Rus Limbaugh shockingly cannot separate fiction from reality

[Manic Spinoza]

Rush Limbaugh fumes: Idris Elba can’t play ’007′ because ‘James Bond is white and Scottish, period’

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh complained on Tuesday about the prospect of Luther and The Wire star Idris Elba playing superspy James Bond in a movie, Media Matters reported.

“James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming,” Limbaugh said. “He was white and Scottish, period. That is who James Bond is.”

As The Daily Beast reported late last week, the hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment revealed that the company’s co-chair, Amy Pascal, recommended Elba for the role to an executive at Columbia Pictures, which distributes the Bond film series.

Columbia’s contract with the current Bond, Daniel Craig, runs out following the release of the next installment, Spectre, in November 2015.

“We’ve had 50 years of white Bonds because Bond is white,” Limbaugh argued. “Bond was never Black. Ian Fleming never created a Black Brit to play James Bond.”

However, Limbaugh did not mention that the character has not been played by a Scot since Sean Connery in 1983′s Never Say Never Again. Bond has also been portrayed by an Australian actor, George Lazenby, and Pierce Brosnan, a native of Ireland. Limbaugh also failed to mention that Fleming, who created Bond, told The New Yorker in 1962 that the character’s name was taken from an American ornithologist who he thought had “the dullest name [he] ever heard.”

But after explaining Bond’s roots as a fictional character, Limbaugh tried to compare casting Elba in that role to enlisting white actors to play actual Black people. He then tried to imagine white people playing Al Sharpton, Nelson Mandela, Condolezza Rice, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

“Sometimes, a story is just a story. But we can always make it better,” he said. “We can always be more fair. We can always be more equal about it. So, fine and dandy. George Clooney and Kate Hudson as Barack and Michelle Obama, and you can have Idris Elba as James Bond.”

 

[mala]

to me this is hilarious in that we just had a movie were moses was played by a white irishman amongst other things.

the ghost in the shell movie adaptation might well have scarlett johanson taking on the role of major motoko kusanagi.

the characters in the last airbender movie were played by white actors.

 

[Glass*Soul]

to me this is hilarious in that we just had a movie were moses was played by a white irishman amongst other things.

the ghost in the shell movie adaptation might well have scarlett johanson taking on the role of major motoko kusanagi.

the characters in the last airbender movie were played by white actors.

Not to mention Paul Muni and Luise Rainer in The Good Earth. Or Yul Brynner in The King and I.

I'm thinking of two male roles that were brilliantly played by women: Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously and Stina Eckblad as Ishmael in Fanny and Alexander.

 

[Michael]

Ok, I'll bite. Why would that be a "shock" in the first place?

 

[Nithavela]

 

[Archie the Preacher]

This is sad.

I share the feeling that James Bond has been 'altered' enough. Daniel Craig is a talented actor, but the description in the books has Bond with black hair. The actor Idris Elba may be a talented actor, but he's just not right for James Bond. Nor would a Chinese, Korean, Mexican or Basque actor.

Moses played by an Irishman? Or even Charlton Heston? Not really correct. Nor was Noah, but that whole story was altered to the point of ridiculous. At least Moses wasn't played by a Moslem or Egyptian.

Sorry, Manic. Your criticism of Lindbaugh is based on personal animus, not actual critique. May you obtain actual existence.

 

[mala]

At least Moses wasn't played by a Moslem or Egyptian.

by a moslem???

you mean one of 1.5 billion people in the world?
or does that term specifically mean an arab to you?
because that is what moses would have looked like.

 

[Bedford]

I agree that Limbaugh the entertainer is delusional, and paranoid and a racist. It took me all this time to realize that Limbaugh is only an entertainer, and his persona is to portray a simply minded bigot on his show. In real life, Limbaugh is a sad lonely man who goes through marriages like changing his underwear, needs Viagra to satisfy his woman of the moment, and must self medicate with pills to feel better about himself. Has his fictional character taken over his real life? I do not know.

 

[South Bound]

Rush Limbaugh fumes: Idris Elba can’t play ’007′ because ‘James Bond is white and Scottish, period’

How does this mean he can't separate fiction from reality? Did he, at any point, claim that James Bond is a real person?

In the science fiction and fantasy genres, there are "universes" in which characters exist, in which authors have unofficial rules governing how those characters are portrayed.

Why is this any different?

Sorry, Manic. Your criticism of Limbaugh is based on personal animus, not actual critique. May you obtain actual existence.

I agree.

 

[Douger]

In Rush's defense, there was considerable controversy over Daniel Craig not looking like Bond, as Archie the Preacher points out.
Still, it's fiction, so IMO picking the actor with the right character and abilities is what matters. I think Elba would be awesome in the Bond role.

 

[Bedford]

I wonder what the entertainer thought about Jack Reacher as portrayed by Tom Criuse?