Redacted, by Beverly Hicks Burch

Redacted

By Beverly Hicks Burch

There’s a buzz going on in Hollywood or as some of us in the “Normal States” lovingly call it…La-la-land…about legendary director Brian de Palma’s movie Redacted. Mr. de Palma’s latest is an anti-war movie supposedly based on a true life incident in Iraq.

Redacted means “cut out” or “edited” and Mr. de Palma thinks the government or Big Brother seriously redacted the supposed real-life incident. “Patriot” de Palma claims this is his attempt and contribution to end the war, but it could also be seen as another rather clumsy, paranoid anti-government, anti-American rant. In the days of FDR, Hitler, the Final Solution of 6 million Jews and WWII it would have be viewed as a danger to the troops on the ground and treasonous.

Furthermore, while Mr. de Palma claims redacting is a Big Brother, government tactic, I would suggest Mr. de Palma took the tactic and title from his own ilk, the entertainment industry play book. Case in point: Kathy Griffin’s recent award speech upon winning an Emmy for her benchmark, innovative, groundbreaking show My Life on the D List (note sarcasm). Have you seen or heard of the show, or even care? This show has struggled for years on cable.

Upon receiving the award Ms Griffin gave this speech:

“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus,” an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. “Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.”

(Wow…that is sooo classy…right up there with Brittany and Lindsey! Of course Kathy is close pals with Queen of Mean and Very High Class Rosie O’Donnell so I’m sure Rosie’s high class has rubbed off there, also.)

So, upon Kathy uttering these words, what did the Academy decided to do? They decided to redact Kathy’s words from the Emmy telecast the following Saturday. They didn’t want the goobers in the fly over states (that’s you and me my friends) to see what classy Kathy had said and the cheers and yee-haws and “you go girl” the other Celebs were giving Kathy.

The problem is this shows what the Hollywood elite think of the “fly over states”, Christianity and Jesus…the man who taught peace and love. Whether you are a Believer or not is irrelevant. It goes to point there is at least one prejudice still allowed by the very people that promote tolerance and multiculturalism. To illustrate let’s do some role playing using Kathy’s same speech and ponder the reaction if she had used a different name instead of Jesus in her speech. Remember…this is role play and not my personnel sentiments or feelings.

First let’s try this:

“A lot of people come up here and thank Mohammed for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Mohammed,” an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. “Suck it, Mohammed. This award is my god now.”

Me thinks that would have gone over like poop in a punch bowl…

To prevent redundancy, let’s just provide a list of words we could insert in place of Jesus’ name and each time estimate the crowd’s and the media’s reaction had Kathy utter her speech in the revised form…

…Evolution

…Planned Parenthood

…Hillary Clinton

…Don Imus

…The Bill of Rights

…The US Constitution

…Martin Luther King

…John Kennedy

…Gloria Steinman

…Buddha

…Dali Lama

…L. Ron Hubbard

…Brigham Young

…Confucius

Should I add more? I think I made my point. Kathy is being given a pass on this by Hollywood and redacting her words isn’t enough to hide the contempt she and most of Hollywood hold for most of America. When will the rest of America wake up? We hold the strings to their pocketbooks after all…

You shall have no other gods before Me. Exodus 20:3 NASB

© 2007 Beverly Hicks Burch All Rights Reserved.