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

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

But no.

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

No lie: black Republicans are as evil as genocidal maniacs.

Meanwhile, during a Senate hearing, socialist Bernie Sanders compared climate change skeptics to Nazi appeasers – people “who said ‘don’t worry! Hitler’s not real! It’ll disappear!’” How weird is it that a socialist like Sanders would have the stones to say capitalists are worse than Hitler. Sorry Bernie – look it up. Hitler was one of yours, d-bag.

Anyway, it serves to remind us all, that the people on the other side don’t just disagree with you, they hate you. They want to ruin you. They think you’re Nazis, monsters and Nazi monsters.

It’s why we should look to Andrew Breitbart for inspiration. He’s right when he says “bullies crumble when you hit them back.” So let’s hit them back, as hard as possible.

Metaphorically, of course. Prison sucks.

And if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Bernie Sanders.

Tonight we’ve got Nick Gillespie from Reason, Anthony Cumia from Opie and Anthony, the always awesome Patti Anne Browne, and GWAR’s Oderus Urangus.

That’s a line-up!!

Quentin Tarantino exploded on the world film scene in 1992 with “Reservoir Dogs,” a brutally profane yet ingeniously plotted and often funny deconstruction of the heist-film genre. He took things to a whole other level in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction,” reviving the foundering careers of superstars John Travolta and Bruce Willis while launching the star careers of Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman while winning a Best Screenplay Oscar himself. 

Yet in the 15 years since that classic, Tarantino hasn’t been able to score quite as big an impact. 1997’s “Jackie Brown” made just $39 million, while the two “Kill Bill” films scored $70 million each yet were considered hyper-violent trifles compared to what he was really capable of. And he really bottomed out with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which made up half of “Grindhouse,” a three-hour homage to the trashy drive-in films of America’s past. Its 21st-century audience didn’t get the joke and largely ignored it, earning just $27 million at the US box office. 

Tarantino knew it was time to dig deep if he was ever going to recover his relevance, and the result was this summer’s smash “Inglourious Basterds,” which radically re-imagines WWII history with its focus on Brad Pitt leading a team of the US military’s toughest Jews on a mission to kill and scalp as many Nazis as possible – before a series of ingenious plot twists give the team of Basterds a shot at taking down Hitler himself. The film has proved to be a smash hit with critics and audiences alike. Following a smash $38 million opening that was by far Tarantino’s biggest ever, it also proved to have legs, placing in the top 3 a full four weeks after its release – a staggeringly uncommon occurrence that has earned it nearly $110 million with no end in sight. 

Sitting down for a Q&A at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Tarantino offered plenty of insights into the creative process behind “Basterds” and the rich sense of film history that permeates its multi-layered entertainment. Since the film is entering its 5th weekend in theatres, giving people plenty of chances to see the film already, I’m including some of the questions that feature minor spoiler details.  

BIG HOLLYWOOD: It’ll surprise people how little the Basterds are actually in the film. Should we preserve that? 

QUENTIN TARANTINO: If you consider the Basterds the six guys in the background of Pitt, yeah they become incidental to the mission itself once the story goes on. To me, the story has three leads: Aldo (Pitt’s character), Shoshanna (a Jewish woman who escapes a Nazi slaughter) and Landa (the most ruthless Nazi). The first 3 chapters are setting up these leads, and Chapters 4 and 5 are now the adventure begins. You can also say everyone in the movie is an inglourious basterd, not just the little group. 

BH: This is a movie that shows a love for cinema… 

QT: I would definitely say so. One thing that cracked me up when I was first writing the first scene between Zoller (a Nazi who tries to charm Soshanna) and Soshanna and they’re debating (classic film directors) Linder vs. Chaplin, or he’s debating and she’s listening, I thought ‘OK I go make my WWII movie and it becomes a love letter to cinema.’ I guess I cannot not have that love show. 

BH: You’ve done wonders for epic film, can do 2 ½ hours to tell a complex story. Should studios let others do that? 

QT: I don’t see most movies holding to the traditional 90 minute format. Romantic comedies are 100 minutes these days. The new time frame now normally seems to be 2:10, 2:15, for any film trying to do something beyond a little comedy or horror film. But everything needs the time that it needs. I think that my movie is exactly the right length to tell my story and be entertaining. I can cut 20 minutes and make it seem longer because it becomes disjointed or abrupt, and you don’t feel as involved. But here you can say ‘wow that really flew by.’ When I went to Cannes, we hadn’t watched it with an audience. So we did, heard what didn’t work and then spent two days nipping it and it wound up a minute longer – but it feels 12 minutes shorter. 

BH: How long did you work on this film? 

QT: I put pen to paper on this at first in ‘98, around the time of  “Jackie Brown.” People said along the way that Schwarzenegger would be in it, but that was all rumors. I’m not against him, but some said Bruce Willis, Stallone – none of that ever came from me. 

BH: When you started, was it a more traditional war movie? 

QT: It changed, but what gets me to sit down and write something in the first place is something, usually a very thin idea. “Reservoir Dogs” was bam, sit down and write a heist movie. You don’t see the heist, but still it’s a heist movie. Then I hope I get beyond that and it becomes its own thing, but hopefully still developing the pleasures of the genre I’m dipping my toe into. Yet the whole idea is to expand beyond it. How this has changed from what I came up with then is I had a different storyline in mind way back when, I wrote the first two chapters to introduce the characters but the story I had was just too big. I had the opposite of writers’ block, I couldn’t stop writing. And like (his idol, Italian director) Sergio Leone, I couldn’t introduce a character without giving them a 20 minute scene. I had to go back to it, realizing I had to get over myself thinking I can’t work on that puny a canvas of 3 hours. So I did “Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2,” then I came back with a new story, and the new story is one about (Nazi) Frederick Zoller being like a German Audie Murphy (a famed American soldier turned actor) character who gets a movie made about him, and the mission would be the blowing up of the actual premiere of the film. 

BH: What would you like us to say about the alternate history of the film? 

QT: I don’t want you to say who gets killed, but you can say there is a point in the movie where history went one way and we went another. My idea was my characters changed the course of the war. It didn’t happen because they didn’t exist, but if they had existed it would all be fairly plausible. 

BH: You have a real passion for cinema and use touchstones from the past in your current films. Out of current films or the past 20 years, anything that inspires you? 

QT: I just wrote down my top 20 movies of the past 17 years that I’ve been directing. I was happy to find it was hard to break it down to 20. There’s a lot of terrific filmmakers out now, like my contemporary Paul Thomas Anderson. I feel I’m Marlon Brando to his Montgomery Clift. But that was an interesting reality. Brando and Clift were better actors because they always knew the other was there. I remember something that when I met Brian DePalma, a hero of mine, he was talking about having a friendly rivalry with Scorsese. While he was doing “Scarface,” a big epic with Pacino, and on a day off went to see “Raging Bull.” And that opening shot of rain, slow-motion, Jake LaMotta dancing and he thought, “Ugh, there’s always Scorsese. No matter how good you are or what you do, he’s always looking back at you.” But in last couple decades, great directors would include Paul, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater – not because we’re friends, but we’re friends because we respond to their aesthetic. I’m not friends with David Fincher but I love his work. To me, some of the best cinema on earth is coming out of Korea. They’re amazing. Just two guys have done five of the best 20 films of the past ten years. 

BH: Are there any good B-movies left nowadays? 

QT: I wanted to see “Get Snow,” that Norwegian Nazi zombie movie. Straight to video, there was something lost by losing the theatrical experience, but now films on DVD with no theatrical release in America will get them overseas.. Who thought overseas fans would all of a sudden get into the horror film in a big way like “High Tension.” Or these Spanish horrors released by Dimension Extreme. These are very extreme movies, very few of Japanese horrors play US theaters, you watch them on DVD. I actually have seen “Kurosawa’s Pulse” at theaters, but most find it on DVD. It’s different than when Roger Corman had Concorde and they just put out their films straight to video. Every month I read Video Watchdog to see if something cool has reared its head. Is there a “Lost Boys 4?” 

BH: Where does (the main Nazi villain) Landa rank among your characters? 

QT: When I wrote him, I knew not only is he one of the best characters I’ve ever written, he’s the best I ever will write. One of the things I felt happy about with that sequence at the opening, I always felt that there’s this weird aspect that my scenes a lot of times are meant to stand alone the way you would listen to a greatest hits album. And in that self-aggrandizing analogy, I’d say the Sicilian scene in “True Romance” [a verbal confrontation between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper] was my best work. I knew I’d come close, but never top that. But when I wrote the opening scene in this movie, with the Jew Hunter and the French farmer, I thought, ‘I did it!’ That’s up to you to decide of course, though. 

BH: On a typical day, what’s your routine on set? What’s your ritual? 

QT: The bar sequence (of “Basterds”) was like a little movie unto itself, or a one-act play – so much so that I had people do the whole sequence in one long run. By the third day of rehearsal we had that scene down. A scene like that, there’s a lot of dexterity going on, because you have one table with Bridget and our boys, and the other table with Nazis and they’re playing a game. It was like a one-act play, so much so that I asked in rehearsals if we could wind up doing it as one long run. The third day of rehearsal we had that thing down, and with one more week I could have taken it to the Berlin stage. What could very well happen is we’re preparing (actress Diane Kruger), working something special for her, but the whole time I’m filming the German soldiers’ game, then I move over to film what bartender is doing. Then I really get into the card game, and there’s so much dialogue in it. So I’d film it but I’d be like, “I’d like to do the other angle the next day.” A sequence like that took two weeks to shoot, it’s like its own little movie, there’s a lot of juggling elements, and when you’re figuring out the directing of it you’re figuring how to juggle and how to keep it going. 

Anybody who’s a director and gets more than 5 hours sleep a night must not be passionate. If you can sleep well, you must not be doing the job right. 

BH: In “Basterds” you bring back old actors like Rod Taylor, or reinvent someone like Mike Myers, yet sometimes you discover someone totally unexpected like Christophe Waltz (the main Nazi Landa, considered an Oscar shoo-in by most critics). Would you say this is your best casting yet? 

QT: It was the toughest, a tough delivery but we had a beautiful baby. I was precious about my casting – that whoever I cast was perfect to play the different facets of a character. Every once in a while I cast an actor who’s not my type. Hopefully, you don’t notice that but I notice that. You have to be both physical and verbal, and obviously you have to have a facility with dialogue if you’re gonna do one of my movies. You’ve gotta be hungry for it – instead of saying “Awww, I gotta learn this three page thing,” but say “Yeah! I’m gonna OWN this! It’s MINE!” and you take it and make it your own. You also gotta be smart to do my stuff. 

BH: In 17 years of doing this, what’s your biggest triumph and your biggest disappointment? 

QT: I guess the career goal that I always go to is winning the Palme d’Or for “Pulp Fiction.” There’s only one list of filmmakers more prestigious than those who’ve won it, and that’s the directors who haven’t. I took it very hard when “Grindhouse” didn’t do well. I like the movie, I’m very happy with that and what we did, and when we had an audience it played like gangbusters. I never had that kind of a flop before and it hurt my feelings, but you get over it and I’m lucky that I’m in a position to follow my muse, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

“Basterds,” misspelled the way Brad Pitt’s moonshining Lt. Aldo Raine character carved it into his rifle, takes place in German-occupied France from 1941 to 1944.  Tarantino makes a point of specifying “Nazi-occupied France,” justifying to the film watcher the extreme measures needed to deal with this particular type of human evil.  That National Socialist German Workers’ Party membership never numbered more than about 20 percent of the adult German population is beside the point; the Nazi Party in the guise of Hitler (played by Martin Wuttke) controlled the Wehrmacht from the top.  

“Basterds” follows three characters.  ”Chapter 1″ introduces Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) a young Frenchwoman whose dairy farmer family is wiped out in 1941 by the Germans and Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who directs the killing.  Landa is a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party, who considers himself a detective asked by his government to find every last Jewish person in France.  In “Chapter 2″ we meet U.S. Army Lt. Aldo Raine. Raine’s crossed arrows insignia on his collar identifies him as a member of the First Special Service Force, a U.S.-Canadian commando force called the Devil’s Brigade.  Lt. Raine leads a small band of soldiers, all of whom happen to be Jewish, on a mission of retribution, mayhem and terror behind enemy lines, the goal: take 100 “Nazi scalps” each. 

While “Basterds” is pure fiction, it does trace historical actions depicted in “Bodyguard of Lies” by Anthony Cave Brown.  “Bodyguard” details the deadly cloak-and-dagger action surrounding the effort to return Allied forces to the Continent on D-Day.  The scene with Mike Myers’ as British spymaster General Ed Fenech and Rod Taylor as Churchill suggests Major General Sir Stewart Menzies, Britain’s WWII head of the Secret Intelligence Service, as the basis for Myers’ character.  “Bodyguard’s” riveting accounts, such as the German capture and interrogation of British agent Princess Noor Inayat Khan (she was killed in Dachau, her last words being “liberty”), echo parts of “Basterds” – reminding one that “Basterds” may not be real, but it’s true – which brings up an inconvenient truth for some enthusiasts of Mr. Tarantino’s latest work. 

The theme of “Basterds” is revenge.  But revenge in this case takes place in occupied France in 1944.  In this context, Lt. Raine and his encouragement of scalping and other torture methods, violate the Hague Conventions (the forerunner to the Geneva Conventions) to which both the U.S. and Germany agreed.  The Hague’s Article 23 specifically prohibited the “treacherous” killing of an enemy, or harming enemies who had surrendered, or “declar(ing) that no quarter will be given.”  Of course, Raine’s men, usually operating sans uniform, were in violation of The Hague’s Chapter I, The Qualifications of Belligerents, Article 1, reading in part, that proper belligerents must, “have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance” and “conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”  Executing prisoners is, unfortunately, an unspoken reality of swift-moving commando forces operating behind enemy lines.  Beating enemy prisoners of war to death with a baseball bat while not wearing a uniform is an even more obvious violation of the law of war.  Under rules then in effect, if Raines’ men were captured while operating outside of these rules, they could be treated very harshly – even summarily executed. 

In 1949, the Geneva Conventions updated the Hague Conventions. The Third Geneva Convention, Part I, Article 4, parallels The Hague’s Article 23 in specifying the attributes of a legitimate prisoner of war who is deserving of protection by his captor.  It is this part of the law of war that the Bush Administration cited when justifying their treatment of men captured as part of the Global War on Terror (now called “overseas contingency operations”), i.e. al-Qaeda didn’t fight with “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance” or carry “arms openly” or conduct “their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war” therefore they were “unlawful combatants.” 

It is interesting indeed to see those who applaud Tarantino’s latest, admittedly excellent work, revel in the unbridled revenge against Nazis who get what’s coming to them.  Many of whom, without batting an eye, view al-Qaeda killers as deserving of respect, protection, and the benefit of civilian law.  Since all that separates al-Qaeda from the Nazis is the means – industrial power, modern education, and an organized national base – one wonders why a certain amount of cognitive dissonance wouldn’t kick in after a liberal enjoyed screening “Basterds.” 

To the point, what would a liberal think of the scene where Lt. Raine interrogates a captured German sergeant, demanding the location of a German outpost and its supporting artillery?  As the German NCO refuses to talk, Raine orders one of his men to kill the prisoner with a baseball bat.  When the two remaining German prisoners see this, one runs in horror and is shot down, while the other is brought over and threatened with the same deadly treatment.  He talks, saving the lives of the American commandos.  For the prisoner’s troubles, Raines carves a swastika into his forehead.  By comparison, the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during interrogation seems rather pedestrian. 

Were Lt. Aldo Raine unleashed in Waziristan today, he and his men (all from New York City to provide the needed element of justifiable revenge) would no doubt relish taking al-Qaeda and Taliban scalps.  Alas, were Tarantino to make this flick, it would end prematurely just as Osama bin Laden was about to be relieved of his wavy locks by Raine’s massive knife.  The unsatisfying closing sequence would have a shocked Raine arrested by FBI agents after the Basterds’ cover was blown by the New York Times.  The credits would roll on Raine’s trial by Attorney General Holder’s Department of Justice with bin Laden in protective custody as a witness to Raine’s heinous war crimes. 

I don’t see Tarantino making that film – it might not be real, but it’s too true for Hollywood.

Bringing together his usual strengths as a director of intense performances from sterling casts, an amazing score pasted together from classic scores of past films, incredibly sharp and catchy dialogue and a warped time frame that that will throw viewers through a satisfying series of loops, Tarantino has easily made his best film since “Pulp Fiction.” Coming off a humiliating misfire with 2007’s “Death Proof,” which was half of the box-office disaster known as “Grindhouse,” Tarantino has admitted that he felt the need to double down on his strengths and prove that he was just as relevant and inventive as ever. 

With “Basterds,” a dream project of Tarantino’s for the past decade, he has accomplished all that and more.  The result is a (mostly) fast-paced, multi-layered and entertainingly violent film that has the audacity to completely reinvent the way WWII went down in flames for the Germans and get away with it. 

The film’s innovative structure tells the story in five distinct chapters, using the first three to establish the main characters in their own storylines. This serves all the better to make the fast action and double-crosses that make up the final two sections more emotionally involving and edge-of-your-seat exciting since by the time things really kick in, you’re fully invested in all the characters. 

“Basterds” opens with ace Nazi Col. Landa (in a star-making and likely Oscar-nominated performance by Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, in his American film debut) squaring off against a French farmer he suspects is harboring a Jewish family beneath his floorboards. The conversation between the two surpasses the classic discussion of hamburgers and foot rubs that Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta shared en route to a hit job in “Pulp Fiction,” for while its dialogue is perfectly etched and delivered, it also reveals layer after layer of the depravity in Landa’s soul and creates the tension of a ever-worsening life-and-death situation almost exclusively through the words expressed rather than overblown violence. 

The second chapter opens with the now-ubiquitous scene of Pitt’s Aldo Raine challenging a team of Jewish American soldiers to take down all the Nazis they can, and collect 100 Nazi scalps each, and brings the heroes to vibrant, darkly humorous life. The third chapter guides us into the subtly building tension of a young, secretly Jewish woman named Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) who escaped Col. Landa three years earlier and now operates a Parisian cinema. 

As she tries to fend off the attentions of a slimy yet handsome young Nazi war hero named Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), Shosanna comes to realize that his request to show the premiere of a propagandistic war film about his exploits that he stars in will offer her the chance to have hundreds of Nazi leaders including Hitler himself seated together in the dark of her theater. And so it is that in the fourth and fifth chapters, Shosanna teams with Aldo Raine’s men to set up the perfect revenge and perhaps end the war itself.

“Inglourious Basterds” wildly re-imagines the way in which the Nazis were defeated in WWII, but its unhinged take on historic events still proves to be immensely entertaining and there are no blatant anti-American messages stuck into the film’s script as in many other modern war movies. Pitt and his men are unabashed heroes you want to root for. Every performer appears to be having a blast, both in their often over-the-top action scenes and in the extensive dialogue and planning scenes that put all the pieces of the plot puzzle into place. And one more good aspect to note is that Tarantino has learned to curb his worst impulses of graphic violence and excessive profanity to make a film that has some of both but in a more restrained level than his usual. 

The only fault to be found is that some of the dialogue scenes stretch the talking almost to the limit of attention spans, especially among viewers who were led to believe by the simplified, Pitt-centered commercials that the movie is composed of wall-to-wall Nazi-killing. Having to follow many of these scenes in subtitles might turn off some prospective viewers, especially those who might otherwise seek out repeated viewings of an ass-kicking flick, but for those who appreciate quality filmmaking to go with a rousing good time, “Inglourious Basterds” easily fills the bill.

#1: Us Citizens.

#2: You elected officials.

I really prefer writing long pieces on why Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and Johnny Rotten rule. It’s more fun to talk about how everything in popular culture that everyone else likes actually sucks, and I’m even going to provide some inspirational music selections below. But duty calls. Right now, a bunch of people whose salaries you and I pay and who work for us are telling us to shut up and do as we’re told.

That’s just not gonna happen.

Message to our representatives: Hey Bub, I didn’t swear allegiance to the Constitution and deploy twice to defend it to shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, guess that old First Amendment thing doesn’t apply to me” just because you’re tired of hearing about how completely and thoroughly your plan to turn our health care system into another DMV sucks. Here’s how it’s going to be: Like it or not, you’re going to stand there, zip your pie hole for once, and listen to your constituents.

You may not like us mere citizens daring to question you. You may turn to your entourage, gasping in horror because some mere business owner has the nerve to ask you why you think shooting his taxes up over 60% so some deadbeat who doesn’t want to fork over the money to buy his own policy can get covered for free is a good idea. I know it must be a shock to realize that you aren’t some minor potentate, immune to criticism and answering only to yourself. But that’s too damn bad. This is a democracy, and you work for us.

It’s time to remember that the key word in the phrase “public servant” is “servant.” You’re not our “masters,” not our “rulers,” and not even our “new insect overlords.” You’re our servants. So serve. Start off by bringing me a draft Dos Equis lager, with a lime, pronto. Oh, and vote against socialized medicine.

And another thing, Mac. Like the rest of your employers, I don’t dig being called a “Nazi” by one of your little lefty functionaries. First, it’s inaccurate. Maybe your flunkie’s commie professor at Bennington never taught him enough to know that the Nazis were on his side of the poli-sci spectrum and not mine. The word “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist,” not “National Free-Market Supply-Side Libertarian with a Strong Grounding in Traditional Values.” Perhaps I could be called a “Nfmsslwasgitvi,” but I’m sure as hell not a “Nazi.” Second, me and my ancestors have protected this country from Nazis, commies, thugs and other assorted scumbags for generations, and if someone freaking calls me a Nazi to my face someone’s getting knocked on his fifth point of contact.

And stop impugning my motives, Dude. Supposedly all of us who aren’t thrilled about this health care reform abomination are speaking up only because we’re in the pay of the evil Big Insurance and Big Pharmaceuticals. To that, I ask a question – Where’s my check? I don’t want to be saying that this is idiotic for free like a sucker.

Now, if we speak, will they listen? Oh yeah. In 1986, I spent the summer drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls in Washington, activities I interrupted occasionally to intern on the Hill for Congressman Duncan Hunter (Duncan ruled – he kept a 12 gauge in his office closet and thought we should give the Contras the Bomb). The point is that I remember the intense interest the representatives had in constituent contacts – they counted every letter, categorized them and paid very, very, very close attention to the mood of the voters.

You better believe that every member who doesn’t represent a district to the left of Berkeley is feeling the heat and shuddering in terror at the prospect of having to find a real job in January 2011 if he or she votes wrong on this one. Not everyone gets to run for re-election in a district where 72.5% of the voters agree with the proposition “U.S. out of North America.“ Write, call, fax, email, and best of all, show up at a town hall meeting or at the local office – it matters.

And when you speak out – and you must speak out, even if your name goes into the big database of wrongthinkers at Central Committee headquarters (Note to der Commissar: There are two “H’s” in “Schlichter”) – here are some basic principles that you should demand that any health care reform plan incorporate:

1. Health care is not a right. You are not entitled to someone else handing it to you for free any more than you are entitled to free Special K, a free condo in Maui or a free Nintendo Wii.

2. Everyone is responsible for obtaining and paying for his own and his family’s health care. But isn’t it true that some folks just don’t have the money? Well, here’s a powerful wealth-building strategy that I’ll let the freeloaders out there in on for nothing: Get a job. Then you can buy your own damn health insurance. I work three jobs and I’m getting a masters degree. I’m not loving the idea of paying your freight too, so roll off the couch, do a push-up, and start eyeballing the Craigslist want ads.

3. I actually sort of respect illegal aliens – anyone who will swim a river, cross a desert and dodge cops to work for minimum wage cooking me Big Macs is the kind of guy I want in America. But that doesn’t mean I want to pick up the tab when one gets a rash. Go home, get in line, then welcome back when your turn comes.

4. The government is so wrapped up in health care that right now you effectively have no choices.  I know this because I pay for my employees’ health care and I have a wide variety of one choice at one price among two companies. Thanks for “helping” me choose by eliminating all choice, California.

5. As a lawyer, let me draw the fire of my peers. The malpractice system is nearly as big a scam as global warming – the only difference is a few people actually believe in global warming. Everyone in the legal field knows that the malpractice system is a racket.

6. The government must have nothing to do with providing health care. Nada. Zero. Zip. There’s no need to extend its unbroken track record of failure right into my doctor’s office. Time to get yourself pumped up and ready – and to give me something to talk about that tangentially relates to pop culture.

*****

Here are six great tunes to get you in the frame of mind to do your job as an American citizen – to make yourself heard:

1. Get a Job by The Silhouettes. Obeying this concise directive would go a huge distance in solving the problem of the uninsured.

2. The Ballad of the Green Berets by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. This, the most literal song of all time, is a potent reminder that the right to speak out we are exercising didn’t come free and didn’t come cheap. Don’t waste your rights – dissent is almost as patriotic as fighting your country’s enemies or backing up those that do.

3. Fight the Power by Public Enemy. Embrace the chorus and ignore the rest of the lyrics, along with the silly Malcolm X imagery. Catchy, motivating and who can resist old school Flavor Flav!

4. The Theme to the Magnificent Seven by Elmer Bernstein. The ultimate psyche-up music for Americans fighting against all odds. But as the Seven showed, when we’re united we’re invincible – and we’re not about to let ourselves be vinced by a bunch of collectivist doofuses, lefty hacks and their union thugs.

5. God Bless The U.S.A. by Lee Greenwood. The best thing about this song is the way its raw sentimentality and naked patriotism tends to make liberals so uncomfortable. That’s the spirit animating this campaign to preserve our country as we know it, and a little faith in our country’s principles is nothing to be ashamed of. I just wish it had some snarling guitars.

6. I Fought the Law by the Clash. Okay, here’re the snarling guitars. And yeah, I know the Clash thought they were leftists. I don’t care. Anyway, here’s my tortured reasoning as to why this song is relevant here: The law is our Constitution and the First Amendment, the liberals are fighting it, and we’re going to win. Okay, it’s just a really great song that I use to get me amped up for court.

So, ignore the people telling you to sit down and shut up, get pumped, move out and make your voice heard. And I’d sure appreciate it if someone out there could let me know where I can pick up my check from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

My pretty fourth-grade teacher, who taught us everything from math and history to a dash of entomology (study of insects), didn’t think so.  One day, unprompted, she told her class of 10-year-olds that she wasn’t really concerned about the Biafran babies because mass starvation was just nature’s way of controlling overpopulation.  (My parents were mortified.)

Margaret Sanger

Hard to fathom how, less than three decades after the Holocaust, any educated person could harbor such cold acceptance of the cruel suffering of fellow human beings - much less voice it (and to children, no less).  But whoever said the human race is on a one-way path to progress?

It’s widely assumed that, in every moment we’re alive, we’ve reached a new pinnacle – of modernity, experience, knowledge, enlightenment – that we always move forward, never back.  But what if we don’t?  What if we’re fated to make the same mistakes (disguised with innocuous new names) over and over again?

Fifty years before my lesson in urban savagery, Margaret Sanger, the Saint of Planned Parenthood, advocated beliefs that were not dissimilar to those of my twisted teach.  The fabled women’s rights activist was all about negative eugenics – meaning making sure ”social misfits” and other undesirables never got the chance to repulse the right people, by making sure they never got born.

“Birth control,” she declared in 1923, “is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, or preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives.”  Her mission: to stop ”keeping alive thousands who never, in all human compassion, should have been brought into this world.”

Sanger was ambitious.  She actively advocated for sterilization of the great unwashed – the “feeble-minded, insane… deaf, deformed and dependent,” including “orphans, ne’er-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and paupers.”  Talk about a hard knock life.

Before she came along, President Teddy Roosevelt had responded to a drastic drop in the national birth rate with a more positive (but equally elitist) message.  He encouraged turn-of-the-century yuppies to do their primitive best and reproduce – to, in theory, bring more of the “right” kind of people into the world.  But the goddess of “choice” found hope only in curtailing options for the disenfranchised.

“I hated the wretchedness and hopelessness of the poor,” Sanger wrote, “and never experienced that satisfaction in working among them that so many noble women have found.”  Indeed, her whole life seems to have been spent rebelling against the devout Roman Catholicism of her parents; Sanger’s mother got pregnant a whopping 18 times (which probably explains a lot).

Yes, thanks to Sanger’s one-woman crusade, 8300 people were sterilized in the state of Virginia alone.  Her most famous casualty was a young rape victim named Carrie Buck, whose tubes were ultimately cut – against her will – because she was allegedly promiscuous and mentally “challenged” with a rocky family history.  “Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote of the case.  Snip snip.

Betty Friedan

Forty years later, feminist Betty Friedan picked up the Puritanical, less-is-more torch and hailed the American family a “comfortable concentration camp.”  Easy to dismiss such a statement as cheeky rhetoric.  But even in our seemingly advanced society, fascism still seethes just beneath the surface - behind a smile, an empathetic word, a good intention.  People like to control people.

As Paul Johnson points out his absorbing bestseller, Intellectuals, “social engineering has been the salient delusion and the greatest curse of the modern age.  In the twentieth century it has killed scores of millions of innocent people, in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Communist China and elsewhere…. It is the birthright of the totalitarian tradition.”

In the popular countdown, the number one eugenicists were obviously the Nazis, who took social engineering to nightmarish new heights.  But after the post-War baby boom of the 1950s, we got soft – resting on our liberators’ laurels and blindly trusting in the assumption that, as a species, we were finally evolving and growing.

In fact, revolving and shrinking is more like it.  As a good friend once said, “People don’t live long enough to learn anything.”

Gays and lesbians, for instance, were once an invisible minority in America.  In the 1950s, they were labeled mentally ill, often forced to undergo electro-shock therapy or sent off to asylums along with the rest of Sanger’s degenerates.  Yet in 2009, out and proud American LGBTs – exalted and protected by the media and endowed with all the legal rights to form civil unions (and, in some states, marriages) – march naively alongside the covert Stalinists of International ANSWER, whining that they “can’t breathe” in the redneck USA.

Never mind that we live in a country where even the former Republican Vice President – the father of an openly gay daughter - has publicly declared that “People ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish.”  (Which is a more forthright statement than any the Democratic President has said.)

Meanwhile, in the heterosexual paradise known as Iran, gays who dare to exist (or get caught doing so) continue to be executed, to the tune of about 15 deaths per month – with barely a peep of solidarity from the most powerful and affluent gay community in the Western world.

Recently, violence exploded in Tehran over the rigged re-election of murderous homophobe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Students and others were inspired by the daring and unusual sight of the opposition candidate – gasp! – holding his wife’s hand in public.  As protesters were bludgeoned and shot in the streets, what did the gay community here do?  They donned green (once upon a time done only on Thursdays), brazenly equated the Iranian riots with their armchair petulance over Obama’s (unsurprising) neglect - and courageously withheld checks from the DNC.

Newsflash: West Hollywood is not Tehran.

And sadly, Mir-Hussein Mousavi ain’t Michael Jackson.  The minute the King of Pop stopped breathing, the gays dumped their Iranian brethren to attack Perez Hilton on Twitter.  A few days later, President Obama officially killed gay solidarity with Iran: he distracted the griping gays with an overdue bone, hosting a Stonewall anniversary party in the East Room of the White House – and proclaimed “June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.”  (What about June 2010?)

The LGBT community proved its collective attention span is no better than the average teenager’s.  Riots?  What riots? Memories of atrocities perpetrated against mankind no longer get passed down generation from generation; they end up on T-shirts.  Not even the gay community can remember its darkest days anymore – though God knows, they still love the drama!

As long as there are celebrity train wrecks, oppressed people will remain diversions.  Which makes me wonder: how will gays - or any Americans – react when faced with the next imminent threat?  Deadened by trendy moral relativism, will we even be able to recognize such a thing anymore?

If comfy, urban gays think they can’t “breathe” now, wait until they really start suffocating – not from the widely promoted ”fact” of greenhouse gases, rising seas, and over-population – but from a rapid rise in religious fundamentalism brought on as a direct result of the hardcore secular, anti-family, anti-life legislation most “progressives” support.  The gays will wish they could turn back time and vote for John McCain!

In his book, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity (and What to Do About It), author Phillip Longman presents demographic evidence that over-population is, like global warming, a myth (that the scientific community and the media can’t afford to give up).  Rather than growing, world population is actually shrinking, and at alarming speed - a concept that does not bode well for gays or any other “liberal” minority.

Why?  Because, writes Longman, unless people start having more babies – and fast - ”unsustainable trends end.”  Current global fertility rates are half what they were in 1972.  According to the Census Bureau, by 2050, one out of every five Americans will be over 65.  Imagine the seismic cultural shift Madison Avenue will have to make in order to attract that hot new 55-99 demographic!  You’ve come a long way, granny.

Yet our culture continues to promote endless, sexy images of successful, attractive, single individuals who are always in complete control of their personal choices and surroundings.

“Population growth underlies our modern concept of freedom,” Longman declares.  “Not since the fall of the Roman Empire has the world ever experienced anything on the scale of today’s loss of fertility.”  And when people die off, fundamentalism blossoms – to keep the species going.  Many of the attitudes we associate with the Victorian Era - religious revivalism, moral rigidity, gender role conformity, intolerance of birth control, glorification of motherhood – were actually rooted not in religion, but in demography.

The Industrial Revolution threw people into the cities, where children suddenly became economic burdens and obstacles to upward mobility.   Husbands and wives no longer worked together at home, the number of single women and prostitutes skyrocketed – so late Victorian housewives took it upon themselves to march the streets as moral crusaders for the good of society.

Yes, lesbians and gays (and suburban swingers) can look forward to a whole new generation of PC-resistant Anita Bryant mutations, fighting sin to save the children.  Escalating national debt – check! – and a soon-to-be-massively-overburdened ObamaCare bureaucracy – check! – could help Puritanical thrift and temperance make monstrous comebacks.

Previously gay-friendly friends and neighbors could become more suspicious of “alternate lifestyles,” not because the Bible or the Koran demands it – well, maybe the Koran - but because they would no longer be able to afford the luxury of such conduct.  “Those who reject modernity,” says Longman, ”seem to have an evolutionary advantage, whether they are clean-living Mormons, or Muslims… ”

To quote Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan:  “Have babies – Allah wants it.”

According to the London Times, the number of Muslims living in the UK grew by half a million between 2004 and 2008 alone – a growth rate 10 times that of the rest of the country’s population.   And this isn’t by accident.  In Australia, for instance, British-based Sheik Abdul Raheem Green exhorted Muslim couples to have no less than four children each - to ensure that the land down under becomes a pure Islamic state.

Today, there are no less than 85 Shariah courts operating in the UK.  As columnist Peter Whittle recently pointed out in the Telegraph, a ”survey by Policy Exchange… showed that 72 percent of young Muslim men thought that homosexuality should be recriminalised,” reminding that “there are some pretty disturbing things being said by some Imans about what is best for gays, i.e. death.”  (Could it, perchance, be time for American gays to rethink their hostility towards the Mormons?  Just asking.)

So-called “youth gangs,” contemptuous of infidels – that’s us - have made cities all over Europe increasingly dangerous for women, Jews and gays.  The upside is that the rise in gay-bashings by young Muslims has caused many hitherto left-wing Dutch gays to vote conservative by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

Yet good American progressives continue to shill for a nanny state, willfully ignoring the fact that socialism in Sweden and the Soviet Union failed miserably to maintain even replacement-level fertility rates – never mind the gaping holes a shrinking populace puts in the sails of the environmental windjammer.  What a concept: mankind might actually be part of Mother Gaia, after all; without resorting to killer tax hikes, health care rationing, or concentration camps, we may just destroy ourselves naturally!  So recycle while ye may!

And fasten your seat belts, boys – or start hooking up with some surrogate moms quick.  Because unless we actively try to keep the species going, we’re ushering in what Longman calls “the fundamentalist moment… a fundamentalist future.”  As the saying goes, everything old becomes new again – be it positive eugenics, the Jackson Five, or the Islamic Caliphate.

So the next time you’re up in a plane, looking down at the earth, and you see a bunch of tiny dots moving across the landscape like ants, remember that’s all we are: bugs on a rotating ball.  Mother Nature has a plan for us, and she’s in no hurry to tell us what it is.

In the meantime, don’t get too comfortable, because it only takes a moment to step out of line, fall out of favor – and get smushed.

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran.

The backstory. In late February, the decision by AMPAS (as defined above) to send the Nine Stooges to the fascist hostage-taking, women-stoning, gay-exterminating Islamic Republic of Iran (at that time, things may be changing) set me off hotter than a Kim Jong Il nuke. Five days after the gay rights infomercial Oscars, no less! My gay rights heroes.

Somebody give ‘em an Oscar! For what it’s worth nowadays. Sean Penn getting an Oscar for playing a gay rights hero with his sorry track record on the subject is like Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore getting Nobel Prizes. They just ain’t worth what they used to be these days.

But I digress. On With The Show Biz Trial.

For ten days and uncounted humiliating punkings in early March, Team Oscar was a national embarrassment and a disgrace to this country and people, and an affront to the innocent Iranians suffering under a yoke of oppression not seen since Hitler’s Third Reich. A yoke which they are desperately and bravely fighting and even dying to cast off even as we speak.

And now, despite all that transpired back then, and all that is happening now in Iran, AMPAS is looking to whitewash the whole affair as a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road trip! Not on my watch! Fat fucking chance! Can you imagine how Iranian gays felt, watching the same people who facilitated tearful speeches on “gay rights for everyone” socializing and galivanting around town with the very monsters who were hunting them down, torturing and killing them?

If that alone isn’t a stoning offense, then nothing is.

Some may consider my charges harsh, even unreasonably so. So be it. Brutal Injustice and rank hypocrisy bring out the Zarqawi in me. But I will present to you, Dear Hollywood non-Academy Readers and Fine Fellow Americans everywhere, the foul evidence at hand in toto.

When charges have been read, and sentence is to be passed, I will leave it to the rest of you stoners as to which direction your rocks should fly. But first, to put the matter into Supreme Court-like perspective, look at the precedent law upon which I base my charges and my case.

THE WORLD v. SOUTH AFRICA

In 1985, during the oppressive Apartheid era of South Africa’s all-white fascist regime, actors, artists, producers and many fine musicians like Little Stevie van Zandt and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, united to make a statement against that racist government, which held Nelson Mandela behind bars unjustly for 29 years, and murdered noted anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko while in police custody. That murder was memorialized in the Peter Gabriel song of the same name.

In conjunction with worldwide sanctions and divestment of business from South Africa at the time, the musical statement made by that group of most talented artists, better know as Artists United Against Apartheid, was immortalized in the song Sun City, which became a smash hit worldwide. We all know the rest of the story. The white South African government eventually folded, and Nelson Mandela was freed and then elected to the presidency.

What were South Africa’s crimes besides just Mandela’s imprisonment and Biko’s murder? Officially enforced racial segregation and subjugation, violent repression and the banning of opposition political parties. Certainly more than enough justification for international outrage, and both official and unofficial sanctions.

Yet compared to the current theocratic Hitlerite thugocracy running the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the world is also widely sanctioning today, South Africa’s Apartheid government was operating an island paradise fit for Chinese Uighurs. In Iran, political empowerment is nonexistent, and has been since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

All the power is in the hands of Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and the Mad Mullah Guardian Council. Reform was impossible. Any measure passed by Iran’s Parliament, the Majlis, deemed ‘un-Islamic’ by the Mad Mullahs could be overturned on review. The Church is the State in Iran. Like a nationwide Westboro Baptist Church from Hell. Only worse. Much worse.

Examples. Children are routinely executed, gays are hunted down, tortured and brutally exterminated, and women and young girls are stoned and hanged, even for the crime of being raped. Until international outrage interceded, as happened vis-a-vis Roxana Saberi, seventeen-year-old Nazanin Fatehi was awaiting a death sentence for the crime of stabbing and killing one of the three God-fearing Islamists who attempted to rape her and her niece in a West Tehran park.

Here is a 27-minute documentary that re-enacts the attempted rape and the unbelievably misogynist injustice which followed. Had the world not screamed so loud in outrage, Nazanin would have suffered the same fate as that of twenty-year-old Delara Derabi, who was hanged by the Islamic Republic only six weeks ago. Iran has held mass hangings as recently as May 14th. And given the official death penalty announcement for Mousavi protesters, many more may follow depending on the outcome of current events.

This doesn’t even take into account the fact that many in Iran’s terror-sponsoring Islamist extremist leadership, including ‘moderate’ Hashemi Rafsanjani and recent presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and former ‘diplomat’ to Argentina, are wanted by Interpol for their involvement in the worst terror attacks in Argentina’s history back in 1994. An Interpol warrant was issued for Rezai as recently as May 22nd.

Here is a piece I wrote back in early March, branding the regime as today’s Third Reich. Look at all the horrific and barbaric evidence of crimes against humanity committed both at home and abroad, and you tell me if I’m overstating the case. Keep also in mind that Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists are now in the streets of Iran, beating and killing the same Iranians who have supported and patronized the Islamist groups for decades.

Taking time out from killing innocent Jews to killing innocent Iranians. No surprise there, since the regime already kills its own people on an assembly line basis. Even bloggers. Given all this brutal evidence of the Iranian thugocracy’s bloody track record which spans the globe, I ask you, Dear Readers of jurisprudence and humble advocates of human rights for all, how was the Islamic Republic of Iran worthy of cultural diplomatic exchange, and South Africa not?

They should be forming Artists United Against Insanity to oppose Iran’s theocratic thugocracy, not flying over for tea, fingers cookies, and film seminars! Disgraceful!

Charges as follows. Bear with me. It’s a longer list than you think.

1. THE FIRST PUNKING OF FAR TOO MANY

Even though AMPAS was promised no politics would be involved in the visit, Team Hollywood was no sooner off the tarmac at Khomeini Airport in Tehran than they were totally punked by the best punks in the world, with harsh demands for apologies and submission by Iranian leaders over the films 300 and The Wrestler, or they wouldn’t get to meet their Iranian film buds. Curiously, Team Oscar was allowed to meet with their Iranian counterparts shortly thereafter. My question to the Academy is this: did they apologize or not?

Iif you recall, what so outraged Iranian government stooges over The Wrestler was Mickey Rourke breaking an Iranian flag and tossing it into the crowd. Deliciously ironic, considering the desecration of our flag is a national sport with the regime. There was also a declaration by Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, that thirty films currently in production in Hollywood were ‘anti-Iranian.’

Civilized governments don’t act like that. Yet I broke the punking story in America to Drudge and Nikki Finke because I knew something like that was going to happen. I was looking for it. Hell, the regime has been punking us for thirty years! Ahmadinejad had even said Hollywood was devoid of all culture and art. Something’s Gotta Give. I must admit, however, that maybe Ahmie was onto something with that comment. Never thought I’d agree with anything the Little Hitler said.

Academy politics makes strange bedfellows, I reckon.

That infamous Punking Heard ‘Round the World should have proved to all concerned that President Obama’s attempt at diplomacy through Team Oscar was a horrendous failure, as all other efforts since have been. Like the Khamenei-led Death to America rallies in response to Obama’s peace video. Yet Team Oscar suffered that humiliation and degradation only to suffer many more. And the rest of us, since Team Oscar represented us over there as a nation as well.

Some were even worse, if you can believe it. In short, if somebody wrote a script like this, no one would ever believe it. But I already read the book. Been reading it since 1979.

2. TEAM OSCAR’S STOOGES TRAIN IRAN’S PROPAGANDA STOOGES

Iran ‘film industry’ experts, many of whom Stooge Team Oscar no doubt gave seminars to, gave their own previous film seminars on Iran TV on the Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators for making such anti-Iranian celluloid slanders as Harry Potter, Chicken Run and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. And let’s not forget the Jew Disney’s cartoon conspiracy, Tom and Jerry. Also deliciously ironic, considering Iran exports child martyrdom cartoons across the Middle East, a business so thriving the BBC called it, in blackly comic Joker-like fashion, ‘booming.’

I can understand the cultural aspect Team Hollywood pursued. I even respect it. But in my opinion, given the circumstances, it was the equivalent of sending a cultural team to Hitler’s Berlin during the Holocaust. The real great Iranian filmmakers were all heel-ground. The ones who aren’t languish in Evin prison or are awaiting kangaroo court religious tribunals, like Iranian-American Esha Momeni, for the celluloid slander of interviewing Iranian women for a womens rights documentary for her master’s degree.

Filmmaker Tehmineh Milani was sentenced to death for her celluloid slander. Again, only international and, in Ms. Milani’s case, even domestic outrage saved her neck from the rope. Another filmmaker, the French-Iranian Mernousche Solouki, was thrown into Evin prison for the crime of stumbling across a mass grave.

Here’s Ms. Solouki’s recounting of the event. She still suffers nightmares from her experience in Evin. I read that, and other horror stories of the Gestapo-like Evin prison when Roxana Saberi was still there. Horrified me. I know her father must have known of that. He’s from Iran. He must know. They all do. I can’t even imagine how he felt with Roxana there. Again, the South Africa analogy.

Yet despite all those goings-on, Annette Bening took time out to tell the world how great women’s rights were in Iran. Which brings us straight to Team Oscar’s next great offense.

3. ROXANA SABERI AND THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Throughout Roxana’s unlawful detention, i.e. hostage status as a political pawn, and bogus conviction on trumped-up espionage charges, Team Oscar couldn’t have been more silent or unheard from than Roxana herself. Not one public message of support for either Roxana or the Academy during her unlawful detention in Evin, never mind anyone else in Hollywood except us right-wing extremists. In fact, the whole human rights-championing left-wing PRAVDA-like MSM and government pulled a complete disappearing act on Roxana right after Hillary demanded her release, like she was bad press for the Obamamessiah to be swept under the rug.

At the time, my linked article above generated twenty times more Google hits than the entire media coverage combined. It’s at over 7300 hits now, more than 100 times the number of hits generated on Google vis-a-vis coverage of Roxana in late March.  I’m still getting hits on it. I don’t think people can believe what they’re seeing still. But I digress. You get the point.

No public statement of support from Team Oscar for Roxana that I can find. Team Oscar member William Horberg’s Iran blog made no mention whatsoever of Roxana’s unlawful captivity, or any plea they might have made on Roxana’s behalf to Iranian authorities. I have to assume none was made. Perhaps the Academy could clear up that matter, too. Inquiring Minds Want To Know.

Knowing the King of Hearts-like unreality that resides in the La La Land of AMPAS HQ, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear any of them claim credit for Roxana’s release in the future, or even for the green revolution going on in Iran today. If they do, just remember Annette praising the regime’s great women’s rights record while Roxana was still in Evin. For starters.

That should clear things up.

What was really depressing to me throughout Roxana’s Hostage Crisis was how few in Hollywood spoke up on her behalf, when no one knew whether she would live or die. That will forever be a black stain on those who profess to be the greatest human rights champs in the world.

4. OF STOOGES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

Perhaps the most vocal filmmaker during Team Oscar’s prolonged humiliation in Iran was domestic thugocracy stooge and new Team Oscar BFF Alireza Davudnejad, who wrote an open letter to President Obama claiming that the only road to peace, freedom and justice in this world was for the President to destroy all of America’s nuclear weapons and give up its UN veto.

Mr. Davudnejad also requested a schedule as to when those world-shaking peace, freedom and justice-inducing landmarks would be carried out. This, from a regime that foments war, writes injustice into its penal codes, crushes freedom with an iron boot, and races to build nuclear weapons they swear to Allah and their own people they’ll use on Israel just as soon as they’re built.

Now THAT’S Comedy! Fortunately, the President didn’t fall for it. If he had, it would have been the Punking Of All Time. No punking for Mr. Ali-Duh, but a gold star on the forehead for effort. Mr. Davudnejad did, however, manage to give a closing backhand to his new BFF, Team Oscar:

“My last recommendation is not to follow your previous cultural policies and avoid your Hollywood friends from playing any tricks to dominate the cinemas of Iran. The United States once removed Iranian cinema from the Iranian life with the help of the former dictatorship; and sacrificed our industry with the import of foreign films.

The fallen cinema of Iran has once again regained its footing with the Islamic Revolution and has been fighting to survive for thirty years. We will not forgive the enemies of this cinema wherever they are. By the way, which is harder, to relinquish the veto right, or to forbear the domination of Iran’s cinema again? You have a hard path ahead. I pray for you. Only the right path has no deviation.”

How about neither, Ali-DUH? Over my freakin’ dead body! Go sit on a projector!

By the way, you got all that, Sid, Annette, and the rest of you Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators? No more tricks! Or they won’t even let you apologize next time!

Q. What was the difference between Team Oscar and Ali-Duh in Iran?

A. He’s a domestic film industry stooge.

Yet another degrading episode Team Oscar let slide. I guess they’re more on the M side of S&M. Seeing as they represented all of us in a diplomatic capacity, so were we. How does it feel? Mr. Ganis also stood by for yet another punking by the Director of Iran’s House of Cinema, one of many he seemed unfazed by. Some people are just gluttons for punishment, I guess.

As a comic relief sidebar, the culture ministers who approved Team Oscar’s trip were summoned before an angry Majlis, Iran’s parliament, to explain who let the Great Satan into their pure Islamist paradise. But that’s how it goes. Nobody is safe in Punkedville. Even the punks! No word on if the ministers apologized, but it was rumored Mr. Ganis couldn’t find his ministerial escort anywhere.

Hell, they’re the liberals in Iran! Fuggeddaboutit!

5. THE BURQA BABES OF BABYLON

It would seem that, as Team Oscar was reeling from their hot-off-the-tarmac punking, the Mad Mullahs used the opportunity to wrap up the goils like mummies in burqas. They may call it a fashion statement or cultural sensitivity, but why didn’t they make a bold statement by wearing Western dress the whole time, instead of looking like every other oppressed woman in Iran?

6. THE GENOCIDE PRIDE PARADES, or BOY, CAN THESE GUYS THROW AN O-BASH!

On March 6th, the same day Iranian authorities promised to release Roxana Saberi ’soon’ after SOS Clinton’s demand the day before, news broke of the ICC warrant issued for Sudan’s genocidal leader, General Omar Bashir. It was an insult, an offense and a crime against humanity (Majlis Speaker Lari Alijani’s words, not mine) against the Iranian regime’s BFF O-Bash.

In response, the entire upper leadership of Iran’s thugocracy, along with their Islamist Gestapo Blackshirt stooges from Hamas and Hezbollah (the same ones beating and killing Mousavi protesters this week), took to the streets of Tehran AND Khartoum, the very streets where the genocide was and is being committed to this day, to throw genocide parades for human vampire and Dear Leader Bashir.

Now, what should you do if you know your host country is officially celebrating the most abominable crime known to man in the streets below your gilded cages? Do you a. speak up in outrage? Do you b. hightail it out of Dodge as fast as you can? My answers are a and b. Team Oscar’s appears to have been c. keep the tea and finger cookies coming, Ahmie! Now I don’t know the law in that situation, so maybe some fine Hollywood lawyer could tell me. Is that being silent accomplices?

See, I believe genocide parades are a crime in themselves, as though other nations were celebrating Hitler in the streets of Berlin and their own streets, had Hitler been charged by the League of Nations for genocide during the Holocaust. But that’s just me.

SUBPLOT: I just read that O-Bash flew to Zimbabwe on June 10th. He’s wanted for genocide. Why is he being allowed to fly all over Africa and the Middle East with impunity? What, we don’t have aircraft carriers out there that could send up a couple fighter jets to escort Blacula to justice?

7. AHMADINEJAD’S WILLIE HORTONS

As a bonus, highlighted by Ahmadinejad’s condemnation of Hollywood as devoid of culture and art, and followed up by the summoning of ministers to the Majlis over Team Oscar’s invite, both Ahmadinejad and Supreme Asswipe Khamenei used Team Oscar as their Willie Horton in the recent elections. You know. Who let the Great Satan in?

So rather than fostering a liberalization of Iran, as they no doubt naively thought, they instead served as a political tool with which hardliners could beat moderates over the head with. Considering the extreme Islamist nature of Iranian politics (as least last week), they made the situation for moderates even worse. The only thing they didn’t appear to do was make the political ads themselves. But they did train the propaganda stooges who no doubt made any, if any were made.

Damage done either way. Hooray For Hollywood!

THAT’S A WRAP!

I suppose I could rummage for even more egregious offenses, and glaring or willfully blind oversights. But I have far more than enough to convict. If you seek more for purely historical reference, feel free to check all my linked articles above. You’ll find ‘em. My problem was trying to choose which offenses and oversights to pick from.

WILLIAM HORBERG FOR THE DEFENSE

Currently posted at the Academy website is the following prosaic account by William Horberg of Team Oscar’s late-term abortion of a trip to Iran: The Road To Isfahan. Let’s hear what he has to say in Team Oscar’s defense before we stone them. That may seem predicative of the outcome, but remember, these offenses took place in Iran. Islamist extremist rules apply. Got it now?

Actually, just check the link above. We’ll stone ‘em now and rule ‘em guilty later. I mean, come on people. Given the evidence, they may as well have been jumping up and down and screaming “Jehovah!” Time to get stoned. And if you’ve misplaced yours, here’s another one.

IN CLOSING

Now, I fully condemn the shooting of Dr. Tiller by lone madman Scott Roeder in Kansas, as all right-minded human beings should. But I would fully endorse the shooting of whatever single-digit IQ Academy PR doctors were behind this afterbirth. They Shoot Horses’ Asses In Hollywood, Don’t They? If anyone at the Academy had any brains, they’d be stocking up on ammunition like a right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh-like Montana militia for that very purpose right now!

QUALIFIER: Yes, I’m kidding. No need to call DHS just yet, thank you very much. Besides, you’re as likely to find a gun at Academy HQ as you are a hymen on Heidi Fleiss.

Despite the current brain-dead off-the cliff lemming leadership at AMPAS today, I love film. I love Hollywood I even love the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. Always have. Broke my heart to declare war on them. I even told them so. But all the above is Casus Belli. Gloves are off.

The blackest irony of all? I was in the middle of writing a loving screwball comedy tribute to Oscar when the news of their trip broke! By the way, I even warned them that if they tried giving all this Iran shite the Red Carpet treatment, I’d pull the rug out from under them. And I know and they know I’ve caused a lot of PR damage already over their Iran trip, both here at Big Hollywood and elsewhere.

My Iran opeds since the PUNK’D piece on Nikki Finke February 28th are pushing 30,000 hits at one blog alone. Can’t anyone in this business keep their mouth shut? How stupid can you be? Are they total masochistic gluttons for punishment? Oh yeah, I already covered that. Drop that last one off at the Department of Redundancy Department, LOL! In the meantime, I’ll do my best to have the Nine Stooges ejected off the Academy board and into the Pacific.

Now, I’ve had some very juicy tastes of Tinseltown. The Red Carpet A-List circuit in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. I’m not a Guild Member, but my first screenplay got a number of finalist nods from some of the toughest Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated contest judges in Hollywood. And I got an option with it. I got some chops. And I’ve only gotten better over the years through hard work, practice and learning. I know that because industry pros doing my coverage told me so.

But you know what? As much as I wanted to trash that story and never write another word in screenplay format again, I love that script. Put a lot of love and time into it. Think it’s my best work so far. So does my writing partner. In fact, I’m going to finish that script very shortly. And I’m going to finish it in the spirit in which I started: with love, tenderness and affection, even towards Academy members I wrote into the script with boundless love that I totally detest now.

How? I call it professional detachment. Like sniping Nazis as I lovingly listen to Mozart. Best of, worst of. I don’t let politics poison my scripts. I’ll leave the Lefties to do that. I’d rather not bomb at the box office. And I’ll have coverage done by someone I know and trust networked into the industry like a spiderweb. If I get a nearly impossible grade of RECOMMEND and it doesn’t move, I know my self-inflicted film industry Hiroshima is complete.

But you know what, people? I’ll take as many of them with me as I can, just like the wounded Mickey Rooney in Ambush Bay offering Japanese soldiers pineapples. He had plenty for everybody. Point being, I won’t stand for this crap and let it slide just to sell a script. This matter goes way beyond film to me. Look at it this way. AMPAS spends four hours championing gay rights at the last Oscars, then flies off to Iran to give that gay-butchering regime its gold-plated PR kiss, even praising women’s rights in the most violently misogynist regime on earth? STUFF IT!

God, how I wished I lived in the era of the Hollywood of an earlier day, when the top stars flocked to the service of their country, instead of the service of thuggish and violent dictators like Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad. By the way, Sean Penn holds the Trifecta of Shame on that one.

Let me be explicitly clear that I believe extreme left-wing morons like Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Harry “Bananas” Belafonte are the minority in Hollywood. Squeaky left-wing wheels get all the grease. I know a lot of great people in the industry personally. And I can’t praise highly enough Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Jim Carrey, Gary Sinise, Robert Davi and so many great USO supporters like Saddam million dollar bounty-offering Bruce Willis, Scarlett Johansson, Jack Black and Ben Stiller.

There are really too many to name. But you know who they are. As to the distinct minority, I will quote my former Obama-like governor and liberal tank commander Michael Dukakis for the first time in my life: “A fish rots from the head down.”

Tom Hanks dares to call gay marriage opponents un-American? Well, if President Obama, most Americans and 52% of Californians are un-American for not supporting gay marriage, what is Tom Hanks and the rest of the Motion Picture Asylum guilty of for signing off on a trip to a regime that hunts gays online, raids gay parties, tortures them horribly and then hangs them from crane wires to die agonizing deaths that can take up to an hour, as they did with two gay teenage boys?

There’s too much blanket idiocy in Hollywood. Megan Fox, jokingly telling the Transformers to take out all the white trash to save the earth, the irony totally lost on her. The Twitter crowd at afterellen.com. Like Adrianne Curry, who calls Prop 8 a human rights offense, but remains dead silent on the holocausts against LGBTs in Iran and Iraq. Why isn’t Dustin Lance Black screaming to the skies about this stuff? I couldn’t find any evidence of him opposing the AMPAS Iran trip on purely humanitarian grounds. WHY NOT?

No. I, a straight conservative Republican screenwriter, offended to my very core by the savagery of Shiite extremist gay death squads in Iran and Iraq, have to be the one screaming to the skies about LGBT terrorists who engage in atrocities even the Nazis can’t compare to. Like super-gluing gay men’s anuses shut and pumping them full of diarrhea cocktails so the gay killers, some on our tax dime, can catch a few pious laughs as their victims endure unimaginable agony before dying.

No. I am left with the dirty jobs and lonely tasks of networking REAL gay advocates like Michael Petrelis and the Gay Patriot blog over these inhuman gay horrorshows. I am the one who has to research and dispatch gruesome reports to sites like BestGayBlogs.com, and LGBT orgs all over the globe like LGBT Network EU. I am the one left to scrape around for signatures on petitions at Iranian Queer Railroad and Iraqi LGBT to save the lives of Iranian and Iraqi LGBTs, who live in fear of torture and unimaginable horrors the incredibly spoiled toddler-like Hollywood Leftie morons and unmarried gays of California will never know.

As a screenwriter, I now know what it feels like to work under an offensive and idiotic oligarchy that is totally brain-dead and out of touch with the realities of the world at large, and those whom they profess to lead. In that respect, though I do not agree with them, I now understand the passionate outrage Lefties felt during the reign of the Bushitler. Like Michael Moore’s and Al Franken’s bloviations during that dark time, I do not expect my heated rants to impact my Golden Bubble-insulated industry oligarchy one whit.

In fact, I fully expect it to to earn me black marks and disfavor, the full McCarthy treatment they so profess to detest, yet practice every goddamn day. Ron Silver, anyone? But like the aforementioned Twin Towers of Leftie-ism, I care not one whit what the ruling establishment thinks. My anger is righteous and justified. In fact, it could not be moreso. What’s happening in Iran and Iraq are de facto gay genocides. What cause could be more righteous than trying to stop those?

Screw sexual conduct! They’re innocent human beings targeted for extermination. They don’t deserve that barbaric treatment. No one does, except the blood-drinking Islamist Gestapo stooges that are doing it all! If that revolution in Iran goes through and the people win, somebody Tweet them to hang on to all the crane wires. They’re gonna need a lot. For the Hamas and Hezbollah Blackshirts, too.

If my harsh words mean my film career is dead, so be it. In fact, if I came to Hollywood for no other reason than to address the horrific hypocrisy of so-called gay and human rights champs who are anything but (some like Bening and Penn even extremely damaging to those they don the mantle of Human Rights Champs for), or to champion the cause of Iraqi and Iranian LGBTs unlike any cause I’ve ever championed based on purely humanistic outrage, then I will feel that my life will have had meaning.

If I have helped to save the life of only one Iraqi or Iranian gay, I have saved the world entire. I can go to my grave totally at peace with myself. If I must bury my screenwriting career ahead of me, this is a small price to pay. So many others, like those now on the streets of Iran fighting and dying for the freedoms that are as natural to us as breathing, or risk brutal torture and horrific death merely for sexual conduct or being raped, are paying far higher prices than we most likely ever will.

In closing, I am resigning from Big Hollywood. I came here on a mission nearly four months ago to bring attention to all I have highlighted above. All the in-between was a bonus. And I do have a comedy piece in the hopper, which is rare for me. Haven’t had much to laugh about lately. Which is why I want to return full-time to screenwriting as well. There’s enough tragedy on Planet Earth. If I can use my award-nominated humor to inspire laughter and comic relief, then that is my main mission now. The rest I leave to the card deck of fate.

If I return, it will be in the cause of those who cannot speak for themselves. There is no shortage of hacks and pundits flame-throwing politics these days, and there are far too many not flame-throwing at all on issues that should enrage them beyond measure. As I am enraged today. Certainly beyond politics.

I do not need anger management. Like Johnny Rotten sang with Public Image Limited, Anger is an Energy. Righteous anger is what freed South Africa. Righteous anger fills the streets of Tehran as we speak. Righteous anger is why we Americans no longer say to each other, “G’day, Mate! ‘Ow about a pint and some bangers and mash? Got some up in me lorry! God Bless the Queen!”

In closing, God Bless The Queen anyway. And God Bless America. I say that as an agnostic secularist, okay? It’s good luck! And may God look down a lot more kindly on the poor LGBTs in Iran and Iraq. Perhaps, if there is a God, and I’m hedging my bets here, I hope his hand is in events in Iran. Maybe with a youth-driven revolution, LGBTs, filmmakers. students, dissidents, bloggers, and raped women need not fear for their lives anymore, or offered the choice of castration or death if they wish to remain gay.

What? Did you think Ahmadinejad was kidding when he said there were no gays in Iran? He said it with the same certainty Hitler said there were no Jews in Germany. The discussion is moot. I really hope to God that changes, as Iran itself seems to be right now.

We do, however, have a most powerful hand in Iraq. The gay killings must stop. The gay death squads must be disbanded with an iron fist. Just like Al Qaeda. Or, to tell the truth, I don’t care if Al Qaeda takes the place over. I would feel the same way if I were in West Berlin in 1947 and the locals were still hunting down and killing Jews. Let the Red Army move in.

Uncle Joe, they’re all yours! Bin Laden, they’re all yours! Let them ALL share in the terror they love with a religious fervor! OR, they can wise up and join the human race. If not, screw ‘em. Let ‘em go back to Al Qaeda torture houses and eating bombs for breakfast. I may not be gay myself. No, really. But must one be Jewish to be totally repulsed by Auschwitz?

Good Luck and Good Night, all. Peace. I hope

Or, by its Hollywood acronym, RATS. Funny. I actually found that startling contraction fitting, not for Roxana (not hardly), but for all of the major black hats and clueless morons who populated this nerve-wracking Thugocracy Studios production, which had civilized people everywhere both riveted and outraged in its most grueling and suspenseful moments.

Not to mention for Roxana and her parents. But before we get to heroes and villains, let us look at the story to date with all its dramatic twists and underpinnings, many with significant international implications. Just like a good Hitchcock drama should. And I caught ‘em all!

By pure happenstance, Your Most Humble Critic and Boy Reporter was already hot on the job covering Iran (unlike some people) and hammering AMPAS for their tea and finger-cookie soirees with these guys, when I saw what Iran was pulling with Roxana and called it for what it was: a hostage crisis. And on the same day HRW called it the same in a press release on March 13th, which I didn’t find out until the 19th thanks to our on-the-ball Vein Stream Media.

Even then I had to look. But HRW called it on the 13th based on international law. I called it the same day from knowing Iran too goddamn well. Why not test Obama? See what he’s made of? They’ve tested every other US president since Carter, and let’s face it. Obama ain’t scarin’ nobody right now.

Fortunately, this particular but not totally unexpected production of Iranian political theater has now ended with Iran’s magnanimous ‘gift’ of Roxana Saberi’s freedom. You know. Like the British getting their Easter ‘gift’ of their own sailors back. My heroes. The Easter Bunny’s got nothin’ on them, huh?

Though President Obama called Iran’s merciful end to this sordid and cruel international affront ‘a humanitarian gesture’, it has been anything but from the beginning. If anything, this tormenting episode of international injustice and flouting of the law should prove just how unworthy a diplomatic partner Iran is. See, diplomacy requires both sides to be civilized to work, and the backstory on Iran’s regime, as with Roxana’s story there, is as uncivilized as it gets.

And let’s be clear here. I am not advocating war with Iran, though what they’ve done and continue to do makes me feel very warlike. But I am advocating that the ugly truths about Islamist extremist Iran be put on display for all to see. Nobody else seems to be interested in covering Iran’s abominable human rights situation. Is that too much to ask from Your Most Humble and Obedient Critic? Despite the nightmare we, Roxana and her parents had to endure, Roxana’s one of the lucky ones.

In order to understand RATS in toto, we must look at the whole backstory of Islamist Iran since 1979 to put Roxana Saberi’s ordeal into its proper context today. I’ve been following Islamist extremist Iran for thirty long years, starting with the US Embassy Hostage Crisis on November 4th, 1979.  See, I knew that date because I was due by legal contract to head for boot camp on November 13th, which I did. You remember things like that. You know. Heading for boot camp, heading for war.

Especially when it was peacetime when you signed up.

It sure looked like war at the time. Yet strangely, war didn’t happen. President Carter was too busy gnawing his nails down to the knuckles for 444 days, with one abortive rescue mission in between gnawings. If I were President back then, I would have at least started taking out Iran’s military facilities with B-52s if we didn’t get the hostages back. Ronnie got ‘em back right away after he became President on January 20th, 1981. I think they knew The Gipper would have bombed them to Hell to free our hostage citizens. He was that kinda guy.

A smart move on Iran’s part. But even Reagan suffered greatly from the Iranian thugocracy’s proxy terror attacks from Hezbollah, like the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon that killed 241 US servicemen on an international peacekeeping mission there. See, Iran just moved their terrorization of Americans and others into the shadows, letting their Brownshirt Hamas and Hezbollah goons do all the dirty work outside Iran. You know. Like Hitler’s used to do.

In fact, every president since Carter has been tormented by Iran, Obama no less. Clinton had the Khobar Tower bombings in 1995. For W, it was Iran-paid and trained militias and EFP IEDs in Iraq, killing and wounding hundreds of American soldiers. No Hope For Change with Obama on that score either, it would seem. Or with Iran’s supplying the Taliban with weapons.

And we are far from alone in the category of Iranian death and devastation. Iran’s thugocracy is currently being held accountable for the worst terror attacks in Argentina’s history, including one former Iranian ‘diplomat’ now running for high office and wanted by Interpol for his involvement in the bombing. See, that’s the reform candidate for president in Iran.

Welcome to Extreme Politics in Islamist Iran. Al Capone and The Joker would fit right in.

But why Argentina? I can understand the whole Great Satan thing, but what did Argentina ever do to Iran? Was the Iranian thugocracy pissed about Argentina no longer supplying WMD components and nuclear supplies, which Argentina cut off in 1992, the year the terror attacks began?

Or was it because of Argentine-born Jews? And all Jews everywhere deserve to die, and in the greatest numbers possible? Maybe it was a twofer. You know. Like Death To America and Death To Israel. They love that stuff, at least enough to paint it on all their missiles.

It’s right up there with “Death To The Jews!” Or partying with their BFF O-Bash.

Then again, do terrorists REALLY need a reason? I think they’re more than content to watch the world burn. Look what Iran’s Islamist Nazi thugs do to their own people! Seventeen-year-old Nazanin Fatehi, sentenced to death for stabbing and killing her and her niece’s would-be rapist in a park in Tehran. One thirteen-year-old girl stoned to death for being raped! Gays hunted down and exterminated. As bad as we, Israel, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the rest of the world have had it from Iran’s terror-loving regime and its proxies, we’re the lucky ones.

Ahmadinejad was right about gays in Iran, you know. Just like Hitler was right when he said there were no Jews in Germany. The discussion’s pretty much moot. And Iran has now successfully exported their own Gay Holocaust to Iraq, which Bush should have stopped and Obama must.

Thus ends the prequel, and leads us straight to Roxana Saberi and today. I have a full recap of Roxana’s story from Day One here, in my BH piece bashing AMPAS and Hollywood over their dead silence and total absence in championing Roxana’s cause. Hell, Team Oscar was IN Iran when Clinton demanded Roxana’s release! You hear a peep out of any of them?

Roxana was BBC and NPR, not FOX! Wait, Mr. Snerdley tells me Roxana DID work for FOX on occasion. Okay, got it. The Hollywood blackout on Roxana all makes sense now. But Roxana is free, and that is all that matters. The rest, lessons learned. And that brings us to a few loose story ends.

What are we and the world now to think of the Iranian thugocracy’s brilliant facade of justice, showing us how merciful they can really be, and that they are truly nice guys after all if only we will be nice to them? Were Roxana the only story here? Maybe. But she isn’t. Not by a damn sight.

Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni still faces her own kangaroo court tribunal for celluloid slanders, for her a women’s rights documentary. And former FBI agent Robert Levinson is nowhere to be found after two years The Iranian government even blocked efforts by the Swiss to track him down at our request. Wouldn’t even let them go to Kish Island to investigate. Hmm. Curious.

Most important of all, Islamist extremist Iran was, is and remains a human rights horrorshow, one of the worst in the world. Even bloggers pay for the wrong words with their lives, like Omid Reza Mir Sayaf, who died in Evin during Roxana’s unlawful detention there. And they seem just a bit too antsy to get nukes. That bothers me greatly. It’s one thing for Israel to have an arsenal. Would you want Hamas or Al Qaeda with a warhead? See, when it comes to nukes, Sanity Matters, okay?

My fear is, the world will look at the merciful end of this obscene miscarriage of justice, and cat-and-mouse toying with Roxana Saberi and us by Iran’s thugocracy, as the light at the end of a dark tunnel, whereas I see a freight train coming at us at full speed. Yet I have no power over those events. I can only report on them to the best of my abilities with what information I have.

Am I biased against Iran? You bet!

But not Iran’s freedom-loving people, who are suffering the most of anyone. The freedom-crushing and terror-sponsoring Shiite Islamist thugocracy is the real problem here. Just as it was with Hitler and his thugocracy of terror.

People need not to lose sight of what Iran’s Islamist thugocracy is really all about. And if you doubt my stern and brutal accusations, go look up the truth yourself. One Google search and you’ll be neck-deep in it. Then think of where this story is really going.

Now, on to the Heroes and Villains.

First up, the Good Guys and Roxana’s true BFF. Freeroxana.net, the North Dakota Legislature with their Free Roxana bill, the CPJ, The BBC, NPR and ABC with their 10,000-plus signature petition and strong words, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Iranian.com and too many others around the world to mention here. Roxana had, and has, no shortage of friends. I will even include the UK Guardian and Huffington Post, both of whom I’ve warred with, but which have long been on the Free Roxana Bandwagon with their peerless reporting on Iran and full support of Roxana.

I know, I know. But credit where credit is due.

Unfortunately, there was also no shortage of villains either, the greatest being the Iranian thugocracy itself, which unlawfully detained Roxana from the start, lied about Roxana’s release to SOS Clinton on March 6th, sent signals to Roxana’s parents as they left for Iran that Roxana’s release was being speeded up, only to land and see Roxana sentenced falsely to eight years for espionage, in closed session and without even a lawyer present. Broke everyone’s hearts.

Hitler had rigged courts like Iran’s that imprisoned and executed the innocent, and freed serial killers. How much further behind the curtain do you have to look to know the wizards are evil?

Yet I fully expect the Iranian thugocracy to use this ‘peace-seeking’ correction of an abomination of justice as a political and diplomatic club, or proof of their divine benevolence. Most likely both. And far too many will fall to their knees in gratitude over Roxana and agree. They don’t fool me. Then again, I’m not a fool when it comes to Iran. I’ve been watching their Islamist horrorshow for thirty long years. I’ll go by what history and my eyes and ears tell me, and not some clueless morons.

Speaking of which, Congress, The President, State, and the Invisible Press all pulled major disappearing acts on Roxana, when she should have stayed front and center after SOS Clinton’s demand for her release. Look at these unbelievable search results from March 20th, two weeks after Iran promised to release Roxana ’soon’. It’s like she was bad press the Obamamedia and government wanted swept under the rug.

No bill submitted to Congress in all that time in support of Roxana that I can find, only statements by Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Roxana’s home state. Too busy cleaning our pockets, I guess. Or calling us racist redneck teabaggers. Roxana who?

This whole sordid production also revealed to me how mile-wide and micron-deep Hollywood’s support for human rights really is. And I don’t mean Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, George Clooney and the dozens of other real human rights and troop-supporting heroes of Hollywood.

I specifically mean the left-wing Looney Tunes Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which fancies itself as human rights champs. Name me one mention of Roxana Saberi from any prominent Academy member to date, even when Team Hollywood was in Tehran. Won’t find her anywhere in Team Oscar member William Horberg’s Iran blogging. No press releases. Yawn.

How about filmmaker Esha Momeni? Nope, no Esha. Or any mention of the Iranian regime’s hunting, party-raiding, online entrapping, torturing and slaughtering of gays that should have outraged them beyond measure but which they seem to have curiously overlooked, and not a week removed from their four-hour gay rights infomercial called the Oscars. They’re still silent about it!

It’s not like you really have to look for this stuff. And I know they know. I’ve told them. Repeatedly.

Wait a minute! Was Team Oscar on some super-secret Mission Impossible Thing for ObamaMan ? You know. “Should any member of Team Oscar be caught or killed, the President will disavow all knowledge.” Are they remaining silent and staying nice so they can infiltrate Iran again? If so, I apologize, guys. My only regret is that you all escaped unharmed. Maybe I should file an FOIA on that one. Why not? Shouldn’t be a problem. They seem to be just giving away secrets these days.

In summary, ‘Roxana: A True Story’ was a riveting, very uncomfortable and all too real life-and-death drama with plenty of ordinary citizen superheroes, Blofeld-like villains, Dr. Smith-like cowards and even a few Judases. Zeroes were Stars, and Stars were Zeroes. Yet this production should never have been staged in the first place. It should have ended after SOS Clinton’s demand. And Roxana’s happy ending is only one of far too few in today’s Iran. Too many play out like ‘Schindler’s List’.

On that note, how about we all start calling cruel, oppressive and violent nations for what they are, instead of what we wish them to be? It ain’t helping those who really need help. But a lot of people speaking up for Roxana helped save her. How about ‘Artists United Against Insanity’? Little Stevie’s still out there!

As to what the future brings, who can say? But Roxana is free now, so today I’m gonna have that symbolic piece of overdue birthday cake, and set aside my reporting for other endeavors. As to Iran, I will say Caveat Emptor to all. But I will spare you, in parting, one inevitable coming attraction to Thugocracy Studios already in production. It’s a sequel, actually. Or is it the third in a trilogy?

Stay Tuned!

Lest we forget, we are at war. 

Men and women at this very moment are fighting for their lives and for the lives of those they took an oath to protect and defend. 

There have been some recent films about war and what it means for the “average Joe” to be at war. A few of these are receiving deserving accolades for their realism. No, not the realism of blood and guts spilled, which is what war is, of course, but the realism of human behavior in adverse conditions, or as Hemingway put it, grace under pressure. This is the human condition that we all face, in one form or another, each and every day of our lives. Of course, most of us can face our pressures, make our decisions, get through our daily angst without wondering if a shell is going to go off five feet away, having the vehicle we’re riding in targeted for destruction or being exposed to combinations of chemicals not even named yet. No, we don’t have that extra worry. But some out there do. 

One classic Hollywood film which articulates the stress of war with keen insight and wry humor, as well as pathos, is the often overlooked “Battleground,” directed by William Wellman and released by MGM in 1949.  

“Battleground” is not just a great war film. It’s a great film by any standard, in any genre. Depicting the struggles of the 101st Airborne division at the historic Battle of the Bulge, director Wellman wisely puts the emphasis on characters not tanks, on people rather than explosions.

The title “Battleground” implies not only the physical place where these soldiers battle with enemies in different uniforms, but moreover, the mental terrain they must also traverse in order to survive the horrors, the fear, and yes, the inescapable boredom of war.

Disregard the critics who say there is “too much talk” in this film, as clumsy misfires coming from those who do not, nor ever had to understand the sublime contrasts of war. Theirs is the voice of the textbook mentality, too many classes and not enough life. They should be thankful that their experience on this subject is lacking.

Talk to any veteran of war, however, particularly WWII, and you will hear stories paralleling exactly those depicted in Wellman’s “Battleground”: moments of sheer terror interspersed with eternities of boredom and the dread of not knowing what’s going on. Such feelings of helplessness were cut down to size only by the chit-chat and banter of those brave souls in attendance who feared for their lives just like you or I would. Also disregard the cynics who say such scenes are unrealistic or worse yet, propaganda, as soldiers could not possibly be so introspective, so self deprecating, so insightful while under fire. These criticisms couldn’t be farther from the truth, or the historical record, for that matter. It is exactly these moments, in battle, between explosions when “foxhole chatter”  turns to the insignificant topic just as easily and as often as it does to the crucial themes of life and death. 

Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. 

There are many great scenes in this movie, but when actor Leon Ames as the chaplain explains why they are there, freezing, hungry and dying, and not back home,  and what could this fight possibly have to do with them in America, and as individuals, are words and sentiment that are as applicable today as they were in that far away, now non-existent world of Nazi occupied Europe. 

Another part of the film often cited as deserving of ridicule, of committing that worst of crimes for the so-called sophisticated viewer, is the ending. “It’s corny,” is often heard.  This segment, the “sound off scene,” as it’s sometimes called, is arguably one of the finest moments in the entire movie.  Wellman knew enough, as did Edward Zwick who might very well have been inspired by this scene for his marvelous “Glory,” to show the importance of duty. Wellman illustrates this in heart-wrenching poignancy as the barely surviving men pass their fresh replacements on the road. If you are a man, and this scene doesn’t move you, I’m afraid you have no soul. That, or you’ve been watching too much parody. 

“Battleground“ is not what is mistakenly called an anti-war film. That is a misnomer. Nonsense. All well made war films are, in essence, anti-war films. Just like all soldiers are against war, policemen against crime, doctors against illness. These soldiers don’t want to die. Neither do soldiers in other battles, other wars. To call any film ‘anti-war’ is to misunderstand the philosophy at the core of every fighting man and woman. Current fashion would have us believe that soldiers want to kill, maim, and loot. Current fashion would have us believe that all wars are evil, unnecessary, or exercises in national arrogance, or the newly revived terms, “colonialism” and “imperialism” (both particularly fashionable in descriptions of the previous administration’s actions and most likely banned from use or utterance by the major media outlets in describing the present one).  Current fashion would have us believe that if soldiers complain, it can only mean that they don’t agree with the need to fight, the need to stop that opposing force, or defend one’s way of life: the need to do what needs to be done.

Those who follow current fashion will not be able to accept such paradoxes, nor be able to understand this film and its main themes of humanity, duty, perseverance, and doing a dirty, dangerous job in the face of overwhelming odds. Many will scoff at the notion that man is capable of this and can do so with moments of introspection, poignancy and humor. Unsurprisingly, many of our greatest novelists, filmmakers and artists spent time in settings very similar to the characters in this story. Current fashion would prefer that we didn’t remember that part.

Thank goodness that the men who fought in battles like those depicted in this film are, for the most part, mercifully spared the current fashion.