Category Archives: Hollywood

Malibu Mel

Mainstream media only recognizes a narrowly defined spectrum of opinion: Republican and Democratic. The one they consider Right; the other, Left.

Both generally support gratuitous, unconstitutional wars, for ostensibly charitable reasons. Each is more likely to support such adventures if their guy is strafing the lucky recipients of the gift of democracy. To wit, Democrats cheered a “preemptive attack” on Slobodan Milosevic; Republicans rubber-stamped sundering Saddam.

Thus when the topic of Gibson’s anti-war-in-Iraq comments came up, commentators on Fox and elsewhere on the blogosphere (which seems as one-dimensional, in many ways) wondered if the immensely wealthy Gibson was not pandering to “Hollywood elites.” (As if he needs to.)

Gibson is probably a paleo-conservative. As far as I know, he’s always been against this war (it fits with his view about “dem Jews”). More material, why would anything he says matter?

Thomas Fleming’s comments on Malibu Mel are the best I’ve seen so far:

I find the whole Mel Gibson saga depressing, because it reminds me of the grotesque stupidity of American Catholic conservatives, who insist on putting their faith in actors like Ronald Reagan and Mel Gibson. Have they ever read an interview with Gibson? He cannot frame a three-word sentence that does not sound like it comes from the mouth of Malibu Barbie…men who spend their adult lives making movies are, to put it as nicely as I can, unreliable as guides to living…

Why does anyone care what an actor thinks about, whether it is the life of Christ or Jewish influence on history? And why, by the love of all that is holy, would anyone with even the brain of Rush Limbaugh, give two seconds to a Christophobic charlatan like Abe Foxman?…
If you really wish to study the Life of Christ, read the Gospels. If you like C.S. Lewis or Tolkien, read their books and do not waste time on the slick and manipulative films made out of them. Christian lovers of Peter Jackson’s version of Lord of the Rings will be pleased to know that he is contributing a large chunk of their ticket money to promote leftist, anti-Christian moral causes. As the most notorious ‘anti-Semite’ in history once observed, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’

“Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish“—that too is good stuff (if I say so myself).

Suri Num-Num

Hollywood

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt? Go back to Namibia. Look at the child of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. What an adorable poppet with her shock of black hair and her lovely blue eyes. Truly a gorgeous little girl.

American masses can’t stand a non-conformist. Since I blogged, in “Cruise and the Shamans,” about the actor’s heroic stand against the “The psychiatric peanut gallery,” I learned from Professor Jeffrey A. Schaler that Cruise indeed is a principled devotee of Thomas S. Szasz’s works. What a shame he went and apologized to the silly Brooke Shields for trying to get her to clear her head instead of doping it up.

The photographs of the bonny baby were obviously also in the same vein—an attempt to ward off another Paramount mishap and ensure the Cruise brand remains bankable. Oh well, bully for baby Cruise; she’s one beautiful bundle.

The Porn Aesthetic

Hollywood, Morality, Objectivism

In response to my fangs fandango, BAB Reader Pam Maltzman reminded me of something I’ve been trying hard to forget: Angelina wants to play Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged. Some Objectivists, who can’t be thinking with their (unclothed) heads, favor the idea. My article, “Angelina’s Color-Coded Kids,” pretty much exposed the woman’s pretensions. In response to that piece, the colorful Michael Musto of The Village Voice wrote this to me: “I now realize she’s even more of a bimbo than I thought!” I don’t think Musto’s an Objectivist, yet he had no problem making the call. Perhaps it’s because he’s gay. (If I could have my own gays as Kathy Griffin does, he’d be the one. I’m a fan.) One or two readers wanted to know what I think of the monster mouth fashion and why men like it. Without being too indelicate, men are responding not to aesthetics but to the basest of instincts. These instincts are now celebrated and affirmed in imagery, rather than transcended. A porn sensibility didn’t always shape ideas of beauty. The sublime 1350 B.C. bust of Queen Nefertiti attests to that. As does the bust of Marianne which embodied the French’s ideal of female beauty: Catherine Deneuve.

Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Hollywood, Judaism & Jews, Media

[Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League] “had more to say about Gibson than he had about Seattle’s jihadist du jour, Naveed Afzal Haq. Last week, Haq murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building…
As a representative of the Jewish community, albeit self-appointed, Foxman needs lessons in etiquette. It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act gracious—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering. Gibson may be uncouth, but Foxman is equally grubby…”

The complete column, “Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish,” is here. In it, I also take a good long swipe at the “The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency,” vis-Ã -vis Mel Gibson’s so-called disease.