Tom Hanks does the first thing I approve of him doing since Bosom Buddies:
Tom Hanks, an Executive Producer for HBO's controversial polygamist series "Big Love," made his feelings toward the Mormon Church's involvement in California's Prop 8 (which prohibits gay marriage) very clear at the show's premiere party on Wednesday night.
"The truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen," he told [Fox News'] Tarts. "There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American, and I am one of them."
This is causing lots of predictable sniveling, which alone makes it worthwhile. Wingnut Detergent, for instance, discovers hypocrisy in Hanks' opinion about the sponsors of Prop 8 and the fact that he produces Big Love. Ms. Detergent thereby reveals a familiar inability on the part of "conservatives" to distinguish between what happens on the teevee and what happens in reality. Ms. Detergent also says "let me get this straight (excuse the pun)," which we most assuredly will not. But the finest vintage whine comes from giddy-assed goober Don Surberbubbles, who informs us:
Hanks is wrong.
Which is why he is resorting to name-calling.
His religious bigotry is startling. Who knew that a cat who seems so wholesome and so good humored could be this vile?
He thinks he is the arbiter of what is American and what is un-American. So did a lot of people in the 1920s. They wore white sheets and hoods.
Because those "cats" who resort to "name-calling" are no better than the motherfucking Ku Klux Klan!
Or, on another level, why is Surber saying that the Klan doesn't have a right to their own opinion without being called names? Would it be fair to call the Klan "un-American"? They had religious reasons for what they did, after all. Why weren't these all just fair play under the rules of the good ol' U S of A? Didn't the Klan have a perfect right to their opinion that, say, black people and white people shouldn't be allowed to marry, even the straight ones? Or if you don't want to go there, let's pick on my own maternal grandparent, an otherwise very nice white man (when sober, sometimes) who was pretty firm in his belief that whites and blacks should not be allowed to marry, as that was an abomination unto the Lord? Is Surber calling my grandpa... an un-American bigot, just for expressing his beliefs? I'm so very hurt.
Though of course the simple fact of the matter is that my grandpa was a stone bigot, as is the KKK -- and as is Surber, as well as anyone else who thinks other Americans don't deserve the same rights they have. The question though is not the empirical one of whether or not you can be a bigot and an American at the same time; I'm afraid the jury came back on that one quite a while ago. Rather the question is that of whether or not "Americanism" as an aspirational, normative value includes a tolerance for bigotry, whether this bigotry derives from religion or simply being a resentful halfwit dickhead (as in Surber's case).
In this sense my definition of what it means to be an American agrees with Hanks'. Though I still think he's a lousy actor. And I also think the Mormons and other religious shits (like my RC homeboys, and if Surber can say "cat" I can say "homeboy") who supported Prop 8 are not merely un-American, but un-American schmegma-guzzling fucknose shitnozzles who should be dunked headfirst into the Gowanus Canal for being such insufferable assholes.