WHY NO CANDLELIT VIGILS IN THIS COUNTRY?
By Cori Dauber
When Tim Robbins' appearance at the baseball hall of fame was cancelled, he said a "chill wind was blowing" -- at his appearance at the National Press Club, a speech by the way, which can easily be found on the Internet in its entirety.. The Hollywood elite, say what you will about them or their positions, do not lack for attention, and are not shy about defending their freedom to use it.
So, asks a piece in this morning's OpinionJournal, where's the outrage over the murder of a Dutch filmmaker for making a movie?
As the author of the piece writes, quoting the 'sphere's own Roger Simon:
Movie after movie showed filmmakers on the edge, taking risks, telling truths that needed to be told. But Mr. van Gogh paid the ultimate price to make his film, and the ensuing silence of a community purportedly so interested in free speech is maddening. Agree with the man or not, what warranted his violent death?
Giving Hollywood the benefit of the doubt, I did one more search to find industry response to the van Gogh murder. I found the blog of novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon, who confirmed that I wasn't the only one who'd been wondering: "It's stunning how silent the American artistic community, Hollywood in particular, has been about the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam," he wrote. "Do they even know what happened to one of their own? Have they even heard of him? Do they care someone was killed for making a film which protested violent abuse against women? Are they even interested?"
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