October 04, 2004

Day 3 at the Liberty Film Festival

The Liberty Film Festival concluded Sunday with a day of great events that left attendees buzzing about what a success the Festival had been.

Evan Coyne Maloney’s terrific BRAINWASHING 101 showed the astonishing suppression of free speech currently being suffered by Conservatives on college campuses in America. Folks, this suppression of our rights, has got to go.

Mike Wilson’s MICHAEL MOORE HATES AMERICA includes interviews with some of the people seen in Moore’s films F911 and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, and lets them testify in their own words as to how they were misrepresented.

From left to right: Jason Apuzzo, Govindini Murty, Jim Hirsen, Michael Medved, David Zucker, Morgan Brittany, Doug Urbanski, Dan Gifford, and Andrew Breitbart

One of many high points of the Festival was a panel discussion Sunday titled, “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again,” including:

...producer David Zucker (Phone Booth/Scary Movie 3), Michael Medved, producer Doug Urbanski (The Contender), actress Morgan Brittany, Andrew Breitbart (Author: Hollywood Interrupted), Oscar-nominated documentarian Dan Gifford, Newsmax columnist Jim Hirsen.

Jim Hirsen did a great job of moderating, keeping the discussion fast-paced, and letting the panelists stick to the exciting subjects that were being raised. Michael Medved started things off by saying that if aliens tried to use movies to determine the most terrible events of the 20th Century, they would probably find that the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s was the second only to the Holocaust. This despite the fact that at roughly the same time totalitarian regimes in Russia were killing tens of millions of people. In short, Hollywood has been focussing almost exclusively on liberal causes for a long time.

David Zucker described himself as a “9-11 Republican”. His family has always voted Democratic, but after 9-11, his own views changed.

Morgan Brittany noted that she’s been working for decades, and Hollywood wasn’t always like this. There was a time when leading stars like John Wayne were celebrated Conservatives. She asked: when did it change?

Doug Urbansky replied that he can’t specify why it changed, but he finds that the timing of when it did coincided with the passing of power from the hands of the 5 or 6 men who built Hollywood, into the hands of individual actors and directors.

Dan Gifford added that media and academia have agreed that only Liberal views are true, and therefore it is proper for them to suppress any opinions and facts that don’t support those views.

Doug recalled James Cagney saying, ‘My brothers and I had to lie awake at night wondering how to make money. Now the government gives you a welfare check. They give you a check—but they take away your dreams.’

Andrew Breitbart noted that his father-in-law, Orson Bean, lived through the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s—and attests that today’s suppression of Conservatives is even worse. Andrew said that there is no way that Hollywood will permit films to be made that express Conservative views today. But he said, we can create an alternative infrastructure for producing those films.

***

The panel discussed the current blacklist. It is not a coincidence that time and again during the Festival I had conversations with fellow attendees, that attested to the impact of this on our own lives.

• A college professor told me that he is unwilling to reveal his Conservative views to his students, knowing that the repercussions would be deleterious.
• A fellow attendee I’d met on Friday, found me on Saturday and asked me to be sure to post no photos of his wife, since that would put her at risk professionally. There was real concern in his voice.

There appears to be an effort on the Left to suppress the views of those who disagree with them. This seems to be the theme most often found in different films and events at the Festival—from the college student prosecuted for posting fliers in BRAINWASHING 101… to an abridgement of the 2nd amendment right to bear arms, shown in MICHAEL AND ME… to the comments of the panelists mentioned above… and even to the experiences of the Festival attendees themselves.

Part One of coverage on the Liberty Film Festival is here.

Part Two of coverage on the Liberty Film Festival is here.

CNSNews: New Documents Confirm Saddam’s WMDs, and Support of Terrorists

Saddam Hussein’s long history of supporting terrorists has been well-documented by a Bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report. But new documents confirming this are just what is needed to bring this to the attention of the public.

Additionally, the WMD info in this CNS report, if confirmed, is red hot.

Exclusive: Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
By Scott Wheeler
October 04, 2004

(CNSNews.com) – Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein’s regime to work with some of the world’s most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam’s government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

(Hit Tip to Greg Masone.)