San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Killers of history, business and unity
The true story was almost custom-made for Hollywood.
A powerful man convinces his nephew to marry into a wealthy family, and the two conspire to kill four of the bride’s relatives to inherit their fortune. Then, they begin slowly poisoning the loving, unsuspecting wife. Will anyone catch on and stop the villains before they complete their nefarious plot?
A good yarn, but like too many products these days, it’s gotten caught in the culture wars because the killers were white supremacists, and their victims were members of the Osage tribe.
The National Review says the only thing Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” has going for it “is the woke idea that America’s white men are spiritually sick.”
“It’s the latest variation on themes from the oil-well saga ‘There Will Be Blood,’ with the added Millennial gloss of racial blame along the lines of Biden-era white self-revulsion. (A malign influence of longtime muse, now Trump-hater De Niro?),” reviewer Armond White wonders.
I think the only thing conservative media has going for it is racial grievance, convincing older white people of their imminent demise if they don’t elect white supremacists. Bankrupted of ideas, these billionaire-financed outlets have become nothing more than outrage factories.
Conservative media wants to make every aspect of American life political. Want a vaccination? Woke! Don’t want to pay taxes? Righteous! Want renewable energy? Woke! Want a militarystyle rifle? Righteous! Electric vehicles? Woke!
Why? Because powerful people with financial interests vulnerable to human progress want voters to elect backward politicians who will protect their profits.
So, partisans work to make every consumer purchase a political talisman.
Come back to the office with a Chick-fil-A bag, and some of your coworkers may suspect you oppose LGBTQ rights. But conservatives will also give you a sideeye too because they’ve launched a Chick-fil-A boycott over the company employing an executive overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The company continues to close on Sundays for religious reasons but has stopped giving money to anti-LGBTQ causes. But finding a middle ground is impossible.
Conservatives and progressives have extensive lists of companies and individuals that have perpetrated some egregious act. The perceived misdemeanors are as wide-ranging as they are sometimes absurd. But propagandists know calling out a well-known brand, especially on Twitter, now called X, is a surefire way to grab attention.
The National Review garnered a lot of clicks for the hyperbolic review, which was more than film criticism.
I saw “Killers of the Flower Moon” last weekend, and Scorsese made another fine film about what Hannah Arendt might call the banality of evil. Almost all his films have been about America’s spiritually sick white men; this one is no different.
I agree with critics who say Scorsese spends too much time with the white guys and not enough with the Osage, whose people were murdered. Woke this film is not.
The director’s biggest mistake was making a historical drama revealing how white people did terrible things to people of color. Teaching history has also become a political act.
Anyone who deviates from the white supremacist narratives established between 1875 and 1955 should brace for conservative condemnation, no matter how many endnotes they include. Conservatives want to ignore how many of our ancestors sweetly depicted in sepia-toned photographs committed crimes against humanity. Talking about it gets you labeled woke or worse.
The Texas Legislature has made it a crime to teach American history that might make children uncomfortable. By that measure, no teacher can screen “Killers of the Flower Moon” without fear of persecution.
The systematic murder of the Osage took place in Oklahoma, but Texas also has a long history of atrocities. The Texas Rangers are celebrating their bicentennial, but few are talking about how troopers massacred Mexican Americans or ethnically cleansed Native Americans in shocking numbers and violence.
The Republican majority has also made it illegal to explain how slavery was the original sin of the U.S. Constitution. Teachers must say slavery was a deviation from American values, even though Southerners forced Thomas Jefferson to cut a proposed part of the Declaration of Independence that called for abolition. The Constitution ordered that enslaved people only count as three-fifths of a human.
Pretty originalist to me.
These days, politicians rely on grievance and fear rather than ideas and hope. But politicizing everything only divides us, and ignoring our history condemns us to repeat it; look at the resurrection of fascism.
Patriots don’t hate their fellow citizens; they learn from the past and compromise for a more perfect Union.
Chris Tomlinson, named 2021 columnist of the year by the Texas Managing Editors, writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at HoustonChronicle.com/TomlinsonNewsletter or Expressnews.com/TomlinsonNewsletter.