Monday, April 07, 2008

We'll be prying that gun from his cold, dead hands now


I actually got to see Heston on stage when I was in high school, in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, at the Mark Taper Forum in LA. He came out on stage after the show and did a q & a with the students who'd all come to see him. What's weird is, this was before his flip into a right wing activist. He was very keen on the role the play had in the witch hunt era of the 1950s, and he struck me as being pretty concerned about civil liberties and the evils of government Big Brother. What's sad is that not too many years after that, he somehow decided that the right of individuals to bear arms was more central to his politics than when he was marching with Martin Luther king, Jr for civil rights at a time when it was not cute or safe for Hollywood celebrities to be sticking their necks out. He could have very easily become a victim of the same idiots whose right to maintain private arsenals he would later become so identified with.

..........

If Iran is getting all blue in the face about real or perceived insults to Islam in the Netherlands, let's hope they don't get wind of the racist, anti-Islamic statements made by Rep. Sally Kern. The blood of countless Westerners in the Middle East will be on her hands now. Not that she'll take responsibility for her actions.

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