Help us find Annie
Farewell, Chuck
In the end, even Michael Moore couldn't say anything bad about Charlton Heston. As David Germain reported today at TownHall.com,
In 2002, near the end of his five years as president of the NRA, Heston disclosed he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease.
The disclosure was soon followed by an unflattering appearance in Moore's 2003 best documentary winner "Bowling for Columbine," which took America to task for its gun laws.
Moore used a clip of Heston holding aloft a rifle at an NRA rally and proclaiming "from my cold, dead hands." The director flustered the actor in an interview later in the film by pressing him on his gun-control stance. Heston eventually walked out on Moore.
Moore's Web site, http://www.michaelmoore.com, on Sunday featured a photo of Heston, the date of his birth and death and a note from the actor's family requesting that donations be made to the Motion Picture and Television Fund in lieu of flowers.
There was no other reaction on the site from Moore about Heston's death.
Saturday's news of Heston's death was accompanied by some footage of an interview he gave--I forget to whom--in which he was asked whether he had any fear over the Alzheimer's diagnosis. The gist of his reaction was no, it's just another part of this big adventure called life.
It struck me as I watched that bit of footage, with the actor in his late seventies, that if ever there were an actor suited to portray Ronald Reagan during his Presidential years, it would have been Chuck Heston.
Among this morning's email was a transcript of a speech that Heston gave at Harvard Law School a few years ago, before his illness. The speech contained a few bon mots that bear repeating here:
I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you . . . the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is. ...
As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue.
No, it's much, much bigger than that.
I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.
For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 - long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.
I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.
I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.
Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country.
But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind like that? You are using language not authorized for public consumption!"
But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys - subjects bound to the British crown.
In his book, The End of Sanity, Martin Gross writes that "blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction.
Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something without a name is undermining the country, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it." ...If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist.
If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you sexist.
If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion.
If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.
Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism.
But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation? The answer's been here all along.
I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.
You simply ... disobey.
Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely.
But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. ...In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous laws that weaken personal freedom.
But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies.
You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at Selma.
You must be willing to experience discomfort. ...So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country.
Powerful words. Words that I suspect will be omitted from the eulogizing that all the neocons will indulge themselves in, thinking they know something of this man.