Roger Ebert is an angry old scold.

Tam points out Ebert's latest screed in, where else, the New York Times.


One thing to keep in mind is that, this is also a man who is very angry at the First Amendment.

That's why he had his screed a couple years back about how video games can never ever be art. Yeah his words.

Because you see to Roger, "art" shouldn't be restricted. The things he likes, movies, are art and thus should not be restricted. But things that are not art? Well go ahead.

I also love the little anecdote, which I'm sure really, really happened.

I was sitting in a Chicago bar one night with my friend McHugh when a guy from down the street came in and let us see that he was packing heat.

“Why do you need to carry a gun?” McHugh asked him.

“I live in a dangerous neighborhood.”

“It would be safer if you moved.”

This would be an excellent time for our political parties to join together in calling for restrictions on the sale and possession of deadly weapons. That is unlikely, because the issue has become so closely linked to paranoid fantasies about a federal takeover of personal liberties that many politicians feel they cannot afford to advocate gun control.

Note that this took place in Chicago a city where carry is illegal (unless you work for the State), and where simply owning a gun is a massive legal hurdle... and until a few years ago had a full on handgun ban. And Ebert just happened to run into someone carrying, and openly bragging about it.

Yeah, I'm sure one more law will solve that Roger!

I gotta love the doublethink of a man "calling for restrictions on the sale and possession of deadly weapons" immediately following with a dismissal of "paranoid fantasies about a federal takeover of personal liberties".

Gee where would those gun nuts get the idea that you're after their guns Roger?

And gotta love the liberal mindset of you don't feel safe? Just move. Right because it's just that simple. Everyone has the money and ability to simply move to a "good neighborhood".

And yes, that's exactly Mr. A's views on carry. "You can always move to neighborhood safe enough to where the odds of needing it are vanishingly small."

And bad things never happen in "good neighborhoods". Note how quickly progressives go to defending "gated communities" and the like. I'd bet Roger would be a-okay if his neighbor simply hired a private security guard to follow him around.

And now I'm off to the range.