SELMA THE MOVIE: Don't fuck with history!

I went to see the movie SELMA and thought that it was a very powerful and very inspirational film but I just could not get over the revisionist history it was trying to sell.

As a history purist I wince at every attempt to revise history no matter whose history and no matter how painful or embarrassing the history may be; we deserve to know what really happened.

What makes it even more distressing is the fact that black children, on a national level, are being given free tickets to see the movie. For many of them, this will be the history they will remember and not the history in history books.

The revisionist history I am talking about is the treatment of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president at that time, by director Ava DuVernay. She showed him as an obstructionist or more bluntly, an antagonist of the movement and that was a blatant falsehood; without him the Civil Rights Movement would not have moved forward.

Director Ava DuVernay in defending her rationale for altering history came off as arrogant when she said she was not making a white savior movie and is not a historian or a documentarist. To me, if you’re recreating a historical moment than get the history right; don’t fuck with it.

This Sunday’s New York Times had a great article by Maureen Dowd called “NOT JUST A MOVIE” where she echoed the sentiments of many and but mostly the people who were actually there with Johnson during this time.

Dowd said that in this country, on matters of race – there is even a higher responsibility to be accurate.

In my mind, DuVernay had crossed a line and therefore her reputation as a movie maker will be tarnished and suspect and the movie and all the fine actors in it will also suffer because of her arrogance and plain stupidity; the movie has been nominated for Best Picture but that is all…a snub…maybe…but to me a deserved snub of the director…she probably will call this racism.

PHILIPPINES: Does the pope have the balls to do what needs to be done?

Pope Francis is visiting the Philippines this week.

In honor of his visit hundreds of street urchins (children) that are homeless have been rounded up and put into holding cells. I presume they will be released after the pope leaves.

The irony here is that the Philippine government has just allowed contraceptives to be available on a national basis and free to the poor. This was done despite huge opposition from the Catholic Church there (Philippines are mostly Catholic). 

The pope has come to address the issue?

In the Philippines, women have on average 6-7 children in their lifetimes (abortion is prohibited but so is divorce). Many of the children die at an early age and so do the women.

Finally Catholic women can obtain contraceptives legally and are doing so BUT don’t want to go to hell for opposing the wishes of the Catholic Church…really?

How absurd does this issue have to get especially when we are talking about the welfare and well-being of human beings on this earth?

I know Pope Francis is in a tough position going against church teaching but I think he has the balls to do what is right and reasonable after all he has been preaching a theology that helping humans on this earth and not hurting them as the church has been doing for ages with its nonsensical religious bullshit.

CNN: Pusillanimous twits for not showing the cover of Charlie Hebdo (look up the word)...

CHARLIE HEBDO the satirical French magazine has published a new edition after the massacre at its offices.

The magazine cover has a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying “I am Charlie” which most of the people in the world were holding, with a caption stating that “All is forgiven”…Muhammad is crying.

The cartoon tried to convey that the journalists at Charlie Hebdo “forgive” the terrorists and that even Muhammad is crying in sympathy with those slain; that makes him unhappy with what the terrorists did.

CNN chose not to show the cover of the magazine and that just pissed me off to no end; USA Today did because it had news value and that is what a fucking news organization is supposed to do.

I will agree that some of the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo puts out are not fit to print in family newspapers; they are just too obscene but this cover, coming especially at this historic time is very tame.

The problem, I suppose, is that some Muslims are offended by the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad and CNN did not want to offend them???

All religious people are offended by a sarcastic portrayal of their religion or of their religious leaders…so what…that does not mean that such portrayals can be banned by them as they have no right to do that.

The Muslims have been known to issue death warrants against people or organizations that do not abide by “their” rules of behavior and obviously some of these death warrants have been carried out trying to “avenge” the Prophet Muhammad.

The only way to stop this kind of thinking and behaving is to totally ignore these people and their demands and publish what one wants as is allowed in our culture under our tenet of free speech; we cannot bend to intimidation.

The pope has said that killing in the name of religion is wrong but he also added that insulting someone’s faith is also wrong. Well it may be in poor taste and even rude to insult someone’s faith but it’s not against the law and it is not “wrong” as the word is defined; it is simply someone’s opinion.

The march in Paris with all those world leaders joining hands in support of free speech was a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. Many of those world leaders jail journalists for publishing things they don’t like…Turkey, Egypt, etc.

This whole debate about “hate” speech can get out of hand and must be carefully monitored but who will monitor those monitoring the speech…see the problem.

Our Founding Fathers pledged to defend the right to free speech and the right to practice one’s own religion as the basis of our Constitution. 

CNN is obviously a pusillanimous news agency more concerned with its ratings (which are falling) and not with the principles of its profession…reports the NEWS dipshits!

Charlie Hebdo: What now?

The brutal attack on the French satirical magazine CHARLIE HEBDO by Muslim terrorists has struck me rather hard as it has so many others. As of this writing the suspects are dead.

The first reaction is anger and a call for revenge and I am sure that is what many people were feeling. There have been many anti- Islam protests in countries like Germany, France and even Sweden and I am sure this terrorist attack will only increase those protests. But why this calculated attack on a satirical magazine.

Satire has been a tool by which so called “sacred” topics or people could be criticized and has been in use throughout history. The targets come from all areas of our society including politics and religion. The Charlie magazine was known for very graphic cartoons and some may even be called disgusting and over-the-top. 

My wife asked what the purpose of such disgusting satire is. This magazine did not play favorites but satirized anybody and everybody that they felt was in need of some poking.

Satire is usual a humorous method of shaming individuals and organizations or making fun of them through irony and sarcasm by pointing out what one feels needs to be pointed out as a means of social criticism. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show on the Comedy Channel is a person that is exceptionally good at satirizing people, organizations and events.

As we all know, Muslims do not allow depictions of the prophet Muhammad; it is a sin and a great sign of disrespect towards their religion. Historically, the case is not as clear; the Quran says nothing about images of the prophet and the Shia Muslims do not ban images of Muhammad even if they fear that images may lead to idolatry…that is another topic for another day.

I think the real story here is that most of these depictions / cartoons are negative and highly insulting. But then, so are those of Jesus, Buddha and every other religious leader and symbol; we don’t kill people over them.

We have always said that we may disagree with many people but we will fight to the death to protect their freedom to those ideas we disagree with and this is something that the radical Muslims don’t seem to understand or are not willing to understand. 

If we are not willing to give up our freedom of speech and they are not willing to allow us the freedom of speech, what then?

I think in time, moderate Muslims will prevail because they want the opportunity at the life the West has to offer but they must help control Muslim radicalism and extremism. If they don’t police their own community, people in the West will blame the whole community and take action against the whole community and that will not be a good outcome.

SELMA the movie; questions as to historicity?

There is a new movie coming out next week titled SELMA about the civil rights struggles of the 60s. I believe it is one of the first such movies dealing with this subject and therefore very important especially for our young people who were born after these events occurred; you might call it a dramatized history lesson which every child should be familiar with.

As important as I feel this movie is to our society, I was a little flabbergasted to read in the New York Times that the movie may have taken some liberties with historic facts. Some historians argued that the portrayal of Lyndon B. Johnson and what he actually did during those times was actually false. It is one thing to embellish the truth but it is another to flat out lie.

As a history nut, I am very concerned about history revisionists who try to portray what happened in a way that is closer to what they want to believe happened than what really (actually) happened.

This is something the Japanese, among others, have tried and continue to try to do as they revise the history of their behavior during WWII. They are trying to justify some of their actions during the war and shine a gentler light on the atrocities committed by their soldiers. This to me is reprehensible.

In the case of the SELMA movie which I have not seen yet, the critics who include people who were in the Johnson administration (Joseph Califano) during those times are adamant in defending what really happened especially when it came to what Johnson did or did not do.

It appears, at least at this early date that the movie tries to minimize the role of Johnson in this struggle and actually tries to portray him as an obstacle to the struggle which historians say is the opposite of the truth.

This is dangerous in the sense that many people seeing the movie and especially young people will take the movie as factual in all respects and that will temper their judgment of this particular time in history.

The director Ava DuVernay defends herself saying that she was not going to make a movie about a white savior but does herself a disservice by not defending her movie on historical grounds. Of course it is her picture to make but because I think this movie is so important to our society, it should be perfectly factual when depicting historical events.