The current Indian War against Adam Sandler is a liberal rich-kid conspiracy to shut down populist conservative voices.
This week, comedy filmmaker Sandler was roasted in the liberal press for allegedly demeaning Indians and women in his upcoming straight-to-Netflix Western “The Ridiculous Six.” About twelve Indian actors, extras and crew members staged a walk-out on the set because of some jokes in the movie. Here are the jokes that caused the actors to blow their little bighorn, according to statements that two protesters gave to Indian Country Today:
“We were supposed to be Apache, but it was really stereotypical and we did not look Apache at all. We looked more like Comanche”
Oh God, no. The Indians in the Adam Sandler movie looked more like Comanches than Apaches? Shit, somebody call Sacheen Littlefeather.
“One thing that really offended a lot of people was that there was a female character called Beaver’s breath. One character says ‘Hey, Beaver’s Breath.’ And the Native woman says, ‘How did you know my name?'”
Hahahahaha! That’s great.
“They just treated us as if we should just be on the side. When we did speak with the main director, he was trying to say the disrespect was not intentional and this was a comedy.”
On the side. Like an extra?
“When I began doing this film, I had an uneasy feeling inside of me and I felt so conflicted…I talked to a former instructor at Dartmouth and he told me to take this as finally experiencing stereotyping first hand. We talked to the producers about our concerns. They just told us, ‘If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.’ I was just standing there and got emotional and teary-eyed. I didn’t want to cry but the feeling just came over me. This is supposed to be a comedy that makes you laugh. A film like this should not make someone feel this way.”
You went to Dartmouth? Damn, sounds like you’ve really had a tough go of it in life so far because of your minority status.
Wait a second. Indian Country Today, the media outlet that got the extensive interviews with the angry Indians, is published by Ray Halbritter, the widely-denounced activist who spearheaded the campaign to change the Washington Redskins name.
In my favorite report ever for The Daily Caller, I revealed that Halbritter is not actually a legitimate member of the tribe that he leads (Oneida Nation) and that he runs an abusive tribal government based on casino profits that he hoards and that he persecutes his own people, including his own family.
So why is Adam Sandler taking all these arrows from Halbritter’s empire and liberal outlets like MSNBC? For the same reasons that I like him: he’s a conservative and he has a working-class worldview. A registered Republican and Rudy Giuliani donor, Sandler’s stuff appeals to guys like me. And guys like me, as far as progressives are concerned, are the enemy.
For guys like us — the underpaid, the unheralded, the involuntarily celibate — Adam Sandler is our man. We grew up with him, and this isn’t the first time our guy has been the target of humorless class-based jihads against him. Hell, they’ve been doing it to him his entire career.
Sandler broke out as a star on the mid-’90s cast of Saturday Night Live (a.k.a. the only funny cast in the show’s history) with a group of badass, take-no-prisoners male comics including the late Chris Farley, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and the brilliant news parodist Norm MacDonald. They were a bunch of oddball, unsexy middle-class white guys and they absolutely killed it on the show. They were also all Republicans or Republican supporters or later became Republican supporters. Their blue-collar brand of comedy showed that. And it was popular.
In the March 13, 1995 issue of New York magazine these guys got their asses handed to them in a piece entitled “Comedy Isn’t Funny: Saturday Night Live at twenty – how the show that transformed TV became a grim joke.”
Unfunny feminist buzzkill Janeane Garofolo was the little star of the article, crapping on her employer and her co-workers in characteristic liberal form. It was a political hit.
Pretty soon, the Sandler crew was out at 30 Rock (“fired” Sandler has said), replaced by revolving trash-heaps of lame and mostly liberal overachieving actors like Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers. The edge was gone, and the show has never been even remotely watchable since.
But Sandler wasn’t done. He went on to Hollywood to make a pair of beloved, critically-reviled comedy masterpieces — movies that for unsexy guys my age are as iconic and perennially quotable as “Caddyshack” or “Animal House.” Those movies are called “Billy Madison” and “Happy Gilmore,” and they are absolutely hilarious.
Sandler’s movie persona was completely refreshing and totally class-conscious. In Madison, even when playing the billionaire son of a corporate executive, Sandler and his onscreen buddy Norm MacDonald embody the working-class uneducated beer-drinking element in opposition to Bradley Whitford’s smug Ivy League-educated Wall Street ladder-climber. In Gilmore, Sandler’s hockey-playing, construction-working everyman goes up against the elitist villain of the PGA Tour — and wins both the trophy and the girl in the end. And the rich guy gets his ass kicked.
In all of Sandler’s early films — from “Waterboy,” where he played a dim-witted backwoods dweller to “Big Daddy,” where he played a foulmouthed urban underachiever, to “Little Nicky,” where he was an ugly freak — he placed himself at the middle of a ragtag cast of misfits and regular joes, a bunch of losers who come together to beat the Big Guys just one time. Rob Schneider returned time and again as an ethnic interloper who cheers Sandler’s underdogs on with a grin-inducing refrain: “You can do it!…You can do it all night long.”
Admittedly, I haven’t seen all of Sandler’s movies in recent years, and he’s done a lot of cookie-cutter studio romantic comedies and the like, but I will always support him. He represents something special in an industry that actually thinks guys like me can relate to fucking Matthew McConaughey or Shia Labeouf or whoever. When Sandler busted down the doors to show business he brought his entire misfit crew — me and my friends included — along for the ride. And as much as my little liberal enemies in the news business would love to hear me say it, Adam Sandler actually inspires me as a journalist.
No matter how many zero-star reviews they give you, no matter how many times they try to shut you down for saying some politically incorrect shit, all you have to do is keep on going and being honest to your own audience — and if you can get enough people to buy a ticket you can exist outside of their rules. Work hard, produce a lot of content, and just be real about your worldview.
A bunch of whiny little rich kids and political activists are taking dead aim at guys like us right now because they have no use for us in their progressive version of America. What else is new? Guys like us have been getting screwed over and pushed to the side our entire lives. But as long as we keep our sense of humor, we’re not done yet.
Stand strong, Sandler. I won’t abandon you. In other words, my friend…you can do it.