Airwolf
Member
What I want' to say about this piece of filth "journalist" and his "writing" would get me banned for life from THR.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/04/30/notes043003.DTL&nl=fix
Charlton Heston's Last Sneer
The NRA retires its crusty king, with the country more violent and gun happy than ever
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
He is 78 and fragile and suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's and hasn't made a decent movie in decades, unless you count how he sadly made himself look quite the undereducated, largely unsympathetic, defensive fool in the Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine."
And now, Charlton Heston is stepping down as the High Lord Gunmaster Poobah (or whatever they called him) of the phallically righteous increasingly paranoid adorably manly National Rifle Association. They are sighing in tribute. They are hugging each other and giving reassuring pats though not in an icky scary gay way. They are raising their rifles in salute.
And they are actually erecting, in front of the NRA's national headquarters in Washington, D.C., a 10-foot bronze statue of Heston, in character from a manly 1968 western flick no one has really ever seen called "Will Penny," in full bogus mythological cowboy gear, holding a handgun. Isn't that great? Other nations erect statues of poets, artists, thinkers, revolutionaries. We erect statues of craggy actors holding a pistol. God bless America.
It's a thoroughly appropriate icon for the NRA, actually. A character that never really existed, a gun-totin' Wild West that never really happened, a studly kill-the-bad-guys posture that, well, the NRA pretty much invented and frantically clings to as its own raison d'etre. Actors are, by definition, all about illusion, the propogation of manufactured myth, of collective delusion, as opposed to genuine human ideas and perspective. Voilà -- the perfect icon for America's gun culture.
Heston's departure is a good time for reflection, truly. Arguably, the man has done more to promote the desperately macho causes of the NRA than any leader in the group's carefully racist, white-power history (as "Bowling..." so effortlessly describes).
Which is to say, because he is a reasonably articulate and well-known actor, he single-handedly did more to promote the NRA's trademark causes of fear and paranoia than any outspoken gun lover in 25 years. No wonder they are so proud.
Because this is the great myth of the NRA. This is the true foundation. Despite the careful PR, the NRA is not much about the promotion of safe firearm use. It is not about enforcing the rules and sportsmanship of hunting, or about appreciating firearm artistry or improving your clay-pigeon target-practice technique. Maybe a little.
One peek into America's 1st Freedom: The Official Journal of the NRA reveals that the group is, more than anything else, all about paranoid defensiveness and the simple promotion of the right-wing brand of dread.
You know the one. That fear of the great ugly Other coming from somewhere "out there" -- someplace probably Muslim, or pagan, or inner city, or foreign or San Franciscan -- to steal your children and eat all your apple pie and take away your precious guns. Always, always to take away your guns. This is the Biggest Fear of All.
Like pyromaniac children hording precious matches, the loss of unfettered gun-ownership rights ranks right up there with castration and the outlawing of beer in Worst Possible Evils for the NRA. The magazine is packed with lib-hating articles, attacking everyone from the progressive U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to the entire country of Canada and its national gun registry.
Every single alarmist article delineates how "those damn anti-gun liberals" are skewing the statistics, lying and manipulating, trying to chip away at your God-given right to keep 157 sawed-off shotguns and a few submachine guns in your garage, for, you know, "hunting."
That this stance, this viewpoint, is sad and shortsighted and misguided is only half the problem.
Let's make one thing clear: Guns will never be wholly banned in America, not in this lifetime, anyway. It simply will not happen. There are an estimated 200 million firearms in circulation in the nation. They are far too ingrained in the culture, in the national mind-set, in the laws of the land. And most Democrats, and even most progressive liberals, wouldn't care to ban them entirely in the first place. They simply want to make our ridiculously easy access to deadly weaponry a little less, you know, easy.
But any proposed restrictions on gun ownership -- strict licensing, a national gun registry, mandatory gun-safety locks and so on -- represent, of course, a horrifically slippery slope for the NRA. They are a dangerous precedent that would lead to one thing and one thing only: someone taking away their guns -- that thing that will, let us repeat, never happen.
The NRA is, of course, wildly easy to hate. Easy to see the group as a cliched cadre of twitching socially inept boy-men with a seriously compensatory need to display their gun barrels. Problem is, such hyperzealous groups only feed on such sentiment -- it simply adds fuel to the cause.
And, moreover, the stereotype is largely wrong, and unfair. The NRA has some very smart, very passionate people who truly value their rights and their country. It's true. Let's admit it.
The tragedy, then, is how deeply this powerful group of rabidly passionate uber-Americans has bought into the lie, the myth, of what America really stands for, and has become a part of the tyranny of fear, a mouthpiece for that very divisiveness and paranoia and antagonism that keeps America volatile and childish and so bitterly derided the world over.
Do you see? It's not the love of guns, it's the love of the bogus illusion of what guns actually do -- that is, how they allegedly serve to protect that vicious, isolationist Us-versus-Them mentality so beloved by BushCo and the warmongers and Fox News.
It is a vision of America as this faux-virtuous, good-guy, white-hatted, monosyllabic brute, the well-armed hero enforcer of all that is righteous and pure and bullet ridden -- you know, just like the bogus and hollow Wild West of Heston's "Will Penny."
Heston's most famous contribution to the NRA cause? That thing for which he will be most remembered? His trademark catchphrase. Raising a rifle in the air at the end of his speech at every NRA rally, Heston would get that sly gun-nut gleam in his eye and exclaim (to wild applause), "From my cold, dead hands!"
Sadly, and with absolutely no progress made toward the true reduction of rampant gun violence and the tyranny of right-wing fear in this nation, it looks like the rapidly aging Heston will soon get his wish.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/04/30/notes043003.DTL&nl=fix
Charlton Heston's Last Sneer
The NRA retires its crusty king, with the country more violent and gun happy than ever
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
He is 78 and fragile and suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's and hasn't made a decent movie in decades, unless you count how he sadly made himself look quite the undereducated, largely unsympathetic, defensive fool in the Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine."
And now, Charlton Heston is stepping down as the High Lord Gunmaster Poobah (or whatever they called him) of the phallically righteous increasingly paranoid adorably manly National Rifle Association. They are sighing in tribute. They are hugging each other and giving reassuring pats though not in an icky scary gay way. They are raising their rifles in salute.
And they are actually erecting, in front of the NRA's national headquarters in Washington, D.C., a 10-foot bronze statue of Heston, in character from a manly 1968 western flick no one has really ever seen called "Will Penny," in full bogus mythological cowboy gear, holding a handgun. Isn't that great? Other nations erect statues of poets, artists, thinkers, revolutionaries. We erect statues of craggy actors holding a pistol. God bless America.
It's a thoroughly appropriate icon for the NRA, actually. A character that never really existed, a gun-totin' Wild West that never really happened, a studly kill-the-bad-guys posture that, well, the NRA pretty much invented and frantically clings to as its own raison d'etre. Actors are, by definition, all about illusion, the propogation of manufactured myth, of collective delusion, as opposed to genuine human ideas and perspective. Voilà -- the perfect icon for America's gun culture.
Heston's departure is a good time for reflection, truly. Arguably, the man has done more to promote the desperately macho causes of the NRA than any leader in the group's carefully racist, white-power history (as "Bowling..." so effortlessly describes).
Which is to say, because he is a reasonably articulate and well-known actor, he single-handedly did more to promote the NRA's trademark causes of fear and paranoia than any outspoken gun lover in 25 years. No wonder they are so proud.
Because this is the great myth of the NRA. This is the true foundation. Despite the careful PR, the NRA is not much about the promotion of safe firearm use. It is not about enforcing the rules and sportsmanship of hunting, or about appreciating firearm artistry or improving your clay-pigeon target-practice technique. Maybe a little.
One peek into America's 1st Freedom: The Official Journal of the NRA reveals that the group is, more than anything else, all about paranoid defensiveness and the simple promotion of the right-wing brand of dread.
You know the one. That fear of the great ugly Other coming from somewhere "out there" -- someplace probably Muslim, or pagan, or inner city, or foreign or San Franciscan -- to steal your children and eat all your apple pie and take away your precious guns. Always, always to take away your guns. This is the Biggest Fear of All.
Like pyromaniac children hording precious matches, the loss of unfettered gun-ownership rights ranks right up there with castration and the outlawing of beer in Worst Possible Evils for the NRA. The magazine is packed with lib-hating articles, attacking everyone from the progressive U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to the entire country of Canada and its national gun registry.
Every single alarmist article delineates how "those damn anti-gun liberals" are skewing the statistics, lying and manipulating, trying to chip away at your God-given right to keep 157 sawed-off shotguns and a few submachine guns in your garage, for, you know, "hunting."
That this stance, this viewpoint, is sad and shortsighted and misguided is only half the problem.
Let's make one thing clear: Guns will never be wholly banned in America, not in this lifetime, anyway. It simply will not happen. There are an estimated 200 million firearms in circulation in the nation. They are far too ingrained in the culture, in the national mind-set, in the laws of the land. And most Democrats, and even most progressive liberals, wouldn't care to ban them entirely in the first place. They simply want to make our ridiculously easy access to deadly weaponry a little less, you know, easy.
But any proposed restrictions on gun ownership -- strict licensing, a national gun registry, mandatory gun-safety locks and so on -- represent, of course, a horrifically slippery slope for the NRA. They are a dangerous precedent that would lead to one thing and one thing only: someone taking away their guns -- that thing that will, let us repeat, never happen.
The NRA is, of course, wildly easy to hate. Easy to see the group as a cliched cadre of twitching socially inept boy-men with a seriously compensatory need to display their gun barrels. Problem is, such hyperzealous groups only feed on such sentiment -- it simply adds fuel to the cause.
And, moreover, the stereotype is largely wrong, and unfair. The NRA has some very smart, very passionate people who truly value their rights and their country. It's true. Let's admit it.
The tragedy, then, is how deeply this powerful group of rabidly passionate uber-Americans has bought into the lie, the myth, of what America really stands for, and has become a part of the tyranny of fear, a mouthpiece for that very divisiveness and paranoia and antagonism that keeps America volatile and childish and so bitterly derided the world over.
Do you see? It's not the love of guns, it's the love of the bogus illusion of what guns actually do -- that is, how they allegedly serve to protect that vicious, isolationist Us-versus-Them mentality so beloved by BushCo and the warmongers and Fox News.
It is a vision of America as this faux-virtuous, good-guy, white-hatted, monosyllabic brute, the well-armed hero enforcer of all that is righteous and pure and bullet ridden -- you know, just like the bogus and hollow Wild West of Heston's "Will Penny."
Heston's most famous contribution to the NRA cause? That thing for which he will be most remembered? His trademark catchphrase. Raising a rifle in the air at the end of his speech at every NRA rally, Heston would get that sly gun-nut gleam in his eye and exclaim (to wild applause), "From my cold, dead hands!"
Sadly, and with absolutely no progress made toward the true reduction of rampant gun violence and the tyranny of right-wing fear in this nation, it looks like the rapidly aging Heston will soon get his wish.