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Legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone has passed away at the age of 91.
His death has sparked a flurry of tributes all honoring the late musician's prolific output and prodigious talent.
For six decades, Morricone's music has shaped cinema. Often honored as the creator of spaghetti Western drama soundscapes, Morricone composed scores for Quentin Tarantino, Pier Pasolini, Terrence Malik, and many other luminaries.
The Academy Award-winning scorer composed for Édouard Molinaro's La Cage Aux Folles, Wolfgang Peterson's In the Line of Fire, Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, and hundreds more.
But he is perhaps best known for his work crafting soundscapes for Sergio Leone's Western films. Defined by his use of uncanny, collage-like sounds—often created by non-traditional objects—Leone's work not only created symphonic wonders: It created worlds.
<p>"All kinds of sounds can be useful to convey emotion … it's music made up of the sound of reality," the late composer once said of his work. </p><p>Morricone was born in 1928 in Rome, Italy, where he lived his entire life. He began playing trumpet as a child, and during elementary school he met his future collaborator Sergio Leone. He attended Rome's Conservatory of Santa Cecilia starting at age 12, and he set about learning the ins and outs of classical music. Eventually he began working as a session musician and composer.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>The first film he scored was Luciano Sales II's <em>Federale </em>in 1971, and from there he launched himself into creating soundscapes for Western films. "I attempted to reinvent American folk," he once said. "The caricatured nature of [Sergio Leone's] characters inspired me to introduce strange sounds into the score, so they would have the charisma he wanted."</p><p>Among his many achievements, Morricone was responsible for creating the "coyote-howl" sound effect, the ticking-clock-before-the-shootout trope, and more. He soon expanded beyond Westerns, lending his talents to all manners of films, from the avant-garde to the obscene to the Hollywood blockbuster. His music has been sampled and praised by everyone from Yo Yo Ma to Jay-Z to <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/metallica-tribute-ennio-morricone-ecstasy-of-gold-1024601/" target="_blank">Metallica</a>.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><div id="73e6b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="76626d6805e319a831b9bb1d364b343d"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1280182274206633985" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">I'll never forget the way Ennio Morricone described music as “energy, space, and time.” It is, perhaps, the most co… https://t.co/dLG8lZPpoW</div> — Yo-Yo Ma (@Yo-Yo Ma)<a href="https://twitter.com/YoYo_Ma/statuses/1280182274206633985">1594054213.0</a></blockquote></div><p><br></p><p>While it's impossible to even come close to summarizing all of the composer's magnificent achievements, here are some highlights of Morricone's career:</p><h4>1. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)</h4><p>This soundtrack may be one of Morricone's most recognizable. The movie <em>The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly</em>, which starred Clint Eastwood, is defined by its main theme. The film also gave us the legendary, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, psychedelic and whimsical opus "The Ecstasy of Gold." Ever a master of final scenes, Morricone also gave us a fantastically chilling soundtrack for the film's final showdown.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966) title sequence</small>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Ecstasy Of Gold</small>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - The Final Duel (1966 HD)</small>
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</p><p><br></p><h4>2. Days of Heaven (1978)</h4><p>Terrence Malik's second major film was graced by Morricone's haunting, atmospheric, visionary talents. The score won him an Academy Award and his first Oscar nomination, and the soundtrack is simply to die for—it sounds almost too perfect to be real.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f557aec1eb7d55cac858cec77882080e"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OP5UchXF9YM?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Days Of Heaven | Soundtrack Suite (Ennio Morricone)</small>
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</p><h4>3. Once Upon a Time in the West</h4><p>Yet another famous Sergio Leone Western, <em>Once Upon a Time in the West </em>was graced by Morricone's magical soundscaping abilities. Impressionistic and deeply creative and incredibly theatrical, the entire score is a wonder.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><iframe src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:album:1mLXrA8oEtzeH6D45Zx4Bt" id="7c526" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="60f833eb4afd266e3f3155f6f6dc9650" expand="1" height="480" width="100%"></iframe><h4>4. Here's to You - Sacco e Vanzetti<br></h4><div>Morricone certainly was in no way tied to the Hollywood Western juggernaut; and in fact, he resisted it, diving deep into alternative and Italian cinema. He lent his talents to Giuliano Montaldo's <em>Sacco e Vanzetti </em>in 1971, composing two songs that featured Joan Baez on vocals. The film told the true story of two Italian immigrant anarchists executed in Massachusetts, and Morricone's score swells with melancholia that makes its message feel all the more tragic and resonant.</div><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7589afbbb37afff32137f23c27dd6b46"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nohl01PR-_I?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Sacco and Vanzetti (Here's To You) - Original</small>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Ennio Morricone - Here's to You - Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)</small>
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</p><h4>5. <em>The Mission</em> Theme - Gabriel's Oboe</h4><p>Roland Joffé's film <em>The Mission </em>was soundtracked by Morricone's wonderfully opulent score, which includes "Gabriel's Oboe," its expressive and romantic theme. Simple and haunting, it sounds like a cross between a funeral and a rebirth.<span></span></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ef624d2006da6d562ada2e58f0aa75f9"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ixby9BzJfEo?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Mission Theme - Gabriel's Oboe (Ennio Morricone)</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=Ixby9BzJfEo&feature=emb_title" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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Kanye West's Presidential Run Is Great News for Donald Trump
"Better late than never" may not apply in this case...
07.06.2020
On Saturday, in a strange celebration of Independence Day, rapper, producer, and sneaker mogul Kanye West announced his intention to run for president in 2020.
As in, this year. Right now.
The announcement quickly prompeted messages of support from Kanye's wife, prison reform advocate Kim Kardashian West, as well as from billionaire weirdo/Grimes baby daddy Elon Musk.
Of course, this news comes well past the filing deadline for independent candidates in several major states—which means that unless a political party randomly decides to nominate him, Kanye's name won't appear on those ballots. As deadlines in other states approach—with little apparent effort to gather the petition signatures required—Kanye is officially joining the long, proud history of vanity presidential campaigns. Unfortunately, that's a lot more dangerous than it sounds.
We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am runni… https://t.co/MySzN3vjIB— ye (@ye)1593909493.0
<p>With zero chance of actually winning, vanity candidates often spend fortunes promoting themselves to the public—enjoying the prestige and attention the process garners for them. This would all be fine—vanity candidates can make an election cycle far more entertaining—if not for the fact that these campaigns sometimes end up determining who actually wins.</p><p></p><p>Take, for example, the first time Donald Trump ran for president, back in the year 2000. Following two successive elections in which the center-right Reform party siphoned millions of votes from Republican candidates like George H. W. Bush—likely securing Bill Clinton's victory in 1992—Donald Trump's longtime friend and advisor Roger Stone reportedly set out to ensure that wouldn't happen again.<br></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><h4>Roger Stone's Election Interference</h4><p>Stone's most infamous interference in that election would involve <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-gop-dirty-trickster-has-second-thoughts" target="_blank">the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot—</a>which disrupted the pivotal Florida recount process—but his sabotage tactics started much earlier and centered on the Reform Party primaries.</p><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/5/10/15597328/get-me-roger-stone-netflix-review" target="_blank">According to the documentary <em>Get Me Roger Stone</em></a>, Stone began by encouraging Pat Buchanan—who had come in second in the 1996 Republican primary—to run instead for the Reform party's nomination in the 2000 election. Not long after, Donald Trump announced he was running for that same nomination...with Roger Stone backing him.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Get Me Roger Stone | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix</small>
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<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Trump, well-known then as a brash, ultra-wealthy celebrity who <a href="https://time.com/5597843/central-park-five-trump-history/" target="_blank">occasionally shared his outlandish political views</a>, seemed to have little intention of actually running for President. Instead he spent most of his energy in that campaign attacking Pat Buchanan as a "Hitler lover" and decrying former KKK leader David Duke's endorsement of Buchanan (16 years before <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2016/03/trumps-david-duke-amnesia/" target="_blank">Trump received the same endorsement and seemingly forgot who David Duke was</a>).<br></p><p><strong>Before he dropped out—claiming the party was "self-destructing"—Trump's attacks helped create a sense of chaos within the Reform party, sending voters flocking back to the Republican party</strong>. By November, that self-destruction resulted in Buchanan earning less than 450,000 votes—barely 5% what Ross Perot had garnered four years earlier.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Thanks in large part to Roger Stone and Donald Trump, the only meaningful third party candidate that year was Ralph Nader of the Green Party, whose left-wing candidacy earned nearly three million votes and has been widely credited with "stealing" the election from Al Gore.</p><p>So much has changed since then—including Roger Stone being convicted for obstructing a congressional investigation, for which <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/judge-rejects-roger-stone-request-to-delay-prison-term-345080" target="_blank">Stone will finally be going to prison next week</a>—but many of the tactics remain the same. This year we may once again see a brash, ultra-wealthy celebrity who <a href="https://www.popdust.com/kanye-calls-slavery-a-choice-2565254035.html" target="_self">occasionally shares his outlandish political views</a> enter the contest, throw some attacks, instill a sense of chaos, and secure a victory for the Republican candidate.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Kanye's presidential announcement comes a month after <a href="https://www.popdust.com/kanye-maga-manipulate-trump-2646164954.html" target="_self">his $2 million donation to the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor</a>, which prompted fans to speculate that the icon's outspoken support of Donald Trump had all been a hoax.</p><p>If, on the other hand, those MAGA sentiments were genuine—in 2018 <a href="https://deadline.com/2018/10/kanye-west-donald-trump-father-figure-maga-hat-superman-cape-saturday-night-live-kim-kardashian-video-1202480931/" target="_blank">Kanye even compared the signature red hat to Superman's cape</a>—he could hardly do more to support Donald Trump than running for president himself.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQzODIxMi9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0Nzk1NjI0NX0.PzQGTFxPWrXLL0rZuU2r2P-0C42yzbWXEp87EAiJA_Y/img.gif?width=980" id="3a680" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9f44964384e9ba4e94ee517a22fb5e0b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Trump Kanye">
</p><h4>Kanye Can't Win, But He Can Help Trump</h4><p><a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/kanye-west-says-hes-running-for-president-but-he-hasnt-actually-filed-any-paperwork/?utm_medium=social&mbid=social_twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=twitter&utm_brand=p4k" target="_blank">Even if Kanye doesn't end up on the ballot in a single state</a>, he can still run as a write-in candidate and take the opportunity of added media attention to throw some attacks at the other candidates. And if he does so, his doomed candidacy can only serve to help Donald Trump and hurt Joe Biden—because only Joe Biden is vulnerable to those attack.</p><p><span></span><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/28/18965923/joe-biden-school-desegregation-busing-democratic-primary" target="_blank">Considering Joe Biden's record of opposition to desegregation bussing</a> and his authorship of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-law-mass-incarceration" target="_blank">1994 crime that led to a dramatic increase in America's mass incarceration</a>, Biden is certainly open to the same kind of attack that <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/11/03/131052717/bush-says-kanye-west-s-attack-was-low-point-of-his-presidency" target="_blank">Kanye threw at George Bush in 2005</a> (ie. "Joe Biden doesn't care about black people"). And considering Biden's friendship with the late Senator and former KKK member Robert Byrd, he is also susceptible to the kind of attack that Donald Trump threw at Pat Buchanan in 2000.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Even leaving aside the possibility that Kanye earns a substantial number of votes for himself—though if 2020 is anything like 2016, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/hillary-clinton-margin-loss-votes" target="_blank">a tiny percentage could change the outcome in key states</a>—a self-funded campaign could still shift the conversation. And it's hard to imagine how that shift could help anyone but Donald Trump—who is <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/04/biden-polling-lose-to-trump-348607" target="_blank">currently trailing Joe Biden by a substantial margin in most polls</a>.</p><p><strong>With "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/apr/25/kanye-west-donald-trump-dragon-energy" target="_blank">dragon energy</a>" and a net worth in excess of a billion dollars, Kanye has the resources to make sure he's heard—regardless of what he wants to say.</strong> And even if he chooses to disavow Donald Trump and attack him even harder than he attacks Joe Biden, the most likely effect would still be to depress turnout among Biden voters—because Trump voters only care what Kanye has to say as long as he's pro-Trump, and they genuinely don't care that Trump is a racist.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>It remains to be seen how seriously Kanye West will take his campaign. He has yet to file any paperwork, and—if we're lucky—the whole thing may turn out to be a publicity stunt to promote a forthcoming album or a new line of shoes. But as silly as it seems to launch a presidential campaign with less than four months to go before election day, Kanye West's vanity campaign still has real potential to sway history in favor of Donald Trump's reelection. And that should worry all of us.</p>
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White Supremacy and Erasing American History: John Wayne's Son Pushes Back Against Airport Name Change
Democratic politicians are pushing to rename John Wayne Airport after "White Supremacy" Playboy interview resurfaces
06.30.2020
In Orange County this week, a group of Democratic politicians has been pushing to remove John Wayne's name as well as a 9-foot statue of the actor from John Wayne Airport, but John Wayne's son is pushing back.
America has always struggled to reckon with the crimes of its past. While Germany has made a national project out of remembering the evils of the Nazi regime, America prefers to either deny that our nation's crimes were as bad as they sound, or to shrug them off as too long ago to be worthy of attention.
Yet somehow, in that hazy distant past, beyond the realm of clear facts or moral concern, we manage to idolize and identify with a few sainted figures—like the slave-owning founders who enshrined the national values of liberty and justice for all (as long as you have some very strange definitions of the words "liberty," "justice," and "all").
<p>We don't consider them to be people—just as self-serving and broadly ignorant as people tend to be—rather, they are embodiments of noble concepts. They form a pantheon of American ideals, and every once in a while we add a new member to the lineup. And when people question the pantheon, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/arts/design/roosevelt-statue-defenders-natural-history.html" target="_blank">Americans get a bit defensive...</a></p><div id="8aaef" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a971bf19c3d3b6d252414ccc0d1e6ee4"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1277581155945021440" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Can anyone believe that Princeton just dropped the name of Woodrow Wilson from their highly respected policy center… https://t.co/SlXsSYBjiL</div> — Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/1277581155945021440">1593434058.0</a></blockquote></div><p>One of the more recent entrants to the class of American godhood is the man who spent decades embodying the ideal of rugged individualism as a hero of wars and the west on the silver screen.<br></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p><strong>John Wayne: a figure so iconic that, after his death in 1979, a major airport was almost immediately renamed in his honor.</strong> But now <a href="https://www.popdust.com/john-boyega-protest-2646151421.html" target="_self">protests against police brutality</a> and <a href="https://www.popdust.com/derek-chauvin-hat-2646109506.html" target="_self">the horrific killing of George Floyd</a> have revived the push to remove memorials to Confederate generals and other figures of past sins from our cities.</p><p>And in this climate, it's hardly surprising that people are looking back at John Wayne's old interviews and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/us/john-wayne-airport-name-change-orange-county-democrats/index.html" target="_blank">questioning the choice to name an airport after a man who openly expressed such awful opinions</a>. What is slightly surprising is the way his son, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/john-wayne-son-responds-resolution-airport-renamed" target="_blank">Ethan Wayne, decided to defend his father in an official statement</a> on Monday.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Referring to a recently resurfaced 1971 interview with <em>Playboy</em> that has become central to the controversy, Ethan Wayne—who also happens to be the president of <a href="https://www.johnwayne.com/" target="_blank">John Wayne Enterprises (profiting off his father's favorable image with branded face masks and shot glasses)</a>—said of his father that it would be "an injustice to judge him based on a single interview, as opposed to the full picture of who he was."</p><p>No doubt the same could be said of any person—one conversation cannot possibly contain the complexity of an individual, and it's no doubt true that "The Duke" had many good qualities, and he was probably a great father for Ethan. But on his specific claim that his father "was not a racist," that single interview offers quite a bit of relevant insight</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><h4>The John Wayne <em>Playboy</em> Interview</h4><p>For a start, there's the excerpt that has received particular attention, wherein John Wayne says pretty much the opposite of "I'm not racist":</p><p>"<strong>I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.</strong> I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people."</p><p>In response to the outcry over this comment, Ethan Wayne said of his father, "The truth is, as we have seen in papers from his archives, he did not support 'white supremacy' in any way and believed that responsible people should gain power without the use of violence." But this is nonsense.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Leaving aside the arguments of people like <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-did-too/" target="_blank">Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. that violence is often a necessary tool</a> against oppression, John Wayne clearly excluded "the Blacks" as a monolith from the category of responsible people in his statement. He also spoke in the same interview of his openness to the idea of "all-out war" in Vietnam. How does that square with the idea of "gaining power without the use of violence?"</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Conqueror - Excerpt (1956)</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxtQzwoHH8" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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</p><p><br></p><p>When asked about the added barriers for Black Americans to obtain the education "to a point of responsibility" that he seems certain they lack, John Wayne goes on to say, "I don't know why people insist that Blacks have been forbidden their right to go to school. They were allowed in public schools wherever I've been."</p><p>Perhaps he missed the part where, for nearly a hundred years after the abolition of slavery, legal segregation was maintained in most of the US, relegating Black Americans to underfunded and understaffed schools that were not officially recognized as grossly unequal and illegal until the 1954 case of <em>Brown v. Board of Education</em> (only 17 years before the interview)—an injustice that remained unresolved in many cases until well into the 70s.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Wayne must have missed the story of Medgar Evers suing to force Jackson Mississippi to integrate its schools in 1963 (eight years before the interview)—only to be murdered by a white member of city council. <strong>Though, in fairness, John Wayne would be long dead before <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/beckwith-convicted-of-killing-medgar-evers" target="_blank">Medgar Evers' killer was finally convicted</a>.</strong></p><p>Wayne must have missed the way that Black Americans remained stuck in neighborhoods that were relics of white flight and racist redlining practices. Or else he didn't notice how that kept home prices low, preventing Black families from accumulating wealth and resulting in inner-city school systems (funded largely by property taxes) being as underfunded and segregated as ever.</p><p>Throughout the <em>Playboy</em> interview Wayne is dismissive of each possible grievance of Black people, Native Americans, and anti-war protesters. He insists that everything was too long ago to matter or was never really that bad anyway.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><h4>John Wayne on Native Americans "Selfishly" Defending their Homes</h4><p>In response to Native American activists occupying the island of Alcatraz and seeking reparations from the US government, he says, "They should pay as much for Alcatraz as we paid them for Manhattan. I hope they haven't been careless with their wampum," and, "What happened between their forefathers and our forefathers is so far back—right, wrong or indifferent—that … I don't know why the government should give them something that it wouldn't give me."</p><p>To clarify his comments, wampum was a form of shell-based currency used specifically by Eastern Woodland Tribes before European settlers overproduced it to the point of hyperinflation and obsolescence. And as for the claim that it was "so far back," the American government continued pushing Native American Tribes into smaller, less desirable territory well into the 1890s (arguably long after), meaning there were no doubt still Native Americans alive in 1971 who had memories of being resettled.</p><p>Wayne also said that he felt no guilt about how Native Americans were treated because "<strong>our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."</strong></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Which is such a disgusting fantasy—if anything <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-value-land/#:~:text=For%20millennia%20a%20diverse%20population,small%20villages%20throughout%20the%20area.&text=The%20gold%20rush%20of%201848%20brought%20still%20more%20devastation." target="_blank">it was about gold and other resources</a>, not survival—that it kind of explains why he constantly walked like he'd just pulled his head out of his ass.</p><h4>John Wayne on Slavery</h4><p>Wayne is even worse about burying the issue of slavery in the distant past, saying, "I don't feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago these people were slaves." A generation is generally considered to be between 20 and 30 years, so if we're being generous we could say that, at most, five generations had passed since the abolition of slavery in the United States.</p><p>But Wayne was born just 42 years after the end of the Civil War. If he'd cared, he had plenty of opportunity to interact with people who lived through the horrors of chattel slavery. Even at the time of that interview, <a href="https://www.jbhe.com/2016/10/professor-seeks-to-solve-the-mystery-of-the-man-who-claimed-to-be-the-last-surviving-slave/" target="_blank">there was at least one formerly enslaved man still alive</a>. <strong>If he had cared to know them, John Wayne may have realized that many of his contemporaries were the children of formerly enslaved mothers and fathers.</strong></p><p>It's not an issue buried in the distant past, unless we imagine that trauma was erased as soon as enslavement was replaced by share-cropping—and that their children didn't take on any of the burden of that overwhelming tragedy in a society that continues to dehumanize them.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">John Wayne's Position on Minorities</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=ycU4_Fqne5M" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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</p><p>But for John Wayne it wasn't enough that there were systemic and generational struggles. From his view, activists had no right to criticize society if they couldn't tell him "where in the world they have it better than right here in America." It's certainly true that racism is a global institution, but that's hardly a reason not to fight it at home.<br></p><p><span></span>In another deeply offensive interview a few years later (despite Ethan's claims that his father was later "pained" by the <em>Playboy</em> interview because "he realized his true feelings were wrongly conveyed"), Wayne extended that idea to an absurd degree, saying, "They live as well here as they do in any other country over [the last] 199 years" (which is another blatant fabrication he must have found while rooting around in his Duke).<br></p><h4>John Wayne's Ordinary Racism</h4><p>This is undeniably what racism looks like—or what it looked like in "polite" America in 1971. What may have Ethan Wayne confused is that his father never seemed to him or most of the people around them like a hateful or bigoted person. Why would he? <strong>At the time, this flavor of racism was perfectly ordinary.</strong></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
<!-- End Ezoic - undersecond12 - under_second_paragraph --></p><p>Three years earlier, the assassination of Martin Luther King (which may or may not have been planned by the FBI) had been met with mixed reactions from white America. <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/in-1968-nearly-a-third-of-americans-said-mlk-brought-his-killing-on-himself_n_5ac51373e4b0aacd15b7d37b" target="_blank">A shocking number of people felt that he had brought it on himself</a>.</p><p>In that context, John Wayne's beliefs that Black Americans just needed to educate themselves into equality and that "any Black who can compete with a white today can get a better break than a white man" seem almost tame—as absurd as they are.</p><p>But that isn't enough to earn him a pass, because John Wayne wasn't just an actor with some ordinary bigotry—not just a product of his time. He was a man with a huge cultural influence. One of a handful of people shaping that era of American society and the decades since. As an actor, a director, and a producer, he was massively popular, and his views came through not just in interviews but in the stories he chose to tell.</p><p><strong>John Wayne had a tremendous power over culture, and as such he had a duty to educate himself "to a point of responsibility."</strong> If he had listened to leftist Hollywood figures espousing egalitarian and democratic values—rather than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/nov/10/culture.features1" target="_blank">playing a central role in Red Scare witch hunts</a> to force them out of show business—he could have avoided expressing such awful ideas.</p><h4>American Propaganda and the Baby Boomer's Love for John Wayne</h4><p>Instead, he took the common idea of American hyper-individualism, amplified it, and blasted it through war movies and westerns into the brains of generations of Americans. Even in that 1971 interview—when he was already in his 60s, they talk about how popular he remained with young people and acknowledged that his movies amounted to American propaganda.</p><p>Those young people he was propagandizing were raised on John Wayne as the image of the ideal American man. As Ethan Wayne puts it, his father "stood for the very best for all of us—a society that doesn't discriminate against anyone seeking the American dream."<br></p><p>A rugged loner favoring personal responsibility, espousing the meritocracy. From this perspective, any individual's suffering is their own fault. And if a massive group of Americans is suffering...then there must simply be something wrong with that group.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Green Berets (1968) Official Trailer # 1 - John Wayne HD</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xhfSWEbbhM" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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</p><p>That seed was planted, and it grew as those children became <a href="https://www.popdust.com/ok-boomer-ageist-2644657898.html" target="_self">a generation of adults with no faith in government and no belief in the social contract</a>. A generation that went on to fall in love with retired actor Ronald Reagan—another <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/john-wayne-the-world-war-ii-hero-who-didnt-serve/" target="_blank">star of war movies who managed to avoid actual combat</a> (and now has an airport named after him). <strong>A year after John Wayne's death, that generation of John Wayne fans elected Ronald Reagan to the presidency</strong>.<br></p><p>Ronald "<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reagan-was-wrong-the-nine_b_628022" target="_blank">small government</a>, <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/478941-lets-stop-revising-history-reagan-didnt-win-the-cold-war" target="_blank">evil empire</a>, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/154404/myth-welfare-queen" target="_blank">welfare queens</a>, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/two-terrible-ideas-on-their-way-to-historys-dustbin/" target="_blank">trickle-down economics</a>, <a href="https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/cracksinsystem_20061025.pdf" target="_blank">disproportionate sentences for crack cocaine</a>" Reagan. Another rugged anti-communist individualist. John Wayne by another name. So-called personal responsibility at the expense of people who are already disadvantaged.</p><p>Nearly four decades later, at <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-john-wayne-daughter-2016-1" target="_blank">a John Wayne-themed campaign rally for Donald Trump</a>, John Wayne's daughter Aissa Wayne said, "We need someone like Mr. Trump with leadership qualities, somebody with courage, someone that's strong like John Wayne," adding that "if [he] were around, he'd be standing right here instead of me."</p><h4>Erasing the Past</h4><p>Ethan Wayne rejected the idea that his father would have supported Trump's candidacy, because Ethan Wayne is in denial about who his father was. His statement went on to say, "My father believed that we can learn from yesterday, but not by erasing the past."</p><p>But erasing the past is exactly what Ethan is doing now, and it's what his father loved to do when it came to the oppression of minority groups in America—as when he made a movie about the Battle of the Alamo without acknowledging that <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/remembering-the-alamo-101880149/" target="_blank">the Americans defending the Alamo were fighting in part for the right to own enslaved Black men and women</a>.</p><p><strong>There is no point in commemorating the past or our important figures if we forget who they really were.</strong> Fortunately, at the end of his <em>Playboy</em> interview, John Wayne states exactly how he'd like to be remembered. He doesn't mention airports being named after him, or his children selling John Wayne-brand whiskey and work gloves to live comfortably off his rugged image. He says, "I hope my family and my friends will be able to say that I was an honest, kind and fairly decent man."</p><p>His children may still recall him as personally kind and decent, but if they want to claim that he did not believe in white supremacy, they are taking his honesty away from him.</p><p>And if we can all be a little more honest about who he was and the kind of influence he had on our culture, then we should all be fine with taking his name off that airport.</p>
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