So U.S. Sen. Chuck E. Schumer’s—yes, the New York Democrat who might lead the Senate someday and who definitely wants your guns—second cousin’s daughter is the new mouthpiece for Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety. Her name is Amy Schumer. She grabbed fame by the ankles by falling on her face on purpose.
Oh, it was a brilliant tumble to the red carpet. She’d been included on Time magazine’s “The Most Influential 100 People” but was still far from being a recognizable celebrity. She decided to change that. At a Time magazine gala for the chosen 100, all the reporters and photographers were looking over and around her to spot the more famous people on the list. To grab the attention she purposely fell on her face right at the feet of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Kanye and Kim saw her down there crawling on the carpet but they didn’t even bother to stop to help her up, which made the stunt so funny it exploded on social media.
So what’s her story? Well, her background reads like a stereotype of a liberal. She is from Manhattan’s swanky and extremely left-wing Upper East Side, though financial misfortune sent her family to Long Island when she was 12 years old. She made it back to the Big Apple as a comedian specializing in raunchy anecdotes. She then wrote and starred in the 2015 film “Trainwreck,” a story about a New York City party girl who guzzles booze from paper bags and smokes weed as she sleeps around Manhattan until she finds a straight-laced man who doesn’t care about her promiscuous past.
Time said it chose her for its list because she is an “honesty bomb.”
As a native New Yorker who spent more years than I’d like to admit working in midtown Manhattan, I found “Trainwreck” to be a cartoonish parody of working women, not the work of an “honesty bomb.” If Gloria Steinem could take off her political skew for a moment, she’d deem the movie to be a trite offense to feminism, as it’s a tale about a girl-child who suddenly grows up thanks to the benevolence of a man. Too bad Schumer isn’t a real “honesty bomb” on the issues related to guns in America. If she was, wow—she could be a fresh voice helping to make America an even safer place.
Schumer jumped into anti-gun politics after a murderer in Louisiana killed two people in a movie theatre that was showing “Trainwreck.” The murderer watched the first 20 minutes of the movie before he stated shooting. He killed himself when police arrived.
This horrifying event convinced Schumer to become an anti-gun spokesperson. The problem is, what she has since been saying about guns in America is anything but what you’d expect from an “honesty bomb.” (Though it did prompt Sen. Schumer to call her “a great antidote” to gun ownership.)
Amy Schumer didn’t think about and investigate the issue, she simply picked up the anti-gun script and cast herself as its leading lady. A skit she did recently on Comedy Central is her loudest example thus far of her attacks on Second Amendment rights.
The skit is a long list of anti-gun talking points fit into four minutes. In the skit, Schumer and comedian Kyle Dunnigan act as if they are on the Home Shopping Network. One of the things they are selling is a Glock pistol. She says, “Anyone can purchase this.” One caller says he has “several violent felonies” so he can’t get one, but Schumer says he can totally buy one, no problem. Between calls, Schumer and Dunnigan point the pistol at each other and say “bang, bang” and, in fact, break all of the NRA’s rules of gun safety so brazenly that a lot of viewers mocked them on Twitter. This prompted Schumer to go on Twitter and say, “Hey journalists thanks for all the heat from last nights #endgunviolence message. Please use the term ‘gun safety’ instead of ‘gun control.’”
“Gun safety”—is she so in step with Bloomberg and President Barack Obama that she doesn’t see the irony in that request?
Too bad Schumer isn’t a real “honesty bomb” on the issues related to guns in America. If she was, wow, she could be a fresh voice helping to make America an even safer place. What an opportunity. She could mock the ignorance of the mainstream media and of Hollywood actors who star in action films with guns blazing, but who then say the anti-gun lines they are supposed to in public.
However, such a brave and honest approach would have hurt her career in Hollywood and with the mainstream media, so she sold out.
