The LA Film Critics’ Picture of the Year is about an adult gay man’s sexual relationship with a teenager.

The group of America’s top film critics met Sunday to vote on their annual rankings. Their top pick was “Call Me By Your Name,” which follows a 17-year-old Italian boy who develops a sexual relationship with his father’s 24-year-old American intern. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, the movie is a film adaptation of André Aciman’s romantic novel of the same name. It has been hailed as “an erotic triumph” by the New York Post, “a romantic marvel” by The Atlantic, and “a gorgeous gay love story” in The Guardian.

If Hollywood is trying to redeem its image after the Weinstein-Spacey cases, this is probably not the best way to do it.

I wonder how the child rapist Victor Salva is doing these days. Still finding work, I trust.

So, now that Harvey Weinstein’s history is out in the open (the man seems unrepentant, for what it’s worth), there are some whispers that the next scandal to break will be Hollywood’s systematic sexual abuse of minors.

If this does become a scandal, I wonder if the defenders of the Hollywood Left will still try to claim nobody knew about it, even though people like Corey Feldman and others have been trying to warn people for years that this kind of thing goes on in Hollywood and involves some very big names.

Isn’t it also interesting that the head of the Motion Picture Association of America is, himself, a man with a history of sexual abusing women that’s OK because he was a Democrat Senator?

The Narrative the left is trying desperately to spin on Harvey Weinstain is that only a very few people knew about his behavior until courageous women, helped by courageous liberal journalists, broke the story last month. Hardly anyone in Hollywood knew. They were like German civilians who lived near Dachau and Birkenwald. “We had no idea what was going on in the camps. We noticed there weren’t as many Jews around, but we just thought they were on vacation or something.” Like Hillary, they were “shocked and appalled” when they “learned” what was really going on.

Here’s Courtney Love in 2005, blowing another hole in the “Nobody Knew” Narrative.

Here’s Kate Winslet, wanting you to know she was totes courageous for not thanking Harvey Weinstain when she won an Oscar in 2009.

Here’s Meryl Streep in 2017, sanctimoniously pontificating about Hollywood’s moral obligation to oppose those who abuse their power.

“This instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life ‘cause it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.”

She was not talking about Harvey Weinstein.

She wouldn’t have dared.

The leftists are trying to spin a narrative about the Harvey “C’mon the Ficus” Weinstein that somehow, it’s a story of brave women and brave liberal media operatives exposing a great wrong. The facts do not support this narrative. The ‘brave women’ kept quiet for decades about it because their careers were more important. Ronan Farrow is one who exposed the story and, though it’s an easy mistake to make, Ronan Farrow is not a woman. Nor is the Democrat Media Complex covering itself in glory. NBC News had the story as long ago as 2016, but spiked it. No way were they going to break a story about a major Democrat donor being a sexual predator in the middle of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.  The New York Times had the story in 2004 but again, chose to spike it to cover for a wealthy, powerful Democrat.

According to Kurt Schilchter, the real Weinstein Narrative is that while America’s leftist elite portray themselves as our moral superiors, the “Conscience of Our Nation,” they are, in real life, a bunch of self-serving scum-buckets.

They knew. They all knew, and they didn’t care. Meryl Streep’s Sophie’s choice was between her career and her conscience, and let’s just say she didn’t agonize over her pick. Others took his cash to shut up, leaving other ingenues to his sweaty clutches because getting the gigs trumps sisterly solidarity every time.

Hillary Clinton managed to put down her super-sized Chardonnay goblet long enough to issue a 38-word comment/cliché on her pal and benefactor’s icky adventures in gardening. In her defense, she was probably thinking, “I was married to Bill. This guy’s an amateur.”

So why should we normal Americans respect these people? Why should we submit to being constantly scolded, lectured, and treated as morally bankrupt simpletons anymore?

We shouldn’t, and we aren’t, not anymore.

All I can say is ‘Welcome to the Party.’ A lot of us got fed up with Hollywood’s Pious Sanctimony a long time ago.

Remember kids, Harvey Weinstein didn’t get fired because his company found out he was a sexual predator. He got fired because the public found out he was a sexual predator.

Bump: Harvey Weinstein was an even better progressive Democrat than I thought:

I was sent, on Election Eve 2000, to cover a book party [Weinstein] was hosting, along with my colleague Andrew Goldman.

Weinstein didn’t like my question about O, there was an altercation; though the recording has alas been lost to time, I recall that he called me a cunt and declared that he was glad he was the “fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town.” When my colleague Andrew (who was also then my boyfriend) intervened, first calming him down and then trying to extract an apology, Weinstein went nuclear, pushing Andrew down a set of steps inside the Tribeca Grand — knocking him over with such force that his tape recorder hit a woman, who suffered long-term injury — and dragging Andrew, in a headlock, onto Sixth Avenue.

 Such was the power of Harvey Weinstein in 2000 that despite the dozens of camera flashes that went off on that sidewalk that night, capturing the sight of an enormously famous film executive trying to pound in the head of a young newspaper reporter, I have never once seen a photo. Back then, Harvey could spin — or suppress– anything; there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine.

At least he let the reporters live. “Rookie mistake,” said Hillary.

In 2015, [Weinstein’s]company distributed “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary about campus sexual assault. A longtime Democratic donor, he hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton in his Manhattan home last year. He employed Malia Obama, the oldest daughter of former President Barack Obama, as an intern this year, and recently helped endow a faculty chair at Rutgers University in Gloria Steinem’s name. During the Sundance Film Festival in January, when Park City, Utah, held its version of nationwide women’s marches, Mr. Weinstein joined the parade.

What a great guy. How perfectly emblematic of the Democrat Left’s commitment to women’s equality and fundamental dignity.

He also funded a program for aspiring female directors at USC.

What a guy.

I mean, apart from that one thing.

The movie Soylent Green — which depicted a world so overpopulated that the only solution was industrialized cannibalism — came out in 1973. It was inspired less by the novel it was based on (Make Room, Make Room) than Paul Ehrlich’s overpopulation alarmist book The Population Bomb;  which predicted that, due to overpopulation, the United States would experience widespread famine by the early 1980’s. Soylent Green was set five years in the future from our current year, in 2022. I can’t help but notice, we’re not on the verge of industrialized cannibalism. Much like Ehrlich’s vision of famines and global upheaval, it never happened. (Ehrlich has moved on to become a champion of Climate Change and is still well-regarded on the left as a “Population Expert.”)

Yet, here we are, 44 years later, and Hollywood is still churning out overpopulation movies. Even though current demographic trends in the Western world point to population decline, not overpopulation. And if we could get Africans to use birth control, then we pretty much would have global population decline.

So, why is Hollywood still beating this old drum? Well, for one thing, liberal (in the leftist, not classical sense) culture has ossified around the concerns of the hippie baby-boomers who defined the modern left. If it was a big deal in 1972, then to them it’s a big deal in 2017; which is why we’re stuck with all this ridiculous race obsession, and why Hollywood makes stupid movies about overpopulation. But I think another part of it is that overpopulation provides a rationale for abortion, and we all know how much Hollywood loves abortion.

In other stupid Hollywood news, have you heard about the remake of Lord of the Flies with an all-female cast? I am not making this up. I am thinking in this version, Simon will become Simone. The other girls won’t physically rip her apart, but will destroy her self-esteem through bullying and psychological abuse until she dies of anorexic starvation. Piggy will become ‘Peggy,’ and will be trampled to death during a shoe sale.

And it will still be funnier than that female Ghostbusters movie.

At the gym, they were playing Kathy Griffin’s sad press conference with Gloria Allred’s daughter. I don’t know what she was saying, since I was listening my workout shuffle of J-Pop and metal. (FWIW, it synched up amusingly sometimes.)

The thing that almost makes me feel sad for Ms. Griffin is that her whole thing is that she wants to be beloved. The beheading of Donald Trump was supposed to win her the hearts of the increasingly violent left; it wasn’t a threat of political violence, it was a glorification of political violence. And when the people, the clique, rejected her… well, she had to try something. So, she does this press conference where she makes another play for the sympathy of the prog left. “I’m the victim of that horrible Donald Trump, and I’ve been a victim of the Patriarchy my whole life.” That venture seems to have come up short also.

For some reason, I started thinking about Betty White. Betty White truly is beloved by people. Why? Longevity, is part of it, roles on two iconic sitcoms twenty years apart. But a big part of it is her demeanor. Betty White is sweet. People like that. And when she does… as she occasionally does… something a bit raunchy, it’s funnier because it’s coming from sweet old Betty White.

You could imagine yourself running into Betty White in a coffee shop and sharing a coffee and biscotti with her. You imagine Kathy Griffin as someone who would be shouting at the barista and loudly talking about herself in order to claim the unwilling attention of everyone in the shop.

Not to mention, Betty White mostly keeps her trap shut about politics.

You would never see Betty White mimicking oral sex on Anderson Cooper. She has enough sense to know it wouldn’t be funny. For someone who alleges to be comedienne, Ms. Griffin has a terrible sense of what’s comedy. Probably because she was raised to believe that it was ‘comic’ and ‘edgy’ for women to be loud and boorish, and she expected that to translate into affection. It does not.

And I know feminists will be saying, “Well, that’s just misogyny. Women can’t get away with being loud, but men are respected for it.” No, not really. Roger Moore passed away last week, and one of the recurring comments on his passing was what a kind, gracious, and classy guy he was. Justin Bieber on the other hand…

Kathy Griffin is a loud, rude, grating, boorish woman completely lacking in comedic instincts who wants more than anything to have the kind of esteem Betty White does. She’s 57-years-old, and she wants the same things a twelve-year-old girl wants. And that’s just sad.

I know in the greater scheme of things, this doesn’t matter. My takeaway isn’t about Ms. Griffin. I couldn’t care less about her (and that’s the most wounding thing to her, nobody cares). But there is, maybe, some sort of lesson about the futility and abject sadness of pursuing fame and esteem as ends in themselves. Even when you succeed, you end up like Madonna; surrounded by wealth and sycophants while your own children can’t stand being around you.

Anyway, if this all bored you, there’s a video of an alt-right guy slamming Robert De Niro after the jump.

(more…)

CNN has fired Kathy Griffin from their next New Year’s Eve program. As V noted earlier, she posed for a so-called ‘artist’ with herself holding a blood-drenched, beheaded effigy of President Trump. In a single image, she managed to align herself with Islam (or ISIS imagery), Satanism (or satanic imagery), and assassination of the President of the United States.

To his minor credit, Anderson “Vanderbilt” Cooper tweeted “For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.” (Minor because it’s something he should have done hours faster, and perhaps an understatement.)

It remains to be seen whether Hollywood and the Left will actually shun Griffin, or rehabilitate her once the dust settles? After all, the first reaction of a CNN panel (led by Jake Tapper) was a dismissive “We’ve got much bigger issues to focus on.”

And indeed, they do. After all, CNN is the Home of Fake News, such as:

• proclaiming that Hillary is somehow healthy and a lock to win the election;
• pushing the fake/scripted views of a seven year old as a serious reason for the U.S. to make war in Syria; and
• pushing evidence-free, anonymously-sourced innuendo against Trump.

But maybe CNN’s dismissive, first reaction didn’t focus-group very well?

The whole thing got me thinking about denunciations in general. After all, conservatives and libertarians are supposed to denounce every little thing done by every little kook – or else we somehow are that thing. Recently,

• Jacob Schwartz was arrested for child pornography. He isn’t a nobody. He is a longtime Democrat activist and staffer. His father is a huge Democrat donor and insider, having served as an Obama delegate and a lawyer for Bernie Sanders, the SEIU and ACORN (remember them?).

  Young-ish Jacob allegedly possessed graphic images of a 6-month old baby being raped. He was a top staffer to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. Schwartz also appeared on Chris Cuomo’s program on CNN (them again!). Hillary’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, can be seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Schwartz – or at least he could, before Schwartz’s arrest triggered Democrats into disappearing the inconvenient photo.

  My question is, has Robby Mook denounced Schwartz, in no uncertain terms? Has Hillary Clinton? Or the DNC? Or CNN? Has Chris Cuomo indicated his regret at having Schwartz as a guest? I couldn’t find any such statements.

  Each of them, who has not yet done such a statement, therefore supports pedophiles and pedophilic rape – if we apply the Left’s usual logic about these things.

• Marina Abramović is another left-wing “artist” who promotes imagery and practices that are awfully reminiscent of Satanism, with that Spirit Cooking thing she’s into.

  John Podesta is, of course, one of THE top Clintonites, as he was Hillary’s campaign chair and her preference for Secretary of State.

  It’s known that Podesta was invited, on warmly intimate terms, to a private Spirit Cooking “dinner” that his brother Tony probably attended, and which Podesta himself may have attended.

  Has either of the Podestas denounced Satanism, or at least Abramović? Has Hillary Clinton denounced either of the Podestas? I don’t think so.

  Again, apply the Left’s typical logic of you-are-clearly-for-that-bad-thing-if-we-don’t-agree-that-you-have-denounced-it-enough, and see where it would go, here.

• And don’t get me started about Antifa – and the failure of many lefties to denounce their violence.

So, firing Kathy Griffin from a New Year’s Eve program that was going to happen in 7 more months: is that enough? Or should we call for more? If yes, what?

UPDATE: She says “I went too far, and I was wrong.”

Umm, “too far” in what? When I go too far, it’s because I love something. I ate too much chocolate or lemon pie. I tried to power clean too much weight. So, if Kathy “went too far” in making visible her fantasy of beheading the President and soaking his head in the blood, then deep in her soul, she loves…??? Something about this is still “off”.

You know what I’m talking about.

May I posit that the left’s snotty assertion, “When they go low, we go high” only applies when they think they’re winning?

Remember when the left-wing went into… or perhaps, merely elevated… paroxysms of outrage when someone hung an “Obama Presidential Library” sign on an outhouse? How disrespecting the president in such a manner was the most outrageous outrage of all outrageous outrages. Remember how the Justice Department investigated it as a hate crime?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

She actually thinks this gruesome stunt will jump start the rusted out 1992 Yugo that is her career. What does that say about Hollywood and liberalism?

And don’t take this the wrong way, she has every Constitutional right to do this.

And if someone else wanted to portray Barack Obama in a demeaning and disrespectful way, that would have been their Constitutional right. Although, it’s likely they would have had the tolerant progressive mob descend on them… probably the FBI and IRS, too.

Update: Why do they do this?

It’s fine to get shocked or outraged. But you have to understand something. This is all they’ve got. They don’t have rational arguments, not against Donald Trump, and not in favor of anything. If they did, they would utilize the freedom of speech we still have, the academic institutions they largely control with federal dollars, and the media they dominate to make those arguments. Yet they don’t. Either they do things like Kathy Griffin has done here, or they do the equivalent of those things — rant, rave, cry, pout, unfriend people from Facebook, and all the rest.

What have they got? That’s the question. And the answer can only be: nothing. The proof of that is the way they’re handling their loss. When people throw away reason and replace it with bullying and barbarism, they’ve confessed they’re at the end of their intellectual run.

Hat Tip: James

On a recent episode of Law and Order: SVU (which I was amazed to learn is still in production), the storyline concerned… I am not making this up… a Christian church that encourages teenagers to rape other teenagers to keep them from turning gay.

SVU’s writers saved their coup de grace for the final minutes of the episode. In those last moments, the audience learns that Lucas himself is a closeted homosexual, and the priest told him to have sex with Ann as penance for his own homoerotic thoughts.

Yeah, because Christian ministers *always* encourage teenagers to engage in premarital sex to ward off Teh Ghey.

It’s like everything Hollywood knows about Christianity comes from The Handmaids Tale: which is nothing but a paranoid fantasy of what the world would be like if Christians acted like Muslims.

From Breitbart, Joss Whedon Film Imagines World Without ‘Beacon of Hope’ Planned Parenthood

The 3-minute film shows tears, frustration, and desperation in its imaginary world without Planned Parenthood, where scholarships are lost and projects interrupted all because the abortion giant isn’t present to erase the consequences of people’s sexual decisions…

As if people wouldn’t quickly move to a mix of adoption, privately-funded abortion, privately-funded birth control, non-vaginal sex, abstinence and/or condoms.

And I say that as a supporter of first-semester abortion rights. Even I can recognize when abortion advocates are dishonest.

“Planned Parenthood is a beacon of hope, and anyone trying to shut it down is committing an act of evil. It’s not just inhumane — it’s inhuman.

No, Joss. What’s evil, inhumane and inhuman (you can picture his face and voice cracking on that one) is:

1. Late-term abortion.
2. Forcing your fellow citizens to fund it.
3. Painting murderers as heroes.
4. Assuming that anything YOU like, has to be funded by taxpayers (rather than yourself).

But we know Joss has problems:

On Mother’s Day, he tweeted his gratitude for his mother’s death 25 years earlier so she wouldn’t have to live in a world where Donald Trump was president…

…and his other tweets gleefully picture graphic violence happening to Republicans.

UPDATE – Unrelated? I almost blogged on this yesterday: Man rompers. Hipsters in baby clothes.

Joss Whedon has nothing to do with this, so I can’t imagine why my subconscious connects it to him. But it does.

The straight actor who plays Gay Sulu seems to be as dumb as the gay actor who plays Straight Sulu.

John Cho posted on his Twitter account Monday, “It’s hard not to see a connection between the environment Trump has created and what happened on that @united flight.”

I’m squinting really hard and I’m not seeing the connection. It must be like one of those Magic Eye pictures from the 1990’s. I never got those, either.

Are you getting tired of being lectured by Hollywood know-nothings? It got old for me a while ago – mostly because I’m smarter than they are and am really put off by stupid people who think they are saying something insightful. – Joel Hirst

Considering that Celebrity wisdom consists of insights such as “My moral compass is in my vagina,” I think he couldn’t be more spot on. (Imagine if a man said, “My dick is my moral compass.”)

There is no room for innocent childhood fairytales in Progressive jihad. All things must serve the agenda.

According to The Telegraph, Disney’s new live action Beauty and the Beast “will star a manservant exploring his sexuality.” Super.

Apparently, Emma Watson’s Beauty has gotten a feminist makeover, and the character of Le Fou has the hots for his boss Gaston.

The Telegraph cites an interview director Bill Condon did with the gay magazine Attitude. “LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston,” he said. “And Josh [Gad, who plays LeFou] makes something really subtle and delicious out of it.”

They say it’s going to be the ‘gayest film ever.’ Not unless Gaston and Le Fou play homoerotic beach volleyball, it isn’t.

H/T Peter H.

I think the actual standing O would have gone on far longer.

Large Mirror Brought Out Onto Oscars Stage Gets Resounding 6-Minute Standing Ovation https://t.co/UsEWkl681s pic.twitter.com/6TlvukzILm

— The Onion (@TheOnion) February 27, 2017

Did anybody watch the Annual Film Promotional Event and Social Justice Lecture last night? Personally, I was playing video games and watching hockey.

To the Hollywood Left, attacking an innocent ten-year-old kid is a resume-enhancer.

The thing is, Dan Harmon *wouldn’t* be offering to hire Katie Rich if she *hadn’t* become notorious for attacking Barron Trump. As a general rule, rewarding bad behavior encourages more bad behavior. And the behavior that is rewarded is a reflection of the values of the community as a whole.

Consider that this is the same Hollywood that reveres child rapist Roman Polansky as a legend, and lets gay child rapist Victor Salva fetishize teenage males in his movies (Powder, Jeepers Creepers).

Celebrity leftists slaughter “I Will Survive” in the latest “We Are So Butthurt Over Donald Trump’s Election” video.

Also, Rosie O’Donnell is out of her damned mind.

@SenJohnMcCain FOR EMERGENCY INTERIM PRESIDENT – ONE MONTH INAUGURATION PAUSE – ILLEGITIMATE PRESIDENTS SHOULD NOT BE SWORN – GOD DAMN IT – 3:59 PM – 15 Jan 2017

Back in December, there was talk on the left of having a big old “In Yer Face’ anti-Trump concert on the day of the inaugural. It was going to feature Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Madonna and Katy Perry. And it was really going to stick it to Trump because no Big Name Celebrities were going to be at his Inaugural. And how can anyone possibly serve as president without the Celebrity Class on his side?

I looked around the interwebs today for news of this awesome concert, and, alas, I found nothing but old news about the concert from back in December. It seems to have disappeared faster than the women who accused Trump of groping them before the election.

What happened? Surely, these left-wing celebrities weren’t just blowing smoke out of their pie-holes to show off politically correct poses while having no interest in putting skin in the game? (I seem to recall Madonna making some other promises, too.) I just can’t imagine celebrities being so insincere and hypocritical

Or maybe the left just said, “You know what? Concerts are too much work. Lets just have anarchist violence instead.”