'Infidel': Prisoner, Believer, Fighter

It is increasingly difficult these days for conservatives to enjoy anything from mainstream Hollywood, which has made its contempt for all those white supremacist Trump supporters in the flyover states very clear. Conservative viewers have had enough of movies and TV series that denigrate, ridicule, and demonize their faith and values. They’re done with being bludgeoned by social justice messaging from hypocritical, elitist actors and filmmakers. They’ve cancelled their cable TV and their Netflix subscriptions over increasingly vile, nihilistic content. The only entertainment refuge those viewers are left with, however, is bland “faith-based” programming aimed squarely at conservatives, that too often suffers from low budgets, amateurish quality, and heavy-handed messaging of its own.

So when a movie comes along that merges the best of both mainstream and faith-based filmmaking (but doesn’t fit neatly into either category), that unites strong storytelling and a respect for conservative belief and values, and that doesn’t sucker-punch us with a message of moral equivalence, we need to throw our support behind it and spread the word. Infidel, which opens nationwide today, September 18, is one of those rarities.

Executive produced by Dinesh D’Souza’s media company, and written and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, whose 2006 ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 sparked front-page controversy and sent Bill Clinton and his former administration cronies into paroxysms of anger, the R-rated Infidel is a Middle East thriller starring Jim Caviezel as an American prisoner of the Iranian regime, falsely accused of spying for the CIA. His only way out is to sign a confession – and publicly renounce his faith and convert to Islam.

Jim Caviezel (best-known, of course, from Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ) plays Doug Rawlins, a prominent Christian blogger who accepts an invitation to a televised speaking engagement in Cairo. His wife Liz (played by Australian actress Claudia Karvan), a State Department official, tries unsuccessfully to dissuade him – she is concerned that he won’t be able to resist proselytizing in the Muslim country and sparking controversy. And indeed, although Rawlins does his best to find common interfaith ground with the congenial Muslim host of a TV talk show, he finds himself compelled to testify a truth of his faith that directly contradicts Islam, as shocking as that is to the show’s studio audience and viewers. A clip from the show swiftly goes viral on the internet and Rawlins finds himself at the center of a budding international incident. He is subsequently kidnapped, brutalized in a secret location, and accused of spying by agents of the Iranian regime who, unlike too many in the West, are perfectly comfortable acknowledging that we are in a Clash of Civilizations. “We’re going to win,” his Muslim captor promises him, “because we’re not afraid to die.”

Critics Rush to Defend Netflix's Pre-Teen Twerking Flick ‘Cuties’

The brilliant satirical website Babylon Bee recently posted another gem of a faux headline:  “Awesome: Netflix Will Now Just Pump Septic Waste Straight Into Your Living Room,” poking fun at the streaming entertainment service’s reputation for pushing increasingly controversial and offensive content. But Netflix’s latest offering is no joke: a French flick that veers dangerously close to outright child pornography.

Cuties (originally titled Mignonnes), which debuted Thursday on Netflix, is the story of Amy, 11, a Senegalese girl growing up in Paris who rebels against her conservative Muslim immigrant family and seeks the approval of a bullying quartet of fellow 11-year-old girls who are absolutely clueless about sex but who nevertheless believe dressing and acting like prostitutes is the key to popularity (the ages of the actresses at the time of filming are unclear, but reportedly range from 11-14). Their aimless lives center on rehearsing sexed-up choreography to a rap song for a local dance contest.

As Amy becomes desperate to escape the stultifying, traditional expectations of the women in her family, she exhibits increasingly wanton behavior, such as posting a pic of her genitalia on social media and teaching the other girls how to rev up their dance routine by twerking (if you are mercifully ignorant about twerking, it’s a very popular move derived from strip-club lap dancing, in which females squat and shake their rear ends up and down like primates presenting themselves for mating; needless to say, this is wildly inappropriate for pre-teens). The movie climaxes, so to speak, in an extended, raunchy dance performance in which the camera lingers disturbingly on the scantily-clad little girls’ pelvic gyrations, come-hither looks, and suggestive touching – of themselves and each other.

SPOILER ALERT:

During the performance, Amy is horrified onstage by the sudden revelation of what she has become, and she turns her back on both that path and her family's traditions, to find liberation in her own identity. But the transcendent ending feels utterly tacked-on, and it is too little, too late to rescue the film from the sense that we have been trapped in a pedophile’s dream.

END SPOILER

Cuties has lit such a firestorm of controversy and anti-Netflix backlash that the hashtag #CancelNetflix has been trending on Twitter as people cancelled their subscriptions en masse in protest. Politicians have even weighed in. Sen. Josh Hawley called out Netflix on Twitter, with a screenshot highlighting posts to the parental guidance page of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), where warnings about nudity and sexual scenes are shown. Those warnings (see below) have since mysteriously disappeared from IMDb.

Sen. Ted Cruz has written to Attorney General William Barr requesting an investigation into whether the production or distribution of the film has broken any laws against child pornography.

Netflix did concede that its marketing for the film – a movie poster depicting the little girls posing provocatively like strippers – was, to put it mildly, a mistake, and it apologized in the wake of an earlier tsunami of justifiable public outrage. But Netflix stands by the film itself. “Cuties is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children,” a spokesperson said in its defense. “It’s an award-winning film and a powerful story about the pressure young girls face on social media and from society more generally growing up — and we’d encourage anyone who cares about these important issues to watch the movie.”

Oh, so it’s social commentary! It’s art! And it’s award-winning! That’s okay, then. Carry on.

Carole King’s Downbeat Message for Dem Donors

In a fundraising email currently being distributed by the campaign of empty-suit Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, legendary singer-songwriter Carole King has been recruited to plead with potential donors to contribute to the effort to “BEAT TRUMP by the wide margin we need!” The margin must be wide, you see, because President Trump has what King claims is a “history of lying and cheating his way to victory,” so he must lose decisively in order to make Biden’s mandate for the far-left fundamental transformation of America clear. But in fact, it is the Democrats who will have to cheat to win this November – hence their desperate push for voting-by-mail – and King’s downbeat fundraising plea is indicative of the reason why.

Carole King, as anyone alive in the latter half of the 20th century knows, was an enormously successful songwriter and recording artist back in that quaint era when the pop music industry was teeming with talented people who could write memorable melodies and meaningful lyrics, and actually play instruments and sing. You may recall that she scored a monster hit album with 1971’s Tapestry, which included Grammy-winning singles such as “You’ve Got a Friend” and “It’s Too Late.”

As the industry increasingly embraced the degraded and degrading genre of gangster rap and promoted female performers who are essentially glamorized strippers, King’s star waned, and she gradually shifted, as stars tend to do, into left-wing political activism – primarily environmentalism, in her case. Along the way, she lent her celebrity support to Democrat presidential hopefuls such as John Kerry (who seems to have a thing for Old School singer-songwriters; remember the awkward moment when he introduced soporific crooner James Taylor to sing King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” in Paris to help the French heal from the Charlie Hebdo massacre?). She even made a short speech and performed at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

In the election years after that, King was the wrong color and generation to provide any cultural cachet for candidate Barack Obama, who instead recruited former drug dealer Jay-Z Carter and his ghetto-fabulous wife Beyoncé to lure young voters. But King is more Biden’s speed, so now she is back with the aforementioned heartfelt but uninspiring fundraising request, which she begins by writing, “I’m just going to say it: The Republican National Convention is nauseating,” replete as it is with “Republican sycophants parroting Trump talking points.”

Defying Caesar

Last month, tyrannical California Governor Gavin Newsom renewed his statewide, draconian coronavirus lockdown, which includes the order that churches must cease all indoor activities. (The “peaceful protesters” of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, presumably, may continue to riot freely without social distancing restrictions).

Pastor Greg Fairrington, the leader of the 3,500-member Destiny Christian Church outside Sacramento, is defying this threat to religious liberty by continuing to hold in-person services. “If we don’t take a stand, all we’re doing is kicking the can down the road and we will be having the same conversations in three weeks, six weeks, six months, or even a year from now," Fairrington told Fox News. “We need to collectively take a stand and say, ‘We are the church, and we have a biblical and First Amendment right to worship together.’”

“Our mandate is to obey the Word of God, and worship is a part of what we do as a church corporately," Fairrington wrote in a statement. “As we pull together as a community, we choose to live in faith over fear. Just like our currency states, our founders pledged, and our churches believe: In God We Trust.”

Fairrington also urged other pastors to defy the lockdown as well. “It is time for pastors to open up their doors and let people come to church again,” he had told his congregation just prior to the latest lockdown. “With all due respect, if you think our governor is going to relent — if you think he’s going to be nice to church someday, you are fooling yourself. This is just the beginning of where he wants to take the church.”

The pastor graciously took time to answer some questions for FrontPage Mag.

Mark Tapson:           Pastor Fairrington, you find yourself at the center of a political controversy, but prior to this, would you have said your preaching ever turns political? In other words, politics and “social justice” concerns are a big part of some churches’ focus – would you say that’s the case with Destiny Church?   

Greg Fairrington:   At Destiny, our focus is pursuing the presence of God. We do not pursue controversy or confrontation for the sake of it. We pursue Jesus, and wherever that takes us, we do not shy away from it.

MT:     How did the first coronavirus lockdown affect Destiny Church and your work there?

Eulogy for a Conservative Warrior

Many conservatives were shocked to learn last week that Townhall columnist, pro-life advocate, free speech warrior, and conservative professor Mike S. Adams was found dead at his home in North Carolina.

The author of such politically-incorrect titles as Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative Professor (2004), Feminists Say the Darnedest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” on Campus (2008), and Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don’t Understand (2013), Adams toiled in the front lines of the culture war, fighting for the unborn and against the progressive suppression of free speech. His death is a terrible loss for those causes, for the many Christian and conservative students he mentored on a hostile campus, and for patriots all over the country.

Friends and supporters, myself included, could not help but suspect foul play, because the police report on Mike’s death referred to a “gsw” or “gun shot wound.” We considered Mike a fearless warrior, and he had just opted for early retirement after winning a half-million dollar settlement from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (which a jury found had discriminated against him for his Christian conservative beliefs), so suicide seemed unthinkable. It’s painful to think that a brother-in-arms wrestled with and lost an internal struggle of which we were unaware, but a New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office investigation ultimately concluded that that he did indeed take his own life.

Former National Review writer David French, who had been a close friend of Mike and represented him in his seven-year lawsuit against UNC, posted a very personal eulogy at The Dispatch in which he lamented not only his friend’s passing but also that the mainstream media’s coverage of it was “deeply, gravely unjust.” He noted that such outlets as USA Today, CNN, and Buzzfeed had, in their headlines, defined Mike’s life “by the worst possible characterization of his worst tweets.” BuzzFeed’s was the most repulsive: “A Professor Who Was Known for His Racist, Misogynistic Tweets Was Found Dead in His Home.” And of course, social media teemed with vile, leftist celebration for Adams’ passing.

“It’s the most graceless way possible to describe a man who faced an avalanche of unjust hatred in his life,” French wrote, “who had to fight for years to vindicate his most basic constitutional rights, and who helped mentor thousands of young conservative Christian students who often feel isolated and alone on secular and progressive campuses.”

I did not know Mike personally until this month when I interviewed him for FrontPage Mag. That was barely 10 days before concerned neighbors called 911 to alert police that he had not been seen and his car had not left his driveway for a few days. My communication with him was brief; he was grateful for the opportunity to answer some questions about an academic career that was coming to a close, one that had been marked not only by multiple teaching and service awards but by “controversy,” meaning that his irreverence for the left’s sacred cows, and his very presence on campus as a conservative professor (that rarest of oxymorons), triggered the haters. They responded predictably: by smearing Mike with all the usual labels and targeting him for cancellation from his job.

Confessions of a Conservative College Professor

In the left-dominated world of academia, the tiny minority of conservative professors has to keep its collective head down in order to avoid shunning, discrimination, and the bullying Cancel Culture currently running amok in universities. But Mike S. Adams, until recently a longtime professor in the criminal justice program at University of North Carolina – Wilmington (UNCW), isn’t the sort to muffle his convictions.

The author of such politically-incorrect titles as Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative Professor (2004), Feminists Say the Darnedest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” on Campus (2008), and Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don’t Understand (2013), Adams is also a columnist at TownHall.com who isn’t afraid to call out progressive totalitarianism or push back against the attempted suppression of his free speech.

Adams took UNCW to court for violating his First Amendment rights by denying his promotion to full professor in 2006 in retaliation for his pro-life speeches and TownHall columns. In 2014, a federal jury ruled in Adams’ favor and the court ordered UNCW to promote him and give him seven years back pay. Adams says he “spent most of the money on guns made by Browning, guitars made by Fender, and amps made by Mesa Boogie.”

In 2016, a Change.org petition called for Adams' removal from the school after he published an article titled “A ‘Queer Muslim’ Jihad?” at The Daily Wire. More recently, he triggered progressive outrage with a couple of tweets which the school labeled “vile and inexcusable,” including this zinger: “Don't shut down the universities. Shut down the non essential majors. Like Women's Studies.” The tweets sparked two new Change.org petitions calling for his removal, as well as a condemnation from Wilmington resident and actor Orlando Jones, who tweeted that Adams was “a PROBLEM.” Yes, a problem for the anti-free speech left.

Dr. Adams graciously agreed to answer some questions for FrontPage Mag.

Mark Tapson:           Mike, in the ‘90s you abandoned your atheism and embraced conservatism as well. What brought about your religious and political conversions?

Just Say ‘No’ to the Revolution

As the militantly ignorant shock troops of a new Cultural Revolution rampage across the United States of America in an orgy of statue-toppling, cop-killing, and flag-burning, they continue to be met with a stunning lack of resistance. President Trump’s stirring Independence Day speech aside, the country’s leaders are worse than useless: Democrat politicians support the chaos, and Republican politicians are too feckless to take action. Conservative citizens are too law-abiding to fight fire with fire, and so the mob, stoked by the activist news media and facing no consequences for their anarchy, tears down America unopposed.

Instead of resistance, a wave of self-flagellating public apologies and corporate appeasement has swept through guilt-ridden, white America, which has simply rolled over for the violent revolutionaries of the Black Lives Matter racial extortion racket. One notable recent example of Americans embracing their own humiliation before the rabid mob: the country music band Lady Antebellum has chosen to rename itself “Lady A,” because the band members found themselves “regretful and embarrassed” by the word antebellum and its purported “associations” with the Civil War and slavery. Of course, the band didn’t pick the original name to honor slavery, but simply as a nod to the Southern antebellum-style home “where we took our first photos.” But innocuous explanations aren’t sufficient anymore, because the totalitarian left has booby-trapped the cultural landscape into a minefield of ultra-heightened racial sensitivity.

(For the same reason, and in a bid to revive their relevance, the forgotten country music trio The Dixie Chicks, who were so eager to apologize to foreign audiences for President Bush, pre-emptively dropped “Dixie” from their name. Now they’re just The Chicks. Once they realize how triggering that word is to feminists, presumably they’ll hasten to change their name to just “The.”)

It’s unclear whether anyone actually ever complained to Lady Antebellum about its name, but in any case, the members posted a cringe-inducing statement on Instagram expressing their deep sorrow “for the hurt this has caused and for anyone who has felt unsafe, unseen, or unvalued.” It’s hard for a rational person to fathom how the name of a band can cause hurt and make someone feel unsafe, unseen, and unvalued, but this is the irrational, woke world in which we find ourselves now: a culture whipped into a frenzy by political correctness and identity politics, in which supposedly “marginalized” demographic groups in the freest, least racist, and most prosperous country in history have weaponized their perceived victimhood against their perceived oppressors. It is a culture in which those “oppressors” have been indoctrinated to internalize their own racial guilt so deeply that, like the young woman in this degrading video, they do not hesitate to kneel before, beg forgiveness from, and even kiss the boots of total strangers against whom they have committed no sin.

Re-Educating Whitey

Recently I called out a female “person of color” on Twitter for the blatant anti-white racism she was proudly exhibiting in her tweets. A white female ally of hers chimed in, chastising me for not knowing that “people of color can’t be racist.” I needed to educate myself about racism, she insisted. This is a common refrain in these times of even more racial unrest and sensitivity than usual: that white Americans need to educate themselves about the racism that Barack Obama declared is inherent in their DNA. They need to educate themselves about their white privilege, their white rage, and their white fragility which makes them touchy about being called racists. Like counter-revolutionaries who need “re-education,” they need to understand, accept, and publicly acknowledge their deep complicity in an evil system.

According to the left, in our white supremacist nation only whites can be racist because they control the culture’s power structures and therefore only they can impose “systemic racism.” Non-whites, conversely, are helpless victims of the system and therefore cannot be racist. This false oppressor/oppressed dynamic has been promoted so long and so effectively that open bigotry toward whites has reached peak cultural and political acceptability now, whereas any perceived racial “insensitivity” toward non-whites, such as the myth of cultural appropriation, incurs the unforgiving wrath of the internet mob (and of actual mobs).

Black Lives Matter icon and Nike spokesperson Colin Kaepernick, for example, who sparked the whole trend of protesting during national anthems at sporting events, can encourage rioting and looting without fear of losing his multimillion-dollar endorsements. Indeed, it only enhances his cultural cachet. But let white quarterback Drew Brees state publicly and innocuously that he refuses to disrespect the Stars and Stripes by taking a knee, and he and his wife are forced – shades of the Chinese Cultural Revolution – to debase themselves in apology for their incorrect thinking.

To help white oppressors educate themselves about their racism, the media lately has been helpfully providing lists of recommending reading with which to deprogram themselves. As of this writing, for example, the audiobook giant Audible, a division of Amazon, has a banner at the top of its website with a link to “An Anti-Racism Reading List.” Below that are three links to articles about the black experience and black literature, including a reading list of audiobooks on race for children, titled “Listens for Raising an Anti-Racist” – because it’s never too early to start inculcating the blank slates of young American minds that they are either suffering from, or inflicting, racial oppression, depending on their skin color.

Filthy Rich – The Jeffrey Epstein Story

By comparison to the history-making events of 2020, the sordid saga of shadowy, uber-rich hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex-trafficking trial temporarily dominated the news cycle last year, now seems foggily distant and even insignificant. His suspicious suicide while in custody spawned conspiracy theories and internet memes, and then – just as suspiciously – any highly-anticipated exposés of the rich and powerful who might have cavorted with underage girls on Epstein’s infamous “Orgy Island” disappeared into a black hole, and the news media went back to hating President Trump.

Now Netflix has premiered a four-part documentary series titled Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, which raised expectations again that the mystery man and his web of powerful acquaintances would be dragged into the cleansing light of day. Based on the 2016 book Filthy Rich: The Billionaire’s Sex Scandal – The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein by bestselling novelist James Patterson (journalists John Connolly and Tim Malloy are credited as authors as well), the series instead just drags viewers through the repellent Epstein’s mucky lifestyle but unfortunately offers no new revelations or insights into the man or any of his hedonistic friends in high places.

I was primarily curious to see how the documentary would handle former President Bill Clinton’s role in the controversy, partly because Epstein buddy Clinton is conspicuously absent from the series trailer (see below), and partly because author Patterson, who appears in the documentary himself, has at least a professional relationship with Clinton; they have collaborated on two thriller novels. Hillary’s infamously predatory husband is indeed presented in the documentary as being a friend of Epstein and as having flown on his private jet over two dozen times, but all this was all common knowledge before the Netflix series.

A former Epstein employee does claim in the film that he saw Clinton on his boss’ private island, and one of Epstein’s girls affirms that Bill was there but “I never saw him doing anything improper.” Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena has issued a blanket denial of any insinuation that Bill ever participated in Epstein’s pedophiliac shenanigans or even visited any of Epstein’s residences: “This was a lie the first time it was told, and it isn’t true today, no matter how many times it’s repeated.” Hillary unsurprisingly is neither seen nor heard from in the series. That’s as far as the series delves into the Epstein-Clinton connection.

Filthy Rich spends more time covering disgraced British Prince Andrew’s involvement, including showing footage of his epic fail of a BBC interview in which he claimed that he couldn’t possibly be the “profusely sweating” man described by one of Epstein’s girls because he was suffering from a medical condition at that time that didn’t allow him to sweat. He also claimed that he had no recollection of that same girl, whom he was photographed hugging on Epstein’s island. An employee at the island also asserts in the documentary that in 2004 he saw the Prince getting frisky in a pool there with the same girl, who was topless. This new salacious detail, however, is little more than an extra nail in the coffin of Andrew’s public life.

Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words

Before there was Brett Kavanaugh, there was Clarence Thomas. Many who watched or participated in the grotesque circus that was the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings no doubt were unaware of, or had forgotten, the ugly spectacle that was Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991. As a black conservative, Thomas drew (and continues to draw) the vicious wrath of racist Democrats who reserve a special enmity for minorities that dare stray from the leftist plantation. Then as now, the Democrats waged their politics of personal destruction, and then as now a good man with impeccable legal credentials was demonized by an uncorroborated allegation of sexual harassment shored up by the full force of the leftist smear machine.

A riveting new documentary revisits the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy as part of a look at the Supreme Court Justice’s amazing life journey. Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, produced by Michael Pack of Manifold Productions, aired earlier this week on PBS, of all places, and is still available here for free through June 2. Don’t miss it. The producers interviewed Thomas and his wife Virginia for over 30 hours about his life, the law, and his legacy. As the movie’s website states,

the documentary proceeds chronologically, combining Justice Thomas’ first person account with a rich array of historical archive material, period and original music, personal photos, and evocative recreations. Unscripted and without narration, the documentary takes the viewer through this complex and often painful life, dealing with race, faith, power, jurisprudence, and personal resilience.

In his rich, sonorous voice, Thomas, the second black American to serve on the Court and, at 28 years, the longest-serving Justice, tells his life story beginning with his birth in tiny Pin Point, Georgia in 1948. Descended from West African slaves and born into rock-bottom poverty, Thomas later was raised by his grandparents in Savannah. His stern grandfather, “the greatest man I have ever known,” believed firmly in hard work and even more firmly in the education he never had, the lack of which he blamed for his inability to rise above his station in life. He impressed upon his grandchildren the importance of committing themselves to school. He told Thomas and his brother that they would go every day, even when sick, and even if they were dead he would take their bodies to school for three more days “to make sure we weren’t faking.”