingrad, informs Charlie, “Ninety percent of Stalingrad was occupied by the Nazis and the Russians still beat ’em. They beat ’em with innovation and they beat ’em with fortitude.” Oh, and you forgot to mention, they lucked out with the help of the blistering winter and German air supply failure. But sure, let’s credit the Soviets with winning Stalingrad through sheer “innovation and fortitude”!  2) A nod to the wonders of federal programs:  Amy and David relay that they received a tidy $8,200 from F.E.M.A. to fix up the hurricane-damaged-home’s roof.

Pathetic.

The sole shock-moment of this “thriller”? David works on a VAIO laptop. Sony must’ve paid for product placement here – after all, any self-respecting lib would own a Mac.

Skip it, unless you have a pending move to the South… in which case the film might actually reaffirm your decision.

Of course she’s all a-gush over The One. “I love Barack Obama, I voted for him and I will forever be proud of my vote,” she is reported as saying to Britain’s Stylist magazine.

Kunis, it appears, considers herself highly informed about politics and most especially on how wonderfully she thinks Obama is doing in office. Conversely, she seems blissfully unaware of the zero job growth we just experienced not to mention the highest unemployment this country has experienced since The Great Depression. She seems also completely ignorant of the trillions of dollars of debt that Obama has piled up.

Still, she is sure that the compromises that she thinks Obama made in recent economic policies are going to hurt us.

“I think America is in a very temperamental state, and the decision that was made and the compromises made mean, in my opinion, that people are going to pay for a very long time,” she said.

Well, if she means the mess that is ObamaCare, we most certainly will be paying “for a very long time.” But I doubt that is what she’s on about.

I suppose we shouldn’t fault her too much for knowing so little about economics, though. If she’s like many actors she’s likely so far removed from even her own economic condition that she simply hasn’t the experience to understand the issues. She doesn’t have to worry about living from one paycheck — or lack thereof — to the next.

But, darn it, the ObamaMessiah is trying so hard, dontcha know?

I know that he [Obama] tried. I know because you keep reading these reports of him trying to compromise with the Tea Party and the Republican Party and trying to come to a 50/50 agreement. I don’t think it was one. I feel the Democratic Party compromised everything and the Republican Party compromised pretty much nothing.

“Feeling,” Miss Kunis, is not knowledge. Now, I am sure she heard, maybe even read, about how the left-wing, Old Media characterized Obama’s efforts. I am sure she saw Obama’s speeches where he mouthed the need for compromise. But it is plain she never once actually learned that none of the plans and policies that Obama and his party have offered contained any compromises. It is plain her bubble world does not allow inside the fact that the GOP is the one doing most of the compromising.

One other thing she is sure about: you folks in Middle America and you young people are so ill-informed, so dang stupid that you don’t know why you are even in the Republican Party. You dummies just don’t read, she told Stylist.

She chided the younger generation for not reading books, the news, the paper, and then zoned in on “Middle America.” “So obviously you are incredibly ill-informed to the point where they will go do these tests in Middle America… And they’ll ask, ‘OK, what party are you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Republican.’ ‘Why?’ And they can’t even tell you. They have no idea what the Republican Party stands for. Why did I vote for Obama? I can tell you why I voted for him, what I agreed and disagreed with him on, for hours.”

I think she is in a fantasyland, here. What “tests” is she talking about? Did she read this in a script? It sure doesn’t seem she read this from real life, anyway.

Finally, she has a word or two about you uneducated religious folks.

Whoever you vote for, don’t do it just because. And don’t tell me it’s because of religion either because that whole thing is knocked completely out the window. So you better just educate yourself.

If you are religious, you are uneducated? But, even her savior in D.C. claims to be religious. Is she saying he is uneducated? What contempt Kunis shows for all people of faith.

For one so young she sure has come to hate an awful lot of people. Let’s hope her hatred for the very people going to her movies and helping her earn a living don’t get offended by her dismissive, hateful attitude about them, eh?

Well, here’s one way to entice Middle America into your film, insult them by having your three main stars hit the promotional circuit and savage Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin as stupid and evil: 

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QUIZ: What makes you most want to see “Inception” now?

1. Ellen Page’s insufferably cruel sanctimony?

2. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s pathetic, butt-boy me-toosim?

3. Leonardo DiCaprio’s wild hypocrisy?

Actually, “wild hypocrisy” is an understatement….

The same Leo you see in that video belly-aching with so much touching concern over Mother Earth, just happens to be the very same elitist whose PRIVATE jet-setting helped cause the chaos that cost hundreds of World Cup fans — who had spent upwards of $1300 for tickets — the ability to attend the game. Found buried yesterday in the sometimes useful L.A. Times:

The congestion on the ground, caused in part by earlier bad weather on Wednesday and in part by the arrival of large numbers of private aircraft, led to what one British Airways pilot described as “absolute chaos.”

According to a report in Britain’s Financial Times, “Some of the fans had spent upward of $1,300 for semifinals tickets but were stuck in Johannesburg while private jets carrying Spain’s King Juan Carlos, South African President Jacob Zuma, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and socialite Paris Hilton landed.”

Keep in mind that Leo isn’t just any hypocritical Hollywood environmentalist, he is the hypocritical Hollywood environmentalist. If you recall his film “The 11th Hour”:

—–

Had Leo simply practiced what he preached and flown commerical, maybe things would’ve been a little less chaotic and a few more of those folks wouldn’t have wasted their hard-earned money. But they’re just the great unwashed and Leo is the The Great Movie Star Who Commands From Above, so… whatever.

Leo may want to get in the head of BP’s CEO, but I’d like to get in Leo’s head and understand why someone who believes the planet is in peril would commit an act of genocide against the entire human race by flying around in private jets.

My vote, however, goes to Ellen Page, who just went from the lovable and spunky Juno to a shorter, joyless, less-likable version of Rachel Maddow.

How sheltered of a self-involved little bubble does one have to live in to think speaking the term “holistic intelligence” out loud doesn’t automatically qualify you for the All-Time Top Five Moments Of Hollywood Assholery. Page actually considers herself a feminist and yet here she is trashing the compassion and questioning the intelligence of a self-made Governor raising a special-needs child as her oldest son serves in Iraq.

What’s young Page’s claim to intelligence and compassion fame. Oh, that’s right, she’s a celebrity.

Man, I wish I’d never seen this video. I love Christopher Nolan and have been dying to see “Inception.” But goodwill matters and this Terrible Trio of Tactlessness just dropped the needle on that meter way below the half-way point.

You want cliched stereotypes? You want blacklists? You want cruel and vicious hate speech? You want people revealing their dark hearts for all to see? You want to see fanatics spewing bile like possessed, head spinning, profanity spouting Linda Blair imitators? Well, step night up! It’s almost a daily occurrence in Tinseltown. Check out the celebrity rags and blogs. In the allegedly “tolerant” and “inclusive” City of Angeles it’s perfectly PC to show your hatred for anyone who doesn’t toe the leftist line. Yes, even people who are apolitical or libertarian who happen to merely dissent from the progressive hive mind, they too are judged!

Forget the screeching TV evangelists calling people sinners; they have nothing on the judgement that flows like a river of sewer waste from Tinsel Town. Hollywood’s TV and films have been bashing on average Americans going back to Green Acres. Green Acres was the way Hollywood saw the flyover states. A bunch of ignorant, inbred hicks with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Something to be mocked to canned laughter. Times have changed, but only for the worse.

We now have political abuse in your every day shows, to such an extent that many people are afraid to admit their politics. Even Democrats, who aren’t left enough, can feel the heat. Actors are afraid to even come out as conservatives. Writer Andrew Klavan has admitted he’s lost work because of his views. Actress Janine Turner said it is “hard for conservatives in Hollywood because they’re afraid to step out,” because the political and social environment is “very left” and the intolerance for varying political views can hurt your career.

Blacklist, schmacklist–this has been going on for decades and has effected thousands of people, not some “Hollywood 10″ as in the 50s. It’s a form of persecution of anyone who dissents from the political views of the left, It all seems increasing fascist when seen in context. The other side is rarely given or shown in a believable light. Stereotypes are made with the same kind of limited, hackneyed approach that Hollywood once used on Asians and Black people. And if you’re a Christian, look out! According to shows like Law and Order, you’re always the murderer. According to Kevin Smith, in his upcoming film project Red State, the extreme examples of Christians like Fred Phelps is worthy of a horror treatment.

“The movie’s called ‘Red State’ and it’s very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme. It’s certainly not Phelps himself but it’s very much inspired by a Phelps figure,” revealed Smith. “And to me, too, the notion of using a Phelps-like character as a villain, as horrifying and scary as that guy can be, there’s even something more insidious than him that lurks out there in as much as a public or a government that allows it and that’s the other thing that I’m trying to examine in a big, big way. It’s weird because for a few months I’ve been saying ‘horror movie’ and technically it is, but it’s also not a very traditional horror movie in the sense that people have been asking me, ‘Is it a slasher movie? Is it like the Japanese horror flicks?’ It’d be much easier to just show it to them when I’m done and be like, ‘This is what I meant.’ At which point I’m sure there’ll be people saying, ‘This ain’t a horror movie!’ But to me, it is.”

To Hollywood, Christianity is represented by the outliers. Jesus Camp and Fred Phelps are shown as “good examples.” Film makers revel in the carny act. They reduce people to freak show status to try to make themselves feel normal. Which can be a tall order given their many proclivities. Yet America is 76% Christian at last count. That’s a wide majority and shouldn’t be treated with such disrespect.

Then you have the endless cheap shots, sucker punches and gotcha lines thrown into so many movies and shows today no good reason. From Glee, Family Guy to last year’s Julia and Julia,

It’s because of this relentless bashing of the American mainstream that Hollywood has lost its mojo. The public’s view of Hollywood is at an all time low. The star system is all but dead. Hollywood’s economy is practically moribund. These trends will not change until Hollywood changes. It needs to admit it has a problem, like an alcoholic, and start making amends to the people it’s burned. A great step forward would be to start showing more than one side to a political point of view. They should try putting in believable, likable characters who aren’t all of the same political stripe. They can start by not making people of differing views feel they need to stay in the closet.

In short, they need to stop being worse than their image of Joe McCarthy. Because right now they are making Joe McCarthy look like Paul McCartney.

The divide between those who attend movies and those who make movies has never been wider.  While serious Hollywood types spend most of their time, energy and money on movies that trivialize the experiences of middle America, Middle America spends its time and money on movies that celebrate what it is to be an American.  Capitalism is good for Hollywood executives, but it’s under assault in the scripts being written.  American military men and women are celebrated as heroes on Main Street, but they are overwhelmingly portrayed as killers in the movies that Hollywood produces.  And while Hollywood is tremendously liberal, the rest of America is not. 

But middle America is fighting back.  Millions of people have responded to The Blind Side and Sandra Bullock’s performance in such a way that many of the traditional Hollywood types have been forced to take notice.  If there is one thing that Hollywood understands, it is money. Variety reported in early January that The Blind Side brought in $208.5 million in its 7th week of release, making it the first picture in history driven solely by a female star to break the $200 million domestic box office mark.  Sandra Bullock is America’s star, not Hollywood’s.  We have responded to her performances over the years because she is inspiring and talented.  America loves Bullock’s real humility, fun personality and true generosity.  Bullock gives generously to crisis’ like her $1 million dollar gift to the Tsunami Relief effort in Indonesia, more to Hurricane Katrina relief and recently the Haiti earthquake fund – all without seeking media attention for it.  She is funny, beautiful and refreshingly normal.  Bullock is not from a Hollywood dynasty or family, she is someone from your family. 

For the millions of moviegoers who have seen The Blind Side, it’s more than a blockbuster movie.  For them, Bullock is a hero who doesn’t wait for others to respond or a government program to kick in before she helps a young man in need.  The Blind Side speaks to America’s sense of right and wrong, and Bullock’s portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy is a suburban anthem that continues to inspire and cajole men and women to help change someone’s life.  For millions of Americans, The Blind Side is more accurately America than the highly celebrated movie Precious.  The Blind Side is the conservative response to Hollywood’s fêted Precious.  While Precious was gritty and edgy, Bullock’s performance in The Blind Side was just as real.  Bullock could have easily given in to the usual Hollywood portrayal of a southern Christian woman by overdoing the sappiness and creating a condescending caricature of life in the suburbs when you have a southern accent.  But Bullock knows real suburban America because that is where she came from.  The brilliance of The Blind Side is that the characters weren’t over the top in the usual Hollywood way.  The characters were real – real Americans struggling to change their world.    

While many in Hollywood dismiss the life experiences of everyday Americans as trivial or unglamorous, Bullock’s performance in The Blind Side celebrates real Americans.  America doesn’t need to be taught by Hollywood, Hollywood could use some lessons from real Americans.  Sandra Bullock just may be the one person is Hollywood that could bridge the ever-growing gap between the two.

I also found these quotes from Ms. Fox:

“I don’t want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single S.A.T. word I’ve ever learned, to prove, like, ‘Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.’ I don’t want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I’m not a retard.”

And…

“Women are expected to be conformist automatons in L.A. but in Britain you can be more yourself and people will take you on face value.”

Far be it from me to point out that the base audience for “Transformers” is young males in Middle America, the same men that Fox condemns to a robot apocalypse.  I doubt the bi-coastal elites from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side will be waiting in line for the midnight showing of Michael Bay’s latest opus.  Alienating your core audience is never a good idea.  Perhaps Ms. Fox holds an associate’s degree from the Timothy Geithner School of Business Management.

Fox asserts that she is “not a retard” and that she bucks the system by not being a “conformist.”  Is it bad for me to call foul on both points?

I learned something a long time ago.  Back in my fraternity days at USC (oops, man, did I just give the Huffington Post ammo?… A USC FRAT BOY!!!!!!  No wonder…) I noticed how the guys who constantly bragged about their sexual prowess really didn’t do too well.  The guys who were discrete, never bragged, never felt the need to prove anything, had a steady stream of attractive dates and girlfriends. The braggarts would spend their weekends regaling in tales of three ways and sex with strippers while drinking forty-ouncers and challenging each other to games of “Street Fighter” on the Super NES.

The same goes for intelligence.  When you feel compelled to tell the world how smart you are, how intellectual your positions are, how deep your education runs, the sad truth is that you probably aren’t that bright.

Megan Fox is a panderer.  She trashes Middle America to the British Press.  She wears “Star Wars” T-shirts to make Fan Boys drool, then calls those Fan Boys “retards” to the hipsters in Silver Lake.  She talks up her intelligence and non-conformity…. by making stupid, conformist statements.

Lauren Bacall made this observation about Hollywood: “When I first went into pictures, women absolutely ran the show. Bette Davis practically owned Warner Brothers.”  Bacall doesn’t know many of the stars of today. “They’re all too self-involved, y’know? And they’re so unaware of what goes on anywhere else.”

Hmmmm…is there any way that we can draw a parallel between the rise of “correct” thought in Hollywood as evidenced by self-absorbed automatons like Megan Fox and the observation that Hollywood used to be BETTER for women?  Is it, perhaps, that whiny divas who parrot talking points to look cool, who lack independent thought and rely on their good looks instead of honing their craft, have made Hollywood WORSE for women?  That may be a stretch.  Maybe I need some self-professed smart person to help me make that argument.

Bacall, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford…these women are legends.  Not just because they are superior, gifted actresses, but because you can feel their presence, their intellect, their “moxie” in every thing they did.

As a reformed frat guy I can tell you…these women had “balls!”

I have a friend.  An actress.  The one pictured above that you might not recognize.  Her resume is similar to Fox’s, before her lucky break in “Transformers.”  This actress is not an automaton.  Her politics are a unique blend of feminism, social liberalism, libertarianism, and hawkish neo-conservatism.  She has a business degree from BYU, although she’s never mentioned it to anyone to further her “smart” credentials.  When she walks into a party she doesn’t instantly turn the conversation into a discourse on her sexual habits a la Ms. Fox, nor does she sit by and let a comment about that “fascist George Bush” go by without a rebuttal.

Yet while Megan Fox was busy being pampered on the set of “Transformers,” this actress worked with me on the direct to video knock-off movie “Transmorphers.”  While Megan Fox sat in her trailer waiting for make-up, this actress did her own make-up, then stood outside in the freezing rain for 12 hours in an old junkyard near Topanga.  While Megan Fox pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, this actress got paid $50 a day.  No complaints.  No crying.  Just smiles and hard work.

Yes, Megan Fox, women in Hollywood still face issues and obstacles.  But not in the way that you think.  While you are gaming the system, being part of the problem and not the solution, others are advancing the cause despite you.

I know a couple of other actresses like my friend.  They feel alienated, blacklisted, and closed off.  Not because they are as attractive as Megan Fox and people can’t get past their looks.  Not solely because of the male stranglehold on Hollywood.  They feel out of place because they have “balls.”

And the last thing you want to be in the tolerant world of Hollywood is a woman with “balls.”

Megan Fox is clearly lacking a pair.

Since 9/11, Hollywood is taken with the politically correct idea that they’re not allowed to portray Muslims as terrorists, or when they do, it’s to glorify the terrorists and justify their behavior–that America deserves it and made them do it.  Or–a la “24″–that Muslim terrorists are always working for the American White man.  Instead, Hollywood, post-9/11, made terrorists and hijackers, everyone BUT Muslims.  There were Black Men with AIDS from Africa (“The Interpreter“),  Federal Air Marshals and airline stewardesses, er . . . “flight attendants” (“Flight Plan,” exec produced by my uber-leftist cousin, Charles J.D. Schlissel), White Christians (a number of movies and TV shows) and everyone else you can think of . . . except Muslims, who make up the majority of real-life terrorists plotting against America today.

Part of this is the ultra-PC mentality of Hollywood, which hates all religion but for Islam because so many Muslims share Hollywood’s hatred for America.  The other part of it is that Hollywood execs are lazy, and they want to pacify the constant Islamic Whine Industry–the cretins at unindicted HAMAS-funding co-conspirators CAIR, MPAC, ADC, and the rest of the alphabet soup of halal baloney.

But this 9/Eleventh commandment of Hollywood is thawing in tiny, subtle ways.  Last year, in “Vantage Point,” although the terrorists aren’t identified outright as Muslims, we’re subtly told that they are.  One of the main terrorists opens his locker at work, and in it, we see a quick shot of a picture of his wife in a hijab, the Muslim headscarf for women.

In “Taken,” retired CIA agent Liam Neeson’s daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian Muslim sex slavery ring in Paris.  And while the movie doesn’t outright tell us they are Muslims, the filmmakers show us several quick close-up shots of tattoos on the hands of the men who head the ring–crescents and stars, the religious symbols of Islam.

Then, there are the people who “acquire” his daughter.  They are obviously Arabs, who speak Arabic, and they are Muslims–their boss is “the Sheikh” on the yacht (Sheikhs are exclusively Muslim).  And for once, they are the criminal thugs, the sex slavers, the murderers–without apology or excuse.

Just the way it was on 9/11.

It’s partly for this reason that I liked “Taken” immensely.  But also, it’s just a great, clever, action thriller.  Read my full review of this and the other new releases at the box office, including the surprisingly good “The Uninvited,” and “New in Town,” which endlessly mocks and derides Middle America.  You know?–Small town Americans with good values.  Sadly, there’s no Hollywood Commandment against vilifying them.  And so it continues.