(Spoiler notice: This is political in tone. For anyone who doesn't like when I am political, turn back now or forever hold your tongue and rolling eyeballs.)
I have been following the Anti-Israel thing happening at the Toronto International Film Fest with great interest. For one reason, I came from Toronto and I love to keep up with what is going on there -- particularly when it is pathetic and parochial because then I feel even better about not living there. I also like to think quietly (well, sort of) in my head: "Ah ha! I told you so!" That's for all the Jews in Toronto who like to tell me how tolerant Toronto -- and Canada by extension -- is.
But when I read the Toronto Star today I just decided that I had had enough of this stupid Israel bashing.
I always thought that film was about expressing one's self. I always thought it was an art form. (Don't start me on the "then what the heck are all those cheesy Hollywood movies doing?" I don't know.)
My sister (oh, she is going to luvvv this) has an MA in film from NYU. During the years that she studied film I watched some pretty bizarre little, super-8 film vignettes on my parents' living room walls. When they were over, my parents would just sit there so impressed with my sister's brilliance and I just sat there wondering what the heck I had just seen. How long can you watch a sad looked woman smoke a cigarette in her rundown kitchenette? (Answer: a long time)
Apparently I was not nearly as deep or broadminded as the rest of them. Either way, over the years, I have learned to see film more through my sister's eyes and as a result I have expectations of film and film people.
However, has-beens like Jane Fonda and Danny Glover (well documented friend of super anti-semite Mel Gibson) do not see it this way. Neither does Naomi Klein but we excommunicated her from the tribe years ago and she is just one of those all-around angry-intellectual types who thinks that her mental calisthenics make her better than other people.
I have no comment on film-makers John Greyson and Elle Flanders because I know their type -- lefties with little or no real information who simply "think" the world should be a certain way and without an ounce of on-the-ground facts to back up their thoughts, simply take a position. And of course it's an anti-Israel position -- those are the most popular positions to take. EVERYONE is taking that position. It's de rigeur.
Today Flanders commented in the Star that she wasn't opposed to the film makers but rather to what the Israeli government is doing. That's nice Elle you stupid shit. What has the government got to do with Israeli film makers? That's the most pathetic excuse I have heard to date.
She went on to say that in focusing on Israel, the film festival was ignoring the Palestinians. Okay Elle ... I guess it has to be spelled out for you. Either the spotlight was on Israel or it wasn't. And if it was, then the Palestinian Authority is not Israel -- unless you are in bed with Abu Mazen et al. Your comments would be much more palatable if you actually knew what you were talking about. You can't suck and blow at the same time!!!!
So much for film as expression or art. All bets are off if it comes to Tel Aviv or Israel. The film festival could show films made my Idi Amin, Hitler, Mugabe and the likes for days on end and there would be no outpouring of anger. But show a film made by an Israeli and it must be bad. The biggest joke is that most of the Israeli film makers are more left leaning than the average Israeli. They are more like the people blacklisting them than they are like me!
Therefore, I have decided to make a blacklist of my own. Unfortunately I cannot publish it here because it includes pretty much all the people on earth -- excluding the citizens of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. Brits are on my list. Frenchies are on my list up the ying yang. Mexicans and Venezuelans galore. The so-called neutral Swiss are there. So are all the ever-so-regretful Germans. The Morrocans, the Greeks, the list goes on and on and on. Oh, and of course, the Canucks. Thought I forgot them, didn't you? I didn't. They are the people who started this whole little pointless mess to begin with.
Ah ha! I told you so.
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