Don't Mock Moses. You might get FOX News very, very angry.
Right wing pundits exploded yesterday, and, for a change, it wasn't at President Obama. Actor Jim Carrey pushed the gun control envelope and, according to FOX News, fell over a career cliff with it. His 5-minute video for Funny Or Die attacked everything sacred to the Right.
Including Hee Haw.
In it he plays the NRA icon, past president, Charleton Heston (aka Moses, and Ben Hur) appearing on Hee Haw, then switches to a country group lead singer backed up by Ghandi, John Lennon and Abraham Lincoln. The lyrics so offend Heston that, while intending to shoot the singer, he shoots his own foot off instead. The skit is ended by a Sam Elliot character also mocking Heston. To be sure, the lyrics were so cutting that any Heston fan would have stormed the studio asking for Carrey's head, but perhaps the most unnerving of the lyrics:
"It takes a cold dead hand to decide to
pull the trigger, takes a cold dead heart and as near as I can figure, with
your cold dead aim you're trying to prove your di** is bigger but we know, your
chariot may not be swinging low""
If
Carrey had mocked Jesus, the response could not have been more vituperative:
Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity (below), Laura Ingraham and more notably Greg Gutfeld
of FOX News "eviscerated" Carrey, calling him "the most pathetic
tool on the face of the earth." "And I hope his career is dead and I
hope he winds up sleeping in a car the way his life began."
"He is a dirty, stinking coward. He
is a moral coward. He did a video attacking rural America. But he wouldn't do
video about gangs, which kills way more people with handguns -- he wouldn't do
that because he is worried about his career. Such a pathetic, sad, little
freak. He is a jiberring mess. He is a modern bigot, he is a modern bigot. He
is a bottomless pit of insecurity and the desire for acceptance is why he is
doing this, because he knows in his heart he is a fraud."
In
response, Carrey tweeted:
"Cold Dead Hand' is abt u heartless motherf%ckers unwilling 2 bend
4 the safety of our kids.Sorry if you're offended by the word safety!
"Jim Carrey Killed More People Than All The Rifles
Combined"
Gutfeld's above statement was based loosely on Carrey's stance against flu
vaccines, but the hyperbole does not stick: even if you could blame 136,000
deaths on the likes of Jim Carrey, those deaths don't mount up to the number of
people killed by guns in the last month internationally and in the last two
years nationally.
The subsequent attacks were also lame in comparison: Sean Hannity called Carrey
a "Lear Jet limousine liberal with a bodyguard" who doesn't have to
worry about everyday America's defense from gangs and thugs. Ann Coulter chimed
in that elitists like Carrey homestead and travel in places where they don't
need guns: "They can carry guns, but we can't."
Gutfeld additionally claimed that Hee Haw itself was a spoof,* thereby
denegrating Carrey for using it to slam Southerners and Midwesterners.
200,000 Views and Soaring
The problem about being quick and vicious: you create an interest in the very
thing you're against, so perhaps it is possible that FOX News actually gave
Carrey's video a boost. It might hit over one million today. And it just might
hit the American audience with enough outrageous impact to make gun nuts look
ridiculous in paying attention to it.
*Tell that to the people who thought Hee Haw was for real.
3
2
1
