Tarantino’s Whine

As you probably know, film director Quentin Tarantino led a protest march against police brutality in New York on October 24. He spoke at the protest, describing police as “murderers” (although, as he later clarified, “all cops are not murderers”).

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This predictably brought condemnation from many sources and, from some, a call to boycott Tarantino’s upcoming movie, The Hateful Eight. Yesterday, Tarantino gave an interview to Chris Hayes of MSNBC in which he refused to back down, claiming among other things that the United States has “a problem of white supremacy.” I often wonder whether liberals even think about the things the say. Asian-Americans earn significantly more money, on the average, than white Americans. That suggests a very odd sort of white supremacy.

But that’s a digression. What I want to focus on is Tarantino’s free speech defense:

He said on Wednesday that he “was under the impression I was an American and I had first Amendment rights.”

Mr. Tarantino obviously hasn’t been paying attention. His fellow leftists gave up any pretense of tolerating free speech long ago. Tarantino should check with Moshe Halbertal, or Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, who was hounded out of his job by liberals after he made a small contribution to supporters of a ballot proposition in California–a ballot proposition that a majority of California voters favored.

Tarantino’s case is not much like Eich’s, of course. Eich didn’t lead a protest march, and he didn’t call anyone a murderer. He didn’t purport to be leading a political movement; like millions of other Americans, he just made a contribution to a cause he believed in. And no one is calling for Tarantino to lose his job or be barred from directing future films, but only suggesting that those who do not like his anti-police campaign should refrain from putting money in his pocket.

The Left loves boycotts; just ask anyone who lives in Arizona. Now, after the City of Houston failed to enact a pro-homosexual and transgender ordinance, there are “rumblings” of boycotts directed against the city–e.g., a move to re-direct the Super Bowl to a different location in 2017. This is an example of a real boycott: not just a decision by people who don’t approve of Houston to stay away, but rather, an effort to penalize the city by pressuring third parties (e.g., the NFL) not to do business there.

For myself, I intend to participate in the movement to boycott Tarantino’s new film. That is to say, I have never yet seen one of his movies, and I don’t expect to see any in the future, either.

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