Mark Tapson
Mark Tapson writes about the intersection of Hollywood and terrorism for Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood and Big Peace, David Horowitz's Front Page and NewsReal, Pajamas Media, the Investigative Project for Terrorism, and elsewhere. He was the writer’s assistant and researcher for Cyrus Nowrasteh on, among other projects, "The Stoning of Soraya M." and the controversial miniseries "The Path to 9/11." Mark is currently co-writing a documentary for renowned terrorism expert Steven Emerson.
Regardless of whether one subscribes to the notion of a clash of civilizations, I think we can all agree that relations between “the Islamic world” and “the West,” however one defines those labels, are, well, strained. President Obama was elected at least partly because, with childhood roots in Muslim Indonesia and an Arabic middle name no one was allowed to mention until after the election, the Left believed him to be the perfect candidate to heal that rift. When he wasn’t healing the racial divide, America’s reputation abroad, and the planet, that is.
So right out of the gate, Obama made his first order of business an appearance on al-Arabiya TV, in which he made seven references to “respecting” the Muslim world, his flashing neon semaphore to them that he was no imperialist exploiter like his predecessor (Daniel Pipes notes here how common a motif the word “respect” was for Obama, ironically so for a man who commands none either at home or abroad). Then it was on to a self-important speech from Cairo, in which Obama flattered the Islamic world so effusively that one wondered if he was angling to ask it to the prom. And of course, who can forget his show of contemptible dhimmitude – I mean deep respect – to the Saudi King?
Regardless of whether one subscribes to the notion of a clash of civilizations, I think we can all agree that relations between “the Islamic world” and “the West,” however one defines those labels, are, well, strained. President Obama was elected at least partly because, with childhood roots in Muslim Indonesia and an Arabic middle name no one was allowed to mention until after the election, the Left believed him to be the perfect candidate to heal that rift. When he wasn’t healing the racial divide, America’s reputation abroad, and the planet, that is.
So right out of the gate, Obama made his first order of business an appearance on al-Arabiya TV, in which he made seven references to “respecting” the Muslim world, his flashing neon semaphore to them that he was no imperialist exploiter like his predecessor (Daniel Pipes notes here how common a motif the word “respect” was for Obama, ironically so for a man who commands none either at home or abroad). Then it was on to a self-important speech from Cairo, in which Obama flattered the Islamic world so effusively that one wondered if he was angling to ask it to the prom. And of course, who can forget his show of contemptible dhimmitude – I mean deep respect – to the Saudi King?
Two years ago this past Thanksgiving weekend, a team of well-trained, drug-fueled jihadists launched a horrifying attack in Mumbai that has been called “India’s 9/11.” As the terrorists blazed a trail of carnage that stretched on for three days, Aamir Khan, a major Bollywood star, sermonized on his blog that
Terrorists are not Hindu or Muslim or Christian. They are not people of religion or God.
Too many of us keep clinging to that same lofty, non-judgmental cliche, and yet the fundamentalists waging violent jihad, and justifying it with chapter and verse, don’t seem to be getting our politically correct, religiously tolerant memos. And we don’t seem to be taking to heart their shouts of “Allahu akhbar!”
“Jumping the shark,” a term which initially referred to Happy Days’ Fonzie water-skiing over one, usually refers to a TV show so desperate for ratings that it gambles on a ludicrously over-the-top scene. If it’s possible for a movie reviewer to jump the shark, then Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir has just set the standard.
"March of the Penguins" AGAIN?!
A year and a half ago, giddy and hopeful in the wake of Obama’s inauguration, an unofficial but self-important delegation from Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (including actresses Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard, among others), set out for Iran as part of a “cultural exchange.”
Hard to fathom how America was supposed to benefit from the exchange, but cultural advisor Javad Shamaghdari told the Hollywood reps exactly what Iran wanted: “We will believe Obama’s policy of change when we see change in Hollywood too.” In other words, no more movies critical of Islam or Iran. That’s not all Shamaghdari demanded:
If Hollywood wants to correct its behavior towards Iranian people and Islamic culture then they have to officially apologize.
So Hollywood infidels are expected to publicly acknowledge and embrace their dhimmi status. Most Hollywood infidels would be right onboard with that. But not the following filmmakers.
Racking up victories against our Islamist enemy on the military and counterterrorism fronts will ultimately count for naught if we lose the Clash of Civilizations on the cultural front. The stealth jihadists know how to strike where we are culturally weak, patiently eroding our freedoms and pressing for special concessions for Islam and sharia. Their number one goal? Pressing for limits on our free speech in order to prevent criticism of Islam, thus hamstringing us in our efforts to even identify, much less combat our enemy’s ideology.
What follows is a list, in more or less chronological order, of ten significant victories we have handed the Islamists that are diminishing our most precious and unique freedom. How much more ground are we going to cede to our enemy in the name of political correctness and multicultural self-hatred?
Racking up victories against our Islamist enemy on the military and counterterrorism fronts will ultimately count for naught if we lose the Clash of Civilizations on the cultural front. The stealth jihadists know how to strike where we are culturally weak, patiently eroding our freedoms and pressing for special concessions for Islam and sharia. Their number one goal? Pressing for limits on our free speech in order to prevent criticism of Islam, thus hamstringing us in our efforts to even identify, much less combat our enemy’s ideology.
What follows is a list, in more or less chronological order, of ten significant victories we have handed the Islamists that are diminishing our most precious and unique freedom. How much more ground are we going to cede to our enemy in the name of political correctness and multicultural self-hatred?
The rich and famous are usually utterly inconsequential, intellectual featherweights, and yet our celebrity-driven media inexplicably believe that pop culture success earns them a forum in which to pontificate about the heavyweight issues of our time: war, peace, religion, and more specifically, the Ground Zero mosque controversy.
Enter irrelevant celebrity Russell Simmons, whose cockeyed baseball cap is an uninteresting attempt at a trademark headgear a là Donald Trump’s sweeping canopy of hair. read more…
Obama, with Fareed Zakaria's "The Post-American World"
Last Monday evening, President Obama’s motorcade wreaked havoc with Los Angeles traffic as he hurried from LAX to a fundraising event thrown by his Hollywood sycophants-in-crime.
By coincidence (and by “coincidence” I mean “ironic synchronicity”), at that same moment Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were at the Skirball Center west of Hollywood and just north of the Getty Museum, promoting their new book The Post-American Presidency to an auditorium full of discontented Americans who were far less smitten by Barack Hussein Obama than their Hollywood counterparts.
Welcome to Hollywood
The Los Angeles Times’ senior film writer Patrick Goldstein never passes up a chance to take gratuitous, albeit impotent, shots at the political Right. He seems particularly obsessed with sniping at Andrew Breitbart’s successful Big Hollywood website for film biz conservatives, and with dispelling what Goldstein calls,
the conservative myth that Hollywood studios are always trying to enforce a political agenda.
First of all, Hollywood conservatives don’t claim that the studios are always pushing a leftist agenda. Not every movie has a political slant, and there are even (rare) cinematic occasions on which a conservative perspective manages to surface (and when they do, they resonate big-time with audiences; 300, anyone? The Blind Side? The Passion of the Christ?).
Yesterday was a day that will live in infamy. New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously cleared the way for the construction of the innocuously-renamed Park 51 Islamic cultural center, formerly the symbolically-named Cordoba House, commonly known as the Ground Zero mega-mosque. Whatever you call it, it will be an offensive monument to Islamist supremacism, which will announce to the world that America has embraced its own defeat. It is scheduled for a grand opening on – another twist of the knife – the 10th anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11.
Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly discussed it with Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the ubiquitous public relations bullhorn and Muslim Brotherhood offshoot CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. O’Reilly pressed Awad about the lack of sensitivity being shown to the 9/11 victims’ families by the planned mega-mosque, which will loom over the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Yesterday was a day that will live in infamy. New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously cleared the way for the construction of the innocuously-renamed Park 51 Islamic cultural center, formerly the symbolically-named Cordoba House, commonly known as the Ground Zero mega-mosque. Whatever you call it, it will be an offensive monument to Islamist supremacism, which will announce to the world that America has embraced its own defeat. It is scheduled for a grand opening on – another twist of the knife – the 10th anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11.
Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly discussed it with Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the ubiquitous public relations bullhorn and Muslim Brotherhood offshoot CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. O’Reilly pressed Awad about the lack of sensitivity being shown to the 9/11 victims’ families by the planned mega-mosque, which will loom over the ruins of the World Trade Center.
