Posts Tagged ‘ohio’

A fresh look at the movie Hillbilly Elegy

Posted: July 21, 2024 by John Ruberry in culture, election 2024, elections, entertainment, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

With the nomination of Sen. J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate, of course there is renewed interest in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and the Ron Howard movie based on it.

I’ve yet to read book, but I saw the movie in 2020 on Netflix, which distributed the film, and I thought it was a captivating look at Vance’s life. 

Both the book and the movie draw on Vance’s upbringing in the southwestern Ohio post-industrial city of Middletown. His maternal grandparents were from Jackson, Kentucky–in the Appalachian portion of the state, which is where Hillbilly Elegy begins. The young Vance (Owen Asztalos) gets a quick lesson in the importance of family loyalty after losing a fight. The Vances, unfortunately, are quite the dysfunctional family, particularly his drug-addicted mother, Beverly (Amy Adams). Eventually, Vance ends up in the care of his grandmother, Bonnie “Mawmaw” Vance (Glenn Close), a chain-smoking, cussing, mean, but ultimately loving authority figure.

The movie contains many flashbacks as the adult J.D. (Gabriel Basso), a US Marine veteran who is a Yale law student, finds his promising future tangled up with his troubled past. His girlfriend, Usha (Freida Pinto), provides him much needed emotional support.

As I said earlier, this is a captivating film, and Howard, a gifted director, makes skilled used of imagery, including perhaps his favorite, water, and a stunning symbolic use of the Middletown rail bridge tunnel.

However, by 2020, Vance was vocal about his conservative beliefs, and he had moved from the Never Trump camp of the Republican Party to being a supporter of the 45th president. Which, in my opinion, led to movie critics, a group which politically consists mostly of leftists, to offer a large dose of negative reviews of Hillbilly Elegy. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper was a notable exception, he gave the movie a four-stars-out-of-four review.

An even worse response came from the 2021 Golden Raspberry Awards, better known as the Razzies. The bad movie answer to the Academy Awards nominated Hillbilly Elegy for three Razzies: Worst Director (Howard), Worst Adapted Screenplay (Vanessa Taylor), and Worst Supporting Actress (Close). However, Close, was also nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the same role, and Hillbilly Elegy also garnered a Best Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar nomination.

Was this hatred was triggered by Vance’s politics?

I am certain of that, because also that year, Razzie “winners” included the documentary Absolute Proof, which questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election. Mike Lindell of My Pillow fame “won” Worst Actor for his role in that movie, and Rudy Giuliani “won” for Worst Supporting Actor for his brief role in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

Voters for the Razzies are not required to see the movies they vote on. Other “winners” of Razzies, not surprisingly, include other conservatives, among them are Ronald Reagan, Dinesh D’Souza, and Jon Voigt.

I apologize for that brief diversion, but the Golden Raspberry Awards needs a serious and prolonged slapping around.

To summarize, don’t believe the critics. Unless you are an unhinged leftist suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, Hillbilly Elegy is well worth your time.

The lessons from Hillbilly Elegy are conservative ones. Family bonds, hard work, and perseverance, while not a guarantee of success, make success more likely. 

I suspect that left-wing critics will have one more group lash-out at Hillbilly Elegy.

And from the only presidential term of Joe Biden comes another lesson: Don’t believe the media. Even movie reviewers can’t be trusted.

Hillbilly Elegy is available for streaming on Netflix, where as of this writing is ranked #4 in the movie category. It is rated R for violence, drug use, and foul language.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Election 2023 Here Comes the Reaping

Posted: November 8, 2023 by datechguy in elections, elections, politics
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With the exception of the shocking election of a GOP Mayor in Manchester NH yesterday was a good day for the left in general and the culture of death and degeneracy in particular including in my own city that overwhelmingly supported a far left democrat over a conservative Democrat for mayor (we still have some of those here in the same way that deep red states have liberal republicans).

Rather than a long post I’m going to hit you with a few quotes and perhaps a line or two concerning them: First Glenn Reynolds on Virginia at Instapundit:

THIS IS A BIG LOSS, AND AS FAR AS I CAN TELL YOUNGKIN DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG: Democrats regain control of Virginia House of Delegates in rebuke to Youngkin.

It took just two years for the people of Virginia to go back to voting for the folks who brought you parents prosecuted for objecting to their daughters being assaulted by boys dressed as girls. This speaks volumes about Virginia and likely ends the whole “Draft Youngkin” business.

Quote two is from myself years ago when Planned Parenthood first moved into my city and the protests began:

Bottom line: If abortion does not end a unique human life then there is no reason to forbid, restrict or even consider it the least bit of controversial. The filming of it would not be an issue the sight of the “bodies” should be no more odd than a trip to the butcher shop and psychologically it should be no more traumatic than any other simple surgery. There would be no reason to want to reduce abortion, after all it’s just another same day operation, in fact we would want to encourage it for the monetary savings to the public.

When people talk about abortion as a “tragedy“, as something that should be “safe, legal and rare” as something we all “want to reduce” they reveal that they know the truth behind it, that we are talking about human life. We are ending a human life for the sake of convince, hardship or panic. We are willing to let it go, discarding it like any other piece of unwanted property, just so long as we don’t have to talk about it.

Like a town the day after a lynch mob strikes or a person at a party of a plantation owner who visits the slave quarters in the evening, we know something is wrong, but we don’t want to embarrass our neighbors and friends by saying a word.

Because once we say that word, we acknowledge reality

The vote in Ohio demonstrates that the paradigm has changed. The move to allow abortion up to birth shows that the left either no longer believes or no longer needs their faux paradigm of caring about life. It’s actually rather consistent with their reaction to the slaughter in Israel.

And that brings us to the 3rd quote this one from Don Surber:

The NYT poll is suspect because it came a month after Biden’s initial support of Israel after the Palestinian army attacked civilians and raped, tortured, killed and mutilated them. There were zero military targets in the October 7 attack. Palestinians broke a truce — again for the 15th time.

Biden’s reluctance to side with terrorists better explains the sudden hullabaloo about his electability. The pressure is not on him to quit the presidency but to quit the decency. Democrats support the terrorists and have for some time.

Democrat support of anti-Semitism and Muslim calls for a second Holocaust should cost the party the next 10 elections but I have learned something over the last two decades about the word should: it is a bet against the odds because man seldom does what he should.

That’s the thing. We say “Should” because Mr. Surber and I both come from the days when this was a strong and unapologetic Christian Nation whose recent defeat of Nazism is a hot war and the Soviets in a cold one seemingly “should” have been the signal for a new golden age for the world.

Alas even strong didn’t recognize that the grand period we were living through was not the norm but the exception to the rules of history. For we forget who the prince of this world is.

I’ll give the last word and quote to Christ himself:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many.

How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.

Matthew 7:13-14

America has its secretary of silly walks, Pete Buttigieg

Posted: February 19, 2023 by John Ruberry in Blame Trump, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Yes, we have our secretary of silly walks, Pete Buttigieg. 

More on the walks in a bit.

Often described as “the smartest person in the room,” Mayor Pete to his friends, Pothole Pete to his growing list of detractors, the former McKinsey and Company consultant and mayor of South Bend, Indiana mayor has shown a great talent for cunningness in regard to his career advancement. 

He wasn’t an effective mayor and he’s been a disastrous secretary of transportation. In his 24 months at that job, he has faced three crises.

Buttigieg was AWOL during the supply chain crisis of 2021–he was on previously unannounced paternity leave–the holiday season flight disruptions of 2022, and now, there has been a recent increase in train derailments, including the one that led to a toxic mushroom cloud in East Palestine, Ohio. 

But it’s not his fault! It’s Donald Trump’s fault! Actually, Buttigieg is wrong, the Trump era rule change on trains had no effect on the East Palestine disaster.

But Buttigieg still has a job, and because he checks a sacrosanct “box” that is so important to the identitarians of the woke Democrat Party–Buttigieg is gay–he is still being discussed as a running mate for Biden in 2024. Like Chicago’s failed mayor, Lori Lightfoot, Kamala Harris is another “triple threat,” the vice president is Asian, Black, and a woman. Harris is the “first” of all three to serve as vice president, Michael O’Shea, writing for the Federalist, says that “Harris could only feasibly be replaced with another “first.'” 

And that “first” could mean Buttigieg, despite his flops.

I endured some Buttigiegs when I was toiling in the hospitality industry. They were smug, they always knew what to say and how to say it, and they looked good, but when it came to real work, they always had other things to do. 

At one hotel where I worked, we had a management company take over operations–and the Hotel Buttigiegs would nitpick us on nothingness—“Hey, can you have that neon beer sign moved to another window?”–but the real problems we faced would not be addressed. The hotel was falling apart and when one of my co-workers would bring that up obvious problem, the reply would be, “Well, the owners won’t invest their money into rehab.” Fine, I get it, but if these “experts,” these Buttigiegs, were so smart, they would either convince the owners to open their wallets, or they could find a way to make the hotel profitable. After all, they were the experts, as they would regularly remind us.

I remember one of those Hotel Buttigiegs dressing me down one day, literally, because my shirttail was out. Okay, that’s a legitimate criticism, but the reason I was disheveled is that there was a call for all able-bodied employees to help move chairs into a ballroom because a client’s meeting attracted far more attendees than expected. I answered the call–but Hotel Buttigieg didn’t. After all, he was “management.” Well, so was I, but I was not part of the elect, I was not a member of their management class, their little club of overpaid know-it-alls. But Hotel Buttigieg always had his shirt tucked in.

Before long, shirttail-critic stopped coming by–that was an improvement–and so did all of the other Hotel Buttigiegs. The challenges facing the hotel were largely intractable, partly because of these know-it-alls. They were AWOL, while their bosses were still collecting their management fees, because these Hotel Buttigiegs didn’t want their names muddied with our crappy hotel. They were presented with challenges–and they ran away. Because the Hotel Buttigiegs wanted to look good–ah, that tie is perfect with that suit–for their next undeserved promotion.

Pete Buttigieg as of this writing hasn’t visited East Palestine. But Donald Trump will be there on Wednesday. Trump, although he has no real power anymore, has never been afraid of a challenge. Unlike, well you know who.

Oh yeah, silly walks. 

I was in the audience at the Park West in Chicago in 1987 when Graham Chapman gave a fabulous lecture on his years with the Monty Python troupe. I hung on every word. There was a question-and-answer session, and Chapman, who died of cancer two years later, was asked about the silly walks sketch, one of the many legendary bits from the greatest comedy television show ever.

His reply went something like this, “Oh yes, back in Britain we had this member of parliament, who couldn’t do anything right, but the prime minister always found a cabinet position for him. So, when writing this sketch, we came up with the most ridiculous position we could imagine for him.” 

Watch as John Cleese kicks the sketch out of the park. 

America now has its secretary of silly walks, the incompetent Pete Buttigieg. Currently he’s in charge of the US Transportation Department, yet he might be a heartbeat away from the presidency in 2025.

But the residents of East Palestine aren’t laughing at all. Nor are they impressed. Even though Mayor Pete is so smart–he graduated from Harvard, you know–and he’s a former consultant from McKinsey–and oh yeah, did I mention how smart he is? And Buttigieg looks dashing in a suit too.

UPDATE February 22:

20 days after the toxic spill, and very likely only because he was shamed into it, Buttigieg will visit East Palestine tomorrow.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.