Day: March 14, 2012

Chris Rock Attacks Conservative Author Over Tea Party Question

The New York Times bestselling author of the explosive new book, Hollywood Hypocrites: The Devastating Truth About Obama’s Biggest Backers, Jason Mattera, had his crew’s camera snatched and hurled by comedian Chris Rock when he asked the star why he has called the Tea Party racist (video below).

“I was stunned,” said Mr. Mattera in an exclusive interview with Big Hollywood. “Tea Party members get called the worst things imaginable and still remain peaceful. But ask a big Hollywood celebrity to explain himself and the guy goes ballistic, wrestles the camera away from my camerawoman, chucks it 50 feet, and then challenges me to a fight. It’s unreal. And it perfectly illustrates why I decided to investigate and writeHollywood Hypocrites.”

The confrontation, which took place around 2:00 a.m. on January 23, 2012, at Spike Lee’s Sundance Film Festival after party at Tao night club, ended with Chris Rock challenging the conservative author to a fight, says Mr. Mattera:

“Chris Rock shouted, ‘You want to throw down? Let’s throw down right now!’ Of course, he was standing safely behind two bodyguards when he said it.”

The clash was ignited when Jason Mattera inquired about disparaging comments Chris Rock made about the Tea Party in an Esquire article in 2011:

When I see the Tea Party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last — this is the act up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them — and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now.

Jason Mattera says his confrontation with Chris Rock is just the opening salvo in a series of forthcoming ambush celebrity interviews with some of the big name stars he chronicles in Hollywood Hypocrites.

Read more here.

Trouble brewing; will likely be handled with CAIR

Not too long after the controversy about Ocean City’s prayer breakfast stirred up accusations of Islam-bashing from certain quarters, even when it turned out to be much ado about nothing, we may hear from CAIR and its liberal allies once again once word gets out that the Delmarva Republican Women are hosting a “Voices Against Sharia” meeting on March 31. Two of the featured speakers are Manda Zand Ervin and Catherine Mann-Grandy.

This is from Ervin’s bio at the American Islamic Leadership Coalition:

She is the founder and president of the Alliance of Iranian Women, a group which has deep connections within the Iranian diaspora and within Iran.

As the head of the Alliance of Iranian Women, Manda Ervin works to bring the West’s attention to the plight of Iranian women under Islamic Sharia laws. On September of 2009 she was invited to the G-8 International Conference on Violence Against Women, at the Italian Foreign Ministry headquarters in Rome, Italy, where she was the featured speaker on Iran. She almost single-handedly gathered the support to pass a 2003 U.S. Senate Resolution on the human rights of the women of Iran. Manda is frequently consulted by Members of Congress considering resolutions and legislation on Iran policy and human rights.

Read more here.

First a ‘Cultist’ and an ‘Outsourced’ Indian IT Tech, Now Chris Matthews Likens Romney to African ‘Colonizer’

Chris Matthews is not particularly good at choosing metaphors lately. After having likened the former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to an Indian tech support worker and accusing the GOP of “outsourcing the election to a Mormon,” (a religion which Matthews also suggested was a “cult”), Matthews has now hit Romney with yet another odd metaphor in the wake of his losses in Alabama and Mississippi. Now, according to Matthews, Romney is like an African colonizer.

Mediaite brings us the latest Matthews gaffe:

Matthews asked Steve Schmidt, former senior advisor to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, if it seemed to rank-and-file Republican voters that he “didn’t belong.”

“He’s not a backslapping urban politician, you know, who can go down there and pull off the y’alls and the cheese grits,” Schmidt observed. “He’s a serious man with a record of accomplishment and he particularly has a record of accomplishment in making broken things work right and I think being able to communicate that through the prism of this is how it benefits you, the voter, in a primary context and then ultimately in a general election context, you know, convincing people he has the core competence to restore prosperity to the country.”

“It sounds colonial!” Matthews exclaimed. “Like, I’m not one of you people, but I can come in and run your country better than you can! I know I’m not one of you, but I’m really good at this business sense. You know! Colonial! That was the colonial argument by the way in Africa. We’re going to come in. We may not belong here. We’re not one of you but we got this economic sense. We know how to run businesses better. I’m sorry, these metaphors never work!”

Watch it here.

Obama’s Rev. Wright Endorses Radical ‘March on Jerusalem’ to End the Israeli ‘Occupation’

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

Read more here.

American Indian Tribe Given OK to Kill Two Bald Eagles for Religious Purposes

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given the OK for an American Indian tribe to kill two bald eagles for religious purposes.

The decision comes after the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the agency‘s refusal to allow them to do so was a violation of tribal members’ religious freedom, the Associated Press reported.

While no longer on the federal list of endangered or threatened species, federal law prohibits the killing of bald eagles under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. American Indians are able to apply for eagle feathers or carcases to use in their ceremonies from a federal repository. They can apply for permits to kill bald eagles as well, though such permission is incredibly rare.

According to the Associated Press, it’s been almost three years since the Arapaho tribe applied for such a permit, and a lawyer for the tribe said they believed it necessary to go to court in order to get one. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted the permit Friday.

Under the terms of the permit, the Northern Arapaho will be allowed to kill up to two bald eagles off their reservation. A neighboring tribe, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, opposed the killing of eagles on their shared reservation.

Read more here.