You won’t believe the thrill that ran through this town Tuesday.
No, I don’t mean the polls that show B. Hussein Jr., pulling ahead of Hillary in Iowa, although they were more than welcome. For months now, A-list scribes and rich TV showrunners, like myself, had been forced to pony up to the Arkansas Traveler every time she came to town, like she was some kind of shakedown artist, or something.
We’re all really rooting for the Punahou Kid, of course, with his heartwarming story of growing up a sharecropper’s son at the oldest and most exclusive private prep school west of the Mississippi, but polls were polls and nobody loves a front-runner like the champions of the little guy. But now that Herself’s no longer leading, we can once again show that West L.A. is the bastion of racial equality we like to think it is, and so we’re shelling out to Obambi whatever we’ve got after we make our $10,000-a-month mortgage nut and alimony payments. Hey, we are on strike.
Nor was it the news that the WGA is going back to the bargaining table on Monday, after two whole weeks of sticking it to The Man. I’m writing this on my Crackberry from my own personal picket line at the strategic intersection of Wilshire and San Vicente, where I’m often mistaken for a homeless person or one of those millions of Vietnam vets suffering from Agent-Orange-induced schizophrenia; either way, it’s working out great for me. One side of my sign says, “On Strike, and the other, which I flash when there’s no cameras around, says, “Will do punch-up for food.” It’s hard out here for a pimp.
No, the big news that has everybody jazzed is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant cert to District of Columbia v. Heller — you know, the one where an overreaching D.C. Circuit Court fascistically ruled that residents of the District — mostly poor, and non-white — are in fact covered by the Second Amendment and thus by the entire U.S. Constitution. Can you believe that? Talk about legislating from the bench!
Well, thank the deity of your own personal belief system, or none at all, for Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg is all I can say — if she’s not snoozing on the bench during oral arguments, she and her compadres on the Left (“Fighting the Power Since 1776”) will drop-kick this sucker back across the Potomac and set off a wave of state-legislative rewrites not seen since Roe v. Wade. And America will be a safer, saner nation because of it.
Everybody knows that the Second Amendment is all about state militias — you know, like the one Chimpy McDeath weaseled out of, as those Texas Air National Guard memos Dan Rather got a hold of so convincingly show. It’s obvious that the Framers, in their infinite, if dead-white-male, wisdom accurately foresaw the day when some fools unfamiliar with Derrida and deconstructionist theory might think “shall not be infringed” actually meant “shall not be infringed,” and so they cleverly inserted that confusing subordinate clause about the militias. They also counted on the fact that no one would know either the 18th-century meaning of “well-regulated” or the meaning of the word, “State.” Geniuses all, even if some of them were slaveholders!
No, as any sensible citizen must agree, the Second Amendment protects only two classes of people, the weekend warriors of the state militias and… us!
Because, let’s face it, where would Hollywood be if you disarmed us? Back when I was a beginning screenwriter, my rabbi (former exec at Paramount and 20th, broke now, just divorced from his 28-year-old fourth wife; you know him) took me aside and said, ”Dave, when you’re stuck in a scene — and, from the looks of you, that’ll be pretty often — just have a man enter the room with a gun. Works every time.”
No truer words were ever spoken. Action-movie characters not only keep and bear arms, they use ‘em, most of the time with impunity, laying waste to whole cities in the time it takes the cops to get the hookers’ heads out of their laps and finish their coffee and donuts. In our films, just about every third guy or gal is packing heat, and when some say we’re “glorifying violence,” we simply reply that, on the contrary, we’re making cautionary tales about the clear and present danger of an irresponsibly armed citizenry. No Country for Old Men is what our country would be like if anyone were crazy enough to take the Second Amendment at face value.
Besides, there’s nothing hotter than a smokin’ hot chick wearing only her underwear and brandishing an Uzi. Just thinking about it makes me feel very… comfortable.
So listen up, you Supes — yeah, I’m talking to you, Tony Kennedy: Grab a mitt and get in the game. For too long you’ve been pussyfooting around this subject while we in Hollywood have been carrying your water for you. It’s time to man up and tell that uppity D.C. Circuit Court where to get off. Set the record straight. Do the right thing. After all, this is what democracy is all about:
NO to individual rights.
NO the plain language of the Constitution.
NO to the individual state constitutions that “enshrine” gun rights.
NO to the will of the people.
YES to Hollywood. And –
DON’T tell anybody I wrote this — I’m still on strike.
– David Kahane is a nom de cyber for a writer in Hollywood. “David Kahane” is borrowed from a screenwriter character in The Player.