Jim Carrey misfires in his #ColdDeadHands video

In an effort to offer his two cents in the gun debate Jim Carrey has decided to take a cheap shot at the manhood of a fellow actor who played a Hollywood prophet years before Bruce Almighty (2003) hit the screens. The late Charlton Heston is perhaps best known for his role as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), but I prefer him as Taylor in Planet of the Apes (1963). Heston was also the president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003 when he famously quipped, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands” which became the unofficial slogan of the NRA and gun rights advocates everywhere, and incidentally the origin of the title of Carrey’s obnoxious parody video.

I haven’t been able to find the video on YouTube, but you can see the full original video on Funny or Die. In it, Carrey plays three roles in a “Hee Haw” style variety show. He plays a bumbling Charlton Heston who violates every rule of gun safety, ultimately blowing off his own foot. He plays the lead singer of “Lonesome Earl and the Clutterbusters” composed apparently of Gandhi, John Lennon and inexplicably Abraham Lincoln. And he plays Sam Elliott (misspelled in the footer, by the way) who tells the audience, “Pay attention Ombre’s. This boy’s got something to say. Biting social satire goes down smooth.”

First off, if you need to put on a character and interrupt your “biting social satire” to tell us that it’s “biting social satire” you’ve broken the first rule of creating writing, which is “show, don’t tell.”

Second, it seems as though Carry wants to portray himself as surrounded by men of peace, but for some reason he has decided to include the American President who conducted what remains to this day the bloodiest war in American history. A man who, despite the historical whitewashing, was an insufferable bigot, a crony corporatist for the railroad tycoons, and a tyrant who pissed on what was left of the Bill of Rights in those days. Further, although unquestionably a man of peace, Gandhi was no friend of gun control. In his 1948 autobiography he wrote, “Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”

Finally, there’s the argument presented by the song itself, which focuses primarily on the tired slur that gun enthusiasts only cling to their guns to compensate for their small sex organs. Which is of course a rehashing of something people used to say about expensive cars.

All that aside I want to draw your attention to the climax of the song, because no one is talking about it, and it’s really interesting. I took the liberty of transcribing the lyrics:

“You’re a big big man, with an little bitty gland,
so you need something bigger with a hairpin trigger.
You don’t want to get caught with your trousers down,
when the psycho killer comes around.
So you make your home like a thunder-dome,
and you’re always packing everywhere you roam.
But the psychos win no matter what you do,
because they’re gonna buy way more guns than you.

::gasp::

And while your stumbling out of bed
they put five rounds in the back of your head.
Or you get depressed cause the money runs out,
then you put your own shotgun in your mouth,
and your kids walk in and they find you there,
like a headless chump in your underwear.
And they move the gun and it kills them too,
and your wife just doesn’t know to do.
So she pulls the hand grenade from her shoe,
and she pulls the pin, and it’s all on you.”

Amazingly this rant contains virtually every logical fallacy gun grabbers throw at gun rights advocates. It’s got “little bitty gland.” It’s got “they move the gun and it kills them too” as if guns just magically kill people. It’s got leaping from shotgun to hand grenade, conflating common home defense weapons with weapons of war. It’s even got the signature murder fantasy that gun grabbers can’t seem to avoid when they talk about gun enthusiasts.

But it’s the suicide that’s most interesting to me. Carrey says, “Or you get depressed cause the money runs out, then you put your own shotgun in your mouth.” That’s not a common gun grabber argument, and it’s not a common problem among gun enthusiasts. That’s a problem faced by washed up celebrities. So, I have to wonder, sincerely, is this video an attempt by Carrey to appear relevant because he recognizes that his career and popularity are winding down? Is the subconscious message in this video that he doesn’t trust himself with a firearm?

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