By now, everyone should know that the new film, GI Joe: Rise of Cobra, is a despicable excuse for a movie. It was harshly panned by Big Hollywood as well as by me. For an action film, it is horrible, but for an American film, it is a disgrace.

Director Stephen Sommers said, “this is not a George Bush movie — it’s an Obama world.” Sounds to me that since Bush is no longer president it is supposed to legitimize the disintegration of patriotism for our armed forces. That would explain why the Joe’s are no longer the all American heroes they once were. Instead, they are a multinational task force that picks up the pieces after the USA fails.

This film represents everything President Obama worshipers stand for, which explains the lack of Americanism.GI Joe has always been a vehicle of unapologetic patriotism. What happened? Obama happened. For some reason, it now feels like multiculturalism was not acceptable until Obama was elected into office?

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John Nolte’s review of “Brüno,” a film I haven’t yet seen, tackles Sasha Baron Cohen’s previous film “Borat,” a film I have seen about twenty times. That being said, Nolte is dead-on in his appraisal of the film: it found favor with the left-wing elitists because it poked fun at us regular folk. But in praising “Borat,” they revealed something about themselves, something I’ve known to be true since the summer of 1994.

That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates. (more…)

Actor Karl Malden, who died at age 97, was a fine performer who stood for good principles and conveyed a sense of moral responsibility in his performances.

Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime achievement award to writer-director Elia Kazan, who directed Malden in perhaps his best and most memorable role, that of Father Berry in “On the Waterfront.”

Kazan had been an outcast in Hollywood for several decades before the 1999 award, because of his opposition to communism. Malden’s support of him carried a great risk of ostracism by Hollywood’s political correctness police.

A measure of Malden’s integrity is that he was married to the same woman for seventy years and was surrounded by family members when he died. (more…)

I had the pleasure of seeing an independent film named “Corked,” a movie that satirizes the pomposity and smugness of the culture of Sonoma Wine Country.

As somebody who does not drink alcohol, does not go to independent films, and does not drive my car outside the West side of Los Angeles (it’s an old car), I forayed into Downtown LA to watch a “mockumentary“ where adult beverages were served. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

With Barack Obama, many Americans had hoped to get a post-racial president. With Mr. Obama’s pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David H. Souter on the Supreme Court, it looks less and less like they got one.

President Obama – a man we still hardly know – clearly subscribes to the notion that we should judge each other not just on the content of our character, but also by the color of our skin.

We’ve had warning signs before. Remember the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.?

As for the outrage du jour, the call for Sotomayor to apologize for making a racist comment in a 2001 speech is silly. She said what she meant, and she meant what she said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” (more…)

When you favor someone because of their race over others who are equally or more qualified, that’s racism. Except in America where an old policy that was supposed to help people in an age of real separatism is still on the books and enforced.

The appointment of judge Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama to the Supreme Court is a classic example of how absurd affirmative action has become. And she unwittingly said it all in the following statement:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

First of all, that is a foolish statement. Wise people don’t call themselves wise. And anyone who thinks their ethnicity (Latinos aren’t a race) or race makes them somehow more wise is not very smart. There are clueless people of every race. Life experience only imbues wisdom if you actually learn something from it. A lot of people don’t. (more…)

Last week I told you why political correctness must die. There are plenty of reasons, but I gave five. Today I want to tell you how to kill it for good.

PC is something everyone seems to hate, yet it pervades our culture and lives. The only people who seem to like it are the ones who use it to impose their will on everyone else. The abusers. But we don’t have to put up with it anymore. It’s time we stood our ground and said “no more.”

Of course, to be un-PC doesn’t mean going out and insulting everyone. Bad behavior isn’t going to win you friends. But a lot of the alleged outrage out there from the PC clowns is bogus and it should not be allowed to pass anymore.

How do we do that? Simple. (more…)

In the early 20th century Marxism seemed like a good idea to many of the poor and downtrodden the world over. It hadn’t yet resulted in the untimely deaths of more people than all the wars of the 20th century combined.

Even so, radicals then were as annoying and crazed as radicals now. So the people weren’t universally jumping on their bandwagon. The Marxists couldn’t flip governments without the masses. So they worked on a system to undermine unity in society. The old adage “United we stand, divided we fall” was on their mind. They had to divide the people in order to tear society apart and remake it their way. Thus, political correctness was born.

This documentary does an excellent job of telling its story. PC is designed by German Marxists of the Frankfurt School to destroy Western culture. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

Here we go again. The latest poster conservative for political-correctness-run-amok in a country careening downhill on left-wing, Democratic cruise control is Republican congresswoman Virginia Foxx.

Mrs. Foxx’s impropriety: The thought crime of arguing against “hate crime” laws by pointing out that Matthew Shepard – the tragic icon attached to the legislation – represents a salient argument against enacting them.

Mr. Shepard, the gay Wyoming teenager robbed and savagely beaten to death by drug-addled thugs in 1998, is the emotionally charged posthumous force behind the movement to pass hate crime laws. He got that way after a relentless, decade long mainstream media, Madison Avenue and Hollywood propaganda campaign to make his death a symbol of just-beneath-the-surface sadistic intolerance toward homosexuals. (more…)

The primary attraction to any Andrew Klavan novel is a well-constructed, breathlessly paced story that grabs hold within a paragraph and never lets you go. In this respect, Klavan’s a narcotics dealer, a deliverer of addictive, satisfying escapism created to transport you from reality — which in a way makes his latest thriller, “The Last Thing I Remember” a gateway drug for young adults.

Opening sentence: “Suddenly I woke up strapped to a chair.”

Strapped to that chair is Charlie West, a typically bright and motivated high school student who has no idea how he got there. The last thing he remembers is a good though unexceptional school day but nothing that connects to the where, how or why of his present and immediate circumstance. Not only has he been tortured, but voices in the hall have just decided to kill him … slowly.

From here Charlie will have to escape, out run and out-wit his deadly, resourceful captors and unravel what happened in-between scoring a first date with his dream girl and waking up in, well,  an Andrew Klavan page turner. The plot never stops moving or thickening and as the pieces come together, Charlie finds himself the only hope between … and that’s all you’re getting from me. (more…)

Note: This is the second part of a two-part interview. Part one can be found here.

Big Hollywood:  Where did the idea for “The Last Thing I Remember” come from? I know there’s an evolution to a good story, well told. How did this evolve from that first spark to final draft?

Andrew Klavan: Some of it in this case was a matter of putting my money where my mouth is.  For years, I’ve been complaining that there are no books with real boys in them, that when we want to write about manhood or patriotism or battling evil, we suddenly have to write about fantasy lands and dragons or Gotham City or whatever.  There’s real evil in the world, real people who do real evil, and they need to be fought and there’s no appeasing them.  So I started from that point of view.  Let me just speak plainly about what we’re fighting for, what kind of people do the fighting and what they believe that empowers them and why.  And I guess it started from that.

BH:  I know the secret to your success is having your wife read everything first. Are you like me? Do you get angry at her criticism, especially when she’s right?

AK: LOL.  I know your wife, you have the sweetest wife on earth and shame on you for getting mad at that good, good woman when she’s only trying to help.  But yeah, I do exactly the same thing.  You know how it is.  We pour our hearts and souls into these things and at the point when we show them to our wives, we’re still raw with it, the wound is still bleeding.  And she says, “This is the greatest novel I’ve ever read but on page 116, you misspelled whirligig,” and you’re, like, “How dare you, you harridan!  Don’t you realize I’m an ARTIST???  I meant to spell it that way!!!”  Luckily, my wife knows I worship the ground she walks on.  (more…)

In a dangerous and dramatic throwback to eras long thought dead, pirates are once again actively threatening lives and property of honest seafaring men along the African coast.

The situation presents a perfect opportunity for:

A. Hollywood to produce an exciting action/adventure film based on real world events.

B. The American president to make a rousing and pointed statement on his firm support of the rule of international law on the open seas and how he’ll defend the safety of his citizens if endangered anywhere on Earth.

I predict you have a better chance of being abducted by said pirates at your local McDonald’s than you have of seeing either of the above actually occur. Why?  Both Hollywood and Obama are held hostage by the same childish, simple-minded worldview that curses all hard left art and politics (a refrain I’ve sung before and will chirp about again): “The strong are always bad. The weak are always good.” (more…)

Breitbart response to come…

I just finished reading Ben Shapiro’s Rap Is Crap and I can’t let it go.

I am not a huge fan of rap music. It is not the top rack choice on my iPod, and yet, I can appreciate its contribution to music and pop culture. Very few of the top 40 songs today don’t have at least a small rap section in bridge of the song.  It has now been over thirty years since rap made the leap from the inner city streets to the top of the pop charts, so it’s not going away anytime soon.

All of Ben’s complaints were once said about rock and roll: lack of melody and harmony, overemphasis on rhythm, vulgar, overly sexual lyrics… Rock and roll was also called a corrupter of youth and predictions of it’s quick demise abounded. There were record burnings and organized protests against this Satan music, and today, footage of these protests are viewed comedically. Do we really want this stigma attached to Republicans any longer?  Are we tired of being the punchline yet? (more…)

In an age when a waiter is a server, an actress is a female actor, and a dubiously-competent socialist cult leader is an American president, it was only a matter of time before the “Global War on Terror” became an “Overseas Contingency Operation” (OCO).  Thus Spoke Zarathustra this week via a memo sent to the Pentagon and select speech writers, officially establishing Team Obama’s redesigned terminology.  The War is over, long live the Operation! This should show the road-side bombers, suicide bombers, bombers-in-burqas, snipers-for-Allah, and other assorted, blood-thirsty, Jihadist savages that the US really means business now.  Victory through euphemism!

The unveiling of OCO capped-off a terror euphemism trifecta for the administration.  Previously, the Justice Department scrapped the ghastly “enemy combatant” to describe war prisoners in favor of the much more uplifting, “detainee.”  Additionally, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano─who may be the only member of the administration more intellectually troubled than Tim Geitner─rebranded terrorism as “man-caused disaster.” (To review:  mail carrier; police officer; business person; but man-caused disaster… maybe the errant sexism has something to do with Ms. Napolitano’s romantic leanings.)   (more…)

“Obama looks like a Chimpanzee…” That’s the exact reaction elicited from Liberals in response to Sean Delonas’ recent comic strip in the New York Post. Granted, they prefaced it with, “Conservatives are trying to say…” in an attempt to play off their own prejudice while projecting it onto conservatives. Is anybody out there truly fooled by, or scared of, these blatant attack patterns? What can I say; the liberal playbook is as bland and predictable as a Vin Diesel sequel. “How can we better handle said attacks?” you may be thinking. Oh, Big Hollywood… I’m so glad that you’ve asked. Assemble the troops!

The aforementioned comic was meant to poke fun at the recent shooting of a chimpanzee amidst a chardonnay and Xanax bender in Connecticut, while simultaneously taking a jab at the stimulus bill. Liberals of course took the opportunity to show their consistent obsession with race, while at the same time trying to leverage their PC agenda in an attempt to silence any criticism of the current administration. (more…)

Clint Eastwood, the iconic, American actor who was robbed last Sunday, came out against political correctness. In an interview with the Daily Express he said, “People have lost their sense of humour. In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth or you will be insulted as a racist.”

Clint Eastwood is one of the last real men in Hollywood. I can’t see any of his lesser heirs to the cinematic throne willing to make such a bold statement. (Aside from the misspelling –I don’t think an American like Clint would have ever pronounced it ”humour.”) Clint is pointing out something important ”free speech” advocates are unwilling to broach: Political Correctness is Dangerous. (more…)

If you call 411 or customer service for almost any service-related company today, you’re greeted with, “Thank you for calling. Press #1 to continue in English.” Excuse me, but when did English cease being the default language in this country?  And this is just one of the politically correct or (PC) aspects invading our culture and stifling free speech.

Today, PC attacks are the foundation of the left’s approach to politics and policy. Examples are everywhere. If you didn’t vote for Obama you’re racist, if you oppose gay marriage you’re homophobic, and if you voted for Bush or McCain  — according to Janeane Garofalo  — you’re an anti-intellectual a**hole (and she said this in such an intellectual way, too).

This is where we have failed and where the left has succeeded. Conservatives ideas are simply branded as politically incorrect and when we fear a backlash to speak up about Obama releasing a terrorist who killed American soldiers, we have not only lost all intellectual thinking, we have all but surrendered the US to whoever might want to destroy it.  (more…)

Surely many gay Americans have seen Gus Van Sant’s Milk through tears of joy because it marks a long-hoped-for arrival. For the first time in mainstream entertainment (at least, this is the picture that got all the fanfare), the history of the gay rights movement is presented as an elemental and welcome part of the story of the U.S., and not as a sidebar or novel supplement to the Great Historical Narrative.

Gays deserve equal rights. As a human being, that’s the only position I can possibly hold. However, you can be in complete solidarity with the cause of gay rights and not care much for Milk. (Whether you will be allowed to claim that distinction sincerely is yet another question. During the last election, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg wrote that the only reason you might oppose Obama is that you are a bigot. Is that the only reason one might dislike the similarly politically correct Milk?) (more…)