MAKING DEMANDS

A lot has been said about guns this year in the blogosphere.

Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out has put forth a couple of posts (one HERE and another HERE) on the gun control debate, as have yours truly and Stephen T. McCarthy.

I do not meant to revisit that debate with this post.

No, faithful readers, with this post I am here to bring you EXCITING NEWS that will make you all feel safer knowing that Hollywood has your back!

A group of Hollywood stars have recorded a "moving" public service announcement for the "Demand A Plan To End Gun Violence" campaign.

And I promise you, the public, this has nothing to do with servicing you, unless you mean they're bending you over and screwing you again.

The clip features celebrities like Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Amanda Peet, Nick Offerman, Cameron DIaz, Jennifer Aniston, Zooey Deschanel, John Slattery, Debra Messing, Elizabeth Banks, Jeremy Renner, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Olivia Munn

In their best teary-eyed dramatic voices, the stars recount many of the tragedies that have happened in recent years (and they ARE tragedies), and point out the need for new gun legislation to protect us all.

Too bad so many of them are full of shit.

For example, Jamie Foxx, who is so against the idea of violence that he stars in the ultra-violent Tarantino film Django Unchained, wants gun control legislation

Jon Hamm, with turbulent films like The Town and Sucker Punch to his name, would like to see your second amendment rights curtailed....for your own good, of course! 

And we all saw Jeremy Renner's message of non-violence in films like The Bourne Legacy, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Avengers, and his most recent, Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Do you really want advice about legislation from someone willing to start in a movie called Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters?

And Jennifer Garner was walking the walk through five hyper violent seasons of Alias, as well as in the films, Daredevil, Elektra, and The Kingdom.

All she was saying was give peace a chance.

Want more hypocrisy?

How about Amanda Peet in The Whole Nine Yards, a comedy about a hit man, or Cameron DIaz in the Charlie's Angels fims and Knight And Day?

Or Nick Offerman in 21 Jump Street and Sin City, or John Slattery in The Adjustment Bureau and Iron Man 2. Gwyneth Paltrow in the Iron Man films, or the lovely Jessica Alba in Sin City?

Need I go on?

If you want to see how deplorable guns are to Hollywood, just look at what was offered up in just the first month of 2013?

Arnold came back from politics and infidelity with a bang...

And Sly did what Sly does best...

Now I am not saying that I think we should ban these films.

That would make ME a hypocrite, as I have seen many of them.

But I am saying that guns have been around longer than movies and have not changed all that much.

But our entertainment HAS changed.

Movies, television and video games are all very different than the television and motion pictures of forty-five years ago.

Video games did not even exist forty-five years ago.

Which also seems to be when these shooting sprees started.

When the subject of violence in movies comes up, the talking heads that represent Hollywood's profit margins will tell you that "no clear causal link between violence in entertainment and real-life violence has ever been established."

I am not disputing that statement.

But I would also say that no evidence has been presented to prove that the UNCONSTITUTIONAL measures being proposed by Emporer Obama or the bleeding-heart celebrities stumping for "Demand A Plan" would have precented ANY of the recent shooting incidents that these initiatives are exploiting to push their agenda. 

After the bad guy killed off all the underdeveloped characters
The good guy put a bullet right through his head
The screenwriter stood up and told us that all the loose ends had been tied
Justice is irrelevant
Violent problems need violent solutions
'Cause in America we like our bad guys dead
It's called box office, baby
It's bigger than the damn Stones

-Todd Snider, from Tension

Everybody wants to blame guns, and perhaps there could be something done to better weed out who we let posess a gun, although we do let ANYONE become a parent, which is a far bigger responsibility.

And that, I believe, is the real problem.

Two parent families working full-time so they could afford that second BMW in turn created an inflationary cycle that that pretty much ensured that two income families would become a necessity, so we have a generation of children raised by the CW, the WB, NBC and Nintendo that were never exposed to anything resembling values in school or in the media, and certainly not at home where the parents were too tired for such things after both working all day that they never noticed that the schools never got around to teaching their children anything, or suggesting that they read anything more challenging than Harry Potter or Twilight, and along the way they fed them fast food and pumped them full of drugs for ADD and bipolar depression and told themselves this was medicine.

And we WONDER why some young people are screwed up?

I hope that second beemer was worth your children's souls!

But I digress...back to the video.

Tell me something.

If "Demand A Plan" is such a grass roots movement (defined as being driven by the politics of a community), why is it that only Hollywood celebreties and large liberal organizations are involved?

Could it be that some people are using these tragedies to further their own agenda?

Beware, America!

When you let your pop culture icons do all of your thinking for you, you do not end up with a world where everyone lives like a pop culture icon.

But you may end up flushing the last of the freedom America is reknowned for right down the toilet.

Coming next from "Demand A Plan?"

A public service announcement featuring the mellow, non-violent players of the National Football League, a game where violent contact, steriods, and bounties for serious injuring a player and taking him out of the game could not possibly have an impact on our society, right?

What better role models for America than our actors and atheletes?