See? You CAN find a Patriot in Hollywood!
Tom Hanks was honored at the Museum of Modern Art gala with the Film Benefit. The audience was comprised of New York and Hollywood Liberals that were still stinging from the Election results.
The introduction by curator Rajendra Roy said that over the last 100 years during times of ‘turmoil or uncertainty’ Americans have looked to the cinema and its heroes for ‘comfort, inspiration and reassurance’ Roy continued saying that Hanks is the ‘…cinematic hero we need now’.
When Hanks made his address, he said some unexpected things.
He probably should have had a ‘trigger warning’.
“I can’t wax philosophically enough about what film means to myself and to any person who ponders the human condition,” said the actor. “We are one week into a different era for the world and for our nation. We can always turn to films, from no matter what era they were made in, to reflect who we are and how we believe and the things we hold dear and important to us. Sometimes they can be silly movies, fantastic movies. The Wizard of Oz when it came out is just as reflective of who we are, who we were, in 1939, as was Gone With the Wind or Goodbye Mr. Chips. The films throughout the ages, in the 1950s and the 1960s, those great years when John Wayne was exhibiting his True Grit at the same time that Peter Fonda was driving across America in Easy Rider. That’s who all of us are. They capture everything about us, one way or another. The rise of artists like Melvin Van Peebles and Sidney Poitier goes on and on…
…”We are going to be all right,” assured Hanks. “America has been in worse places than we are at right now. In my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth and nail. Every dinner table ended up being as close to a fistfight as human families are allowed. We have been in a place where we have looked at our leaders and wondered, ‘What the hell they were thinking of?’ We’ve had moments with the administrations and politicians and senators and governors in which we have asked ourselves, ‘Are they lying to us or do they really believe in this?’ That’s all right. We have this magnificent thing that is in place. It’s a magnificent document and it starts off with the phrases that, if you’re smart enough, you’ve memorized in school or just read enough to that you could put it by heart, or you watched those things on ABC where they taught you a little song in order to sing. And the song goes, ‘We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,’ and it goes on and on. That document is going to protect us over and over again, whether or not our neighbors preserve, protect and defend it themselves.
“We are going to be all right because we constantly get to tell the world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as American. We do have the greatest country in the world. We move at a slow pace. We have the greatest country in the world because we are always moving towards a more perfect union. That journey never ceases, it never stops. Sometimes, to quote a Springsteen song, it’s ‘one step forward, two steps back,’ but we still aggregately move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so, but we will move forward because if we do not move forward, what is to be said of us?”
…“This is the United States of America. We’ll go on. There’s great like-minded people out there who are Americans first and Republicans or Democrats second,” Hanks told THR. “I hope the president-elect does such a great job that I vote for his reelection in four years.”
Read more: The Hollywood Reporter
Shockingly, his words were met with a standing ovation.
Well, Mr. Hanks, here’s one from The ‘Deplorables’ from the Red States:
