White America's Flag on the Moon No Longer Worth Celebrating in "First Man"
09/01/2018
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Make no mistake, the July 20, 1969 landing on the moon by the crew of Apollo 11 was a magical feat courtesy of individual white people collectively uniting on a mission impossible to almost every other generation of humanity in the history of our species. 

It's why Whitey on the Moon': Race, Politics, and the death of the U.S. Space Program, 1958 - 1972 is such an important work, documenting how black America was almost monolithically united against the Apollo program. And in the current year, we can no longer even celebrate white America's triumphant moment of landing on the moon with the slide rule. [Ryan Gosling defends Neil Armstrong biopic 'First Man' leaving out American flag in moon landing scene, Fox News, August 31, 2018]

First Man,” the Neil Armstrong biopic that tells the tale of the 1969 moon landing, has stolen the show at several international film festivals — but not everyone is happy. 

First Man will omit the planting of the American flag on Luna, an event Robert Heinlein correctly noted heralded the dawning of a new age

The film fails to show one of the most integral moments of American history – when Armstrong plants the American flag on the moon, according to The Telegraph. 

Ryan Gosling, the Canadian actor who portrays Armstrong in the movie, defended the decision to not show the flag. 

Gosling was asked at the Venice Film Festival whether omitting the scene was deliberate and the actor attempted to sidestep the question by responding that the moon landing “transcended countries and borders.” 

“I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that's how we chose to view it,” he told reporters. "I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.” 

Gosling said he didn’t think Armstrong “viewed himself as an American hero.” 

“From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil." 

Gosling jokingly admitted he might have “cognitive bias” being that he’s Canadian.

The moon landing did "transcend countries and borders," as the genius of Project Paperclip ensured the USA got the smartest Germans instead of the Soviet Union. But we can't talk about those hidden figures, can we?

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