Chuck you!

Actor, martial-artist and professional beard-wearer Chuck Norris has spent recent years getting increasingly involved in politics. And it should come as no surprise that, much like his action movie counterparts, he leans heavily towards the right.

Last week, Chuck's regular column on Creators.com focused on the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. For the uninitiated, this is a proposed federal bill designed to expand the 1969 hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It's known as the Matthew Shepard Act, in honour of the young gay man who was picked up in a bar by two straight men, driven to the middle of nowhere, savagely beaten and left tied to a gate. He died several days later in hospital from his severe head injuries.

But Chuck doesn't like this law. He believes that it's squeezing out Americans' constitutional right to freedom of speech. Despite aknowledging that the purpose of the bill is to target crimes of brutality (something he's made a career out of), he fears that local judges could choose to expand it to cover a wider field of offences. All pure conjecture of course, but the real issue here is that Chuck fears that he won't be able to hate people freely. Because that's what America is all about. He even invokes the name of Carrie Prejean (yes her, again) and talks about how the poor thing was victimised for "respectfully giving her personal opinions." No mention, of course, of the fact that Miss Prejean has been actively campaigning to take away gay people's rights to marry.

Ironically, Chuck also uses this platform to condemn the fact that jokes were made at the expense of poor defenceless Rush Limbaugh (a man who once described 13-year old Chelsea Clinton as the 'White House dog') at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Maybe he's taken a few too many blows to the skull, but here's where Chuck's point-of-view really comes unstuck. He's arguing against a bill that would protect people from aggressive acts motivated by hate, at the same time as condemning those who make jokes about someone who, by their very nature as an outspoken pundit, is fair game.

A few years ago, there was a flurry of jokes about Chuck, such as "Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is" and "Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door." At the heart of all of this humour though, is a sense that Chuck decides the way he wants the world, and uses brute force to make it happen, irrespective of logic or physics. And that's what's happening here, except that it's not funny at all.