After the assassination this past week of conservative leader and activist Charlie Kirk, and after the murder of Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman in June, and after the arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family in April, and after the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, it is painfully obvious there is something intensely rotten in the United States of America.
It stems not only from the inflammatory rhetoric from both sides. It’s more than that. It stems not only from a way too permissible gun culture in this country. It’s more than that. There’s something deep inside our society that has normalized violence to settle political disagreements. For dialogue to be replaced with death.
We went through political violence in the 1960’s and ’70’s with the killings of JFK, RFK, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the attempted assassination of George Wallace.
The difference is back then, those attacks were met with overwhelming disgust and condemnation. Today’s violence is too often celebrated with a sick and twisted glee on cable news talk shows, podcasts and on social media. That’s a depravity so deep it leaves me with a pit in my stomach. I don’t know how to make it go away.
I do know that if we don’t figure it out and soon, it will be the end of us.
I also know what can be done about the demonization of Israel by some in the entertainment industry.
This past week, more than 3900 industry figures, signed a statement boycotting Israeli filmmakers and studios that, in their words “whitewash or justify genocide and apartheid and/or collaborate with the government that perpetrates them.”
Among the stars that signed onto the boycott are Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton.
Well, if they’re boycotting Israel, I’m boycotting them.
So I won’t watch the Gilded Age with Cynthia Nixon or White Lotus with Amy Lee Wood anymore. So I won’t watch Saturday Night Live and Bowen Yang. And I certainly won’t pay to see any of the other Israel-hating actors. I’ll survive.
What’s so galling about these performers is that they don’t hesitate to shout from the rooftops and wrap themselves in the holy cloak of artistic freedom, but apparently not when it comes to Israelis. They will happily take money from Chinese movie producers, but they don’t want anything to do with those genocidal, apartheid-loving Israelis.
The Israeli Film and TV Producers Association wrote in response to the boycott: “We work with Palestinian creators, telling our shared stories and promoting peace and an end to violence…This call for a boycott is profoundly misguided.”
Not only “profoundly misguided” but also profoundly antisemitic. Because when you are racist, as these actors have exposed themselves to be, nuance doesn’t matter.
These haters don’t deserve a minute more of our time and money and I pray for the implosion of their careers.
In contrast to those low-lives, comedian Jerry Seinfeld deserves a bunch of high-fives.
In a speech at Duke University this past week, Seinfeld compared the “Free Palestine” movement to the KKK.
Seinfeld said, “Free Palestine is, to me, just, you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. Just say, you don’t like Jews…I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, ‘We don’t like blacks; we don’t like Jews.’ Okay, that’s honest.”
No joke, Seinfeld is 100% correct and good for him for delivering the honest punchline.
And while she didn’t get as much attention as Seinfeld, actress Scarlett Johansson also deserves a round of applause.
She’s about to make her directorial debut in a film entitled Eleanor the Great. It’s about a 94-year old woman who moves to New York City and strikes up an unlikely friendship with a college student.
In the movie, Johansson has cast real Holocaust survivors. She says there was never a question about casting the survivors, because she wanted them to “share their stories.”
Eleanor the Great opens in theaters on September 26th. Johansson and her new movie deserve our support.
And finally, this past week we observed the 24th anniversary of the 9/11.
Watching the annual reading of the names, it is clear the pain of that attack on America is still so raw for so many. But the world has changed so much, and not for the better, since that awful day almost a quarter of a century ago.
Back then, terrorists were evil. They weren’t militants or freedom fighters. There were no excuses for what they did, no mitigating circumstances. And, they needed to be eradicated wherever they were.
But the most important thing of all is back then, we were a nation united in spirit and in purpose.