On Tuesday, Matt Drudge linked to a blistering attack on Hollywood by Charles Hurt of the Washington Times in response to the massacre at the midnight Friday showing of the new Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado:
You are devastated that such an “innocent and hopeful place” — here you are talking about the movie theaters that play your twisted movies — would be violated in such an “unbearably savage” way. I mean, really, who could think up such monstrous hatred and nihilistic violence? Umm, have you watched any of your own movies lately?
And, in the selfless modesty that is the hallmark of an Academy Awards ceremony, you tell us that your “feelings” about the massacre are so deeply profound that the mere words of the English language built up over hundreds of years are simply not up to the task of describing them. Wow. You do have a gift for fantasy.
But the real clue that you remain shrouded in guilt-free delusion is when you mention the “senseless tragedy that has befallen the entire Aurora community.”
Senseless? Really? If by “senseless” you mean carried out almost precisely from the scripts of your own movies, then, sure, it was “senseless.”
The next day, Drudge linked to an interview at the Hollywood Reporter with veteran critic turned director and occasional actor Peter Bogdanovich, which asks in the headline, “What If Movies Are Part of the Problem?”
Hasn’t the left boxed themselves into a corner a bit with their rhetoric in early 2011? If they truly believe that clip art can lead someone to kill — despite using the same imagery themselves, and even if the perpetrator very likely had never seen said clip art — and we must stop using gun and violence-related rhetoric in our language, then surely a nearly three hour visual treatise on ultraviolence projected onto a 30 foot movie screen with Dolby Surround Sound can do so as well. If a university truly believes in its collective soul…
A University of Kentucky student pleaded not guilty Thursday to terroristic threatening, a charge that resulted after he allegedly sent a picture of an archenemy of Batman to a university official.
Steven I. Kennedy, 28, allegedly emailed a photo of the Joker, an anarchist villain in movies and comic books, to associate vice president Terry Allen after Allen didn’t return his messages. Kennedy allegedly was upset about the way officials handled a discrimination complaint, according to a warrant filed in Fayette District Court.
Officials viewed the email as a threat in light of the recent mass killing in Aurora, Colo., at a premiere showing of The Dark Knight Rises, the document said. The man charged in the Colorado shooting, in which 12 were killed and 58 injured, dyed his hair red and reportedly called himself Joker.
…. Then surely the underlying product produced by Hollywood itself must be called into question.
Because otherwise, it would prove that the “new civility” rhetoric we heard endlessly last year from the left was mere political grandstanding designed to score cheap political points against a then-newly-emerged Republican majority in Congress.
Not that the rest of us didn’t know that already of course.
Related: At Newsbusters yesterday, “Matthews, Who Once Claimed Someone Will ‘Jam a CO2 Pellet’ in Rush Limbaugh’s Head, Calls for Civility.”
Start with your own network, Chris and then get back to us.
Update: Linking to a story on Maryland police arresting a possible Aurora copycat, the Professor adds, “maybe Hollywood doesn’t deserve the blame, but that’s not the point. Any other industry would be blamed, but Hollywood has bought itself a pass.”
And at the Weekly Standard, Geoffrey Norman explores Tinseltown’s future, “As the Zeitgeist Turns.” Was the use of the Z-Word purely coincidental?
More: Found via Hugh Hewitt, “The Dark Night Rises,” Peggy Noonan writes. “Everybody knows the culture is poisonous, and nobody expects that to change:”
The president won’t say anything—he too is Hollywood funded—and maybe that’s just as well, since he never seems sincere about anything anymore.
A particularly devilish injustice is that many of the wealthy men and women of the filmmaking industry go to great lengths to protect their own children from the products they make. They’re able to have responsible nannies and tutors and private coaches and private lessons. They keep the kids busy. They don’t want them watching that garbage.
Everyone else’s kids?
One thing about good parents these days is they always look tired. A lot have hard lives—two jobs, different shifts, helping with homework, cleaning the house. But they also have the exhausted look of hypervigilance.
Once parents could take a break at night, park the kids in front of the TV and let the culture baby-sit. Not anymore. Our culture, they know, is their foe. The culture brings sick into the room They have to guard against it, be hypervigilant: “Put that off!” “I don’t care if your friends are going, we’re not.”
It’s a wonder they don’t revolt.
Read the whole thing.
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