The Kitchen Sink – Page 10 – Douglas Ernst Blog

Kal Penn: Hypocrisy of Kumar Makes NPH and Joel Stein Cry.

July 4, 2010December 25, 2014by Douglas Ernst4 Comments

A microcosm of what political correctness breeds can be found in the Kal Penn vs. Joel Stein “My Own Private India” spat. There’s nothing more entertaining than watching moral pedestal clowns cannibalize each other. When talking heads who think they’re cool because everything they say is drenched in VH1 Best Week Ever sarcasm start going at it, just sit back and enjoy.

What was it, exactly, that irked Kumar (and one-time Obama staffer)? Behold:

My town is totally unfamiliar to me. The Pizza Hut where my busboy friends stole pies for our drunken parties is now an Indian sweets shop with a completely inappropriate roof. The A&P I shoplifted from is now an Indian grocery…

Eventually, there were enough Indians in Edison to change the culture. At which point my townsfolk started calling the new Edisonians “dot heads.” One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to “go home to India.” In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if “dot heads” was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.

The reason why this article is so great is because it completely demolishes Kal Penn’s creative template that the “Middle America” racist, homophobic, Bible thumping “freak shows” portrayed in his Harold and Kumar flicks are all conservatives. (Kevin Smith apparently hasn’t caught on yet).

It also shows what a hypocritical whiner Penn is:

Gags about impossibly spicy food? I’d never heard those before! Multiple Gods with multiple arms? Multiple laughs! Recounting racial slurs like “dot-head”? Oh, Mr. Stein, is too good! I don’t know how he comes up with such unique bits.

I get it, Kal Penn: It’s okay for you to roll out every tired Christian, redneck, conservative joke that self-righteous Hollywood actors have been using as a crutch for decades, but someone makes the same stale jokes about your culture and Hinduism and suddenly you’re up in arms. How many millions did the “Freakshow” scene (i.e., the character you used as a vehicle to mock Christians) in Harold and Kumar net you? When you break it down, dumb joke by dumb joke at the expense of Middle America, how much did your own myopic writing fatten your wallet?

Immigration is a complex issue, and moral relativists and multi-culturalists who demonize anyone who disagrees with them only set the stage for these sorts of scenarios to happen. Joel Stein wrote a pretty sad article for Time magazine, but it’s understandable for someone to have mixed feelings about his hometown getting a cultural makeover over such a relatively short period of time.

Multi-culturalism can very well lead to large swathes of the United States being Balkanized. It means nothing if immigrants dress like Americans and listen to American music if they don’t believe in the founding principles enshrined in the Constitution. Joel Stein might think the Statue of Liberty would shed a tear “because of the amount of cologne [Indian immigrants] wear,” but I think a better litmus test would be their knowledge and appreciation of our nation’s founding.

Regardless, back to the point: Kal Penn can dish it out, but he can’t take it. Apparently, the Political Correctness Police are only allowed to act when it offends Kumar. And that makes Neil Patrick Harris cry.

NPH and a few angels are crying because Kal Penn has to run to Mommy Huffington Post when the cultural jokes are shot in his direction.

Maniac Mansion: Barack Obama Edition

June 28, 2010July 4, 2010by Douglas ErnstLeave a comment

Growing up in the 80’s, Maniac Mansion was one of my favorite games.

Unlike most other titles out at the time, it didn’t have a predetermined outcome. You hand picked your team from a number of different characters, each with their own unique skill set. Players had to be strategic about who they chose on their team, because the outcome of the game altered depending on who came along for the mission.

The storyline went as follows:

A meteor falls to the earth behind the mansion of “Dr. Fred.”
Weird things happen in town.
A group of friends decide to investigate when their friend goes missing.

What does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Lately, he reminds me of Dr. Fred. Many Americans (particularly independent voters) don’t know what the heck is going on inside the White House, but they know that peculiar things are happening to the country. Like Dr. Fred, some people think the President is evil, some people think he’s a genius, some wonder if his behavior is connected to weird meteors that fall from the sky (okay, well, maybe not that one), and others think there’s nothing wrong at all. The rest have no clue what’s going on…but they’re determined to get to the bottom of it.

While you’ll never hear me call the President evil (read Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy if you want to know why), I do think his policies are downright scary and destructive. Liberals treat the United States as their own special science experiment by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars into social engineering schemes thought up by the “equal outcome trumps equal opportunity” crowd.

no9 — Politicians who try to play God usually just do a great job of making life Hell for the rest of us.

Like the run-of-the-mill mad scientist that isn’t much interested in anyone’s opinion but his own, Barack Obama spent years holed up with like-minded liberal academics. The occasional input by hunchbacked, hobbling assistants generally only echos long held beliefs; they rarely offer dissent. And, while it would be nice to believe that Barack Obama was the kind of guy who could create No.9, I’m more inclined to believe his policies will create the kind of post apocalyptic world the characters of the movie 9 inhabit.

“We had such potential,such promise…but we squandered our gifts,” (Allan Oppenheimer as “The Scientist”).

The next time you get the urge to vote for someone who’s narcissistic enough to think they can plan a 12 trillion dollar economy, dust off your favorite old NES games when the polls open and hope you don’t solve them until after they close.

mmtent — I don't think Barack Obama is being controlled by evil tentacle space aliens, but he's making a strong case for game developers to pursue Maniac Mansion: Hopeandchange Edition

Garafalo: I’m like Churchill…If He Was a Whiner and a Quitter.

June 27, 2010June 27, 2010by Douglas Ernst2 Comments

Janeane Garofalo refuses to go away. It really doesn’t matter how many times she’s given the Magnum PI treatment, because liberal media outlets will keep anyone with a modicum of “celebrity” status on career life support if they’re willing to spew partisan spittle on cue:

AVC Interviewer: Do you feel like you’ve become better known for the non-funny things you say about politics than for your comedy?

Garafalo: I don’t know. I don’t know how well known, really, I am at all at this point. And I’m not saying that as a “poor me” thing. I’m just saying, you know, I have no web presence, and I don’t know that there’s many people who really do know me that much anymore…

Janeane is partially right. Most people today don’t really know

church — Janeane Garafalo feels as though she's a "statesmen." She's kind of like Winston Churchill...if he was a perpetual whiner and a quitter.

her for any sort of cinematic or comedic flashes of brilliance, but for her Pavlovian partisan yip yaps at the behest of producers and editors hoping to snag the lowest common denominator of liberal true believers. Case in point:

AVC Interviewer: …I suppose the presence of minorities in [Tea Party] videos and such is their way of showing that they aren’t racist.

Garofalo: And I would say those people suffer from Stockholm syndrome.

In Garafalo’s mind, people who disagree with her don’t do so because they have legitimate public policy alternatives that might be more beneficial to the country’s long term economic health—they have Stockholm Syndrome! And in Garafalo’s mind, if it gets under your skin listening to someone with no discernible qualifications to offer public policy pronouncements (other than a bottomless quiver of flimsy intellectual arrows), it’s because you’re a misogynist:

Garofalo: The teabagger thing and the right-wing thing—they pick easy targets, and a female in the entertainment industry is low-hanging fruit. It’s very easy to mock and marginalize people in general who are in the entertainment industry, for some reason. But then definitely there’s the double standard and the misogyny that goes through it as well. They’ve got no problem with Will Ferrell or Alec Baldwin or Viggo Mortensen, but they tend to take issue when a female says something.

Actually, Janeane, I’ve mentioned the Funny or Die Liberalism of Will Ferrell before, but he gets less attention because he’s not on Keith Olbermann’s rolodex of reliable liberal guest appearances. And perhaps that’s because, unlike you, he still has the ability to make people laugh:

AVC Interviewer: How do you deal with situations like what happened at last year’s Latitude Festival while staying sober? [After a poor reception from the audience, Garofalo left the stage 10 minutes into her set. —ed.]

Garafolo: It’s terrible! It’s honestly mortifying. It’s just personal failure. I’ve no one but myself to blame. There is no way around that. I failed, and it wouldn’t have helped to be drinking. Or maybe it actually would have, if I drank beforehand. I might have been like, “Oh, I can do this.” I might have had false confidence…And I am very sorry about it, and I wish that did not happen. I wish that I had had the confidence to do it, and been more mature, and powered through my sense of dread.

I find it interesting that the same person who bailed ten minutes into her failing gig also applied that same mindset to the Iraq War not too long ago…and yet, she’s still perfectly at ease referring to herself as a “statesman”:

AVC Interviewer: There’ s a whole younger generation now that’s been raised on and inspired by your comedy. Do you get that sense that you’ve become an elder statesman? Do you recognize your own impact?

Garafalo: I definitely get the sense that I’m an elder statesman, but I don’t know if there’s an impact—and I’m not saying that in a naïve way. I don’t know. I think anybody who’s been doing it for 25 years is going to be considered an elder statesman. But I don’t know if I’ve impacted anyone.

The last time I checked, most people who are elevated to the level of a “statesman” are also recognized as having some sort of influence over how events unfolded during their tenure. One might say that in this instance Janeane was simply being humble, but I think deep down she knows that she’s a contributor to chattering class white noise and little else. She wants to be considered a statesman of…something…in some field, but the same person who burst on the scene with Ben Stiller has more in common in terms of career-trajectory with liberal guys like Andy Dick. And what do liberal artists turn to when their career heads south? Political pot shots at conservatives. There’s always an opportunity to make waves as long as the ladies of The View and liberal media outlets exist. They’ll give anyone a shot at resuscitating their career if they’ll liken conservatives to dim-witted, racist, homophobic, bigoted boobs. The problems liberals are facing now are little things like the internet, talk radio, social media platforms, and emerging technologies that allow the rest of us to point out how bitter, sad, angry and (most importantly) wrong people like Janeane are.

Janeane Garafalo: a “statesman” in the vein of Winston Churchill…if Winston Churchill was a whiner and a quitter.

Winston Churchill: “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

Garafalo: “…Teabaggers.”

You rock, Janeane!

Stallone, Barack Obama, Marvel Comics and the Very Real Secret War.

June 5, 2010June 11, 2014by Douglas ErnstLeave a comment

Do I write a post about Stallone’s new flick The Expendables, or do I cover the Obama administration’s Secret War tactics in the War on Terror? How about…both!

In the new trailer The Expendables, Stallone’s voiceover begins:

“We are the shadows…and the smoke in your eyes. We are the ghosts…that hide in the night.”

What does this mean? It means that the world is a dangerous place, and sometimes we need people to go in an clean up messes the civilized world would like to pretend don’t exist. Think the BP oil spill is a threat to humanity? Okay. But oily terrorists operating in lawless regions around the world can also cause messy explosions, gushers (of blood) on city streets, and black-charred coatings where beautiful things used to stand…

Sometimes, someone like George Bush comes around and is willing to openly talk

about the world’s scum buckets and dirt bags who’d like nothing better than to make Americans take dirt naps in densely populated urban areas. And people get angry, because if you acknowledge how susceptible free societies are to jihad nuts with a desire to return to the dark ages…it means you have a lot of tough decisions to make.

Even liberal writers like Brian Michael Bendis seem to know (really, really, deep down) that we live in a world where a Secret War or two or three or more…is being waged between competing visions for humanity’s future. The only problem is, when guys like George W. Bush are in office, liberal comic book writers come up with weird Bush-Gitmo allegories that inadvertently make the case for conservatism!

Can someone tell me when Brian Michael Bendis is going to lampoon Barack Obama in the comics for the very real “Secret War” that he’s apparently taken to another level? Don’t hold your breath:

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials..Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed “things that the previous administration did not.”

How many young voters pulled the lever for Barack Obama under the liberal auspices that we can live in harmony with jihadi head choppers if we just try really hard to “understand” and “reach” them? (My favorite is Richard Gere’s infamous post-9/11 suggestion that guys like Osama Bin Laden just need to be loved.)

It’s all a lie. The world is a dangerous place. Evil exists, despite what the Neal Gabler moral relativist Mole Men tell you. And it’s better to be honest and frank about that, because otherwise you create bizarre realities where “peace activists” (who try to slice through your liver with gigantor-knives when their cargo is about to be inspected) can play the victim-card. You also have scenarios play out where young people say, “Umm…what happened to all that hopeandchange?” (Yes, that’s one word):

The Obama administration has rejected the constitutional executive authority claimed by Bush and has based its lethal operations on the authority Congress gave the president in 2001 to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” he determines “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the Sept. 11 attacks.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, “particularly in places outside Afghanistan,” had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

Weren’t there a lot of Democrats that voted for that? Hmmm. Nevermind.

The hopeandchange never materialized because it was never there. I bet the kiddies are feeling pretty numb, right now. It’s okay Thunder Kiss, conservatism will welcome you with open arms when the reality hits that it’s a strange, strange world (incompatible with “planned” economies and Youtube Diplomacy).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Stallone trailer to watch.

nickfury — Hey Bendis, do you mind telling me when you’re going to roast Barack Obama for his Secret War? Want to weigh in, Marvel? Didn’t think so. Hypocrites. Deep down, all of these guys are furious that George W. Bush is going to be largely vindicated.

Iron Man is America.

May 5, 2010March 28, 2016by Douglas Ernst4 Comments

While it might seem odd to comment on a movie before it comes out, I can’t contain myself with Iron Man 2. John Nolte has forced my hand:

Though the highly anticipated “Iron Man 2” qualifies as a hilarious, entertaining, irreverent, and openly patriotic summer blockbuster well worth the price of admission (and then some), like most sequels, the continuing story of Tony Stark and company does falls short of its predecessor…

Hilarious: Check. Entertaining: Check. Patriotic: Check.

That’s all I needed, John. Thanks. And now I’d like to take a moment to

ironmanamerica — Iron Man is America. Liberals refuse to accept how cool that is. Their loss.

describe why Iron Man is such a great character (despite the best efforts of liberal writers to ruin him with sad attempts at Bush/Cheney warmonger allegories)

The same thing that makes Iron Man great is the same thing that makes America the most Kick Ass country the world has ever seen. The Christian elements of our nation’s founding guarantee that the innate creativity of man is encouraged to blossom. God gave each of us gifts, and wants us to take full advantage of them. Capitalism, Science, and The Rule of Law fused in America to produce a system that churns out ideas and innovation and entrepreneurs at an astounding rate—when the government gets out of the way. The spirit of America is embodied in the character of Tony Stark: He’s big. He’s bold. He shoots for the stars, and he’s unapologetic about his accomplishments.

However, like America, Tony Stark has his flaws. His same strengths can, at times, cause him to lose sight of himself. Success can be a double-edged sword (or, ummm…malfunctioning repulsor ray?), but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still inherently a hero. And that’s exactly where so many movies written by liberal Hollywood self-loathers get it wrong. They’re so concerned about offending France’s cheese eating elitist lecture circuit and the sensitivities of cultures that won’t even play Western movies, that their heroes come across as weak-kneed nincompoops. When you stand for everything you stand for nothing. And that makes for a horrible superhero movie.

Stan Lee, a living legend most non-comic fans have heard of, once said something to the effect: I wanted to take a character that was almost impossible to like and make him popular.

To a liberal like Lee (creative genius he may be) the idea that an entrepreneur like Tony Stark would be a hard sell is, quite frankly, politically tone deaf. As much as liberals like to bash successful businessmen, the American people want to be them. As I said before, most people know that they have God-given talents and seek ways to cultivate them for the benefit of themselves and their family. Work is a virtue. Work is a gift. Giving to other people through our creative efforts is a satisfying and just endeavor, and profiting off of those efforts is equally as righteous. And that is something that liberals, for whatever reason, just don’t seem to understand.

This week I will see Iron Man 2. And I will most-likely enjoy it. And even if I don’t, I can take heart that a character who personifies American ingenuity gets to step into the limelight yet again.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go listen to that out.freakin’.standing. crooner Robert Downy Jr. And then watch…Lego Star Wars awesomeness. I suggest you take part too. You’ll thank me later.