Mark Cuban - Support The Troops - An Open Comment - UPDATED With OReilly's Response

Mark Cuban while delivering the final Keynote speech for Blogworld & New Media Expo, Las Vegas Convention Center 11-09-2007 - Image Credit: Edmund Jenks - MAXINE

Mark Cuban - Support The Troops - An Open Comment

On Friday, Mark Cuban went off on a rant at his blog (Blog Maverick) about how FOXNews is somehow devoid of principle for taking his company’s advertising dollars because its chief political and cultural commentator is not in favor of Cuban’s latest Hollywood effort to Hate America.

Redacted, a bloody and hateful mock documentary-style movie put up by Brian De Palma was released throughout Mark Cuban-owned theaters yesterday. One suspects that this movie is so out-of-bounds at a time of live war … that regular distribution through wide-release, corporation owned theaters, was out of the question.

FOXNews is a capitalistic corporate enterprise that is willing to take anyone’s money, save child molesters – even Mark Cuban’s. Mark Cuban, however, is willing to spend his own money to Hate America and openly hurt our troops who are in harm’s way with an art piece that characterizes our military fighting forces as rapists and murderers through the mock documentary depiction of the actions of less than five people.

How cynical is it that when forced with not having any distribution takers … Mark Cuban places the movie into theaters he owns … it’s nice to be the Billionaire.

Mark Cuban while being introduced at the final Keynote for Blogworld & New Media Expo, Las Vegas Convention Center 11-09-2007 - Image Credit: Edmund Jenks - MAXINE

An Open Comment From MAXINE To Blog Maverick –

Support Our Troops

Please do not paint a whole volunteer, heroic, brave, and loyally connected-to-America group of honorable people and have them be compared with the actions of a couple of deviants.

I witnessed your performance at Blogworld. Your comments were spineless and hateful. Only about a third of the crowd in attendance at your keynote - just to hear you speak - applauded your comments about your pathetic Hollywood exploits. Your disrespect of Bill OReilly's honest attempt to push back on Brian De Palma’s “Hate America First” art piece just shows how corrupt and devoid of value your character has become. You really stand for very little except for attention to yourself and money.

Mr. Maverick, I ask you … where is the good? Where is the grateful? Where is the honorable? I suggest that you have no rudder. A ship without a guiding rudder is of little value to itself and to others it may serve.

I ask you to support our defenders and pull the movie from the theaters. Be really big and do not sell the DVD version so that our enemies will not be able to copy, broadcast, and paint the 99.9% of our defending forces by the artfully portrayed actions of the less than .01%

Become a defender yourself. Become a ship with a rudder … what a loving and grateful statement the actions in the above paragraph would make. Truthfully, I don’t believe you have the backbone to show Brian De Palma who’s the boss. We ALL know De Palma will never achieve “rudder status”.

As OReilly would be fond of saying … “What say you? … you HAVE the last word.”

Image Credit: EUR FILM REVIEW: Redacted

The above open comment is posted in response to this from Mark Cuban at Blog Maverick -

Bill OReilly - Principle vs Money ?
Nov 16th 2007 5:45PM

To say Mr OReilly has had it in for me the last month or so would be an understatement. Every day he seemed to take pride in calling me every name in the book and questioning my patriotism. I've already covered my feelings on that subject in blog posts here and here. I've talked about what I, or anyone can do to serve their country here.

What I was curious about was whether this really was important to Mr OReilly, or whether he was just a ratings whore and would say whatever he needed to say to get more people to watch.

I needed to design a very simple test to determine Mr OReilly's motivation. It occured to me to see if FoxNews would take an ad for the movie Redacted.

I had someone call FoxNews and tell them specifically, unequivocally that we wanted to run an ad for the movie Redacted. The same movie Bill OReilly was so upset about.

They said no problem. Do you want to run the ads in both the live show and the repeat ?

Our first reaction was that this was just the sales department and at some point , someone at FoxNews would step in and stop the ads from running. The call to say they were stopping the ads never came.

The ad ran in both shows. Here is a link with Bill's smiling face at the end.

So Mr OReilly , the king of the OReilly Factor, the man who called this movie Anti American and said erroneously it could cause harm to American Troops, was willing to overlook those points and take our money to promote the movie.

We aren't talking about an ad in a show that Mr OReilly has an interest in. This is an ad in the TV show that bears his name. This is a show that he controls from top to bottom. He knowingly took multiple ads for a movie that he he hasnt seen, but believes to be vile. What does that say about Mr OReilly


Of course Mr OReilly can make the argument that he is not involved in the sale of ads, he leaves that to other people. OK, but lets think about the scenario at Fox News if that is the case.

If Mr OReilly doesnt know about the ads, I would think that the people at his show would know and care about his positions, wouldnt you ?" So the question is, do they know that Mr OReilly is all about the money first , last and every bit in between and thats why they took the ad ?

Or is it that they know exactly what Mr OReilly stands for and hate him for it, or could care less what he thinks and they took the ad to spite him ?

Is it that no one involved with Mr OReilly actually watches the show ? Which is why after the ad ran in the live show, no one caught it and had it replaced in the replay ?

its about responsibility Mr OReilly.

And while Im on the subject of Mr OReilly and his ethics, let me add a couple thoughts:

In response to Mr OReilly's comments that "he is going to be my worst nightmare". Well you have succeeded Mr OReilly. The people who take you literally took it upon themselves to call my businesses with bomb threats, threaten employees, myself and others with physical harm and wish every manor of death , injury and illness on us all. They also managed to fill up the telephone lines of the Fallen Patriot Fund so that we couldn't conduct business, and maybe its coincidence, but the fund's website went offline for the first time ever yesterday.

What say you Mr OReilly?
Reference Here>>

UPDATE: 10:15 PT - 11-18-2007 - Mr. OReilly's answer to the Hate America and Hate American Troops, Mark Cuban

This in from HOT AIR -

Hot Air exclusive: Guess who’s visiting the troops at Bagram Air Base? posted at 10:34 am on November 18, 2007 by Bryan

Former Marine and embedded blogger Matt Sanchez spotted Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly arriving and getting ready to spend some time with the troops. Says Matt:

O’Reilly pulled into Afghanistan to say hello to the troops, but was spared the red carpet treatment.

Here he is at Billeting getting a standard-issue pillow and blanket. Image Credit: Hot Air

Reference Here>>

'NUFF SAID, Mr. OReilly!

... What say you Mr. Maverick?

Well the audiance voted and this is what they had to say to the unguided/rudderless and un-American Mr. Mark Cuban:

This from The New York Post, Page Six -

DE PALMA IRAQ FLICK BOMBS
Richard Johnson - New York Post - Page Six - November 25, 2007

IT'S hard for Hollywood pacifists like Brian De Palma to capture the hearts and minds of America if Americans won't see their movies.

While the public is staying away in droves from “Rendition," “Lions for Lambs" and “In the Valley of Elah," audiences are really avoiding “Redacted," De Palma's picture about US soldiers who rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then kill her and her family. The message movie was produced by NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who insisted on deleting grisly images of Iraqi war casualties from the montage at the film's end. Cuban offered to sell the film back to De Palma at cost, but the director was too smart to go for that deal.

“Redacted" - which “could be the worst movie I've ever seen," said critic Michael Medved -took in just $25,628 in its opening weekend in 15 theaters, which means roughly 3,000 people saw it in the entire country. “This, despite an A-list director, a huge wave of publicity, high praise in the Times, The New Yorker, left-leaning sites like Salon, etc. A Joe Strummer documentary [of punk-rock band The Clash] playing in fewer theaters made more in its third week," e-mailed one cineaste. “Not even people who presumably agree with the movie's antiwar thesis made the effort to see it."
Reference Here>>

UPDATE: December 27, 2006 - Boxoffice Mojo

TOTAL LIFETIME GROSSES

Domestic: $ 65,388 29.7%
+ Foreign: $154,919 70.3%
= Worldwide: $220,307

----
VIEWER GRADE BREAKDOWN

As: - 3.7%
Bs: - 1.9%
Cs: - 0.9%
Ds: - 2.8%
Fs: - 90.7%

Ultimately, the public has the final say as to weither a movie is good or has a meaningful, worthwhile message. The public has clearly stated to Cuban and DePalma that their movie product and artistic effort neither good or has a meaningful ... or worthwhile message, and they said NO, Uh-Uuh, terrible, F, don't spend your money, it's a hatchet job, $220,307 in gross receipts after one month ... distributed into theaters owned by Cuban!

Mark Cuban, please do not release this disgusting movie to DVD. The only people who will buy this excuse for an anti-war film will be the type of people who just assassinated Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto. It has great propaganda value to those who actually want to damage others as opposed to the U.S. Military who are actually trying to free others.