Thursday, November 17, 2016

I Told You So - Now There's Even More Of A Reason For Me To Be Allergic To Tom Hanks

Charles Pierce is in the running to be the Venerable Bede of our time.  Here is his mild mannered disgust with Tom Hanks trying to normalize and soft sell the disaster we are about to encounter.

  • "We are going to be all right," Hanks said. "America has been in worse places than we are at right now." He then went on to explain those places, which he witnessed firsthand. "In my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth and nail, and every dinner table ended up being as close to a fistfight as our families would allow. We have been in a place where we looked at our leaders and wondered what the hell were they thinking of. We've had moments with administrations and politicians and leaders and senators and governors where we asked ourselves, "Are they lying to us? Or do they really believe in this?" That's all right…We do have the greatest country in the world. We may move at a slow pace, but we do have the greatest country in the world, because we are always moving toward a more perfect Union.

  • ... That journey never ceases. It never stops. Sometimes, like in a Bruce Springsteen song, one step forward, two steps back. But we still, aggregately, move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so. But we will move forward, because if we do not move forward, what is to be said about us?


Jesus Mary, that song is about the dissolution of Springsteen's first marriage.

As if Sleepless in Seattle, his falsification of history in Charlie Wilson, as if dozens of pieces of Hollywood corn sweetener crap weren't enough.....

It's always a mistake to expect anything of a Hollywood actor in the way of high intelligence or deep thought.   I've know stage actors and they are generally a lot smarter.   I wish he'd just shut up and stick to making lousy movies.

Update:  I read the piece about it in WaPo, it's even worse than that indicates.

Update 2:  Oh, yeah, and if you think my crack about Hollywood actors often being total meat heads was mean:

So why is Hanks so confident that, like Sully and his airplane, America will be safe (even if there’s a bit of, er, malfunctioning)?

The Constitution of the United States.

“That document is going to protect us, over and over again, whether or not our neighbors preserve and protect and defend it themselves,” Hanks said.

And he knows — he even referenced this Schoolhouse Rock song about it:

I should have warned you that you might consume more than a safe monthly dose of bromides if you read that.  I suggest that the real role for Tom Hanks would be George F. Babbitt, he's clearly been preparing to play him all his adult life. 



7 comments:

  1. Come now good sir, if you're going to mock St. Tom at least credit him with knowing that he's just an actor. When asked about potentially running for office, he offered, "Just because I’m an actor...I don’t buy my participation [as a politician]."

    Now, granted, maybe it's because I agree with him to an extent. If we are diligent, if we don't lose hope, if we don't acquiesce to ease and convenience, I pray we can weather this tempest. I was reading up on past POTUS last month and holy cow I was stunned by the corruption and apathetic incompetence of what took place between the Roosevelt's terms.

    This sucks. Really. But, the attention-seeking hysteria of the Lena Dunham's of the world isn't going to do anything but dig Trump voters in deeper.

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    1. You mean he's smarter than Reagan. That's the definition of damning with faint praise.

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    2. But he's also aware that being smarter than Reagan hardly calls for an encore. There's something to be said for that. I liked 'Bridge of Spies,' too. The only good thing Reagan was ever in was "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg."

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  2. He's right that "we" rich white cis-het males will be just fine because the Constitution was designed to protect us.

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    1. Dude, seriously? One of the reasons Trump won is people are sick of being labeled and dismissed by the moniker affixed to them. I had to look up what "cis-het" means and for God's sake why not just start calling people out for being blue-eyed and having ten digits while you're at it (if labels turn you on that much)? I'm a librarian and I love to use them for books but not people, never people.

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    2. I will answer for Ntodd, labeling people other than heterosexual, white, males is practically all Trump's campaign consisted of, that and the lies, often contradicting each other.

      I also think it's entirely obvious who the "founders" who wrote it for and several generations of those with political power and the vote understood it to be for, pretty much the same group Trump addressed. It certainly wasn't anyone but white, heterosexual men, especially those with money or who had delusions that he was going to get them things.

      Is "Dude" a label? At this time of the morning I'm not sure.

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    3. Re: Trump - yes it was, unfortunately, but labeling has been a cause celebre amongst academics when his candidacy was unthinkable. It's almost like he took the gandersauce theory and put it into practice.

      Being from Southern California, "Dude" is just a filler phrase that we sometimes use to begin our statements. It's often employed to focus the audience on what we're about to say, because if you say "Dude" in Los Angeles you're clearly about to say something important.

      Point is, I like people, not labels.

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