Posted on 02/22/2005 2:01:25 AM PST by paudio
Clint Eastwood has acknowledged that a plot twist in Million Dollar Baby that raises the issue of euthanasia "does hit you with sort of a left hook," and that when he attempted to raise money to produce the film "nobody seemed enthralled with that." In an interview appearing in the current issue of Time magazine, Eastwood suggested that he was able to keep the plot twist secret because the movie was made "under the radar. Nobody knew we were making it, and nobody gave a damn that we were making it." Eastwood said that he was surprised that it took so long for the matter to become the subject of controversy. Asked about the fact that the attack on the film comes from his "constituency," Eastwood, generally regarded as a Republican conservative, responded, "Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left."
"As we advance in science - and can even (shall we speculate) keep a human head alive without the body - is it our moral obligation to preserve life at all cost because we (being our self-appointed divine judge) believe we have the right (and obligation) to do so.
Is artificially sustained life attempting to be God?
... It is the holier than thou condemnations that I disagree with."
An interesting example of keeping a head alive or not has already presented itself on an earlier thread on FR. The kid who was born with two heads. The second head's eyes blinked, it breathed on the oxygen provided by the kid with the main head's body. They were going to operate to remove the extra head. Now that head, one would say, was alive, at least as long as the main body existed for it to parasite off of. Do you remove the second head? Is that murder? Euthanasia? How's that as a dilemna for you. Now most logical, rational, practical people would say off with the second head; however, I have seen defenses of preserving the 2nd head on this very website. Amazes me the extremes some people will go to in the name of their religious beliefs. They end up speaking for God as if they ARE God, and take it upon themselves to try to force ludicrous moral decisions on others who may think otherwise and want to opt for other choices, while condemning them for those choices.
Doctor Kevorkian, meet Doctor Eastwood.
I receive regular accusations of being a "statist" from one camp to being a "libertarian" from another. What's a boy to do?
Really? Hmmm...no wonder I liked it, then.
My experience is they become more fearful of dieing alone in a nursing home or without family.
Scaring the beegeezus out of the elderly is a liberal classic. Perhaps Hollywood is in its initial stages of a new political agenda.
Conservatives should support euthenasia! It would scare the elderly into Social Security reform. Just think how much they would fear the power of the government then. < /sarcasm>
Dang, it Clint, what happened to you, did you lose your pair in Madison County or what? Well, I guess there is Charlton Heston left and of course, the old standby, John Wayne.
Pray for W and Our Troops
I think that was what he was saying.
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left."
This article summed it up for me a few weeks back:
(Reprinted from NewsMax.com)
'Million Dollar Baby' Is a Neo-Nazi Movie
Dr. Ted Baehr Saturday, Feb. 12, 2005
The forerunner of "Million Dollar Baby" was the very entertaining Nazi movie "I Accuse," which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and was the propaganda that Dr. Goebbels used to convince the German people to switch their vote from "vehemently opposed to the holocaust" to over 60 percent in favor of so-called "mercy killing." In fact, "I Accuse" is a very subtle film that inspired the killing of millions of people.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels was the National Socialist (Nazi) propaganda minister from 1933 to 1945. He exploited radio, press, cinema and theater in Germany to destroy the Jews, evangelical Christians, handicapped Germans and other groups. In 1994, the Discovery Channel aired "Selling Murder," an important documentary investigating how Goebbels used mass media to influence the German people to accept the mass murder of human beings. The documentary shows that at a time when a majority of German people rejected mercy killings (a euphemism for murder), Goebbels produced the movie "I Accuse," an emotive feature film about a beautiful, intelligent woman who is dying of an incurable disease and begs to be allowed to commit suicide.
After the movie was released, a majority of German people said they had changed their minds and now supported mercy killings. After a few more of Goebbels' films about invalids and handicapped people, the German people became strong believers in the efficacy of mass mercy killings.
While the attempted annihilation of Jews by the National Socialists is well documented, the atrocities did not stop with the Jewish race. The main focus of "Selling Murder" is a group that has been somewhat overlooked: the mentally and physically ill of Germany. In 1939, Hitler ordered the killing of the mentally and physically disabled, labeling them as "life unworthy of life."
His reasoning was that the cost of keeping them alive in asylums and hospitals was too great. The real reason, however, stemmed from the government's determination to eliminate any threat to its idea of producing a superior race.
"Selling Murder" is must viewing for every moral person concerned about the use of the mass media of entertainment to influence societal behavior. Similarities between the National Socialist use of film and "Million Dollar Baby" are frightening.
In a January 27, 2005 article in the Los Angeles Times, Marcie Roth, executive director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, a national advocacy group with 13,000 members, was quoted as saying that "this narrative development spreads a socially irresponsible message. The movie is saying ‘death is better than disability.'"
The Los Angeles Times continues: "The group contends that the movie is part of a larger bias Eastwood holds against the disabled. A press release on its website carries the headline, ‘Eastwood Continues Disability Vendetta with "Million Dollar Baby." Labeling the movie a ‘brilliantly executed attack,' it also details a 1997 lawsuit in which a disabled woman sued the actor-director, saying he did not provide handicapped-accessible restroom facilities at the Carmel, Calif., resort he owned."
The press release goes on to divulge the movie's plot. "Our responsibility is to the half-million people with spinal cord injuries, not to moviegoers or moviemakers," Roth said.
Rush Limbaugh blasted "Million Dollar Baby" as a "million dollar euthanasia movie." Critic Michael Medved told USA Today that he had revealed the plot twist because "there are competing moral demands that come into the job of a movie critic. We have a moral and fairness obligation to not spoil movies. On the other hand, our primary moral obligation is to tell the truth."
Medved, who says he "hated this movie," also eemarked, "They didn't want to tell people what it is [about] because no one would come." Jewish columnist Don Feder says that "the screenplay could have been smuggled out of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's prison cell."
Furthermore, my wife has been on chemotherapy for ten years and is in great pain. California is now considering a so-called "doctor-assisted suicide" law. The connection is too horrible.
Love should never trump conscience. Murder is not excusable, even when it is art. And the renowned director of "Million Dollar Baby" is not conservative (contrary to the witless commentary in the Los Angeles Times), except in the sense that the National Socialists were branded as conservative. In truth, real Christian conservatives support life, not murder.
You forgot to add....that he impregnates every woman he's ever known.
He's no conservative...he's a passionately fornicating conservative.
And, if you like the spaghetti westerns as I do, movies like "For a Fist Full of Dollars" and "Once Upon a Time in the West" are most enjoyable.
You are not an existential coffee house brat if you have sense to do a reality check at freerepublic. Unforgiven was a movie made to order for Hollywood's conventional thinkers, the folks who think that the west was not won, that heroism is a cliche, that truth doesn't matter. Unforgiven was a movie for people who have lost their wits and their faith. Listen and learn.
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