Why does Hollywood seem to despise Roman Catholicism?

Granted, the industry’s antipathy towards religion as a whole, and Christianity in particular, is pretty much a given. But it appears that within this circle, no religion to them is more anathema than Roman Catholicism.

The latest swipe at the world’s largest Christian population, all 1.1 billion of us (plus another 240 million Eastern Orthodox) comes from, surprise surprise, uber-leftist Susan Sarandon. It is interesting that she should accuse Pope Benedict XVI  of being a “Nazi” at this time because I was trying to figure a way to discuss all the good that Roman Catholics have done through incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice over the years.

To call the Pope a Nazi because, like all German youths, he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth during the Fuehrer’s reign of absolute power may provide Ms. Sarandon with a shot of self-righteous hauteur she so desperately craves. It also shows a lack of historical understanding that seems to be a requirement if one wishes to join the coterie of far-left fantasy-performer/activists.

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Remember when Hank Williams Jr. was a horrible human being because he analogized Obama’s golf game with John Boehner to a golf game between Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?  Of course you do; it resulted in his ‘Monday Night Football’ opener being pulled by ESPN.

That, of course, was their right, although they didn’t use similar discretion when some of their local radio hosts allowed Mike Tyson to fantasize about Sarah Palin being raped.

Where’s the reaction to Susan Sarandon calling the pope a Nazi? Perhaps you didn’t hear about that one, because she’s a Hollywood celebrity rather than a conservative country singer – and because Hollywood celebrities are usually granted full leeway to say idiotic things. In fact, Benedict served in the Hitler Youth unwillingly and was never a Nazi Party member. He deserted before the end of World War II and turned himself over to the Americans.

Now, I disagree with the Pope on a wide variety of issues: he received anti-Semitic priest Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk in 2007, he made a rather rotten speech at Auschwitz in May 2006, he was slow to respond to a British-born bishop who denied the Holocaust, and his perspective on the Middle East conflict is problematic.

Nonetheless, he has stood tall against terror on many occasions, and he has criticized in strong terms both moral relativism and radical Islam.

So what prompted the Nazi reference by Sarandon?

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John Fund doesn’t begrudge celebrities their limos and luxurious lifestyles. But Fund is fed up with their penchant for playing the “Nazi” card at a moment’s notice – and the creative community’s willingness to accept such nonsense.

Fund’s latest column castigates Susan Sarandon for twice calling Pope Benedict a “Nazi” on the same night.

Crowds at both venues were unfazed by the remark and lavished praise on the Oscar-winning actress for her work and her recent show of solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protestors. That would the quick drop-by she arranged a couple weeks ago while she was on her way in a limo to catch a plane to Italy (presumably not to pay respects to the Vatican). She told reporters that she was “her to educate myself” because “greed is widespread all over the world.”

Perhaps almost as widespread as the annoying habit that celebrities have of saying stupid things.

Fund also holds Hank Williams Jr. accountable for comparing President Barack Obama to “Hitler.” But while Williams Jr. was quickly removed from his sweet perch on ‘Monday Night Football,’ Sarandon has yet to receive any brickbats from her celebrity peers.

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Not only is Sarandon’s “Nazi” remark driven by hate and factually wrong, it is the very opposite of what we all know to be true about Pope Benedict. Sarandon is lying, she’s doing so intentionally, and if ESPN is going to fire a Hank Williams Jr. for making a Nazi reference, will anyone anywhere in the industry of entertainment do anything with someone who utters this kind of obscenity?

That was a rhetorical question.

Via THR:

“Susan Sarandon’s ignorance is willful: those who have hatred in their veins are not interested in the truth. The fact is that Joseph Ratzinger [the Pope] was conscripted at the age of 14 into the Hitler Youth, along with every other young German boy,” says the president of the Catholic League of America, William Donohue, in a  statement.

“Unlike most of the other teenagers, Ratzinger refused to go to meetings, bringing economic hardship to his family. Moreover, unlike most of the others, he deserted at the first opportunity. Sarandon’s comment is obscene. Sadly, it’s what we’ve come to expect from her,” Donohue added.

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Via THR:

On Monday, the Anti Defamation League also called for an apology from the actress.

Abraham H. Foxman told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement, “We hope that Susan Sarandon will have the good sense to apologize to the Catholic community and all those she may have offended with this disturbing, deeply offensive and completely uncalled for attack on the good name of Pope Benedict XVI.

“Ms. Sarandon may have her differences with the Catholic Church, but that is no excuse for throwing around Nazi analogies. Such words are hateful, vindictive and only serve to diminish the true history and meaning of the Holocaust.”

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THR:

Sarandon was interviewed by Bob Balaban at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on Saturday. She said she sent the pope a copy of the anti death penalty book, Dead Man Walking, authored by Sister Helen Prejean. Sarandon starred in the 1995 big-screen adaptation.

“The last one,” she said, “not this Nazi one we have now.”

Balaban tried to dance around the comment, but Sarandon just made it again, Newsday reports. The audience also laughed.

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Although the revolutionary bloodlust of the Left is never far beneath the surface, sometimes it takes a crisis to bring it out into the open.

Take the case of Roseanne Barr, a self-described socialist and proud ACORN member. As part of her vanity campaign for the presidency, the unfunny comedian has managed to make liberal Hollywood crusader Susan Sarandon seem like a thoughtful moderate.

Barr is now calling for the forced reeducation and murder of wealthy Americans just as Bill Ayers’s Weather Underground Organization proposed decades before.

When meeting with the radical demonstrators occupying Wall Street, Sarandon recently stressed the importance of strengthening so-called campaign finance reform and improving governmental transparency.

Barr, on the other hand, communed with the hippy rabble in lower Manhattan and then took to the airwaves to urge that a French-style Reign of Terror be visited on the heads of those with incomes she considers excessive.

“Part of my platform is, of course, that the guilty must be punished and that we can no longer let our children see their guilty leaders getting away with murder,” Barr told Max Keiser of Russia Today (RT). “Because it teaches children that they don’t have to have any morals as long as they have guns and are bullies that they’ll win and I don’t think that’s a good message.”

“I do say that I am for the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty,” Barr deadpanned.

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Starts around the 3:25 mark: And it’s a great opportunity that this idiot [WI Governor Scott] Walker has given us to remember our strength and to remember that we are the many and they are the few; and even though they have the wealth, we have something which is as important if not more important. And so I came just to say thank you.

“They” have all the wealth?

Brother, that’s priceless.

If you watch the whole interview you’ll hear that Susan Sarandon is “spreading her vast wealth” by donating pizzas to the cause.  Oh, and she likely paid her own airfare to get a little face time by interjecting herself in a big story in front of tens of thousands of people. What a sacrifice for an actor.  

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I’ve never been called a son of God before.

Why it’s a left-wing film

Writer/director Tim Robbins has never made any secret of the fact that his masterpiece (and like every film in my Top 10, this is a masterpiece) “Dead Man Walking” was produced in the hopes of turning people against the death penalty, and the way he goes about it is ingenious. Combining two true stories involving Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and anti-death penalty activist, Robbins makes his case from a strictly Christian point of view. But first he resolutely overcomes every possible objection those who disagree with him might have as far as how he presents his side of the argument.

Nothing in the story is manipulated. The man being executed, Matthew Poncelot (an amazing Sean Penn), is guilty as hell. For kicks, after finding them innocently necking in the woods, he and a buddy rape a teenage girl and then viciously murder both her and her boyfriend in cold blood. Covered in swastika tattoos, Poncelot rants about his love for Hitler, his desire to be an anti-American terrorist, and openly taunts the victims’ families. It’s hard to imagine a better candidate for execution.

Robbins also doesn’t shy away from showing us the raw anguish, anger and personal fallout the parents of the two victims still live with a full six-years after the loss of their beloved children. All four want this man executed and the film gives them every opportunity they deserve to make intelligent, compassionate, and logical arguments for why capital punishment is just and necessary. This isn’t about bloodlust. This is about justice and knowing that the man who punched a permanent hole in their lives, a hole that will never heal, is no longer allowed to enjoy what he ruthlessly took from others — life. These decent, everyday people have also thought well beyond the notion of an eye for an eye. When Robbins allows Clyde Percy (R. Lee Ermey, in a small but memorable role), the father of the murdered girl, to make the irrefutable argument that giving a death row inmate life in prison puts other inmates and prison guards at risk, you know this isn’t Hollywood’s typical shallow, one-sided approach to the issue du jour. (more…)

In case you missed it, August was “National Breastfeeding Month.” I find it incredible that so many celebrity moms banded together to tell women how to raise their babies and no one really took notice.  We should be thankful that celebrities are out there willing to tell us that it is okay to breastfeed.  If we ignore them, they might stop telling us who to vote for or even worse, how many sheets of toilet paper we should use!  Back to reality.  Did they think that millions of American women would not perform one of the most natural acts in the herstory of womynkind until the girl from that Doritos commercial says it’s okay to whip ‘em out?   

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According to this latest PSA from TheBump.com, breastfeeding could save the US government some ridiculous amount of money each year in healthcare costs. First of all, no one can save the government money because the government doesn’t know how to save money. I’m curious: I wonder how much money the government will save if everyone stopped smoking. 

Gisele Bundechen, the Brazilian civil rights hero, I mean supermodel, recently pronounced “I think there should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.” And what happens if we don’t Gisele? Do we get thrown in a Nipple Nazi lactation prison? 

Sure, breastfeeding is one of the most primitive and natural things a woman can do, similar to giving birth or going to the bathroom. But what happens to women who choose not to or can’t breastfeed? Are they to be considered as less of a mother?  Why do celebrities want to make women who can’t or choose not to breastfeed feel like they are incomplete mothers?  (more…)

So, we’re just 103 days away from a special date in our nation’s history.

Yes, on December 23, 2010, we will mark the first anniversary of the break up between Susan Sarandon and her beau of 23 years, Tim Robbins.

This is how Ms. Sarandon assessed the split, in New York magazine’s latest issue….

 ”The nation mourned.

“I had a lot of people who came up to me and were not upset as I was, but were definitely upset.

“I did feel a sense of responsibility because I knew that people had a certain idea of how I was and who we were.”

Yes, the nation mourned, indeed. It was so devastating, that I can imagine all of us remembering exactly where we were…when we first heard the news.

I was at the pharmacy getting a prescription refilled. I remember… I was so stressed out: the generic brand was cheaper, but would it stop recurrences? (more…)

Perhaps no other actor in the modern era has been able to slip into the skin of morally conflicted characters as well as Michael Douglas. Granted, he was kicking around Hollywood for nearly 20 years before his back-to-back breakthrough to mega-stardom in 1987 with “Fatal Attraction” and “Wall Street,” but he’s never looked back – nearly always portraying characters with real conflicts in dilemmas that spoke to the hottest issues of the day in films like “Falling Down,” “War of the Roses” and “Disclosure.”

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But the past decade has been unkind to Douglas at the box office, as he’s appeared in a string of ambitious yet arty films that have barely seen release, while being criminally ignored for an Oscar on 2000’s superb and highly underrated film “Wonder Boys.” This fall could see a big turnaround for him when the sequel to “Wall Street” comes out, with Douglas reprising his Oscar-winning turn as ruthless financial trader Gordon Gekko in a film that’s already caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival.

In the meantime, catch him while you can in the terrific new character-based dramedy “Solitary Man,” in which Douglas plays a downtrodden car salesman named Ben Kalmen, who’s turning 60 while his world is tumbling down around him. He had been ethically upright and successful in his business and his marriage until a doctor warned him six years ago that his heart might have serious problems. (more…)

Several days ago, I had the opportunity to attend an advance screening of the HBO film “You Don’t Know Jack” about the life of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. The television movie has a strong cast including Academy Award winners Al Pacino and Susan Sarandon and is directed by Academy Award winner Barry Levinson. Despite the cast and crew, the movie often fails to bring insight into the life of the controversial doctor who became well-known for helping patients kill themselves.

The movie, which premieres this Saturday on HBO, focuses on Dr. Kevorkian’s work helping sick patients end their lives. It begins around the time that Dr. Kevorkian began actively assisting patients in their attempts to die. As the movie progresses, the doctor receives a great deal of publicity for his methods as he continues working with new patients. The film explores the methods that Dr. Kevorkian used and it also focuses on the types of patients that Dr. Kevorkian did and did not assist in bringing their lives to a close. (more…)

We have all heard of Sean Penn’s most recent outbreak of insanity when he suggested that the critics of his efforts in Haiti “die screaming of rectal cancer.”  Of course his whole life has been filled with controversy.  But when he opens his mouth some of the most nasty, ill informed, un-patriotic trash spews out.

Of President Bush on the Iraq war he stated: “I am more patriotic than this president, who I consider a traitor of human and American principles.”

The Cambridge dictionary online defines “patriotic” as “showing love for your country and being proud of it.”

I don’t believe patriotism equates to calling ones President “a traitor of human and American principles.”  It is not up to Sean Penn or any of his Hollywood friends like Susan Sarandon, Charlie Sheen, and Tim Robbins to decide our President is a traitor.  Our system of government has a method to identify traitorous Presidents.  Over the course of President Bush’s eight years in office he was never identified as a traitor.  So how much truth is in Penn’s allegations? (more…)

The real fun of the Oscars isn’t the cut-throat competition for the little gold naked man but guessing who will make the biggest idiot of himself. 

The Academy Awards show has a fine tradition of pampered celebrities popping off with something stupid when they hit the stage.  It must be something about TV cameras and the opportunity to make damn fools of themselves before tens of millions of people around the world that the Hollywoodoids find irresistible.  Notice how you never hear any fallout from the “technical awards” ceremony?  You know, the non televised ceremony recognizing the boring technological stuff that actually makes movies possible that is usually held at the Beverly Hills Elks Lodge with hosts Steve Guttenberg, Charo and/or one of the lesser Sweathogs.

Some of the past magic moments are legendary.  Remember back in 1993, when Tim Robbins and his then-gal pal, tranny vomit insanity enthusiast Susan Sarandon, harangued the crowd about the detention of Haitian refugees?  Of course, right after that these stars led the way by opening up the grounds of their mansion to these huddled Haitian masses.

Roberto Benigni engaged in memorably tiresome antics after winning “Best Foreign Language Film of 1997” for the Worst Film of All Time, the insanely appalling Life Is Beautiful.  Life has certainly aged well, and Benigni’s shtick has only gotten fresher, contributing to the runaway freight train of success that his career has become since then. (more…)

According to James Hirsen of Examiner.com, Susan Sarandon had an odd night recently:

Sarandon attended the third anniversary of The Box in New York’s Lower East Side.  A transsexual cabaret performer named Rose Wood engaged in projectile vomiting on stage and hit Sarandon with it. Standing nearby were Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber. According to Wood it was not intended as an affront to the actress and she didn’t take it that way. “Apparently [Sarandon] got a big kick out of it. She squealed with surprise and loved it when several handsome gentlemen wiped it off of her. She had a ball! I saw her assistant downstairs afterward, and he was moved by it! She was in great spirits,” Wood told the New York Press. 

Nothing says fun like vomit.  (more…)

So here’s a fun quiz!

What do celebrities like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Benecio Del Toro, Danny Glover, Naomi Campbell and Oliver Stone all have in common?

Was it sex with Punxsutawney Phil?

No, but you’re close.

All of these stars have had their pictures taken and/or partied with Hugo Chavez: their happy faces cheek to mottled cheek with the latest trend in socialist splendor.

He is after all, proof that it can happen! The third way! A new Castro! An anti-capitalist David, taking down that Yankee Goliath!

Being around him, means you’re more than just an overpaid movie star, you’re an overpaid movie star who matters. (more…)

“My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name, Susie. I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973.”

After a limited theatrical run for what is likely to be a fruitless search for year-end award affection, director/co-writer Peter Jackson’s “Lovely Bones” finally goes wide in a couple thousand movie palaces today to in order to prove to every American that winning an Academy Award can turn an otherwise talented director into the very definition of tone deaf and self-indulgent.

Jackson’s film is a serious one dealing with big themes involving child murder and grief and justice and the afterlife. But incredibly, dropped right in the middle of all this harrowing drama, is a flat-out comedy montage straight out of a Chris Columbus movie that has Susan Sarandon’s grandmother-character fumbling and stumbling about like Uncle Buck with the household chores, including — yes! — an out-of-control washing machine. Better yet, it’s all set to a pop song.

Maybe the projectionist was having a laugh with a deleted scene from “Mr. Woodcock.” Regardless, it was the equivalent of a cinematic silver bullet. The movie never recovered. (more…)

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Our newest film in this series, 1931’s The Champ, marks the first time we begin our study not with a director but with a writer. Not to say that the director didn’t have a great deal to do with the success of the film — he most certainly did, and (as the title of this post hints) we will review that contribution in good time. But in the case of The Champ, it was the writer who was primarily responsible for the rich familial tone and heart-rending melodrama for which this touching little film (only 86 minutes) is best known and remembered.

The Champ is that rare film that features a pair of strong male leads doing masculine things in a masculine universe, but with nuanced and delicate characterizations that delve far deeper than the usual sports movie, tearing at the raw edges of what it means to be a parent in an imperfect world, to live through the tragedy of a broken family, and to suffer the premature loss of childhood innocence. On the surface, these subjects would seem ill at home in one of the most famous boxing movies of all time. But The Champ is not based on a true story, or cribbed from a famous novel — it was wholly conceived in the mind of the screenwriter. And not just any screenwriter, but the most prolific (and arguably one of the greatest) in Hollywood history. Who was he, you ask?

Well, first of all, he was a she. (more…)