Boycott Will Smith!

[chenanceou]

In Alabama you have that wonderful man trying to take all books with reference to homosexuals from the bookshelves. I have a question... If you go by the religious fundamentalists^*, you are supposed to ban everything that isn't considered pure and appropriate (or what makes their list as) - does that mean that their faith and will power is so crappy that they have to get rid of anything that would tempt them?

I thought it was some sort of joke, but it isn't (I pasted the Salon article behind the cut, for those interested).

Here you go, patriotism as a twisted tool news:

A Will Smith boycott? Hard as it is to imagine anyone questioning the values of a man who once left the Academy Awards -- shortly before the winner of the category in which he'd been nominated was announced -- to rush to the side of his ill child, that's precisely what activist Jon Alvarez, who runs the Web site PABAAH.com (Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood), is doing. Alvarez is trying to start and stoke a movement against Will Smith in response to comments the actor reportedly made four months ago to a German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine. Asked whether the 9/11 attacks had changed him, Smith said, "No. Absolutely not. When you grow up black in America, you have a completely different view of the world than white Americans. We blacks live with a constant feeling of unease. And whether you are wounded in an attack by a racist cop or in a terrorist attack, I'm sorry, it makes no difference." Smith continued, "In the '60s, blacks were continuously the victims of terrorist attacks. It was civil terrorism, but terrorism nonetheless. We are used to being attacked. That constant state of vigilance -- a sort of defensive state -- that hasn't changed at all. For me, nothing has changed at all." May sound reasonable to you, but apparently not, alas, to Alvarez, who's planning to forswear all Smith movies henceforth -- and hopes others do the same. (Lloyd Grove's Lowdown)

Another Christmas/Channukah present suggestion - give your Freedom of Speech paladin the ultimate cool gift: a CBLDF membership card! Check it out >here<!

^*fun·da·men·tal·ism n.

1. A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.


2. often Fundamentalism An organized, militant Evangelical movement originating in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century in opposition to Protestant Liberalism and secularism, insisting on the inerrancy of Scripture.

Comments

[hils.livejournal.com]

This makes me both sad and afraid at the same time

How long before they start setting up concentration camps correction centres for gays and 'anti-americans'?

[chenanceou.livejournal.com]

I don't believe the country is actually going that insane, though that in no way means that people shouldn't fight every coercive step the fundamentalists try to take to force their ideas down the rest of the country's collective throat.

(sorry, just got this on the mail - LJ can be wonky)