Darn Old Trump

I'm sure by now everyone's seen and heard this little clip of Donald Trump responding to Megan Kelly's question at the GOP debates:




Wow! The way he was browbeating her it was like she was a cop kicking in his door and he was a greasy slob wearing nothing but a dirty wife-beater and some even dirtier gitch violently resisting arrest.

Bad boys! Bad boys.... etc.

But besides his egregious defence of his indefensible behaviour, something else he said struck a chord with me.  He actually used the term "political correctness" to both dismiss Kelly's criticism and excuse what he has said.  It absolutely irks me because I hate political correctness as much as the next free thinker in a healthy democracy.  I even created a few monkeys that serve to expose and attack all of this political correctness, or as Seth MacFarlane called it, the "outrage industry".  Trump's remarks here are more of a setback than a help to that cause.  Now more people will associate him with that and say "Hey, if political correctness keeps Trump from talking then I'm all for it."

No! The main purpose of destroying political correctness is so that everyone, not just white males, can speak their minds, create their movies, books, plays or youtube videos without any fear of reprisal.  That absolutely gives everyone the freedom to criticize whatever they wish as well also with no fear, just so long as that incessant criticism doesn't lead to cancellation, the making of a pariah, or even jail time.  Nobody should get the same treatment as rapists and murderers just for saying words or creating art.

For comparison, here are some examples of some gloriously politically incorrect material:


George Carlin - The Seven Words by AlbertinaChavers

Ah, the master himself George Carlin.  He was very vocal about his hatred of political correctness on many occasions.  He hated its pretentious notion that softening the language will somehow soften the content, such as referring to 'death' as 'passing away'.


Sarah Silverman tells Mark Wahlberg to shut up... by ChristOlaf

The great Sarah Silverman! Mad Magazine once referred to her as a "venom-tongued hottie".  I can agree with that.  In this clip she's so raw and out-spoken she even makes Mark Wahlburg cringe.



From Blazing Saddles!  If movie executives saw footage like this in their dailies today, they would be nervously dripping all manner of fluid into many many buckets.



Bigots by Daffyduckandthedinosaur

Here's a sketch that would get so many people in alot of trouble if done today.  They seem to be gleefully defying the very essence of political correctness back when it was still relatively young.


Bugs Bunny - Southern Fried Rabbit (1953 Banned... by DemonPreyer1

 And now here's some wonderfully "incorrect" stuff from Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. It even has a big ol' Confederate flag in it.

What all of those examples have in common is that they all expressed an uncomfortable truth.  It's a truth that's not always attractive, but an avenue must be left open for it to be said.  A society grows richer when all types of ideas are allowed to flow.
This brings me back to Mr. Trump's remarks.  The only truth they revealed is that he is an over-ripe man-child with his head firmly up his ass at all times and is woefully ill-equipped  to handle criticism.  While they are certainly allowed to be spoken in a free society, they are not above ridicule.  His use of the term "politcal correctness" was just an attempt to make himself appear more noble like that examples I cited above (plus many more great examples that I wish I had enough bandwidth to include).  But, his only retaliation in the face of any critiques are childish ad-hominems like "pig" and "slut", etc.  He's not even able to challenge the ideas presented to him by Megan Kelly, Rosie O'Donnell, or anyone else.  He goes right to the name-calling and thinks that's enough.

At this time I'd like to bring up another incident, somewhat involving Donald Trump, that Donald could have used to support his claim of political correctness ruining things.  Does anyone remember a beauty contestant named Carrie Prejean?

She was Miss California back in 2009.  In the question portion of the pageant she was asked about her opinion of same sex marriage.  Her answer included 'marriage is between a man and a woman'.  She was rather abruptly removed from the pageant entirely based on that answer.  That entire situation was wrong.  I'm not referring to her opinion on gay marriage.  I don't agree with it myself but she has every right to that opinion.  The wrong part is that the question should not have been asked, and definitely not asked in that way.  The judge asking that question was fishing for the 'politically correct' answer there and held the attitude of "you'd better say it or else...".  But, in her naivete, she gave her honest answer instead saying what that judge wanted to hear, and she paid a huge price for it.
Donald did come to her defense.  However, he did not site any of the issues I stated here, he simply said "Carrie is extremely beautiful".  Inversely, when Rosie O'Donnell joked about him during that brief time she was on The View, Trump's response was "Rosie is fat and ugly".  That just shows how simply his mind works.  In his mind, any lady he deems 'beautiful' is valuable to him while any lady he does not see in that way is worthless and not worth considering.  A simple philosophy for a simple mind.

I guess my basic message with this blog post is this.  Feel free to enjoy the demented circus that is Donald Trump's candidacy and even indeed his life.  But, for the love of everything sacred (I think there are 2 or 3 things left that are), please do NOT associate him with anything relevant.  And absolutely do NOT associate him with the presidency.  To any ladies reading this, if you are one of the unfortunates who has been called a "dirty pig" by this man, consider it a compliment.  All it means is that you bruised his childish ego enough that he had to immediately pull a word out of his 'insult hat' and possibly even caused his brain to be put to use for once.

Frankly, I'm glad to be associated with all of you courageous women who have stood up to that asshole.

AAAAWWWWWWW!!!  Am I being compared to Donald Trump again.  I'm always put with the worst people.

So, to the American voting public I say, if Trump does indeed become the Republican candidate, or even if he doesn't, please disregard him and anything he says as the childish jabbering that it is.

I'll end this post with Seth Meyers giving Trump the roast he deserves.  Enjoy!

Apacheeeeeeeeeeeeeeez what a grouch!

I'd like to take this time to give my thoughts on the whole debacle with Adam Sandler's latest movie The Ridiculous 6 where, if you haven't heard by now, a few actors of Apache decent walked off the set in disgust by what they saw.  What got them most offended were the spoofy Indian names Beaver's Breath and Wears No Bra as well as how the set designers seemed to have got most of the Native symbols either misplaced or just plain wrong.

I'm not going to say anything disparaging about the actors who walked off.  They had every right to leave if they didn't feel comfortable with anything on the set.  Hell, they had every right to leave if Kraft Services got their frappaccino order wrong.  I will say though that their actions could have been an over-reaction, but not nearly as big as the over-reaction on social media decrying this movie as "horribly racist" or even "hate speech".  I've even seen people who are calling for a full boycott of this movie, all Happy Madison projects, and possibly building a time machine and travelling back to January 1, 1966 to stop Stanley and Judy Sandler from conceiving of a subversive yet juvenile offspring.  Many of these people are forgetting some rather important things.

Keep in mind that the object of the offence as of now are just isolated jokes.  Context is everything.  You've got to see how these jokes play within the entire screenplay before you can even begin to examine whether they are an insult or not.  For example, if you tuned in to Schindler's List on some movie channel right at the part where that girl is yelling "GOODBYE JEWS!!!!!" over and over it would be easy to say "oh my, what a mean-spirited anti-semetic movie".  But, if you actually took the time to watch the entire movie you would see that "oh, it's actually sympathetic to the plight Jews had during the holocaust and shows a bright uplifting event within a very dark period in history".  I'm quite certain that this 'direct to Netflix' comedy is not anywhere near the same category as Steven Spielberg's masterpiece, but it still does deserve the same consideration of being judged on it's whole rather than just a few less than ideal parts.

Something else you need to remember is that this whole movie is a spoof of an old Western, namely The Magnificent Seven.  Like any spoof comedy, it's a good idea to check out the very thing they are spoofing.  That would help people better understand the jokes being delivered, especially the offending jokes about the Indians.  Maybe they're a send up on what Sandler and his writers felt were racist portrayals of minorities in the original movie.  Here's the trailer to give you somewhat of an idea:



I can see lots of people applauding the actions of these actors walking out the way they did.  I for one would like to applaud Adam Sandler and his crew for NOT changing the script when faced with this situation.  Let the creators create I say.  No special interest group should be allowed to infiltrate and commandeer the creative process whether through guilt, intimidation, or even straight up violence.  Let the production be fully realized.  If you don't like it you don't have to watch it.  To force this movie to cease production now over this would be like punching a fetus because you swear you saw it flip you the middle finger in the ultrasound.

Like what's been said about Sandler's humour elsewhere, he definitely works on a very low brow level.  The comedy in pretty much everything he's done (from SNL to today) seems to be grown from a group of 10 year old boys in their treehouse fort giggling over a stolen Penthouse magazine.  Of course he's going to enjoy names like Beaver Breath and Wears No Bra or any other cheeky sort of name they can conjure up.  And it's not like this is the first time he's upset people with his content.  Remember that SNL skit from around 1994 with Alec Baldwin where the aggressively flirtatious scout master nearly molested and possibly could have raped Canteen Boy?  SNL and NBC received many angry letters and phone calls about that one.  If both he and Alec Baldwin can survive that incident and keep going, then Mr. Sandler will most certainly get through this heated situation without a problem.

One thing I will say on the disgruntled actors' behalf is that the set designers getting the Apache symbols wrong could be problematic.  Just because it's a comedy doesn't mean that they don't have to take the time to get any of the details right.  I'd even go so far as to say the wacky Indian names like Beaver's Breath etc. would be more acceptable if the Apache environment were as authentic as possible.  That could be the key element to fix that would make people, possibly even those same disillusioned actors, to feel better about this movie.  But, the mistakes in the decor could also be a part of the whole "making fun of the original racism" that I talked about before.  Once again, it's best to see the entire movie before making a final judgement call.

But at the same time, I'm not in the biggest hurry to see this movie myself.  From what I've gathered from Adam Sandler's filmography, if you've seen one of his films you've seen them all.  I'm personally of the opinion that whenever Sandler comes out with a new movie you're better off just watching Billy Madison again.  It'll be pretty much the same thing only cobbled together a bit better.  Like it or not, Billy Madison is Adam Sandler's equivalent of Citizen Kane (except in this case "Rosebud" is a flaming bag of dog shit).

I'd like to end this post with another comedy film about American Indians starring Buster Keaton that is actually quite progressive for 1921.  I'm not 100% sure of this but I do think it might be the first movie where the Indians are portrayed as victims of caucasian colonial treachery as opposed to the Indians in all of those cheap John Wayne westerns where the they are just one dimensional war-like savages who keep getting in the way as a ragtag group of clean cut cowboys try to create America.

Ladies and gentlemen of all tribes, I give you The Paleface: