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The claim that Milton Berle appears in TILLIE PUNCTURED ROMANCE was Berle's alone.

Scoundrel wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:51 pm

The claim that Milton Berle appears in TILLIE PUNCTURED ROMANCE was Berle's alone.

And has been thoroughly disproved.

Wonder if the same can be said about his claims about his "appendage"?

Jim

The Blackbird wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:32 pm

I'm certainly not defending BIRTH OF A NATION - if we could bring Griffith back from the dead it would be hilarious trying to hear him explain away title cards like the one that refers to the white man's "Aryan birthright," nor am I particularly defending Ms. Gish. Her equally hilarious attempts to defend the Griffith controversy are the stuff of legend. "Mr. Griffith LOVED the black people!" [Yes, of course he did, Ducky...]

Yes watching that interview always makes me cringe. It reminds me of my mother-in-law unconsciously saying racist things and my husband and I trying to decide whether to start the fight again or not.

Also I can't stop thinking about how hilarious it would look to see someone actually yelling at John Wayne over his grave.

I think the intensity of John Oliver's shock, and the issues raised about Apu, and all the other instances of people being offended by old media is backlash against the emerging racist sentiments in this country. People who thought racism was a diminishing phenomenon in this country are seeing that it is a much more heated issue than they ever imagined and as a result they're pushing back against it anywhere they identify it. I'm not saying their efforts are always well-placed, but it isn't coming out of nowhere.

maliejandra wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:38 am

I think the intensity of John Oliver's shock, and the issues raised about Apu, and all the other instances of people being offended by old media is backlash against the emerging racist sentiments in this country. People who thought racism was a diminishing phenomenon in this country are seeing that it is a much more heated issue than they ever imagined and as a result they're pushing back against it anywhere they identify it. I'm not saying their efforts are always well-placed, but it isn't coming out of nowhere.

That's a very good point. There are a lot of people who feel frustrated and helpless about what they can do to stop the newly emboldened alt-right, so they turn to these symbolic gestures. I don't like these types of over-reactions but I understand where they're coming from. The only thing I can do is to point out the difference between being "not politically correct," which I support, and being deliberately "politically incorrect," which is provocative and often racist. Like Big Shot, I like BOAN as a film, but hate its undeniable racism. I understand why most African Americans can't watch it in the same way I can, but I think it's a good thing to turn over the rock and see what's underneath. If the college wants to do something about the "pain" that the Gish theater is supposedly causing, they should bring BOAN out into the open, address it with brochures and signage, talk about what BOAN meant to the resurgent Klan of 1915. I keep hearing that America needs to engage in a frank conversation about racism. Well, it's very difficult to have a conversation about racism if one of its most potent symbols is being hidden from sight.

This does seem like a teachable moment for all involved. A screening of the film seems necessary for the students, it seems hard to believe that a school with a Gish Theater doesn't have a film studies program but who knows? I wonder if the college is missing a real opportunity for a discussion of the continuing impact of racism, our 'outrage' culture throughout our political spectrum, and the history of film.

If they did screen it I suspect they might see what I find to be the real problem with BoaN, and that is that it is an entertaining film that makes you feel the need to take a shower after you watch it.

Jim Roots wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:10 am

Wonder if the same can be said about his claims about his "appendage"?

In one of the Life After Porn movies, one of the 'actresses' was apparently presented with Uncle Miltie's legendary unit (under a table in a restaurant no less) and she vouched for its magnificence.

The Blackbird wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:08 pm

You counted my words? Well, I didn't realize you were in a hurry, sorry. Wha - who!
What I was referring to was a critic who WAS calling for GWTW to be banned. I was also referring to one talk show host whose head exploded seeing one ancient newsreel. I never said anything about GWTW indeed disappearing, only that you're now seen the beginnings of calls for it to do so and we'll have to listen to others in the future. I haven't a clue where Hitler, Stalin, 1984 and impending doom came into this as I was stating this kind of thing will continue to annoy like mosquito bites, nor do I understand the point of mentioning most people here are in the US, unless it was a rebuttal to what you can read between the lines in my last couple of sentences in the post, which I stand behind though I won't get political here either. I couldn't agree more that there is plenty of uncorrectness still about in the States though. In the end, I merely try to state that while racism's day of reckoning seems to have finally come in recent years, thank God, you'll still be seeing people taking potshots like the one at Ms. Gish and I'll never understand this kind of selective outrage. Why not concentrate on demanding real accounts from famous bigots like Brigitte Bardot or Mel Gibson who are still alive?

The computer counted them.

OK, I did not know that story about the critic. But there is a certain spirit of "oh, the PC brigade is coming" which some people are very keen on, it wasn't just in your comment alone. Others mentioned the nazis, bookburnings, stalin, 1984, etcetera. It clearly strikes a chord, but it seems out of all proportion to me.
You mention selective outrage - well I hope the same people are equally outraged if someone blames immigrants for all sorts of stuff (holding ceremonies and coining names for the victims), when actual facts don't show them to be any more criminal than the next man.

In USA-specific I meant that some of the problems coming from slavery are (almost) unique for the USA, for purely historical reasons. Europe for example did not have any black population until very recently. So those countries "missed" phenomenons like segregation, blackface, "passing", or enfranchisement.

Jim Roots wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:10 am

Scoundrel wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 13, 2019 7:51 pm

The claim that Milton Berle appears in TILLIE PUNCTURED ROMANCE was Berle's alone.

And has been thoroughly disproved.

Wonder if the same can be said about his claims about his "appendage"?

I was wondering how the romance got punctured...

oldposterho wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:42 am

Jim Roots wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:10 am

Wonder if the same can be said about his claims about his "appendage"?

In one of the Life After Porn movies, one of the 'actresses' was apparently presented with Uncle Miltie's legendary unit (under a table in a restaurant no less) and she vouched for its magnificence.

I guess she didn't need any explanation as to how it worked.

Jim

The Blackbird wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:08 pm

I guess how famous Ms. Gish is today is kind of subjective. Given I've met grown adults who've never heard of Chaplin, or Ronald Reagan, or Johnny Carson, "semi-fame in the modern era" is all too apt with people who are indeed not conversant with the old days, which appears to sum up the folks wanting that theatre's named changed.

I'm sure there are grown adults on this board who have never heard of Sophia Lillis or Natasha Lyonne, so fame is indeed subjective.

Spiny Norman wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:06 am

In USA-specific I meant that some of the problems coming from slavery are (almost) unique for the USA, for purely historical reasons. Europe for example did not have any black population until very recently. So those countries "missed" phenomenons like segregation, blackface, "passing", or enfranchisement.

European countries just facilitated the transport of the slaves and subjugated the third world through colonialization!

bigshot wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:18 pm

Spiny Norman wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:06 am

In USA-specific I meant that some of the problems coming from slavery are (almost) unique for the USA, for purely historical reasons. Europe for example did not have any black population until very recently. So those countries "missed" phenomenons like segregation, blackface, "passing", or enfranchisement.

European countries just facilitated the transport of the slaves and subjugated the third world through colonialization!

Yeah, they did (although sold to them by other Africans), but that is a different matter. Colonization is also a different crime from slavery (although inequality is still a crucial part of it and it was generally the same seafaring countries, but at different times).

They created the problem until about 1800, but they did not maintain it after that. Unless you mean white people in general. But I wonder if the Swiss for example should feel guilty for that, having always been totally landlocked? Personally I don't believe in being guilty because one is white. I do believe in shared responsability for specific crimes one's country did in recent centuries.

But anyway, whenever I read people talking about the subject I get the impression that most of them have a very misguided idea of the historical situation.

Spiny Norman wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2019 3:54 pm

Yeah, they did (although sold to them by other Africans)

It just goes to show ya... save your receipts!

Destroying history will not make you feel good about the present.

The 21st century is in danger of becoming an era of statue smashing and historical erasure. Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past.

In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam.

In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Mohammed.

The West prides itself on the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.

In the last two years there has been a rash of statue toppling throughout the American South, aimed at wiping out memorialization of Confederate heroes. The pretense is that the Civil War can only be regarded as tragic in terms of the present oppression of the descendants of Southern slaves — 154 years after the extinction of the Confederate states.

There is also a renewed crusade to erase the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Los Angeles removed a Columbus statue in November based on the premise that his 1492 discovery of the Americas began a disastrous genocide in the Western Hemisphere.

Last month, the Northern California town of Arcata did away with a statue of former president William McKinley because he supposedly pushed policies detrimental to Native Americans.

There have been some unfortunate lessons from such vendettas against the images and names of the past.

One, such attacks usually revealed a lack of confidence. The general insecurity of the present could supposedly be remedied by destroying mute statutes or the legacies of the dead, who could offer no rebuttal.

The subtext of most current name changing and icon toppling is that particular victimized groups blame their current plight on the past. They assume that by destroying long-dead supposed enemies, they will be liberated — or at least feel better in the present.

Yet knocking down images of Columbus will not change the fact that millions of indigenous people in Central America and Mexico are currently abandoning their ancestral homelands and emigrating northward to quite different landscapes that reflect European and American traditions and political, economic, and cultural values.

Two, opportunism, not logic, always seems to determine the targets of destruction.

This remains true today. If mass slaughter in the past offered a reason to obliterate remembrance of the guilty, then certainly sports teams should drop brand names such as “Aztecs.” Likewise, communities should topple statues honoring various Aztec gods, including the one in my own hometown: Selma, Calif.

After all, the Aztec Empire annually butchered thousands of innocent women and children captives on the altars of their hungry gods. The Aztecs were certainly far crueler conquerors, imperialists, and colonialists than was former President McKinley. Yet apparently the Aztecs, as indigenous peoples, earn a pass on the systematic mass murder of their enslaved indigenous subjects.

Stanford University has changed the name of two buildings and a mall that had been named for Father Junipero Serra, the heroic 18th-century Spanish founder of the California missions. Serra was reputed to be unkind to the indigenous people whom he sought to convert to Christianity.

Stanford students and faculty could have found a much easier target in their war against the dead: the eponymous founder of their university, Leland Stanford himself. Stanford was a 19th-century railroad robber baron who brutally imported and exploited Asian labor and was explicit in his low regard for non-white peoples.

Yet it is one thing to virtue-signal by renaming a building and quite another for progressive students to rebrand their university — and thereby lose the prestigious Stanford trademark that is seen as their gateway to career advancement.

Third, in the past there usually has been a cowardly element to historical erasure. Destruction was often done at night by roving vandals or was sanctioned by extremist groups who bullied objectors.

So too in the present. Many Confederate statues were torn down or defaced at night. City councils voted to change names or remove icons after being bullied by small pressure groups and media hysteria. They rarely referred the issue to referenda.

Four, ignorance both accompanies and explains the arrogance of historical erasure, past and present.

Recently, vandals in North Carolina set fire to a statue of General Lee. But they got the wrong Lee. Their target was not a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, but a statue of World War II major general William C. Lee, who campaigned for the creation of a U.S. Army airborne division and helped plan the invasion of Normandy.


The past is not a melodrama but more often a tragedy. Destroying history will not make you feel good about the present.

Studying and learning from it might.

Victor Davis Hanson
NATIONAL REVIEW

(C) 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Scoundrel wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:08 pm

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/ ... -columbus/

Right, the use of the term "confederate heroes" tells me all I need to know. It's followed by a lot of very selective reasoning and empty phrases ("oh, let's learn instead of destroy" - except learn why pro-slavery generals should be on a pedestal, literally but also figuratively). What a poor excuse for an article.
Perhaps it would have been best to leave the whole statue discussion out of this.

Okay, I think this thread has exhausted its direct and relevant value and is heading into territory not in need of exploration here. I'm locking it, thank you for your cooperation.