Author Christopher Buckley is gratifyingly irreverent and managed to predict the future through fictional channels similar to the style of long running television series The Simpsons and their writers’ uncanny ability to accurately facilitate soothsaying on a level of Nostradamus.
Buckley painted the picture and the essence of the early generation of “woke” or “wokeness” in his satirical cult/best selling title Thank You For Smoking, which addresses the subject of cigarettes intertwined with entertainment. The tenured writer and son of prominent Conservative William F. Buckley Jr. brings to the forefront Gonzo humor intertwined with cultural nuances through a narrative of mainstream society of Hollywood collaborating with Big tobacco resulting in hilarious, but foreboding consequences.
In Buckley’s universe and bold plot, the Marlboro man meets with Tinseltown executives to create a surreal partnership where movie classics are egregiously edited to boost profits. Within the context of the book, which was ironically later adapted into a film, benign and everyday consumer products are replaced with smokestacks of cigarettes to glorify and solidify the branding of smoking. A book in the hand of a character becomes a cigarette, a glass of water a cigarette, or a fork is transformed into a tobacco product as propaganda pervades. Outside the confines of fiction and in real life, the opposite is being pushed by the tech regime in a campaign spearheaded by Silicon Valley to attack the Second Amendment through the entertainment industry.
In the future shock environment of the contemporary, the empire of Amazon is at the forefront of leaving original film on the cutting room floor with the continued evolution of AI enhanced Photoshop, as Bezos and cronies are pushing for the opposite of the Buckley’s masterpiece with Big tech pressing the movie industry to erase guns from prominent films in an insidious attempt to promote the disarming of Americans. Of course, the initial target of this unsettling trend is the foundation of the James Bond franchise.
Recently, the massive online retailer now a formidable stakeholder of so-called pop culture entertainment ventures, released promotional images of retro Sean Connery movie appearances during the heyday of creator Ian Fleming’s brilliance in the 1960’s and 1970’s minus a crucial accessory. Sticking to their extremist playbook gun control advocates funded by Amazon and other big tech corporations edited out Connery’s pistol from the digital pictures, thus destroying 007’s signature trifecta of exotic women, Martini’s and firearms.
Through the dark magic of the implementation of Photoshop on steroids for software, Amazon’s decision to indirectly attempt to ruin an iconic character sparked an immediate backlash from movie fans stunned by the audacity of the company pushing the agenda of disarming citizens. The massive blowback from the majority of disgruntled fans forced the company to backtrack its passive aggressive and nonsensical attack on gun rights through the channels of the entertainment medium.
It should be noted that Amazon acquired the creative licensing to the Bond franchise in 2022 and has subsequently threatened to transform the character of the legendary masculine agent into a woman or a transgender identifying as a disgruntled human resources director fighting crime through empowerment and paperwork with the retro Connery and the promise of gratifying vengeance nowhere to be found.
The Seattle-based corporation was justifiably lambasted for the attempted tarnishing of the Bond character press a narrative. While movie producers had their finger on “the button” of blatantly incredulous edits, the audience spoke, and for only the third of fourth time in history, the executive producers were forced to listen and effectively backed down on the anti-Second Amendment propaganda.
With the plethora of streaming choices available to the consumer that are not in the format of traditional films, it no longer pays to overwhelm Americans with counterproductive ideology through movie plots, a mission in damage control that Bond could and would help spearhead in peppering the boardroom with a metaphorical spray of bullets and callous precision.
Word from Studio City has it that inspired by the influence of Buckley that “Gunning for Gratitude” will feature four pacemaker hours of granular cyborgs morphing into sleek and leaden superheroes of commonsense.
