Hollywood's brave face

I have to say I'm disappointed. I had planned to go see the new Sony Pictures film The Interview on Christmas Day and now Kim Jong-un has ruined my Christmas. Thanks to the leaked script and some spoilers from folks who attended a sneak preview, it probably wasn't going to be all that anyway. Now everyone wants to see it just because they can't. It's human nature.


Something that puzzles me, and I heard it on both CNN and Fox News, is this notion that Sony should never have made this movie in the first place. What the heck is that supposed to mean? The folks who spout that nonsense don't elaborate. We're left to suppose that they mean Sony shouldn't be making fun of a sawed off, narcissistic dictator who thinks he's God. Quite frankly, the dude is ripe for the picking.

And what's up with the president, who can't get the stars of the movie straight (he called James Franco James Flacco), piling on Sony like they had a choice in pulling the movie? Look, when the top five movie chains say they're not going to show your movie, it's over. That's not to say that the movie can't come back at some later date but don't act like Sony Pictures is somehow a coward for scrapping the run.

The real cowards are in Hollywood. George Clooney tried to get a letter of solidarity with Sony signed by the major movers and shakers. There were no takers. Because the execs at Sony had made some Obama jokes in their e-mails, everyone else was afraid to be anywhere close to them, despite the fact that the very same attack could happen to them. They're so brave.

And to make matters worse, some theaters wanted to run the movie Team America instead. The movie, using "supermarionettes," makes fun of Kim's father, Kim Jong-il. Although it's unnecessarily crude, it is pretty darn funny. The weenies at Paramount Pictures put the kibosh on that. Funny. No condemnation from the Dalai Bama on that one.

OK, so the higher-ups at Sony were proved to be liberal hypocrites who make fun of a black president in private e-mails. Is this really such a shocker? I had a self-proclaimed Democrat tell me many years ago that she couldn't be a racist because every time she sees black folks her heart just breaks. No, dear, that's not racist. You're supposed to pity anyone who's not white. Reminds me of Wolf Blitzer's comment during Hurricane Katrina when he observed that many of the victims were "so poor and so black." You folks who are "so black" keep that in mind next time a liberal tells you they're here to help you.

Despite all that, we have been attacked by North Korea and probably little, if anything, will be done about it. Newt Gingrich said this was the first cyber war involving the United States and we lost. He's right.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Hollywood crowd, who ran and hid during the whole Sony cyber attack, doesn't give Sony Pictures a special medal of freedom award at the Oscars. It'd be just like 'em.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Boehner has to go

The recent budget fight was a case of Pork and Porkier. Democrats and Republicans alike piled on their pet spending as the budget reached the finishing line. There’s money to promote travel destinations like Las Vegas. Guess who put that one in there. Yep, soon to be senate minority leader, Harry Reid.

The bill fully funds the Export-Import Bank, a government agency that provides taxpayer-backed loans to corporations and foreign governments. The government has no business making such loans and this program should’ve ended long ago.

Probably the most egregious spending is for the DREAMer streamers and Obamacare, two issues the American people screamed at the top of their lungs about. This bill spend $948 million on unaccompanied illegal children coming to this country, something that should’ve been stopped instead of funded. It also fully funds Obamacare. The American people gave the Republicans the majority in Congress specifically to stop Obamacare. The GOP has had show vote after show vote repealing it in the house but everyone knew it was going nowhere in the senate. The only way to stop it is to defund it. 

The Republicans have now had a half-dozen chances to do just that and they’ve refused to do it. Why? Because of John Boehner. The GOP speaker is spineless. Worse, he works in conjunction with the free-spending liberals on the other side of the aisle to keep the gravy train rolling, and he may single-handedly bring the Republican Party to its knees.

It’s no secret that the Republicans lost the presidency in 2008 and 2012 because their base stayed home. Their base stayed home because it saw little difference between the Republican candidates and Barack Obama. This same base has been somewhat encouraged by the tea party Republicans who have been sent to Washington as reinforcements. However, these reinforcements do little to no good as long as Boehner is their general.

Boehner’s a is political animal. He’s been in Washington for 23 years and you’ll have to blast him out with a stick of dynamite. You’ve heard of Potomac Fever? Boehner has a terminal case. He’s destined to die in DC unless he’s defeated, and that’s not likely. The folks in his district in Ohio apparently like their congressman being the speaker. He won his last election with over 67 percent of the vote.

Where he’s vulnerable is in the house itself. He only won the speakership with 50.8 percent of the vote. That means about half the house doesn’t want him, including a good number of Republicans. He’s already been nominated by his party for this next term but there is a way to oust him even after he’s re-elected speaker.

The speaker can be removed by a resolution declaring the Office of Speaker vacant. If that happens, the speaker pro tempore becomes speaker. Right now that’s Congressman Kevin McCarthy. Would he be better than Boehner? Hard to be worse, but there’s no assurance that the maneuver would work. The tea party Republicans would also need some Democrats’ help and it’s unlikely they would trade in a RINO for a tea partier.

But something has to be done. If the Republicans continue to do pretty much what the Democrats would do then what’s the point? The Republicans were sent to Washington to dismantle Obamacare. That should be Job One. Instead, they seem to think we’ve all moved on. We haven’t. Elections have consequences. The consequence of the last election was no more Obamacare and amnesty. If Boehner doesn’t get that message then the Republicans need to replace him.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The women who cry rape

Ever heard of Lena Dunham? Don’t feel too bad. She’s huge with the artsy crowd. She’s created a television show for HBO called Girls but she’s about to become a household name for another reason. In her new bestseller, she apparently wrote an account of being ‘raped by a Republican’ in college. It’s also apparently not true.

Lena’s story is becoming the new refrain, unfortunately, with some women who’ve learned that crying rape months, if not years, after the fact is a way to either get even or get attention. And nobody questions it. Until now.

A reporter from Breitbart.com actually went to Oberlin College where Dunham claims she was raped and interviewed dozens of people. He soon found that Dunham’s story was a complete fabrication. The damage done by such stories is not only incalculable to the person accused, it does unbelievable damage to the credibility of real rape victims. Feminists like Dunham are held up by the left as victims while the real victims become less discernible because of the false accusations.

You’ve probably heard of the University of Virginia gang-rape story by now. A woman who goes by “Jackie” told Rolling Stone magazine that she was taken on a date to a frat party, lured upstairs, and raped by seven pledges. Once a real journalist started asking questions they found that there was no person by that name at the fraternity, no one at the fraternity worked at the aquatic center as she had claimed, and there was no party at the frat house on the weekend she said the incident happened. In fact, the rape support group that had rushed to her side is now saying the story is falling apart.

That didn’t stop the University of Virginia from suspending all greek life on campus. Even now, they refuse to apologize saying that even if that particular rape didn’t occur it’s still a problem on campuses.

A lot of this stems from the California law that’s now sweeping the nation. This legislation has shifted the burden of proof in campus rape cases from the accuser to the accused. In other words, you’re guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Under the law, you have to verbally or physically affirm your consent and your consent has to be “ongoing” throughout the sexual encounter. Oh, and any use of alcohol negates your consent. 

That’s what Lena Dunham has latched onto. She admits using drugs and alcohol on the night of her alleged sexual encounter. She even admits to taking the guy back to her apartment. She says after the sexual encounter she started thinking that it just didn’t feel right and now she says it was rape. She identifies her rapist as a prominent campus Republican named Barry.

Oberlin has less than 3,000 students and, as John Nolte with Breitbart points out, “Republicans stand out like nuns on a football field” so it wasn’t too hard to find the “Barry” that Dunham was talking about. He tells National Review that “he has never met Dunham and had no relationship with her.” Doesn’t matter. Dunham is speaking to sell-out crowds about her horrible encounter and has become the poster child for date rape.

Meanwhile, the fraternity at UVA is preparing a lawsuit against Rolling Stone for the reckless article they published. The magazine apparently took “Jackie’s” story at face value, never bothering to interview any of the accused.

And this is where we’re heading with this ridiculous California law. There are unscrupulous women who have learned how to weaponize their vaginas. Everyone knows what rape is. It’s a horrific crime. But so is maliciously and falsely accusing someone of it. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Professor says American Dream is a myth

A University of California, Davis professor has caused quite a stir by essentially saying that the American dream is a myth. We’ve always believed that America was special. That you could break out of your social status and be all that you could be. Not so, says Professor Gregory Clark. He says America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England.

Clark said he studied figures from the last 100 years but we’re not privy to those figures. He did single out illegal immigrants as being no more socially mobile than their parents but there’s a problem with using that group. First, the current avalanche of illegals is hardly 25 years old. The professor also doesn’t take into consideration the status of the illegal in the country he left. It’s hard to argue that they aren’t better off in America or so many wouldn’t have come. As to what happens to their children, they will certainly be at a disadvantage compared to legal immigrants. All the more reason we should insist people come to this country the right way.

He claimed black folks weren’t socially mobile, which is absurd if you’re looking at data over the last 100 years. With civil rights legislation and an awakening of the American conscience there’s no doubt that black citizens as a whole are much higher socially than they were 100 years ago. Is there a disproportionate number of blacks in poverty? Sure, but that’s another issue altogether. Government programs continue to trap too many blacks in poverty but there are far more rich black people than there ever has been in American history.

It is true that so much about us is shaped by our parents. The predominant deciding factor in which political party you’ll support is familial. There’s no question it’s harder to break that cycle but it’s done all the time, especially when it comes to social status. Even today we hear of people who are the first in their family to go to college. Most parents on the lower end of the economic spectrum strive to give their children a better life than what they had. That doesn’t mean it will always work out that way.

I would argue, however, that Americans, in general, have made fantastic strides in the last hundred years. I’ve been to third-world countries. Many citizens of these countries have hardly moved an inch from where their forebears were a century ago. Look at us as a country. Even the poorest live better than all but the richest citizens of a hundred years ago.

A study by the Heritage Foundation found that a typical household defined as poor by our government had a car, air conditioning, cable TV, a DVD player, an Xbox, a microwave, washer and dryer, ceiling fans, and a coffee maker. The study found poor Americans had more living space than average Europeans.

I suspect Professor Clark was trying to make a case that America never has been exceptional or extraordinary. That seems to be the modus operandi of many college professors. The data just don’t bear that out. Immigrants have been coming to this country for centuries because of the unique opportunity it offers. Those of us who are natives have several steps on the rest of the world just by being born here.

The professor is certainly right on one count. There’s no guarantee that you’ll break out of your parents’ social status. The difference in America is that you can. The opportunity exists for everyone. Whether or not you take advantage of it is up to you.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.