Springtime for Baldwin

 

Springtime for Baldwin

©2021 Ross Williams

Alec Baldwin has a tortured personal life and a smug professional life. He's a decent actor – not great, but not bad. I appreciate his acting in many films and TV shows. He has great range as an actor, able to elicit the subtle nuances of personality from the characters he portrays.

He was the perfect arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit Hollywood boyfriend of Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. He was the perfect arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit Hollywood bubbleboy star in State and Main. He was the perfect arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit television network head in 30 Rock. It's impressive how he pulled together so much self-centeredness for these roles – possibly while trying to play Words With Friends during take-off – with nothing in his personal life from which to draw.

Maybe.

I felt bad for him, though. Once. He had been married to Kim Bassinger. But that's not what I felt bad about. Hubba hubba. He and Kim had a child. A daughter. Then he and Kim got divorced. And Kim was given custody [go figure].

Then – according to everything in the papers – the daughter, Ireland, began to display classic behavioral symptoms of parental alienation syndrome toward Alec. Which meant that Kim was committing emotional abuse upon the child, poisoning the child's impression of her own father, a crime far too many custodial mothers commit and which is never prosecuted for what it is. It's barely even acknowledged.

Apparently channeling the self-centered characters he so often plays, he failed to understand that a child of divorced parents living almost exclusively with just one of those parents will, quite rapidly, take on the custodial parent's attitude toward the non-custodial parent. And then act on it.

After weeks or months [actually, six years] of enduring his daughter acting out the ire that his ex-wife had for him, Alec Baldwin thoughtlessly left his 11 year-old a voice mail calling her a “thoughtless little pig”. In the same voice mail, he referred to Kim Bassinger as a “thoughtless pain in the ass” which, given the circumstances, would make sense. Like divorced mother-with-custody like daughter of divorce.

The blame the victim icing on this soured wedding cake is that the phrase “thoughtless little pig” was brandished as a weapon to accuse Baldwin of the emotional child abuse Bassinger had been committing. This caused a thoughtless little petit Napoleon attached to the divorce court to suspend visitation. “Visitation”. The ritualistic duty we give to the recently deceased. That's modern American divorce for ya.

Diverging from this clueless self-centeredness, though, Alec Baldwin has portrayed political figures on comedy shows in generally non-comedic ways, always to rave reviews of his work by those whose appreciation of comedy turns on non-comedic properties.

Abandoning the smug arrogance of so many of his character portrayals, he has publicly mocked those who've killed others in accidental shootings for the political mileage his [non-arrogant, non-clueless, non-narcissistic] personal gun-control views gain. Taking political advantage of others' tragedy is a noble and sensitive thing to do. Such noble sensitivity is just so Hollywood.

Then this last week on the set of, Rust, a B-movie Western he's starring in, Alec Baldwin gets handed a prop gun to rehearse a close-up for a gun fight scene. He's supposed to fire it at the camera for the dramatic at the audience view.

The gun had a live round in it, instead of a blank, when he pulled the trigger. ...as it was pointed at the camera. The film's cinematographer behind the camera was shot, and the film's director standing behind the cinematographer was hit by the pass-through bullet.

The cinematographer died.

Of course, many people who don't appreciate the subtle nuance of his out-of-nowhere portrayals of arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twits or his completely opposite real-life personality that mocks the unwitting perpetrators of similar tragic events, have taken to mocking him for being an arrogant, clueless, narcissistic twit who unwittingly took another's life. And it's truly unfair to Alec. After all, there's an entire professional Hollywood chain of command responsible for the safety and proper disposition of weapons used in television and films long before the prop gets handled by the doofus actor plying his craft.

First, there's the prop master, the “armorer”. The professional Hollywood prop master on this film was making her professional debut. Her professional credentials include having a quick draw exhibitionist and Hollywood firearms consultant for a father, having professionally multi-hued hair and “body art”, and having her professional Tik Tok twerking followed by 2,600 people.

Next, there is the assistant director, a consummate professional with a long trail of complaints about movie set safety behind him and, possibly, ahead of him once again. He professionally handed the gun to the doofus actor claiming, without checking, that it was unloaded despite the same gun having been test-fired by a stunt double twice earlier with identical live-round discharge.

One may be inclined at this point to suggest that perhaps the professionalism on this movie set was not exactly knowledgeable about what firearm safety consists of. This would be completely unfair. Oh, sure, there were continuing complaints of unprofessionalism on the set. The film's union camera crews did indeed vacate the set earlier in the day complaining about unprofessional working conditions. The working conditions they were complaining about were being put up in hotels an hour's drive from the set and not getting paid on time. ...which is what professionalism consists of to Hollywood union workers. In order to continue shooting, the producers replaced the union camera crews with non-union crews, which is totally unprofessional. Naturally.

But that brings us to the third level of the professional chain of command for the proper disposition of weapons used in films: the producers. Those who front the money to hire the right people who know what they're doing, and enough of the right people that no one gets overworked and careless.

Even if you wish to unfairly impugn the professionalism of a doofus actor known for arrogant, clueless, narcissistic personal behavior and professional characterizations, a movie set armorer on her first armoring job, and an assistant director with a history of safety issues, it still boils down to the producers of the film providing enough money to hire the right crew.

And The Producers are...

To Dispel a 'Conservative' Fantasy

 

To Dispel a 'Conservative' Fantasy

©2021 Ross Williams

Those on the American political right love to call themselves conservatives. They believe they are conserving values, whereas those on the American political left are inventing values left and right [pardon the pun], assuming those fresh-out-of-the-box values are universally held, and shooting their fellow leftists in the feet – and elsewhere – as they do so. Ask Dave Chappelle, J K Rowling and, new to the Canceled By My Own club, Margaret Atwood.

While I hold that most of the values invented over the last few generations by the American political left are incoherent, undiluted pig shit, a handful of the values being 'conserved' by the American political right are no better, let alone values that originate from the sources conservatives cite.

Some values conservatives claim they are conserving are, of course, political. Specifically, American political, as conveyed by the Constitution. The same Constitution which demands that the government leave people alone to do what they will, even if they will be stupid, self-serving, irresponsible asshats who endanger themselves and those around them. The only time the government is not required to leave an individual alone is when the government was given clear and unambiguous authority to control the activity the individual is undertaking.

By means of example, as I've said for decades: drugs are stupid and the people who do drugs are stupid but it's not the government's business. If it were, the Constitution would have included it as a power of government. It doesn't, so therefore it isn't. So toke up, snort up or shoot up, dudes. Whatever suits your fancy. If slow motion suicide is your thing, then get on with it.

Other values conservatives love to claim they champion are theological. Almost exclusively judeo-christian theological values. And colliding with conservatives at the intersection of Political Street and Theological Avenue is, naturally, abortion.

I was raised as a christian. United Methodist, to be specific. And in many regards I still am a christian, if not a United Methodist. I haven't been to church in decades, though, and plan to keep it that way. I'm mystified by the concept of a god that takes attendance. Pecuniary pastors have concocted many rationalizations as to why regular attendance is spiritually necessary, mostly devolving upon the financial support that tends to accrue, in order to push the message, naturally, about rendering to Caesar and god, in turn, as appropriate.

But about abortion... the political argument used by conservatives in conserving the political value of Liberty is that the Constitution requires the government to defend and protect inalienable rights, such as life, liberty and property. Conservatives are correct about that. But at the risk of being a broken record: you don't get points for being correct, you get points for being pertinent. Conservatives demand to QED the political leg of their stance by concluding abortion must be made illegal because it takes a life. “Abortion is murder”.

Not so fast.

One of the many many many arguments currently being disingenuously paraded by liberals, “progressives” [ironic term] and other socialists is that the government has an identical obligation to compel all Americans to wear masks and submit themselves to a growing series of injections of an experimental pseudo-vaccine which is actually a gene therapy treatment. ...and which doesn't seem to actually work. The propaganda put out about the matter also very clearly equates not masking and “taking the jab” to be conspiracy to commit murder. “Life, liberty and property” includes “life”, after all; not accepting experimental therapies costs lives. Another QED.

If the object is simply to fetishize a societal commodity in Constitutional terms in order to impose a personal viewpoint on the rest of the nation, in the process disregarding the underlying principle of Liberty, the freedom from government imposition into one's personal life that our nation was founded upon, then both conservatives and liberals [“progressives”, socialists, et al] are playing the same duplicitous game.

The pertinent reality is that the government's power to do even those things it is allowed or required to do is extremely limited. Not getting a series of Wuhan Fluhan pokes may indeed result in a given individual passing a virus onto someone else who ends up dying from it. That's entirely possible, but beside the point. The point is that the government has no legitimate power to require it. The same risk to others' lives can be claimed about everything. Congress [or a state legislature] doesn't have the power to make those laws and, under our definition of governance, the President [or Governor] absolutely doesn't have the power to dictate it.

The government's power to protect the life of the “unborn” is very specifically restricted by the Constitution itself. The Constitution defines who, in our nation, has a clear and unambiguous expectation of having their inalienable rights protected by the government. Those people are [and I quote]: “All persons born or naturalized”. Abortion, certain psychotic liberal states' laws notwithstanding, occurs upon the “preborn”, which therefore excludes the topic from the Constitutional argument used by conservatives in conserving this particular value. An actual legal gray area might be claimed when it comes to “viability”, with the understanding that viability doesn't equate to heartbeats. See Terri Schiavo.

If it were any other way, if the power of the government were UNnlimited in doing what it claimed was “common sense” protection of individual's rights to life, liberty and property, then the government could use any means available to impose mask mandates, experimental pseudo-vaccines, and indeed preventively stick black males between the ages of 16 and 34 in prison. As statistics have fairly conclusively shown, the Shanghai Shivers infection and death rate would remain unchanged under mask/vaccine mandates, but street and property crime would drop, and the murder rate [of mostly other black males between 16 and 34] would asymptotically approach zero upon the summary incarceration of young black males. Good thing the power of government is extremely limited, ainnit?

Once again, it isn't a conservation of Constitutional Principles that drives the conservative political position regarding abortion. It is an attempt to dishonestly rework a Constitutional Principle in order to impose a denial of liberty upon others for the personal satisfaction of a specific ideology. Congratulations, conservatives. Your political preening on this is indifferentiable from the “progressives'” preening on so many other topics: Whatever it takes to get our way.

If you believe in limiting the power of government, conservatives, then it requires the government's power to be limited even when it costs you your personal desires by governmental means. If you can't do that, then you aren't a conservative.

Likewise, the theological argument against abortion is equally strained. There is zero unanimity on the subject among christians, and most notably among catholics whose religious doctrine as dictatorially imposed by Papal Bullshit requires being anti-abortion. Catholics themselves are among the most frequent abortion-getters.

Many christians will parrot an anti-abortion sentiment in front of other christians, but secretly [or not-so] give a wide range of caveats, exclusions and exemptions in private. “It's not my place to say.” “But only after viability.” “Just not as birth control.” Et cetera.

Christians, on the whole, are perfectly fine with legal abortion even if they are not fine with all abortions being legal. From a strictly christianity in a democratic republic perspective, it's a wash at best and certainly doesn't represent a clear doctrinal imperative. This is particularly the case when it comes to the metaphysical assertions made about abortion: the soul of the aborted.

If the soul doesn't inhabit the “preborn” until birth – as many christians firmly believe – then it's an entirely moot point in the first place. Abort... don't abort... it's completely outside the reach of this theology.

On the other hand, if the soul attaches to the “preborn” before birth, as arguably most christians believe, then we are left with the question of when this attachment occurs. Two primary soulification points are most accepted: “quickening”, and conception.

“Quickening” is the moment the fetus first “kicks”. If one is a preborn quickener, then abortion before quickening is moot to christians. If one is a preborn conceptioner then – if the theology is correct and sinless souls go straight to heaven, then it is also moot. The aborted soul is in heaven. ...if the theology is correct.

Oh...but!!

Not all christians accept the same theology. Wasn't that your point, Ross?

Why, yes it was. Paste a gold star on your forehead.

Many christians – most particularly the loudest christians [and where “loud” arguably equates to “defying basic christian doctrine”] – do indeed believe that a soul can't get to heaven unless it has been tested in life. Ergo it must be born.

If the soul isn't born, it can't be tested, it can't have the possibility of heaven, it is lost.

And yet. Not all christians, very very few in my experience, believe souls are ever lost. A god of love couldn't – and wouldn't – allow that. God may test individuals in horrifying, wretched ways, but allow a soul to be made “lost” because of the Free Will of his ultimate creation? Inconceivable!

What happens to souls “lost” this way? Or indeed, to souls “lost” by means of any misdirected Free Will?

Whether some christians wish to acknowledge it or not – and many will be greatly offended by hearing this [I don't care] – belief in reincarnation is very common among a huge share of christians, probably a majority of them. Many devout christians were very firm reincarnationists. George Patton, for one. Mark Twain, for another. Voltaire, Wordsworth, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Richard Wagner, Rudyard Kipling.

And before anyone drops the End of Story declaration that reincarnation is only a tenet of eastern religions, let me just point out that christianity, and its judaic forebear, are very much eastern religions. End of story. Western religions tend to devote themselves to either animal spirits or godly pantheons living on tops of mountains or in huge dining halls. The concept of reincarnation being a christian belief actually sprang from the origins of the christian faith itself. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are fairly unambiguous about it.

Let us turn to Luke, chapter 9, verses 18 and 19.

“Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say I am?' They replied, 'Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.'”

Hmmm. “Come back to life”. Interesting.

How could any jew in Judea, let alone those jews in the sect of nascent christians, ever begin to propose that Joshua bar Joseph was a dead prophet “come back to life” unless they already knew of and accepted reincarnation in at least some form? They couldn't.

What is the resurrection itself, except a final, ultimate manifestation of reincarnation? Exactly.

Wouldn't reincarnation be a loving god's means of ensuring that his children have as many chances as they need to get it right that they may get to heaven? And wouldn't a belief in reincarnation make, to a christian, the question of abortion thoroughly irrelevant from a disposition of the soul standpoint?

The answer to both, of course, is yes.

That doesn't mean that abortion is necessarily theologically benign. It is very likely a Free Will cop-out, a cheat. But, to a christian, other christians' cheating on their Free Will mid-term is not their place to address. “Judge not”. It is god's job to address it if addressing it is the thing to do.

Any christian who claims that christianity requires being anti-abortion is being entirely presumptuous and arrogant [and unchristian], and is speaking for all christians when, in fact, he speaks only for a very very slim minority of them, and possibly only himself. He obviously hasn't read the scriptures as well as he believes he has.

Any American who claims that upholding the Constitution requires being anti-abortion obviously hasn't read the Constitution as thoroughly as he thinks he has, either. He is just as willing as a “progressive” [ironic term] to abuse its principles of limited-power governance in order to get his dictatorial way.

This scold may be as futile as wishing that “progressives” would actually embrace progress for once, but: act the part, conservatives. Try conserving something that you claim to believe in.