At the upcoming Academy Awards, “Crash” director Paul Haggis wants Hollywood to wear white ribbons in solidarity with Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, two filmmakers sentenced to six-years in prison in Iran for conspiring to make an anti-government film critical of that country’s regime. Well, that’s certainly a righteous cause and we were actually going to applaud Haggis for it until we read further and found the leftist, anti-American filmmaker whipping out the ole’ moral equivalence argument against the very country that’s made him wealthy while making films critical of it and the troops who defend his right to do so…

Today’s Incredible Shrinking Los Angeles Times:

Haggis, the director of “Crash,” and others are urging Hollywood stars to pin on white lapel ribbons to register their opposition to the Iranian government’s treatment of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (“Offside”) and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who were sentenced last month to six years in prison and banned from making movies for 20 years. …

Though Haggis does not know Panahi and Rasoulof personally, and the Iranian government is notoriously resistant to outside pressure, he said he felt compelled do to something when he heard the news.

“When I see something like this, it hits pretty close to home,” said Haggis, who with Sean Penn, Martin Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein joined with Amnesty International to condemn the sentence and sign Amnesty’s petition calling for international pressure on Iran to lift it.


“We just can’t point the finger over here. Intolerance is growing in our country as well, so it may be absurd to say what is happening there couldn’t happen here,” says Haggis, founder of Artists for Peace and Justice, an anti-poverty and social justice effort that has been particularly active in Haiti relief efforts. “It has happened here before” with the 1950s Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist, he noted.

Is there an older or more pathetic violin than the one marked “Hollywood Blacklist”?

No.

Regardless, comparing the blacklist to what’s happening in Iran is not only the height of a rank narcissist exploiting what’s happening to Panahi in order to paint himself as a millionaire victim, it’s like comparing “Crash” to a good movie.

Furthermore, this isn’t the Oscar-winner’s first Academy Award ribbon campaign. In 2008, as American troops were fighting and dying in two different countries, orange ribbons were the Haggis’ cause du jour, ribbons in solidarity with the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.