Saturday, January 18, 2025

Hollywood's- or America's- Heir to David Duke


What, was David Duke unavailable?

 

While many prominent Republicans such as Lauren Boebert complain about "Hollywood elites"

President-elect Trump is leaning on some of his famous friends to influence Hollywood, tapping actors Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone to serve as “special ambassadors” to the entertainment industry.

In a Truth Social post, Trump called Hollywood a “great but very troubled place” and claimed it was losing business to foreign countries.

“These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!” Trump posted.

Voight has been a longtime Trump supporter and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2019. He likened Trump’s 2020 election defeat to the “greatest fight since the Civil War.”

Stallone during the 2024 campaign compared Trump to the “second George Washington” and introduced Trump during a postelection gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Gibson has caused controversy for making racist and antisemitic comments. He has supported Trump in the past and ridiculed Vice President Harris’s intelligence during the 2024 campaign.

In June, 2020 actress Winona Ryder accused Gibson of having

referred to her as an "oven dodger" in an apparent reference to her Jewish background.

Gibson's representative said Ryder's allegations, which she made in 2010 and repeated in a recent interview with The Sunday Times, were "100% untrue".

Ryder responded by asserting again that she and a late friend had been "on the receiving end of his hateful words".

The Stranger Things actress described the alleged encounter as "a painful and vivid memory".

Ryder first made the claims in an interview with GQ in 2010. She told this weekend's Sunday Times: "We were at a crowded party with one of my good friends, and Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar, and we're all talking and he said to my friend, who's gay, 'Oh wait, am I gonna get Aids?'

"And then something came up about Jews, and he said, 'You're not an oven dodger, are you?'"

Ryder, 48, said Gibson, 64, had tried to apologise to her at a later date.

The Braveheart star's representative disputed Ryder's version of events, however, accusing her of "lying" about both the alleged comments and apology.

Gibson, he claimed, "did reach out to [Ryder], many years ago, to confront her about her lies and she refused to address it with him".

Ryder responded by offering more details, including that the encounter occurred "around 1996"….

It is not the only time Gibson has been accused of using the offensive term, which alludes to the mass murder of Jews in Nazi death camps during World War Two.

In 2012 screenwriter Joe Eszterhas accused the actor of using it while they were working on a film about Jewish hero Judah Maccabee.

Gibson, who made widely documented anti-Semitic comments when he was arrested for drink-driving in 2006, called Eszterhas's claims "utter fabrications".

 Oh yea, sure.  When the Passion of the Christ was all the rage in 2014, The National Catholic Reporter (not my usual source, but when right, they are right) explained

Gibson made a film that confirmed many stereotypes of the Jews, such as depicting the moment when the bag of silver was tossed to Judas in slow motion and Judas looked at it lovingly; the "bad" Jewish men with fang-like teeth and the "good guys" with nice teeth; the sneering hatred from the high priest when he questions Jesus; and Pilate calling the Jews "filthy rabble." Certainly not the first to do so, Gibson uses stereotypes, some more subtle than others, to create a group of "bad" Jews to confront the "good" Jews consisting of Jesus, Mary and their followers who would be thought of as aligned with Christians today.

As a non-actor, David Duke wasn't available for appointment as a "special ambassador" for Hollywood. And the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and prominent anti-Semite has drifted out of the public sphere since he controversially supported Trump's presidntial bid in 2016 and was crushed in a U.S. Senate bid.  Appointment of Mel Gibson for anything by Donald Trump is only one more reminder of the latter's embrace of bigotry at practically every turn. So it is striking that in his victory speech upon defeating Duke in the Louisiana gubernatorial election in 1991, Democrat Edwin Edwards appeared to anticipate the last decade of national politics in remarking

Prophecy is reserved for those who are given that special gift, which I do not possess. But I say to all of America tonight, there will be other places and other times where there will be other challenges by other David Dukes. They too will be peddling bigotry and division as their elixir of false hope, they too will be riding piggyback on the frustration of citizens disaffected by government … We must address the causes of public disenchantment with government at every level … Tonight Louisiana defeated the darkness of hate, bigotry and division, but where will the next challenge come from? Will it be in another campaign in Louisiana? Or in a campaign for governor in some other state? Or a campaign for president of the United States?


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