Quote of the week--maybe the month

If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face.

William A. Donohoe, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

I am not a fan of Hollywood, mainly because of the chronic sexism and gay-bashing that goes on there. Donahoe, however, has other objections, as he expressed in an interview on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" on a segment entitled "Hollywood Hating America." He went on to say "...it's such a cop-out to talk about freedom of expression."

I understand that a lot of people do not like to see a lot of sex and violence in films. Frankly, I am one of those people, though there are some films in which the sex and violence are not gratuitous, in which case I am usually fine with such content. Then there are people who do not want to see a film such as Brokeback Mountain (one reviewer described the people who snickered during the trailer as being in one of three groups: idiots, the insecure, and the insecure idiots) because it makes them uncomfortable or they have been told it is about something "sinful." I heard one conservative radio talk show host say he believes people when they say that Brokeback Mountain was possibly the best film of 2005, but that just goes to show you how bad off Hollywood is.

Donahoe's comment, however, feeds the belief that American film actors have no morals all. And while it is true that the Angolina Jolies and Brad Pitts of Hollywood make us want to gag, and that Jennifer Lopez's fur-wearing makes us sick, the only solid evidence we have that some Hollywood actors will do anything for money is the largely pitiful collection of film roles chosen by Julia Roberts.

There is no evidence that anyone in Hollywood is more morally bankrupt than anyone else in America--the people in Hollywood just happen to have their lives examined and recorded every moment of the day. What goes on in Hollywood is nothing compared with, say, what goes on in Washington, D.C., where the morally bankrupt live and work. As far as I know, no one in Hollywood has lied repeatedly to the American people, invited terrorists to make us a target, encouraged the poisoning of our air and water, begun a campaign to destroy our civil liberties, or gone out of his or her way to create a giant gap between the rich and everyone else.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is upset by what it describes as a "bigoted portrayal" of the Catholic Church by the media, and "slanderous assaults" made against the Church. This is the same organization that exists to suppress the rights of women, that has colluded with the Bush administration in withholding life-saving health information from women and girls in developing countries, and whose priests have sexually abused thousands of children. Pardon me if I can't work up any sympathy for those who promote it.