Medved: Hollywood is Anti-American

My copy of Imprimis arrived in the mail while we were on vacation. This month features a speech by film critic, author and talk show host Michael Medved. Medved, a Yale Law School contemporary of the Clintons, was a left-wing political aide in the 70s. His speech lays out how extremely hostile Hollywood has become toward the US military and America. The details are stunning. For example, each of the movies which mention the Gulf War (and there have been only four) is extremely negative toward the military. And he can't recall a single movie celebrating America's victory in WWIII, the Cold War.

An interesting fact that I didn't know from his speech:

in truth, the typical Vietnam veteran is not homeless or disillusioned or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The statistics are readily available from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and this is what they reveal: Vietnam vets—people who actually served in combat in Vietnam—are less likely to have psychiatric problems, less likely to have drug problems, less likely to have committed suicide, and have a higher median income than people of comparable socio-economic backgrounds who did not serve in Vietnam.

You'd never know it from Hollywood.

More:

And of course it is not simply antipathy to the military that permeates Hollywood today. There is a broader anti-Americanism—an alienation from everything American—that runs very, very deep there. Listen to Sean Penn, speaking to a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, when asked a question about his film Indian Runner:


I don’t think it scratches the surface of the rage that is felt, if not acted upon, by most of the people in the country where I live. I was brought up in a country that relished fear-based religion, corrupt government, and an entire white population living on stolen property that they murdered for and that is passed on from generation to generation.


And here is Oliver Stone in 1987, upon receiving the Torch of Liberty Award from the American Civil Liberties Union:


Our own country has become a military industrial monolith, dedicated to the Cold War—in many ways, as rigid and corrupt at the top as our rivals, the Soviets. We have become the enemy with a security state now second to none. Today we have come to live in total hatred, fear, and the desire to destroy. Bravo. Fear and conformity have triumphed. This Darth-Vadian Empire of the United States must pay for its many sins in the future. I think America has to bleed. I think the corpses have to pile up. I think American boys have to die again. Let the mothers weep and mourn.


..... Is it any wonder that people who deliver statements like that also feel the need to trash the U.S. in film after film after film?