If your six-year-old ever saw a scary movie and then pleaded for protection from a monster under his bed, know that it isn’t just children who are influenced by Hollywood. Congressmen are, too — that is, if Representative Steve Cohen is any indication.
For Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, has been inspired by a Tinseltown flick to once again try to cancel legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
During an appearance on Yahoo News’ Skullduggery podcast, the congressman “said that he will reintroduce his bill pushing for J. Edgar Hoover’s name to be removed from the [Washington, D.C.] FBI building,” writes Complex. “Cohen got the ball rolling again one day after watching Judas and the Black Messiah about three weeks ago.”
“The movie is a clear depiction of his [Hoover’s] efforts to impede the civil rights movement,” Cohen said in the interview. It’s comforting to know that not just Big Tech, but now also Hollywood, is crafting our policy.
As Deadline tells us:
Award season typically sees a smattering of topical movies screened before lawmakers in D.C. or at the White House, but that hasn’t happened this year due to Covid-19 restrictions. Cohen said he watched the movie about three weeks ago and, inspired by it, called his staff the next day to work on reintroducing the legislation.
The movie tells the story of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), who served as an FBI informant to help silence him. The movie had its premiere at Sundance’s virtual film festival before debuting in theaters and on HBO Max last month. Hampton was killed in a police raid in 1969. Martin Sheen plays Hoover in the movie.
In introducing the bill late last month, Cohen said that Hoover “doesn’t deserve the honor and recognition of having the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency headquarters named for him. The civil rights we enjoy today are in spite of J. Edgar Hoover, not because of him.” The bill has about a dozen co-sponsors.
In a press release, Cohen’s office elaborated on the bill’s rationale, stating that “Hoover, who served as FBI director from 1924 to 1972, was a notorious bigot who sought to disrupt the Civil Rights Movement, attack black and anti-war activists, and out LGBTQ federal employees. Under his leadership, the FBI engaged in a variety of practices of questionable legality.”
Well, it’s comforting to know nothing has changed. That is, except for one thing: Whatever the legality of Hoover’s FBI’s activities, they at least were often directed toward thwarting communism. Today’s FBI has surely engaged in illegality — as the spying on the Trump campaign/administration proved — directed toward aiding the “woke” neo-communists imperiling us.
Speaking of which, Cohen also said in a statement that he is “pleased to see the outpouring of support for this long overdue righting of an egregious wrong,” reports Breitbart. In reality, though, if Hoover was as bad as the wokesters claim, it’s most fitting that his name appears on the FBI building. Given the bureau’s current state, it’s a bit as how a statue of Red Terror architect Edmundovich “Iron Felix” Dzerzhinsky once sat outside KGB headquarters in Moscow.
I’m not here to precisely assess Hoover’s character. But I will say that I estimate him more highly than I do the revolutionaries currently rampaging about raping our culture with the finesse and awareness of a bull in a china shop. I mean, would you buy a cultural-reform plan from these people?
You don’t have to — they’re imposing it. That’s part of the issue, too: Whatever you think about the multitudinous cultural elements “canceled” in recent years — from Dr. Seuss books to Aunt Jemima to numerous cartoon characters to movies to songs and beyond — the culture we have (had?) developed naturally. Yet the same people who might give us a planned economy are now delivering a planned culture.
No, I don’t mean that any of this is orchestrated by an actual ministry of culture, as exists in China (at least not yet). But I’ve noted in the past that GoogTwitFace censorship amounts to an end run around the First Amendment, as the strong Big Government/Big Tech nexus essentially makes it state censorship by proxy. Similarly, cancel culture is effected by a relatively small group of people in Big Tech, the Democrat Party, left-wing activist groups, academia, the media, and entertainment. And this alliance of co-ideologists, acting with a hive-mind, increasingly acts as a de facto ministry of culture.
So would their planned culture be any better than their planned economy? Well, given that the cancel cultists think “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” should be purged but don’t have a problem with the song “WAP” (I can’t tell you what that stands for; this is a family site), I wouldn’t bet on it.
As for cancel-cultist Steve Cohen, he’s not the first Democrat to get his history (and morality) from Hollywood. President Woodrow Wilson, in fact, reportedly praised pro-KKK film The Birth of a Nation when it was screened in the White House in 1915. Will anyone, now, consider canceling the Democrat Party?
