If you told me in advance that Donald Trump was going to be on Fox & Friends this morning to talk about the Oscars, I would have told you to prepare for a car wreck. Trump didn’t disappoint. Not realizing that slavery was the most racist thing in our country’s history, he called Django Unchained the most racist movie he has ever seen. He not-so-subtley suggested that the movie, which features a black man shooting a bunch of white slaveowners, was proof of why we don’t want gun control (cuz then whitey can’t fight back?)- “You know, when they talk about guns and gun control, that movie– people should watch that,” he said. “You wanna talk about somebody with a problem. But, I thought it was terrible.” Imagine black people having a “problem” with slaveowners!!
Then he trashed Daniel Day-Lewis for not being from this country and having a British accent which Lincoln didn’t have and which powerful people do not have. Whereupon, the Fox & Friends crew piled on about how the movie about the man who made the Republican Party a respectable institution was a boring sleep-inducing documentary that was almost as gay as a play.
I know the Democrats long ago took up the original Republicans’ banner as the protector of black civil rights, but can’t these folks even pretend they’re not the direct descendants of Simon Legree?
An Oscar-winning movie that lionized Ronald Reagan would have caused a virtual circle jerk to break out on the set of Fox & Friends, but one about the man who ended slavery? That’s strictly for the arse-bandits.
And these people still claim, with an absolutely straight face, that all this shit is “not about race”. I am so fucking tired. Tired of the stupidity and ignorance. Tired of the racism and bigotry. Tired of the celebration of all the sordid aspects of our country’s history. So tired………
Sigh……….
Not me. I’m munching popcorn, laughing at the teevee gasbags, and watching the opposition beat itself senseless.
Yes, there is a certain comical aspect to it all. And I would be laughing a bit more, too; if it were not for the fact that a there are people I know who are suffering and poised to suffer because of all this stupid bullshit. This insanity isn’t happening in a bubble. And personally, I have a hard time sitting back and watching it indifferently. It might a game to all the TV gasbags, but it all has real consequences outside their safe, gated communities; where all their kids go to private schools and their privileged lives go on without a hitch, regardless of what happens in the real fucking world.
Thanks, MikeInOhio, for expressing my views quite precisely. The thing we need to take in is that these carnival barkers and circus clowns are having a meaningful degree of success in executing their extremely hostile agenda. This is more true at the State level than the Federal, but it’s harming so many people today and tomorrow while we wait for an enduring Democratic majority to finish cooking so we can help deliver it to the polls in off-year elections.
The TEA Party has become the Honey Badger, ever more so every day.
In restrospect, pardon me for failing to maintain my sense of humor long enough to recognize that Trump And Friends is, indeed, a nauseatingly hilarious painting-with-poop crew.
they’ve replaced lincoln with a different bearded icon:
Do we really have to keep on feeding the ego and the “celebrity” of this irrelevant embarrassment? We already know that the GOP’s dream is the return of slavery or at least Jim Crow. Forget ’em until we’re prepared to gut ’em.
“there was so much more to Lincoln than that one amendment… “
And
“it was so boring I almost fell asleep”
That they can say that without shame or awareness of how stupid they come off says everything. There will be no reasoning or educating of them.
They simply need to be outvoted.
Despite what the Donald says I would not recommend a second amendment solution even if Djinga made it look satisfying.
“there was so much more to Lincoln than that one amendment… “
Lincoln could have done bupkis about slavery, and he’d still be persona non grata in today’s GOP….
I would thought Fox would have gone with “look how racists democrats are” through anachronism… that they choose to disown Lincoln really says something
There are some legitimate criticism of Django, even from a racial POV, but I personally loved it.
I think a lot of these critics are missing the point of Tarantino’s work in the first place, which in a sense isn’t about creating alternative histories, but making you feel uncomfortable laughing at things you might not necessarily normally laugh at, while simultaneously mocking genres of film in general. I’m not sure it was T’s goal to utilize Stephen as a point of outright mockery (something some critics are criticizing), but knowing other aspects of his work would point to an interpretation that he was mocking the view that most slaves WERE passive. That could be giving him too much credit and too much benefit of the doubt, who knows; seeing DiCaprio point out the “dimples” in the skull, asking why they don’t rise up, and constant refrain of 1 in 10,000 seems to indicate that I’m not.
I also thought DiCaprio and Waltz’s characters were well done.
On DiCaprio: he was shown to be an effeminate man, in strong contrast to the “monster” slave owners you depict in your head. It showed that he was still human…that makes our past much more difficult to deal with, but also makes it more real. These were people just like any other, not dehumanized brutes. Effective, definitely.
On Waltz: He reminds me of a lot of white liberals of today, tbh. He talks down to Django despite saying how much he despises slavery. And in the end, he chooses death and destruction rather than imagining what’s best for the characters involved, including himself. “I couldn’t resist.” He had to be “pure,” even if it meant all of their deaths. He needs to be “the crusader”; whether they’re free or not is irrelevant.
Oh, also, fuck The Donald.
“I don’t think Lincoln had an English accent,” Trump said, apparently oblivious to the fact that Lincoln in the film does not speak with the same accent. “I know lots of politicians and lots of powerful people and they don’t talk like that,” he complained.
It’s the Onion’s world: we just live in it.
Of course Trump saw “Django Unchained” as racist because except for the doctor, all the white men were stupid, mean, and violent. But they were also all well armed; they just couldn’t shoot as straight as Django.
“Not realizing that slavery was the most racist thing in our country’s history . . .”
Is that what was wrong with it?
“Not realizing that slavery was the most racist thing in our country’s history, he called Django Unchained the most racist movie he has ever seen.”
I haven’t seen it, but I suppose it might have been. I’m guessing he never saw Shaft?
Anyway, slavery was not a movie, so I don’t get that sentence.
Sorry.