I used to play a game with my wife. The game involved watching a movie and laying odds on how long it took for the movie to shoehorn a gay character into the first act.
If the movie (or TV show) was made after 2020, the average was about 10 minutes. It might be as simple as a guy mentioning his “husband” or as overt as a woman cooing at another chick and kissing her, but it is a “requirement” if the project is to be greenlit. “Hollywood” the “Industry” now has DEI schedule. Gay characters and diversifying the writers and showrunners is a mandate. I’m not suggesting that the DEI schedule is why most movies are mostly garbage, but you can mostly draw your own conclusion. Mostly.
Last night I had a cold. I retired to our guest room to watch something mindless. I picked a Prime series titled Scarpetta. Nichole Kidman is the lead. She plays a 2026 version of a medical examiner. It jumps back 28 years with Rosey McEwen as the younger Scarpetta. The younger Scarpetta has a multi-racial niece living with her. That niece is the apparent love child of Scarpetta’s sister, played in the present by the absurdly over-acting Jamie Lee Curtis. That niece has grown up to be (of course) a computer programming lesbian genius. And, her wife has died. That was 10 minutes in.
The series also introduced a female character who stares at Kidman taking a shower. The chances that that character is a closeted lesbian are pretty much zero. She’s old and white. As the series progresses, she’ll probably be a church-going “Christian” hypocrite.
I turned it off. 15 minutes.
Leftist messaging isn’t new.
By example, in a 1992 movie called Sneakers the movie concludes with the “good guy” computer hackers stealing all of the RNC’s money and giving it to Amnesty International, Greenpeace and the United Negro Fund. The RNC had nothing to do with the plot, but the shoehorn was used.
A few nights ago, my wife wanted to watch a movie. A 1995 movie called The American President was the choice. I didn’t remember watching it 29 years ago.
Opening credits rolled.
Aaron Sorkin wrote the script. Rob Reiner directed. Oh, boy… The American President was the catalyst for the TV series “The West Wing”. Many of the actors in the movie reappear in The West Wing. I girded myself for 2 hours of leftist lecturing.
The movie poster depicts Michael Douglas as a tux-wearing president dancing with Annette Bening. Charming. It was billed as a romantic comedy. It isn’t. That was to sell tickets. In reality it’s a vehicle for Sorkin to push leftist hot buttons, with lectures on “Global Warming” and gun control.
Douglas plays is a hugely popular, smart Democrat president named Shepard. Bening plays an “Environmental” lobbyist named Sydney Wade. They “fall” for each other. Throughout the movie, the White House characters remind us that without at least a 20% reduction in fossil fuel emissions, “within 20 years” we’re all gonna die, or die from gun violence. The villains? Republicans, of course. The main villain? A character played by Richard Dreyfuss, named Rumson. Rumsun is a whiskey-soaked, dried-up jerk who implies that Shepard lacks character, because Shepard is shacking up with Bening. His team found a photo of Wade attended a flag burning in college, so he adds an implication that she’s also an un-American radical.
The movie ends with a final patented Sorkin lecture aimed at knuckle-dragging Republicans. The speech is like an MS-Now strawman struggle session. Shepard steps into the press briefing room and lectures America about how America must tolerate speech that we hate, because that is what makes America special.
More strawman arguments are delivered before the speech (and movie) ends. It closes with Shepard staring into the camera, and the press staring back at Shepard like he just delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Shepard (aka Arron Sorkin) vows to send two new bills to Congress. The first intends to cut fossil fuel emissions by 20% to “reverse global warming.” The second is a crime bill to ban “assault weapons and handguns”.
Although Shepard didn’t ride in on Unicorn, that would have been about as believable as “The American President.”
I think the next time my wife asks me to watch a movie with her, I might just tell her:
“I’m gonna read a book…”