Fem Film Flam

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has somehow managed to find time and surplus budget to fight a new battle along with their old standbys of preventing criminal background checks, preventing verification of American citizenship, striking down job-related competency testing, or disciplining any employee who isn't a straight white male.

Specifically, the EEOC is launching an investigation to prove that the "War on Women" is actually being fought in Hollywood, where women aren't being allowed to direct enough feature films.

The EEOC has sent letters to 50 female directors asking them to share any stories they might have about workplace discrimination or unfair treatment. Although rather than making it a formal inquiry, Hope n' Change thinks it would be easier to just gather the ladies in a wine bar and keep the Chardonnay flowing while they vent.

The investigation is the direct result of lobbying by the ACLU, an organization that spends most of its time tracking down replicas of the Ten Commandments to complain about. Perhaps they stumbled across the film version of the Ten Commandments, discovered it was directed by a male and starred testosterone-oozing former NRA President Charlton Heston, and decided enough was enough.

But why isn't ultra-liberal Hollywood giving equal opportunity to female directors? Simply put, it's because Lefties are amazingly quick to drop their beliefs when it might take money out of their own pockets.

With tens, if not hundreds, of millions in the balance on every film, risk-averse studios prefer to hire those directors with a track record of actually making a profit and most of those directors are male. Because men are naturally skilled at making boneheaded movies in which people die and things get blown up, while women are naturally skilled at making intellectual movies in which troubled women, after years of emotional torment and silent suffering, eventually make peace with their mothers.

In other words, it's not so much discrimination as it is attention to the bottom line and...

Oops, we've just been informed by the EEOC that it's sexist to use the word "bottom." What we meant to say that is that studios have a fiscal responsibility to their stockholders when making tentpoles and...

Hang on, now the EEOC says that the term "making tentpoles" is also unacceptably sexist. So we'll wrap this up with two observations, the first being that it's hard for us to do anything other than make some buttered popcorn and enjoy watching the bigscreen cat fight between Hollywood and an aggressively overreaching government bureaucracy.

And the second? Why isn't the ACLU telling the EEOC to look into the political discrimination of Hollywood against conservatives? Now there's a case that will not be "coming soon" to a legal theater near you.

Mourning in America

As if the people in Roseburg, Oregon haven't suffered enough, Barack Obama and the Westboro Baptist Church both plan to descend on the community to push their personal political agendas.

The people of Roseburg aren't happy about the president coming because of his seeming inability to tell the difference between a coffin and a soapbox. And no one is ever happy to see the morally repugnant Westboro Baptists, especially in light of their gloating tweets that "God sent the shooter." A sentiment, by the way, which the president had previously suggested about the Almighty in the case of the Charleston, SC church shootings.

Hope n' Change has already said a lot about Barack Obama's reprehensible politicking, and has no need to comment on the Westboro Baptists other than to say that, despite our personal lack of religious affiliation, we hope there is a Hell so that they can burn in it.

Unlike the spotlight grabbers named above, there's actually a respectful way for real Americans to show their concern for the families who lost loved ones at Umpqua Community College. Visit this GoFundMe site to donate a few dollars and leave a few thoughts (non-political, please) to let the good people of Roseburg know that we care and share their terrible loss.

BONUS: BUT ON THE WRITER SIDE...

The good folks at Grammarly.com (a super-duper online spelling and grammar checking service) have done another study comparing the online writings of Democrats and Republicans to see which group has the greater "richness" of language (defined as the greatest number of unique words in online postings).

Their results: Democratic supporters' vocabularies were 22.4% richer than their Republican counterparts. But why?

We're guessing it's because Democrats have been force fed a continually evolving (indeed, metastasizing) word salad from their ideological leaders. Put another way, if brevity is the soul of wit, obfuscation is the soul of liberalism.

What we call "terrorism," they call "man-caused disaster." What we call "abortion," they call "women's healthcare services." What we call "war," they call "overseas kinetic military action." What we call "illegal aliens" they call "undocumented workers and dreamers willing to do the jobs that Americans won't do."  And of course, what we call "freedom," they call a "vast Right-wing conspiracy to suppress women and minorities while promoting income inequality."

So the results of the "vocabulary richness" study strike us as interesting but unsurprising. In the end, it's not the quality of language but the quality of ideas which really matters. And the notion that Democrats might win that competition? Now that's rich.

Blasts from the Past

During his weekend press conference, Barack Obama doubled down on his demands for gun control following the tragic shootings in Oregon. But when pressed for specifics, he unsurprisingly doesn't offer any of the "common sense" ideas which he claims would solve the problem of mass shootings.

Rather, he says he'll just "talk about" the issue hoping to effect "political change." In other words, he has no ideas and cares nothing about either lives or gun control, but cares a lot about further dividing Americans in time for next year's elections.

Need further proof? Then consider the fact that Obama has had over 6 years to present his "common sense" ideas, and instead he's given us this...

(12/21/12)

One of the previous ways Mr. Common Sense wanted to curtail gun violence was by having the DOJ give guns to Mexican drug cartels and then track what happened.  Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the guns were used to kill hundreds of people, including U.S. border agent Brian Terry.

Also, following the Sandy Hook shootings, Obama tasked his most trusted associate with the job of coming up with bold, innovative new "common sense" gun control policies. Not that we actually remember him producing any...

(1/9/13)
No, wait - Shotgun Joe did finally come up with a "common sense" idea to end mass shootings! And this was it...

(2/1/13)
Of course, waiting for non-violent videogames to change our culture is a slow process, which is why the Obama administration needed to posit ways for people to protect themselves in classrooms and offices without using guns...

That's right. Homeland Security actually released a video asserting that scissors, staplers, and tape dispensers all made perfectly dandy defensive weapons. Which makes us wonder why Obama isn't currently whining about "common sense" regulations to control dangerous office supplies.

(4/9/14)
Then in 2014, Eric Holder pitched another "simple" idea which only Rube Goldberg could love...

Clearly, the Obama administration has had plenty of time to come up with "common sense ideas," but has failed miserably to do so. Because, as is the case with most issues this president has faced, actual solutions are less useful politically than keeping the problems alive as devisive wedge issues.

But on the positive side, Hope n' Change will note that even our current gun regulations, while not perfect, at least weed out the obvious lunatics...

(1/18/13)