If you are trying to make a "statement," make sure your house is in order

 

It has been pointed out that Elon Musk has posted this curious tweet:

 

Does that mean he’s prepared to defend anyone “canceled” or fired from their jobs because of anything they’ve tweeted? Gina Carano, former MMA performer and “actor”,” seems to think so, since she was one of the first to dare him to put his money where his mouth is. Carano was fired by Lucasfilm a few years ago for a tweet and Instagram post in which she posited that

Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?

Now, I entirely disagree with the statement that this post taken on its face “is denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities.” It makes perfect sense to say that people allow the world to fall apart because of their indifference or acquiesence to government policies that dehumanize a group so long as they see a "benefit" for themselves in it, or they are not personally effected by it.

I also personally take offense at Jewish “exceptionalism,” (just as I take offense at black claims that they are the only racial/ethnic group that has suffered discrimination and prejudice in this country). As I pointed out in a post here h about the history of white nationalism in this country, the effective genocide of Native Americans up to 1900 was far worse than any racial/ethnic/religious group in historical memory.

In Seattle and Bellevue there is also a kind of “exceptionalism” going on—except that because of the “open door” immigration and work visa policy (and looking sideways at illegal entry and visa overstays) for East and South Asians, white people are slowly, but surely, becoming the “exception” in many areas of employment that were once their private domain. 

They can’t keep blaming the “usual suspects” for their problems now, because not just their insistence on a numbers-based “merit” is being used against them, but a latent form of hiring discrimination supposedly against the law that Asian-controlled businesses practice that has no place for whites who don't "fit in" with the "culture."  Trying to close that Pandora's Box now just makes white people look even more like hypocrites.

And so unfortunately there is a “context” to Carano’s attempt to draw comparisons that is both offensive and hypocritical, given the divisiveness and hatred her “political views” have by intent incited. Her social media posts have in the past been full of far-right conspiracy theories, such as Covid denialism and “stolen” elections. I guess that is the kind of thing you’d expect from someone who made a living through “performance art” violence. Like Donald Trump, she just couldn't keep her stupid mouth shut about all those other things.

However, some “liberals” are also guilty of  ignorance and prejudice, although sometimes I’m not sure if it is because they are “liberal,” but because they are self-absorbed narcissists. This brings me to the Amazon-produced French film released in 2022 that is available only on the Amazon Prime streaming service, I Love America. 

The only reason why I had any interest in viewing this was because Sophie Marceau was in it, playing a French woman looking for a “new life” in America (Los Angeles to be precise), where she apparently expects that Hollywood  is the place to be for a “director,” although we never see her doing anything related to the trade.

Marceau still looks like she "could" attract a 29-year-old lover even as a 50-year-old character, although she was 55 when she made this film, and the effects of too much sun seemed to require more powder than, say, what Catherine Deneuve needs, who always looks good, even at near 80:

 

Anyways, the French director of this film, Lisa Azuelos, obviously has an “agenda.” Why does she “love” America? Well, apparently because it is more supportive of the gay lifestyle than is France, I suppose. The best friend of Marceau’s character Lisa (the same name as the real director—get it?) is Luka, played by a French actor of Moroccan parentage, who is insufferably “gay” the entire film, I mean really heavy-handed stuff.

But that wasn’t my problem with the film; what was can be seen here in a clip I lifted from it:

 

No, it isn't the 10cc song that is annoying Lisa, just some “Mexican” yard worker, actually for the second time, but this time just in case you were “confused’ about the “ethnicity” of the stereotype, you get a blink-and-you-missed-it confirmation. I suppose we should be "thankful" for that: in this version of America, there is no crime, homelessness, poverty, stuff like that, to interfere with hot disco nights.

But I just couldn't get past the fact that in a city and county that is nearly 50 percent Hispanic/Latino, that is the only look at one in the entire film. It seems the director—and Marceau’s character—went out of their way to avoid putting a Hispanic/Latino in any frame except to degrade one of them, completely ignorant of the Spanish heritage of the city, which, after all, is Spanish for “City of Angels.”

What is particularly curious about this is that Azuelos goes out of her way to portray herself (and her “character”) as this “liberal” who has all these non-white friends from the Middle East and South Asia, either immigrants or the children of immigrants. But her attitude toward Hispanics/Latinos betrays a real prejudice against people who she not only thinks are “beneath” her socially, but for whom that she has absorbed the present racism against Hispanics/Latinos in this country that is part of the political culture in this country. 

They simply don’t have any place in the world she created in this film; they are just annoying “things” that either must be “tolerated” or escaped from, or symbolically "deported." In other words, Azuelos (and by extension “her” character in the film) is a racist, because you only have to hate on one group that has done you no harm to be one.

Amazon doesn’t allow viewers to leave reviews on its own productions on its website, although elsewhere I Love America has a slightly “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes. But I needed to say my piece, and I found this YouTube video h of Azuelos giving an interview about the film;  I noted that “interest” in the film was such that not a single comment was left after almost a year.

Well, that’s not true anymore, although I wonder what Azuelos thinks if the only person who gave a shit enough about her film to comment on her motivation for making it dares think she has a bit of the racist in her for all the phony “liberal” malarkey she dishes out.