Heston Blasts P.C. Media as Threat to Freedom

Heston Blasts P.C. Media as Threat to Freedom

Wes Vernon
Tuesday, March 20, 2001

WASHINGTON – Actor Charlton Heston says the Second Amendment to the Constitution "for the foreseeable future is safe."

Speaking to an audience gathered to "confront the liberal media," Heston, who heads the National Rifle Association, cited "people like Barbra Streisand and Rosie O'Donnell," who, he said, are "gifted people, but they honestly don't understand the Bill of Rights."

He noted that states allowing the carrying of concealed weapons are generally "remarkably free of gun violence."

The Hollywood icon, best remembered for his roles as Moses and Ben-Hur, recalled a conversation he had with a father of one of the students at Colorado's Columbine High school, the scene of gun violence nearly two years ago. The actor quoted the man as saying he never has owned a gun, but then added to Heston that "this is not about guns. It's about maladjusted kids."

Asked how a moral actor can survive in Hollywood, Heston said he considered himself to be a moral person and he had worked in Hollywood for about 50 years.

"There are good people there, trust me," he added.

The actor berated the mainstream media, news and entertainment for "pretending" that freedom is not threatened by a "dumbing down" that is known as "political correctness."

He also charged that the Clinton administration had used financial incentives to encourage TV companies to submit entertainment scripts to the White House to "develop plot lines the government likes."

"Freedom of the press is great," the longtime actor said, "but it requires honest people."

He pointed to such absurdities as a ruling in New Jersey that health practitioners need not tell their patients they are HIV positive, and a story in New York of kids "who did not speak a work of Spanish" who were nonetheless "herded into a bilingual education class" just because they had Hispanic surnames.

The media are in a "pretend" mode when they "dumb down" the public by treating such events as if deserving of criticism, Heston said.

"Don’t report the irrelevant as relevant," he pleaded with the media, "or present thought [opinion] as news."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Guns / Gun Control
Media Bias
Clinton Scandals