December 26, 2012
By: Linda Case Gibbons
During World War II Hollywood was all red, white and blue for America, with Hollywood stars voluntarily putting their careers on hold to joint the armed forces and to fight for their country.
James Arness served in the U.S. Army. He was wounded in the Battle on Anzio and suffered a lifelong limp from his injuries. Arness was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
Lee Marvin quit school to join the U.S. Marine Corps and was wounded during the Battle of Saipan where most of his platoon was killed.And Mel Brooks deactivated land mines during his service in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer, taking part in the Battle of the Bulge.
Mickey Rooney served in the U.S. Army under Gen. George Patton. Rooney was awarded the Bronze Star.
Tony Randall served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, refusing an entertainment assignment with Special Services.
Jimmy Stewart entered the Army Air Forces as a private and attained the rank of colonel, serving as a bomber pilot with more than 20 missions over Germany and hundreds of air strikes during his tour of duty.
Don Adams served with the U.S. Marine Corps. Wounded during the Battle of Guadalcanal, he nearly lost his life to malaria and black water fever. He went on to become Maxwell Smart.
Henry Fonda enlisted in the U.S. Navy, was stationed on the destroyer USS Satterlee and was later commissioned as Lt. (j.g.) in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific.
And the much admired and loved Charles Durning, who died this week, barely survived World War II and, as his obituary states, "was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive…
"In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and Three Purple Hearts. ‘Too many bad memories,’ he told an interviewer in 1997. ‘I don’t want you to see me crying.’”
And those who waited at home also did their part.
Local newspapers included vast coverage of the war so citizens were kept advised of conditions at home and overseas. Farmers heeded the call to produce food for the war effort. Women worked on farms and in factories taking up the slack. Victory gardens were planted and women made their family’s clothing.
All manner of materials were recycled and salvaged for the war effort – grease, tin, metals, paper, used tires. Children helped by collecting tons of tin foil.
Citizens participated with dedication in the rationing of gas, meat, sugar, cheese, nylon hosiery among other things. Rationing stamps were commonplace and financing for the war effort came from the sale of war bonds.
It was while travelling by airplane for one such bond drive that the actress Carole Lombard’s plane crashed in Nevada and she was killed. Although an established star, she volunteered for the war effort and raised millions of dollars, crisscrossing the nation, selling war bonds.
In 1942, after her death, her grieving husband Clark Gable, then already a mega-star, enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Force.
It makes us proud to hear these stories. These are our forebears, they are the people who made it possible for us to enjoy our current blessings as Americans.
One cannot help contrasting the past with the present, the current Hollywood actors with those of the 1940s.
This new crop of actors do not feel they have a country about which they wish to speak proudly, much less defend. And neither do our elected officials.
And "they” get away with it. How have things gone so wrong?
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration has created a new brand of mediocrity as the new measure of a man.
Bill Clinton kicked off the ball as president with his flagrant lying, under oath and in his private life. But compared to today’s public officials, Clinton looks like an amateur. Unfortunately, he would not be a member of Obama’s Pinocchio Club.
Lying has become the new normal. No one is out of the running for anything for neglecting or avoiding their responsibilities and no one is ever "punished” for their transgressions. It has become routine for this administration and its supporters to beat the heck out of everything that is American and to praise everything that is not. But wrongdoers get a pass.
And "they” get away with it.
The Justice Department covers the mistakes of the Justice Department, the State Department and Department of Homeland Security the same. It’s a stacked deck with a bar that has been so lowered that we have nothing but mediocre people defending mediocre people in positions of power.
Service to and protection of this fine nation is the last thing on the minds of any of our elected officials, but most especially our president. Thus we find ourselves outclassed in the Middle East, a feat accomplished by Obama in a few scant years. We are now no longer a "Go-to Power.” And it is not an accident.
Governed by a child-president as we are, we are the unwilling recipients of what Obama thinks is America’s future. It resembles what his eyes have seen in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Africa, but there’s nothing "classically American” in his lexicon of what should be for a country that he blames for its colonialism, exploitation of the poor of the world and the undeserved success of this country’s citizens.
He told us far before he was elected in "Dreams of My Father” that he was not comfortable in France when he visited there, in that European environment, but embraced the third world living conditions in which his father lived in Africa when he visited there. That is the environment he believes America deserves.
Today black conservatives such as South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott who is replacing Sen. Jim DeMint in the Senate, are hated and berated as "not black enough” by black liberals. Racial division in the country is deeper than ever. And these liberal detractors get away with it.
Citizens are deliberately set against citizens, black, white and Latinos, rich against poor.
The head of our government flashes his U.S. credit card and laughs in our faces as he spends and spends and heads to the links. He uses presidential edicts to bankrupt small businesses with burdensome regulations that are hidden from the public purview. He and his administration killed the coal business and natural gas is next on the EPA’s secret agenda.
Hillary Clinton in most bizarre fashion, simply disappears from sight. Jesse Jackson’s son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. also simply disappears from sight. When we ask where they have gone, these elected representatives who are not at their "desks,” but who are still getting paid, we are angrily attacked for criticizing them. "How dare you ask,” they say. "They are sick!”
Hill has a lot of problems from her non-performance relative to Benghazi.
Jackson has a lot of problems, too. He is accused of using campaign funds for things other than campaigning and a "pay to play” scheme to win a Senate seat. It appears both are suffering from the same debilitating condition: being in trouble for not doing their jobs and being afraid of facing the piper. So they call in sick.
When four officials were pulled out of somewhere in the State Department to take the blame in Benghazi and were supposedly fired from their jobs, it turns out they were simply moved to new desks and are still on State Department payroll.
And "they” get away with it.
Harry Reid ignores Republican plans to avoid the "Fiscal Cliff” sitting on his desk since May, Obama can’t pass a budget to save his life and they get away with it.
Don’t ask, don’t ever ask has become the new rule of the Obama nation. Logic is out the window and anything is fair game.
It doesn’t look like America of the 1940’s, I admit, and the patriotism of World War II, but that’s Socialism for you. As defined, in Marxist theory, it is a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.
Even though most Americans and all Republicans are reluctant to put into words what is happening here in our country, it is happening.
So you see, it’s all up to you. We can be better than we are. We could be swinging on a star.
Happy New Year, America.
Hold the line, America.