Showing posts with label Hollywood hypocrisy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood hypocrisy. Show all posts

Friday, January 20, 2017

Social Justice, Pope Leo XIII and the Inauguaration

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need  Karl Marx

Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labour, nor labour without capital. Mutual
agreement results in the beauty of good order, while perpetual conflict necessarily produces
confusion and savage barbarity Leo XIII

Image result for Leo XIII and Donald Trump
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the open form compound word social justice to the year 1824

Cathoic Social Justice began in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum.  Prior to that bandits preyed upon peasants, capitalists prey upon workers and followers of Marx preyed on Guilds and the Knights of Labor.

Catholics and many other believers from different faiths were encouraged to seek justice and treat one another with dignity.
Image result for social justice warriors
Today the acronym SJW is a misnomer. It is now a pejorative tossed at the self-anointed prophets of divisive activism - usually on the left of things.

Yesterday, I gave my Theology III juniors a test on a unit covering Rerum Novarum and the advent of Catholic Social Justice.  The gentlemen did very well.

One problem asked that they identify Pope Leo's 'duties of workers'

to perform conscientiously the work they have freely agreed to do
• not to damage the employer’s property or resort to violence
• not to have anything to do ‘with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful
promises of great results … which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss

I asked that they use themselves, when thinking about the workers.  These are sixteen and seventeen year old males. They get it.
Image result for illinois congressional progressive caucus
Through the past American two holiday seasons,  the news media has flooded the atmosphere with wailing and gnashing of teeth, by our most familiar Social Justice Warriors of stage, screen, television and of course the public teat - our Progressive elected officials.  This torrent of anguish and dire threats about our futures incites anger and uncertainty among the angry and the uncertain.


Today is the day of the dire threats.

FRIDAY J20
Early Morning Blockade Actions:
Movement for Black Lives
Trade Justice
Climate Justice
Showing Up for Racial Justice
Labor Direct Action
The Future Is Feminist
Qockblockade Brigade: Queer Resistance on J20
Communities Under Attack Fight Back!
more to be announced
9am  Outdoor Convergence Space @ McPherson Square opens
10am Anti-Capitalist Anti-Fascist Bloc @ Logan Circle
12pm Festival of Resistance, permitted march starting @ Columbus Circle
2pm Rally at McPherson Square
SATURDAY
Preparing for the Trump Era: What Anarchists Are Doing, 5-8pm @ The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd NW
SUNDAY
What’s Next After J20? DisruptJ20 Debrief & Next Steps, 6-9pm @ The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Rd NW
Events in DC

I will teach class.  Then I will correct papers.  Later, I will try and drive to Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL and watch Brother Rice tussle on the hardwood with the Fighting Irish. Tomorrow, I will sleep until 5:30 and do chores. On Sunday, I will attend 8:30 Mass at Sacred Heart Church and then enjoy a jazz concert in Hyde Park, followed by Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap cheeseburgers and fries.

Our 45th President will take the oath of office and move into the White House.

Let's see what happens.  Then let's begin to ignore ‘. . . men(women) of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results … which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss.’

Old Leo got things right. 



Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Hollywood Pretty Quiet About Obama's Scandal Troika



A couple of years ago Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. had Hollywood all a-giggle. In fact, Hollywood, the folks who churn out special effects and computer animations around such glib and witty dialog as this -

Dr. King Schultz: How do you like the bounty hunting business?
Django: Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?

(Dang!  I wish I could have heard William Powell answer that one to George Sanders)

- tends to pepper the air waves with political commentary from its cavalcade of stars on everything from Fracking to Fluke-ers.

In the last nine months, the American atmosphere has swelled pregnant with misdirection, misdeeds, misspeechifying, mission failure and mismanagement on the part of the Bride of Hollywood - the Obama White House.  Benghazi, the IRS war on Grannies and Minutemen Re-enactors, and the Snoop-dogging of the AP and FOX reporters are crowning full-term and kicking and kindly Old Doc Gosnell is in the joint- full term.  There seems to be no aborting Obama's three headed baby all set to walk to the bus and drive over his players.

Naturally, contracted celebrity gasbags on HBO, MSNBC and Comedy Central are doing all that is possible to snip the chord on this roaring distraction, but where are Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ingmar Johanssen, Rob Reiner, Tom Hanks, Will and Jada Smith and the ace dowager Susan Sarandon? How about the B-list egos?  Perez Hilton, John Cusack, Cheryl Crow and the other goofs who pen unfiltered but un-original thoughts for Huffington Post?
Where's the Velvet Mafia?  The first Gay President is in the jackpot.

The Obama Scandal Troika is coming full term. Pretty gloomy with no George Clooney.

Interesting this silence. Moreso, Hollywood is treating its President like he did with those four folks in Benghazi last September.

Then, again.  Hollywood does not answer a phone call - it gets screened.

Scarlet Johansen!  Not Ingmar. 

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Hollywood Hails Jail-bait Pimp - "Well, Too Bad About You!"


A healthy self-doubt or conscience if you will, evolves from being told that somethings that we have, done, said, or intended to do, or say happen to be unacceptable - universally and dogmatically unacceptable. Some of the very first words that had an impact on me came from my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and neighbors and they were all first and second generation Irish Catholics on the south side of Chicago. The words were 'Well, too bad about you.'

'Well, too bad about you' had a marvelously thick inflection honeyed with obvious irony. Those very intention deflecting words usually followed my plea for more candy, cookies, or Dixie cups; the stated desire to repaint my Grandfather's garage floor with benzine; or, my circa 1958 swaggering into Lou's Saloon at 77th & Ashland to see what uncles Bart, Donnie, Sy, and my Dad, if he were off-shift from the State and on his way to the Beverly Theatre, were drinking for lunch.

"What in the hell are you doing in here, Padgin (Pat-sheen in Chicagoese)?"

Well, Uncle Bart, I thought I'd grab a root-beer and play with the German cowboys( a Budweiser Beer Wagon set behind the bar) , I was in yesterday.

" Well listen here, Bub, your Dad brings you in or it's nix, get me? How old are you, again?"

Six.

" And who brought you in?"

Dad

"That's right. You want to get Lou shut down by Capt. Hennessy?"

Shut down how?

" Shut down fast. You walk all the way here on your own from Granpa's?"

Well,Lou's right next to Jack's car store.

" Well, this is your last trip in. Uncle Donnie will drive you back. Your Old Man will tan your rump."

I like coming to Lou's , Uncle Bart.


"Well, too bad about you."

I learned that I could not walk into a saloon unescorted at the age of six. I was only a guest, if there was no other possibility for my Dad's refreshment, while I was in his charge. I learned that my place was predetermined by my elders and betters. I had already learned at Little Flower Grammar School that I could not get up out of my seat and have a chat with Larry Fiscelli, Al McFarland, Billy Cullina, or Judy Lawlor. The Sisters of Mercy applied the exact same dictum -'Well, too bad about you.'

I learned that I could not steal, abuse animals ( withing reason -crayfish from the Wood Street viaduct, ants, especially huge black carpenter ants, the odd snake or alley rats could, in fact be mistreated); or lie . . . well, that got worked out with a deft rhetorical apprenticeship and the application of strategic omissions - 'Oh, that pack of smokes!'

Telling small lies, actual fabrications and omitted truths, is the foundation of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is how we evade the inner voice, 'Well, too bad about you.'

Last night, I read a disturbing article about a millionaire celebrity bankroller and pedophile with Hollywood closing ranks in his support. Here is the marrow of one from the Daily Beast:

Despite the pedophile mogul's conviction for soliciting underage prostitution, his circle is standing by their man. Scientists whose research Epstein funded also back the billionaire, writes Alexandra Wolfe.
On the evening of December 2nd, 2010, a handful of America's media and entertainment elite—including TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedienne Chelsea Handler, and director Woody Allen—convened around the dinner table of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't just any dining room, but part of a sprawling nine-story townhouse that once housed an entire preparatory school. And it wasn't just any sex offender, but an enigmatic billionaire who had once flown the likes of former President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak around the world on his own Boeing 727. Last spring, Epstein completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Palm Beach. Now he was hosting a party for his close friend, Britain's Prince Andrew, fourth in line to the throne."In the Midwest, where I am from, he would be a social pariah," says Lorna Brett Howard, a political activist and wife of Irving Post Capital CEO and Aeropostale director John Howard. "What I see here is if you have big money or are famous then you get a pass."
“A jail sentence doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty.”
Sure enough, that December night no one mentioned that their handsome host, a gray-haired 58-year-old financier with tanned skin and a joker smile, had just doled out millions of dollars in civil settlements to seven girls who allege that he paid them to perform erotic massages and demeaning sexual acts when they were underage. They are among the 40 victims turned up by an FBI investigation. But at the time, this particular swath of Epstein's elite Rolodex had no idea that the feted royal would soon renounce Epstein as a friend, nor that the royal's ex-wife, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, would hysterically apologize for letting Epstein pay off some of her debts.


Let's see. I was a long-time high school teacher of English. My sexual inclinations are solidly in the hetero-breeder camp. I started teaching at 22 years of age - that is exactly sixteen years after uncles Bart, Sy and Donnie gave me the bum's rush from Lou's Saloon at 77th & Ashland. I was teaching at Bishop McNamara High School which is a co-educational secondary school. I was, therefore, four or five years older than the oldest of my students. I was wearing a tie and in colder weather a jacket. The tie and jacket were distancing objects - I was not 'Pat, Paddy, Padgin, Hickey, Hick, Dipshit, Numbnuts, or Hey, You'. I was, and remain to my students now in their forties, or very early fifties, Mr. Hickey and they were at that time Mr. Boudreau, Miss Schafsma, Miss Hoekstra, Miss Kell, Miss Purcell, Mr. Whitman,Miss Pelletier Mr. Raines, Miss Regnier, Miss. Nugent, Mr. Coy, and Miss Cardosi and etc.

The girls were students. I treated students with affable distance, but welcoming tutelage. I came to teaching fairly well-armed with a command of my subject, but learning the art of teaching came from observation and good counsel. I had learned from watching and listening to wonderful teaching mentors like Nick Novich, Dave Raiche, Jerry Krieg, Jim Frogge,Rich Zinanni, Fathers Ken Yarno, Jim Fanale, and Bob Erickson, Sisters Theresa Galvan, Helen Kavanaugh, and others that respect for the vocation demanded a constant exercise of respect for my charges -in loco parentis.

High School girls are beautiful, but they are kids and it matters not whether a teacher is male, or female, gay or straight, long-in-the-tooth, or youthfully attractive -mind, words, deeds and hands off! Violate that cardinal rule and be damned to you.

We had several cases of Humbert-Humbert and Lolita and no Nabokovian parsing - cashiered on the spot and shunned by colleagues. Too bad about you - nothing a coronary can't make right, Old Chum!

We, as a people, allow some really obnoxious and dumb people to scratch out our societal moral high ground - the "Who's to Say-ers" The heart wants what the heart wants - TS! Too bad about you.

Our hypocrisy is making a case for understanding people who never fully grasped the commandments of God or the sound ethical dictum shot out of a singe sentence by our elders and betters -'Well, too bad about you.'