This has been a fascinating week in the news. We are up in arms that people are savoring the lofty fragrance and forbidden taste of whale flesh in a popular sushi restaurant. We have joined together publicly in our outrage and have mobilized as if our very shores were being invaded by countless communists, to save some wood that spells out HOLLYWOOD.
We live vicariously through articles detailing Steven Spielberg's $30 million annual cut from Universal Studios' theme parks and his much anticipated HBO miniseries "The Pacific," where the story of bravery and liberation is told as only Spielberg can tell it. A sure money-maker.
Surely, there's a lot to get excited over.
Nobody can tell a war story like Spielberg. Add co-executive producer Tom Hanks to the partnership, and you get cinematic artistry that is dripping in social commentary.
In "The Pacific," there is a scene where a cabbie who is a veteran of D-Day says pityingly to two war-weary G.I.s who enter his cab: "You gyrenes, you got nothing but jungle rot and malaria. Welcome home."
The simple act of recognition and thanks takes only a few words, and hardly any effort, yet its dramatic impact is staggering.
Like those Marines who got into the cab, the elderly and their families for whom we are doing battle have gotten nothing but anxiety, despair and death for being the mute pawns of a system gone horribly wrong at a facility they were told was their home -- the Motion Picture & Television Fund Home.
The fact that this is reality and not fiction is equally shattering and no less dramatic.
It's no wonder that Mr. Spielberg is so involved with the Motion Picture Home. His stature in the community is beyond reproach. I applaud him for all the good he's done for humanity.
A friend of mine, whose parents were part of his film about the Holocaust, absolutely revere the man; they have a photo of him in their house, in much the same way as you'd find a photo of the pope on every Irish mantle, or a velvet painting of Elvis festooning tourist traps on the streets of Tijuana.
Spielberg is an avatar for those who want to do good things for their fellow man.
What happened, then?
I'm sorry for singling you out here, Mr. Spielberg, but you have a lot to answer for. You have the gall to give a Torah, the "holiest of holies," to a facility that you have had a hand in gelding. A place that Jeffrey Katzenberg refers to as "an enterprise."
A place that would deny those who want to display a nativity scene, a crucifix or other religious artifacts strangely welcomes the gift of a Torah. You've got a lot of pull, I'll give you that.
I'm sorry to break it to you, but that Torah is perceived as nothing more than a PR salve, ushered in by a broken regime that unceremoniously rid the campus of their CEO, but still pays the architects of its ruination hundreds of thousands of dollars.
