Yet despite the Daily Star’s perversely hopeful tone, there was no violent reaction in the UK from said fanatics, nor was there one in the United States after the episode originally aired here last Thanksgiving weekend (in a grimly ironic twist, the same weekend as the devastating mass murder and mayhem committed in Mumbai by a band of – wait for it – Muslim fanatics, or as the culturally sensitive media preferred to call them at the time, “gunmen”). So why no Muslim fury over The Simpsons?

In the episode “Mypods and Broomsticks,” Homer Simpson believes a local Muslim couple are terrorists planning to blow up the Springfield Mall. It turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a misunderstanding; no plot is being hatched after all. As a spokesman for London’s Sky1 reassuringly sums up, “At the end of the show, all the issues are resolved and Homer realizes the error of his ways.” In other words, Homer was wrong to suspect Muslims – despite seeing them unload dynamite in their garage, despite hearing them discuss blowing up buildings, despite finding the schematics of the targeted local mall on their computer, and despite the fact that, in the real world, Muslim fanatics do have an impressive track record of blowing up innocent civilians.

The moral of the toon: coming forward to protect your community from a possible terrorist attack by Muslims, even with an abundance of probable cause, marks you as a buffoonish bigot. So, contrary to the Daily Star’s claim, the episode did not poke fun at Islam, but at Homer. Simpsons creator Matt Groening explained to Sky1: “Cartoons deal in stereotypes. We try to be sensitive.” Well, sensitive to the murderous rage of Islamists, anyway, since the episode ridicules the stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists, while stereotyping Homer as an Islamophobic, paranoid, ignorant American.

Thus CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, ever-ready with a quick denunciation of any criticism of Islam or any association of it with terrorism, instead whipped out a statement approving of the episode’s plotline and congratulating the show’s creators “for tackling the disturbing phenomenon of Islamophobia.” If I were CAIR, I’d be much more concerned about tackling the disturbing phenomenon of violent jihad committed by fanatics who have supposedly hijacked my religion (then again, CAIR is currently tackling revelations that it is a Muslim Brotherhood front group committed to replacing American democracy with Sharia and theocracy). What if Homer Simpson had been right, and the Muslim couple intended to murder and maim hundreds at the local mall? I guess CAIR would rather that he keep quiet and stifle his Islamophobia than act on reasonable suspicion, report the possible bombing to the authorities, and save countless lives.

Najibullah Zazi

Admittedly, those are cartoon characters in the service of comedy writers whose aim is to give the topic a light treatment; but they nonetheless reinforce the default PC position that only stupid bigots draw a connection between Islam and terrorism. In the real world, meanwhile, Osama bin Laden and his ilk are busy making that connection themselves, and political correctness won’t save you from them.

“Mark, this is all very fascinating,” I hear you say,“but doesn’t Obama’s election mean that America is now safer and more ‘well-liked’?” (A concept I previously bashed here) “Won’t our Islamist enemies respond more peacefully and diplomatically to his flaccid ‘open hand’ policy and his many cringe-worthy expressions of pro-Islam sycophancy?” First of all, no less an authority than bin Laden himself has made it clear that he considers Obama no different from his predecessor. Second, since Obama has taken office, over 40 American-born Muslims or converts have been arrested for plotting terrorist attacks here and abroad, including Najibullah Zazi, a Denver-based Muslim who apparently is connected to al Qaeda and at the center of what could have been a catastrophic terrorist plot; Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, for attempting to car-bomb a Dallas office tower; and Muslim convert Michael C. Finton, who planned to blow up a federal building in Springfield (Illinois, not the one in The Simpsons). Even as I write this, Tarek Mehanna and cohorts, apparently desirous “to participate in Islamist holy war,” were arrested in Massachusetts for plotting to attack a mall in the U.S. Are all Muslims terrorists? Of course not; indeed, the fundamentalists have no qualms about targeting Muslims who aren’t onboard with the notion of embracing Sharia and a worldwide Caliphate. But make no mistake, there are untold numbers of Islamists here in America, and many of them want to kill you.

What can you do about it? Join a great activist organization like Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! for America, buy The Citizen Soldier Handbook: 101 Ways for Every American to Fight Terrorism by my friend Michael Mandaville and put his action items to work, or simply keep your eyes open and trust your instincts. The LAPD recently rolled out a community awareness program called iWATCH, a neighborhood watch service designed to nip terrorist plots in the bud by providing citizens with a hotline to report suspicious activity. Seems a little long in coming - nearly ten years after an alert customs officer arrested Ahmed Ressam at the Canadian border and foiled the “millennium LAX plot” in late December, 1999 - but better late than never. Skeptical, pseudonymous police officer “Jack Dunphy,” pointing out that iWATCH bluntly warns against ethnic profiling, believes the program will be hamstrung by political correctness. He may be right; time will tell. In any case, if only programs of this sort were promoted as frequently on television as Obama’s volunteerism propaganda (which includes nothing about combating Islamic terrorism), Americans would become more conscious of a local role they can play in the war-formerly-known-as-the-war-on-terror.

“The price of freedom,” said Thomas Jefferson, “is eternal vigilance.” Not willful blindness, not political correctness, not naive complacency, but vigilance. While the current administration has its hands full demonizing its critics, winning the praise of dictators worldwide, and embracing anti-American radicals and Sharia supporters, radical Islam continues to wage war against us on our own soil. It’s up to each one of us ordinary Americans, us Citizen Soldiers, to throw off the yoke of political correctness, disregard trumped-up accusations of Islamophobia or racism, and help law enforcement protect our communities and our country from the enemy among us.

Tonight Fox will run the series finale of King of the Hill, the saga of Hank and his gang of associates living in their exurb paradise of Arlen, Texas.  King has a helluva a pedigree.  It was created by fellow UC San Diego grad Mike Judge, who also developed the criminally under-appreciated Beavis and Butt-Head.  The co-creator was Greg Daniels, who previously worked on The Simpsons  and wrote the classic Lisa’s Wedding episode.  Together, they made King the most subversive comedy on television.

Hank is the archetypal anti-free spirit, an assistant manager at a local company selling “propane and propane accessories” with a wife, Peggy, who thinks she speaks fluent es-pan-nole, and a son, Bobby, who looks like a bag of potatoes with two feet and a head.  Hank loves his quiet life, and the mere idea that someone might consider him “cool” would terrify him – Hank likes routine, calm and the occasional Alamo beer.   And he’s perhaps the fussiest heterosexual character in television history – about his lawn, about his tools, about his abnormally narrow urethra.

But the true glory of Hank is his eternal conflict with those who somehow feel morally empowered to stick their noses into his life.  All Hank wants is to be left alone, but a never-ending stream of know-it-all petty fascist bureaucrats, nanny-state meddlers and smarmy government twerps with more authority than common sense are determined to get in his face.  Hank, you see, doesn’t understand his immense need to be changed and modified and improved by the forces of enlightenment. 

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The beauty of King is that while it pokes fun at Hank’s myriad foibles, it understands the creepy nature of those who dedicate their lives to interfering in the lives of others, always claiming the moral high ground yet inevitably maximizing their own personal power and advantage.  From snooty school guidance counselors to pompous college professors to lazy municipal clerks, Hank is constantly beset by nimrods trying to force him to conform to their personal vision of how he should be.  He usually responds as any good American would – with an exasperated threat to “kick your ass.”  There were probably more than a few Hank Hills at Lexington and Concord.

Hank also embodies a kind of glorious naïveté, the shameless love and admiration for our country and its principles that would make a goateed hipster snigger.  Hank is the type of guy who would show up at a town hall meeting about health care and ask where the Constitution says the federal government has any business at all getting involved with him and his doctor.  The politician would roll his eyes – what kind of hick thinks the fact that the Constitution doesn’t empower the feds to take over health care is an argument against doing so?  You know, kind of like in real life.

The beauty of King is that it made no apologies for the Hanks of the world.  Liberals with a wide range of life experience living on the coast tend to think of those parts of America that stretch between Manhattan and Manhattan Beach as a sinister breeding ground of banjo-strumming inbreds aching to drag their terrified meterosexual victims off to a revival meeting.  Not quite – if you really want to take a risk, hang with a liberal icon.  Hank Hill wouldn’t have left a passenger in his truck at the bottom of a pond – but he wouldn’t have been heading to the beach with a gal pal for a personal pork barrel project in the first place.  If your daughter’s car broke down on the side of the road at night, you’d pray for one of the Hank Hills of this country to be the one to pull up beside her.

While King of the Hill will now be reside in syndication, Judge is continuing his campaign of subversion with the new film Extract and – assuming it gets revived on a new network – the conservative-friendly series The Goode Family, while Greg Daniels continues to work on the American version of The Office.  King never got the kind of street credit that the more surreal The Simpsons received.  A show where the husband was usually the wisest guy in the family and where traditional values seem to lead to happiness just doesn’t cut it with the hip crowd. 

King was never cool, which was kind of the point.  It had to get by on doing its job, which was being funny.  “Doing its job” – that kind of sums up Hank Hill, and the rest of the folks like him who make this country work.

You’ve probably experienced the Basterds publicity blitz.  Brad Pitt looks like he stepped out of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. Folks I know who have been around him say he really is a pleasant and laid-back guy, and these are hardly the characteristics of a beady-eyed killer.  Creepy Eli Roth, taking some time off from directing his degenerate torture movies, is just a leering clown – he looks like he should be squatting in the back of his Ford panel van offering Tootsie Rolls to passing tweens.  And B.J. Novak?  The guy is a hilarious writer and is really funny in The Office , but I’m not buying this cat as the scourge of the Third Reich.

In contrast, Lee Marvin’s tough guy legacy lives on despite the fact that his body rests with thousands of other heroes in Arlington National Cemetery. He earned that right when he was wounded fighting the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific as a Marine private. His Purple Heart is 100% USDA certified proof positive of his prime badassary. Who is the Hollywood tough guy of today who can dare step up to the Lee Marvin plate and take a swing?

Nobody.

Marvin got discharged from the Corps, came home and started doing crummy odd jobs to support himself – his willingness to work instead of freeloading off of others is itself an anachronism in today’s entitlement culture. He found acting and appeared in various supporting roles until he starred in a hit television series (M Squad) and moved on to bigger roles. He even won an Oscar for Cat Ballou.  Serving his country, working hard, honing his craft and winning the recognition of his peers – Lee Marvin’s career had a lot in common with that of fellow all-American badass Ernest Borgnine.   

How tough was the on-screen Marvin? He brawled with the Duke in Donovan’s Reef and stalked Chuck Bronson as a Mountie (!) in Death Hunt. His classic performance as the grizzled First Infantry Division squad leader in The Big Red One has inspired legions of American sergeants.

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Check him out in 1967’s Point Blank. As Walker, a single-minded human tsunami of violence, he smashes through the psychedelic Sixties’ Summer of Love with his .357 and mantra of “I want my money!” This flick works for me on several levels. As a soldier, I respect his character’s fearsome firepower choices; as an attorney, I find his character’s single-minded focus on getting paid inspiring.

Remade in 1999 as the tepid Payback, Point Blank was harder-core than any of the watered-down, focus-tested, suit-neutered, glorified filmstrips that limp out of the studios today and pretend to be edgy.  

For sheer cinematic awesomeness, his performance in The Dirty Dozen as Major Reisman, leader of the cutthroat band of condemned convicts on a mission to solve the Nazi overpopulation crisis, is never going to be matched. It’s actually unfair to even use it as a standard against which to measure subsequent action films. In the teachable moment regarding action movies that accompanies the release of The Inglorious Basterds, The Dirty Dozen would be Sgt. Crowley’s Full Moon beer while Little Quentin’s movie would be the President’s Bud Light.

Marvin was totally fearless, including when he should have been afraid. He did a terrifying musical, Paint Your Wagon, and even had something of a hit song – Wanderin’ Star. Sadly, that little ditty sounds like a duet between Tom Waits and a drunken leaf blower, but it did lead to Marvin being paid homage to by The Simpsons – another great honor he shares with Ernest Borgnine. 

In his personal life, his shacking up with his girlfriend led to a lawsuit that led to the creation of the legal concept of “palimony,” empowering a new generation of golddiggers. And politically, according to the always accurate Wikipedia, he was a liberal Democrat – hey, nobody’s perfect. But if you get shot fighting for this country, dude, for all I care you can vote for a transsexual Marxist cocker spaniel that buys into global warming.

Hollywood needs to look harder for its tough guys because the new ones just can’t cut it. All the fake blood and stylized mayhem in the world are no substitute for the hard edge of real life experience that WWII vets like Lee Marvin and Jimmy Stewart – I should say, Brigadier General James Stewart – brought to their roles.  Today, the critics’ favorite director sends boy toys, torture pornographers and comedians to battle the SS. Yawn.

If Tarantino really wanted to kill Nazis, he could just bore them to death with his endless, pseudo-academic dissertations on so-bad-they-are-just-plain-bad B-movies. Too bad Eisenhower didn’t have a videotape of QT sounding off at Cannes about his personal artistic vision to use to soften up Omaha Beach. But fortunately for us, he had men like Lee Marvin.

Look at his life. Borgnine was born to Italian immigrant parents in 1917, spent 10 years in the Navy, including all of World War II, then bummed around as a second string character actor for another decade before snagging an Oscar in his first major role. The closest thing to life experience one of today’s stars has is a three week stint at $5,000-a-day rehab resort getting seaweed facials and talking about how his daddy never told him he loved him during group therapy while secretly gobbling the vicodins he smuggled in inside the liner of his Louis Vuitton cosmetics case.

You want retro cool? Forget posers like George Clooney and his pathetic attempts to relive the Old School dream with his Ocean movies, skinny ties and succession of cocktail waitress girlfriends. Ernest Borgnine is a 33rd Scottish Rite Mason, was in From Here to Eternity with Frank Sinatra, and was married to Ethel Merman. He married Ethel Merman! Try and top that for retro cool, George. Borgnine not only founded the Old School but is a Professor Emeritus.

What are his politics? Who knows? While his most recent political contribution was to George W. Bush in 2004, Borgnine comes from a time when actors concentrated on acting. He is very active in supporting Navy veterans, but you won’t hear him spouting off about his specific views. He’s a generic patriot – there’s probably a yellow ribbon on the back of his Caddy (you just know he drives a Cadillac) and anyone he sees messing with the flag can probably expect to feel one of those meaty Borgnine paws hard across his pie hole.

But can he act? Hell yes. There is that aforementioned Academy Award for 1955’s Marty. Marty is the heartbreaking story of a homely 30-ish meat cutter and his delicate romance with a plain-Jane schoolteacher. Borgnine is fearless as Marty, lashing out at his own looks and his inability to connect with women in a way no modern star ever could or would. It is a brave performance in a way you simply do not see today, and a performance that is a credit to both Borgnine’s talent and lack of ego.

Marty is about real people and real love, but if it were remade today – and lacking either vampires or a graphic novel pedigree it never would be – you can just imagine the Hollywood weasels’ notes:

Instead of this lonely butcher thing, which is a downer, how about making Marty a swinging TV reporter looking for The One?…And can we rename him Gavin? And let’s make the girl a model – is Kate Hudson busy? We’ll need a non-threatening gay friend for her. And let’s get Gerard Butler as Marty, I mean Gavin. Awesome. I think these changes are really going to test well.

Borgnine’s ten minute supporting role as the general who gives Lee Marvin his suicide mission at the beginning of The Dirty Dozen is like a master’s class in acting. In just a few minutes, he shifts from deadly serious to comic and back while holding his own against arguably the toughest guy ever on screen. Watch his face and his expressions and reactions, then compare his technique to that of today’s actors, whose “performances” seem to consist largely of them standing there staring vacuously and radiating their unnatural beauty. No contest.

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Ernest Borgnine has been in classic Westerns like The Wild Bunch and Bad Day at Black Rock, got capsized in the original Poseidon Adventure and even showed up on SpongeBob SquarePants. Sometimes he was a maybe bit too versatile – this Italian-American portrayed “Ragnar” in The Vikings. Still, he epitomizes the concept of the working actor, with roles ranging from big budget films to parts in what only one grading on a generous curve would label as B movies. He’s had several TV series and a ton of guest shots, including a part in the finale of ER and a memorable appearance in a classic episode of The Simpsons. And if you check out his IMDB site, you’ll find over 200 entries and see that he has three more movies coming out. The dude is 92!

You can have the soulless, polished Berluti loafers that are the stars of today – I’ll take the scuffed character of the old bowling shoes reeking of spilled Budweiser and the feet of a hundred guys with names like Sal and Bob that is Ernest Borgnine.