Archive for January, 2013
Have You Ever Seen Changeling? It’s actually worth your valuable time (and really inspirational too).
The movie Changeling is not the 70s horror flick with George C. Scott and the ghost boy in the wheelchair (that would be The Changeling…and it scared the bejeebus out of me as a little kid…because apparently the addition of an extra three letters equals pure terror).
In 2008, Angelina Jolie starred in Changeling and I purposefully avoided seeing it in theaters because I’ve long believed Angelina Jolie is a cuckoo-bird. She wore a vial of her brother’s blood around her neck for a while, apparently dated him around the time she won her Oscar, and then stole Brad Pitt from Rachel from Friends. Being gay, I’ve never understood her sex appeal…but instead thought she was trash for participating in adultery. While I typically enjoy movies set in the 1920s and am fascinated by stories based on real-events, I just couldn’t get beyond my dislike for the actress to see this movie when it was new…and in years since I honestly never encountered it on DVD or on Netflix or even thought of it again.
But, while I was sick this last month I watched a lot of movies on Amazon Instant Video and somehow accidentally ordered Changeling when I probably wanted The Changeling…and so felt obliged to let the movie play, regardless of Angelin’a presence.
I’m truly glad that I did because not only was Angelina very good in the role (and gorgeous, too, incidentally…looking spot-on perfect as a woman in the 1920s without a vial of her brother’s blood in sight) but the story itself introduced me to two new American heroes in the form of Christine Collins and the Reverend Gustav Briegleb.
Collins (portrayed by Jolie in the film) was a mother whose young son went missing around 1927 in Los Angeles while she was away at work. The Los Angeles Police Department was the most corrupt in the world at the time and decided it wanted some good publicity…so they shipped in a runaway boy they found in Illinois and tried to pass him off as Collins’ son Walter. When Collins insisted that this stranger was not her son, the police ultimately decided to lock her up in a mental ward to shut her up so they wouldn’t have any more bad press over the fiasco. It’s so sad to admit it, but this is the sort of thing I can honestly see happening here in Chicago with Rahm Emanuel as Mayor and Democrats running the Justice Department nationwide.
Briegleb was a man with a radio show at the time who realized what happened to Collins and vowed to broadcast every day on the subject until everyone in listening range was riled up against the police for their abuse of power. He did just that…and ultimately forced Collins’ release. Watching the movie, he seemed to be the Andrew Breitbart of his day…which made me doubly sad because neither he nor Andrew are around anymore.
After Briegleb rescued her, Collins went after the police, sued the primary guy responsible for what happened to her, and kept suing him again and again through the years trying to force him to pay her the judgement she was awarded (which would have been about $400,000 adjusted for inflation). Someone with this sort of tenacity is amazing here in 2013…let alone in 1927 in Los Angeles…when no doubt most of her peers were terrified of being killed by those crooked cops in a “traffic accident” or “robbery” or something.
The movie could have been a gruesome, scary, serial killer story…but instead it was a very inspirational tale of a woman who just would not be broken and one who never gave up on finding her son. Christine Collins was absolutely amazing. I really hope that if I ever had a kid I’d fight for him or her as much as Collins waged all-out-war for hers.
I enjoyed the movie so much that I spent a few days researching what happened to everyone after the story told in the film ended. True to form, Christine Collins spent the rest of her life looking for her son. She lived until 1964 and apparently had to use aliases and change her name here and there because people affiliated with the crooked cops kept bothering her…even decades later. But, still she kept up her battle against the bad guys. And she never gave up hope that her son was still out there somewhere. Gustav Briegleb kept calling out the crooked police until the day that he died…and together with Collins he so embarrassed the City of Los Angeles that new laws had to be passed to prevent the police from ever again having the ability to just throw someone in a mental ward when they wanted to silence the person.
2013 is really starting out to be a bleak year and though the Ministry of Truth that is our national media won’t admit the obvious, we really are in an economic Depression. Things will get much, much worse in the days ahead as all of the many taxes prescribed by Obamacare drive companies out of business or force massive layoffs. Simultaneously, never in our lifetimes have we had so many people in government who believe they can do whatever they want to people and that they are answerable to no one. It all feels very reminiscent to Los Angeles in the late-1920s when Collins and Breigleb fought back.
I think a lot of you out there are going to be fighting back in your own ways in the years ahead. I hope you never go through anything like what happened to Collins…but in whatever challenges you do face I do hope you never give up, never surrender, and that you always speak truth to power. People today are scared of our government and the power it wields…and some are even afraid of being “disappeared” somewhere because they oppose what the Left is doing to the country (and what it will do in the next four years).
What I liked most about the movie Changeling is that it illustrates there is indeed an alternative to being too afraid to take on the “big guys” or the all-powerful government. I’m sure Collins was scared…and Angelina depicted her as being unsure what to do at times…but she would not let those monsters break her.
And in the end it was actually she who embarrassed and broke them.
What a great movie this ended up being…so good that I ended up doing something I almost never do and I bought the DVD so that I can watch it again one day when Justin’s home too.
It really is worth your valuable time the next night you want to put something on your video screen.
HillBuzz Open Thread: Tuesday January 8th, 2013
Today in History:
2011 — Attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona (which the Ministry of Truth that is our national media immediately tried to blame on the Tea Party or Governor Sarah Palin just so they could score a political punch against conservatives…when in fact the shooter ended up being a crazy person who actually was an Obama voter).
2004 — The Queen Mary 2 is christened by Queen Elizabeth II; it is the largest cruise ship ever built. If you ever wonder why it’s a “2″ instead of the Roman numeral “II” this is because the ship is the second to bear the name “Queen Mary” in the Cunard line and is not named for a “Queen Mary the Second”. It’s the same with the old QE2 liner, which was the second “Queen Elizabeth” liner in the Cunard line…not a ship named after the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II.
2002 — the odious “No Child Left Behind” nonsense is signed into law. Eleven years later, public school children are all still left behind because their teachers fill their heads with the Left’s indoctrination and the teachers’ unions make sure that any efforts to thwart this are prevented.
1982 -- AT&T is broken up into smaller regional parts. It’s so alien to even think of having to deal with AT&T in any form. Here in 2012, it’s now been eight years since I’ve had a land line.
1975 — First female Governor of a US state who did not succeed her husband into office: Ella T. Grasso takes office in Connecticut.
1964 — Lyndon Johnson declares “War on Poverty” in the US. In reality, Johnson only ended up declaring war on the black family unit…and all subsequent efforts by Democrats lumped under an umbrella of having anything to do with poverty were really aimed at removing black fathers from the home, encouraging teenaged pregnancies and abortions for young black women, and making black people dependent on the government for hand-outs. If Vietnam is the war that all public school history teachers universally call a “disaster”, then what the heck should they appropriately call the “War on Poverty”.
1963 — The Mona Lisa is displayed in the US for the first and only time, thanks to the beguiling efforts of First Lady Jackie Kennedy. I’m honestly torn on what to say about Jackie here, because I grew up in a house with her pictures on the wall and appreciate the stagecraft and branding efforts she did in the White House…but the Kennedy Family as a whole is just so despicable to me here in 2012 that I no longer have any residual good feelings for Jackie. Until about 10 years after she died I’d still hear one person a week call her the epitome of “Grace”, but really since Caroline took over the family’s brand management I’ve started to see Jackie as a ridiculous and manipulative person. She cheated on her husband with William Holden, the movie star; she believed all sorts of oddball conspiracies even before her husband was assassinated; she apparently swore like a sailor and said vile things about Martin Luther King when she didn’t think anyone important was listening who’d rat her out. She wasn’t Saint Jacqueline as much as she was the woman who knowingly exposed herself topless on a Greek Island when she was sure photographers would catch her doing it. She liked playing games like that…but I have to give her credit for playing enough of those games with France to convince them to transport their La Jocande across the ocean and bring it to the US. I doubt this will ever happen again because so much could have gone wrong with that shipment. It’s just still so marvelous that so many people got to see that famous painting who’d never be able to travel to Europe.
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It’s often surprising to look back on things that happened in the past on a certain date and reevaluate how you feel about it all.
I’m actually startled by my change in feelings about Jackie Kennedy, because when I first moved to Chicago in 2005 the first thing I hung on my wall was a big Andy Warhol print of her that I bought in Pittsburgh at his museum. I ended up giving that framed print away to a neighbor when I moved in with my boyfriend Justin…because I just didn’t care to take it with me. I am that divorced from any emotional connection to the Democrat Party at this point and cannot conceive a future where I’d ever be able to look past all the bad these people do…just because a former First Lady sometimes showed “Grace” (when it was part of her PR plan, anyway).
Speaking of the opposite of “grace”, I’m truly sickened today when thinking about what Democrats did at their convention last September when they trotted former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords out onto the stage, when the poor woman obviously had no idea where she was or what she was doing there. That was deplorable…but yet again, it’s truly what the Democrat Party is today. It’s been two years since Giffords nearly lost her life in that shooting and it’s clear she’s never going to recover. I’m actually heartsick thinking about how she was paraded around in Charlotte…and how no grown-ups stepped in to tell anyone in the party that it was in truly bad taste to do this. I so wish they party had some sense of decency left and had allowed this woman to cling to some dignity. There is no reason at all that she shouldn’t have been allowed a quiet, private life away from the cameras when of course it was the Democrat Party that had always insisted that FDR and JFK should never be shown in their wheelchairs or in any sort of humiliating position because of their illnesses or injuries. My how that attitude changed in Charlotte when it came time to drag poor Gabby Giffords before the cameras to be gawked at.
Here in Chicago this 8th day of January in the year 2013 it’s bracingly cold…with the sort of chill that gets right into your bones. The new Obama taxes are hitting paychecks and a great many very foolish people are shocked that they have so much money left after taxes in this the Golden Age of Hope and Change. I know this is going to be a very sober and austere year for almost all of us…but I hope it truly is a sobering one for everyone out there that either voted for Obama or chose to sit home on Election Day. Right now, we could be gearing up for the inauguration of someone who actually had a plan for getting millions of people back to work…and instead, we’re just going to get another four years of high taxes and insane increases of health insurance premiums with job cuts and losses left and right. Hope! Change!
I still truly believe that America will endure and survive this…but it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. The Republican Party still seems to believe that doing what the Ministry of Truth wants is the key to success…and even though they ran the candidate that Minitru wanted them to run in the last two presidential elections, the Cocktail Party honchos still keep saying “we need to be more moderate!”. Whoever’s not repeating that is saying “Time to run another Bush!” for 2016. The Cocktail Partiers are truly hopeless. They really will never learn.
But, in this first week of 2013 it’s not all bad news. The Ministry of Truth is not as strong as it thinks. There are little cracks here and there that fascinate me. One story I enjoyed following in the last few weeks involves Matt Lauer and how he’s being driven insane by New Yorkers shouting profanities at him whenever he’s out and about in the city. This is because Lauer insisted that his co-host on the Today Show, Ann Curry, be fired back in the summer of 2012. NBC then forced Curry to publicly humiliate herself and announce her own firing live on the air; she cried…and the public permanently turned against Lauer. Now, people shout things at him in the way they used to scream “Murderer!” at O.J. Simpson whenever he’d try to eat in a restaurant. This has taken both Lauer and NBC itself by complete surprise. ”You’re a bad guy, Matt!” they holler. ”What you did to Ann was wrong!”. ”Boo!”.
This gives me such immense hope, I can’t even tell you.
Because it means that there really is a point when people do indeed think for themselves and turn against the Ministry of Truth and those that comprise it. Lauer thought he was invincible and master of his little fiefdom…but he went too far when he ousted Ann Curry. He’s paying the price now and his public image is never going to recover. Watch for him to be released from his contract at Today as soon as NBC finds a suitable replacement (in my opinion a dime store mannequin would do, but apparently there’s more to it than that).
I know New Year’s Resolutions are supposed to be all about losing weight or drinking less and all of that…but I think it would be more fun to make 2013 about doing little things to make the people around you turn on the Ministry of Truth. Matt Lauer proves the Ministry is vulnerable…and that something emotional can resonate with the public, if Americans get disgusted enough.
I know that YOU feel pretty disgusted by the nonstop lefty propaganda the Ministry churns out…but 90% of the public isn’t that tuned-in.
I think 2013 is the year that you and others like you turn the table on the Ministry…and cause your friends and neighbors to become permanently alienated from the talking heads on their tee-vee screens.
It’s going to be tough, but nothing great was ever achieved without adversity and corresponding perseverance.
And, honestly, on a very personal level it would just be a whole lot of fun to see Matt Lauer’s colleagues become as reviled as he is by the end of the year. Just imagine if everyone on MSNBC and CNN and the other wings of the Ministry was booed and jeered wherever they went.
That just warms the heart on a cold Tuesday morning, it really does.
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What are people talking about in your part of the country?
What new things are you going to do in 2013 to help bring down the propaganda enterprise that is our national media?
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Editor’s Note: I really want to thank all the people who emailed the last month with well-wishes while I was recuperating from my surgery. Today’s the first day I’ve had enough energy to be in front of a computer, but I’m feeling better and taking it slow to get back up to speed soon. This site takes a lot of personal effort to publish every day and it really does come down to whether or not I am physically able to sit here and write it. I am in a lot of pain and it’s hard to focus on the screen, but today’s better than yesterday and tomorrow will be even better still. February will be our site’s 5th anniversary and I think there’s a lot of interesting things to do and be involved with in the years ahead. While I was sick this last month, I was still able to work from bed on a few projects that mean a lot to me. One of them is actually the biggest thing I’ve ever done, which hopefully will be published in April or May. The funny thing is that it never would have happened if I hadn’t been sick and forced to stay in bed and not go anywhere or do anything else but read and research for a month. — K.D.
