Dean A. Hoffman skewers U.S. filmmakers' hypocritical silence about the killing of Theo van Gogh and its implications, in the Charlotte Observer:
It is a particularly hateful comment on the state of American cinema that one of the most egregious examples of Islamofacism since the unspeakable events of 9-11 has gone virtually unacknowledged by the filmmaking community.With no significant profile in this country, director Theo van Gogh remains a whispered commodity, surreptitiously designated as a descendent of the famous painter and sheepishly acknowledged as the auteur behind "Submission," an 11-minute independent film scripted by Somalian immigrant and Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, that offers a critical perspective on the abusive treatment of women in Islam.
Killed by Muslim fanatic
The cruel fact that his last public act was being shot to death and mutilated in retaliation by a Muslim fanatic on an Amsterdam street in November 2004, a crude denunciation pinned to his chest with a penknife, is at best grudgingly recognized by Hollywood as an example of artistic equivalence, a non-Western gesture of living theater certain to provoke accusations of cultural insensitivity.
[...]
Dismissing van Gogh as a representative of the independent artistic fringe is one thing; willfully ignoring him for becoming a martyr to it is quite another. In the wake of George Clooney's sophomoric discovery of the decades-old Sudanese genocide , the public hypocrisy in Hollywood over "Submission" is every bit as obscene as some of van Gogh's own works.
If not more so.
Just as Vincents contempories ignored his genius,Theo's own do the same. Who remembere Vincents contempories? I expect the same will be true for Theo.
Hollywood sympathizes (and generally hopes the terrorists succeed in booting the US out of where ever the US Military is located) with the terrorists, why would they express outrage...
we made our beds.
I don't ignore him and mention him quite often. We must - we cannot let him die in vain.
Hollywood’s liberals like to imagine they speak “truth to power.”
Unfortunately, their idea of speaking truth to power is making a film like the idiotic “Fahrenheit 911.”
The truth is they should give an Oscar for best documentary to something like “Obsession: Radical Islam’s war on the West.”
Aint gonna happen though.
In fact, an entire generation has been raised to believe that bashing your own Government/Country is the most heroic thing you can do.
One day they will learn that freedom in not free.
"One day they will learn that freedom in not free.
Posted by: Odyessus "
from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young:
....Find the cost of Freedom...buried in the Ground..
Mother Earth will swallow you...lay your body down.
Very true words spoken.
Ah, the soldier’s sacrifice.
Yes, the military should be one of the most widely respected professions.
Bringing back conscription might teach a new generation that we all have a part to play in defence.
Actually, if you are going to conscript young men why not tell young women that they must do their duty for their country i.e. stop abortion?
Everyone has their part to play.
United we will stand, divided we will fall.
This is what so many people in the West still do not get.
Theo van Gogh's "Submission" is on youtube
There is no age of man in which the idiocies that dominated and destroyed previous ages are not present and prominent.
Why should we believe that our celebraties are any better or smarter than those of the court of Louis and Marie Antoinette, or that of the late Romanovs, or the prominent citizens of Imperial Rome or Peking?
And why should we assume that the crowd is any smarter or better than the credulous, admiring, envious, fickle and hostile crowd of those days?
We have ocassional good stretches, Athens, Florence the founding of America and such. But mostly it's just stupidity and suffering.
The only question is whether we will handle it any better than our predecessors in the difficult late periods of prior glory.
We have their examples to go by you know.
leonthepigfarmer said
And now we must die in them.
Ishaq:676 “‘You obey a stranger who encourages you to murder for booty. You are greedy men. Is there no honor among you?’ Upon hearing those lines Muhammad said, ‘Will no one rid me of this woman?’ Umayr, a zealous Muslim, decided to execute the Prophet’s wishes. That very night he crept into the writer’s home while she lay sleeping surrounded by her young children. There was one at her breast. Umayr removed the suckling babe and then plunged his sword into the poet. The next morning in the mosque, Muhammad, who was aware of the assassination, said, ‘You have helped Allah and His Apostle.’ Umayr said. ‘She had five sons; should I feel guilty?’ ‘No,’ the Prophet answered. ‘Killing her was as meaningless as two goats butting heads.’”
Qur'an 7:97 "Did the people of the towns feel secure against the coming of Our wrath by night while they were asleep? Or else did they feel secure against its coming in broad daylight while they played about (carefree)? Did they then feel secure against the Plan of Allah? But no one can feel secure from the Plan of Allah, except those (doomed) to ruin!"
The "penknife" - erroneously mentioned in this otherwise useful article- that was plunged into Theo Van Gogh's chest by the Dutch-born Morrocan jihadist was actually a large kitchen knife.
Any image search online can find the cell phone photo of the massacred film-maker and columnist -taken by a passing Dutchman (before the p.c. police shielded Van Gogh's body from public view)- to verify this.
"Penknife" sounds vaguely comical.
Butcherknife is more bloody accurate.
Hollywood's cowardly elite are too busy undermining Civilization to honor one of its tragically-martyred defenders.
Their collective chickensh*t silence is deafening.
I'm glad someone's writing about Theo Van Gogh in the American press. Ayann is hitting the press in Canada now...they're heroes to me, but I won't put that in my Facebook profile. It's pathetic, but I'd be thought of as a racist by my Persian and Arab friends.
"Bringing back conscription might teach a new generation that we all have a part to play in defence." Posted by: Odyessus
Something my husband has been saying for years. Sadly, there are now almost two generations of young people who have been raised and/or educated by the wacky lefties from the 60s.(Thankfully both my husband and I never got involved with that crowd. He is a Vietvet.) Most of the US colleges and universities are now run and staffed by those who were and still are anti-American. Nothing America ever does is good. Yes, a stint in the military for every single person between the ages of 18-21 should be mandatory, men and women. Paris Hilton in desert camos....OMG. But seriously it is something that should now be considered. And parents need to stop and think what has been done to their children. Many under 35 don't even know how the country was started. Nor do they know what the Holocaust was. Shame on the US educators and parents for being so blind.
What happened to Theo Van Gogh can certainly happen here. And it may. People like George Clooney and others of the so-called Hollywood elite have no clue what would happen if these madmen were in charge here. Heads would roll I am sure. I myself, never listen to the Hollyweird crowd. Never have and never will. They are so ego driven and without a clue as to what goes on in the real world.