Mark Tapson

Articles by Mark Tapson

CIA Vindicates 'Path to 9/11' Charge Clinton Missed bin Laden

Few memes about President Barack Obama are as comical or aggravating as his “gutsy decision” to take out Osama bin Laden. For one thing, military and intelligence insiders are strongly suggesting that he didn’t even make that call. And after

CIA Vindicates 'Path to 9/11' Charge Clinton Missed bin Laden

Review: Let's Hear It for 'Captain America'

A year ago Big Hollywood’s John Nolte expressed his “predictable heartbreak,” and I did likewise, over disappointing interview comments by Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston. They seemed desperately designed to reassure his patriotism-hating peers in Hollywood that

'Targets Down' Review: Bob Hamer Hits the Bullseye

Working undercover meant more than a fake driver’s license and a fictitious name. It was living life as a liar for hours, days, even months at a time. It meant becoming one of them without becoming one of them. Distance

In Praise of American Warriors

My father Roger E. Tapson, a former United States Army Staff Sergeant and veteran of World War II, died seven years ago and was buried near a small lake in the rolling, pastoral grounds of the Dallas-Ft. Worth National Cemetery

The L.A. Times Announces the Triumph of Conservative Hollywood!

Patrick Goldstein, the Minister of Hollywood Disinformation at the L.A. Times, is obsessed with convincing you that leftist dominance of Hollywood is a whiny conservative myth. Big Hollywood‘s indefatigable John Nolte, among others, has taken down Goldstein in numerous columns

'Four Lions' Review: Jihad Comedy Self-Destructs

Can a comedy about jihad make us laugh? Certainly there’s not an iota of humor to be found in the ruins of the World Trade Center, or the massacres in Mumbai or London or Madrid or Ft. Hood or Beslan

Charles Martel: Turning Back the Islamic Tide

This week marks the anniversary of an epic event that’s no longer commonly known but which nonetheless shaped the future of the Western world, and which may still hold inspiration for the West today. After the death of the Muslim

'Carlos' Review: Compelling Miniseries Hits Select Theatres Friday

Last week the Sundance Channel aired a five-and-a-half hour miniseries about the brutal and charismatic real-life terrorist known to the world as Carlos the Jackal. Starring Edgar Ramirez (from Domino and The Bourne Ultimatum) and directed by French filmmaker Olivier

CAIR's Hollywood Crusade

Thanks to a heads-up from terrorism expert Steven Emerson and his organization IPT, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, I learned that in late July Nihad Awad, the unctuous executive director and co-founder of CAIR, gave a lecture at Jordan’s Kuta

Hizb ut Tahrir and the End of Capitalism

“I’m not presenting the Islamic system as one of the alternatives – or an alternative. This is a defeatist and apologetic approach. The Islamic system is the only alternative for mankind.” – A speaker at the Hizb ut Tahrir Khalifa

Not Such Strange Bedfellows: A Review Of Andy McCarthy's 'The Grand Jihad'

President Obama called the murder of a soldier in Little Rock by a self-proclaimed jihadist “a senseless tragedy.” The Christmas bomber, “an isolated extremist.” The Ft. Hood shooting, a “horrific outburst of violence.” Daniel Pearl’s beheading, an act which “captured

'Fair Game': L.A. Times Ignores Facts to Pimp Film, Trash Bush

The political thriller Fair Game premiered at Cannes today. (Pause for giant, collective yawn from Big Hollywood readers…) The Sean Penn-Naomi Watts “starrer” (hey, it’s fun using unnecessarily awkward Variety-speak!) revisits the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal, an episode I’m not

'South Park': Drawing a Line in the Sand For Freedom of Speech

We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed. That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim

'South Park': Drawing a Line in the Sand

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim

ZINN 101: A Radical's History of the United States

Twelve years ago in his breakout performance as an arrogant young genius in Good Will Hunting, struggling fresh-faced actor Matt Damon sneered at his Boston psychiatrist for “surrounding yourself with all the wrong f__kin’ books. You wanna read a real

Political Correctness, Ft. Hood, and Hollywood

Almost before the echo of gunfire from the massacre at Ft. Hood had faded, the news media launched a pre-emptive rationalization for the slaughter committed by Muslim traitor Nidal Malik Hasan. To divert attention from the shooter’s inconvenient name (“I

'The Simpsons', Islamophobia and CAIR: The Price of Freedom

This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone

Honoring September 11th: They Want Us to Forget

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner “We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President

NBC's Reality TV: To Catch a Terrorist

When I learned of a new NBC-TV series called “The Wanted,” about an elite investigative team tracking down terrorists-at-large, I naturally assumed the terrorists in question would be Homeland Security priorities: white Christian conservatives building abortion clinic bombs in church

Troopathon 2009: In Praise of American Warriors

My father Roger E. Tapson, a former United States Army Staff Sergeant and veteran of World War II, died five years ago and was buried near a small lake in the rolling, pastoral grounds of the Dallas-Ft. Worth National Cemetery

The Whitewashing of Soraya M.

While Iranian-American protesters packed streetcorners in Westwood last Saturday afternoon in support of the revolution currently playing out in the streets of Tehran, an historical drama about stoning in Iran got underway at the Los Angeles Film Festival mere blocks

Getting Real About Torture

Since our country’s having a heated conversation about torture, and especially since that conversation seems certain to devolve into a parade of politicized, self-flagellating show trials that will broadcast our divided weakness to the world, it’s time to get some

The Post-American President

As President Obama takes his victory lap abroad, the cheerleading media line up to shake their pompoms. The Huffington Post says “this is what real diplomacy looks like.” Slate calls it “the return of statecraft.” Here’s another way to describe

Mr. President: War Is Not A 'Struggle' Or 'Situation'

First, President Obama jettisoned the admittedly empty and useless phrase “war on terror,” a label which pleased pretty much no one, primarily because it didn’t specify an enemy; it’s often been pointed out that the phrase was like calling World

Hollywood Goes to Iran

Inspired perhaps by President Obama’s “unclenched hand” approach to reaching out to “countries that don’t like us very much,” as his former opponent John McCain tepidly used to put it, an unofficial delegation from Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts

Where the hell is Peter Gabriel?

Jude, Gabriel is in the audience but he refused to perform only 45 seconds of his song. It was the whole thing or nothing.

Remembering Mumbai…

Bravo, Andrew, for your comment about the Mumbai attacks…

The Worst Form of Terrorism

Valentine’s Day was the 20th anniversary of the death fatwa issued against The Satanic Verses novelist Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, whose stern expression glowered down from many a wall-sized banner throughout his country, and whose declaration, “There is