Wheel of Free Speech
: Pat Sajak — Pat Sajak! — lambasts Hollywood’s creative community for not expressing outrage over the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.
So, again I ask, where is the outrage from Hollywood
22 responses to “Wheel of Free Speech”
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Yeah! How dare they not make noise over the tragic death of someone they’ve never heard of! I’m sure they’re just waiting for all the pro-war folks to express their outrage at the injustice done to innocent Iraqi bystanders and the hobbled US troops in Iraq.
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sorry Oliver – being clueless and oblivious of real world never stopped anybody in H-wood from expressing his or her opinions again & again.
sajak hit bull’s eye & andrew sullivan wondered about silence of our intellectual & moral “superiors” a few day s ago. -
Does anybody have any feel for the dollar effect of supporting Kerry on the Hollywood “stars?” Did their box office/record sales fall? Anybody know of any analysis out there?
My guess is that their stance hurt their careers, at least in my part of the world (northern Louisiana). Hence their failure to take another stance. I know that I’m never going to contribute to Barbara’s, Whoopie’s, Tim Burton’s, Susan Sarandon’s, Madonna’s, Cameron’s coffers again. I demand my entertainment to be entertaining. I don’t care who they support. If they politic for a candidate I don’t support (and insult my intelligence in the meantime), I realize I have the opportunity to spend my entertainment dollars elsewhere, and I do.
Could they just be nervous? Naaaaah. Just chicken! -
Nah. They just don’t give a rat’s arse because it hasn’t penetrated their consciousness.
If the media were all over it as a horrible thing and condemning it (independent of the Bush thing) they might well be all over it.
It’s pretty trite to say ‘why aren’t those human shields protecting Iraqi policemen NOW?’ or ‘When will Bush do regime change in Zimbabwe?
The idea has never forced itself to their consciousness, thats all. Cut them a bit of slack; they all have lives and pressures. -
You hit the bullseye! Such is the level of hatred toward President Bush that the Hollywood left(ists) will oppose ANY position that he endorses–simply out of fear that, by siding with him, they might be perceived as supporting him.
These megalomaniacs are fond of calling Bush supporters dumb ignoramuses (and much worse, of course), but what does it say about THEMSELVES if they insult the very voters whose support (i.e., votes) they will need in order to win in future elections?
P.S. Just because the previous poster (some nonentity who calls himself “Oliver”) never heard of the slain Dutch filmaker Van Gogh doesn’t mean that the Hollywood denizens aren’t familiar with him. But then, again, such megalomania as displayed by “Oliver” is typical of the far Left. -
I think that, to them, there’s no such thing as “justifiable outrage” if the target is not white or in the employ of whites. In that mindset, it would be rude and ethnocentric to judge islamofascists harshly.
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And I clicked a link from Jeff’s blogroll: Greg Allen. HE condemned it. I think we reactionaries if we looked would find hushed condemnation all across the so-called liberal media. Compared with Islamofascist thought they are all, in fact, us.
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I think you are confusing people in the entertainment industry with the characters they have played. People in entertainment are self important circus people. They are more self interested than anyone…. which is why their hair and “look” never changes no matter how old or hasbeen they are.
They think everyone only thinks about them,,, so they are afraid the terrorists will kill them if they speak out. They don’t like George Bush, but they wouldn’t speak out even if they did like him. Notice Mel Gibson, Britney and the rest are also noticeably quiet. -
Notice, also, that Pat Sajak is only speaking out against the entertainment industry and not the actual terrorists.
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My basic stance on “famous hollywood types” and artists from the music industry who supposedly “hate war” so much, is that they should generally shut the heck up about foreign policy in front of TV networks …
UNLESS they were seen and heard actively protesting economic sanctions against Iraq since early 90’s;
UNLESS they’ve shown some intelligent knowledge of where Iraq was and where it was headed before we “invaded”;
UNLESS they can formulate an intelligent argument on what alternative courses of action should have been;
UNLESS they can successfully demonstrate that hunting-down Muslim fascists all over the Middle-East while continuing to starve innocent *Muslim* Iraqi Children for another 12 years was a preferable course of action;
UNLESS they can demonstrate that there was a way in hell economic sanctions would have EVER been lifted while saddam was in power.
UNLESS they can utter anything beyond “Bush lied to us”, “Bush is a stupid monkey”, “Bush sucks”, “Vote Democrat”, beyond giving-up on finding solutions by just sitting around and throwing blame.
Their “fame” yields an aura of righteousness and authority that feeds a crowd eager to buy propaganda from anyone who’ll paint the world as black and white, resulting in further polarizing political opinions among sheep.
Famous people, like everyone else, have a right to free speech. That’s a Good Thing -
nice try steve. not speaking against terrorism FIRST rendered sajak’s argument invalid. too difficult to figure out that sajak wasn’t in favour of terrorists already and skiped the obvious?
by your logic, everything susan sarandon & co. uttered against bush w/o prior condemnation of osama & his islamofascists is meaningless. -
How dare they not make noise over the tragic death of someone they’ve never heard of!
Yeah. They only make noise about the deaths of people they know personally. They would never make noise about the death of a complete stranger they only heard about in the news.
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The final question is answered in this fine leftist article.
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jeebus, oliver might be the most blindly partisan character in all of blogdom. it seems to me if you are at all interested and active in geopolitics, you’d be aware of this hate crime. certainly an informed person would be aware of the brutal murder of a colleage, even one unknown to you personally; especially if this crime of religeous and cultural intolerance took place in a country that “walks the walk” of multiculturalism.
but oliver defends their silence for obvious reasons. sajak’s conclusion is the correct one.
>>I’m sure they’re just waiting for all the pro-war folks to express their outrage at the injustice done to innocent Iraqi bystanders and the hobbled US troops in Iraq.
bush is the criminal. bush, (and clinton, kerry, and the world’s intelligence community) lied. and iraqis and our CHILDREN died!
anyone have the patience to check oliver’s site for UNSCAM updates? i don’t. -
Hey, Pat:
SH_T THE F_CK _P! (Can I buy a vowel?)
I’m sure all those people out there hitting the Left over the head with this story right now would be marching in the streets to defend Theo van Gogh’s right to freedom of speech if he had made a movie which savaged Christianity and got killed for it.
Umm… not.
I agree there should be more public outrage about this, but Lord Almighty please don’t swallow this bullshit line that the American Right has somehow become the champions of freedom of expression. Neither Left or Right understand that the speech you hate the most is the type you must defend at all costs. -
>>I’m sure all those people out there hitting the Left over the head with this story right now would be marching in the streets to defend Theo van Gogh’s right to freedom of speech if he had made a movie which savaged Christianity and got killed for it.
>>Umm… not.
dead wrong. this is an incredibly stupid remark. -
http://www.google.com/search?q=Theo+Van+Gogh+anti-semitic&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Hate to mention this, but Theo van Gogh had a bit of a history flirting with anti-Semitism, to the point he was taken to court I believe. I would also suggest checking out the Jerusalem Post’s coverage of this story.
http://www.jpost.com/
“Van Gogh had made anti-Semitic remarks too. One of his quotes was “It smells like caramel here. They must be burning diabetic Jews.””
Perhaps that might play a role in Hollywood’s silence? -
Yeah, Friendlydude2k, because I saw the Right-wing free speech activists out in droves defending the release of The Last Temptation of Christ when American Christofascists decided that it was blasphemous.
Oh wait… not!
And B has a point: Theo van Gogh was an arrogant prick, a deliberate bomb-thrower in Dutch cinema with all kinds of chips on his shoulder (not just against Islam).
Not that it should matter, of course. The difference between “us” and “them” is that we’re supposed to defend freedom of expression when the chips are down.
Where’s Pat Sajak’s outraged open letter to Michael Powell when a vocal minority of American fundamentalists are able to dictate what can or can’t be shown on television or heard on the radio?
There’s a battle going on, chief – over there and right here as well. There are barbarians both inside and outside the gates, and we can’t prevail over either one without taking on both.
Like I said, the Left is just as guilty as the Right when it comes to disrespecting our right to free speech. But they both cut and run when push comes to shove – people who have been blinded by their own party’s self-serving rhetoric. -
Here’s another perspective on the whole thing, written by someone who was just recently in Amsterdam
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=7310_0_5_0_C -
I’ve never quite understood the “speak-out” thing. A civilized person, by definition, is against murder. It is the same with having moderate Muslims speak out against beheadings…if they’re civilized (an easy assumption for those living inthe West), it should be understood that they are against it.
Why the need for this group or that group to specifically condemn barbarism. Is the implication that, by their silence, Hollywood stars condone the murder of Van Gogh? What rubbish. -
Yeah! How dare they not make noise over the tragic death of someone they’ve never heard of!
Good point! After all, Matthew Shepard had certainly achieved complete worldwide fame before his death. -
Kurt, did you see recent 20/20?
turns out Sheppard, who became a gay martyr saint, was killed over drugs & money, not due to his sexual orientation. one of his killers was bi (now that he’s under lock and key, it’s safe to assume, he’s just gay)
