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<\/p>\nCharlton Heston knew Martin Luther King, and marched alongside him for the civil rights of African-Americans.\u00a0\u00a0Sadly, the American Left was blinded to that when he became a spokesman for, and later president of, the National Rifle Association.<\/p>\n
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I recently picked up the excellent biography \u201cCharlton Heston: Hollywood\u2019s Last Icon\u201d by Marc Eliot.\u00a0 In his acknowledgements, Eliot writes, \u201cGrover Norquist gave me an overview of Heston\u2019s involvement with the NRA and a frank assessment of what he thought about the ostracism that followed.\u201d Yes, ostracism seems to be the correct word.<\/p>\n
Writes Eliot, \u201cOn April 10, 1989, an (NRA) advertisement appeared in Newsweek <\/em>that pictured a smiling Heston.\u201d\u00a0 It was his first \u201couting\u201d as a supporter of gun owners\u2019 civil rights, via the NRA. Eliot: \u201cThe fallout was immediate and mostly negative in Hollywood, as he suspected it would be.\u201d\u00a0 Heston, who had served for two years aboard a B-25 bomber during World War II, had been extremely proud of his high position with the American Film institute.\u00a0 Eliot continues, \u201cNot long after (the Newsweek <\/em>blurb appeared), he called Jean Firstenberg. Here is how she remembered that call. \u2018He was still on the masthead of the AFI as (a former) president and it meant a great deal to him, but that day he said to me, \u2018Jeanie, if you want to take my name off the masthead, I understand.\u2019 How thoughtful of him, knowing there was going to be a political backlash (because of the ad) and not wanting to hurt an organization he cared so deeply about. I never took his name off the masthead.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But, the biographer continues, \u201cMost of Hollywood took him off theirs. The only real work he was able to get was a TV film\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n In 1998, the Left became even more choleric against Heston when he was elected President of NRA.\u00a0 Prominent anti-gunner Josh Sugarmann poured vitriol on Heston and noted, \u201cWhether Mr. Heston does the talking or not, the National Rifle Association remains the same extremist organization that blocks sensible gun laws and markets guns to children.\u201d Heston continued with the NRA, living long enough to be sandbagged as a frail old man with developing Alzheimer\u2019s, by that caricature of journalists, Michael Moore.<\/p>\n Charlton Heston passed a little more than nine years ago. Impartial historians will remember him as a fighter for civil rights, with Dr. King (himself a gun owner, by the way) and <\/em>with the NRA.<\/p>\n He paid a high price for his ethics and his commitment to civil rights.\u00a0 How many here have suffered ostracism \u2013 in the neighborhood, in the family, in the workplace, or elsewhere \u2013 for the same thing?\u00a0 You are invited to share your experiences here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Charlton Heston knew Martin Luther King, and marched alongside him for the civil rights of African-Americans.\u00a0\u00a0Sadly, the American Left was blinded to that when he became a spokesman for, and later president of, the National Rifle Association. I recently picked up the excellent biography \u201cCharlton Heston: Hollywood\u2019s Last Icon\u201d by Marc Eliot.\u00a0 In his acknowledgements, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}