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.

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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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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I for one am tiring of the vitriol from both sides in the Iraq war debate (and, boy, I’ve been part of it). It is good to hear about people who can display some common sense balance and decency in the midst of all the arguing. The strength of America is in its self-correcting, political middle. You go, Alec:

Alec Baldwin may criticize the president’s policies when it comes to the war in Iraq, but don’t ever accuse him of not supporting the troops.

After reading a Mar. 4 article in the New York Times about an 18-year-old female Army soldier preparing to embark on her first tour in Iraq, the 30 Rock star was so touched he decided to reach out and offer to help pay for her college education. …

So Baldwin, a staunch liberal democrat who’s flirted with the idea of running for public office, put politics aside and took it upon himself to track down the girl’s mother, Patricia Kane, at the discount store where she works in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and offered to foot part of her daughter’s tuition bill. …

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By Kenneth T. Tellis

I think that somehow the Iranians have gotten their history mixed up regarding their protest over the film 300. Thermopylae was a battle where the Greeks triumphed over the Persians. It certainly was not a battle between Iranians versus Greeks.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Jennifer L. Pozner exposes the decadent garbage that Hollywood peddles as “entertainment” under the rubric of “free speech,” but which is in reality, “deeply dangerous to our culture.” Are TV viewers immune from Hollywood’s message? “A 19-year-old Texas A&M University student was killed by her ex-boyfriend, who then dismembered and burned her body on a patio grill… because … she had begun a new relationship.” You know where I stand on Hollywood (here and here), but you should read Pozner’s excellent essay, “Top Model’s beautiful corpses: the nexus of reality TV misogyny and ad industry ideology:”

Ain’t nothin’ hotter than a dead girl. That’s the take-away message from this week’s episode of America’s Next Top Model, in which Tyra “I care so much about my girls” Banks & co. created the most brazen bit of ad-industry misogyny ever to grace the reality TV genre: an entire episode presenting a gaggle of underfed model wannabes as the mutilated, mangled and murdered epitome of beauty. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Many Hollywood types supposedly “rage against the machine,” but they are part of that machine. I find it strange that most opposed the Iraq war, yet participate in creating one violent movie after another. How convenient for Hollywood to claim a pacifist philosophy while peddling and profiting from violence — and washing its hands of the repercussions of violent entertainment on viewers. How can people indulge in graphic violence “vicariously” without becoming obsessed with — at least desensitized to — that same violence? Not only does Hollywood produce violence, it pats itself on the back for doing so, as evidenced by The Departed winning four Oscars. Here’s what the movie brought to the big screen as “entertainment:”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction… The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you asked most of the Hollywood big-wigs, “Who was the greatest civil rights leader?,” I’d bet you that nine out of ten would say, “Martin Luther King, Jr.” Talking the talk, but not walking the walk. If Hollywood is so “liberal” and so enamored with the hallowed civil rights movement, then why is it producing perverted filth 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.” How about “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?” Would you want your kids playing the video game “Grand Theft Auto” where “you play an evil criminal who kills random folks for dishonorable people?” Even commercials are violent now, like Capital One’s barbarian-starred credit card ads. My point: Can people derive “entertainment” from indulging in violence without being touched by violence? And in no way am I advocating censorship. Let me explain.

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