To paraphrase Captain Louis Renault in the 1942 movie "Casablanca" "I'm shocked to find hypocrisy among the left-wingers of Hollywood!"
Of course in December 1942 -- and early 1943 when the classic Warner Bros. movie went into wide release -- movies were worth seeing. They didn't feature gun-wielding characters like Matt Damon and Daniel Craig who take home tens of millions of dollars per movie starring in violent flicks like the "Bourne" trilogy (for Damon) and the James Bond flicks (for Craig) and attack the Second Amendment rights of ordinary people who have guns for protection and/or target shooting and hunting, writes Jason Mattera in "Hollywood Hypocrites: The Devastating Truth About Obama' Biggest Backers/"
Actually, I wasn't at all surprised -- or shocked -- about the hypocrisy of A-list celebrities like Sting, Madonna, Bono, Al Gore, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz, Bruce Springsteen, and many, many more. They've always had a pious (Prius?) "Do as I say, not as I do" attitude that allows people like Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn to have gun-toting bodyguards -- in the case of Rosie -- and carry permits -- in the case of Sean Penn. The latter actor, friend of Hugo Chavez and an anti-gun person (except for his own shooting irons) had his car stolen outside a Berkeley (naturally) California restaurant, Mattera writes. In the trunk of this unspecified make and model car -- I'll bet it wasn't a Prius -- was a loaded .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver (probably like my .38 M&P) and a loaded 9 mm Glock semi-automatic. And Rosie had the unmitigated gall to attack (on her own show a dozen years ago) conservative actor Tom Selleck for defending gun rights.
I WAS shocked to find that First Lady Michelle Obama's favorite addiction is French fries, along with cheeseburgers. Shocked because Mrs. Obama is famously on record against unhealthy food. President Obama is still puff, puff, puffing on those cigarettes, says Mattera.
In nine chapters, plus a conclusion, Mattera teaches celebrities -- including Ariana Huffington (Huffington Post) who didn't pay content providers, stirring an uproar among the Lefties -- their most important lesson yet: No longer can they advocate against Americans the very liberties they use to catapult themselves to prosperity and stardom. Mattera looks at the records (and the police records) of rap and hip-hop supporters of Obama, revealing most of them to be racist, misogynistic, violent thugs who make fortunes out of stereotyping blacks; movie stars with multiple houses, cars and airplanes who tell us to reduce our carbon footprints with tiny cars and funny looking lightbulbs; and the well-known "Inconvenient Truth" of an alleged groper of a Portland, OR massage therapist who lives in a gigantic house in Tennessee and leaves his gigantic carbon footprints (and handprints?) on everything by shunning commercial flights -- like the rest of us -- for private jets.
These celebrities represent the zenith (or nadir) of arrogance as they avoid taxes by moving to tax havens (the over-the-hill rock band U2, relocating from Ireland to the Netherlands) or take advantage of farmland preservation rules to reduce their property taxes (not that I blame them, because New Jersey has the highest property tax rates in the country). What Mattera objects to is that they don't practice what they preach -- they don't live by the same environmental, health, anti-violence, civil rights, and other policy prescriptions they seek to inflict on Americans.
Mattera's extensive research pulls back the curtain on Obama's celebrity supporters and fundraisers, making it abundantly clear that Hollywood elites are some of the most hypocritical creatures on earth. Mattera does his legworkand reveals:
Paul McCartney had his new Lexis 600h flown into England from Japan instead of transported by ship, which had the environmental impact of driving the car 300 times around the globe.
Barbara Streisand harps about a "Global Warming Emergency" as she spends $22,000 a year watering her lawn and gardens.
Robert Redford, whom Time magazine called an environmental "superhero" cited environmental concerns when recently lobbying against a home development near his Napa Valley estate. Yet at the same time he was pocketing millions by selling luxury home lots to developers in pristine wilderness area near his Sundance, Utah resort.
Harrison Ford is the chairman of a global conservation group, yet owns 7 airplanes and has stated, "I often fly up the coast for a cheeseburger."
In 2008, Michael Moore assaulted Hollywood for taking subsidies from poor states to attract in-state filming stating, "Why do they [large corporate movie studios] need our money from Michigan, from our taxpayers?" Then, in 2010, Moore took over $1 million from Michigan for the privilege filming some of, Capitalism: A Love Story in the State. The movie grossed Moore over $17 million.
Bruce Springsteen has publicly opposed tax cuts for the rich saying that they would increase "the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract..." However, when it comes to paying taxes himself, he claims the acreage next his sprawling New Jersey estate is a farm in order to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax.
Jon Bon Jovi, another self-acclaimed defender of the downtrodden, raises bees to fit into the same tax loophole in New Jersey, a law designed to preserve farmland in the Garden State.
I particularly liked Mattera's reminder that the Democratic Party was the home of the nation's biggest racists, and the Republican Party was formed in the middle of the 19th Century to abolish slavery. Even in the 1960s, the biggest backers of civil rights legislation came from the GOP ranks, while former Ku Klux Klan members like West Virginia's sainted Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat, voted against such legislation. Most of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill came from southern Democrats, with Republicans and northern Democrats overwhelmingly favoring it. Illinois Republican Senator Everett M. Dirksen was instrumental in getting the bill adopted by the Senate. For a revealing article on Dirksen's role in getting the bill through the senate, click:[...]
And, of course, that liberal icon, Woodrow Wilson, comes in for observation by Mattera, a 28-year-old New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent. Wilson, infamous for re-segregating the Federal government when he took office in March 1913 and firing all the nation's black postmasters -- Republicans to a man -- screened D.W. Griffiths' racist silent movie about the Klan, "The Birth of a Nation" in the White House!
With the recent incident of Rush Limbaugh (does anyone listen to him anymore?) calling Congressional testifier and 30-year-old Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a "slut," we're reminded of a double standard, with the Left getting a free pass to say the nastiest things about conservatives, but not vice versa. Or as Mattera phrases it: "Progressives are allowed to use violent rhetoric against conservatives, but not the other way around." One example (on Page 195) cited by Mattera is of "liberal comedienne Sandra Bernhard warning Sarah Palin (did anyone watch the awful movie "Game Change" on HBO this past weekend?) not to enter Manhattan lest she be gang-raped "by my big black brothers."
An actual "big black brother" -- Montel Williams (who listens to him? I've zoned out his Money Mutual loan shark commercials on TV) advocated the killing (also page 195) of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann: "So, Michele slit your wrist! Go ahead! I mean, you know. why not?" Mattera provides chapter and verse documentation for his quotes. I wish the publisher had been equally diligent about providing an index!
And yes, there are quite a few conservative celebrities to offset the lefties, including Alec Baldwin's brother Stephen, musician Ted Nugent, and actress Patricia Heaton. I'd like to suggest a book for Mattera: Hollywood Conservatives!
