Conservative actor Gary Sinise has shot back at former presidential candidate Howard Dean for making "stupid blanket statements" claiming that "very angry" members of the tea party are seeing "American Sniper."
According to
Mediaite, in an extensive comment on the social media platform Whosay, the former "CSI: N.Y." star said to Dean, "With all due respect, what the hell are you talking about?"
The blockbuster film, directed by conservative Clint Eastwood and based on the life of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the most deadly sniper in U.S. history, touched off a furor in Hollywood following criticism from liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and "The Interview" actor Seth Rogen.
On
HBO’ s "Real Time," Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, told host Bill Maher, "There’s a lot of anger in this country, and the people who go see this movie are people who are very angry.
"This guy (Chris Kyle) basically says, 'I’m going to fight on your side.' I bet you if you looked at the cross section of the tea party and people who see this movie there’s a lot of intersection."
Now Sinise, who starred in "Forrest Gump" and "Apollo 13," said to Dean, "I saw American Sniper and would not consider myself to be an angry person. You certainly have a right to make stupid blanket statements, suggesting that all people who see this film are angry, but how is that helpful sir?
"Do you also suggest that everyone at Warner Brothers is angry because they released the film? That Clint Eastwood, Jason Hall, Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller and the rest of the cast and crew are angry because they made the film?
"Chris Kyle’s story deserved to be told. It tells a story of the stress that multiple deployments have on one military family, a family representative of thousands of military families. It helps to communicate the toll that the war on terror has taken on our defenders. Defenders and families who need our support.
"I will admit that perhaps somewhere among the masses of people who are going to see the film there may be a few that might have some anger or have been angry at some point in their lives, but, with all due respect, what the hell are you talking about?"
Fox News host Gretchen Carlson also took Dean, a former Vermont governor, to task for saying that angry tea party types were seeing the film, which has grossed a record $200 million in 10 days.
She said that by using the terms "angry" and "tea partiers" to describe the audience, he had made "this a complete political discussion when it just doesn’t have to be this way."
Moore, who had started the controversy by calling snipers like Kyle "cowards,"
fueled the fire over the weekend with a tweet, saying, "Tomorrow's Sunday School. What Would Jesus Do? Oh, I know what he'd do - hide on top of a roof and shoot people in the back!"
Mediaite writer Joe Concha suggested that Moore may have invoked the name of the son of God because Kyle was a devout Christian and is depicted in the film as carrying the Bible with him and saying prayers while gunning down his targets from 1,000 yards away.
After four tours of duty, Kyle, who had 160 confirmed kills, was shot dead on a gun range by a war veteran suffering from PTSD he was trying to help.
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