Showing posts with label Harvey Weinstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harvey Weinstein. Show all posts

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Let's kick California off the island: When bad things happen to a good state

You don't know me but you don't like me,
You say you care less how I feel
How many of you that sit and judge me
Ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Streets of Bakersfield
Sung by Buck Owens

I love California, which I've visited many times. Napa Valley is lovely and produces terrific wines. The landscape around Santa Barbara is the most beautiful in the world, surpassing Tuscany and the Li Valley in southwestern China, in my opinion.

Unlike (I suspect) California's politicians, I appreciate the great literature of California. I've read Frank Norris' The Octopus, Nathanael West's Day of the Locust, some of Joan Didion's essays, Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and many of the works of Jack London and John Steinbeck. I love T.C. Boyles' California novels, particularly The Tortilla Curtain and Budding Prospects.

And Californians are great people. Although I haven't met them all, I've never met a Californian I didn't like. (I might not like Charlie Manson or HarveyWeinstein, but we don't run in the same circles.)

But let's face it. The Californians insist on sending wingnuts to Congress, and these nut jobs are ruining the country.  I'm talking Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, etc., etc.  It's got to stop.

So let's vote California off the island. I realize a state can't secede from the Union, but with a constitutional amendment, we can surely vote to kick a state out of the club.

Who could oppose such a move? Texas? North Dakota? Hell, the Californians would jump at the chance to have their own nation.

If California was a country it could do whatever it damn likes. It could have open borders, free sex-change operations for illegal immigrants, and no-charge facelifts. It could require corporations to put convicted rapists on their governing boards and make it a criminal offense for Christians to go to college. The People's Republic of California could give citizens the constitutional right to crap on the sidewalks instead of restricting that privilege to San Francisco.  What's not to like?

Of course, my proposal has some limitations. First of all, the town of Bakersfield--home of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and the Bakersfield sound--would continue to be part of America.  And the Ronald Reagan Library.  That goes without saying.

And America would keep the military bases and Disney Land.  But Hollywood would be happier if California were a separate nation, and Americans are tired of Hollywood movies anyway.

Think about it. Kicking California out of the USA would solve a lot of problems, and I can think of no downsides. And if Americans get nostalgic about the old California, they can watch classic movies: Vertigo, The Big Lebowski, and The Maltese Falcon.

The Dude abides, man.




Sunday, October 15, 2017

Harvey Weinstein, the Napa-Sonoma Wildfires, and California's Travel Ban: Greetings from Flyover Country


Awhile back I wrote about California's legislative travel ban, which bars state-funded travel to states that passed so-called unprogessive legislation. Eight states are now on that list, including Texas and North Carolina.

At the time I wrote, I considered California's travel ban to be arrogant, self-righteous, and gratuitous. But that was before the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the Napa-Sonoma wildfires. Now I consider the travel ban to be pathetic.

People who live in flyover country have grown accustomed to being reprimanded by the California entertainment elites--all those beautiful people who are so cool and sensitive. We've endured public scoldings from the California legislature, which passed a law that bars state-funded travel to eight of California's sister states.

And now we find that Hollywood, the capital of coolness, has been enabling a sexual predator and accused rapist for decades. Everyone in the movie business knew Harvey Weinstein was preying on vulnerable women. His own company knew; in fact Harvey's employment contract contained a clause obligating Weinstein to reimburse his employer for future sexual abuse lawsuits (he had already settled with eight accusers) and to pay escalating penalties for future sexual assault complaints.

And then came the Napa-Sonoma wildfires, which have killed at least 40 people and scorched 350 square miles of the California wine country. Firefighters are pouring in from all over the United States to help fight these fires--including firefighters from North Carolina, which is under California's travel ban.

Do you think the California legislature will bar North Carolina fire crews from tackling the blaze in the Napa Valley? No, of course not. California's politicians want all the help the state can get to put out the deadliest wildfire in California history--even help from insensitive North Carolinians.

Do you think Hollywood will ask the folks in flyover country to boycott all the  movies associated with Harvey Weinstein? No. The movie industry depends on the rubes to buy movie tickets and $10 popcorn. Puh-leeze buy a ticket to see all the movies Harvey Weinstein and his cronies vomited into American culture.

Do you think any of Hollywood's supercilious, pompous asses will apologize to middle America for all the judgmental lectures they delivered while they covered up the Weinstein scandal? No, I don't think so.

But it is not my purpose to scold Hollywood or California politicians now that the Golden State's hypocrisy has been exposed. I don't wish to descend to the level of Alex Baldwin.

No, I wish to evoke the spirit of Woody Guthrie, the great folk singer and Dust Bowl refugee who migrated to California during the Great Depression, back in the days when California state troopers turned Okies away at the state border.
"This land is your land," Guthrie sang. "this land is my land.


From the California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest
To the Gulf Stream watersThis land was made for you and me.



So this is my message to California:

We, the people of flyover country, grieve for you as you battle the Napa-Sonoma wildfires, and fire crews from all over America will come to help. We'll even continue watching the retched movies that Hollywood grinds out ever year.

But here's the thing: This land is not just your land. It's our land. It was a land made for all of us. So let's all be a little more tolerant toward one another.