As IF Times

Source: 40+ dead in Iran at Gen. Soleimanis funeral after stampede

This seems like a preposterous headline until you dig a little deeper and find out that a large number of the ‘mourners’ who turned out to grieve the death of the recently dispatched Iranian military leader Soleimani were convinced to attend…at the point of a gun.  We assume that the other contingent of people who were not so persuasively convinced to attend did so because of the free food, also offered by those in charge.   Still, it’s hard to believe that it’s worth taking a day off work to go to a funeral and risk getting stampeded to death, but perhaps they really do love their despots.  Every culture is different. Over here, people line up to buy telephones.

A similar such scenario plays out regularly in Western nations, in particular within the small cabal of those in the fantasy entertainment business in the U.S.  A few outspoken heroes speak out and the rest of the community are forced to show obeisance to the cause for the same reasons as do the faithful in Iran; either for the food or at the point of a gun aka, employment.  Most of the people in the entertainment business are not exactly Rhodes scholars, or else, well they wouldn’t be actors. Heck, many of them are barely Dick and Jane scholars. They have achieved success at reading lines created by others, or by pretending to be personalities that they are not.

Yet, this doesn’t stop them from pontificating on all sorts of real life issues for which they have no educational or intellectual grounding, including science, geopolitics and most obviously, common sense. Oddly, while the people may be fake, the sanctimony is real. For the most part, the fanbase for their opinions….are themselves.  This was most evident at the recent Golden Globe awards, another of those interminable masturbatory fetes that entertainers hold among themselves, seemingly every other week.  And the speeches are predictably similar.  There is usually some straw villain that they nod their heads lemming-like in agreement for action against.  Apparently things such as hate, poverty, murder and oppression are issues that some people are for, but they alone are against.  There is often some cause of injustice that they ‘bravely’ address for whom the worst perpetrators are themselves or their own heroes.

Well finally, someone had the cojones to drop a figurative bomb in their midst and you could tell that those that had been forced to walk the plank of political correctness had trouble hiding their glee.  Ricky Gervais did what no one had the guts to do for years and that is, call out the vapidity in their community. You could audibly hear the outraged gasps among the self important as they sat stunned by someone having the temerity to push back against their collective circle jerk.

It’s hopefully only a matter of time until the aged Mullahs running Iran get turfed from their despotic influence in that nation.  When that happens, people will have the freedom to attend funerals of political figures…or not. I wonder if Ricky Gervais will be responsible for the freedom of the serfs of Hollywood.

Source: Lashana Lynch will play 007 in new James Bond movie: report

According to this line from the linked story, the creators wanted to “to modernize the franchise criticized by many as being too dated and sexist.” I’ll bet Ian Fleming is shaking and stirring in his grave over what has happened to his original spy thriller stories.  As some may know, Fleming was a British intelligence officer operating in the uncertain world which was cold war Europe in the 1960’s. He likely drew from his experiences in the shadowy world of no holds barred espionage and embellished them with an active imagination to produce one of the most iconic characters in popular fiction and subsequently, the entertainment business.

As usually happens when commercial forces gets a hold of a successful franchise, the Bond mystique has morphed over the decades from being a daring cloak and dagger operator,  into the cartoon like character we now see over the past generations.  From a story line geared towards adults, the Bond franchise has devolved into films with video game like scenarios to appeal to the A.D.D. crowd.  Each film now has a gossamer thin plot line connected by 90 minutes of car chases, explosions, super human feats of agility and an exaggerated Bond insouciance.  It resembles Fast and Furious but with occasional tuxedos and evening gowns and fewer tattoos. It’s all about money.

The first crack in the franchise happened when they decided to cast Judy Dench as M.  Some may have noticed the disappearance of Miss Moneypenny over recent episodes, she of Bond groupie fame.  We definitely don’t see Bond slapping her on the butt as in the early days.  Having to write a subplot of an harassment suit into the show would destroy the flow of the narrative. Although, I can definitely see an LGBT person taking on that role in future films…or a robot…or an animal depending on the state of society by then.  In earlier episodes of the franchise, Bond had to often physically contend with brutish Slavic thugs in life and death hand to hand combat.  As time went on, the fights stretched a bit of credulity, taking on a video game-like feel, but now we are to believe that a slightly built woman will be just as good in such instances.  Okay….

We’re not really sure which audience this ‘freshened up’ franchise is supposed to address.  The latte sipping, vegan, gender confused, safe space, bicycle short wearing crowd shouldn’t be interested in someone employing duplicity, kung fu fighting and other assorted violence for the benefit of a nation…which they think is oppressive anyway. Bond used to be an agent working to further the aims of the West against a Communist East Bloc. What is Bond supposed to be fighting now? Brexiteers?

I’m not sure how gripping the narrative will be as the audience adjusts not only to a black female secret agent, but also to her driving a Tesla instead of an Aston Martin and drinking soy oatmeal smoothies instead of martinis.  On the other hand, given the PC environment and our modern reality, she may actually still be seducing women like Bond of old.  Though the plotline is not yet out, we can expect that her mission will include taking out plastic straw makers and global warming deniers.

The real world has experienced an Alice In Wonderland perversion of most every facet of normal life.  People are gaslit daily on what constitutes unimpeachable fact.  Even the most elementary observation of the sexes is now not so obvious.  Apparently sex is a social construct, not a biological fact.  As some wise guy noted, it’s amazing that throughout hundreds of excavations of ancient civilizations they’ve only ever encountered two sexes.  Suddenly in the past decade, there are dozens.  Apparently, crime is good, cops are now bad.  Single is good, families bad.  Hot days are proof of climate change; conveniently, so are cold days.  Maleness is oppressive, but males in female sports is ok.  I can go on.  That’s real life today and somehow we deal with it.

But novels and characters.  Leave them alone.  They are the product of someone’s imagination and they capture periods of history and reflect their cultural zeitgeist.  People can do whatever they choose to make current history, but leave the old stuff well enough alone.  The new breed of idiots are not just rewriting history, they’re rewriting fiction!