The artistic community is always ready to stand against censorship – and we know that because it constantly tells us so.  If you want to drape an American flag across a walkway to make a statement by letting goateed hipster art aficionados traipse across it, you’re a bold visionary.  If you want to write a novel about shooting a Republican president, you’re courageously speaking truth to power.  If you want to smear pachyderm dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary, you’re bravely facing down the forces of religious bigotry.

Hell, you not only have a right to do it, but you have a right to have it federally funded through the NEA by the very taxpayers whose collective mind you intend to blow by getting so darn real.   It’s right there in the Constitution, amid the emanations and adjacent to the penumbras.  Oh, but if you accurately depict the acts leading up to the murder of nearly 3000 Americans, you’ve got to be stopped.  After all, the artistic elite can’t let you upset the Krugman-esque party line that 9/11 was really about Bu$Hitler and Company’s wars for oil or something.

The artistic community is anti-censorship right up until the second it decides it wants something censored.  Then it piles on.

A little background.

Steve Reich is a Pulitzer-winning composer who lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center when the planes hit on September 11, 2001.  He was out of town at the time, but his family was home.  They barely escaped, but the experience was so emotionally traumatic that it was only as the 10th anniversary of this monstrous crime approached that he was able to finally express his feelings through his art.  You would think the artistic community would praise him – well, you would think that if you had not been paying attention and still believe that it possessed the capacity for shame at its own rank hypocrisy.

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As I watch documentary recollections of 9/11, I remain of the opinion that it will be a nearly impossible task to contextualize the atrocity in any form of popular culture.  That’s not to say it can’t happen, but to do so will require a master artist creating a work that transcends any living work.

Some may ask why it should even be necessary to do so.  The reasons are plentiful.  Those who do not study the past are doomed to repeat it.  The human experience is intrinsically connected to the search for meaning, from which our collective purpose can be divined. In short, by seeking to understand, we become that much closer to each other and to God.

But there is a greater reason still.  You’ll find much of it contained in David Milch’s discussion of his intriguing (though flawed) HBO series John From Cincinnati.  Mr. Milch postulates that the media has abdicated its moral responsibility (fans of Big Journalism have known that for some time), and that television has created a surrogate existence for us, detaching us from emotional reality.  Specifically:

I think that the media have infantilized the expectations of the audience because of the lack of some sort of transcendent informing vision. I believe that the surrogate existence that is provided by television has come to supplant the genuine emotional life of the populace…the assault on the collective sensibility of 9/11 was such as to give the audience so much fear that the only way that they could be placated was with a television series [The Iraq War…which had] everything to do with the habituation of the viewing public to the shaping of human experience in distorted forms for which the media is responsible…we wanted to be narcotized in our reaction to the assault on the World Trade Center…There is a different drama which is enacting itself in our country right now and it has to do with a failure to acknowledge the necessary moral and imaginative predicate that has become an entirely virtual existence, which is, you know, people spend more than half their waking hours watching television. Just think about that for a second. That has to shape the neural pathways…”

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Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center was wildly disappointing. This film could have been the defining film of our times, but it ended up being nothing more than a generic disaster film. It’s a missed opportunity, which I think was brought about because Oliver Stone lost his nerve. But can there even be a defining 9/11 film in this day and age?

I’ve experienced several historical events, but nothing quite like 9/11. I lived in D.C. when 9/11 happened and I used to drive right past the spot where the American Airlines jet crashed into the Pentagon. That particular day I passed by twenty minutes before it happened. I still remember the morning DJ joking about “some idiot who slammed a Cessna into the World Trade Center” (“how can you not see the World Trade Center?”), and I remember the horror in his voice when he learned it wasn’t a Cessna. Then there was actual panic and confusion and people talked about the Capitol being destroyed and the White House. It took me six hours to get home, fifteen minutes away, as they closed the bridges and soldiers set up road blocks.

I also remember the shock and disbelief that this was happening in our country. And I remember feeling sick upon seeing people jump to their deaths in New York. All of this is vividly etched in my brain as it is for so many of us.

When I heard that Oliver Stone would do a film about 9/11, I had high expectations. Stone is a leftist nut, but he had undeniable talent at one point. Platoon was brilliant, as was Wall Street. Platoon was so good it literally broke the Vietnam spell in our country and ended the tension between the public and the soldiers who fought in Vietnam. Wall Street (ironically) inspired an entire generation of kids to become Gordon Gekkos. Heck, even The Doors was great and turned me into a fan of the group. So I expected something pretty incredible from World Trade Center, even if it was likely to be liberal.

In fact, I expected something that would mirror the shock, the disbelief, the panic, and the horror that people felt. I expected something that highlighted the selfless bravery we saw on our televisions that day. I expected something that caught both the grand scale of what this meant to the country and also something that captured the personal effect this had on so many people and so many families.

Instead, I got a remake of The Towering Inferno.

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A couple weeks ago my good friend and gifted songwriter/musician Andrew (BigDawg), Co-Founder of BigDawg Music Mafia, and I were tuned in to “America Akbar” on Radio Jihad Network, a weekly internet radio show hosted by our good friends Gadi Adelman, a counter-terrorism expert, speaker, and author; and his lovely co-host/producer Reese Ccup.  During the show, a gentleman named George called in to share some of his thoughts about 9/11 as he was one of the firefighters there that day who lost so many of his brothers when the towers collapsed and is personally suffering from health issues brought on from the Ground Zero toxins.

Reese wanted George to hear a song they often play on their show that Drew and I had written in 2009 called “A Hero’s Creed” – a tribute to all the 9/11 first responders and our military members fighting the war on terror.  There was a line in the original version that said “Eight years have passed…no attacks on our land…we owe it to those who heed the call.” Sadly, since the new administration moved into our nation’s capital, we can no longer say that.

We needed to update the song, so we did.  Somehow, however, through a slight miscommunication regarding our updating of the song, Gadi was under the impression we were working on a brand new 9/11 tribute song and would have it ready in time for his 9/11 Tribute show on 8 Sep.  We knew we had to write a new song for Gadi’s show.

YouTube "Stairs To Heaven" by Lisa Mei Norton & Andrew (BigDawg)

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It did not take long for us to come up with the concept for the song:  a young girl who lost her father – one of the 343 firefighters who died when the towers collapsed – who is now a young woman looking back with sadness on all that she lost that day and a determination to follow in her Dad’s footsteps and serve her country in uniform…knowing one day she would meet him again.

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AFP:

For many people, the images of commercial airliners hitting the Twin Towers, and of Manhattan engulfed in a huge dust cloud as they collapsed, looked like a Hollywood apocalypse-style movie.

But despite that — or maybe in part because of it — 9/11 has not generated as large a number of movies as previous epochal events such as World War II or Vietnam.

Industry insiders say experience shows that 9/11 movies just don’t work at the box office — adding that the attacks may even have pushed Tinsel Town to produce even more escapist movies than it normally would.

In the decade since, only two Hollywood studios have produced films directly inspired by the most deadly attacks ever on US soil: Universal with “United 93” by Paul Greengrass and Paramount with Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.”

This despite an initial surge of Hollywood interest following the September 11, 2001 attacks in Washington and New York.

“There was certainly an enormous amount of interest in 9/11 and the wars that happened afterwards,” said producer Bonnie Curtis, who has worked on films including Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan.”

“I think that creatively, a lot of people started working on a material that normally wouldn’t even exist without the event itself,” she told AFP.

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Contact Music.com:

“I must write how I feel: A blistering argument is taking place about building a mosque near Ground Zero. My son Peter argues that a free country should allow the mosque to be built. I have argued that it could be painful to the families of the many victims who died there. But I am confused because I have had several Muslim friends for many years. They are kind, generous, caring people – I value their friendship.

“But, a part of me says, the people who brought about such horrific destruction on the World Trade Center were Muslims that attended a mosque and who believed that America should die. Of course, I wish more Muslims, like my friends, would speak out and condemn those actions. I am confused.” (more…)

I know the 9/11 imagery is always hard to take in. I still get a lump in my throat when I see it, but that could just be my meningitis. I do think it’s necessary however, to show the tragic imagery so that people don’t forget how fired up they were in the following months. It’s time to get fired up again. It’s time to honor the deceased by proactively fighting against government waste and forcing their hand into action. There’s no excuse for Ground Zero to look the way it does today… Unless Mothra stopped by. He ruins everything.

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President George W. Bush:

On the one-year anniversary of President George W. Bush leaving office, let us recall his words spoken in the National Cathedral, September 14, 2001 (please take a moment to watch the video):

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“This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.

It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.

This is true of a nation as well… 

America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom’s home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.” (more…)

Absent from the big screen for over a decade now, Oscar-winning director James Cameron returns armed with a reported half-billion dollars, a story he’s been desperate to tell for 15 years, and the very latest in cutting-edge visual technology. The result is “Avatar,” a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC clichés that not a single plot turn – small or large – surprises. I call it the “liberal tell,” where the early and obvious politics of the film gives away the entire story before the second act begins, and “Avatar” might be the sorriest example of this yet. For all the time and money and technology that went into its making, the thing that matters most – character and story – are strictly Afterschool Special.

What a crushing disappointment from one of our most original and imaginative filmmakers.

Set in 2154, “Avatar” is a thinly disguised, heavy-handed and simplistic sci-fi fantasy/allegory critical of America from our founding straight through to the Iraq War. Sam Worthington is Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine Corporal sent to the planet Pandora after the untimely death of his brother. In a plot-thread built up to promise much that never pays off, Sully has none of the training his brother benefitted by: years of schooling in the Avatar Program to prepare him to infiltrate the indigenous species of Pandora called the Na’vi, who are the only things between Earth’s RDA (Resources Development Administration) and a precious energy resource “ironically” called Unobtainium.

Because the air on Pandora is toxic to humans, the RDA developed the Avatar Program to create clone-like avatars from both Na’vi and human DNA (which is why they need the untrained Sully) that allow for a human to transfer their consciousness into the 10-foot native blue beings and safely explore the planet. The scientists want to use the program to study Pandora, the military wants to conquer it, and the RDA wants to strip mine it. At first Sully’s unconcerned with these dueling tensions and agendas. Once a marine always a marine, and when his commanding officer, the beefed up genocide-happy Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang), asks him to infiltrate the Na’vi and do recon for a probable attack, Jake is more than ready. Hoo-rah. (more…)

So, President Obama’s speech wasn’t a bad one, but it wasn’t a great one either. If anything, it reminded me a little of Osama bin Laden’s speech – the one where he told us exactly when he was going to take down the World Trade Center. And remember the speech given right before Pearl Harbor – the one where the Japanese Imperial Headquarters let us know when the planes would arrive? Eerily similar.

I kid. Those speeches never took place – because our enemies never tell us when they’re going to attack. But we’re different. Not only do we tell them when and where, but also, how long before we’ll go home. Terrorists? Alas, they have patience in spades. A few years is nothing when you`re looking at an eternity with 72 virgins.

But look: this is war, and we need to call it war, and when we fight a war, we must back the President. So I`m with him 100 percent. But I wish he`d, you know, embrace the damn thing – and say we`re going to destroy these bastards, minus the egg timer. And to me, the coach shouldn’t talk strategy out in the open until after the game, when we`ve beaten the pants off the other team. (more…)

My sense that the September 11th attacks would transcend partisan politics lasted less than a few days. That may sound cynical, but after counting myself as one of them for over a decade, I know how the Left thinks and I knew what was coming.

Within days of the attacks, it began. Without a word, those who had endlessly looped the video of the beating of Rodney King stopped airing footage of Americans jumping to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center. Not long after, those who would later sear the images of a few misfits at Abu Ghraib into the hearts and minds of the enemy, began the inevitable murmurs of “being responsible” when it came to airing footage of passenger planes exploding into the towers.

Soon, and predictably, the footage all but disappeared. 

Step one at chipping away at our resolve was complete, and all in the name of a few sophisticates doing what was best for us.

What followed was also expected. (more…)

Well, it’s been eight years since that terrible morning – George Bush was as deep into his first term of office as Barack Obama is today when those awful events unfolded. 

The anniversary in the mainstream media will be muted, as always – and we’ll come back to that. And even though three thousand people died that day, I want to concentrate on two – not to exclude the others, but simply to show you that they were not some abstract number but individual lives. 

Kevin Cosgrove

One of the people who died that day, eight years ago, was a businessman working in the World Trade Center. His name was Kevin Cosgrove. Kevin Cosgrove stands out from the other three thousand because he was on the phone to 9/11 when the tower he was in collapsed around him. (Fast forward to about 4:00 if you are pressed for time) And I’m warning you, this is not for the faint hearted.  (more…)

It wasn’t a ‘disaster.’  Hurricanes, tsunami’s, earthquakes and famines are disasters.  It wasn’t a ‘tragedy.’ Accidental drownings, poisonings, SIDS, freak accidents….those are tragedies.  This was an evil, premeditated attack.  The worst, most deadly and devastating attack ever carried off against the United States.  And on our own ground – smack in the middle of the greatest city in the world, New York City. 

Nearly three thousand souls perished.  Not combatants on a battlefield, but average everyday citizens like you and me, starting their days like any other, working to earn a living to feed their families.  Along with them were hundreds of valiant firemen and policemen rushing in to the buildings to save lives. 

The images of those New Yorkers the next few days wandering the streets around Ground Zero with pictures of their missing loved ones, hoping beyond hope that perhaps it was a simple bump on the head and temporary amnesia that kept them from phoning home to tell them they were okay…  These thoughts suck the wind from my soul.  (more…)

Frank Munoz was a good guy.  When he was a teenager, he worked hard to straighten his life out. He went to school. He got married. He got a job. He took good care of his mom. 

Frank Munoz died on the 73rd floor of The Second Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.

For days after 9/11, his family searched the hospitals because some sick person put his name on a fake Internet survivor list. 

I didn’t cry for him until two years later when my wife and I stood at the edge of Ground Zero. 

Afterwards, Lisa and I wanted to get a burger. A block away, we walked into a bar called O’Hara’s. On 9/11, O’Hara’s had their windows knocked out and the building was covered in debris.  (more…)

So another Rambo flick is on its grimy, sweaty way and this time the villains are human traffickers and drug lords. To make them even more despicable, they’ve kidnapped a young girl and are probably ignoring her strict vegan needs.

Look, I applaud Sylvester Stallone’s heroic stance against human traffickers and kidnappers – for I know there will be quite an outcry especially from the large and very influential human trafficking and kidnapper lobby.

Of course, this movie comes on the heels of two other edgy ventures: The G.I Joe flick – which turned a gritty American icon into an airbrushed Benneton ad, and “Inglourious Basterds” a fantasy that has average Jews hacking Nazi soldiers to pieces.

These three movies have two things in common:
1) They avoid present, real danger in the world and instead choose villains that are not just safe, but politically correct to hate. You’d think it would be easy for Quentin Tarantino to find a present day enemy for the Jews (like, say, a terrorist group that denies the Holocaust and wants to wipe Israel off the map), but maybe none exist! And what of those guys who flew planes into the World Trade Center? I suppose in the era of the “unclenched fist,” we must be more sensitive to “backlash” than barbarism. (more…)

I painted my first American flag in 1997 after viewing Robert Hughes’ PBS series “American Visions” about the history of American art and its coming of age in the fifties. This left me wanting to see Jasper Johns 1954 flag painting so much that I got up the next day, headed to the library, returned home and wound up painting my own flag. I have painted the American flag numerous times since and will continue to do so.

All Quiet on the Western Front, 1997

In 2001 I wanted to create a work of art that would fuse Jasper Johns flag and Andy Warhol’s 32 Campbell Soup Can paintings titled “Choices” with a little Ed Ruscha thrown in for good measure. The soup can paintings were all identical except for the flavors on the cans and that’s what I would do to my Johns inspired flags. All identical, as much as you can make thirty-two separate paintings, except in this case, instead of flavors, each vertical flag painting would have an almost invisible word at the bottom. (more…)

It’s just a few months into the Presidency, and Barack Obama is finally living up to his middle name.

In a good way, of course!

In front of the Turkish Parliament last April, he stressed how he’s lived among Muslims, while also saying the West must “educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.” Of course, I thought I learned all I needed to know already. But I’ve soon realized that all that terrorism, murder, and mayhem are the fault of extremists – and Islam really is a peaceful religion (we should really be listening to Olbermann and focusing on those nutty rightwing Christians who fly planes into abortionists).

So I totally get what OFM (our fearless Messiah) is doing. Before he was president, he stressed his Christianity, because we’re a nation of Christians. Now, with the office under his belt, he can speak freely of his experiences in the Muslim world. (more…)

My wife loves me.

Despite the fact I’m an actor, she loves me. She thinks I’m the most talented guy on the planet, even as work continues to dry up.  The eternal optimist to my ever lovin’ pessimist. I’m a Flintstone while she’s a beauty with a heart of gold.  I make her laugh.  She loves my bits. (A particular favorite is, my DeNiro, as Jake LaMotta, performing Kenny Loggins, “House at Pooh Corner”). FAHGETAHBOUT IT! My wife’s a peach.

Lately, however, there’ve been some clouds brewing on the horizon and it’s possible I may have had a slight hand in creating the situation.  I’ve been listening to her as she’s watching the tube, talking about how Hannity is so cute.  On other occasions, how the humble founder of Big Hollywood, Andrew Breitbart, has such a quick wit.  I mean, I can handle her getting jazzed about Dennis Prager but this is new stuff for me. For the longest time, she was just so liberal.  To this day, she’s a registered Democrat.  I asked myself, how did this happen?  How did she go from being a liberal woman from Buffalo to being charmed by the likes of O’Reilly?  As I mentioned, I may be somewhat to blame because truth be told, at one time I was a liberal guy from Beantown.  A man who voted for both Carter and Clinton.  There, I said it.  (more…)

The Great Buck Howard is a funny, knowing gift for anyone who loves old-fashioned show business: It celebrates the entertainer who is in it for the fun of putting on a good show, and for bringing a little pleasure to anyone who cares enough to come out and watch. 

Buck Howard the man is an old-fashioned show-business type: He is a mentalist—a magician who does mind-reading tricks. But he is preternaturally good at what he does (in contrast to his complete lack of self-awareness), and he was once a pop-culture fixture, a regular on The Tonight Show. (“The real one—with Johnny Carson,” he constantly reminds—this will have its intended melancholy effect only on those over 40 or so.) Now he plays half-empty halls in third-tier markets. Not that this tempers his enthusiasm, or that of his fans. Which is exactly the point. (more…)