Posts Tagged ‘morality’

Jeremy D. Boreing

Roman Polanski, Child Rape, and the Shifting Sands of Cultural Morality

by Jeremy D. Boreing

When I first started contributing to Big Hollywood, one of the rules I set for myself was to never discuss non-political figures, specifically folks in Hollywood.  There is plenty to write about without insulting members of the industry you are trying to work in.  So, in writing today about Roman Polanski, my purpose is not to malign the child-raping son-of-a-bitch himself, but to discuss the broader cultural ramifications of Hollywood’s support for his vile, child-raping son-of-a-bitchery.

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The Founders of this nation understood full-well that a nation of liberty could not long survive without a strong moral foundation.  If government exists to control people, then limited government naturally would control them very little.  The potential upside was tremendous.  If allowed to live free, a human being might pursue their own interests to the betterment of all of society.  Freedom means a man might strive, risk, and fail, but it also meant that he might strive, risk, and succeed.  As this process played out over time, it might well become the single greatest engine for innovation and wealth creation in all of human history.  (more…)

Jeffrey Jena

Stand Up Notes from Flyover Country: Vice — Legalize It!

by Jeffrey Jena

There is no doubt the State of Ohio, like many others, is in a financial mess. If you looked at the history of our economy you would notice that there have always been ups and downs. Individuals seem to understand this and plan for times of lean and times of plenty. Governments and our elected officials seem to have missed that day in Economics 101. Governments always seem to be shocked when the economy goes south for a while.

Our Governor Tom Strickland has a plan to balance the Ohio budget. Here it is in a nutshell: “Let’s gamble our way to prosperity!” As a comic my natural instinct is to ridicule this idea and to highlight the fact the Governor is ignoring that four times in the last twenty years the voters, by a wide margin, have refused casino gambling. (more…)

Michael McGruther

Moral Relativism; The Liberal Lynchpin

by Michael McGruther

The vast majority of adults in this world know that moral perfection is absolutely impossible, so I get upset when self proclaimed Hollywood/MSM liberals ruthlessly attack any conservative that cannot do the impossible; avoid succumbing to temptation for their entire life. Hollywood/MSM liberals always use this angle to attack conservatives nationwide because by strongly believing in nothing specific they’ve set themselves up to perpetually come out on top of any moral argument, guilt, worry and public-scorn free.

In today’s Hollywood a famous liberal filmmaker could hire a hooker while shooting a $100,000,000 studio feature film, secretly charge it to the budget, snort coke in his trailer between shots and drop E at night without any real concern for condemnation or job loss if he’s caught, because, well, he never proclaimed to be on the side of good in the first place. Whereas a famous conservative Christian filmmaker (pretend with me here) caught doing the same thing would be ridiculed and kicked out of town for the hypocrisy of it all since, by being Christian, he openly admitted that kind of behavior is not the most desirable for himself and doesn’t set a very good example for the fans. (more…)

Leo Grin

‘Taken’: The World’s Oldest Profession is Father

by Leo Grin

He is a man with a gun. He is a killer, a slayer. Patient and gentle as he is, he is a slayer. Self-effacing, self-forgetting, still he is a killer. . . All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. — D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)

Every once in awhile an action film comes along that revives. That proves that — no matter how strong the political correctness of an age, no matter how pale and pathetic its notions of masculinity, no matter how much Ritalin is force-fed to little boys, no matter how many toy guns, xylophone mallets, and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots get banned from stores and playgrounds — there are certain aspects of the male soul that are inviolate, and certain primal yearnings that are evergreen. Taken (2008) is one of those films, and its release last week on DVD and Blu-ray should be heralded by lovers of all things red-blooded, hairy-chested, and morally sound.

When this movie appeared in the doldrums of Hollywood’s off-season, it was expected to die a quick death in a marketplace filled with audiences either too sophisticated or too sophomoric to respond. Modern theatergoers, the theory goes, increasingly want their “heroes” to be either brooding Abercrombie & Fitch nymphets like Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, feckless stumblebums like Ben Stiller and Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s Kevin James, quirky class cut-ups like Robert Downey Jr. and Johnny Depp, or silly video-game tough guys like Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. When an actor does put some honest testosterone in his performance — Daniel Craig in Munich (2005), Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino (2008) — it’s inevitably to make a much larger point about violence breeding only more violence, all of it equally reprehensible, a product of way too many pesky males wreaking havoc in primitive bursts of knuckle-dragging temper. (more…)