The Nature Of Reality Is Pure Subjective Fantasy

It's been more than two weeks since I've written about the conservative movie site Big Hollywood. The reason for that is that BH has gotten boring. When they first started they were fresh and exciting with a crazed revolutionary spirit. Far right conservatives thought that this meant they would finally have a chance to kick Sean Penn and George Clooney out of Hollywood and turn the entire movie industry into the Heritage Foundation's new propaganda wing. For me, this was high comedy that I thought would never get old. Yet, here we are, not even four months since the day they went live and they're already boring the crap out of people. The liberal blogs who initially unleashed their environmentally friendly solar powered hell all over Big Hollywood now barely mention them, having gone back to their usual targets. It was just too difficult to sustain the crazy when it wasn't yielding results. I guess they honestly thought comparing Barack Obama to Ozymandias would force him to resign and appoint Sarah Palin as his successor and the fight simply left them when it didn't happen.

Fortunately, when revolutions start to die, it's not at all uncommon for splinter groups to form and try to pick up where their comrades left off. Case in point: Parcbench.com. Their founder, Brett Joshpe, stated that he was inspired by Big Hollywood. That was good enough to rate a look from me and sure enough, I found TeH CrazeY.

The article is called "The Vigilante". It's author, Chris Yogerst, goes to Regent University, a school run by Pat Robertson to which the term "higher education" can only be applied ironically. Yogerst opens with the sentence, "Sometimes in real life, vigilantes are necessary." To prove that point, he spends the rest of the article citing examples from fiction.

Perhaps it is because the vigilante uses force when innocent lives depend on it, because he is not associated with the bleeding heart narratives that run rampant in Hollywood, or because he does not view the criminal as a victim. For whatever reason though, many of us would sleep better at night with “Dirty Harry” living next door.

Since most of the people that Dirty Harry Callahan befriends end up dead, I'd probably be scared shitless to have him living next door to me.

Since Dirty Harry, the big screen has featured other intriguing vigilantes, including the main character in the Die Hard films, True Lies, and Payback, just to name a few. Television also features Jack Bauer (Kiefer Southerland) on 24. Like “Dirty Harry,” he does not have time for political correctness when lives are on the line. He is not afraid to push the boundaries in order to get information that will save an entire city and expose a terrorist organization.

What have we learned from that paragraph other than the fact that Chris Yogerst doesn't know how to spell Kiefer Sutherland's name? We have also learned that he has most likely never seen Die Hard or True Lies or, if he did see them, he was too busy begging God to forgive him for seeing R rated movies in which boobs and underwear were clearly visible to pay attention since the characters in those movies weren't vigilantes. As for Payback, well, I guess I'm not as big a movie fan as I thought since I honestly couldn't remember that one. After looking it up, I remembered it as some lame second string piece of crap in which Mel Gibson played a criminal who shot up other criminals after they left him for dead and stole his money. He's supposed to be society's hero? At least he paid attention in Rightwing Fuckwit School and remembered to mention Jack Bauer.

In January, another vigilante hit the big screen. Taken was released, unsurprisingly, to mixed reviews. The film is about a girl who is kidnapped in France by Albanians and sold into the slave trade. Her father Bryan Mills (played by Liam Neeson), an ex-CIA operative, sets out to find her and bring her abductors to justice. Dealing with an uncooperative local government, he takes matters into his own hands. Although nationally acclaimed critic Richard Roeper feels the film is full of “slick, loony, escapist violence,” it is a safe bet that if someone had their child kidnapped, they would want Bryan Mills there to get him or her back….by any means possible.

If my child was kidnapped, would I want Bryan Mills? Hell no! I mean, since we're talking about fictional characters, why the hell would I settle for Bryan Mills? I'd want Superman or Green Lantern or else I'd just make up my own character, Instant Retrievo Man, who has the power to find people who've been kidnapped and safely teleport them back home.

Yogerst's point here is that sometimes you need a two fisted loner who has to go outside the law to get the job done yet every example he gives comes from fiction. Where are all the real life stories of vigilantes who brutally tortured suspects and ended up finding the bomb or the missing girl or the escaped criminal mastermind? Real vigilantes usually do what these guys do. In case you didn't want to click the link, it presents six real life cases of vigilantes like the gang in Mexico who burned alive people they thought were child molesters only to discover later that they were Mexican Federal Agents. Also, when was the last time you picked up a newspaper and didn't read something about some poor falsely accused schmuck who spent a decade or two in prison because some two fisted loner who had to go outside the law forced a confession or fabricated evidence? People like Jack Bauer who have the unerring ability to know when the rules should be broken don't exist which is why the rules are in place and why they should always be enforced.

Still, good job, Chris Yogerst. This wasn't a bad attempt at right wing demagoguery. You rejected a reasoned, scientific approach and instead reached a conclusion based on narrow ideology and then ignored any evidence that said you were wrong while altering or inventing evidence that proved beyond a doubt that you were right. This means you'll have something to do after your screenplay about Darwin selling his soul to Satan for the theory of evolution gets rejected. Just make sure to say that the rejection had nothing to do with the quality of your writing but, rather, because Hollywood hates conservatives.