The Joy of Hate (9 page)

PER SQUARE FOOT
, Hollywood has more tools than Ace Hardware. And because of this, disdain is often directed at people who deserve their gratitude. This behavior is most prevalent among celebrities and assorted artists, who express dismissive opinions toward supposedly simple or idiotic Americans. It’s often done when traveling in other countries, Gwyneth Paltrow–style, even though it’s directed at the home country that keeps them in Range Rovers made entirely of Fabergé eggs. And will someone at least break the news to “Gwinnie” that she’s not British landed gentry? There hasn’t been a more ridiculous Anglophile pose since Dick Van Dyke in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
. What a doofus.

In January, during all the hoopla (or as much hoopla as you could expect) leading up to the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, its founder, Robert Redford, went on a clumsy, brittle tirade against America, comparing it unfavorably to Europe—a favorite hobby among both the forgotten aging stars and the eager up-and-comers. Somewhere in Hollywood, there must be a
Celebrity Thoughts for Dummies
book, and the first chapter simply states “Compare America unfavorably to Europe.” The second chapter: “Trash Palin.” The third chapter: “Confess your third nipple.”

While ripping on Republican Mitt Romney (suggesting Mitt would prefer a movie like
Transformers
over the arty crud at Sundance, essentially using Mitt as a symbol for “the rest of America”), Redford complained, incoherently, about how the U.S. lagged in appreciating the true artists and their artistry. The bloomin-onion-faced actor, recalling time spent as a student in Europe as a springboard to his current outlook, says, “For years and years and years, you’ve all experienced what we had to live with, the fact that other countries are far more supportive of their artists than we are.” He adds, “But when you have congressional narrow-minded people, people who are afraid of change when change is the only thing that succeeds, the only thing we know is going to happen is that things are going to change.… I think it’s just tragic that we don’t support our artists more than we do. And as long as we’re going to have that kind of thinking in Congress, we’re going to have to fight it.” I’ve cracked open fortune cookies with deeper thinking than this. And anyone who thinks a guy who like Redford spent his early “European years” doing anything more than drinking wine and bending costars over the radiator knows nothing about young men.

Translation of Redford’s rant: I want to make crappy movies that nobody wants to see, and I want to pay for it with your tax dollars. Rather than make a movie that Americans might find entertaining, I want the government to go through your wallet while you’re watching something good, like
Spaceballs
.

And while some Yanks might yearn to feel sophisticated and pseudo-intellectual and therefore agree with R
²
, the truth is, if we instituted a referendum on a proposed “independent film tax” tomorrow, how far would it get, really?

And what if you did the same in Europe? You think the Italians would vote for such a thing? Only if the Germans were
paying for it. And here’s the other elephant in the room: Europe has “supported its artists” all the way to the brink of continental insolvency. They got change all right. Loose change. Which is the average GDP these days. “Yes, we’re broke, but at least we’ve got mimes!”

But there’s something else going on here. I do think a great movie can be an artistic experience (I am referring mainly to
Human Centipede
and
Human Centipede
2), but generally movies are commerce. Films these days are just one step above your average video game, which means Redford is just another joystick with an agent at William Morris. He’s not even a great artist. He’s no Picasso, or Ernest Hemingway, or even Stephen King. Hell, he’s not even Bruce Vilanch. He’s a professional show-off who will likely be replaced by a hologram in a few years. In fact, judging from his recent “work,” that may already have happened. That’s the problem with most of Hollywood—talent supplanted by ego, and too much time in between actual jobs for that recipe to boil. I mean, c’mon. Artist? Really? For Hollywood actors? The guy who writes the obituaries for whatever paper you read is more of an artist than these professional behaviorists. I just don’t buy it, sailor. They’re indulged pubescents who never grew out of “let’s put on a show for Mommy and Daddy.” Somewhere along the line we let them start believing they were a big deal. They’re not. Period.

And you gotta admit it’s pretty convenient for Redford, after making dozens of big-studio flicks, to have made enough money to buy a city and then decided it’s all about independent film. If we asked him if he’d like to go back and do it all over, and instead of the career he managed without help he had received a small government stipend to make documentaries about teachers who
use Aztec macramé to reach at-risk felons, what do you think he’d choose? He’d be back on the studio lot whistling the theme to
The Sting
before you could say
The Way We Were
.

Of course, he could leave us unsophisticated American dopes and actually
move
to the more cosmopolitan Europe, where he’d never have to say, “I don’t want to get into politics” and then get into politics, like we’re not supposed to notice (see George Clooney). He’d never have to tolerate supremely American people (i.e., dull people with dull tastes) like Mitt Romney again, or great unwashed rubes who think Sundance is an Indian casino. But that would mean a much smaller stage, less acclaim, fewer ego strokes, and less money for periodic mole removal.

The problem with the intolerant artist is that he fails to see that we tolerate him—even more, we support him by buying his crap once in a while. That’s the basic contract. And thinking Americans understand that government support for performance artists shoving yams up their ass doesn’t bring national security, or a healthy economy, or even successful art. It brings Greece, where the movie theaters are empty because no one can afford to buy tickets. It also brings filthy yams, which can lead to a rare infection and a worm that later becomes your best friend. Mine’s got his own blog at the Huffington Post.

WE LIVE IN A TIME
when our leaders seem hell-bent on legislating reality. The need to be seen as open-minded—coupled with a fear of being seen as racist—has culminated in an administration that struggles with calling a terrorist a terrorist. Driven by a desire to be viewed as NLB (Not Like Bush), Obama’s administration has turned our basic lexicon into a game show of code words and charades. Whether it’s the Fort Hood shooter or the underwear bomber, the preferred wisdom is that these are just incompetent crazies, not terrorists. Clowns, not killers. Bozos, not bad men.

This logic is so pervasive and poisonous it even infected Obama’s onetime State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley, who couldn’t bring himself to label the killings of American servicemen in Frankfurt by a lone jihadist an act of terror. Instead, he hypothetically—and pathetically—wondered if the Tucson tragedy (the shootings that brutally wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killed a handful of other innocent people) was an act of terror, too. It’s the worst kind of moral relativism, born out of extreme wussiness.

How does this help fight terror, you ask? It doesn’t—and thanks for asking, whoever you are.

Instead, it encourages a head-in-the-sand mentality that cedes
extremists the moral high ground. And so this is why you have eight-year-old kids and eighty-year-old grannies getting felt up in airport security—because you can’t frisk the Middle Eastern guy without performing the same task on others. Or else you’d be seen as profiling, which is racist, which is offensive, which is awful. So rather than focus on safety, we spread the diligent work out to a paper-thin veneer, making it that much easier to penetrate.

Probably the weirdest display of this bizarre over-the-top tolerance driven hysteria comes from a letter written by the Defense Department, in which they apparently classified the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence. Yep, a horrible event, in which a rabid Islamist opened fire and killed American troops was labeled “workplace violence.” Folks, I know workplace violence. In all its permutations. Trust me, Fort Hood isn’t it. Thankfully, during a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committees, someone possessed enough sanity to call BS on it.

Senator Susan Collins blasted the department, and suggested political correctness was being put ahead of our national security. She then accurately nailed the Obama administration for being too timid in identifying radical Islam as the culprit.

She’s right. I mean, when a guy shouts “Allahu akbar” while shooting more than a dozen troops, it’s safe to say he isn’t a Jehovah’s Witness. He also isn’t a disgruntled worker pissed off at his boss. Or annoyed that the vending machine is out of Snickers.

Another hero here: Senator Joe Lieberman, who held hearings on this stuff. Lieberman and his committee essentially broke ranks with the insanity of the Obama administration and labeled Major Hasan’s actions not only terrorism but preventable terrorism that wasn’t stopped because of political correctness in both the military and the FBI. Of course, Lieberman had to fight every
inch of the way to get the necessary documents from Eric Holder’s Justice Department. (See
Furious, Fast and
.) But we’ve all gotten to know Holder since then—we know what he’s about. Imagine if Hasan had been a Southern white boy looking to shoot minorities or women. You think it would have been labeled “workplace violence”? You think it would have taken congressional hearings to find out why a guy like Hasan was allowed to do what he did, despite the investigations into him going on at the time? Forget it. Obama’s DOJ wouldn’t have even bothered with a trial. Al Sharpton would have declared the perp guilty. His secretary, Eric Holder, would concur. And Soledad O’Brien would indict America in a seven-part CNN special.

I mean, what would it take at that point to qualify as terror? My understanding of a terrorist is someone who invokes terror in others. Hasan didn’t qualify for that as he was spraying Fort Hood with military grade ammo? I suspect there are a few people who were there who disagree.

This mentality also explains the government videos you can find online offering suggestions to the public on what they should do if they ever witness activity that might be terror-related. In these slick videos, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who looks, well, Arabic. Everyone looks European, or kinda European, and most look young, hip, and healthy. With the sound off, it could have been a commercial for your local community college. No, scratch that. The local college would actually include every single type from the diversity wish list—in effect
all
commercials are pretty much Benetton ads. Except the terror PSAs, which are entirely European, and therefore hideously bigoted. The PSAs have about as much color as my urine after drinking a case of Coors Light.

Now, when I first saw these ads, I experienced some mild discomfort. Not because the commercials seem to say Americans of European ancestry are more likely to blow us up than radical Islamics. No, I wondered about the poor actors of dark complexion who are being cheated out of jobs because, well, they’re just too perfect for the part. We now live in a world where Corey Feldman has a better shot playing a terrorist than an actual terrorist. (No complaining there. Mr. Feldman is a dynamite actor with gentle, caring hands.) Yep, in an effort to be as tolerant as possible, we took jobs away from people who could use the money.

Where does this all come from? It’s a disease that I was the first to name: Islamophobia-phobia. The fear of being accused of Islamophobia.

Islamophobic, by definition, seems to be a fear of Islam. But it’s come to mean any behavior that’s perceived as mean-spirited toward people who practice Islam. And by any behavior, I mean just about everything you do in life. Look, if you feel uncomfortable that a cabdriver named Mohammed Mohammed is talking incessantly on his Bluetooth, is that Islamophobic? Maybe. But the fact that you listen—that you clue into it—doesn’t make you a racist. It makes you human.

And the accusation of Islamophobia prevents questions being asked that are far more important than that stupid one about the Bluetooth. And Islamophobia-phobia has now become a tool in hampering our war on terror and enabling our enemy to get away with more crap—by making us timid in our quest for safety.

Here are some facts that should make your head explode, whether you heard them already or not: Thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded at Fort Hood. The killer, Major Nidal Hasan, did not hide his sympathies for radical Islam, for he
was a radical himself, inspired by the now dead radical U.S. cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The two lunatic loverboys even exchanged something like twenty e-mails (sometimes I imagine them as “God is great! Death to the infidels LOL”). If people had known about this crap (and it seems they did), and didn’t act for fear of being seen as intolerant, then those thirteen poor souls perished because of pure moral cowardice. Along the way, some asshat felt it was far better to be seen as tolerant toward radical Muslims than to protect our own brave gals and guys. This is one of the more gruesome consequences of tolerance: you’d risk the lives of others in order to belong in the cool group. And because you are seen as tolerant (and therefore enlightened and cool), we have thirteen dead Americans.

It’s no secret that since 9/11 the number of plots targeting our soldiers has gone up dramatically. There are something like thirty-three plots (according to a summary of incidents on
FoxNews.com
) that have been uncovered, and God knows how many others we don’t even know about.

In June 2011, two men allegedly plotted to attack a military base near Seattle. Then, a month later, an Army private named Naser Abdo (probably Irish Catholic) was accused of planning a second attack on Fort Hood. And then there was Jose Pimentel, another Muslim, who in November 2011 was arrested because he allegedly planned to kill service members returning from war. And God, I hope he’s off his rocker, but Congressman Peter King reports, there’s evidence that a large number of extremists have—like Hasan—joined the armed services.