What would be the reason for leftists removing the money shot, Armstrong planting the United States flag on the lunar surface, in a Neil Armstrong biopic? Their claim is that the movie is about “human” achievement, and it’s not necessary to focus on the moon landing being accomplished by any particular country.
Well then, let’s remake Cool Runnings and take out the part about them being from Jamaica. It’s not necessary. After all, it’s a movie about HUMAN achievement, right?
(Isn’t it sad that the best example I could think of a biopic of another country’s achievement has them sledding.)
I’m sure I could think of other movies with better examples, but the point would be the same. Name a movie with an achievement on par with LANDING ON THE MOON and show me how the director removed the nation responsible for the achievement.
“Cultural appropriation” is an egregious offense. How dare someone non-Mexican sell a taco. (I guess a Taco is a Mexican’s moon landing in terms of achievement and they don’t want it being appropriated. Sad.)
But landing on the moon? That can be appropriated by the rest of the world as their achievement.
Jeremy Boreing, for the Daily Wire, says:
Almost every major human achievement of the last two plus centuries, and that represents the majority of all human achievements in all of history, have been American.
That’s not coincidence.
Rather, what Gosling and so many like him fail to see is that America is the achievement — the greatest of all human achievements. The achievement from which most subsequent achievements have sprung forth.
What I like about Boreing’s statement is that when you get the inevitable backlash from another country’s nationalists, listing their achievements, you get to scold them for making it so important.
“Hey, these are not (fill in the country name) achievements. These are HUMAN achievements!”
Boreing’s proclamation is a bit of a trap. I like it.
Trying like crazy to think of great Canadian achievements. I’m stuck on Poutine!
Killing all those Jews during WWII, starving to death all the Chinese & Russian people after communism took over was quite the human achievement as well!
Just read that article, excellent. My husband and I were looking forward to going to see the film. No going to happen now.
So this means we can finally put slavery to rest as it wasn’t uniquely a blemish on the United states, rather a human failure…
Then who won Pres. Kennedy ‘s proclaimed ‘space race’?
Like I always say, One country on the planet put men on the moon; the rest use the metric system.
Let’s quit naming streets MLK Boulevard, we’ll call them U.N. Avenue.
We are the world!
Good time to put in a plug for Bill Whittle’s excellent video on American Exceptionalism!
Go find it on YouTube. While you still can.
Hollywood could not find one American actor to play a great American hero?
It stands to reason, people like that never contribute to the country, they just take.
TP September 2, 2018 at 3:51 pm
Actually, no Hollywood actor has the capability of playing a great American hero. They don’t have the capability of pulling that off.
Jimmy Stewart could.
What Hollyweed would NEVER admit ….. was from Buzz himself:
“Landing on the moon is not quite the same thing as arriving at Grandmother’s for Thanksgiving. You don’t hop out of the lunar module the moment the engine stops and yell, “We’re here! We’re here!” Getting out of the LM takes a lot of preparation, so we had built in several extra hours to our flight plan. We also figured it was wise to allow more time rather than less for our initial activities after landing, just in case anything had gone wrong during the flight.
According to our schedule, we were supposed to eat a meal, rest awhile, and then sleep for seven hours after arriving on the moon. After all, we had already worked a long, full day and we wanted to be fresh for our extra-vehicular activity (EVA). Mission Control had notified the media that they could take a break and catch their breath since there wouldn’t be much happening for several hours as we rested. But it was hard to rest with all that adrenaline pumping through our systems.
Nevertheless, in an effort to remain calm and collected, I decided that this would be an excellent time for a ceremony I had planned as an expression of gratitude and hope. Weeks before, as the Apollo mission drew near, I had originally asked Dean Woodruff, pastor at Webster Presbyterian Church, where my family and I attended services when I was home in Houston, to help me come up with something I could do on the moon, some appropriate symbolic act regarding the universality of seeking. I had thought in terms of doing something overtly patriotic, but everything we came up with sounded trite and jingoistic. I settled on a well-known expression of spirituality: celebrating the first Christian Communion on the moon, much as Christopher Columbus and other explorers had done when they first landed in their “new world.”
I wanted to do something positive for the world, so the spiritual aspect appealed greatly to me, but NASA was still smarting from a lawsuit filed by atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair after the Apollo 8 astronauts read from the biblical creation account in Genesis. O’Hair contended this was a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Although O’Hair’s views did not represent mainstream America at that time, her lawsuit was a nuisance and a distraction that NASA preferred to live without.
I met with Deke Slayton, one of the original “Mercury Seven” astronauts who ran our flight-crew operations, to inform him of my plans and that I intended to tell the world what I was doing. Deke said, “No, that’s not a good idea, Buzz. Go ahead and have communion, but keep your comments more general.” I understood that Deke didn’t want any more trouble.
So, during those first hours on the moon, before the planned eating and rest periods, I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out the communion elements along with a three-by-five card on which I had written the words of Jesus: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.” I poured a thimbleful of wine from a sealed plastic container into a small chalice, and waited for the wine to settle down as it swirled in the one-sixth Earth gravity of the moon. My comments to the world were inclusive: “I would like to request a few moments of silence … and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way.” I silently read the Bible passage as I partook of the wafer and the wine, and offered a private prayer for the task at hand and the opportunity I had been given.
Neil watched respectfully, but made no comment to me at the time.
Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankind — be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists. But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience that by giving thanks to God. It was my hope that people would keep the whole event in their minds and see, beyond minor details and technical achievements, a deeper meaning — a challenge, and the human need to explore whatever is above us, below us, or out there.
Some sources asserted that Aldrin’s taking of Communion was kept “secret” from the public by NASA due to an ongoing lawsuit filed by atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair:
The story of the secret communion service only emerged after the mission. Aldrin had originally planned to share the event with the world over the radio. However, at the time Nasa was still reeling from a lawsuit filed by the firebrand atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, resulting in the ceremony never being broadcast. After the Apollo 8 crew had read out the Genesis creation account in orbit, O’Hair wanted a ban on Nasa astronauts practising religion on earth, in space or “around and about the moon” while on duty. She believed it violated the constitutional separation between church and state”.
Boycott the crappy movie!