Sniper-Smearing in Hollywood

Clint Eastwood's movie "American Sniper" dominated the box office race over the long Martin Luther King weekend with a gross of $103.5 million. That's more than twice as high as the previous January opening weekend record. It received a rare "A+" CinemaScore from people who saw it, suggesting word-of-mouth will be wildly positive.

This movie wasn't very controversial -- until, that is, the film earned six Oscar nominations and had that amazing weekend at the box office. That's when the hostility erupted from leftist Hollywood types on Twitter, hell-bent on pushing back against the wave.

Radical director Michael Moore slammed American snipers in general on Twitter: "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes." Moore hasn't made a real movie in six years. He sounded almost desperate for attention.

Moore added to his smear campaign on his Facebook page, connecting it to the MLK holiday: "Lots of talk about snipers this weekend (the holiday weekend of a great man, killed by a sniper) ... Hopefully not on this weekend when we remember that man in Memphis, Tennessee, who was killed by a sniper's bullet."

Actor Seth Rogen -- so recently lionized for being at the center of a free-speech fight with North Korea over his comedy "The Interview" -- showed he was no First Amendment hero. "American Sniper kind of reminds me of the (Nazi propaganda) movie that's showing in the third act of Inglorious Basterds." Quentin Tarantino's World War II movie featured a fake film about a German sniper killing Allied soldiers from a clock tower.

This knee-jerk liberal tendency to compare our bravest, most dedicated soldiers to Nazis reminds us of NBC "Parenthood" star Dax Shepard's Twitter rant about the 2012 movie "Act of Valor," a movie that starred actual Navy SEALs. He cracked: "Saw 'Triumph of The Will' tonight, oh wait, I mean 'Act of Valor.' great action."

The network news reported on the furor with alarming "objectivity," considering the nature of the smears, but some network stars praised the movie. CBS morning host Gayle King said, "I really loved the movie and at the end of the day he saved a lot of lives. Chris Kyle saved a lot of lives." On MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski praised the movie, saying veterans told her it was a very accurate reflection on the difficulties veterans and their families go through.

Faced with the hornet's nest they kicked, Moore and Rogen quickly backtracked, lamely claiming their comments were taken out of context, which they weren't. Live by the tweet, die by the tweet. Moore said he wasn't directly referring to the new movie, which is a bald-faced lie.

Rogen protested that he actually liked the film and wrote a new tweet Monday saying he wasn't directly comparing "American Sniper" with a satire of Nazi films. "Big difference between comparing and reminding," he wrote. "Apples remind me of oranges. Can't compare them, though." Earth to Rogen: If you had said Martin Luther King "reminded" you of a communist, you couldn't dig out of it by saying you were just comparing apples and oranges.

Movies raging against the Iraq war have failed, dud after dud after dud. But it should be no shock that American audiences like movies about American heroes, complete with their highs and lows. "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Lone Survivor" opened in the same post-Christmas slot in 2013 and 2014, respectively, and they grossed $95 million and $125 million at the box office.

"American Sniper" is now expected to surpass $200 million in ticket sales, demonstrating that the American public has a lot more gratitude for the sacrifices our troops make for freedom than the loudest mouths in Tinseltown.

It’s not your father’s Hollywood. After WWII, the Army’s most decorated hero, Audie Murphy, was celebrated and welcomed in Hollywood, given a career and an Oscar.

Today, the anti-Audies get the adulation: Morbidly obese, obscenely rich 1%’er like “I ate the whole thing” Moore, Rogen, Maher, the Hanoi bitch, and those of their one-cell ilk.

In the end, though, money still talks. What have those slime balls done for Hollywood lately?

“American Sniper” aside as part of the culture wars, snipers have never been been very popular, even by their own side.

If captured in WWII, particularly on the Russian front, snipers were often summarily executed (but then, so were regular SS).

It wasn’t just the Soviets and Germans. Such executions occurred during our civil war and others. There was a lot of antipathy felt towards them.

Snipers lie in wait, concealed, sometimes in elaborate camouflage (`ghillie suits’) and they can do a lot of damage before getting away.
Much of their training is in setting up for the shot undetected and then escaping.

After seeing your buddies/comrades dropping dead from heard but unseen gun shots and being unable to spot the source, snipers were something like submarines forced to surface—after days or weeks of terror, convoy corvettes and destroyers kept shooting until they sank. Even their own infantry found snipers a little creepy.

So, more facts for the premise of the movie: it takes balls to snipe.
Snipers haven’t always been heroes, but Chris Kyle was the real deal.

This movie is going to easily pass the $200M marker this weekend. I am estimating that the sales domestically will generate about $300M-$350M. the foreign market will easily generate another $100M and the after market sales will bring in another $50M. And...there my friends are low estimates.

This fim cannot be easily measured for revenue flow...just like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, a low budget film made for $5M and then grossed $265M because of its ethnic culture impact. The culture impact of “American Sniper” is that the vast majority of Americans honor, respect and understand the stress and strain our girls & boys go through in defedning us and the nation.

The Academy will make a massive mistake if it does not honor the film as the best and Bradley Cooper as best actor. Clint Eastwood should have be a nominee for best director. The Academy members dhould “Write -In” Eastwood as the best Director, Failure to recognize Mr. Eastwood will further diminish the “Tinsel Town, Obamabot, low life, in the hearts and sould of the majority of the American people!!!

The Lefty Hollywood crowd proves that they are clowns just smart enough to read a script. They are the useful fools who mix up the political poison for the Kool Aid drinkers. In their world, wrong is right and the ends justifies the means. They live in the fantasy world on the Unicorn Farm.

At one time there were those of the opinion that anything other than hand-to-hand combat was dishonorable (look a man in the eye...) So, dropping bombs from an aircraft was less than honorable. Now we drop bombs and kill people with drones and little is said. Things change over time.

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