A good Sunday morning to you! There are two articles of interest to me this morning, and are rather intersectional. The first comes from the Chicago Tribune
Twelve-year-old Ruth Turpin of Hammond struggled through tears Saturday to explain why she wanted to participate in an anti-gun-violence protest outside of a gun show at the Lake County Fairgrounds.
“I can’t believe that something as horrible as this could happen,” Ruth said, referring to the mass shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that resulted in the deaths of 17 students and faculty members. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t understand. It’s not something that should happen to kids.”
Bad Things happen in this world. Children are murdered, abused, enslaved, sold of to older men, forced to have their genitals mutilated, and so much more by radical (and sometimes not so radical) Islamists. Yet, these same Leftists do all in their power to defend any denunciation of a portion of Islam as being Islamophobia.
Ruth’s father, David Turpin, Jr., said his wife worries for his daughter’s safety while she is in school, and the family came to the protest to support sensible gun regulations. Turpin said while such measures would be a step in the right direction, the solution to violence is multi-faceted.
“We have created a culture of violence by glorifying it. We need to rethink that seriously,” Turpin said. “I’m a gun owner, but I am for gun control.”
Let me ask: what is the biggest creator of this glorified violence? We’ll return to that in a bit.
Indiana is one of 29 states that does not require universal background checks, Halstead said. That means there is no required background check when purchasing a firearm from a private seller at a gun show like the one underway at the fairgrounds through Sunday. Federally licensed gun dealers are required to do background checks but nothing prevents a private seller from legally obtaining a gun and then selling it to someone who cannot pass a background check.
First, this is a canard. The number of people who purchase firearms in this manner is shocking small. Second, if someone is purchasing in the manner describe, that could easily be considered a straw purchase, rather than some who had some guns and is selling them. Personally, I have no problem requiring all gun sales/transfers to have a federal background check performed, even if it is from father to daughter. We could draft very simple legislation on this, but, Democrats are opposed to small bills, because they want to restrict and even ban guns and citizens from owning them.
There’s lots more in this, worth the read, but let’s move on to this NY Times opinion piece, one of many at the paper today and yesterday, what with the Oscars (tomorrow’s headlines: “Oscars have lowest viewership in decades”)
We Got Rid of Some Bad Men. Now Let’s Get Rid of Bad Movies.
The Oscars are here: the first Oscars since powerful men started falling to #MeToo, a Trump-era Oscars, a #TimesUp Oscars, an Oscars in the shadow of “Black Panther.†Some big chairs will be empty. Some big secrets will stalk the red carpet, newly unleashed.
In an America where the ruling party seems willing to sacrifice many things — including decency and justice — to reassert white Christian masculinity as the tentpole of the universe, the best picture category offers a contrasting vision: a flaw-free indictment of that same colonial pathology (“Get Outâ€), a blazing affirmation of young womanhood (“Lady Birdâ€) and an aching gay romance (“Call Me by Your Nameâ€), among others.
Let me ask: would anyone at the Times dare write anything negative and stereotyping as “to reassert white Christian masculinity…” in terms of Islam, where women are treated as owned things, required to wear several different types of body covering clothes, have their genitals mutilated, 11 year olds are married off to 50 year old men, etc and so forth?
Jordan Peele has the chance to become the first black person ever to win best director; Greta Gerwig would be only the second woman. Yance Ford, whose film “Strong Island†is up for best documentary feature, would be the first trans director to win an Oscar. Vulture reported last week that some older Academy voters refused to even watch “Get Out,†calling it “not an Oscar film,†a dismissal more air horn than dog whistle. Identity politics loom large over the 90th Academy Awards, as well they should.
TV and film are in the thick of an unprecedented sociopolitical reckoning, the first ever of such scale and ferocity, a microcosm of our ever-more-literal national culture war. But to make that reckoning stick, we have to look ahead and ask ourselves what we want of this new Hollywood, and look back to avoid repeating the past.
It’s interesting that op-ed writer Lindy West is almost demanding that Hollywood not make certain movies, that they be censored. Get Out is a horror movie: not many get nominated for an Oscar except for things like makeup.
It’s also interesting that it seems as if Hollywood is rather racist and sexist.
Hollywood is both a perfect and bizarre vanguard in the war for cultural change. Perfect because its reach is so vast, its influence so potent; bizarre because television and movies are how a great many toxic ideas embedded themselves inside of us in the first place.
What do both articles share? The notion that Hollywood is a horrendous hive of scum and villainy. The first on guns, when we start referring to a culture of violence, where is this coming from? It’s in TV shows, it’s in movies. It’s hypocrites
https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/970266936314654725
It’s also Hollywood which has perpetuated all the racism and sexism as portrayed by Lindy West. As a straight male, I certainly appreciate the female body. But even I will point out how women are treated as sex objects by Hollywood for the sake of being a sex object. How many times have you watched a show and said “that scene with a woman was simply gratuitous?” Or seen a movie poster where the man is dressed and the woman is wearing a few scraps of clothing. Like this
Perhaps Hollywood and the entertainment industry should take a deep look at itself first.
