The headlines Monday highlighted three Golden Globe awards for “American Hustle” including Leonardo DiCaprio’s “best actor in a comedy.” Seeing these headlines reminded me of this picture of a DiCaprio advertisement I had taken at a local jewelry store just before Christmas. I was about to turn off my car in the parking when I heard a clip from a DiCaprio interview. He was discussing the movie he had just made about a rich capitalist: “I feel like it’s an accurate reflection of everything that’s wrong with the world we live in today. And the attitude of this character, Jordan Belford, is directly attributed to the destruction of our economy to, you know, you can attribute this attitude, this darker side of human nature, to everything that has gone wrong in society really.” The notion bothered me, especially when I went into the jewelry store and saw this greater than life size portrait of DiCaprio peddling watches. Though DiCaprio is obviously in the 1%, he appeared to have slammed the capitalism that has enabled him to make his money. Upon listening to the video later, I agreed with DiCaprio that the character he portrayed exemplifies a dark side in our country that has contributed to the destruction of our economy. However, DiCaprio is a bit too naïve when he attributes this “dark side” only to capitalism and capitalists. He is leaving out an even bigger factor in the destruction of our economy – growing government and the displacement of self-governance. We can directly attribute millions of hardworking Americans losing their healthcare and jobs and the labor participation rate plunging to a growing, overbearing, corruptible government and Obamacare. When will DiCaprio and the movie industry create a film that describes the real “American Hustle” . . .what our federal government is doing to the honest, hard working people of this country? There are certainly enough real characters, lies, scandals, and deaths to make it interesting.
