Eulogy, Brief
Sure, we disagreed about a number of things. You liked to tote guns around and champion the 2nd amendment. You opposed Affirmative Action and became a Republican later in life. You campaigned for George W. Bush, George Bush Sr., and Reagen. You boycotted Ice-T.
But at one point in your life, you supported the Civil Rights movement and became inextricably linked as an icon of Jewish Biblical history. For many of us, before our political awakening, we knew you as the man who carried the tablets down from the mountain. Or, a different subset of us knew you as the man who fell to his knees and cried out, “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
So God bless, Charlton Heston. May you be remembered for good (at least on TNT’s annual pre-Passover Ten Commandments screening).
That was beautiful. Amen.
This is mildly disrespectful, but way too funny not to link to.
Heston was not a champion of the Second Amendment. He was a champion of a clause of the Second Amendment and completely ignored the parts of the text that did not fit in with his ideological stance. The full text very clearly states that the people bearing arms are to be regulated by the state in order to defend the state from extra-legal or extra-territorial threats. It was a response to Shays’ Rebellion.
That said, I think Heston’s greatest film role was as the old racist movie-star and gun advocate who was confronted with the moral consequences of his activist work by the interviewer played by Michael Moore.
I assume, Ian, that your comment means you’ve never seen Soylent Green.