Tag: Charlton Heston

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Charlton Heston’s Naked Butt

I was watching “Planet of the Apes” on PBS the other night and there was that famous shot of Charlton Heston being presented to the ape officials for disposal, naked, from behind.

I have seen this movie at least three times, on television. I have never before seen Charlton Heston’s naked buttocks blurred out. But here it was, on PBS, the “enlightened” network, blurred out, just like Stewy’s naked butt on “Family Guy”.

What the hell? Has PBS joined the hoards of frigid hysterical puritans who have decided that the moral life of the nation is threatened by the back view of a man’s naked buttocks? In a country that enjoys dismemberment, explosions, bikinis, gratuitous sex and violence, and Fox News? Spare us.

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The NRA and Iraq

Does the NRA, and Charlton Heston, know what their lusty cohorts in the White House are doing in Iraq?

The NRA argues that every man, woman, and child in America should be armed. That’s the best way to ensure democracy and freedom. If the government starts regulating the possession of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and Uzi submachine guns, it will soon be able to take away our precious freedoms and liberties.

The U.S. government under George Bush is trying to do precisely that to Iraq. It is bursting into their “homes” and searching for weapons and it plans to take them away if it finds them.

The NRA says that just because guns are dangerous and are often used to commit felonies doesn’t mean that any citizen should have the slightest difficulty obtaining them. In other words, you can’t assume someone is going to do something illegal with a gun, the way you can assume someone is going to do something illegal with a blank CD or a minidisc.

But here you have George Bush acting as if Saddam Hussein doesn’t have the natural right as a citizen of the world to own a few nukes or chemical bombs.

My question is– what if Saddam, or somebody, persuaded the U.N. to send a weapons inspection team to the U.S., to see if they have anything that could hurt people around the world? Like mines, chemical weapons, nukes, artillery, and guns.

Ah– but we’re the good guys. Well, we are. But we’re not perfect. And who knows what kind of idiot might end up in the White House some day?

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that in a society that controlled access to guns, the police would still have access to them. That’s the special nature of their jobs. They have special authority. They’re supposed to keep us from hurting ourselves and each other.

So the U.S., it could be supposed, has to have nukes to make sure that the Saddam Husseins– and Charlton Hestons — of the world don’t go around bullying other people.

The trouble is that the U.S. sells mines and helicopters and bombers to other countries. Sometimes, through happenstance, we end up facing the barrels of our own guns.

Why doesn’t the NRA step up and put an end to this nonsense? Where is Charlton Heston when you really need him? He should be railing against the Bush administration! Chemical weapons don’t kill people– despots do! And when you criminalize the possession of nukes, only the tyrants will have nukes! Saddam Hussein should show up at the next NRA party– usually held in a nearby town after a mass shooting– and hold a nuclear bomb in his arms above his head and proclaim, “…from my cold dead fingers!”

I can’t even begin to explain North Korea or Iran in this context. Except that Iraq, of course, has the oil.

And that reminds me of what a famous outlaw, Willie Sutton, said when someone asked him why he robbed banks.

Because that’s where they keep the money.

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The Festive Charlton Heston

In a letter, the N.R.A. president, actor Charlton Heston, said the group was canceling a gun show along with all other “festive ceremonies normally associated with our annual gathering.” The group was nevertheless going to hold its annual members meeting at the city’s convention center. From the New York Times, April 21, 1999

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“Festive ceremonies normally associated with our annual gathering”?????

This is Moses speaking. Moses also asserted that the massacre at Littleton, Colorado shows that every school should have armed guards. Governor of Minnesota and Wrestler Jesse Ventura agreed: “Had there been someone who was armed, in this particular situation, in my opinion, it may have stabilized.” But what does “stabilized” mean to a man who used to run around in tight underpants and throw chairs at people in masks?

Well, why stop at permitting concealed handguns? I think they should be obligatory. Just imagine: you’re at school. A couple of kids come in wearing black trench-coats with furtive expressions on their faces. You gonna wait to see what happens? Hell, no. Case closed. Incident ended. No more anxiety for all those parents sending their kids off to school in the morning– they can trust that everyone is well protected!

Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that your teenage daughter was at school, surrounded by a bunch of illiterate metal morons carrying concealed handguns?

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Think of how convenient that concealed hand-gun might be as well, next time you meet up with those hooligans from that rival football team across town, or that dorky teacher that failed you in Consumer Ed!

Charlton Moses Heston, interrupting his prayer breakfast (I kid you not) also said this: “If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly.”

Errr…. according to the New York Times, Neil Gardner, of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department, was in the school at the time, and was quite armed. In fact, sounds like he took a few shots and then cleared out as quickly as possible.

And I’m ashamed about the prayer breakfast bit. Deeply ashamed. Deeply, deeply, deeply. Everyone reading this should know that many, many Christians abhor violence and guns, and don’t consider a gun show to be a “festive” occasion, regardless of whether or not it opens with a prayer breakfast.

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“Our Whole School Year is Ruined”

“…our whole school year is ruined.” — student Casey Brackley

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I’m never sure what goes through the mind of Charlton Heston at a moment like this.

Charlton Heston is the president of the National Rifle Association. It is the stated aim of the NRA to prevent the slightest legal restriction from being imposed upon the ownership of almost any type of gun. I’m not exaggerating.

A naïve person might think that the NRA doesn’t know where to “draw the line”. The NRA doesn’t think automatic or semi-automatic assault rifles should be outlawed. It doesn’t think you should have to wait a day or two when you apply to get a handgun. It doesn’t think you should be held responsible if you leave a loaded gun sitting around somewhere and a child picks it up and accidentally kills another child. It is quite comfortable with the fact that you can get 30 years in prison for possession of five ounces of marijuana, but not even one day, if you happen to shoot someone who walks up your driveway one evening to ask directions, or if you happen to shoot your own daughter because she decided to hide in a closet and scare you when you came home late one evening. (Yes, both really happened.)

The NRA has a very strong presence in Colorado. Right at this very moment, the Colorado State Legislature is considering a law that would make it legal to carry a concealed handgun. Charlton Heston’s boys—I am not kidding – are already arguing that if only a teacher had had a concealed handgun, he could have put a stop the carnage immediately.

If a manufacturer made a product that was so defective that it caused injury or death, the lawyers would descend like flies and there would be billions of dollars in lawsuits. I’ve never understood why the parents of children who are killed by other children using guns that were stored carelessly or not at all don’t sue.

In the past several years, two children were killed in Pearl, Mississippi, five in Jonesboro, Arkansas, three in Moses Lake, Washington, two in Springfield, Oregon, and three in West Paducah, Kentucky. In almost all cases, they were killed by young males using weapons easily obtained from careless relatives or friends. I have not heard of a single lawsuit launched against the owners of the guns.

The law requires seatbelts in cars, pets on leashes, and litter in bags. For some bizarre reason, Americans have chosen to award special status to the gun. If you dropped it in a park, you could not be charged with littering. If you made the trigger so sensitive that a fart would set it off, you could not be subject to a safety inspection. If you sold it to a half-witted naked dwarf with a noose around his neck, you could not be held liable for anything.

I am also baffled by the police. Whenever a cop is killed in the line of duty, there is a massive funeral, with tributes to the courage, selflessness, determination, and virtue of the slain officers. But the 911 call from Columbine High School came at 11:30. Police arrived within minutes but did not enter the building until 12:30. They proceeded slowly, checking every knapsack and desk for bombs, and did not reach the library, where they found the bodies of the two killers, until 4:00 p.m. Clearly, some of the wounded teenagers died between 11:30 and 4:00 p.m. I don’t understand why they were left lying there, mortally wounded, while the police “secured” the perimeter.

Well, I do understand. The police were operating on the basis of conventional military strategy: you secure the area, quadrant by quadrant, before proceeding to the primary objective. That’s why they were in no hurry to stop the shooting. That’s why the students fleeing the building were practically arrested.

I don’t get it. Where was the courage and determination? There were hundreds of police surrounding the building, including agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Firearms, Tobacco, and Alcohol, yet two children with guns held a school of 1800 hostage. Were they thinking Waco?

When students were able to leave the building, the suddenly powerful and courageous police made them hold their hands up and chased them into a corner or lined them up against a wall so they could be frisked. Did they really think that the killers would try to escape with a gaggle of terrorized cheerleaders? It looked like Attica on television. It bothered me a lot. Some kids dress up in black and come into your school with guns and start shooting the place up. You think you’ve escaped, but then men dressed in black with guns make you put your hands on your heads and line up against a wall. Who decided that this procedure was suitable?

CNN, right after showing us the results of the carnage in Colorado, showed us some of the carnage in Kosovo. It left an indelible impression: man is a killer.

So, Charlton Heston, where are you now? How come you aren’t on CNN telling us that this is all the result of rock music or feminism or homosexual rights or declining morals or communist infiltration, and that guns have nothing to do with it?

Charlton would probably tell us that if only some of the victims had been armed…

And if you could ignore the past and the future and concentrate purely on the moment the two boys appeared in the cafeteria with their weapons and their empty grimaces, you might have a point. And then you would come to your senses and ask yourself if we are better off with everyone having a gun, or with no one having a gun.

How extreme is the NRA? They make it easy for us liberals. We don’t even have to argue that guns should be banned, to get the NRA upset. All we have to do is argue that guns should come with a child-proof lock, like aspirin containers, and that guns should be electronically disabled until the owner has entered his very own personal identification number. The NRA become apoplectic at the very suggestion!

Charlton Heston once played Moses, in the movie “The Ten Commandments”, one of the worst of the big-budget spectacles Hollywood liked to foist on us in the 1950’s and early 60’s. “The Ten Commandments” bore little resemblance to the real story in Genesis, just as the NRA’s vision of reality bears little resemblance to anything but a Hollywood spectacle.

Charlton Heston can shrug. It was just an unfortunate incident. I don’t think God shrugs.

 

“Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun
Nobody’d ever get shot
‘Cause everybody’d have a gun
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun”

– The Arrogant Worms

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The Noble Charlton and His Festive Murder Weapons

Charlton Heston, who played Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s pompous and boring “10 Commandments” has just been elected President of the National Rifle Association.

Charlton Heston claims he was a liberal back in the 1950’s and early 60’s. He was in favor of the civil rights movement. Then it all got out of hand he became an arch-conservative. The NRA hopes the luster of Moses will revive the somewhat sagging fortunes of the NRA, which has lost more than 500,000 members in the past two years.

The NRA only has about 2.5 million members, yet they virtually dictate U.S. policy in regard to gun regulation, because they have the big bucks.  The general population has no regard for the NRA but– here’s the key– Republican Primary voters do.  Once you win the primary, you tone down your virulent pro-death views and act as if you’re a moderate.

The NRA fought tooth and nail against Clinton’s efforts to ban the importation of assault rifles.

I’m not going to waste my time making a case against virtually unrestricted gun sales, which the NRA advocates. Only an idiot would believe we are safer if everyone has a gun than if no one has a gun. Shall I repeat it? Yes, it sounds harsh, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade: only an idiot would believe that we are safer if everyone has a gun than if no one has a gun.

John Sayles recently produced a brilliant movie (“Men with Guns”) that dramatizes better than almost any other what the meaning of a gun is. If Jesus were here today, I think he would say something like “anyone who buys a gun has already committed murder in his heart”.

That said, I am not totally unsympathetic to those who buy a hand-gun out of fear and keep it next to the bed. The truth is, American’s have made their bed: they have made guns readily available to everyone. They have created a sick, ultra-competitive, violent society, and now they have to deal with it. American culture constantly hammers home the message that if you are poor or unemployed or on welfare, you are a valueless parasite and a worthless human being. I sometimes think they will never solve the gun problem– it’s too late.

But the politicization of gun control can be changed.

A few years ago, a man came home to his house, heard a noise in a closet, flung the door open and shot whoever was in there. It turned out to be his own daughter, who died in his arms.

Well, hey, anybody can make a mistake. What bothers me about this case, however, is the fact that the man was never even charged with careless use of a firearm. Similarly, a Japanese student was shot to death when he walked up someone’s driveway to ask for directions to a party. You could, maybe, argue that it wasn’t quite the same thing as first degree murder, but the killer was not even charged with negligence. What if he had run him over instead, while drunk or drugged? Do people actually believe that such negligence is more criminal than firing a handgun at a stranger walking up your driveway before you have the slightest idea of what he wants?

The most offensive irony of all this is the large number of fundamentalist Christians who support these insane gun laws and yet call themselves “pro-life”.

“Moses” should take a few tablets himself and start rereading his scriptures. Or did I miss the verses where Jesus tells his disciples to travel light, preach the good news to the poor, and pack a .45.

The satirical Arrogant Worms had it right:

“Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun?.
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun?
No one would ever get shot,
’cause everybody would have a gun
Wouldn’t it be great if everybody had a gun…”

The sad part is that some people would take those lyrics seriously.