On Monday night, Robert De Niro took the stage at the Gotham Awards in New York City to present an award for Martin Scorsese’s Apple film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which De Niro starred in.
When he looked at the teleprompter, he realized the first part of his speech was missing. “The beginning of my speech was edited — cut out,” he said. “I didn’t know about it, and I want to read it.” So he pulled out his iPhone (cue the irony music) and read his uncensored version:
History isn’t history anymore. Truth is not truth. Even facts are being replaced by alternative facts and driven by conspiracy theories and ugliness. In Florida, young students are taught that slaves developed skills which could be applied for their personal benefit.
The entertainment industry isn’t immune to this festering disease. The Duke, John Wayne, famously said, of Native Americans, “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”
Lying has become just another tool in the charlatans’ arsenal. The former President lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office, and he’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution. But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature, and shows disrespect, for example, by using Pocahontas as a slur. Filmmakers on the other hand describe — this is where I came in and I saw that they edited all that.
At the end of the speech, De Niro said, “I’m gonna say these things, but to Apple and thank them and all that, Gothams, blah, blah, blah, Apple, But I don’t feel admire thanking them at all after what they did. How dare they do that, actually?”
Cue the sad violin music for controversy-shy Tim Cook.
