Hollywood & Co.: in Good Company with Obama Era FBI, CIA, Justice

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Or …. the Dangers of Listening to the “Famous”

“There is a veritable industry of celebrities calling for President Donald Trumps demise,” Victor Davis Hanson reminds readers. As he points out, it is getting not just old and boring. It is getting dangerous to listen to the likes of the  “famous.” Some examples follow:

• Anthony Bourdain, the late celebrity chef, mused about poisoning Trump.
• Musician David Crosby thought of incineration.
• Actor Johnny Depp and rapper Snoop Dogg preferred shooting.
• CNN host Kathy Griffin, comedian George Lopez, and singer Marilyn Manson imagined decapitation.
• The rock group Pearl Jam offered up the image of Trump rotting.
• The singer Madonna and musician Moby chose explosives.
• The New York City public theater fancied stabbing.
• Actor Robert De Niro seems pathetically fixated on repeated blows to the head.
• Comedian Rosie O’Donnell dreamed of Trump’s death by falling off a cliff.
• Actor Mickey Rourke threatened clubbing.
• Charlie Sheen seemed to pray for some sort of divine intervention to eliminate Trump.
• Comedian Larry Wilmore would settle for old-fashioned suffocation.
• Peter Fonda envisioned a particularly sick form of violence against Trump’s young son, Barron: “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles. And see if mother will stand up against the giant a–hole she is married to.”

Hollywood, of course, had been fixated on hating Trump since he first announced his candidacy — an obsession shared by the Obama-era CIA, FBI, and Justice Department.

Not New News

Liberal celebrities, authors, and entertainers have long publicly dreamed of various ways of killing a conservative president.

• Filmmaker Gabriel Range gave us the 2006 “docudrama,”“Death of a President.” The slick production enacted a successful killing of George W. Bush.
• Former President George W. Bush was a favorite target of such entertainer death wishing. Remember the 2012 episode of “Game of Thrones” in which Bush’s decapitated head was displayed on a pike?
• Charles Brooker, Guardian newspaper guest columnist, invoked past shootersof presidents to kill then-President Bush: “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr.—where are you now that we need you?”

• Alfred A. Knopf published Nicholson Baker’s novelCheckpoint.

The book was nothing more than a monotonous dialogue of trite characters offering up ways to assassinate Bush.

VDH suggests substituting the name of Obama for Trump to appreciate the consequences. “These vile vituperations would most likely earn the hater permanent ostracism, career destruction, or even legal consequences.”

For example, do you remember the obscure rodeo clown who was banned for life in 2013 from the Missouri State Fair? His crime? One of his assistants bought a stock mask of Barack Obama at a store and then wore it while working in the arena. “The ensuing universal outrage at the local rodeo clown was based on the liberal insistence that even mocking the then president of the United States was not only racist but dangerous and would bring presidential haters out of the woodwork to conceive of violence toward then President Obama.”

So What’s Up with Left Wing Hatred?

The supposed goals of equality and fairness justify any means necessary to advancing them, including obscenity and calls for violence.

1. Progressive Goals of Equality and Fairness Justify Anything Goes
   Even sick smears are seen as virtue signaling from edgy social justice warriors. It is not unimaginable to assume that if some unhinged nut takes seriously celebrity talk of killing or injuring Trump and acts out one of their quite numerous fantasies, the celebrity death-threateners won’t be all that remorseful—given their boutique hatred of conservatism in general and the Trump family in particular.

2. Celebrities – Undereducated, Arrogant , Plain Dumb by Nature
   They wrongly confuse their ability to act or sing with some sort of intelligence and erudition. But since Plato, the philosophers have warned us that performance is more a natural than acquired gift, and may have nothing to with intelligence, wisdom, or learning.

3. No Fear of Backlash.
   The bosses of the entertainment industry are also left-wing for the most part. Even vile attacks against conservatives may be considered career enhancements. As wealthy elites, they believe they are privileged and influential, and so should be exempt from the legal consequences of publicly hoping or advocating for the death of a sitting president.

4. Entertainers Love Public Attention
   The more the better, especially as they age or see their careers diminish.
   For the fading and the vain, even bad publicity is good publicity. A Madonna, Moby, Robert De Niro, or Rosie O’Donnell is not now enjoying an ascending career.

5. The 60s and 70s Destroyed Cultural Norms, Sanctioned Obscenity.
   For those celebrities boasting about the death of the president, it is part of their lifelong culture, the sort of vulgar talk they take for granted in music, film, and stand-up comedy. As a general rule, crude youthful actors age badly. The “Easy Rider” free-spirit Peter Fonda of 1969 mouthing off on his chopper now sounds cranky and befuddled when he continues his rebel crude shtick well into his creaky late 70s.

6. Hollywood, Entertainers Divorced from Most of America
   The wealth, segregation, walls, nannies, servants, gardeners, climate, and privilege of Malibu, Beverly Hills, Montecito, or Santa Monica are not American normal. Almost no Americans live in the royal manner of a Jim Carrey or Johnny Depp. The New York City public theater would not ritually kill Trump every night on stage if they were performing “Julius Caesar” in rural Alabama or central Oklahoma.

Delusional Malibu Does Not Reflect Norms of American Thought

So expect celebrity-driven assassination chic to continue until either the country collectively says “enough”—or such sick rhetorical murder leads to the real thing.

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