Meghan McCain is very upset. And this time, it’s not even ’cause of a bad hair day or ’cause everyone is talking about her bountiful breasts which she took a picture of and posted on Twitter because she loves America that much. Nope, not even close. This time it’s even worse: Hollywood.
Meggy just doesn’t understand why the stars and elitists over in Hollywood hate our troops so much. She, for one, adores them. They’re so cute, cuddly and heroic, how could you not just wanna squeeze ’em and kiss ’em?
Which is why she is terribly upset, no make that outraged, that the new Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman film “Brothers” she saw over the weekend about a Marine serving in Afghanistan didn’t portray our war heroes as realistically as you’d expect from a big Hollywood Blockbuster.
Meghan asked her mother Cindy if she would come see the movie with her, but naturally Cindy said “she didn’t want to give any money to a movie in which the preview showed the soldier coming back home and waving a gun at his family in their driveway.” Hits too close to home or something.
I mean how ridiculous is that? Such obscene things would never happen. If anything, he would just divorce his now crippled wife and leave his old family for a fresh start with a much younger, richer blond heiress who still has use of her legs.
While Meghan was also deeply disturbed by the preview, her curiosity about Hollywood’s take on our soldiers and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan triumphed and Meggy was forced to endure “Brothers” all by her lonesome.
This is where the plot thickens my friends! So Megs and her popcorn are just chilling at the theater waiting to see what crazy perversion of war Hollywood’s come up with now. Like showing our soldiers as deserters or whackjobs instead of the perfect specimens of humanity Meghan knows they really are.
In Brothers, not only does one of the Marines captured by the Taliban actually say that he “realized we shouldn’t be there,” but Maguire’s character Sam beats a fellow soldier to death with a lead pipe. Sam then returns home to his family and goes AWOL trying to kill both his wife and his brother.
Can you believe the nerve of these Hollywood hotshots, portraying soldiers as real human beings with feelings whose experience in war is sometimes so traumatic that they actually have trouble readjusting to civilian life afterward?
Well, Megan cannot.
“I don’t care if every producer, director, and screenwriter in Hollywood is against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and presumably most are), what offends me is the portrayal of soldiers as cowards and lunatics—driven to such lengths that they come home and try to kill their families,” Meghan writes.
“Obviously, post-traumatic stress disorder has become more prevalent in the military and clearly this is a problem that needs to be seriously addressed. But I believe these films add to the damage when they portray soldiers as disloyal, unwilling to serve, and against the missions themselves. In my experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth.”
After all, she is the daughter of a onetime POW turned politician, so she knows everything there is to know about war.
In other words, Meghan knows post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exists and all, but still doesn’t understand why we have to focus on the “ugly” side of war, when everyone knows war is mostly about having a good time and also shooting some people.
“How many deserters do you actually hear about on the news? Not very many. Unfortunately, the thousands of stories about heroism and courage that could be told about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not in the interest of many Hollywood filmmakers, and so a real disservice is being done to these troops. These films only perpetuate negative stereotypes about soldiers and the military. At a time when support for the war in Afghanistan is dividing this country, I simply don’t understand why Hollywood insists on portraying our soldiers in such a negative light. If Vietnam taught us anything, it was hate the war, love the warrior.”
Right on Meggy! Hate the war but love the warrior. By sending them to die in some proxy war in the Vietnamese jungle (or mountainous desert terrain). And if they’re “brave” enough to actually come back in one piece, don’t provide them with any mental and or physical support for their injuries or sacrifices. But whatever you do, certainly don’t acknowledge the heavy burden many of them now carry as a result of their dedicated service to America or in any way help them put the pieces of their shattered lives back together.
Because that shows weakness. And strong, brave American soldiers are NEVER weak, understand? NEVER! They are brave courageous men and women whose haunting memories of the horrors of war gently fall off them like leaves fall from trees in autumn.
It’s just a shame Hollywood still has the silly notion that war is hell, when it’s really helloooo opportunity, or in Daddy’s case, helloooo presidency. Almost.