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In this insufferably PC era, defending America and this kind of openly proud patriotism is the very definition of edgy.  Via HuffPo, here’s a portion of the transcript. The audio is pretty garbled in spots:

“… it appears to me, y’all like it over here a lot… If y’all had California and you loved it, then you shouldn’t have given that mothaf*cka up. You should have fought for California, goddamnit, since you love it… Are you Mexican? Do you know where Mexico is? No this ain’t Mexico, it used to be Mexico, motherf*cker, and now it’s Phoenix, goddammit. USA! USA!… No n*gga, do you know where you at? USA! USA!… No n*gga, this is my hood… [security comes] F*ck him! Mothaf*ckas think they can live in this country and pledge allegiance to another country… Do you remember when white people used to say go back to Africa? And we’d have to tell them we don’t want to? So if you love Mexico, bitch, get the f*ck over there! [breaks into the National Anthem]… We were slaves bitch, you just all work like that at the landscapers…”

Naurally, the Huffington Post is all bothered, bewildered and offended by this:

Recently, African American comedian Katt Williams went on a xenophobic anti-Mexican rant during a comedy show on August 27th in Phoenix, Arizona, apparently in response to a heckler. In comedy it’s painfully hard dealing with audience barbs and catcalls (no pun intended), although everyone knows this is part of the life and any comedian worth their salt generally address such attacks with their most powerful weapon–humor.

Yet we get those instances when a comedian loses it.

For decades, we’ve all watched comedian after comedian after comedian trash this country, and no Leftist has ever stopped to wring their hands over that — which makes them the bigots.

Lennon plays a bit part as a soldier under the command of British lieutenant Earnest Goodbody (Michael Crawford), whose incompetence continually dwindles his troops as they fight the Axis in North Africa and Europe.

Director Richard Lester, the man behind Beatles films “Help!” and “A Hard Day’s Night,” splices grainy, tinted documentary footage into his film, but detracts from the weight of this footage through gag comedy and an apparent lack of direction throughout.

Charles Wood wrote the screenplay, though it’s hard to understand what he wrote exactly. The dialogue is spoken so fast that with the British accents it’s nearly impossible to understand. And the storyline is mashed and incoherent, seemingly without a purpose or end-point in sight.

I think the acting is good, I think, but I couldn’t really tell since I didn’t know what the actors were saying. Lennon’s pretty funny, but his character is a prankster, whose gags are immature and childish.

The film’s interesting camerawork and editing keep it from being an entire waste of time, but ultimately “How I Won the War” is only half as entertaining as its critiques, as average films sometimes are.

Ebert attacked the film’s advertising campaign, which asserted the movie as a work of art simply because it “starred” an artist. He wrote of the film: “Simply by appearing in this film, Lennon has cloaked it in his personal immunity. We know Lennon isn’t phony. Therefore, the movie can’t be phony, right? Wrong.”

Ebert’s critiques of the film rightly include the film’s highly accented (and thus, barely intelligible) dialogue, British in-jokes, and, more importantly, general carelessness of subject. He concludes his review saying, “I got no impression from this film that Lester really, personally, cares very strongly one way or the other about war. It was only a currently fashionable subject, a good excuse to make a movie. Especially if John Lennon would be in it.”

Crowther doesn’t hold back either, criticizing the film’s handling of the cruelty of war, and the offensive way that a Nazi officer passes over the “inconsequentials” of the holocaust. He concludes, “I am afraid Mr. Lester has not added a single discouragement of war, but simply a little discouragement toward patronizing too-pretentious films.”

The lesson from this: Story is everything. Being politically correct counts for next to nothing at the box office.

Source Code is a well-made movie with an engaging high-concept premise and — in a world where many movies don’t know how to land — a satisfying conclusion. Writer Ben Ripley tackles the (what I like to call) “screenwriter science” with the necessary balance of efficiency and logic, explaining away the sci-fi plot elements as much and as best as possible. Jake Gyllenhaal delivers an intense performance and is supported by sharp direction, cinematography, editing and F/X, and a dynamic original score by Chris Bacon.

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If you’ve seen the trailers, you know the set-up: It’s basically Groundhog Day with a terrorist attack. Gyllenhaal is an Air Force chopper pilot who last recalls flying sorties in Afghanistan but awakens to find himself trapped in what appears to be some kind of time travel pod: a device in a top secret military program that allows him to relive (repeatedly) the last 8 minutes of a doomed Chicago-bound passenger train.

You see, earlier that morning, a bomb exploded on the train, killing everyone on board, and it is believed to be the first of a series of attacks, the second of which is imminent and might involve a dirty bomb detonated somewhere in Chicago. Gyllenhaal’s mission is to identify the terrorist aboard the train so they can avert the upcoming catastrophe.

But then, just when you’re getting into it, the movie stumbles over the Hollywood Hills-sized speed bump of political correctness…

**MAJOR Spoiler Alert**

About 2/3 into the film, Gyllenhaal discovers the guilty party: It’s an angry young clean-cut, almost preppy, white American male who just wants to watch the world burn. He might as well dye his hair green and paint his face with freaky clown make-up.

Not since the movie adaptation of Sum of All Fears recast the Middle Eastern terrorists of Tom Clancy’s novel and transported the audience right out of the geopolitical nuance of the original work and smack dab in the middle of a Roger Moore-era James Bond movie (think Moonraker), has there been such baffling villain selection.

After an Israeli fighter jet carrying a nuclear warhead is shot down somewhere over the Sinai Desert in the haunting opening moments of Sum of All Fears, the sum of all our greatest fear is realized: The weapon is discovered by Middle Eastern men, dug up from the sand, and sold out of a tent at some terrorist bazaar to — who else? — a SPECTRE-esque cadre of international billionaire Neo-Nazis, of course! Huh?!?!

Even now, 9 years later, you can still hear the echo of the CRACK of the audience’s collective palm smack our collective forehead in the theater. The revelation of the terrorist’s identity in Source Code provides a similar moment of disorientation that takes you right out of the story.

In Hollywood’s attempt to not offend anybody, they offend the intelligence of the entire audience.

Jeffrey Wright, as the scientist who invented the Source Code technology, refers to the program as a “real tool in the War on Terror.” Okay, but I think it’s pretty well established that the enemies in the contemporary War on Terror are Islamist extremists.

Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to shock the audience, who would likely be expecting a Muslim terrorist; to almost call us out for our own biases and stereotyping. Perhaps. There’s even a “racial profiling” joke, made when Gyllenhaal sets his sights on a Middle Eastern-looking man as a suspect. I think it was Dennis Miller who said (and I’m paraphrasing), “When you realize that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from the same country, that’s not profiling, that’s being minimally observant.”

Our enemy is not the Muslim people or Islam, in general. There are a 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, so it’s not unfair or unreasonable to acknowledge that there are a few bad eggs. It is, however, unfair and unreasonable for Hollywood to institute a blanket casting filter that automatically eliminates Middle Easterners from the rogues gallery of potential movie bad guys.

Prior to 9/11, it seemed it was acceptable to present Islamic terrorism as a threat in Hollywood movies. Despite protests from Arab-American organizations, films such as James Cameron’s True Lies (1994), Stuart Baird’s Executive Decision (1996) and Ed Zwick’s The Siege (1998) portrayed Muslim terrorist villains respectively as broad comedic bumblers, straight action heavies, and even three dimensional characters with complex motives.

But, for some reason, following the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil, carried out by Islamic extremists of Middle Eastern origin, Hollywood execs started tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. Out of sensitivity to whom? Terrorists? It shouldn’t be offensive to all Muslims if Source Code had an Islamic terrorist as its villain anymore than The Godfather should be considered an affront to all Italians.

Truth is, most War on Terror-inspired movies have failed at the box office. Yes, people love a good “ripped-from-the-headlines” yarn, especially on the small screen, but if we’re going to make the investment of time, money, gas and mileage to venture out for a night at the theater, Americans tend to want a dash of good ol’ fashioned jingoism, as well. I know that’s a major economic concern for studios these days: Will an overtly patriotic film sell internationally? Why not, as long as it’s a classic good-triumphs-over-evil story?

Consider this: True Lies was banned in 54 Arab and Muslim countries, but still wound up one of the 1994’s top worldwide box office draws and sequel and TV spinoff rumors still get the blogosphere abuzz.

Hey Sly, maybe it’s time to send Rambo back to Afghanistan?

Fortunately, Source Code has deeper, more life-affirming ambitions than simply being a War on Terror thriller, and it mostly achieves them. To the filmmakers’ credit, it recovers gracefully from its politically correct stumble to ultimately ask the compelling question, “What would you do if you knew you had less than a minute to live?” And I confess, I was misty-eyed when Gyllenhaal’s character answers that question himself at the end.

Thanks to political correctness, ours is a rough day for masculinity. Strong men are painted as tyrants, heroic men as ego-centrists, and moral standard bearers as bigots, or worse. This is particularly true in Hollywood, where a purposeful revisionism toward manhood has been under way for decades.

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Not surprisingly, big screen super heroes and mythic figures of valor – male figures – have been among the hardest hit by this revisionism. As a result, the mighty have learned to cry, the powerful to admit vulnerability, and the brave to second-guess themselves, all in an effort to win over the effeminized masses. And this is what makes the screenplay for the upcoming feature film, “THOR,” so wonderful: not because it carries on the ridiculous revisionism, but because it shatters it with a hammer blow from Thor himself.

Through its clear portrayal of an unapologetically strong male who comes to the rescue of female characters, risks his life in the defense of right and wrong, and loves his world (his realm) in an undying fashion, “THOR” promises to revitalize masculinity in 2011 the way “The Expendables” did in 2010.

Early in the screenplay we see Thor as a young man, and a citizen of the realm of Asgard, about to be crowned king of that realm by his father, Odin, who had been King of Asgard for some time. In that moment of passage, Odin’s words to Thor set the tone for the rest of the film — a speech about how responsibility, duty, and honor” are central to the charge Odin gives Thor, and as the screenplay unfolds, they are central to all that Thor does.

Yes, there are moments when a young Thor demonstrates the brashness of youth and launches attacks against other realms (particularly Jotunheim) that threaten the peace of which his father spoke. (Yet even in attacking another realm Thor never seeks his own glory but the defense of his people.)  Nevertheless, Thor’s father banishes him to earth for having “betrayed the throne” via his brash attack on Jotunheim, and in casting him to earth strips Thor of both his immortality and the powers that attended that immortality.

Once banished, Thor’s mortality is represented by the fact that he and his famous hammer are separated. From there the rest of the screenplay is ultimately the outworking of Thor doing what he must to recover his hammer, and thereby his powers. The catch is that the hammer can only be lifted by “one who is worthy.”

While on earth, Thor is befriended by a group of scientists, among which is Jane Foster: a female who never becomes a romantic love interest yet who loves Thor nonetheless (and by the end of the screenplay is loved by him in return). It is for Jane that Thor risks his mortal life more than once, and in risking himself learns what “responsibility, duty, [and] honor” really mean.

Moreover, through these risks Thor unknowingly proves himself worthy to lift the hammer once more.

As the screenplay approaches its final, climatic pages, Thor learns that his hammer had fallen to earth when he had fallen from Asgard. Thus he determines to retrieve it.

If the screenplay remains as it is, suffice it to say that Thor’s efforts to retrieve the hammer will provide movie goers with an excellent display of things like focused aggression, righteous indignation, and a proper use of one’s fists: for these things are all on display in Thor’s character, as he uses brute force, cunning, and unbending determination to break through a small army of men who are dedicated to keeping him from the hammer.

I will neither tell you that he reaches the hammer nor that he doesn’t: Nor will I provide the details of the many battles he wages along the way.

What I will tell you is that “THOR,” as presently scripted, promises to hit us the way “Rocky” hit us in 1976. In other words, it could be a movie that men who shun political correctness will enjoy for generations to come.

Mr. DeQuattro is a political artist. He uses his background in graphic design to illustrate the dominant political culture of his world. At Pratt, this means creating work that addresses, as he wrote to me, the “growing bureaucracy, higher tuition, new buildings for administration, new offices, and departments, and left-wing bias, all at the expense of the students.”

Steve DeQuattro, "Sustainable Liberalism In a Box" (2011)

As part of his recent work, Mr. DeQuattro has designed a cereal-box-like sculpture that he calls, ironically, “Sustainable Liberalism in a Box” (the graphics are pictured above). He has developed a piece that takes the ubiquitous Apple iPod ad campaign to address abortion. He has designed a sobering five-foot-wide mural that tracks the Democratic Party’s record on race, from Jefferson’s slave-holding days up through the racially charged speeches of Senator Robert Byrd and Vice President Joe Biden.

As a senior in the school, Mr. DeQuattro has been working on this art in preparation for a group show for Pratt’s graduating students, which is scheduled to open on April 23. While his faculty advisor has been supporting him, his peers have not. Mr. DeQuattro says they recently wrote a letter to his professors, calling his work “offensive” and complaining about exhibiting alongside him. Last week, the chair of the fine arts department stepped in to prevent Mr. DeQuattro’s participation alongside the other students in the group show–an unprecedented move in the history of the department, says Mr. DeQuattro, despite the fact that none of his work is pornographic, libelous, or in violation of the laws of free speech. Mr. DeQuattro’s advisor did not return a request for comment.

For the administrators and students at Pratt, the problem isn’t political art itself, says Mr. DeQuattro, but the nature of his politics, which are conservative. He says his school takes a liberal position on politicized discourse, just as long as that discourse does not deviate from a left-wing position. Pratt’s opposition to Mr. DeQuattro’s art only underscores the importance of his work. Mr. DeQuattro is asking for outside help in convincing the institution to support his exhibition.

Mr. DeQuattro’s case illustrates the art world’s double standard towards political art. From Jean-Louis David’s Death of Marat to the works of George Grosz to Picasso’s Guernica, political commentary has had a place in the history of art. Artistic expression can help us understand politics in ways that other forms of commentary cannot.

Yet the relationship of artist to audience often tells us much about the validity of political work. Art that preaches to a wholly agreeing public is little more than propaganda. Most self-described political art today falls short in this regard and is of limited value outside of its political utility, because it almost exclusively presents left-wing arguments to a left-wing public. Rather than standing apart from their audience, works like Shepard Fairey’s promotional designs for candidate Obama to Richard Serra’s visual denunciations of Abu Ghraib pander to existing assumptions and reaffirm the politics of their surroundings.

Audience resistance and censorship, by contrast, can sometimes illustrate the value of an artist’s political message. Such work may encourage the audience, however resistant, to see its politics in a new way. Sometimes this censorship is largely self-constructed, as in the case of David Wojnarowicz’s “Fire in My Belly,” where a bad internal decision at the Smithsonian to remove the work from display was taken up by protesters as an opportunity to advance a political and monetary agenda. In that example, the work went from excluded to another form of propaganda, quickly landing in the permanent collection at MOMA. Other times the censorship is more serious, as now in China, where the state crackdown on Ai Weiwei speaks to the continued validity of his artistic project.

By these definitions, Mr. DeQuattro has the makings of a political artist, because as a conservative artist he currently stands outside of the politics of his own time and place. Regardless, student work deserves an especially generous standard for display. Mr. DeQuattro’s art should be supported by the same institution that invited him to hone his craft over the past five years. He should be afforded the same rights given to his classmates and allowed to exhibit in the group show. The fact that his politics are not shared by his peers does not render his art as irrelevant or “offensive.” Instead, it is a reason his political art is valid and deserves to be shown.

x-post thenewcriterion.com

You may instead have been watching critically acclaimed, scripted dramas like Big Love, or award winning educational programming on Discovery or National Geographic. Hell, you may have been reading a book or spending quality time with loved ones. If so, you have been wasting your time.

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The premise of Wipeout is fiendishly simple: Everyday schlubs and schlubettes brave the “largest obstacle course in the world” – the last one standing wins $50,000. The course itself changes from week to week, but consistently features various moving apparatuses that don’t merely stand in the way of contestants, but actively seek out and pummel them before tossing them mercilessly into the icy water below. All this while sports broadcaster John Anderson and comedian John Henson deliver running, wise-ass commentary reminiscent of the two geezers from the old Muppet Show.

But a written description could never do justice to the genius of this show, which must be seen to be apprehended. Wipeout is gut-bustingly, laugh-out-loud funny. You will not believe some of the shots these poor bastards take to the head, stomach, and groin, risking humiliation and injury for our amusement. If you’re the squeamish sort, never fear: The course is said to be so padded that, no matter how brutal the wipeouts look on TV, there is virtually no chance for actual bodily harm. If true, that makes me feel a little better about the peals of Mr. Burns-like guffaws it draws out of me and a little less guilty about the warm fuzziness it brings to my otherwise exhausted and icy heart.

But I wonder: Some of these contestants get bent into all manner of shapes; shapes that were never meant to hold the human form. That they invariably get up, no matter how seemingly brutal their fall, to attack again the Big Balls, Fling Set, Crank Shaft, or whatever other obstacle lorded over them like a vindictive god is nothing short of a miracle – a hilarious, beautiful miracle.

So my advice is – enjoy Wipeout while you can. ‘Cause like Mom always told us, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Wipeout is too much fun and too popular (ten million viewers tuned in to one recent episode) to escape the notice of lawyers and “safety” cry babies at some point, and they’ll ruin it just as surely as they ruined junior high dodge ball.

Trust me – get there before they do.

First the reality. The country of France is having serious domestic problems between its immigrant Muslim community and those natural-born, European Frenchmen. Immigrants have been rampaging across the country for several years now. Clashes between police and large groups of rioting Muslim youth have wreaked havoc on the Gallic nation. Violence is all too common — it is woefully common for hundreds of cars to be lit afire in these riots and dozens of arrests to be made. It has the country split and frightened.

It has gotten so bad in France that in some parts of its cities, those parts controlled by marauding gangs of Muslim youths, whites never enter for fear of their lives. Not only that but not even police dare enter these areas. This dangerous situation does not seem anywhere near being solved. In fact, it’s just getting worse.

Now for the fantasy: enter The Batman.

DC Comics recently launched a series called “Batman Incorporated.” Essentially, Bruce Wayne (well-known as Batman’s alter ego to comics fans) is cruising the world setting up a “Batman” for major cities across the globe. These Batman figures, though, will not be vigilantes. They will be sanctioned by whatever local police force is in charge of the area in which the new Batman is operating. In the case of Detective Comics number 12 (Part one) and Batman Annual number 28 (Part two), Bruce Wayne has come to Paris, France to find a “French savior.”

The story reveals to us a cult-like group that is assassinating France’s fringe political figures. The cult’s goal is to cause unrest and riots to be led by the murdered political figure’s followers. This group hypnotizes its members to kill and then to commit suicide so that the cult cannot be discovered.

First a “popular” French union activist “with ties to the French Communist Party” is murdered. Next the leader of a “break-away Neo-Nazi Party” is killed. Then Batman discovers that a “minor diplomat” from Saudi Arabia is targeted. Batman tries to stop the assassination but is too late.

Batman turns to a man that he helped police arrest earlier in part one. When first encountered the young man was dressed in a skin-tight, black costume and sported a face mask. Batman arrested him when this man tried to involve himself in some rioting. Batman didn’t know the young masked man was actually trying to stop the riot but later learns of his good intentions. Consequently the Dark Knight decides to put this man to work to help stop the cult that is assassinating French political figures and causing riots.

In the course of this story Batman, aka Bruce Wayne, decides that this man should become the French representative of Batman Incorporated. As Wayne styles the man, he’ll be the “French savior.” He ends up calling himself Nightrunner.

So what’s wrong with all this? Only that it is completely absurd and so badly misleads people from any understanding of why riots are really going on in France that it almost qualifies as a crime itself.

You see, DC Comics has decided that the “French savior,” the French Batman is to be a Muslim immigrant. The character’s name is Bilal Asselah and he is an Algerian Sunni Muslim and an immigrant that is physically fit and adept at gymnastic sport Parkour. Apparently Batman couldn’t find any actual Frenchman to be the “French savior.”

The whole situation is a misreading of what ails France. The truth is, neither communist Union members nor “Neo-Nazi” Parties are causing riots in France. Muslims are. Yet DC Comics is absurdly making a Muslim immigrant the “French savior”? This is PCism at its worst. Not only that but it is pretty condescending to France, too. France is a proud nation. Yet DC Comics has made a foreigner the “French savior.” This will not sit well with many Frenchmen, for sure. Nor should it.

As DC told the tale of this character’s origin, it badly downplays the seriousness of the actual racial tension in France. In essence, all you get from the story is that “they hate us, and we hate them.” There is no attempt at all to explain the real underlying problem. The true cause of the riots and violence between Frenchmen of European stock and that of immigrant Muslim stock is glossed over as if it doesn’t even exist. DC Comics makes the whole problem as simplistic as mere racism as if that is all there is to it ignoring the fact that Islam is the single most important factor in the strife.

Unfortunately, readers of Batman will not be helped to understand what troubles are really besetting France. In this age when Muslim youths are terrorizing the entire country, heck in this age of international Muslim terrorism assaulting the whole world, Batman’s readers will be confused by what is really going on in the world. Through it all DC makes a Muslim in France a hero when French Muslims are at the center of some of the worst violence in the country’s recent memory.

But it isn’t surprising for DC, a comic book company that has a character whose creator based it on “corporate greed.” Nor is it surprising in an industry where tea party members are made the enemy of super heroes. For the character based on “corporate greed” look up DC’s Larfleeze character and see the Marvel comic Captain America issue 602 where The Captain makes Tea Partiers into an enemy to America (Marvel later apologized). For that matter, check out the words of the director of the new 2011 Captain America movie who said that his Captain America won’t be a big “flag waver.” Imagine that. Captain America not being that into America.

These few examples aren’t the only ones, either. Among many other instances, last April the venerable Archie Comics announced they were adding a gay character and back in 2007 movie makers announced that they intended to remove all mentions of the U.S. military from G.I. Joe (they later relented to a degree).

It all adds up to a PCing of the American comic book industry that has been going on for far too long.

Following my recent article on the dust up over the use of the word “gay” in a joke in the movie “The Dilemma” I engaged in an email discussion with our fearless leader, Big Hollywood editor John Nolte. The question John posed to me was in the new era “everything is deeply offensive to someone” could guys like Sam Kinison, George Carlin and even Saint Lenny make it today?  Could three of the greatest comic voices ever survive in today’s comic environment?

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My first impulse was to say a quick yes, give John a virtual eye roll, and get back to making funny Facebook status updates about the TSA. Then I considered his question a little more deeply. I was too young to have known or seen Lenny Bruce and only got to meet Carlin three times, so I didn’t know him well. Sam, that was different. I got to know him pretty well back in the late seventies in Texas. We stayed friends and even worked together a few times through the years. I’ll get back to Sam in a minute.

Lenny Bruce got arrested a number of time for his language. Back in the sixties few people objected to making ethnic jokes. The word “gay” still meant filled with joy and to most Americans a “fag” was a Lucky Strike. Lenny got in trouble for his scatological references. “Cocksucker” was a big one. Most of the stuff Lenny suffered for seems mild in comparison to today’s cable fodder. However, one of Lenny’s greatest bits, which heavily features the notorious “N” word, couldn’t be broadcast today even on cable. Today it couldn’t even be written in a transcript without serious repercussions. It is however one of the most brilliant bits of comic social commentary ever performed. Dustin Hoffman does it justice in the movie, “Lenny.” Lenny also foreshadowed today’s political correctness in another bit featured in the movie when he substituted the word “blahblah” for “cocksucker.” Quoting Hoffman as Lenny in the movie, “It’s the dirtiest bit I have ever done and they can’t touch me!”

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Carlin had his transformation for the slick ex-adman comic the hipster we all know in the late sixties and early seventies. His most famous piece featured the “seven words you can never say on television.” Ironically, all seven are now heard with regularity on television, in movies, on Broadway and in teen conversations. Later in his career the seven words became about seven hundred. I heard him do an extended version of the original which took at least fifteen minutes on stage. If he did the bit today he would have to change the bit to, “ There are only five words you can’t say on TV , “N” word, “F” word, “R” word, “G” word, “  and Islamic Extremists!”

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Sam was different. He seemed to invite harassment. Reviews of his show that called him obscene and offensive he wore as a badge of honor. He sometimes sent them out with his press kit! He defied authority at every chance. Once, at The Annex, a small club where we started, he smashed a wooden stool on stage during a bit. The club manager told Sam he had to pay for the stool and warned him that he would be charged for future damages.  The next time Sam went up he took the new stool and smashed it against the wall and flipped some money down on the stage. He told the manager to get a few stools because he would need them. As I remember it, that event led to Sam being banned from the club for awhile and the infamous “crucifixion for comedy” incident.

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At times I think Sam wanted people to hate him, it was good for business. He would antagonize those who protested his antics and language. He demeaned women onstage because he knew how it enraged NOW and other feminist groups. They would scream about it and the tickets to Sam’s shows became the hottest around. Some of his most famous bits sent howls of through the gay community even back then. His famous “Rock Hudson” bit where he imitated Mr. Hudson performing numerous acts of fellatio and then regretting the last one which Sam imagined gave him AIDS was universally panned by the politically correct even back then.  

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If Sam were starting today would he have a chance? You know it! Genius is a hard thing to stifle and Sam was a comic genius. Sam also would have succeeded today because back in the eighties he was already aware that those who presumed to speak for “the masses” were usually out of touch. He never worried about what people thought of him. He spoke his mind and used words he knew his audience would understand. As I am traveling today I am imagining what Sam would have to say about the TSA and enhanced pat downs. I would give just about anything to watch him go through an airport today and “engage” the security.

That would be national news.

They bent over and censored the show. According to the New York Times arts blog posted this morning, the episode in question, a follow-up to the one that showed the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bear costume, was edited by Comedy Central to avoid further offense. The version that aired Wednesday contained audio bleeps and image blocks (“CENSORED”), apparently inserted by the network, after the Muslim group warned on its website that show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably end up like Theo Van Gogh.” This is a reference to the Dutch film maker who was murdered – shot eight times then stabbed, with a note pinned to the knife, like in an Eric Ambler story — on an Amsterdam street after he made a documentary critical of Islam’s treatment of women. Fearing for her safety, Van Gogh’s collaborator, Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was forced to flee the country, and the Dutch Parliament engaged in vigorous debate on the subject of banning certain kinds of speech as “blasphemy.” In other words, they unheroically blamed the victim.

Based on the information so far, the honchos at Comedy Central are cowering like the Dutch. A spokesman for Comedy Central said, according to the Times, that it was not giving permission for the episode to run, without censorship, on the studio’s website.

A few questions:

First, where is Homeland Security on this? (Oh, never mind, they’re most likely busy infiltrating Tea Parties.)

Second, what is it about animation and cartoons that these idiots cannot understand or abide? There is probably no point in trying to explain to them that this is a cartoon series and is deliberately, delightfully offensive (the original pilot for the program was entitled “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe”). Ever see any of the episodes about the gay teacher? And his leather-clad “assistant,” Mr. Slave? If you happened by any chance actually to be a gay schoolteacher who saw those shows, you either: a) wanted to die, or b) were dying laughing and will continue to chuckle every time you think about it for the rest of your life.

Planet Earth to Revolution Muslim: You need a sense of humor to live in this country. Otherwise go away.

Last, why are our media outlets run by jellyfish? Are there no bravehearts in the newsrooms and control rooms anymore? The Emmy-winning “South Park” is a take-no-prisoners sort of show whose main characters Stan and Kyle (not to mention the inimitable, somewhat anti-Semitic Cartman) bravely tread where no newspaper commentator, Op-Ed columnist, cable news bloviator, or talk radio loudmouth will ever dare to go. They go, literally, where the sun don’t shine. Stone and Parker are — like Theo Van Gogh — free-speech fundamentalists. Are we going to allow courageous artists to go it alone? We can’t let the bullies win.

Comedy Central needs a backbone, and Revolution Muslim needs a bitch-slapping. This is a situation about which the Left and the Right can easily agree.

The second thing that has been on my mind is which brand of political correctness will prevail this year’s Oscars. Will the “I’m voting for ‘Avatar’ because it ridicules America and its military” faction be stronger than the “It’s time a woman won best director” faction?

There are other political considerations in this year’s voting but this got me to thinking about past years and whether or not the nominations and awards really are all about the art. It seems that all sorts of considerations, political, social, personalities and career get mixed in and often the storytelling gets left on the cutting room floor. In the interest of brevity I will limit my comments to the years I can actually remember, which, if I am honest, would rule out several years in the early seventies and mid-eighties.

Back in 1967, we all rushed to see “The Graduate” with anti-hero Benjamin played by Dustin Hoffman. A good movie but not a great one. “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Dr. Doolittle,” and winner “In the Heat of the Night” were also nominated. So was the entirely forgettable “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” nominated for its subject matter and the casting of Hollywood legends Tracy and Hepburn?

In 1970, the double question mark of “Airport” and “Love Story” were nominated. Has anybody under the age of 75 gone back and given “Airport,” the forefather of the disaster film genre, another look? What do you get when you take an unbelievably banal book and make a very predictable movie? With “Love Story” you got a best picture nomination for the chick-iest chick flick of all time. The beautiful and irascible young woman in the picture getting cancer and dying may have done the trick in getting the nomination, a lesson not lost on the makers of 1983 winner “Terms of Endearment.”

I have this other theory about the Oscar’s: If you want to get a nomination for an acting award, play someone with a physical or mental problem. There are tons of examples, like “Rain Man,” “Forrest Gump,” Scent of a Woman,” All About Eve,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “As Good as it Gets,” I could go on and on, but you get my point.

Of course the all time champ of getting a best picture nomination that it didn’t deserve is “The Godfather: Part III.”  The result of all this was that now I believe that Marlon Brando and George C. Scott were right: leave the trophy and take the cannoli.