Commenting on the media’s frenzied, foaming-at-the-mouth anti-McCain and Palin viciousness, Victor Davis Hanson has noted that overall, the mainstream media’s efforts to help Obama are backfiring: “Strange to say, they don’t seem to get it that they are, well, not liked or respected.” The same would seem to hold true for Hollywood actors who are growing ever more rabid in their support for the Democratic presidential nominee.
But Barack Obama might want to beware of his glamorous high-profile fans, because if there’s one thing Hollywood loves more than a high-priced cocktail party in support of its man of the moment, it’s uttering foul, racist diatribes after one too many of those cocktails.
There are many examples. Take Michael “Kramer” Richard’s racist spewing and Dog the Bounty Hunter’s career-ending slurs. Paris Hilton’s sex video may have made internet search history, but what about the video of her racist ravings?
Remember Pauly Shore? You don’t? No need to feel bad — now if only we could forget his racist ravings. Or how about Charlie Sheen, star of Emmy-nominee Two and a Half Men, who dropped the n-bomb on his ex-wife. And, even though he’s not a Hollywood celebrity — and was supposedly sober — let’s not forget liberal mouthpiece Don Imus’ “nappy head” remarks.
This week, Sandra Bernhard, another loud-mouth Hollywood liberal, has shown her true colors, too — apparently in the belief that the surest way to revive a flagging career is by uttering foul, threatening, and deranged remarks:
Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the sh** and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat bitch! Don’t you f*****’ reference Old Testament, bitch!” Bernhard said. “You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bullshit! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b***h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You wh*** in your f*****’ cheap New Vision cheap-a** plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bullsh** moment.
In this indescribably offensive tirade — which the DC Examiner describes as “enraged optimism” — one of Hollywood’s loudest and biggest mouthed (literally) actresses spewed her apparent belief that blacks are rapists, Jews own the Old Testament, and pro-life women are female “Uncle Toms.”
According to Bernhard, her remarks were all taken out of context.
“[The gang rape comment] is part of a much larger, nuanced, and yes, provocative (that’s what I do) piece from my show about racism, freedom, women’s rights, and the extreme views of Governor Sarah Palin, a woman who doesn’t believe that other women should have the right to choose,” Bernhard told the Daily News.
One cannot begin to fathom the outrage that would ensue were a conservative to make the same suggestion about black Americans. Oh, wait, I don’t have to imagine it. Consider, for instance, the furor over at Daily Kos about Rush Limbaugh’s racism.
What about the anger if a Republican similarly smeared Hillary Clinton? Oh, wait. Chris Matthews already went through that?
So where’s the outrage over Bernhard’s remarks? Where’s the furor, the stampede as the politically correct left distances itself from Bernhard? The demands for a retraction, an apology, a platter for her large head?
Don’t strain yourself, the answer is there is none. As the Anchoress notes, in Hollywood it’s perfectly acceptable to make such remarks so long as you’re targeting Sarah Palin:
Sarah Palin is the wrong sort of successful woman, so this is taken with a shrug and a smile by the left. And the right is “over-reacting.”
In other words, hate-spewing actors have “artistic license” to make racist remarks, to engage in sexist antics, or to spew attacks like Matt Damon’s regurgitation of a fake internet story about Palin’s views on dinosaurs. As long as they’re serving the higher purpose of turning people against McCain-Palin, nothing more is required: not decency, not morality, and certainly not truth.
The true irony behind the left’s united decision to overlook Bernhard’s racist ravings is that, by doing so, they’ve given up their strongest rallying point: something Slate’s John Dickerson called “the politics of umbrage” back when Hillary was still in the race.
A reporter will never go wrong at a Clinton or Obama press conference by asking: “Senator, what about the latest outrage?” The question is always apt, because taking umbrage and responding to it has become the chief daily business of the Democratic campaign.
Now, however, Hollywood — the darling of the left — is the source of the umbrage, and the resulting silence among the liberals is deafening. The effect is much like Dorothy and crew’s stunned silence in The Wizard of Oz when the curtain pulled back to reveal the “wizard” as a gnarly little old man.
Only this time what the curtain has revealed is a far more gruesome sight: the true face of Hollywood, no longer wearing Al Jolson’s blackface paint, but just as racist as ever.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member