'An American Carol'

We recommend this movie.



Vote Early and Often — At the Box Office

Let the Hollywood Left know what you think of them: see An American Carol.

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

It’s election season, so it is appropriate that an important vote will be cast this weekend. No, I am not talking about early balloting in Ohio or Oregon for the November presidential race. Rather, this vote is a national one — and it will be taking place at a theater near you.

This weekend, the returns will be tallied on box-office sales of the opening weekend of An American Carol — a marvelously politically incorrect take-off on the timeless Dickensian morality tale. Set around the Fourth of July in contemporary America rather than a Victorian Yuletide, it has been created and directed by my friend, the zany and wildly successful David Zucker.

This Carol’s Scrooge character, played by Kevin Farley, is a dead-ringer for radical leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. The ghosts who visit him — including John F. Kennedy, George S. Patton, and George Washington — labor to teach their subject about the greatness of this country, the absurdity of the “Blame-America-First” Left’s toxic hatred for it and the opening the latter provides for Islamists bent on our destruction. Punctuated by trademark Zucker slapstick humor (his other credits include Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Scary Movie 3, and assorted sequels), the movie makes a deadly serious point: Everything is on the line in this War for the Free World and those of us who prize our freedoms will lose them if we fail to protect them against enemies foreign and domestic.

In a sense the pilgrimage Zucker chronicles is an autobiographical one. He had his own epiphany after 9/11, prompting him to break with Hollywood’s dominant left-wing politics and reflexive contempt for our government, military, and people (even, amazingly, the movie-going ones). With the passion of a convert, he uses his skills to poke fun at his industry, academia, political and media elites and such mainstays of the radical Left as the ACLU, MoveOn.org, Rosie O’Donnell and, of course, Michael Moore.

Zucker and Farley are joined in this apostasy by other accomplished stars, including Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammar, James Woods, and Robert Davi. Their courage in goring so many of Hollywood’s sacred cows is palpable given that community’s notorious practice of ensuring that those who are shunned never “eat lunch” (read, work) in that town again.

Amidst the sight-gags, the slapstick (often literally), the absurd moments and hilarious quips, there is a scene that is transcendently important and deeply affecting. After the protagonist has proven infuriatingly resistant to mentoring from JFK and Patton, he is given a tour of St. Paul’s Chapel near Wall Street by its most famous parishioner, President Washington. Jon Voight does not act this part; he channels the father of our country. Moore-as-Scrooge comes face to face with the carnage of 9/11 and confronts at last the necessity of taking responsibility for his own destructive actions. It is one of the most powerful pieces of cinematic artistry I have ever seen.

An American Carol is more than a wonderfully entertaining film. It is more even than a forceful political statement on behalf of the values and institutions that have made America, as the bumper sticker has it, thanks to the brave, the land of the free.

David Zucker’s new film is also an opportunity — a chance to show Hollywood in the only way it understands that the people of this country admire those prepared unashamedly to stand up for us and the country we hold dear.

For the film industry, opening weekend box office returns determine whether a film is deemed to be a success or not. A big turn-out demonstrates an appeal that will result in more movie theaters showing the film and for longer runs than will otherwise be the case.

Consequently, we have a chance to do something more than properly reward David Zucker and his gutsy team by turning out this weekend to see their movie. In the process, we can demonstrate in a most tangible and impactful way to others in their industry that there is a market not only for this film but for others who revere this country, rather than demean it.

In short, I urge you to take not just your family and friends to see An American Carol. Ask everyone you know to do the same. If possible, do it this weekend and thereby vote in a contest that may prove to be nearly as far-reaching as that whose balloting will take place a month later.

— Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.

'Bush 7, Terrorists 0'

Bush 7, Terrorists 0

Ann Coulter
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Morose that there hasn't been another terrorist attack on American soil for seven long years, liberals were ecstatic when Hurricane Gustav was headed toward New Orleans during the Republican National Convention last week. The networks gave the hurricane plenty of breaking-news coverage -- but unfortunately it was Hurricane Katrina from 2005 they were covering.
On Keith Olbermann's Aug. 29 show on MSNBC, Michael Moore said the possibility of a Category 3 hurricane hitting the United States "is proof that there is a God in heaven." Olbermann responded: "A supremely good point."

Actually, Olbermann said that a few minutes later to some other idiotic point Moore had made, but that's how Moore would have edited the interview for one of his "documentaries," so I will, too. I would only add that Michael Moore's morbid obesity is proof that there is a Buddha.
Hurricane Gustav came and went without a hitch. What a difference a Republican governor makes!

As many have pointed out, the reason elected officials tend to neglect infrastructure projects, like reinforcing levees in New Orleans and bridges in Minneapolis, is that there's no glory when a bridge doesn't collapse. There are no round-the-clock news specials when the levees hold. You can't even name an overpass retrofitting project after yourself -- it just looks too silly. But everyone's taxes go up to pay for the reinforcements.

Preventing another terrorist attack is like that. There is no media coverage when another 9/11 doesn't happen. We can thank God that President George Bush didn't care about doing the safe thing for himself; he cared about keeping Americans safe. And he has, for seven years.

If Bush's only concern were about his approval ratings, like a certain impeached president I could name, he would not have fought for the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq. He would not have resisted the howling ninnies demanding that we withdraw from Iraq, year after year. By liberals' own standard, Bush's war on terrorism has been a smashing, unimaginable success.

A year after the 9/11 attack, The New York Times' Frank Rich was carping about Bush's national security plans, saying we could judge Bush's war on terror by whether there was a major al-Qaida attack in 2003, which -- according to Rich -- would have been on al-Qaida's normal schedule.

Rich wrote: "Since major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough." ("Never Forget What?" New York Times, Sept. 14, 2002.)

There wasn't a major al-Qaida attack in 2003. Nor in 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007. Manifestly, liberals thought there would be: They announced a standard of success that they expected Bush to fail.

As Bush has said, we have to be right 100 percent of the time, the terrorists only have to be right one time. Bush has been right 100 percent of the time for seven years -- so much so that Americans have completely forgotten about the threat of Islamic terrorism.

For his thanks, President Bush has been the target of almost unimaginable calumnies -- the sort of invective liberals usually reserve for seniors who don't separate their recyclables properly. Compared to liberals' anger at Bush, there has always been something vaguely impersonal about their "anger" toward the terrorists.

By my count, roughly one in four books in print in the world at this very moment have the words "Bush" and "Lie" in their title. Barnes & Noble has been forced to add an "I Hate Bush" section. I don't believe there are as many anti-Hitler books.

Despite the fact that Hitler brought "change," promoted clean, energy-efficient mass transit by making the trains run on time, supported abortion for the non-master races, vastly expanded the power of the national government and was uniformly adored by college students and their professors, I gather that liberals don't like Hitler because they're constantly comparing him to Bush.

The ferocity of the left's attacks on Bush even scared many of his conservative allies into turning on him over the war in Iraq.

George Bush is Gary Cooper in the classic western "High Noon." The sheriff is about to leave office when a marauding gang is coming to town. He could leave, but he waits to face the killers as all his friends and all the townspeople, who supported him during his years of keeping them safe, slowly abandon him. In the end, he walks alone to meet the killers, because someone has to.
That's Bush. Name one other person in Washington who would be willing to stand alone if he had to, because someone had to.

OK, there is one, but she's not in Washington yet. Appropriately, at the end of "High Noon," Cooper is surrounded by the last two highwaymen when, suddenly, his wife (Grace Kelly) appears out of nowhere and blows away one of the killers! The aging sheriff is saved by a beautiful, gun-toting woman.