Fierce Patriots

Conservative Political News

  • Subscribe

Cancel Culture

Republicans Launch New Jersey, Virginia Ad Campaign Hammering Cancel Culture

by Leave a Comment

The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) will launch a five-figure digital ad buy in New Jersey and Virginia this week, highlighting the detrimental effects of left-wing cancel culture on communities across the country.

A new digital ad, “Hardest Hit,” will highlight what the RSLC believes to be the “hypocrisy and self-defeating result of the Democrats’ cancel culture crusade.” The five-figure ad buy will run in multiple targeted districts in each state; according to their press release, this will be the first paid media initiative from the RSLC state ahead of their 2021 legislative elections.

The 30-second ad will emphasize Democrat lies about Georgia election integrity laws, which Democrats then used to pressure businesses to take action against the laws. Ultimately Major League Baseball (MLB) moved its 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to Colorado. This decision will cause companies in the mostly minority community to lose roughly $100 million in revenue. The ad also points out how the left claims they are champions of the minority communities. The RSLC is trying to persuade New Jerseyans and Virginians to reject Democrats at the polls in November.

The transcript reads as:

NARRATOR: A great American pastime. The left took our game and weaponized it.

NEWS ANCHOR 1 (audio): Pulling its All Star Game out of the Atlanta Braves stadium

NEWS ANCHOR 2 (audio): The state could lose more than $100 million.

NEWS ANCHOR 3 (audio): Simply crushing.

NARRATOR: Who was hardest hit? The concession stand worker planning on overtime. The hotel staff expecting full capacity. The small businesses doing everything they can to survive a pandemic. We must end the cancel culture madness. The left cancelled our jobs. They are coming for yours next.

“Democrats claim to be the ultimate defenders of minority communities, but their willingness to trample on Atlanta’s economy to advance their partisan political agenda shows their true colors,” RSLC President Dee Duncan said, adding that, “now that the woke cancel culture mob knows it can get its way by peddling lies and threatening the economic well-being of anyone that disagrees with them, there is no telling whose livelihood will be next.”

Duncan said voters in states where the ad will be running “were watching what happened in Georgia and know that state Republicans are their only line of defense against the Democrats’ cancel culture hypocrisy.”

UNC System’s President Talks about Issues

by Leave a Comment

Even though North Carolina is a “purple” state and most of the administrators in the University of North Carolina system are as blue as can be, the system’s president, Peter Hans, is a conservative.  He hasn’t been in office long and has had a lot of COVID matters to deal with to start his tenure.

In today’s Martin Center article, Shannon Watkins interviews Hans.

Corner readers will probably be most interested in the last few questions. For example, what does he intend to do about the heavy cost of administration? Hans answers that federal regulations require colleges and universities to do a lot to comply, but nevertheless he wants to find ways to cut down the burden.

Another is freedom of speech. Hans notes a survey done at UNC showing that a high percentage of students feel that they must watch what they say — more to avoid trouble with fellow students than with their professors.

“Being exposed to different viewpoints,” he says, “[is] foundational to what higher education should be. Where there is a lack of diversity of viewpoints though, that’s a huge blind spot. Where there is intolerance for alternative viewpoints, it’s a major problem. And so this issue of free expression is one that I feel close to my heart, and I can actually see spending a great deal of time on this post-COVID. We’ve got the ball rolling, now we’ve got to elevate the issue as one of importance, and make sure that all voices are heard and respected.”

Exactly what he wants to do about this Hans does not say. At least he isn’t pretending that all is well.

Ng: In Defense of Clint Eastwood's 'Gran Torino,' Now Under Attack from Left-Wing Cancel Mob

by Leave a Comment

It was only a matter of time before the left-wing cancel mob came for Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s 2008 movie about a bigoted retired autoworker and his Asian Hmong neighbors. The racial epithets spewed by protagonist Walt Kowalski are so prolific that it’s hard to imagine the movie being released under today’s ultra-woke Hollywood standards.

Anyone who’s seen Gran Torino and has half a brain will easily grasp that the movie is the opposite of racist. After Walt catches Thao, the Hmong teenager next door, trying to steal his cherished 1972 Gran Torino, he puts the boy to work fixing houses around the neighborhood. Walt grudgingly becomes his mentor, his friend, and eventually his father figure. In the end, he makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect Thao and his family from local Hmong gangbangers.

None of that matters anymore because Gran Torino is now officially problematic. The wave of physical assaults on Asian Americans has unleashed a woke backlash against the movie — more than ten years after it was released — with some accusing it of perpetuating Asian hate and trafficking in negative stereotypes.

Watch below:

Surprisingly, some of those attacks are coming from people who worked on the movie. Actor Bee Vang, who plays Thao, has all but disavowed the film, claiming in a recent op-ed for NBC News that the movie “mainstreamed anti-Asian racism,” adding that he is still haunted by the laughter of white audiences at Walt’s racial slurs.

In a Medium post, Mai Xiong, who worked as a Hmong cultural consultant on the movie, alleges producers ignored her concerns about the movie’s ethnic slurs, which include “zipper head,” “swamp rat,” and “gook.” She also complains about the portrayal of Hmong gangbangers who terrorize Thao and his family, saying the movie fails to address the socio-economic factors that can lead to organized crime in minority communities.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen criticized the movie in a recent series of tweets in which he complained that the Hmong characters are “either gangsters or model minorities/allies in need of white rescue.” He also questions why Sue, Thao’s older sister, never pushes back against Walt for using words like “gook.”

Ridiculous. Maybe Sue has thick skin and isn’t bothered by it. She is a strong woman after all. More likely, she correctly intuits that cantankerous Walt sometimes uses racial epithets as a term of endearment — a uniquely American form of male bonding. She probably has more important things to worry about, like the gangs shooting up her house.

Of course Gran Torino isn’t responsible for perpetuating Asian hate. I could find no documented cases of crimes inspired by the movie, and even if there were, no filmmaker is responsible for the actions of a crazed fan. Taxi Driver didn’t shoot Ronald Reagan. John Hinkley did.

It’s true audiences laughed at Walt’s racist language. In fact, they still do. Walt’s ethnic slurs have been endlessly memed on social media and a YouTube supercut of Gran Torino‘s worst insults — which include slurs against Latinos, blacks, Italians, and Polish people — has been viewed more than 3.5 million times.

People can laugh at a movie for many reasons. I admit I cracked up when Walt, who is a Korean War veteran, threatens a Hmong gangbanger who dared to trespass on his lawn: “I used to stack fucks likes you five feet high in Korea, used ya for sand bags.” It’s a great line.

I suspect most people laughed not because they find racism funny but because Walt’s unfiltered language is so alien and taboo to today’s ear that it produces a strong emotional reaction. We laugh at Walt like we laugh at Archie Bunker.

Ultimately, the left is targeting Gran Torino for many of the same reasons they attacked American Sniper. Both movies ask you to identify with a white, (probably) conservative male from middle America who is skilled at firearms and who uses racist language but who deep down is compassionate and moral. Human complexity used to be something the left valued at the movies. Now they’re scared of it.

In today’s woke mindset as dictated by critical race theory, you’re either racist or anti-racist. And because Walt Kowalski is neither of those, he must be cancelled.

I’m not surprised the leftist mob is attacking Gran Torino. I think it’s kind of amusing in a misguided way. What’s more disturbing is the silence from professional film critics and scholars whose job is to defend art against the wrongheaded passions of the moment. Instead of standing up for movies like Gone with the Wind and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner — which have been labeled “troubling and problematic” — they are hiding under their desks, hoping the mob will pass them by. Shame on all of them.

For me, Gran Torino gets better each time I see it. Time will tell if it’s a true masterpiece but I have a good feeling about it. Eastwood’s sense of pacing strikes me as close to perfect, especially in the final half hour. The Catholic themes of guilt and salvation feel more pronounced, but not in a didactic way. Walt is a religious skeptic to say the least, but he achieves a spiritual grace.

In the end, Walt doesn’t leave his beloved Gran Torino to his selfish children or grandchildren. Thao is the inheritor of the American Dream because he worked hard and earned it. The last shot shows him driving the open road: a boy, his dog, and his car. What could be more American than that?

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at [email protected].

James Carville on Woke Politics: 'English Faculty at Amherst Has too Much Power' in Democrat Party

by Leave a Comment

Appearing Thursday on Conversations with Bill Kristol, veteran Democrat strategist James Carville weighed in on the Democrat Party’s embrace of identity politics and wokeism, quipping: “the English faculty at Amherst has too much power in this party.”

A transcript is as follows: 

BILL KRISTOL: You mentioned defund the police, you mentioned identity politics, cancel culture, whatever you want to call these things, but how worried are you about that complex of issues? Some of the attacks may be unfair, some may be fair, but the Democrats, parts of the Democratic party coalition, giving enough oxygen to that stuff that allows Republicans to just scream and yell about it for two years or four years and really have an effect. You think it did have an effect 2020, certainly down ballot, right? The police stuff?

JAMES CARVILLE: It did. It is the thing that I’m most worried about. And because, first of all, who they are. I don’t know of anybody, and I talked to, I live in New Orleans, okay? It’s no secret. I don’t know of a single person that thinks of themselves as a “person of color.” I really don’t. I had Ruben Gallego, who’s a Democratic congressman from Arizona, and we did much better in Arizona than we did in Texas or Florida, and he said, “I’ve never heard anybody use the word LatinX.” And that’s just not the way people talk. It’s not what they — It’s just not the way. When people hear that — And it’s a little different because when you’re in the middle of it, you hear it so much it doesn’t stand out.

When you’re out in the rest of the country — It was like the janitor at Smith College. That story. I give Tom the credit for running the story, but there is a feeling — And I got to tell you, I’m a supportive, ardent Democrat, passion and everything, but the English faculty at Amherst has too much power in this party. They really do. And they come up with all of these different things and when people see that, they don’t like it because it’s not what their life is. I think Biden does a — Congratulations, he stays out of that.

[H/T conversationswithbillkristol.org]