Tag: Tom Hanks

Elvis: Pushing the Envelope

The new Elvis Presley biopic made me think.  Early in the movie, Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, says that the acts that made the most money were ones “that gave the audience feelings they weren’t sure they should enjoy, but they do.”  Then the film focuses on the controversial gyrations that drove the girls crazy and made many people upset and uncomfortable as “The King” began his rise to stardom.  Now we laugh because those dance moves that seemed so edgy in the 1950s seem so tame by today’s standards.  This is not a new phenomenon.

Every generation, you hear the older people complaining that the younger generation is worse than theirs was.  “Kids today,” they often grumble.  The popular culture explains this by saying that old people are stuck in their ways and overly critical of the younger generation.  The media may say that the younger generations are not really that rebellious or bad, because the older generation was also seen as rebellious and bad by the generation before them.  Have you ever considered that maybe, instead of each generation being old, stodgy, and self-absorbed, that actually they are right?  Each generation really is worse than the last, because they have to one-up the previous generation by pushing the envelope further than their parents.  Yes, no generation is perfect and they all have a rebellious streak, but that does not mean that younger generations are morally equivalent to older ones.  Just because Elvis shaking his hips on stage was rebellious and controversial in the 50s, that does not mean that it is morally equivalent to Cardi B singing “Wet Ass Pussy” today.  Can we please bring back the innocence of generations past?

The worrisome part about this is that the envelope has already been pushed so far that it is hard to imagine what somebody can do next that will actually shock anybody.  The Beatles’ long hair is certainly not controversial anymore.  Drug references in lyrics that shocked people in the 60s and 70s are old news.  Maybe it would take it to a higher level if someone bit the head off of a bat onstage?  Nope.  Ozzy Osbourne already did that in 1982.  Remember when Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast in front of over 100 million viewers on live television at Super Bowl XXXVIII?  That was way back in 2004.  I fear that celebrities will become so desperate for attention in the coming years that we will see some disgusting acts being done to gain notoriety.

Will we soon see live sex acts on stage?  Will our entertainment revert back to feeding Christians to lions in front of cheering audiences?  Are we going to see The Hunger Games play out in real life?  We seem to be heading in that direction.  The good news is that there is now another way to cause controversy and gain attention.  Simply do and say good things that were once considered normal and mainstream.  As the Bible says, when people rebel from God, they begin to call evil good, and good evil.  It is definitely happening.  Think about the things that actually are considered shocking and controversial today: 

  • In June, five Tampa Bay Rays pitchers were attacked by the mainstream press and “woke” social media pundits for opting not to wear rainbow “Pride Night” logos on their uniforms.  You do not even have to go back to my parents’ generation for when this stance would have been applauded.  Now it is counter-culture. 
  • Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling started a firestorm of controversy when she criticized the use of the term “people who menstruate” instead of women.  She also committed the unforgivable sin of tweeting her support for a woman who had been fired for saying that “men cannot change into women.”  I am pretty sure that Elvis could have said that without causing a stir.
  • Actor Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, The Terminal List) has been disparaged as “the worst Chris in Hollywood” for his public professions of Christian faith.  What a Hollywood bad boy, huh?  Personally, I think being a Christian is the best way to be a rebel because it also gets you into Heaven.
  • If you really want to be an outcast, choose not to get what is called a Covid-19 vaccine, even though it does not prevent you from getting or spreading Covid-19.  This is the most discriminated against group in America for the past couple of years (with one possible exception).  They have been banned from many places, and some have even lost their jobs.  They are controversial not for anything they did, but instead for not subjugating themselves to their overlords.
  • When it comes to controversial athletes, former baseball star Curt Schilling is near the top of the list.  He was fired from ESPN in 2015 for tweeting “A man is a man regardless of what they name themselves.  Male bathrooms were created with the penis in mind; female bathrooms were not.  Is it now necessary to have laws to teach us otherwise?  Pathetic.”  To any previous generation, that comment would not only be acceptable, but obvious.  Now it is a fireable offense and has even been used to keep Schilling out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
  • Actress Gina Carano was famously fired from Disney’s, The Mandalorian, for taking the provocative position that she should not have to ask to be called “she,” since she is obviously a woman.  Apparently, calling a boy “he,” or a girl “she,” is now edgy.  Charlie Sheen had to work a lot harder than that to get fired from a hit show.
  • The one possible exception mentioned above as the most discriminated group in America are supporters of President Trump.  The backlash that Elvis got for dancing is nothing compared to what you can expect if you say you agree with President Trump.  If you support his policies that brought us a booming economy, less government interference in our lives, and four years of peace (including unprecedented peace agreements in the Middle East), you can expect to be attacked more viciously than an opposing sports star in Philadelphia. 

It is terrible that these things are now controversial, but there is one positive thing about it.  Entertainers want attention.  In the past, they had to come up with more and more outlandish and crazy gimmicks than we had previously seen to get that attention.  Now, all they have to do is espouse solid, traditional values, and wait for the media firestorm.

Again, this is not new.  When reading the Bible straight through, the Old Testament prophets were the hardest parts to get through because they were so repetitive that it got boring.  They were all the same thing.  Israel would turn from God and pull further and further away from Him.  He would warn them through prophets, and most of the time they would ignore the warnings and push His patience even more.  Eventually, God said that enough was enough and allowed Israel to be defeated and the people to be scattered into exile.  We are in that same spiral of self-destruction that the Israelites were in.  Each generation seems to push their rebellion a little further than the last.  We have had our modern-day prophets warning us to turn back to our morals and values of the past.  Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, and others have warned us about the decay of our values and societal norms of earlier generations.  If America does not heed these warnings and keeps pushing the boundaries, we will soon run out of room to push and we will end up as Israel did. 

There is one last thing I should do before I close out.  To all the old people out there, I apologize for my generation.  You were right.

The Underrepresented in the Covid Story

Those on the left constantly opine that white males are overrepresented in Hollywood, in business, or in any other venture they can think of.  They say that we should correct that by discriminating against white males in favor of people of color and women.  Apparently, Democrats think people of color and women need help because those persons are not smart enough, talented enough, or hard-working enough to succeed based on merit.  Those leftists think that media attention should show a more representative sample of how America is, based entirely on percentages.  However, there is a segment of society that is far more underrepresented than any group the left complains about.  

I realized this injustice while I was getting my hair cut.  One of our local network news broadcasts was on the television and the anchors were feigning sympathy while gloating that a Republican who had spoken out against tyrannical mandates had died of “complications from Covid.”  My first thought was that “complications from Covid” generally means that the person died of something else while testing positive for Covid.  My next thought was that the only reason the media is trumpeting this story is that it fits their agenda of scaring people about Covid.  If they honestly cared about giving fair representation based on the actual numbers, for every story about somebody dying of Covid, there should be tens of thousands of stories about the most underrepresented group there is:  People who did not die of Covid. 

The media does not even acknowledge this massive group because it might inadvertently cause people to be less afraid.  They love reporting that we will die if we don’t do exactly what they tell us to do, but they hate it when we don’t oblige them by dying like we were supposed to.  Low death counts really frustrate the left.  The huge disparity between stories of people dying from Covid and those who have not died from Covid needs to be corrected. 

Since the left has trouble reconciling their need to scare people with their purported concern with proportional representation in the media, I am going to help them out.  While I can name myriad people who have not died of Covid (considering all of us are in that demographic), I will stick to people many of us will recognize.  Fortunately, Covid is as undeadly to celebrities as it is to us average Joes, so there are plenty of examples.  Let’s get started.

Tom Hanks – The panic all started back in March of 2020 when legendary actor Tom Hanks announced that he had Covid.  News reports made people contemplate what life would be like without one of the most familiar faces in the world. 

Update:  You might be wondering why the media would tell you about Tom Hanks’ impending death, yet didn’t even cover his funeral or people mourning at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  What jerks, right?  Well, I’m happy to inform you that Tom Hanks did not die.  The media had gotten the fear they wanted from the story so it ended at the beginning. 

Side note:  Many of you immediately think of Forrest Gump when you picture Tom Hanks, but I still think back to Bosom Buddies, when America still knew that men dressing as women was something to laugh at.  Hanks’ co-star from Bosom Buddies, Peter Scolari, actually did die this year, but did not have Covid, so it was barely mentioned in the press.  They were shocked to find out that even if you don’t get Covid it’s still possible to die.  In fact, the odds are right around 100%.

President Trump – In October of 2020, President Donald Trump announced that he had tested positive for Covid at the age of 74.  To the chagrin of Democrats, President Trump did not die.

Bob Barker – Yes.  Bob Barker is still alive!  I was as surprised as you are when I looked it up.

Me – I am not a celebrity but you are reading my article, so it counts.  Plus, I have been in the group of people who lived our lives fully and ignored the tyrannical rules.  The panicked wimps on social media have smugly been saying for two years that we will be wiped out by Darwinism, so I know it galls them that I am still alive.  Just smile at them and laugh.  It drives them even more crazy. 

Rudy Gobert – The first NBA player who tested positive for the coronavirus was Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz.  You may remember that he mocked the severity of the virus by goofing around and touching all of the microphones at a press conference.  He later apologized, but as it turns out, he was right.  Gobert is still with us.

The cast of The Bachelor/Bachelorette from every single season – There are just so many people who have not died from Covid that it is easier to list them in groups of hundreds of people.  Between the two shows there have been 44 seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, with right around 1,180 contestants, and while some have died, not a single one of them has succumbed to Covid.  I guess this is not the most dramatic disease ever.

The Los Angeles Dodgers – For the first time in 32 years, the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series.  Their victory was not without controversy, though.  During the 6th and deciding game of the series, third baseman Justin Turner was removed from the game because he had tested positive for Covid.  Though he was not sick, he was told that he could not be on the field with his team who he had worked so hard with for years to win a championship.  After the game, Turner came back onto the field to celebrate with teammates and take pictures with the trophy.  He even took off his mask for pictures.  This started a media firestorm.  Leftist sportswriters and commentators were swift to call for Turner’s head.  They openly questioned whether fines, suspensions, or other punishments should rain down on Turner and the Dodgers.  They claimed that he had put everyone on the field in grave danger with his irresponsible behavior.  Some even fretted that Turner had endangered the few thousand fans allowed in the stands at the game.  We waited with anticipation to find out which Dodgers would return to defend their title in 2021 and which ones would meet their doom.  A week went by.  Then another.  There was no word from the press on which Dodgers had died.  Eventually, spring training for the next season rolled around, and the Dodgers players took the field and played baseball as if they had nothing wrong with them.  Even Justin Turner himself was alive and hit 27 home runs after his death sentence.  If the sportswriters really thought the players were in danger, this survival miracle should have been a huge story.  Instead, there was silence, as if they knew from the beginning that it was a non-story.

All of the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL – The four major sports leagues in the United States bring Americans many hours of entertainment and joy.  They also bring billions and billions of dollars into the economy.  Between the MLB (1,026 on opening day rosters), NFL (1,696), NHL (999), and NBA (529), there are 4,250 players.  Some of you might be wondering how many of these players have not died with Covid and why is the press not reporting on it?  The answer is that none of these players have died with Covid and highlighting that fact might ease public fear.  Despite the 100% survival rate, these leagues are still requiring testing and canceling games due to Covid.  I guess they haven’t figured out the sabermetrics for Covid strategy yet.

The non-death count – I will wrap up by using a pretty staggering number.  We keep hearing a highly exaggerated death count of over 800,000, which even according to the CDC, counts mostly 80-year-olds with three or four other causes of death involved.  What needs to be reported is the non-death count, or how many Americans did not die of Covid to provide some perspective.  That number is approximately 334,031,568 at the time of this writing.  I say “at the time of this writing” because as you can see if you click the link, our population is actually growing.  That may surprise some of you, since you have been led to believe that Covid is decimating our population.  However, in fact there are more Americans now than in March of 2020.  So, the next time you hear the media complaining about groups being underrepresented in our culture and starting hashtag campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite, think about how the survival of over 334,000,000 people is being ignored by the press.  #AmericaSoPanicky