By Phyllis Chesler
I protest. Everything is too loud, too fast, too vulgar, too aggressive. POW! BAM! Only celebrities matter. Even our so-called thinkers write the same book over and over again (everything is reduced to branding) and are expected to behave like attack dogs on a short leash.
Welcome to our Comic Book Culture.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Happy Halloween from the folks in our “entertainment industry,” proving that nothing matters to them — not morality, society, integrity, or anything. Lo and behold the latest video game, “Manhunt 2,” the “most violent game yet,” in which players use virtual reality tools to torture and kill in the most gruesome, graphic manner:
…The objective: a mental patient tries to escape from a bizarre insane asylum using everything from a sickle to rip out a character’s skull to a club to attack a police officer, CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports.
As Scott Steinberg, a video game reviewer and author, demonstrated for CBS News, the experience is even more intense when it’s played on Nintendo’s Wii, which gets players to act out the violence.
“We’re going to lure them into the open and then chop them up,” Steinberg explained while playing.
“The Wii has motion-sensing controls, and therefore to stab you’re gonna mimic a stabbing motion, to swing a sledgehammer or a shovel you would do the same. Unfortunately it’s probably not something you would want to have your kids get much practice on,” Steinberg said. …
Is acting out violence in virtual reality any different from actually committing violent acts? (See the Buddhist concept of “Right Thinking.”) If you are concerned about our entertainment industry’s production of ultra-violence, please get involved:
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Americans really need to start thinking about what they consider entertainment and whom they consider role models for their children. This isn’t exactly the first rapper to be caught with guns — by a long shot:
Grammy-winning rapper T.I. was arrested Saturday — just hours before he was to take the stage at the BET Hip-Hop Awards — in a shopping center parking lot where federal officials said he planned to pick up machine guns and silencers he had his bodyguard buy for him. …
Bling. Diamonds. Gold. Jiggling butts. Peers who call black kids who study hard “white.” Glamorizing gun-toting gangstas. This is what BET promotes, but which is in reality a “culture steeped in bitterness and nihilism, a culture that is a virtual blueprint for failure.”
By Phyllis Chesler
So, there I am, sitting in what I had hoped might be an escape movie when I realized that I was watching one more extended Hollywood commercial against the war in Iraq. Alright, it’s a free country for those who’ve got money to burn and this movie, “The Valley of Elah,” was brilliantly acted by three Academy-Award winners: Tommie Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon.
War is hell and it wounds both the victims and perpetrators; this is the film’s focus. War robs human beings of both their humanity and their sanity. Soldiers and combatants become less-than-human; many can never recover from this infernal assault. What war makes people do is something they cannot easily, if ever, recover from. This is the film‘s major point. At film’s end, Jones hoists the American flag upside down to signify that American foreign policy and the armed forces are “upside down,” screwed up, and that we need to be rescued from ourselves.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Today, O.J. Simpson was ordered by Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg to “hand over his Rolex watch and other assets to satisfy part of a long-standing judgment that found him liable for the deaths of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and friend Ron Goldman.” O.J. has turned out to be his own worst enemy — more and more so in the eyes of African-Americans:
…after a string of missteps by the former football star — a heated 2003 argument with his teenage daughter in which she called police; a book, “If I Did It,” that raised eyebrows last year; and a dispute over sports collectibles in Las Vegas this month that led to an armed-robbery arrest — black opinion has shifted. …
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Dear Ms. Whoopi Goldberg, don’t tell me that torturing animals (dog-fighting) — “hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground” — is an integral part of Southerners’ “cultural upbringing.” I’ve lived in the Deep South for about 5 years, visited family there many times, and vacationed there more times than I can remember. My experiences? Good, decent people, and beautiful cities, countryside, and beaches. So how did this dog-fighting controversy get started?
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was busted red-handed running a chamber of horrors for canines. Not only was he fighting dogs, but torturing them too, presumably for his own pleasure. From the Smoking Gun, including the federal indictment against Vick:
…After a March 2003 loss by a female pit bull, codefendant Purnell Peace, “after consulting with Vick,” electrocuted the animal. In April, prosecutors allege, Vick, Peace, and Quanis Phillips, “executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well in ‘testing’ sessions.” These animals, the indictment claims, were killed “by various methods, including hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground.”
By Andrew L. Jaffee
…From the middle of August, Wal-Mart, the biggest toy retailer in the US, will for the first time stock a full line of faith-based toys. …
Faith-based toys? These will surely make the politically-correct crowd squirm, complain, and hurl wild accusations about “indoctrinating” young minds — you know, the same bunch who seeks to eradicate all common sense morality from every social institution, be it private or public. The BBC’s snide take:
Instead of Spiderman or Bratz dolls, children in the US could soon be clutching a talking Jesus toy, a bearded Moses or a muscle-bound figure of Goliath. …
Oh, G#d forbid children engage in some healthy playtime! Heaven help us if kids get exposed to our Judeo-Christian societal foundations! The PC crowd doesn’t seem to have any problem with young minds being indoctrinated with all manner of perversions. In one of his recent movies, Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino appears as “Rapist Number One.” Artistic license, right? Not only is Tarantino poisoning minds through the film media, he’s released “Grindhouse Action Figures,” including a Rapist Number One doll with a gun. Also available is “a girl with an M16 as her prosthetic leg.” Just some harmless fun, huh?
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Two hip-hop heavies — Ja Rule and Lil’ Wayne — were rapped last night in New York, both for possession of .40-caliber pistols, and just an hour and a few blocks apart from one another. …
Many of our children are listening to the “music” produced by gun-totting Ja Rule and Lil’ Wayne. Do parents even have a clue as to what their own children are tuning in to for “entertainment?”
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Congress could regulate violence on cable, satellite and broadcast television without violating the First Amendment, the Federal Communications Commission said in a report released Wednesday. …
A correlation exists between bloodshed on television and violence in real life, the commission said.
- WHIO TV
While I’m not sanguine with censorship, Hollywood has shown no inclination to limit the amount of perversion it pumps out. The FCC report cited above “has alarmed executives in the broadcast and cable industries as well as the American Civil Liberties Union.” It has alarmed broadcast executives because they’re afraid they might make a few less million dollars; the ACLU doesn’t know what morality means. Are Americans concerned about Hollywood’s ultra-violence? Yes. Are U.S. citizens willing to do anything about it? Maybe. Are Americans sitting back and passively internalizing all the violence? Probably.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
As Perez Hilton puts it, “Because rape is so funny, right?” In his latest movie, Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino appears as “Rapist Number One.” Artistic license, right? Not only is Tarantino poisoning minds through the film media, he’s released “Grindhouse Action Figures,” including a Rapist Number One doll with a gun. Also available is “a girl with an M16 as her prosthetic leg.” Reports had circulated that Toys “R” Us would be carrying these “action figures,” but the company has denied such claims (thank you). Time to rush out and get these “toys” for your kids so they can become the next Cho Seung-Hui.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Where did Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui get the idea for his rampage? Apparently, he was “inspired” at least partially by a “bloody South Korean movie… ‘Oldboy,’ the second film in Park’s ‘Vengeance Trilogy.’”
Let’s see… Hollywood, anyone? [Continues below…]
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Regarding the Virginia Tech massacre, the AP reports that the gunman “alarmed professors and classmates with his twisted, violence-drenched creative writing,” in an article entitled Va. Tech gunman writings raised concerns. Really? So this type of behavior “alarms” people, but millions of Americans indulging in Hollywood’s ultra-violence doesn’t worry them? Quentin Tarantino, anyone? Hello!
Tinsel Town pumps out garbage like Saw, acclaimed by Rue Morgue as a movie which “will make your skin crawl right off your bones!,” where the protagonist “decides to crush the bones in his foot with the toilet’s tank cover, so that he can slip out of the ankle cuff,” and Americans aren’t concerned? Hollywood produces The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, which treats viewers to a very graphic “night of sheer terror at the hands of a family of cannibalistic, inbred psychopaths,” and citizens aren’t worried? Would you want your kids immersed in the video game Grand Theft Auto, where “you play an evil criminal who kills random folks for dishonorable people?” And then there’s Top Model’s beautiful corpses… perfect for your teenage daughter.
Is the AP writing about the shooter or Hollywood’s “artists?” [Continues below…]
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Punch the bitch in the eye/then the ho will fall to the ground
Then you open up her mouth/put your dick, move the shit around.- Niggaz With Attitude, “She Swallowed It”
The above-referenced song recommended “specific procedures for attacking a fourteen-year-old,” and is just a small sampling of the violent and misogynist lyrics prevalent in rap music. Al Sharpton went after Don Imus for calling members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” Strangely, Sharpton seems to have no quarrel with African-American rap artists labelling women as “bitches” and “hos” — or worse. But Today show hostess Meredith Vieira yesterday forced Shapton to try to explain his contradictory sentiments: [Continues below…]
by Bill Levinson
It is instructive to compare the personal character and integrity of today’s Hollywood celebrities and those of fifty or sixty years ago. Today, of course, we have 9/11 conspiracy theorists like Rosie O’Donnell and Charlie Sheen. Hanoi Jane Fonda is still active, while Michael Moore’s Web site calls the terrorists who are murdering our men and women in uniform “Minutemen.” The following information is primarily from Wikipedia which, although we recognize that it is not always authoritative or entirely accurate, is probably good enough for our purposes.
By Andrew L. Jaffee
Once again, I say, “Gimme Shelter from the Hypocrite Rolling Stones.” Guitarist Keith Richards is the archetype for the phrase “ate up,” but I never realized how far his depravity went. The latest news is downright disgusting:
“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.
“He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “… It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”
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