Category Archives: Hollywood

UPDATED: ‘MAD’ MEL (What’s Worse?)

Addiction, Celebrity, Conservatism, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, Psychiatry

“The South Park depiction of Mel Gibson bouncing off walls he had freshly ‘coated’ in bodily waste is not far off,” I wrote of Gibson’s previous peccadilloes.

It usually falls to liberals to fend for A-list reprobates. Left to Barbara Walters, Paris Hilton’s porn debut, in which she made narcissistic love to the camera, (i.e. herself) was elevated to a PG-rated tale of innocence betrayed. Conservatives, usually attuned to the coarsening culture, and fierce about defending cops, are airbrushing Mel Gibson in the same way (although, unlike Paris, he doesn’t need makeup).
Mel’s many conservative fans have downplayed his vulgar public conduct. He cussed cops who were being decent to him, threatened to ruin them, Russell Crowed a phone, and generally behaved like a hog high on his own power.

The latest Gibson indiscretion is covered well by Larry Auster (whose take comports with mine in “Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish”. Or perhpas I’m biased because LA just echoes my thoughts (minus the aspect on the medicalization of misbehavior)?

Either way, we both have Gibson pegged. Over to Larry’s “Gibson And Conservatives”:

What a ridiculous culture we live in—and that includes the mainstream conservatives. Mel Gibson in a drunken rant that was surreptitiously recorded said a pile of extremely offensive things to his ex-mistress. But because in the midst of this geyser of verbal abuse, he used the word “nigger” once, his rant is constantly billed—by conservatives—as a “racist rant,” even though the rant overall had nothing to do with race. When it comes to race, meaning, when it comes to blacks, the mainstream conservatives are precious little Victorian ladies, ready to faint dead away at the sound of the “N” word, even when uttered in a private conversation by a man who was obviously drunk.

As for Gibson, I’ve been saying for 15 years, based on his movies, based on his appalling demeanor in TV interviews, that the man was not a conservative but a messy product of our debased contemporary culture, a point I particularly emphasized in VFR’s huge debate about his movie The Passion. Conservatives, especially paleocons, couldn’t see this about Gibson, because his Catholicism and his seven children with one wife designated him automatically as a traditionalist conservative in their minds. They didn’t see the non-conservative qualities and attitudes he was actually expressing in the public realm …

UPDATE (July 14): Even more obscene than the preoccupation with Mel and Oksana’s icky audio is the orgy that will follow the announcement of the impending engagement of the two stupidest people in Alaska. I give the marraige of twiddledumb and twiddledumber, if indeed it gets past this stage, six months. I wish them well, of course.

I agree with Gibson on the following. This Oksana Grigorieva is distinctly dumb. Any woman that looks, naturally, as pretty as she did here, yet goes and modifies herself to look like a slightly improved version of the Octamom, is a devastatingly dumb bimbo.

Regulation Wrecking Ball: The Gulf & The Jones Act

Energy, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Regulation, Science, Technology

REGULATION WRECKS. The point was made in “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann,” with reference to the Federal law limiting liability under which BP was operating. The regulation wrecking Ball is still swinging over the Gulf. In particular, The Jones Act. The scandal is beyond the grasp of such stupidity as is exhibited by “Hollow-Wood”:

“Foreign companies possessing some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships say they are being kept out of efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf because of a 1920’s law known as the Jones Act — a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US workers.

Joseph Carafano of the Heritage Foundation has been studying the matter and wonders, ‘Are we accepting all the international assistance in the maritime domain that we can, and is the Jones Act an impediment to that?’

The Coast Guard and the Administration are quick to point out that some foreign technology is being used in the current cleanup effort. Including:

– Canada’s offer of 3,000 meters of containment boom

– Three sets of COSEQ sweeping arms from the Dutch

– Mexico’s offer of two skimmers and 4200 meters of boom

– Norway’s offer of 8 skimming systems

But that is largely technology transferred to US vessels. Some of the best clean up ships – owned by Belgian, Dutch and the Norwegian firms are NOT being used. Coast Guard Lt. Commander, Chris O’Neil, says that is because they do not meet ‘the operational requirements of the Unified Area Command.’ One of those operational requirements is that vessels comply with the Jones Act.

‘Yes, it does apply,’ said ONeil, ‘I have heard no discussions of waivers.'”

READ ON.

[SNIP]

“A Jones Act waiver” is not something the state workers involved in the pitiful clean-up—his Admiralty Thad Allen included—are eager to obtain.

The We-Are-The-Best-In-The-World chauvinists ought to take note: America is no longer cutting edge. But The Golden Calf will get us there again, right?

UPDATE II: Hollywood: Let’s Call It Quits!

Art, Energy, Film, Free Markets, Hollywood, Propaganda, Science

I’ve always shied away from calls to boycott an entire industry; it sounds so, well, stupid. Now I see no other way with the Hollywood cretins. Watch the latest antics from the nation’s prime pea brains:

The evidence is in. Activism has now replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories. I don’t know about you, but given my own intelligence, I refuse to be lectured by “tards.” Unless these cerebrally compromised egotists can promise me a GOOD STORY sans politics—I do not patronize their “art.”

And while I’m at it: Theirs is not art. Idiots; you are nothing more than public entertainers; glorified circus animals, show critters. Amuse me–make me think less about my daily political reality—or f-ck off.

There are some superb, new TV series that showcase the best of entertainment: strong acting, no abreacting; fabulous, apolitcal scripts. “Justified” is one. “Flashpoint” is another.

“Law and Order” in all its permutations sports PC elements, as does “CSI.” But generally, these excellent series offer kick-ass scripts and actors. Give me a good narrative. But I will not tolerate some prancing, decked-up, self-styled Goth twenty-something (allegedly) inserting herself into the story, and selling what goes, in these sorry days, for “originality” and “individuality.”

Other than the ladies who always offer up their cleavages in the interrogation room, and everywhere else (you want respect when you go into a situation boobs first? Not from me, bubbles), “Law & Order,” “CSI” (but not NCSI) and “Criminal Minds,” especially,—are all top-notch productions.

Vote for such quality with your time and money; withdraw your vote from the rest.

UPDATE I: MORATORIUM ON MINDLESSNESS, please. In what is high-level deception, the administration co-opoted and doctored scientific opinion rendered in the matter of the so-called moratorium.

Via KansasCity.com:

“A group of engineers and oil experts said Friday that the Interior Department changed the language of a high-profile oil spill report after they’d signed it, falsely signaling their support for a drilling moratorium that they thought went too far.

The new language called for a stronger and wider moratorium on some oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico than the experts thought necessary. In fact, one said Friday, the stronger moratorium might instead increase the risks slightly.” …

UPDATE II (June 14): PHILOSOPHER KINGS. What, you may ask, is entertainer Gloria Estefan doing at the “Merage Foundation for the American Dream and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars’ National Leadership Awards Gala held at the National Press Club”? Carrying forth against the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, of course. Boycott the bitch.

UPDATED: Cameron’s Categorical Confusion

Business, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Hollywood, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Science, Technology

Off-shore oil driller and acclaimed scientist and inventor James Cameron, who “has worked extensively with robot submarines,” is annoyed that the film directors running BP have not used his know-how to plug the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Reverse that; Cameron is the filmer; BP the explorer. But you get how ridiculous Cameron’s puff is; how inflated Hollywood’s sense of itself is.

What matters is that the public get an idea of how crucial to life itself are the hard sciences, although a whole lot will have to change before the youth, streaming into law, health care and finance for the obvious reason (it begins with a “g”) change course, and those with the aptitude do hard science.

UPDATE (June 4): The images of immobilized pelicans weighed down by oil are heartbreaking. In the animal rescue and clean-up efforts we ought to begin to see the strength of private initiative.

The political Idiocracy continues to make hay of this environmental nightmare. Insisting Big Daddy O was supposed to clean up, show more rage, froth at the mouth more.

The fact that the POTUS and the FLOTUS like to live it up is perhpas unseemly. But the idea that if Obama were not so self-absorbed, or more unhinged emotionally, he’d do what’s right to save our ravaged coast—this is misguided.

This is so sad. (Here are my birdies.)

In “Regulation Encourages Recklessness” I spoke to what I think is at the root of environmental despoliation:

• Regulations, which are the culmination of agreements between the regulated and the regulators, to the detriment of those left out the loop: wild life and the rest of us.

• The tragedy of the commons, i.e., the absence of property rights: “Government-controlled resources go to seed because there is no private ownership of the means of production. Entrusted with the management of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of millions of people you don’t know, don’t care about, are unaccountable to, and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement except to whine like wimps—how long before your performance plummets?”

• The modern corporate colossus resembles government in many ways.

My smart readers can think over the last point—have at it. I’ll be back to mark your pixelated papers.