An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
A Few Things That SHOULD Be Remembered
The headlines announcing Charlton Heston’s death peg him as a actor who was a gun activist. He might not have been a real-life Moses, but he was much more than the media give him credit for.
Heston died Saturday at age 84. He will be memorialized primarily for his roles in “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben-Hur” and “Planet of the Apes,”" as well his defense of gun owners’ rights. Those achievements, though, are but a superficial narrative of this dignified man.
Unafraid of how he would be received, Heston ran against what became the leftist Hollywood grain. The dear friend of Ronald Reagan was not apologetic of, nor embarrassed by, the founding fathers and the gift of freedom they graciously provided. He was a believer in the entire Constitution, not just the Second Amendment, and the unprecedented liberties it gave men.
Heston was not the doddering old fool that Michael Moore — who, shockingly, had enough class to post Heston’s photo on his Web site as a tribute — tried to depict him as during the 2002 interview in which the propagandist ambushed the man as he suffered from Alzheimer’s. He was much more than that.
Heston vigorously defended freedom, was troubled by what he saw as a culture war that would hijack our liberty to speak freely, and felt grave concerns that the country was heading toward a place where “the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.” The man known as “Chuck” to his family and friends understood the virtue of hard work and humble beginnings, and was ever grateful for being born an American in what he called the “cradle of freedom.”
Lost among the media portrayal of Heston as a dupe and a “brain-injured, senile, crazy old man” for his association with the National Rifle Association is the fact that he marched in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr. That was, as he said, “long before Hollywood found” civil rights to be fashionable. Together with his longtime opposition to class division, Heston’s experience with King gave him the moral authority to be one of the few to courageously point out the country’s growing hypocrisy about race.
In 1959, Heston won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal as Judah ben-Hur. But his best performance was that of Charlton Heston the man, zealously declaring the goodness of America.
Emphasis mine.
