–

Obviously, the Left opposes The HAPPY Act. Anything that takes money from an out-of-control central government and gives it back to the people who actually earned it is anathema to them — but there’s been some polite opposition from our side, as well.

What you might call “killing the good in pursuit of the perfect” reasoning:

This will only complicate an already complicated tax code…

…which is why God invented TurboTax.

People will abuse the law…

…and 99% of the laws on the books could be disqualified with that line of reasoning.

Any tax law — any tax law —  that keeps tax-dollar-crack out of the hands of DC Democrats and in the hands of the people who earned it is a good thing. 

Robert nails it best in the video, though, when he suggests people debate and discuss the Happy Act on the merits. The link above sends you to a copy of the actual bill. Many of the concerns people have voiced are already addressed in the bill. 

“What a pro-active way to be able to help the economy and change the culture in this country around animals,” Robert Davi, a veteran actor (”The Goonies,” “Die Hard,” “License to Kill”) who was a main force behind the bill’s introduction, told ABCNews.com in a telephone interview. 

“This money goes back into the economy, and it encourages people to understand the social responsibilities we have toward animals,” Davi said. …

***

A bill making the rounds on Capitol Hill marries two feel-good propositions — tax cuts and pet ownership — to generate a novel idea: A tax break of up to $3,500 per person for pet care expenses.

The measure is a legislative long shot. But it’s been championed by a veteran Hollywood tough guy and by a conservative Michigan congressman [Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich], and has drawn the enthusiastic support of animal rights groups eager to promote pet ownership during economic down times. …

***

The tax break would apply to more exotic pets as well, so long as they’re being owned within the bounds of the law. Any “legally owned, domesticated, live animal” would qualify, under the terms of the bill.

According to the ASPCA, a cat costs about $670 a year on average to take care of, while dogs are about $200 a year more expensive. The tax break would be capped at $3,500 per person, regardless of how many animals a taxpayer owned.

Davi, the owner of four dogs and a cat, said the concept of using the tax code to promote pet ownership occurred to him a few months ago, in thinking about the stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress — a package, he said, that he opposed.

Davi’s cousin runs a prominent California animal rescue foundation, D.E.L.T.A. Rescue, and is always looking for ideas that would get more pets adopted, he said. Why not let people deduct expenses like pet food and veterinarian bills from their taxes, like child care expenses or mortgage interest can help reduce your tax burden?

Read the full article here.

Also see Robert Davi’s Big Hollywood articles:

Leo Grillo Defines What Makes America Great

Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years (HAPPY) Act

“Not today, hon.”

With a loud sigh of disgust she slammed the phone back into her purse and sat there in the fold-out chair and sulked. My wife’s look to me of indignant expectation (You going to put up with that?) was met by my practiced calm of everything-will-be-fine (She’s a teenager, that’s what they do). 

Hoping against hope that my doubting Thomas wife was wrong and that I was right, I settled in to listen to the Memorial Day program at the Los Angeles National Cemetery.  It was May 30, 2009, and as we sat there on the lawn that cloudy morning, our little family was a whirl of dysfunction.  It had been building for some time; petty problems had ruined our peace, and small arguments and squabbling set my wife and my 16-yr-old daughter at mutual odds.  I sat there amidst the several thousand gathered feeling alone, distant, isolated.  And completely alienated from my family.  How could three so close seem suddenly so distant? 

Speaking to honor our fallen war heroes that day were several Hollywood notables including John Voight and Robert Davi.  They were reading letters sent home from distant battlefields and different wars.  Sent to loved ones by men they would never see again. 

As the program proceeded, a miracle happened.  It happened within our family – but I think it was happening everywhere that day, all across America really.  We forgot our petty differences for a moment.  We forgot to text.  We forgot who was on “American Idol” that week.  We forgot ‘it’s all about me’.

We remembered the soldier.

There were tears wept openly that day as these heart-rending letters were read.  A glowing warmth of pride descended upon this crowd as we sat there together and considered the people who were willing to serve to preserve our freedom. 

My daughter’s truculence had dissipated and been replaced with a sweet reverence.  After the program we wandered through the cemetery reading the headstones of veterans who had passed.  My daughter wandered off by herself, reading the names, fully engrossed in reverie for these heroes of past wars.  My wife nodded at her, squeezed my hand, and we watched her in quiet repose.  This was something new I was witnessing.  My daughter got it.

This recent Memorial Day was a good time for America.  And it was definitely a good day for my family.

I thought of times in our history when brave men in uniform demonstrated their courage.  And by ‘brave’ I mean – scared sh*tless, disoriented, fiercely committed, praying for help, screaming death and venom at evil, blasting away at the enemy, and…basically doing exactly what a soldier is expected to do.  Put himself in the line of fire to win the battle.

The 101st Airborne at Bastogne. The Marines at Chosin Reservoir.  Normandy.  Iwo Jima.  Saigon.  Fallujah, Iraq. Hindu-Kush, Afghanistan. The examples of American Military heroism are endless.

Jesus told us in the Bible that “no greater love hath a man that that would lay down his life for another.”  A prescient truth foretelling true self-sacrifice, as reflected in the Cross — our Lord’s final act of love on this earth.  Consider the love and selfless courage it would take for a G.I. in combat to throw himself onto a live grenade to save his fellow squad members.  Yet this has happened time and time again by our courageous troops, most recently, in Ramadi, Iraq by a young Navy SEAL Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor. 

These acts of heroism are common, but seldom widely reported.  More often than not, they are buried beneath apparently more urgent stories like who won a talent contest or basketball championship. 

The many efforts of the Left to disparage and denigrate our servicemen are all too widespread.   Our troops are constantly being maligned as intellectually inferior and naively gullible. Ironically, the exact opposite is true.  In fact, the very highest of all human ideals and attributes is to be found by the men and women who serve in our military. 

My teenage daughter got it on May 30th.  She got that her carefree life of texting her friends and going to the mall and riding her horse is all made possible by the sacrifices our military men and women are willing to make on a daily basis.  They don’t demand our respect – but they are certainly worthy of it.

So the next time you hear some arrogant, pseudo-intellectual dipstick running his mouth about how our military is a bunch of ignorant, thug rednecks…step up to the Cretin and set him straight.  Idiocy, if tolerated, has a habit of turning into a cultural mindset…and pretty soon you have one of those ‘Zeitgeist’ things happening.  That’s how Political Correctness got started.  (And, not coincidentally, the Third Reich.) 

It’s time to cut that garbage off at the knees.  Educate yourself, America.  Re-examine our roots and our heritage and our history.  Contrary to what the America-hating revisionists want you to believe, America has a proud past of building from nothing a nation that is the contemporary cornerstone of freedom for all mankind.  We haven’t been perfect…but we’ve become the best the world has ever seen.  Build up a fire in your belly for America and all that she stands for, and stand up and shout your love of country and honor for the flag from the rooftops. 

If you’re not spitting out blood… you’re just not yelling loud enough.

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

Obama’s Cairo Message: Limited Audience, Limited Impact 

1. President Barack Obama’s address at the Cairo University on June 4, 2009, which was billed in advance by his staff as a historic message of goodwill and reconciliation to the Islamic world, had a limited audience. Though projected as an address to the Islamic world, it was largely an address to the Arab world and focused largely on issues of interest to the Arabs.  

2. The Arabs constitute a minority in the Islamic world. Non-Arab Muslims living in countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia constitute the majority. The issues, which agitate them, are different from the issues which agitate the Arab world. Osama bin Laden understands this better than Obama and his advisers. That was why in his audio message released through Al Jazeera a day before Obama’s Cairo address, bin Laden focused on issues of immediate concern to the non-Arab Muslims in the Af-Pak region such as the large-scale displacement of Pashtuns from the tribal areas of Pakistan. By focusing on their plight and by holding the Americans responsible for it, he sought to make it certain that the anti-American anger in the Af-Pak region will increase rather than decrease.  

3. Outside India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, the attitude of the Muslims towards the US is characterized by feelings of hostility or anger or skepticism. There is hardly any feeling of empathy or warmth. There are various reasons for the negative feelings towards the US. Some are country-specific, some are region specific and some are ethnicity specific. The negative feelings of the Arabs towards the US may be due to the Palestine issue and the perceived US support for Israel, but Palestine and Israel are not such burning issues in the non-Arab Islamic world.  

4. Obama’s address seemed to have been constructed around the belief that the Muslims constitute a monolithic community and that their actions are motivated by certain issues of common concern to all the Muslims of the world. This is a wrong belief. The Muslims are not a monolithic community and there is no common thread uniting the anger motivating the Muslims in different countries and different regions. There are Muslims and Muslims and issues and issues.   

5. If Obama wanted to address the Muslims of the world, Cairo was the wrong place from which to seek to do so. There was a time when Egypt was seen as the beacon of the Arab world. It is no longer so. Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organizations project Egypt and its leaders as apostate. President Hosni Mubarak is a very unpopular Arab leader. Obama going to Cairo to deliver the address is seen by large sections of pro-Al Qaeda and pro-Taliban leaders as a leader of the American infidels traveling to the country of apostates to deliver an address to the Muslims from a platform provided by the apostates.  

6. There are two ways of judging the impact — what has been and what will be the impact on those Muslims who have taken to terrorism against the US and other countries of the world – and what will be the impact on ordinary Muslims who stay away from the so-called global jihad, but at the same time do not nurse any feelings of empathy for the US?   

7. The impact on the world of global jihad will be very little. Their views towards the US have been formed as a result of years of brainwashing in extremist mosques and madrasas. They are not going to change as a result of a beautifully-drafted speech beautifully delivered before an audience carefully assembled by the so-called apostates. They will continue to fight against the US, which will have to defeat them in the battlefield. bin Laden’s projection of the US President as Bush in Obama’s clothing will make a greater impact on the minds of the jihadis than the words and phrases of Obama.  

8. The jihadi behavior till now was influenced by the visuals, which came out of Iraq and Afghanistan. As the impact of those visuals decreases, Al Qaeda and pro-Al Qaeda organizations are trying to exploit the visuals of the plight of nearly three million internally displaced Pashtuns, driven out of their homes by a Pakistani war ordered by the US as bin Laden projected it in his message.  

9. The impact on the ordinary Muslims outside pockets of urban elite will not be significant. Ordinary Muslims are not so naïve as to be impressed by a couple of quotations from the Holy Koran. Muslims outside India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia are not enamored of democracy. They have nothing against authoritarian rulers, provided they care for the ordinary Muslims. Mubarak is not an example of a caring ruler. Among Muslim rulers blessed and supported by the US, there is hardly anyone whom one can call caring for the common Muslims. The ordinary Muslims will judge the US by the company it keeps in the Islamic world than by the speeches of Obama.  

10. Obama’s speech may help him back home by pushing up his popularity. Americans love such orations. It may not help the US much in the Islamic world. The use of soft power to counter pernicious ideologies coming out of the Islamic world is important. They have to be countered in a more subtle and sophisticated manner through personal interactions, dialogue in small groups, radio and TV programs, Internet chats etc. A Cairo-style address is not suited for this purpose.  

11. A mix of Wahabism and Deobandism of the Pakistani brand is the driving force of the global jihad and of the hostility towards the US. Deoband is in India. The Indian brand of Deobandism was benign and continues to be benign The Pakistani brand is venomous and behind much of the negative ideas influencing the attitudes and conduct of millions of Muslims. Unless the pernicious Wahabi-Deobandi ideas emanating from Pakistan are countered in an intelligent manner, the divide between the Muslims and the non-Muslims will continue to widen. How to do so? That is the question that should occupy the minds of US policy-makers. (5-6-09)  

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai.)

I know this to be true. Being a news junkie myself, I have found time after time as I was reading about a supposedly breaking subject, like ABC’s recent coverage of the targeted LGBT murders in Iraq, that it had already been on display for all to see in Big Hollywood posts for months.

Not to toot my own horn, but…well, okay, I’m tooting my own horn. And those of Andy Breitbart and John Nolte, who have given I, and so many other wonderful and insightful Hollywood right-wing fringe types, a magnificent bullhorn we otherwise would not have. We appear to be doing the dirty jobs our media just refuses to do. It’s a labor Hercules would completely sympathize with.

Here are some prime examples.

THE OBAMAMEDIA: The British press, the UK Telegraph in particular, are VERY unhappy with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today. Seems Mr. Gibbs offended them beyond belief with this statement, in response to the British tabloids hammering the Obama Administration over the suppression of torture photos, a la the reviled BusHitler:

“Let’s just say if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a write-up of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I’d might open up a British newspaper,” (Gibbs) continued. “If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I’m not entirely sure it’d be the first pack of clips I’d pick up.”

The UK Telegraph found the irony of that statement delicious:

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington.

Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

Mates, you’re not telling Big Hollywood anything new. We reported that our Fourth Estate was now a Fourth Branch of Government a month ago. Of course, these UK complaints of Obamamedia malfeasance would hardly have been necessary were President Obama a Republican, which we here at BH also hypothesized in Alice In Wonderland fashion. Fact is, if Obama were a Michael Steele-like Republican POTUS, the US press would be all over him like white on rice. Can I say that?

Who’d a-thunk we and the British tabloids would ever be banding together and staging a revolt against the American government and its PRAVDA-like propaganda wing, the VSM? Strange days, indeed. I also find it incredibly ironic that, as President Obama goes out of his way to appease the Hilterite Islamist extremist regime in Iran, his administration lackeys, through pure idiocy, are marching us down the path to yet another war with the British. Not only that, just how bad is it when the British revolt against OUR tax policies? Sorry, but I’m with the Redcoats this time around.

OBAMA AND THE LEFT: On May 26th, US News and World Report opined on the dissatisfaction of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party with Obama’s Bush Lite policies. On May 24th, Gary LaMarche tried to quell the Leftie uprising against Obama with this HuffPo piece. However, if you read the comments, many Lefties aren’t biting. Sorry, Gary, the Kumbaya routine doesn’t work with tinfoils. Same at KOS, which is telling their readers to quit with the ‘Obama is a War Criminal’ crap.

Again, Big Hollywood beat all to the punch on May 23rd. We knew how much of a disappointment Obama was to the Left. It is, in fact, a complete train wreck of liberal politics, naive idealism and harsh realities. And we’re lovin’ it! Again, Big Hollywood is ahead of the curve.

OBAMA AND GAY RIGHTS: On May 23rd, the New York Times published Frank Rich’s OpEd ‘La Cage au Democrats’ in which he commiserated with gay rights advocates of how little support LGBTs were getting from the Obama White House. He closed it out with this stinging rebuke:

The gay civil rights movement has fewer obstacles in its path than did Dr. King’s Herculean mission to overthrow the singular legacy of slavery. That makes it all the more shameful that it has fewer courageous allies in Washington than King did. If “American Idol” can sing out for change on Fox in prime time, it ill becomes Obama, of all presidents, to remain mute in the White House.

Ouch! Dead Bullseye, Frank! Sorry to tell you, Mr. Rich, but you’re only splitting Big Hollywood’s arrow. BH contributor Charlie Winecoff covered this issue in-depth at Big Hollywood way back on March 19th in his ‘Love, War and Gay Marriage’ OpEd. He saw what was coming based on Obama’s own statements, positions and even associations with gay-haters like Farrakhan. On May 8th, we illustrated how even Ronald Reagan was a better friend to gays than Obama probably ever will be.

Double Ouch! Sorry, Frank. You guys at the Times have to keep pace better than that, or you just might find yourselves relegated to dinosaur status. Wait a minute…Oh, never mind.

LGBT MURDERS IN IRAQ: Yet another issue that is beginning to inflame American gay advocates, who are fast becoming infuriated at the brutal and systematic extermination of LGBTs in Iraq on our dime, sanctioned by both Supreme Leader Ali al-Sistani in his fatwa of death against Iraqi LGBTs and by the Iraqi government itself. Not only are LGBTs being slated for execution by al-Maliki’s government, the Interior Ministry police are raiding gay parties, hunting gays online, and either arresting them or killing them on the spot. Shiite gay death squads are now common in Baghdad.

News outlets such as ABC are finally beginning to cover this issue in-depth. Gay rights advocate Michael Petrelis of the Petrelis Files blog has long been on point on this issue, holding demonstrations and raising money for Iraqi gays. Though encouraged by the media attention this horrific plight of gays in Iraq is finally getting, he could not be more outraged by the willful ignorance of this issue by the White House, the State Department and his Congressional representative, none other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Though Mr. Petrelis was not entirely enamored of my Reagan/Obama piece on gay rights here at Big Hollywood (he called me a right wing blowhard on his blog), he does credit BH for addressing the issue as he wished so many others in the gay community and politics would, and praises our calling it for what it is: a gay holocaust. What else do you call a targeted extermination program?

That said, the Reagan piece was not the first BH OpEd to address the burgeoning problem of targeted gay murders in Iraq. That was highlighted in my very first piece for Big Hollywood, entitled ‘One Critic’s Review of Mr. Ganis Goes to Tehran’ way back on March 9th. It was, in fact, Team Oscar’s trip to gay-butchering Iran at that time, not five days after the gay-infomercial Oscars, that sent me into fireball mode and led me directly to BH in the first place.

Not only did that piece describe the longstanding gay holocaust in Iran, a de facto genocide of Iranian LGBTs, it exposed for all the world to see what a human rights sham AMPAS and so-called Hollywood gay rights champs like Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black really are. Team Oscar member Annette Bening went so far as to praise women’s rights in Iran (an oxymoron if ever there was one), even as fellow American Roxana Saberi was being held hostage as a political pawn right across town in Evin prison. Need more be said?

Again, Big Hollywood was way ahead of the curve.

Speaking of which, the targeted killings of Iraqi LGBTs poses a very curious question. If Prop 8 opponents are so infuriated and outraged at the perceived abysmal gay rights situation in California, as these Tweeting celebrities at afterellen.com seem to be, and in which model/actress Adrianne Curry sarcastically retorted, “treating gays like they aren’t human is wonderful!” then where is the outrage over the hunting, torturing and extermination of gays in Iran and Iraq?

Where is the fury over gay men in Iraq having their anuses glued shut, and being forced to drink diarrhea cocktails that induce horrible suffering before death? Sounds like way less than human treatment to me, Adrianne. Where, oh where, is the outrage?

Just goes to show. Hollywood celebrities may not be gays rights advocates, but they play them on TV. And where else, but for a few lone gay blogs like the Petrelis Files, will you find this pressing issue covered in as much depth as here at Big Hollywood? Hmm. Curious.

TEAM OSCAR IN IRAN: Who else was covering Team Oscar in Iran like Big Hollywood? No one in the entertainment industry I could find. A few outraged conservatives, that’s about it. And it looked like AMPAS shut down all PR coverage of Team Oscar after the punking episode (a story lead I broke to Drudge and Nikki Finke, hee hee!), I had to get all my scoops from the Tehran Times and the Middle East press! This, for the most historic mission in Academy history! How sad is that?

Do any of you remember their grand Red Carpet heroes’ welcome at LAX? Me neither. Hell, they were so quiet about the trip, I though the Iranians were holding them hostage! I thought maybe they had taken me up on my offer to trade the Nine Stooges for Roxana Saberi. No such luck.

And show me anyone else in the media or entertainment rags who was pointing out that Iran’s film industry, which Academy prez Sid Ganis is still praising, spits out the worst anti-Semitic propaganda since Goebbels’ Reichministry. They’re marketing and exporting child martrdom cartoons like Hollywood does SpongeBob! Doing a bang-up business too, if you’ll pardon the pun.

THAT’S A WRAP! As a contributor I will do my best, as many other fine folks here at BH are doing, to keep you all up to date on the goings-on in Hollywood and elsewhere,  that you just won’t see covered in all too many other so-called media outlets. Considering how many pressing subjects the Obamamedia is dodging to keep Dear Leader spotlessly clean, that won’t be hard to do. The real problem will be deciding on which subjects the media isn’t covering to choose from.

As a BH fan and reader, I look very much forward to reading more of the great Greg G. spilling his guts, Charlie Winecoff’s unique perspectives on the issues of our day, John Nolte’s insightful and unbiased reviews of Hollywood films and TV shows past, present and future (as well as his calling the biased reviewers out for their politically-motivated hit pieces), interviews with outstanding Hollywood filmmakers you just won’t see in HR and Variety, and many other great contributors like Robert Davi, Bert Prelutsky, Andy Breitbart too numerous to mention here.

You want the real Hollywood scoop? You know where to come! Peace, all. I hope

William F. Buckley was Uncle Mike’s favorite and we frequently were subjected to long dissertations.

Thank God for Uncle Mike.

When we were younger my cousin Michael and I would put on political skits. This was in the 60s and I must say we were ahead of our time.  I like to think that we’re still ahead on some things — most recently when the economic crisis first started my cousin provided insights that only now some are talking about. He was WAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE, which is why I want to share his voice with you.

His latest piece, “The Horror……the Horror” is a good starting point. Then I suggest you go back to his blog “The Law of the Bad Premise” and share his stuff with your friends.

So a little about my cousin; he graduated number one in Columbia Business School, was a partner at Shearson Lehman Bros, CEO of CIBC Oppenheim Worldwide, ran an eight billion dollar hedge fund, another eleven billion dollar hedge fund, and is just shy of his Poli-Sci PHD.

I hope you enjoy — Robert Davi  

The Horror……the Horror
by Michael Rulle

The Anti-American Left is Born

For the second time on this blog site I quote Karl Marx’s satirical critical witticism of Hegel: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”. Perhaps, like Marx, I too can add a twist to this aphorism. Oscar Wilde said that “life imitates art more than art imitates life”. Lets see if I can sew the giraffe’s head onto the elephant’s body. How about “All great artistic themes in history appear, as it were, twice. First as a tragic representation of profound truth, second as real life absurd farce”.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard heads down river in search of an Army operative, Colonel Kurtz, who had gone very much off the reservation. In a paradoxical morality play, Kurtz had become so distraught by the horrors war had rendered, he rebelled by endlessly recommitting those same horrors, but without the false pretense of purpose or meaning. The death and torture machine Kurtz established down river was visible to all who approached, as heads, corpses and skeletons lined the entrance to his encampment. Willard fittingly releases Kurtz from his self inflicted psychic hell by hacking him to death with a hatchet/machete while Jim Morrison sings “this is the end, beautiful friend”. Brando/Kurtz memorably leaves this movie-world’s stage straining out the whisper “the horror….the horror”. Apocalypse Now – Kurtz Dies

I am pretty certain you have already figured out where I am heading, but, hey, lets just get on with it. Apocalypse Now, surely one of the great movies of the last 50 years, definitely caught and reflected the historic change in this country’s intelligentsia’s values and morals that occurred during the Vietnam war. A new anti-American, anti-military world view was born. Kurtz, who was identified early on by his superiors as a future leader of the military, was the logical final perfect product of this inherently corrupt system. Killing for killings sake. Evil beyond all evil. A giant genius had lost its way.

You can read this post in full here.

I knew they were going to get punked! They were going to Punkedville! In fact, I was so sure of it, I was the one who broke the story in the US off the French wires to Drudge and Nikki Finke.  One Hollywood Jihadi PR roadside bomb detonated. War Is Hell.

Look at their trip from my POV. I remember the whole balls-to-the-wall anti-Apartheid campaign from the mid-eighties. ‘I Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City,’ remember? By the way, wasn’t Little Stevie great in that video? Love him! Point being, if the racist South African apartheid regime was unworthy of cultural exchange, why was the gay-hanging, women-stoning, child-executing, blogger-killing, hostage-taking fascist regime in Iran worthy of a gold-plated Academy PR kiss?

But let us start at the beginning. I first started dabbling in screenwriting about ten years ago. Had a couple successes with short stories in years before, but started getting some movie ideas. Lot less words, too. Way less typing. So I’m lazy, okay? I admit it! Anyway, I got my first real success in Hollywood out of the blue back in early 2005, with a script I’d been working on for five years. My first.

Did very well in amateur competitions all over. Even passed a gauntlet of judges comprised of some of the top talents in the industry. Made the Top Ten out of well over a thousand scripts submitted to that contest, and it was a Big One! Yahoo!

My first Hollywood Scream. From here in New Hampshire. Probably could have heard me in Hollywood, too! Anyway, it resulted in a couple jaunts to the Friendly Skies of A-List Red Carpet bashes at the WGA Theater as a screenwriting finalist. Open bar! Something else to Scream about! Rubbed elbows, did the whole Jed Clampett thing, you know? Total rube first trip out. Duh-h-h! But I thought I was a lock in Hollywood now.

Took me a year of grueling pitching and marketing to finally option my script. Have finished two since, one of which resulted in my own ill-advised tangling with my two coverage providers, with whom I strongly disagreed on their assessments of my Great American Screenplay.

Know better now. They’re in, I’m not. There’s a reason for that. Got it. Regardless of the difficulties, and the fact that my option has since lapsed (not unusual for this vicinity), my successes with amateur contests and an option had me feeling pretty good. Inspired me to go forward.

My coverage providers and I are now BFF. On the same page. They even say now my work is getting much better. Dialogue, in particular. And that’s okay. We seek progress, not perfection. And more open bars. By the way, as a conservative Republican, I was a little shaky heading into the Lair of the Beast. Though very excited over the Awards Galas, I somewhat feared that one wrong word could end my screenwriting career very quickly. In fact, I was ecstatic to discover a total disinterest in politics with all the people I met.

And they were ALL phenomenal people, especially all the ground-level types like me trying to take off. Actors and actresses, filmmakers, fellow writers. It was all about living life and the dream, all the time. Better than Viagra. I could have no higher opinion of the real worker bees in Hollywood. And a number of A-listers that were generous enough to give my Jed Clampett the time of day. And let us not forget the Open Bar. Screams all around!

Had even more Screams at the 2006 Screenwriting Expo, to which I got a great Gold Pass discount as a Semifinalist in their competition. Alas, no Open Bar. But a Human Circus Par Excellence!

So here I am in the present day, working on my fourth script, IMHO the best of the bunch, a contemporary, high-concept, low-to-medium budget screwball romantic comedy that is actually a loving tribute to the Oscars and the Academy itself. Really crazy stuff, but all in fun. Treated everyone special, the Academy in particular. And I could not have been more inspired by the story, the concept and the absolutely crazy characters I had populated it with.

See, what REALLY made the Academy special to me were board members like Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, Producer Kathleen Kennedy, even the Great Fonz, Henry Winkler. Loved their work, loved their efforts for the Academy, and just loved who they all were, and are. Cream of the Crop. It broke my heart to have to use the instrument of my Hollywood dreams as a weapon of war against them.

I don’t want to rehash all that. It’s beating a dead horse now.

But any Hollywood illusions I had about some of the top names in Show Biz being the human rights champions they claimed to be have been thoroughly shattered. Dustin Lance Black has been dead silent on Iran’s Gay Holocaust, Penn even worse. Not only was Mr. Penn sending flowery Mad Mullah PR dispatches from Tehran, the epicenter of today’s Auschwitz for Gays, back in 2005, he now pals around with Hugo Chavez even as gays are persecuted in Venezuela. Some hero. Like this article states correctly, Sean Penn may not be a gay rights advocate, but he plays one on TV.

Like Annette Bening praising women’s rights in Iran, both have done extraordinary damage to the cause of gay and women’s rights there. Not only did they completely overlook or ignore the real horrors of modern-day Islamist Iran for women and gays, they gave that extremist Hitlerite regime its PR blessings with not one word of condemnation. And Team Oscar is just as guilty as they are, giving theirs and the Academy’s PR blessing to today’s Third Reich. None could deserve it less.

They may say they separated politics from art (and have), but in an all-powerful Hitlerite regime, there is no separation of anything from ideology. Not only does Iran have a film industry worthy of Goebbels, they’ve even sentenced filmmakers to death for celluloid slanders!  Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni is now awaiting trial in Iran on the same charges.

What makes Iran worthy of cultural exchange and South Africa not? South Africa wasn’t sentencing filmmakers to death or exterminating anyone. Certainly not the gays Hollywood Heroes like Penn and Black so profess to represent.

And I said I wasn’t going to beat a dead horse. I’m a writer! Whattaya want?

All that said, I do want to praise, rather than bury, some top-shelf Hollywood players who could not be more honorable in their outspoken, and out-of-pocket, humanitarian efforts to help the helpless and make the world a truly better place, at least for some.

Jim Carrey. Angelina Jolie. Brad Pitt. Matt Damon. Don Cheadle. Jerry Weintraub. George Clooney (though I am upset that he didn’t slam Team Oscar for staying in Iran during this) and father Nick. Mia Farrow. The list in Hollywood really is a long one.

And all that doesn’t even take into account all the Hollywood heroes to our heroes in uniform: Bruce Willis, Gary Sinise, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Davi, Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black. Again, far too many to mention. But I thank them all. Cream of the Crop Every One!

But boy, are the bad apples really stinking up the joint! And you can tell who they are. They visit dictatorships to fawn over strongmen like stooges once fawned over Hitler. They praise systems or heroes that are abject failures or worse while denying or deriding our own worthy heroes and endeavors. They talk a great story, like Penn and Black, but all it takes is a few Google searches to sniff out the BS.

By the way, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez kicked Human Rights Watch out of the country, but still welcomes with open arms Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte. Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical statement. Although I do believe now Mr. Penn will make a great Stooge. Practice makes perfect. You can call it the Stalinovsky Method.

So there it all is. This officially wraps Adventures in the Scream Trade. Tired of the bad screaming. Wishing for a lot more good. All things considered, I’m expecting a lot more of the former than the latter. I can only say Thank You to John Nolte and Andrew Breitbart et al here at Big Hollywood for giving me this forum to address you, My Dear Hollywood Readers and Fine Human Beings Everywhere, on the important issues of our day.

And how to know BS when you smell it. Hell, I’m choking on it. Stinks to the Hollywood Hills!

Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams!