The PC commissars vs. Bryan Cranston

Jeff Jacoby was at this pulpit last year -- defending the casting of Scarlett Johansson as a tranny. I don't wholly agree with him, however.  I agree that it should not be a political issue.  I think casting should be based soley on the actor's ability to portray the role and, in most cases, that should mean that a  black would be best at portraying blacks, women should be best at playing women etc.  To say that anyone can play any part is just another instance of the stupid Leftist  dogma that all men are equal


A memorable TV commercial for Vicks cough syrup in the 1980s opened with soap-opera actor Peter Bergman, known to millions of "All My Children" fans as Dr. Cliff Warner, telling viewers: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."

Bryan Cranston isn't a quadriplegic, but he plays one in a new movie, and that seems to have put a bunch of people's noses out of joint. Cranston, who stars in "The Upside," has been taking flak for accepting the role of Phillip Lacasse, a billionaire left paralyzed after a paragliding accident. Cranston's detractors are offended that an actor who isn't really disabled would have the effrontery to portray one on the screen, instead of declining the job so the part could be played by an actor who actually is paralyzed.

An irrational objection? Vice Media doesn't think so. On its website Thursday it blasted the actor in a piece headlined "Bryan Cranston Advocated for Disabled Actors While Taking a Role from One." Though Cranston has been outspoken in urging Hollywood to employ more actors with disabilities, Vice dismissed him as a hypocrite: "His decision to play Lacasse," it intoned, "has also prevented a lesser-known disabled actor from getting the opportunity to play the role and gain celebrity."

This critique has been bubbling up for a while. When "The Upside" was making the rounds of film festivals, the respected Ruderman Family Foundation, which promotes the inclusion of people with disabilities, censured the casting of an able-bodied actor to play a paralyzed character as "highly problematic" and "discrimination." Dominick Evans, a filmmaker and activist who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, chided Cranston for "tak[ing] economic opportunities away from disabled actors who work on average five days a year." As someone who uses a wheelchair, tweeted Evans last week, "I could never play Bryan Cranston, so why the hell can he play someone like me?!"

The answer, of course, is: because that's what actors do. They play parts. They depict characters. They portray men and women (or, for that matter, amphibians and robots and monsters) whose personalities, experiences, and characteristics may be entirely alien to their own. The greatest actors are those whose performances are so believable and three-dimensional, so intuitive and perceptive, that those who see them forget they are watching an actor. As one theater critic, Susannah Clapp of the Observer, has put it, the most superb actors are those "who appear not to perform but transmit."

Identity politics and the entitlement mindset already infect so much of contemporary culture, from law to academia to the arts. Perhaps it was inevitable that, sooner or later, they would undermine the acting profession. Scarlett Johansson came under fire last year when she agreed to star in "Rub & Tug," a film about a transgender brothel owner, Dante Gill. Tilda Swinton was blasted for playing the Ancient One in "Doctor Strange," a role adapted from a character that was Asian in the original Marvel comic. Disney has been condemned for picking Jack Whitehall, a straight actor, to play a "campy gay man" in the adventure comedy "Jungle Cruise." Latina magazine rebuked moviemakers for filling Hispanic roles in at least 13 movies with non-Hispanic actors.

The likely effect of such criticism will be to kill movies before they can be made or to browbeat actors into disqualifying themselves from whole categories of scripts. The backlash against Johansson prompted her to give up the Gill role, which may mean the film is scrapped altogether. Darren Criss (who won Emmy and Golden Globe awards for his TV portrayal of gay killer Andrew Cunanan) announced in December that he will no longer play LGBT characters because he doesn't to be "another straight boy taking a gay man's role."

Hypersensitivity and the assault on cultural appropriation have been wreaking havoc in contexts as varied as art exhibits, burrito shops, fashion shows, and musical performances. Their chilling effect on college campuses has been especially notorious. But those who wax wroth when actors play characters of a race, sexuality, or body type that doesn't match their own aren't merely challenging particular casting decisions. They are attacking the idea of acting itself.

To insist that only actors who are X be tapped to play characters who are X is to insist that acting can never be more than skin deep. It is to declare that the extraordinary artistry and talent of great actors — their power to embody a role and bring it to life — must be restricted at all times to rigid classifications of race, gender, and whatever other categories the commissars of political correctness deem inviolable. It is to tell performers to stay in their own narrow lanes, to stick to characters just like themselves, and under no circumstances to transmit experiences and truths that they don't know from their own lives.

"I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV" wasn't just an advertising trope. It expressed, in a sense, the raison d'etre of the dramatic arts. Bryan Cranston wasn't a crystal-meth lord in real life, but he played one brilliantly in "Breaking Bad." He isn't a quadriplegic, either. Why should anyone want that to keep him from doing his job?

SOURCE






State Dep't Approved 8,482 Child Bride Requests

This is a disgrace.  That there should be one law for all goes right back to the Torah.  The USA should stand foursquare against any recognition of child brides

Between 2007 and 2017, the U.S. State Department approved 8,482 child bride requests, adults seeking to bring into the country a minor spouse or fiance and minors petitioning to bring in an adult spouse or fiance from abroad, according to the Associated Press. In addition, the U.S. government approved 204 requests by minors to bring in their minor spouses/fiances.

"In nearly all the cases, the girls were the younger person in the relationship," reported the AP.  "In 149 instances, the adult was older than 40, and in 28 cases the adult was over 50...."

Some of the examples cited included, "In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year-old's petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in 2013 for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala."

"The country where most requests came from was Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen," said the AP.  "Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of overall approved petitions."

The information was initally gathered by the Senate Homeland Security Committee after a request to the State Department was made in 2017.

"It indicates a problem," said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).  In a letter, Johnson and his former colleague, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said, "Our immigration system may unintentionally shield the abuse of women and children."

As the report indicates, these child bride requests apparently are legal because most states allow 16- and 17-year olds to marry with parental permission. Also, children under age 16 can marry in New York, Virginia, and Maryland, if they have court permission.

Fraidy Reiss, who fights against coerced marriage through the group Unchained at Last, told the AP that data from New Jersey show that "nearly 4,000 minors, mostly girls, were married in the state from 1995 to 2012, including 178 who were under 15."

The report also noted the case of Naila Amin, who is now 29 but was 13 and living in Pakistan when she was forcibly married to her first cousin, Tariq, who was 26. Amin was bethrothed to Tariq when she was 8 years old and he was 21.

"My passport ruined my life," Amin, who has dual U.S. and Pakistani citizenship, told the AP. "People die to come to America. I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it."

"I was a child," she said. "Why weren't any flags raised? Whoever was processing this application, they don't look at it? They don't think?"

SOURCE







Traditional Masculinity Is 'Harmful' — Who Knew?

Leftists seek to destroy the very foundation of our cultural understanding of gender.

The American Psychological Association recently released its “guidelines” on masculinity and, to put it bluntly, it’s about as insightful as a barrel full of monkeys. Then again, that may be an insult to monkeys, as they instinctively display more intellectual consistency and credibility than does the APA’s condemnation of “traditional masculinity.” At least monkeys don’t dismiss the natural, innate biological differences between the genders as mere “societal constructs.”

In its “first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys,” the APA asserts, “Traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health.” In fact, “traditional masculinity,” which the APA describes as “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression,” is “on the whole harmful” to men and boys.

Using leftist buzzwords such as “macroaggression, patriarchy, and cisgender” — the latter referring to a person whose sexual “identity” happens to match their biological gender — the APA concludes that “traditional masculinity” is a societal problem. Clearly, the APA is guided by the leftist theory that gender is a nonbinary social construct rather than a binary reality based upon biology. But even at that, one particular gender is just the worst.

For example, the APA alleges, “Although there are differences in masculinity ideologies, there is a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence. These have been collectively referred to as traditional masculinity ideology.”

After some backlash, however, the APA attempted to “clarify” its assertion with the following statement: “When we report that some aspects of ‘traditional masculinity’ are potentially harmful, we are referring to a belief system held by a few that associates masculinity with extreme behaviors that harm self and others. It is the extreme stereotypical behaviors — not simply being male or a ‘traditional male’ — that may result in negative outcomes.” But extremes were not the basis for the original APA argument; stereotypes were. So this clarification is actually obfuscation.

The fact remains that maleness or masculinity as well as femaleness or femininity share common, easily recognizable expressions in all cultures and societies across the world. In fact, one of the first things noted when an individual from one cultural group enters another are the natural binary expressions of gender. It is a universal reality based upon the reality of human biology.

National Review’s David French notes an obvious contradiction in the culture’s current “diversity” paradigm, writing, “It is interesting that in a world that otherwise teaches boys and girls to ‘be yourself,’ that rule often applies to everyone but the ‘traditional’ male who has traditional male impulses and characteristics. Then, they’re a problem. Then, they’re often deemed toxic. Combine this reality with a new economy that doesn’t naturally favor physical strength and physical courage to the same extent, and it’s easy to see how men struggle.”

The fact is that true masculinity is designed to compliment true femininity. The two are not one and the same, despite the gender-fluid argument the APA now espouses. Nor is “traditional masculinity” harmful to boys. Quite the opposite — they need more of it.

SOURCE






Vegans 'take twice as many sick days' as meat eating colleagues, report says

Vegans take the most sick days off work due to cold, flu and minor ailments, according to a new report.

The study found that they are absent through illness for almost five days a year, which is twice the annual total of the average Briton.

And while the reasons for the high sick-day count are unclear, two-thirds of vegans admitted to taking more time off work due to minor illness in 2018 than in previous years.

In contrast, just half of their meat-eating colleagues reported that they took the same amount of time off as the year before, while one in three said they took less.

The study of 1,000 office workers also revealed that vegans are three times more likely to take a trip to their GP during the cold and flu season in comparison to the average UK adult.

They tend to book 2.6 appointments to see the doctor, in contrast to the national average of just 0.7 visits.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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