The Patriot Post® · Avengers Fans Marvel at Director's Hate
If you’re looking for the bad guy in the Avengers movie, check behind the camera. Director Joss Whedon may not be part of the cast, but based on his Twitter account, he’s a pretty convincing villain in real life. This week, after a year and a half of vile anti-Trump rants, the Hollywood liberal finally took it too far. “Die, Don,” he tweeted.
Even for Whedon, who’s used to creating drama, it was a sinister turn. The man who shocked everyone last year by posting that he’s “grateful” his mom has “the gift” of death so that she doesn’t have to see what a “tub of [profanity] our country’s become” seemed even more unhinged than ever. “Donald trump is killing this country. Some of it quickly, some slowly, but he spoils and destroys everything he touches. He emboldens monsters, wielding guns, governmental power, or just smug doublespeak. Or Russia. My hate and sadness are exhausting. Die, Don. Just quietly die.”
And Hollywood says we’re the haters? A major motion picture director is openly calling for the death of the president. Imagine, PJ Media’s Jim Treacher wondered, if someone famous had said that to Obama. “Not just some Flyover Country bumpkin blogger like me, but a guy who directs blockbuster movies. He’d be run out of Hollywood on a rail. He’d never work again. His career would be deader than Kevin Spacey’s.” Instead, the mainstream media yawns and goes back to calling out conservative “intolerance,” as if believing in marriage is the same thing as wanting the leader of the free world dead.
Whedon, for his part, has no shame. The self-proclaimed “feminist” publicly called Ivanka Trump a dog — and industry peers said nothing. He told followers he wanted to see a rhino sexually assault House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) to death. Crickets. Only when he unleashed on a group of childhood cancer survivors, insisting they must be in DC for the “White House wife hunt” except they were “not a 10,” did he take any heat. Finally, liberals objected. He offered a faint apology, but the damage had already been done.
For Hollywood, the hypocrisy is no act. This is an industry that wants to be considered a serious political actor, while everything it does reeks of smug insincerity. It flies thousands of miles on private jets and then complains about the fuel creating global warming. It protests the Second Amendment, only to load its films with out-of-control gun violence. It talks about black lives mattering or women mattering, only to show up at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser and encourage the extinction of both.
And while not everyone is as spiteful as Whedon, most of Hollywood lost touch with American values a long time ago. They don’t understand, Salena Zito wrote after Meryl Streep’s Middle-America shaming at the Oscars, that the majority of us “simply don’t want or desire the same things that these people hold up as valuable; they don’t need a mansion, they don’t rack up frequent-flyer miles… They don’t want to leave their hometowns to come to Silicon Valley or Washington, D.C. or Manhattan. They want different things — a place to live, a decent job, education for their kids… That’s not hate, that’s not stupidity, that’s not racism — it’s their own version of the American dream.”
Ironically, it’s that version of the American dream that helped elect the man Whedon wishes dead. Arrogant elites take that personally, Zito says. She’s right. In the end, what Hollywood really despises isn’t Trump. He’s just the infuriating reminder of what it does hate: our nation doesn’t share its radical views.
Originally published here.
Donald Trump and Evangelicals: Concerned or a Conversation?
An NPR story published Friday morning says evangelical leaders are organizing a meeting with President Trump because they’re “concerned” about the tantalizing details of President Trump’s past and its effect on the midterm election. There’s only one problem. It’s not true. How do I know? I’m one of the key organizers of the event, which is very similar to the event we did in New York City in June of 2016. We are inviting 1,000 evangelical leaders to come to Washington for the day to discuss what has happened on the shared issues of concern since January of last year. The media, which has earned the descriptor “fake news,” has been preoccupied with talking about Russia collusion and the manufactured scandals du jour. The media has not focused on the fact that his administration has advanced the most pro-life policies since Roe v. Wade and is working hard to restore religious freedom that was systematically attacked by the previous administration.
We’ve invited the president and do hope he will join us to continue the conversation that began with evangelical leaders two years ago in New York City. Our concern is that evangelicals are discouraged, not because of details dredged up from the president’s past but from Congress’s poor performance on promises made. The GOP’s future depends upon evangelicals remaining enthused and engaged, which depends on the president’s agenda going forward — and the Left knows it.
Originally published here.
Perks and GW Recreation
George Washington University can host a seminar bashing Christians, but it shouldn’t be surprised when students fight back.
Thursday, the campus seminar that’s grabbed headlines across the country had a few unexpected guests. At least a dozen young people of faith turned up to take a turn at the session, which was meant to highlight so-called “Christian privilege” in America. The workshop promised to expose “how Christians in the U.S. experience life in an easier way than non-Christians,” a laughable concept, considering the attack on religion in America over the last several years.
Of the 30 or so in the crowd, almost half came to protest the idea, “challenging the moderator on a wide variety of topics.” One of the main arguments for Christian privilege, a student explained to Campus Reform, seemed to rely “on the assumption that non-Christians aren’t guaranteed safety on campus, as well as that Christians have more places where they can worship their religion.” All in all, she said, the point seemed to be that Christians somehow have an easier life than others.
Sophomore Emma Shindell couldn’t believe her ears. “I know a lot of Christians who’ve been persecuted because of their faith,” she told CBN. (This workshop, most people would tell you, is Exhibit A!) Emma, like a lot of courageous young people on campus, is tired of being demonized for her beliefs. In the end, she says, “These conferences do more to divide the student population. [They’re too focused] on pointing out our differences rather than working together to try to make sure we’re a united student body, [where] everyone is respected.”
Although media wasn’t allowed into the event, several students seemed eager to talk about how off-base the seminar was. “I think there are a lot of perks that come along with being a Christian,” said Junior Kaleo Kinimaka-Ahkoi. “A lot of the tenets of Christianity are very helpful, I think, to people developing personally and spiritually. But at the end of the day, they’re equating Christianity essentially with immutable characteristics like race and color — which is not something that Christianity, or any religion for that matter, actually is. It’s something you can convert into.”
At the end of the day, the most powerful witness was the willingness of Christian students to show up and engage. “We didn’t protest the event,” Abigail Malone told “Fox & Friends.” “We didn’t demand it be cancelled. Instead we attended, we had open ears, and we were ready to engage in a dialogue and defend our beliefs.” And, frankly, that’s more than many liberals would ever do!
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.