‘Uncle Tom’ Blacklisted by Hollywood
Hollywood has blacklisted the documentary “Uncle Tom.” (Photo: AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images/Getty Images)
Actor Ben Affleck once explained why he found it difficult to watch Republican actors on screen.
“It’s … hard,” explained Affleck, “to get people to suspend disbelief. … When I watch a guy I know is a big Republican, part of me thinks, I probably wouldn’t like this person if I met him, or we would have different opinions. That [expletive] fogs the mind when you should be paying attention and be swept into the illusion.”
This likely explains why “Uncle Tom,” the documentary on which I worked as executive producer, gets no love from the lists of best documentaries of 2020.
A critical and financial success by any measure, the gross earnings of “Uncle Tom,” so far, exceed seven times its cost and counting. It recently became available on iTunes, Amazon Prime, and Walmart online, as well as on store shelves.
The Left has declared war on our culture, but we should never back down, nor compromise our principles. Learn more now >>
Former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson recently wrote about the film’s snub with the headline: “Censored: Larry Elder’s ‘Uncle Tom’ film.” But the Hollywood trade publications Variety and Hollywood Reporter? Silence.
The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass, a political writer, wrote a piece headlined “What Frightens the American Left: Larry Elder’s New Documentary ‘Uncle Tom.’” Kass writes:
Is there anything more frightening to the American political left and their high media priests of the woke world than Black Americans who think for themselves and refuse to kneel? … And so, they are demeaned by Democratic politicians and either ignored outright or marginalized as race traitors, sellouts and ‘Uncle Toms.’ It’s a way to humiliate them, shut them up, and cancel them. And the party’s handmaidens of the media play along. But that’s one reason why Larry Elder’s stunning new film, ‘Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative,’ is so important, especially now.
Each of the following three year-end lists of “best” documentary films of 2020 ignores “Uncle Tom,” despite an IMDb viewer rating higher than any on the lists—in most cases, far higher. (IMDb, the Internet Movie Database website, assigns films a rating, from one to 10, based on viewers’ reviews.)
First, Polygon’s list: 1) “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” 7.5 (IMDb rating); 2) “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets,” 7.3; 3) “Welcome to Chechnya,” 7.9; 4) “Collective,” 8.4; 5) “You Don’t Nomi,” 6.7; 6) “The Go-Go’s,” 7.5; 7) “Mucho Mucho Amor,” 7.2; 8) “I Am Greta,” 5.2; 9) “Mayor,” 7.5; 10) “City Hall,” 7.3.
Next, Paste Magazine’s top 25 list, listed alphabetically, without rankings, contains some of the same films, but many others are not on the first list. The new additions are: “76 Days,” 7.1; “David Byrne’s American Utopia,” 8.3; “The Annotated Field Guide of Ulysses S. Grant,” N/A; “Boys State,” 7.7; “City So Real,” 7.4; “Crip Camp,” 7.8; “Epicentro,” 6.8; “Feels Good Man,” 7.6; “Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds,” 7.0; “The Grand Bizarre,” 6.7; “Heimat Is a Space in Time,” 6.8; “The History of the Seattle Mariners,” N/A; “I Walk on Water,” 6.7; “Malni—Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore,” 6.2; “The Metamorphosis of Birds,” 7.8; “The Painter and the Thief,” 7.6; “Sunless Shadows,” 7.3; “Time,” 7.2; “Vick,” 7.4.
Finally, there’s IndieWire, an independent film website whose 2020 “best of” list (unranked and listed alphabetically) also ignores “Uncle Tom.” The films on its “best of” but not already listed above include: “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” 6.3; “Athlete A”, 7.7; “Gunda,” 7.4; “The Mole Agent,” 7.6; “The Social Dilemma,” 7.7.
Not a single film on these three lists achieved an IMDb rating of 8.5 or more. Not one. “Collective” registered the highest at 8.4. How did “Uncle Tom,” again, shut out on all three lists, rate on IMBD? 8.9. Not a typo: 8.9.
Finally, of the last 10 Oscar winners for Best Documentary, none has a higher IMDb rating than “Uncle Tom.” None. Only one matched its 8.9 rating. See you at the Academy Awards?
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It’s Fake News That the 1776 Commission Report Whitewashes America’s Past
The unanimously approved conclusions of the 1776 Commission’s report focus on the historical challenges of two founding documents and civic renewal. Pictured: The Liberty Bell located in downtown Philadelphia. (Photo: Drbueller/Getty Images)
The newly formed President’s Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.)
The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents, and the need for civic renewal.
The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective. It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials, and past public servants.
>>> Listen to Carol Swain’s interview about the commission on “The Daily Signal Podcast”:
Whether because the report was issued by a Donald Trump-appointed commission, or because the conclusions questioned the controversial and flawed New York Times-sponsored 1619 Project, there was almost immediate criticism from the left.
Yet at any other age than the divisive present, the report would not have been seen as controversial.
First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787. It emphasized how unusual for the age were the Founders’ commitments to political freedom, personal liberty, and the natural equality endowed by our creator—all the true beginning of the American experiment.
The commission reminded us that the Founders were equally worried about autocracy and chaos. So they drafted checks and balances to protect citizens from both authoritarianism, known so well from the British Crown, and the frenzy of sometimes wild public excess.
The report repeatedly focuses on both the ideals of the American founding and the centuries-long quest to live up to them. It notes the fragility of such a novel experiment in constitutional republicanism, democratic elections, and self-government—especially during late 18th-century era of war and factionalism.
The report does not whitewash the continuance of many injustices after 1776 and 1787—in particular chattel slavery concentrated in the South, and voting reserved only for free males.
Indeed, the commission explains why and how these wrongs were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of our founding documents. So it was natural that these disconnects would be addressed, even fought over, and continually resolved—often over the opposition of powerful interests who sought to reinvent the declaration and the Constitution into something that they were not.
Two of the most widely referenced Americans in the report are Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. Both argued, a century apart, for the moral singularity of the U.S. Constitution. Neither wished to replace the Founders’ visions; both instead demanded that they be fully realizedand enforced.
The report details prior ideological and political challenges to the Constitution as we approach America’s 250th birthday. Some were abjectly evil, such as the near-century-long insistence that the enslavement of African Americans was legal—an amorality that eventually led to more than 600,000 Americans being killed during a Civil War to banish it.
Some ideologies, such as fascism and communism, were easily identifiable as inimical to our principles. Both occasionally won adherents in times of economic depression and social strife before they were defeated and discredited abroad.
Perhaps more controversially, the commission identified other challenges, such as continued racism, progressivism, and contemporary identity politics. The report argued how and why all those who insisted that race might become a basis from which to discriminate against entire groups of people were at odds with the logic of the declaration.
Historically, progressivism assumed that human nature is malleable. With enough money and power, Americans supposedly can be improved to accept more paternalistic government, usually to be run by technocrats. Often they sought to curb the liberties of the individual, under the guise of modernist progress and greater efficiency.
The commission was no more sympathetic to the current popularity of identity politics or reparatory racial discrimination. It argued that the efforts to insist that race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and gender define who we are, rather than remain incidental in comparison to our natural and shared humanity, will lead to a dangerous fragmentation of American society.
Finally, the commission offered the unifying remedy of renewed civic education. Specifically, it advocates far more teaching in our schools of the declaration and the Constitution, and other documents surrounding their creation.
It most certainly did not suggest that civic education and American history ignore or contextualize past national shortcomings. Again, the report argued that our lapses should be envisioned as obstacles to fulfilling the aspirations of our founding.
The commission may be short-lived with the change of administrations, given that it was born in the chaos of the divisive present. President Joe Biden reportedly planned to terminate the commission through an executive order.
But any fair critic can see that the report’s unifying message is that we are a people blessed with a singular government and history, that self-critique and moral improvement are innate to the American founding and spirit, and that America never had to be perfect to be both good and far better than the alternatives.
(C)2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Trump’s 1776 Commission slams ‘destructive scholarship’ in final report
President Trump’s 1776 Commission, formed to promote “patriotic education,” on Monday released a final report touted by the White House as offering “a definitive chronicle of the American founding.”
The 45-page report slams “destructive scholarship” that it says misrepresents the history of slavery and racial discrimination.
“States and school districts should reject any curriculum that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist propaganda, or factional ideologies that demean America’s heritage, dishonor our heroes, or deny our principles,” the report says.
Trump created the commission last year to counter denunciations of the Founding Fathers during national anti-police brutality protests. The report was released less than 48 hours before Trump leaves office.
The document says, “Deliberately destructive scholarship shatters the civic bonds that unite all Americans. It silences the discourse essential to a free society by breeding division, distrust, and hatred among citizens. And it is the intellectual force behind so much of the violence in our cities, suppression of free speech in our universities, and defamation of our treasured national statues and symbols.”
Trump established the commission in part in response to a national movement to remove or deface the statues of slaveholders or colonial figures. Trump critics, however, vowed to resist his push to put a rosier spin on US history.
The new report slams the current education of students, saying, “Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for American principles and history alike, in the process and historical truth, shames Americans by highlighting only the sins of their ancestors, and teaches claims of systemic racism that can only be eliminated by more discrimination, is an ideology intended to manipulate opinions more than educate minds,” the report says.
The report says that the US is exceptionable because, “No one is above the law” — a cliche recently applied by President-elect Joe Biden to Trump after his supporters stormed the Capitol and disrupted certification of the election.
“Patriotic education must have at its center a respect for the rule of law, including the Declaration and the Constitution, so that we have what John Adams called ‘a government of laws, and not of men,’” the report says.
The report argues against presenting slavery as an indelible sin of the Founding Fathers.
“The most common charge levelled against the founders, and hence against our country itself, is that they were hypocrites who didn’t believe in their stated principles, and therefore the country they built rests on a lie. This charge is untrue, and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric,” the report says, adding: “Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil.”
David Barton
1 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
2 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
barton videos
4 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton
—-
February 10, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life.
Lillian Kwon quoted somebody that I respect a lot in her article, “Christianity losing out to Secular Humanism?” :
“Most of the founding fathers of this nation … built the worldview of this nation on the authority of the Word of God,” Ken Ham said. “Because of that, there have been reminders in this culture concerning God’s Word, the God of creation.”
___________
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture , but the issue of the founding fathers’ views on religion got one of the biggest responses.
It is true that 29 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had degrees with Bible Colleges or Seminaries and these men we know were God-fearing Protestants. This means they had a biblical view of man with an understanding of our sin nature and this led them to come up with a limited government with many checks and balances. They had a strong belief in the afterlife and in future punishments and rewards. They also encouraged Christianity and were not hostile to religion. However, they did not set up a Christian Theocracy but wanted freedom of religion.
People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding principles that made our country great. We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes President Obama made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Here is a clip discussing the founders and what their religious views were.
Here is some comments from our debate on the Arkansas Times Blog in July of 2013:
Olddoc read Jefferson’s own words given 237 years ago:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights…”
______________
I want to go where the evidence leads. AMERICANS UNITED Rob Boston misled several leaders into believing that David Barton fabricated quotes and attributed them to the founders and when I confronted him about that he just laughed and said he was glad that Barton was experiencing problems because of the article that Boston wrote even though Boston himself admitted to me that he knew that Barton did not fabricate the quotes but just got them from secondary sources.
https://thedailyhatch.org/2012/06/18/did-da…
________________________
In the advertisement from the Freedom from Religion Foundation you have a quote from John Adams but these quotes below were omitted. By the way these quotes were so powerful that I emailed and mailed them to the White House and here is a copy of the letter at this link
https://thedailyhatch.org/2013/04/03/open-l…
JOHN ADAMS:
SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; JUDGE; DIPLOMAT; ONE OF TWO SIGNERS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS; SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.1
The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost. . . . There is no authority, civil or religious – there can be no legitimate government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words damnation.2
Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell.3
The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.4
Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. . . . What a Eutopia – what a Paradise would this region be!5
I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.6
1.Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington D. C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIII, p. 292-294. In a letter from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813.(Return)
2. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), Vol. X, p. 254, to Thomas Jefferson on April 19, 1817. (Return)
3. John Adams, Works, Vol. III, p. 421, diary entry for July 26, 1796. (Return)
4. John Adams, Works, Vol. II, pp. 6-7, diary entry for February 22, 1756. (Return)
5. John Adams, Works, Vol. X, p. 85, to Thomas Jefferson on December 25, 1813. (Return)
6. John Adams and John Quincy Adams, The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams, Adrienne Koch and William Peden, editors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 292, John Quincy Adams to John Adams, January 3, 1817.
________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
__________________
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The Founding Fathers views concerning Jesus, Christianity and the Bible (Part 1, John Adams)
There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life. Lillian Kwon quoted somebody […]
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