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Glenn Beck crowd: Not so white as advertised

Anita Crane — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:36:55 +0000

Yours truly reported from Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally on August 28. It was ENORMOUS – probably 500,000 people.

Al Sharpton had announced he would lead “progressive” protesters to the Lincoln Memorial and “reclaim the dream” of Martin Luther King. To the best of my knowledge, no one spotted him there.

After all, Alveda King, daughter of Rev. A.D. King and niece of Rev. Martin Luther King, spoke at Beck’s rally. Click on the second or third link for her best line.

Anyway, here’s my eyewitness account to WND weekend editor Drew Zahn: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=196633

August 29, my analytical piece with insightful interviews: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=197029.

Update Monday, August 30 - thanks Matt Drudge for linking to the story: Crowd at Beck rally was racially diverse…

Were you there? Share your experience via comments

Christ, Obama and America

Anita Crane — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:42:10 +0000

These days, many Christians in America are downhearted. No wonder! In addition to economic distress and news of terrorism, the presidential election revealed more about our countrymen and women than it did about Barack Hussein Obama. To complicate matters, certain “conservative” pundits are preaching that anyone who cares about human rights ought to just shut-up and despair.

However, stay with me here because not all is lost. During this beautiful season of Advent, let us rejoice that the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity bestowed us with the utmost dignity, since we are created in God’s image with intellect and free will. Yes, Jesus Christ Almighty elevated human nature by coming into this world as a vulnerable infant and a Christmas carol by poor American slaves sets the tone:

Sweet little Jesus boy

Born long time ago
Sweet little holy child
We didn’t know who You was
Didn’t know You’d come to save us Lord
To take our sins away
Our eyes was blind, we couldn’t see
We didn’t know Who You was.

The purity of that song makes me wonder what its humble composers would think of their descendants’ politics. According to Politico, 96% of black Americans voted for Obama. Usually I am skeptical of exit polls, but considering what I witnessed close to home, that figure is probably accurate. Minorities are the majority in my Virginia neighborhood – where no one displayed campaign signs until this year – and they were all for Obama. In fact, one of our leading black seniors had never voted, but he finally registered specifically for Obama. Yet none of the Obama fans who spoke with me had investigated the candidate’s policies.

My Baptist neighbor and friend Lisa is an amazing mom who strives to raise her sons on truth. Nevertheless, one evening Lisa said, “Anita, I love you, but I hate Sarah Palin.” Lisa faithfully listens to radio host Michael Baisden, whose lowbrow campaigning for Obama included absurd attacks on Gov. Palin. For example, I heard him mocking Palin’s latest pregnancy and conducting a poll on whether conservatives would tolerate her unwed pregnant daughter if she was black. I explained to Lisa that Baisden’s ploys were racist and insulting, especially since some conservatives are black. I told her that my primary reason to vote against Sen. Obama was his extreme abortion agenda. But Baisden won her over – at least temporarily. Lisa put an Obama bumper sticker on her car and a campaign sign in her front yard.

To the contrary, on Election Day, one of my dearest friends proclaimed that he had “voted Republican straight down the ticket.” Like Lisa, B.B. is black. When we first met at work ten years ago, B.B. was an irreligious “pro-choice” liberal.

Five years later, we became close friends when a series of tragedies began to strike his family. First, his beloved mother, the classy matriarch, died. Later, B.B. invited me to the home of his bedridden father, where we all discussed the meaning of life and eternity. Soon thereafter, B.B. lost his job, then his father. Then again, as God would have it, B.B.’s next boss was Ken: a noble Christian, husband and father of a child with Down syndrome.

Meanwhile, one of B.B.’s nephews was born with serious disabilities; then the children’s father died. Thus, B.B. lives with his sister and nephews, and works three jobs producing Christian radio in order to raise the two boys as his own. Of course, this honorable man inspires me.

Thankfully, I know many champions for the downtrodden. Last year, I introduced both Lisa and B.B. to the legacy of stem cell scientist James Sherley, a Baptist who suffered racism and further discrimination for defending embryonic persons, regardless of race.

Why did B.B. vote against Obama? For starters, now he is Christian. He was impressed with Sarah Palin’s credentials, her faith and her joyful witness as the mother of a sweet baby son with Down’s. B.B. also said, “Ken had a great effect on me. I decided that his child with Down syndrome deserves to live. I decided that my disabled nephew deserves to live. I researched stem cell science and read Dr. Sherley’s article True Liberty and Justice for All Ages.” Bottom line, B.B. declared, “I decided that I am pro-life.”

Just before Thanksgiving on a cold day, one of my favorite cashiers was wearing an Obama campaign fleece jacket as she rang up my merchandise. Therefore, I quietly asked her, “My dear friend, do you know what Obama stands for?” As I expected, she did not know his abortion record or his plans. To my surprise, she wanted more info. “Charity” is this black woman’s name and I like to think that it’s more fitting than the Obama fleece that she wore. After all, charity is the love that unites us to God.

I mentioned Charity’s request to Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, who recommended her own article “Someone Has to Say It … Christians Who Voted for Obama Voted Against the Word of God.” After Charity read two Gardner editorials and my interviews with Latino star Eduardo Verastegui on his pro-life witness and videos about Obama, she said, “We have to talk.”

Pastor Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org, said, “Barack Obama’s longstanding relationship with [the abortion chain] Planned Parenthood is easily documented and now can’t be clouded by media bias, economy woes and the notoriety of America’s first black president. The election is over. We now have a face to put on black genocide in America.

“During the general election cycle to deceive voters, primarily evangelicals, Obama’s campaign set up a website ‘Matthew 25 Network.’ On this site Barack Obama claims to be pro-life. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Childress described abortionists treating their victims like trash, thereby demonstrating the hypocrisy of Obama luring Christians with Matthew 25. In that chapter of the Bible, Jesus, the Lord of Lords and Kings of Kings, warns us about His final judgment on all nations and every soul: “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. Then he [the Lord and King] shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Douay-Rheims Bible)

In His love letter of John 14, Christ tells Judas, “If any one love me, he will keep my word.” He also commands us, “Let not your heart be troubled: nor let it be afraid … Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do, he also shall do: and greater than these shall he do.”

Although few of us are as meek as the slaves who composed “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” we can sing their hymn, pray for mercy and help our neighbors to understand that duty calls. As the song goes:

You done told us how
We’s a tryin’
Master, You done showed us how
Even when You’s dyin’
Just seems like we can’t do right
Look how we treated You
But please, Sir, forgive us Lord
We didn’t know it was You.


Copyright © 2008 Anita Crane. All rights reserved. This story may not be rewritten, republished or otherwise redistributed without prior written authority by the author. Published by RenewAmerica.us, SperoNews.com and DailyEstimate.com.



The woman behind ‘An American Carol’
Anita Crane — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:44:45 +0000
By Anita Crane

Published 10/3/2008 12:08:42 AM
 
 
 



Myrna Sokoloff and David Zucker.

If you couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs or Brian De Palma’s Redacted, consider treating yourself to An American Carol, which opens in movie theaters today. This gutsy satire by David Zucker challenges Michael Moore, Rosie O’Donnell, Barack Obama, the ACLU, the Recreate ’68 movement, the Hollywood establishment and even jihadists, but that’s not the half of it. After all, this Zucker comedy was sophisticated by Republican Myrna Sokoloff.
How did this Republican woman become a screenwriter and executive producer in Hollywood? Well, that was not so easy.
Myrna Sokoloff comes from a conservative Republican family in Connecticut. Yet when she moved to New York City and took a political job during Mayor Ed Koch’s administration, she found a one-party system as she represented Manhattan Borough President Andrew Stein in real estate development to the Jewish community.
In 1986, Sokoloff worked on ABC’s star-studded July 4 TV special Liberty Weekend and wanted to switch her career, so the producers told her that she should move to L.A. There, Sokoloff sometimes reverted to politics, such as working on Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign and as a staffer for Senator Barbara Boxer.
Sokoloff was a Democrat because she thought the DNC represented the downtrodden and the poor, especially women. “However,” she said, “as time went on, it seemed to me that the only [women's] issue became abortion.” Sokoloff deeply loves her family, especially her 17 nieces and nephews. Therefore, she became disturbed that Democrats and liberal women’s groups belittle moms who stay home to raise their families.
As President Bill Clinton was being impeached, Sokoloff suffered another rude awakening. “I became incensed,” she stressed. “If a Republican president had done what he did, the women’s groups would be out there protesting and saying he had victimized a young woman–but it was all about being Democrat.”
Shunned by the liberal sisterhood for her insights, suddenly Sokoloff was lonely. In solitude, she began listening to Rush Limbaugh because he made her laugh. Indeed, reality was over the top, so why not try to cure certain ills with comedy?
By 2004, the master of questionable taste and former Hollywood Democrat David Zucker befriended Sokoloff through the Republican Jewish Coalition. (Zucker’s long list of hits includes Airplane!, all three Naked Gun flicks, Ruthless People, and Scary Movie 3 and 4.) Appalled by the far-left reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, he and Sokoloff produced political TV spots, starting with the Club for Growth’s “Kerry Flip-Flop.”
Over the course of four years, Sokoloff and Zucker then wrote An American Carol with liberal Lewis Friedman,* who was “willing to sell his soul” for longtime friend David.
An American Carol is loosely–and they mean loosely–based on the Dickens masterpiece A Christmas Carol. As Grandpa (Leslie Nielsen) celebrates Independence Day, his grandchildren plead for a patriotic story. Grandpa takes them to MooveAlong.org’s annual Hollywood extravaganza, where indie filmmaker Michael Malone (Kevin Farley) is awarded for his boisterous ode to Cuba’s commie “health care,” but depressed because Die, You American Pigs! is a box-office bomb. Consequently, Malone cannot finance his feature debut, Fascist America, or muster much enthusiasm for his latest cause celebre to abolish the Fourth of July tradition. When a terrorist cell leader and his sidekicks (take that literally) come upon Malone, whose America-bashing documentaries are intensely popular in the Middle East, they see him as Allah-sent and tempt him with $10 million to make their next suicide-bomber recruitment video.
After Malone refuses to attend his nephew Josh’s (Travis Schuldt) July 4 family picnic, the ghosts of JFK (Chriss Anglin), General George Patton (Kelsey Grammer), George Washington (Jon Voight) and the Angel of Death (Trace Adkins) offer him redemption.
Most scenes are fearlessly funny slaps at leftwing and jihadist lunacy, but they are cringe-free laughs because providence protects the open-souled. Still, two of Sokoloff’s favorite parts are seriously personal.
For example, Malone’s nephew is a Navy officer scheduled for Iraq and that character was inspired by Sokoloff’s own nephew, Josh. “I went to the real Josh’s graduation for boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois and there were 700 young people graduating, all standing in their white uniforms, and it was so inspiring,” she recalled. “The commander who was welcoming them said, ‘You are sailors now. You are all sailors in the most powerful navy in the history of the world and we are the only thing that stands between the terrorists and our families and our friends.’ It just sent goose bumps all over me!”
In the movie, Malone sees his nephew depart for combat. Sokoloff wrote that scene to honor all American military families. The day after Zucker cut the scene, he told Sokoloff that it choked him up because the character Josh represents everything good about America. I never expected to fight tears during a Zucker comedy, but Sokoloff got me too.
There is also the matter (or should I say immaterial?) of faith in An American Carol. Sokoloff earned her degree in religion and philosophy at Boston University. “And,” she said, “I also have a master’s degree in Jewish education from Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. So there’s a whole other part of me that you didn’t know about.”
Thus, another one of her favorite scenes is Michael Malone’s encounter with George Washington, who tells him, “When you meet the Almighty, only truth will do.”
“We always had the whole scene in there,” said Sokoloff. “It’s a serious scene, there’s no way around it and David always had a problem with having this serious scene in a comedy. So we agonized over how to make it work. Actually, Jon Voight loved the scene and he added his own lines–the ones about freedom of speech and religion. When Washington takes Malone to St. Paul’s Chapel, it sets up Malone for the fact that he will face his own death… And unless you believe in your own death, you have no chance of redeeming yourself.”
I have a few reservations about An American Carol, most importantly the point where the ghost of Patton tells Malone that we have to give up some freedom for safety. I discussed this with Sokoloff, explaining that various acts of Congress and executive orders unconstitutionally license the U.S. government to invade our privacy, and arrest and prosecute individuals without cause. Related creepy developments include widespread video cameras and airport photo scanners that penetrate travelers’ clothing.
Sokoloff replied, “It is a concern, but in this time when things are dangerous–during the times when we were at war, under Lincoln, under Roosevelt, rights were curtailed for the safety of everyone–and I don’t mind being searched if it’s going to catch somebody with a bomb who would get on a plane with me and 300 other people.”
All things considered, An American Carol is thoroughly entertaining, just when we need some good laughs–and reason for hope.
Published by The American Spectator. Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved by author and publisher. 
*After publication of this article, Sokoloff explained that Friedman joined the screenwriting team shortly before the movie was filmed.