The Google logo has been blacked out today. Wikipedia, reddit, Mozilla and Twitpic are all blocking access to content.  Even Star Trek icon George Takei has blocked his site.  The moves are displays of cyber-protest against the heavy-handed and ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

From a political and public relations standpoint, this has already been a complete and utter failure for Hollywood and their formerly formidable lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America. Former Sen. Chris Dodd became the new CEO of the MPAA after he realized he would never be re-elected in his home state of Connecticut due to his personal scandals with Countrywide Mortgage and his involvement in the mortgage collapse at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So naturally, Hollywood hired the failed Senator as their man in Washington. Dodd has been the chief architect of SOPA, which was written with about as much subtlety and constitutional protocol as his equally disastrous Dodd-Frank banking law.

The merits of SOPA and the overall issue of online piracy is a worthy topic, and it can be argued that the federal government should have some hand in policing and enforcing piracy on behalf of private industries and artists who rely on royalties as a major part of their profit structure. These details can and should be debated here and in Washington DC. What is striking about today’s Internet blackout and the over-the-top reaction to it from Dodd is that this arrogant, befuddled and inept former Senator has finally figured out a way to unite the left and the right to focus their passion against a common enemy:  Hollywood.  (more…)

I push the squeaky metal glass door open to the store known as Blockbuster. I’m here to return one B-movie for another one to feed my copious addiction to way-too-cool-for-its-own-good genre fiction.

I drop the movie off and get a half-assed “hello” from one of the cashiers. I take one look around and the place is dead. I can’t even remember what I came here for. I start browsing. All I can hear is the static of the old TVs playing what is probably “Schindler’s List,” but the poor quality of the sets make it look like an Ed Wood movie and the cashiers talking about what level they are in “Skyrim.” I grab my movie and head to the counter.

The college-age, bearded cashier scans my movie without much thought. Clearly, he probably wants to be somewhere else … and maybe I do, too. He’s nice enough, and I even hear the other cashier explain the plot of the movie “Super 8″ to a customer over the phone which is impressive in this day and age of the too-ironic-to-be-good-at my-minimum-wage-job attitude. I leave the store to hop in my gas-guzzling truck to head home to the cool tune of about $10 in gas ( I live two miles away – an over exaggeration, but not by much, sadly).

If I still had Netflix, my movie viewing night would have gone a little something like this: I pop open my laptop, pick the genre I want and start watching whatever I want and, if I get bored, I just stop the movie and start a new one. Hmm. Easy as pie. And we know how we all love pie! Because we are American! Hoo-ah (except meat pie — is that even real!?).

Considering you probably watch your movies through Netflix and your movie watching life is just as easy, if not more easy than what I just wrote, you’re probably laughing at my one of many Blockbuster experiences and wondering why the hell I don’t just wake up … oh, but I have. It’s time to wake you up, sirs and ma’ams.

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It’s not hard to suss out where playwright Richard Montoya stands on the immigration issue.

His 2010 play ‘American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose’ features a Mexican man cramming for his U.S. citizenship test who dreams of how immigrants have been mistreated over the years.

But Montoya isn’t letting Mexicans – or illegal immigrants – off the hook through his art.

“’American Night’ doesn’t cheerlead for illegal immigration. It’s a problem. I’m not supporting open immigration,” says Montoya, whose celebrated play details how Mexicans often live under the thumb of powerful drug cartels.

Montoya, an actor/playwright and founding member of the satirical comedy trio Culture Clash, includes several Tea Party characters in ‘Night’ during a faux Town Hall meeting. The situation brims with humor, but he thinks the vitriol on both sides of the immigration debate is no laughing matter.

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The New York Times piece Lee refers to here is the most appalling piece of race-baiting I’ve read in years. You can read my write-up about it at Big Journalism. The reaction the Times was looking for is exactly this kind of thing from Spike Lee. They want high-profile, left-wing black Americans to take after Herman Cain. They want to toxify him as a sell-out in order to hurt his standing among black voters. The Times also wants to make damn sure Tea Party Republicans get no credit for embracing a black man. That would kill a cherished narrative the corrupt MSM has spent two years creating about us being racist.

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A couple of weeks ago, we brought your attention to anti-Tea Party remarks made by Morgan Freeman and a subsequent invite to attend an actual Tea Party from African-American organizer Ali Akbar.  Now this, via Entertainment Weekly:

Sean Penn may have a bigger foe than Mr. Hand in the Tea Party, but, still, a rep for the conservative movement is still willing to sit down and share a pizza (or, let’s face it, more likely tea) with the man who was Jeff Spicoli. After the actor appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight Friday and called the Tea Party the “Get the N-Word Out of the White House Party,” the co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots released a statement to EW, inviting Penn to meet with members of the movement.

Said Mark Meckler: “I’m fairly certain that Sean Penn has never been to a tea party or met anyone who belongs to a local tea party. I’d be happy to sit down and speak with him if he’s ever interested in really speaking with one of us and learning what we are about instead of just slandering millions of his fellow American citizens with racist hatred. This kind of rhetoric, while protected by the First Amendment, has no place in reasonable discourse in America. Then again, no one has ever accused Sean Penn of ‘reasonable discourse.’” (more…)

Via Fox Nation:

“Samuel L. Jackson, I guess, disregards the 16.7 percent unemployment rate in the black community, a 20 percent unemployment rate for black adult males and a 45-46 percent unemployment for black teenagers,” the Florida Republican said. “I think the racism that he is talking about is coming out of the White House and this administration.”

West warned Jackson against using the tea party movement as a “scapegoat,” insisting that conservatives are trying to fix the economy and turn around the unemployment numbers in the black community.

The perfect example? Herman Cain.

West said the Republican presidential candidate “negates” the recent comments by Jackson and Freeman.

“I think that what you’re seeing with Herman Cain is someone that is against the tide. He is not a career politician, he is coming forth with common sense solutions with what is happening in our country,” he said.

More at Politico.

Samuel L. Jackson is the latest actor of color to accuse the Tea Party of racism.

Late last month, Oscar winner Morgan Freeman blamed racism on the Republican party’s eagerness to see President Barack Obama defeated.

This week, Jackson told a reporter from New York Magazine (after said reporter used the scurrilous Washington Post story on Rick Perry’s so-called racist rock) that the reason Tea Partiers want Obama out because of his skin color, not his policies.

“The division of the country is not about the government having too much power. I think everything right now is geared toward getting that guy out of office, whatever that means,” he said, echoing Freeman. “It’s not politics. It is not economics. It all boils down to pretty much to race. It is a shame.”

Their collective proof is so poorly constructed even a half-asleep Chris Matthews could swat it aside without eyeballing a teleprompter.

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Is Morgan Freeman afraid to challenge his bigoted preconceptions or will he accept a gracious invitation from a fan, national tea party organizer Ali A. Akkbar?

Via Tea Party Brew:

Dear Mr. Freeman,

My name is Ali Akbar. I’m a 26 year-old African-American small business owner and a tea party activist. I’m not writing to rake you over the coals in the way that many conservatives have done in the last 48 hours. Heck, I wrote a passionate open-letter refuting many of your claims already, but this is not that. This is an honest and standing invitation. I do believe that you are wrong in what you said about the tea party, but I would rather prove it to you than castigate you for your comments.

I also understand that your reflexive comments came from experience. You grew up in a different America than the one that I was blessed to be born into. We both grew up in the south, but I never saw ‘White Only’ signs. I’ve been called a name or two in my three decades, but racism has always been the exception in my life, not the rule, as it probably was in your youth. I understand your suspicion of conservative political movements. It is rooted in pain and fear and memory, and though I never saw the horrors of segregation that you did, we share that cultural heritage.

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Even Dancing is not safe from left-wing attacks on Tea Partiers, sadly. Last night on the venerable dance show, fashion makeover maven Carson Kressley thought it would be a hoot to make fun of over half the voters in America with an attack on how he thinks Tea Party activists smell.

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On last night’s Dancing With The Stars, funny guy Kressley hit the screen wearing a gorilla mask. Taking it off he snarked, “It still smells like a Tea Party.”

So, what are we to make of this nonsense? Is Kressley saying that Tea Party activists smell like gorillas?

Are we supposed to be laughing at that, now?

So, what do Democrats smell like? Maybe Europeans? How about reds?

I wonder what dance partner Anna Trebunskaya, who was born in Russia, thinks about that? I wonder how ABC will take attacking so much of its audience?

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So here we are ten months after the “shellacking” that took place during the November 2010 elections, thanks in large part to the TEA Party movement, and now the left-wing, State-run, “lamestream media” would have you believe the TEA Party is fizzling out – asserting the power of the conservative movement is waning.

Don’t they wish.

On October 8, from 2-4PM, several 9/12, TEA Party, and conservative/patriot organizations will unite in an “unprecedented” show of support for one of this country’s great American companies, Gibson Guitars at a “We Stand With Gibson” rally at the Scoreboard Bar & Grill parking lot in Nashville, TN.

YouTube We Stand With Gibson Rally Promo (Keep Your Hands Off Our Wood)

For those who don’t tune in to Fox News Channel, read conservative blogs, or listen to conservative talk radio, chances are you are not even aware of what happened to Gibson Guitars last month when Federal agents raided their offices and factories in Nashville and Memphis, semi-automatic weapons drawn, clearing out all employees and confiscating guitars, supplies, files, computers, etc.

What was their alleged crime, you ask?  Using “illegal” wood in their products.   Isn’t it odd how nobody has even been indicted on any charges?

As I discussed in my last BigDawg spotlight piece on fellow BigDawg’er, Nathan Picard, seems the only real “crime” here is Gibson’s CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, is a Republican donor.  The feds have basically told Mr. Juszkiewicz that all of this “would go away” if they outsource their jobs to Madagascar.  Say what?

Meanwhile, POTUS is making the rounds touting his so-called “jobs bill”…demanding Congress “pass this bill” (90 times in 5 speeches)…. But do keep sending those jobs overseas.

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Herman Cain wins a GOP straw poll by a wiiiiiide margin the day after actor Morgan Freeman describes the Tea Party as racist.

No doubt the corrupt MSM is just as confused.

We don’t dislike Obama because of the color of his skin, we dislike Obama because he’s utterly failed as president — unless his goal was to addict more people to the federal government, spend us into oblivion, and tank the economy … again.

That’s the concept those screaming ”racism” can’t get their mind around. It’s a psychological thing. Morgan Freeman and those who populate the corrupt media agree with and approve of what Obama is doing to this country. And so any rejection of Obama they take as a personal rejection. Given a choice between coming to terms with their own failed ideology and lashing out childishly with name calling, they will always choose the latter.

The Tea Party rejection has to be especially galling because it’s a grassroots, citizen-driven revolution. The People are rising up against everything Morgan Freeman holds dear.

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As a satellite barrels towards Earth this week with impending doom, the references to Northern Exposure are many. I, of course, remember it well. Maggie, my character on Northern Exposure, was giving her boyfriend, Rick, a pilot’s examination. He made a mistake so she did not give him a passing grade. He was distraught and thus ventured to the top of a mountain to meditate. While in this posture, he was hit by a random, falling satellite and killed. Many of Maggie’s boyfriends died untimely deaths and this was a blow, in itself, to Maggie. Fleishman was undaunted, and, daring death, danced with Maggie at the end of the episode. Great writing. Great cast. Great fun. Maggie was a truly unique character; one unmatched then and now.

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I was walking through Lowe’s yesterday to buy a hammer and I saw a tool kit belt that wraps around the waist. I laughed fondly as I remembered that during rehearsals, to “get into character,” I wore one of those tool belts filled with tools. Maggie could fix anything: planes, toilets, dinner – with meat hunted by her own hand.

During the filming and post-production of that episode I was unhappy with the producers, Josh Brand and John Falsey. I had to re-record the dialogue for the scene where Rick’s coffin was revealed and they continuously cut away from my face. The satellite had fused to Rick’s body, so the coffin had pieces of metal coming out of it. I wanted to show some emotion revealing that Maggie was sad that Rick had died. Thus, I had a few tears, conjured by “method acting.” (My favorite actors were all “method actors” – Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Jessica Lange, even Marilyn Monroe.) John and Josh were desperately trying to keep the show in the Monday night “comedy” line-up so my performance had to be restructured via sound booths and editing rooms to be “funny.” Of course, I believed that “the self same well that holds our laughter also holds our tears,” to loosely quote Khalil Gibran but.. so goes the tango and artistry of teamwork.

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“It is a racist thing.”

Hollywood never fails to disappoint:

Sorry Morgan, Obama’s a failure and a loser and the color of his skin has nothing to do with that. And whenever you’re ready to reconcile Tea Party love for Herman Cain and other non-Caucasians and your childish “racist” tantrum, we’d love to hear it.

The following article contains spoilers. You’ve been warned.

 Glee is back! Come on, guys, get excited!

Anyone?

Just me? Well ok then. I’m not afraid to admit, loudly and proudly, I totally heart Glee. I’ve been a fan of high school dramedies since Joey crawled through Dawson’s window, and when you throw musical theatre into the mix … pure entertainment, Baby!

So what if it’s a microcosm of leftist indoctrination that spoon-feeds liberal drivel into eagerly waiting mouths? What isn’t, these days? Cue my theme song, because that’s where I come in. This year I’ll be tuning into Glee and reporting back to you fabulous Big Hollywood readers the blatant misrepresentations of reality that were sung and danced into living rooms across the nation.

Get the facts! Fight the smears!

(Sorry. Couldn’t help it.)

Anyway. The season 3 opener on Tuesday was filled with blog fodder: Cheerleading Coach from Hell Sue Sylvester is running for congress, the only stable relationship continues to be the one between gay boys, and Quinn tries to ‘find herself’ by dying her hair pink and lighting a purple piano on fire with a cigarette.

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The rumor is that in this upcoming season Sue (Jane Lynch’s character) is going to run for Congress as a Tea Party candidate. If true, we can likely expect much bashing and proselytizing aimed at our children. Because there’s no place Hollywood is happier than when they find that sweet-spot to wedge themselves between parent and child.

The video below – a preview of next season — gives you a glimpse of what’s coming:

Maybe I’m wrong. Suspending taxpayer funding of the arts sounds awfully good to me, especially if it means focusing on reading and writing. Maybe the show’s finally seen the light and won’t present that “goofy” idea as, well, goofy. But then again, I’m a right-wing, gun-owning, liberty-loving, neanderthal — so what do I know?

The larger picture here is 2012. Hollywood knows Obama can’t win on his failed record and therefore you can expect Hollywood (and the MSM) to pull out all the vicious stops to make our side unelectable. The worse Obama’s poll numbers get, the uglier all of this will get. Count on it.

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Film critic Roger Moore (no right winger) in the Orlando Sentinel:

Equal measures smug and savage, Rod Lurie’s infuriating remake of Sam Peckinpah’s vengeance thriller “Straw Dogs” still packs a visceral punch. An exploitation picture built on redneck cliches and big city liberal outrage, it’s not all bad. But it is a pretty unpleasant wallow in the obvious.

Lurie, whose career has become a careen (unreleased or under-released failures) since “The Contender,” has cleverly re-set the tale, that of a mild-mannered bookish and emasculated city dweller (Dustin Hoffman in the original, James Marsden here) challenged, bullied and battered by brutish, primitive locals from England to Mississippi. …

Lurie’s resetting of the movie may seem dated to a real Southerner. But you don’t have to dig into ancient history to find the redneck thuggery suggested here. Where the original film was a commentary on the endangered state of manhood in the late 20th  century, Lurie seems to be making points about the ineffectual ways reasonable people face belligerent ignorance. It’s intellectual liberals vs. Tea Party hicks with guns. Get it?

One “improvement” stands out. Sam Peckinpah rather famously forgot to leave out the Chinese proverb that gave the original film its title. Lurie has David explain it in a moment that feels like a class recitation. It comes right after the  nightly chess lesson he gives his young/naive wife.

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Yawn. Another bitterly disappointed Obama supporter calls critics of the President “racist” — a response I’m actually starting to sympathize with.

Hear me out.

So many invested so much into Their One and now he’s not only a complete failure as a president, but he’s also on the fastrack to becoming a national joke. Supporters like Lil Wayne have nothing positive to defend him with and so they’re shattered, broken, hurt, desperate… 

This isn’t a cry of racism, it’s a cry for help from those disillusioned by the fact that the oceans did not rise.

And yet, even Lil Wayne has to admit Obama deserves criticism for his failed economy.

“You learn from what the right-wing is doing and you take something from it,” Wayne tells VIBE. “I feel like as a people the most that we can do is better ourselves and learn. Then look at yourself and ask ‘Am I the person they’re talking about or am I not?’ You have to make the most of who you are because the Republicans are never going to like us.”

Wayne added that the right-wings’ at times blatant disrespect of the oval office has more to do with Obama’s racial make-up than his policies. He admits that while he understands the criticism over the President’s handling of the economy, he says some of the talk has gone beyond politics.  “I don’t think I have to say that for everybody to know that,” Wayne says. 

The Left will never stop calling us racist, but they are running out of one thing…

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Dear Harvey,

Please send all the event details directly to Dana Loesch at dloesch@breitbart.com.

She’ll see you there!

And more directly from Dana to Harvey here.

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With his favorite child-raping fugitive out of jail, Weinstein can now turn his brave self to taking shots at the softest target in Filmdom.

A regular profile in courage:

“In 20 years of coming to the Toronto Film Festival, I’ve never released a statement for a film. But I would like to take this moment to formally invite Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to co-host with me the big premiere of Butter in Iowa in a few months from now. I know Michele will already be in Iowa for the caucus, so we can save some money on airfare and travel. I would, of course, be more than happy to fly in the other leading members of the Tea Party movement to make an entire day of it. We could take some math classes in the morning to help balance the budget, brush up on the Constitution in the afternoon, play some ping-pong, and then maybe some verbal ping-pong on gay rights and women’s rights (especially the right to choose). But at night we can all go hand-in-hand to the premiere of Butter, a fun and important film where we’ll share some popcorn and laughs. These are the kind of bipartisan effort that makes America great. I look forward to hearing from Michele, and I’m particularly looking forward to those classes on the Constitution. All my best, Harvey.”

Rep. Bachmann and Tea Party leaders should definitely take him up on on making an entire day of this.

I’m especially interested in that part of the Constitution that says it’’s okay to drug, rape and sodomize a thirteen year-old girl and flee from justice if a guy named Harvey really dug “Chinatown.”

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Odd how many Americans can agree with Christopher Hitchens on many issues, i.e. his rage at Henry Kissinger. I sympathize totally with such disgust.

The Hitchens contempt for the Tea Party, however, is the grandest dividing line, largely due to the tea Party’s fervent belief in God and its faith in Sarah Palin whom Hitchens repeatedly heaps fear and loathing on.

Hitchens, however, warns the world to not patronize Sarah Palin!

He points out that his favorite film on American Presidential politics is Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.

With an almost bottomless irony of ironies, he further adds that at one time Ronald Reagan was considered for a role but he was dismissed as “insufficiently Presidential”.

Therein lies the substance of his concerns about Sarah Palin and her Presidential Insufficiency.

It also strengthens my faith in the fact that Sarah Palin will, indeed, be America’s next Ronald Reagan and more.

The “more”, I’m certain, is what most terrifies Christopher Hitchens.

His contempt for America and anything classically American is so deep it makes him blind. He traipses out the history of the 19^th Century Pledge of Allegiance, smugly noting that the words “under God” didn’t reach the Pledge until the 1950’s. He finds it “funny” that Palin cross-referenced the Pledge of the Allegiance with the Declaration of Independence.

“God” reached the Declaration of Independence in the 18^th Century. In that profoundly obvious sense she was totally correct in saying she stands with the Founding Fathers.

A smirking history professor who is also a repeatedly self-described atheist would consider the ultimate truth of her statement irrelevant in the face of her historical liberties.

More the pedant he.

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