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Saturday, March 18, 2006

Boycott “Mission Impossible: 3”

Posted by on March 18 at 17:49 PM

Andrew Sullivan is pretty worked up over Paramount censoring South Park to appease outraged Scientologists.

Email Viacom to protest their submission to Tom Cruise. The main email address I can find on their site is press@viacom.com. Email Comedy Central to demand the airing of “Trapped in the Closet”; use this page to send an email and put “Support Freedom of Speech” in the contents line; and add your own personal message beneath. If you’re a blogger, encourage your readers to do the same, and advertize these email addresses on your site. Let’s see if we can harness the blogosphere against the censors. Finally, make sure you don’t go see Paramount’s “Mission Impossible: 3,” Cruise’s upcoming movie. I know you weren’t going to see it anyway. But now any money you spend on this movie is a blow against freedom of speech. Boycott it. Tell your friends to boycott it.

I wasn’t going to see “Mission Impossible: 3,” but Paramount doesn’t know that. I’m sending them a letter—you should too.


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Sorry, no thanks. My lesson for this year is that cartoons are not worth getting worked up over.

If I read you right Elenchos, and you're trying to ding Dan for being a hypocrite because he's getting worked up about a South Park cartoon, I think you've missed the point. Badly.

Dan is being consistent by bitching about Tom Cruise. You see: Tom Cruise, just like radical Muslims, is the one who's worked up about a cartoon. Dan is not. He's worked up about Tom Cruise and radical Muslims successful efforts to censor cartoons.

If I haven't read you right, then we can still. be. friends.

No, I'm not accusing anyone of anything.

I'm just saying that whether it's about wanting to censor a cartoon or wanting to not censor a cartoon, in the end it's just a cartoon to me. And there are a lot more important things than cartoons.

But is there anything more important right now than religious people attempting to dictate to others? How we live, what we can read, draw, think, do, abort?

That's the issue here, and it's worth getting worked up about.

You can't boycott something you had no intention of seeing... thus I can't really help you here. Plus, most people I know either share my sentiment or are as worked up about the South Park flap as you are, and thus won't give any movie featuring Mr. Cruise their money anytime soon.

What about an informational picket? Seriousy, think about it: South Park, I believe, is the most watched show on cable. There's probably some overlap between its audience and that of Mission Impossible 3. Handing out some sort of informational flier in front of theaters would probably turn some people away, or at least get them to see a different film. I'd say this would have at least as much of an effect than emailing Paramount and Comedy Central. Plus, it surely could garner media coverage.

The Muslims don't want us to see cartoons, the Jews don't want us to see the Rachel Corrie play, now Tom Cruise doesn't want us to watch television.

Jews, Muslims, and Scientologists will always try to control what we see. Who cares? Plenty of entertaining stuff gets shown anyway.

All media is currently censored. You're living in LA LA land if you think US media can say whatever they want.


If you're going to boycott the cowards who cancel performances better include New York "alternative" Jewish theatres, Paramount Scientologist Actors, and Mormon movies like "Napoleon Dynamite".


Maybe a better action would be to go see shows that are entertaining and funny no matter who produces them. Protect our Freedom to Laugh.

How ridiculous. The issue here is that religious zealots (and I'm being generous by calling Scientology a religion) are successsfully putting pressure on these corporations to restrict what adults can watch - on their tvs, movie screens, wherever. It's irrelevant (and untrue) to say that all media is censored, or that a boycott won't have an effect, and certainly absurd to argue that this has anything to do with cartoons.

We don't have to boycott every example of censorship or hypocrisy, it's perfectly okay to boycott some and not others.

And 'Yawn' - lots of people care, and some people do something about it. You should be thanking them.

Gee...nothing is censored? Let me know when the Academy Award nominated Palestinian film is on Television this week, and while you're at it send along a couple of tickets to that Rachel Corrie play in New York.


And I was about to let those religious zealots were going to stop me from seeing things.

I could give two shits about what religion Tom Cruise follows. I'm not watching MI: 3 because MI: 2 made me want to throw up. Why dosen't he just go make crappy movies with his buddy Travolta that way Battle Field Piece of shit can have an all star cast and make more then 2 dollars at the box office.

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