Fast forward to today, with such shows dominating the TV viewing audience.  “CSI” (and its many incarnations), “Law & Order” (and its many incarnations), and a myriad of homicide and courtroom dramas have conditioned us all to a few extremely misleading and dangerous mandates regarding the quest for justice.   There is an ever-growing and alarming trend in this society.  With such an increase in daily TV viewing, coupled with more and more reality-TV afoot…it is becoming more and more difficult for people to discern reality from fiction.

Thanks to television, we now have the following rules for court justice:

1)    As in a TV drama, the first and most obvious suspect NEVER is ultimately the guilty party.

2)    It’s always the one you least suspect.

3)    Police, with their erroneous and suspicious motivations, are never on target with their investigation.

4)    The DEFENSE team is always the good guys and their motivations and impulses are pure and pristine as the wind-driven snow.

5)    The more obvious the case seems against the poor, hapless defendant, the more certain we are that he/she didn’t do it.

6)     Even with a preponderance of evidence of guilt, the defendant is almost always being framed, extorted, and otherwise the real victim (of the crime he/she perpetrated).

7)    Juries tend to see the defendant as the Little Guy — victimized by the huge, leviathan of the Establishment — that uncaring, unfeeling Machine that is our judicial system.

8)    Juries have come to see themselves as courageous Defenders of the Little Guy – the last vestige of hope for a poor, put-upon, flawed-but-innocent victim of police corruption and legal injustice.

9)    Prosecutors seek to put the puzzle pieces together, to connect the dots; defense attorneys seek to unravel the argument, mix it all up, plant seeds of doubt, throw mud on the wall hope something sticks.  Prosecutors seek to clarify; defense seeks to confound and confuse.

10) With the advent of high-tech CSI-style evidence gathering systems…you had better have DNA, carpet fiber, blood sample, residue forensics (as see on TV!)…all in order, establishing motive, opportunity, ability, plus video of the crime, plus a tearful breakdown on the stand of admission of guilt…and even then!… the jury may acquit.

I think we’ve all fallen for the famous words of Voltaire:  “Better to have a thousand guilty set free than have even one innocent imprisoned.”  (paraphrased)

Rubbish.  I’ll take my chances on the occasional miscarriage of justice over the prisons being opened in the name of We-Don’t-Wanna-Make-a-Mistake.

Gird your loins and man up, wussies!  If you’re on a jury, you’ve got a job to do.  Do it!  Don’t pussy-out because you miss your family, you’re worn out. and deliberations are really, really hard.  Whaaaa!  Man-up and do your duty.

“Beyond a reasonable doubt” does not mean beyond any doubt.  There will always be some doubt of guilt.  Martians could have come down in the night to commit the crime.  It’s a possibility, albeit an absurdly unlikely one.  But what is the reasonable probability?   This is what jurors are reminded to consider – and act upon.  The burden of proof must be met, yes.  But as we saw in the O.J. trial… “Beyond a reasonable doubt” doesn’t work if you’re dealing with unreasonable people.  That crime was proven thirty ways to Christmas.  But that jury couldn’t see it because Furman was a racist?!  And those on the jury who could see it were too wussy to fight for the truth.  It’s tough to fight prevailing unreasonableness in court deliberations.  I know, I’ve served on three trial juries.  It’s tough – you’re tired, you want to just arrive at a verdict, be done with it and go home.

But you have to get it right.

We, as a society, need you to get it right.  Because if you don’t, if you choose instead the easy path, the expedient solution – we as a society suffer.  We are a nation of laws – but if we may break them at will and suffer no consequence, then we are no longer a nation of laws.  Folding in a jury deliberation room is like going to Congress and voting “present.”  You either have some balls and take a stand…or put your tail between your legs, cower to the consensus, and take the easy way out.

Casey Anthony lied repeatedly to police about the disappearance of her daughter, then proceeded to party her little ass off.  A young mother who played at parenthood who just wanted to be carefree again and be done with it.   If she didn’t do it… why lie to the cops?   Why invent the stories of obfuscation about this phantom baby-sitter…etc, etc, etc.   Because she was embarrassed?  She was traumatized by some vaguely-alluded-to adolescent sexual abuse?

I think most of us can figure it out.  It’s obvious.  So obvious, in fact, that she’s going walk.  You see…if was too obvious.

Anyone who’s ever watched “Law & Order” knows that.

These are the values my father tried to beat into my thick skull…with varying degrees of success.   Once, still in high school, I approached him on a Saturday night and in my nicest tone, asked for some spending money to go to a concert with my buds.  As he pulled a twenty from his wallet he gave me a wry smile.  “I’m not sure I’m doing you any favors handing you this.”

It was years later that those words settled upon me with their full import.   What was my motivation to work if I had somebody who would hand it to me for free?  By my not planning ahead…and earning the money myself, even before I needed it…I was retarding my independence, my self-respect, and my development as a man.

When I became a man, I put away childish things. 

And childish notions.  Our nation, under the direction of a Leftist administration and abetted by a ‘progressive’ media, is awash in entitlement philosophy.  More and more Americans are looking for their ‘benefits’.   More and more feel entitled to what others earn.  More and more seem happy to sit in the wagon and complain to those who aren’t pulling it fast enough.

For some time now I’ve made a decent living in front of a camera; delivering lines others wrote, hitting my marks without bumping into the furniture or drooling on my shoes.  It’s not rocket science, but still, it’s not that easy, either.  (The drooling part, not the rest.)  Many of us in Hollywood feel that since they pay us so well to do something so relatively easy, that we owe it to ourselves, and to the world, to ‘give back’.  Many of us, with that artificial sense of self-importance that comes with being in the movies or on television, feel we are poised and even obligated to ‘weigh in’ on important issues of national or geo-political nature.

When really most Americans would just prefer we ‘shut up and sing’.  (Or dance or act or whatever it is we do.)

Yet we blather on.  And many of us expose our idiocy (not naming names) — and some of us perhaps even intellectually raise the debate (again, no names… ahem).

And forgive me if I reduce the seemingly mind-boggling chasm between our disparate philosophies to this simple point:   The Left wants the government to exercise and disseminate compassion towards our fellow man…and the Right wants the individual to do it.  

And my Lefty friends say, “Da-da-daa-da-da-da-da…but…  What if they don’t?!”

“But, my friends,” I answer back – “It’s been quite proven that they do.”

“But…but…but… what if it’s not enough?” they sputter.

“People get by.  It’s an amazing proclivity of human beings…they get creative.  They conserve.  They think.  They use their brains…when they have to,” I say.

“That’s cruel!  That’s heartless!  Intolerant!   Bush-lied!  Cheney, Halliburton!  Racist!” they froth.

Da-da-daa-da-da-da-da-and give a man a fish he eats for a day but teach a man to fish and he feeds himself and his family for a lifetime and invites you over for a barbecue and you drink beer and eat healthy food and laugh with friends and family and thank God you’re in America and then you pick up your guitars and flip on the amps and now you’re rockin’-in-the-USA!

Which brings me to the songs I’m writing with Lisle Engle (LisleEngle.com) – war songs meant to stiffen our resolve and boost the morale of American patriots who are sick and tired of those who would trash our heritage and devolve our great nation into a weak, whimpering, wasteland of failed Eurotrash/socialist notions.

And to you, Mr. Obama – hey I’d love to be tolerant of your point of view, but I got to say FTS! And throw a penalty flag on the last two years for intentionally roughing the country – One Term for you, bucko!  Adios!

Here’s our song — born from the disgust Lisle and I both felt with the thug-tactics of the recent public-employees-union shenanigans in Wisconsin.   And the rest of you Lefties, don’t worry – there’ll be plenty more rancor a-comin’ in upcoming songs.  We’re equal-opportunity offenders!

–GG

—–

Lyrics:  “BOUGHT & PAID” (by Lisle Engle and Gary Graham)

We got a deficit high, printing dollars like a pouring rain
We got a leader who lies when says that he’s got the change
They keep them organized, pulling dues from their take-home pay
They called a general strike and the legislators ran away

Working the system like a 3-Card Monty

Filling the streets with signs of socialist rage
Haven’t you heard about the class-war coming
Bussing the outrage in…you know they’re

Bought and Paid

It’s their stock and trade…
You know it’s union made… yeah they’re
Bought and Paid

It’s the American Dream – we can all have a piece of the pie
You build your expertise – Go get yours, baby, I’ll get mine
Now you’re trying to say…that you don’t have enough to get by
If you can’t find a way, you’re going to take it from the other guy

Distortions and lies … Working the angles
The taxpayer dies … Grabbing my ankles
Rigging the system … It’s pissing me off
Feels like a fisting … Turn your head and cough!   

Engle & Graham ©2011 All Rights Reserved

So I’ve been plinking around at my main hobby – music – for years.  Just playing for my own amusement, or so it started out.   Now I’ve got a band, we sound pretty good, we gig around town sometimes… (played for the wounded warriors’ Ride-2-Recovery event in Ventura, and we’re playing two gigs for the “Republican Party Animals” – one at the end of May and another in June)… and between that and film and TV assignments, I keep fairly busy.

Flashback to the last presidential campaign, 2007.   I meet a bunch of conservatives in Hollywood.  Who knew?!   In liberal Hollywood, there are actually a bunch of folks who work in the film industry and think a lot like I do.  Limited government, more personal freedom, individual responsibility, yada yada.  I’d been a conservative for some time but the risks to our nation now seem much more pronounced and pressing than at any other time in my life.

And the primary threat I see is not from without – but from within.

—–

I realized some time ago we are in a culture war.  On the one side we have those who love America, warts and all, and are proud to live in a country that stands as a beacon for freedom to the rest of the world.  And on the other side, we have those who don’t think much of our country or our heritage.  They blame America first for all the ills of the world; they mock and ridicule our time-honored traditions and cultural institutions like family, church, and country;  they espouse the notion that our Constitution is a “living document” to be altered and “shaped” at the latest indignant whim of a Liberal activist judge.  Our guiding document – the United States Constitution – they regard as a mere vestige of a stained and spotted past, an anachronistic relic irrelevant to our times.  This side of the argument works tirelessly to “fundamentally transform” our shining City on the Hill into something unrecognizable, something European…something foreign.   This side apparently has a big problem with a nation of rugged individualists who believe in Honor, Virtue, Freedom, and the unfettered and equal opportunity to, on your own, achieve a dream, limited only by your own talent, ambition, and perseverance.  

The vitriol is ramping up – between those demanding personal responsibility and those pushing entitlements.  Those who want liberty and self-reliance, and those who want to be taken care of.  A nation of doers and builders and innovators, or the nanny state.

I’ve seen firsthand both sides in action – and though the Tea Party keeps it relatively civil and orderly –the Leftists use raucous, intimidating and at times violent tactics to push their agenda.

Youthful Flashback:  My dad holding a $20 bill in his hand… he hesitates and looks at me.   First year of college, I was heading off to Hollywood with some pals for a concert and I had asking him if I could have some spending cash. 

“I’m not sure I’m doing you a favor giving you this,” he said with a faint crinkle in his eye.  I just made a clever joke and thanked him and was off for rock’n’roll heaven.   Years later, it came to me what he was saying.  Had I planned ahead and worked and earned the twenty bucks I’d have been further on up the road of becoming a man.  I would have developed a greater sense of independence, capability and competence; and I would have foreshortened greatly my prolonged adolescence.  (Some say extreeeemely prolonged.)

We do our kids no favors when we fail to teach them that if they want something, they need to get their butts in gear and go earn it.  And I think we’re losing that in our country.  I see our greater national malaise as being symptomatic of this failure.  We have failed to instill the basic work ethic in a large segment of our society.  Rather than gazing upon the frontier of their future with an eager lust of conquest and adventure…an ardent desire to become something exceptional, to produce great things… too many look out and see only a land of great abundance — to which they are entitled.    And the cause of that entitlement is for no reason other than that they breathe air.

It’s an easy seduction, the Entitlement Riff.  This is America, the land of Freedom.  I can do what I want.  I can acquire what I want.  I’m an American.  Therefore, I should have what I want.  And I will vote into office anyone who promises me that if they’re elected to public office, then I will get what I want.   And anyone who disagrees is a greedy, racist, Republican bigot homophobe.

(No, I’ve never worked for the New York Times but thanks for asking.)

When our top leaders can get away with exhorting us straight-faced to claim our ‘rights’ to the fruits of other people’s efforts; there is a national epidemic of envy afoot.  Envy leads to misery and anger.  Evil people harness that energy for their own power and ‘workers revolutions’ are spawned.  The means of production is taken by violence or threat of violence by ‘The People’.  Only the evil, the petulant, or the willfully ignorant refuse history’s lesson of what an ultimately endless and downward spiral-staircase of despair and ruination to which this leads mankind.  Close to a hundred million people in the last century – innocents – murdered by such despotic notions.

Victimhood.   We look at our plight (whatever that may be)…and we see injustice.  And if we don’t see injustice, just listen to NPR, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, or any variety of mainstream media news sources, and they’ll tell you – our society is unjust and you need to be compensated for it.  Paid reparations.  You got it coming. 

It’s easy to fall into.  Hey, all my friends and family are doin’ it, what the hell!  Just go along with it.  The Money-for-Nothing, Where’s-My-Check, Low-Hangin’ Fruit Express.

And the rationale for it all…. aw, that’s easy!  Rather than looking to ourselves for the source of our personal troubles and challenges…we look to our neighbor and covet what they have and we don’t.  Buttressed by the arguments of the Left, we see this disparity of property ownership as a Great American Injustice.   We’re good people – why shouldn’t we have more?   It’s not fair.

And we fabricate cause – we affixed blame.  It’s those rich people’s fault I don’t have more.   They’re taking too much.  There’s not enough left for me.  It’s their fault I’m poor. 

It’s not fair.  There should be a law.

The Something-for-Nothing promise has long lured the shiftless and greedy to the polling place to vote for the latest Snake-oil salesman who promises great rewards for a pittance of a price.   A couple hundred years ago as this nation was climbing onto its feet, fly-by-night salesmen roamed the new land selling remedies of all sorts – available to all for mere pocket change.  Snake-oil was one such ointment, brought over from China and sold as a ‘remedy to relieve all pains’.  Though some claimed it worked, it soon became known as a false panacea with dubious effectiveness.  And often these energetic sure-cure hawkers were run out of town as charlatans and shysters. 

I wonder how those townspeople would deal with our current White House occupant.

Because our Snake-oil-Salesman-in-Chief is selling us a new remedy (that’s not so new):  A cure-all to heal what ails us.  A new re-envisioned America.   A new ‘re-invented’ America.   In this America, no one ever will go hungry.  No one will ever go broke.  No one will ever want for anything.  Because everything will be provided, at no cost to them, by the Government.   Isn’t that fantastic!?   We no longer have to struggle.  And the checks will be delivered to our door.  We don’t have to worry, we don’t have to work; hell, we don’t even have to get out of bed!   Electronic transfers will happen automatically.   Finally, we’ve accomplished what no man or group of men have ever been able to accomplish in human history – a self-generating, perpetual-motion machine.   All known physical laws defied by the magnificent and exalted Leader of the New Global Order — Barack Hussein Obama.  I’m not sure any of you fully grasp what this huge accomplishment portends!   A new system of human interaction.   Human nature reversed!   Rather than people acting first and foremost in their own self-interest, human beings are now unleashed to explore the higher goals of Universal Mind.  A New Enlightenment is upon us, o my brothers and sisters…a new world realized…in which the lion will lay down with the lamb…and the bum on the street can help himself with impunity to the contents of your pockets.  It is a great day indeed.

However…sadly…many of you are still under the mistaken notion that what’s yours…is yours.  This is an old model, an outdated way of thinking.  For, after all, why should you have so much, when so many others have so little?  Is that fair?

Well actually, yes.  As long as you didn’t break the law and acquired what’s yours legally, of course it’s fair.   Ethics are the gray area here – and this is the Great Divide between Left and Right.   The Left thinks it is unethical that a person work, risk and struggle to become successful and then get to actually keep what he earned.  The Left thinks he should have to be pinged for his success (and at a higher rate than the rest of us) and the proceeds be fed into the government coffers to be distributed according to government’s pleasure.  The Right thinks that the government, when it ‘redistributes’ his hard-earned wealth to those who haven’t earned it, are stealing from them.   As one capitalist put it, “At least the Highwayman has the decency to wear a mask.”   The Left think it’s government’s job to ration out charitable compassion – the Right believes that in a free society, it is up to the individual to decide to whom and when to administer charity.   The President last week blamed much of our economic woes on “unpaid-for tax cuts… that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade”.  

Does he just make these numbers up as he goes along?

‘Unpaid-for tax cuts’.   Will somebody please explain to me the logic of that phrase the President is so enamored with?   You won’t be able to because logic is not factor in the phrase – to try to prop that old turd up with logic would ignite a mobius in which the head is chasing the tail and well…only a proctologist can undo it.  This may explain a commonly recurring posture of so many on the Left.   No mention of the fact that reducing taxes actually increases tax revenues by broadening the tax base.  I guess they don’t teach that at Harvard.  (What DO they teach?)   I guess they also don’t teach this – that if you take money from those who work and give it to those who don’t…you shouldn’t be surprised when the number who work decreases and the number who don’t increases.

It pains me deeply to see the America I grew up with fast-become a footnote in history.  Yeah, it was great while it lasted, but sayonara, baby.  We got a New New Deal.  A ‘fundamentally transformed’ chicken-in-every-pot America.  The Great Workers’ Paradise.  

Bullshit.

We are in debt up to our eyeballs to China, we’re at war with a fanatical Cult of Terror hell-bent on destroying us; and at the same time were facing the worst financial collapse in history, our domestic fiscal policy more closely resembles Eurotrash socialism than it does the economic boom of the ‘50’s and 60’s.  Our leader is laughed at by our enemies and distrusted by our allies.  American business is hunkered down, consolidating resources, afraid to expand or hire new workers because they are fearful what this business-hostile president might hit them with next.

And yes, Mr. Obama is a very charming and likable man.  But all the charm in the world won’t keep our markets from spiraling down the tubes, or our enemies from striking us around the globe, or our people from losing faith in our own way of life.  Mr. Obama and his Leftist cronies are ruining America.  My great grandchildren will still be cleaning up the mess decades after I’ve passed.  

Unless we fix it now.  I say it’s time to undo this nation’s undoing.  It’s time to say NO to the President’s plans to ‘fundamentally transform’ this nation.   It’s time to work daily to see that every Lefty in government is unemployed come 2013.

Don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Mr. President…

…but I don’t want my great nation to become un-great.

I’d organize the neighborhood kids into a platoon, and at night, guided by our coded flashlight signals, we’d sneak out our windows for ‘midnight maneuvers’.   Many an enemy mailbox was destroyed by cherry bomb.  By day, we’d bravely assault enemy strongholds of hapless neighbors’ rose bushes, doghouses or Volkswagen’s.  I always lead the charge, throwing dirt clod grenades and, leaping up, charging, blasting roll caps from my Thompson in a mad suicide sprint, firing wildly, taking hits from heavy imaginary enemy fire and always, gravely wounded, staggering forward to claim victory for the Allied troops.  Trampled roses, filthy cars and busted mailboxes were a small price to pay for freedom and the American way of life. (Yeah, I got in trouble.   A lot.) 

John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Robert Mitchum…these guys taught me about valor and grace under fire.  But they weren’t my heroes – the men they were playing were my heroes.   Our little after-school war games were just a young boy’s way of paying them honor. 

Many years later, I found myself on location in the former Yugoslavia running through an ancient monastery next to Telly Savalas, firing a ‘grease gun’ – magazine filled with blanks — at a squad of Nazis in the TV movie, Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission.  They all went down – but Telly and I, never a scratch.  What marksmen we were, firing on the fly and from the hip!  Amazing!

I still do like war movies.  Not just for the intensity of conflict, but for the expression of valor and courage.  And those sometimes forgotten virtues of honor and self-sacrifice.  Missing that, it’s just useless carnage.  

People fighting for Good; fighting and risking and/or losing life and/or limb… these are virtues every good society must cherish…or it ceases to be Good.  

—–

In the oft-prevailing attitudes of Political Correctness I think too many in our good society have forgotten one very simple truth – we are the good guys.  We don’t stand for subjugation; we stand for freedom.  We don’t nurture vendetta and thousand-year-old grievance; we bury the hatchet, we start anew.  We don’t hide behind women and children and slip out of uniform and blend in with the townsfolk when the enemy nears; our military wears its uniform proudly for all to see.  We seek clarity over agreement; and our aggression is tempered with restraint.   And in the theater of war and brutality, we don’t slaughter indiscriminately and carpet bomb, though we could; ours risk their lives being highly discriminate of non-combatants and, at further immense cost to us, our smart-technology pinpoints and removes targets with surgical precision to further lessen collateral damage.    

News flash for those of you who may still labor to understand the ridiculously understandable:  WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS. 

Lo, these many years past my playground games, I am humbled …no, that isn’t strong enough a word; I am grateful and indebted to the ‘nth’ degree… by those who have stormed the enemy position for real.  They, with their real lives on the line…and, in everything they do, day in and day out in military service… offer it all up for the freedoms and security you and I take for granted every day.  

Last month I was privileged for my band to play for the Ride2Recovery group that John Wordin has headed up in the Golden State Challenge bicycle ride from San Francisco to Santa Monica.  The G. Graham Garage Band played 22 rockin’ cover songs for the Wounded Warriors making the arduous trek the night before they pedaled off on their final leg to the Santa Monica pier.  Those guys and gals, tired as they had to have been, rockin’ and dancin’ to our music is a joyful sight I will treasure.  (One of my dreams is to fly around the world, entertaining our troops with my band, just to let ‘em know we care and we’re grateful.) 

My biggest thrill came when my daughter stood up before 200 wounded warriors and vets and delivered a touching tribute, ending with the words, “…you all here…you who fight for us…you are my heroes.”   The very next day at her school she petitioned the dean to start Students for Vets Club…and then came home and created the website, www.vidsforvets.webs.com so that people can send in their video tributes for our military.  Yeah…there’s plenty out there who get it.  

Happy Veterans Days, Vets.  

And thank you.

It is not a political party.  Tea Parties are political gatherings in which concerned and outraged American citizens express their outrage at government spending and crippling legislation and reaffirm collectively their devotion to American Constitutional values.

But there is no Tea Party, there is no Conservative Party, and there is no Liberal Party.  We have basically a two-party political system, the Democrats and the Republicans.  All other ‘parties’ act as spoilers in political elections.  Third party candidates end up swaying election results as to hurt the very people they were hoping to help: themselves.  They split the vote.  Witness two past presidential election votes in which Ross Perot split the Republican vote, awarding both elections to the Democrat, Bill Clinton.  Ralph Nader has been a thorn in the Democrats’ side with his Green Party…or is it the Peace & Freedom Party…or was it the Nutjobs & Pudwhacks for Mindless Change Party, I don’t remember.  Anyway… There is no Tea ‘Party’.

But there is a Libertarian Party.

So it’s funny how a cheery promise to a friend to speak at some dinner made six months ago swings around annoyingly to be suddenly at hand…and I have to scramble to throw together some semi-cogent phrases on paper.   Add to this that I found out, pretty much at the last second that the audience consisted mainly of ‘hard-core Libertarians’… Oh great, I thought.  Spoilers.

I have many core agreements with Libertarians…but as I am a Conservative, I don’t see the efficacy of forming the Conservative Party.  That would be a lunacy guaranteeing Democrat domination for endless dark years to come.  Are you listening, Libertarian Party and all other disgruntled arrogant spoiler parties?   (As a friend quipped, “Oh yeah, libertarians – basically atheist conservatives!”

Maybe not a bulls eye, but not far off.

Yep – some members of the Libertarian Party asked me to be a speaker at an awards dinner last weekend.   I stood and delivered, and I hope that most found my remarks at least semi-cogent and that I at least semi-rocked.  I heard no Boo’s and no food or flatware was hurled, which is always a good thing.  And so here it is then, for your dining and dancing pleasure…

—–

Good evening.  My friend asked me to get up and say a few words about a no less weighty topic as HOW FILM IN HOLLYWOOD CHANGED THE WORLD.   And I agreed to that.  And so I’m up here speaking before you.  But as someone who has worked in Hollywood thirty-some-odd years, I’ll let you in on a secret of the craft:  Once you’ve got the gig, you do whatever the hell you want. So I’m not gonna talk about HOW FILM IN HOLLYWOOD CHANGED THE WORLD.  I’ll leave that to some boring pontificating film historian who’s spent a lifetime in academia, never made a movie, never been on a film set and wouldn’t know the difference between the global historical impact of Hollywood and their rectal orifice.

No, what I’d like to talk about is the following topic:  HOW THE WORLD GOT SO DAMN SCREWED UP AND WHAT WE IN THE FILM BUSINESS CAN DO TO HELP UNSCREW IT.

And speaking of the internet (?)…I found this –

The economy is so bad that…

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I was at McDonald’s the other day and I ordered the Quarter-Ouncer with cheese.  The kid behind the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”

CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.

If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.

Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.

The Mafia is laying off judges.

And, finally…

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc.., I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

But I digress…  The world’s pretty screwed up and I don’t think I need to list the evidentiary bullet points of the world’s screwed-up-ness.  We all read the papers, we watch the news, and it’s all over the Internet.  With today’s technology and the phenomenal micro rates of news dissemination, and the incredibly varied and diverse news outlet resources… man, if you don’t know what’s going on, within a few hours, or even moments of its happening… hey, you’re just asleep.  This brings me to my Three Basic Types of People.  The first type ignore what’s going on around them, cuz the party’s always raging and they say “What’s happening!”  The second type of person is engaged and intrigued by current events and asks questions, combs news outlet resources and seeks diligently to find out what’s happening in the world.  The Third Type of person is blissfully and intentionally ignorant of world events, cause/effect relationships, economic systems and patterns… and when their bliss ends suddenly and dramatically as world events steam roll over them, they shake their dazed heads and cry, “What happened??”

I believe I’m addressing a roomful of the Second Type.  You folks are involved – intellectually, passionately, and spiritually.  In this world…and the way things shake out…you are involved.  You love your families…you love your communities…you love your country.  And let me go further…I believe you love your world.  We are all similar, we humans.  We basically want the same things – travel the world, check it out, people are all basically the same.  When you get past the idiocies of some of the governments.  And even some of the religions.  We’re the same – we’re joined at the species.

Which is all the more frustrating for those of us who see our leaders, rather than trumpet America’s success and hold our system of freedom and self-rule out to the world, not as an unattainable trophy demonstrating out superiority…but merely as a gift.  A gift, offered with open hand…that whoever wants our sort of peace and strength and prosperity…and freedom… all they have to do is accept it.  You want our kind of success – adopt our kind of system.  Freedom…capitalism…responsibility… Liberty.

America, even with all her faults…a comparatively short list which, though the current bunch in D.C. scamper like rodents to shove through more horrid freedom-squelching legislation,  grows longer as I speak…even with all our faults… America is still that ‘shining city on a hill’…beckoning to all… that brave and enduring torch of liberty.  And the promise – that if a man or woman is willing and honest and works hard, that his success is limited only by the grit of his aspiration and the sweat of his brow.

So…given how our great nation was started… how the hell did we get to where we are now?   Well it started with a single lie.  One lie, probably floated as a trial balloon by some lazy, dishonest dickwad who thought he’d run a scam up a flagpole, see if anyone saluted.  He thought he’d see if he could get something for nothing.  He thought he’d see if he could get away with not working…while convincing those around him that even though he didn’t work for something, he deserved it nonetheless.  Because you see…that thing he wanted…he didn’t just want it…he needed it.  It was a ‘need’.

And…no doubt the people around him promptly kicked the livin’ crap out of him.  But when he healed, he moved on.  He found a new group to listen to his idea.  That he had needs…and they probably had needs to.  And it’s just not right…that some people have things they don’t.  It’s not right.  Because those people who have things that they don’t, those rich people… why, they probably got those things by cheating.  By cheating good needy folks like themselves.  And now I know that ain’t right!

It’s just not fair.

So these people who needed things… they got a few spokesmen.  Some fast-talking, smooth salesmen.  Some ‘community organizers’.   And they started floating the notion that people who work and risk and persevere in life…really are just takin’ advantage of the ‘lesser among us’.  They were personally profiting from the American capitalistic system, so obviously they were evil ‘greedy fat cats’.  Never mind the amazing prosperity, community development, and standard of living upgrades these entrepreneurs and industrialists were providing the communities…  no.  They were “getting rich off the back of the poor”.

Goebbels had it right – “If you repeat a lie often enough, it will be taken for the truth.”

Well… this lie grew and grew.  Because more and more community organizers ran for and got elected to public office.  And getting elected became easier and easier.  All you had to do was promise people goodies.  And the goodies were paid for by the Booty.  The Booty, better known as the federal budget was money that was taken from the people who earned it, better known as taxes.  Nobody liked to write a big check to the government to pay their taxes, so the government figured out a way to ‘assist’ the taxpayer by conveniently removing the tax from the person’s paycheck before they even touched it.  Wasn’t that thoughtful?

Don’t you love how the IRS…has the balls to call it a ‘service’??

I’m just getting’ warmed up.  I could go on all night, but I’m not gonna.  Legalized theft has been the M.O. of the Left in our government for some time.  And as we slowly slide from being a Republic…into something…dark and dank…and well…I don’t want to throw up so, suffice it to say… this great nation has slipped from its moorings.  This great nation has forgotten what it is…because we have forgotten who we are.  People in this country have forgotten what it is to be an American.

America is not a place to sneak in to and break the law – and then be rewarded with taxpayer-provided goodies.  It is not a place that you come to so that you may be taken care of.  America is not this big slush fund, feeding trough for all the little piggies to sidle up to and squirm into getting the biggest mouthful of freebies.

America is none of that!  America is an ideal.  Of freedom.  And responsibility.  And opportunity.  We are…or should I say were…a free people.  And the government works for…or should I say worked for…us.  We the people.  Not the other way around.

But every time I watch a movie depicting American values as simplistic, hedonistic aberrations of the reality I’ve grown up with and lived in my years, I want to grab the closest “progressive” and throttle him.

When the world was in turmoil, and entire continents were in danger of falling to evil tyrants…America tipped the scales for freedom.  When cataclysmic disasters over take a land, America is there with overwhelming support and resource.  And if America is so awful, why to so many people risk their lives to come here?  That must tell the world, and us, something about what America is.

We’re the good guys.

So what do we do?  Well we’re doing it.  We educate ourselves on the issues and we get involved, and get increasingly involved with the process of electing our government.  We get vocal.  We no longer let the Left control the narrative.  We stand up for reason and truth.   And we vote — and encourage others to educate themselves and vote as well.

And more – let’s get creative.  Let’s write books…let’s write scripts…let’s make TV shows, let’s make films, sing songs, put on plays….that remind us and inform the world of the simple fact of who we are.  We’re the good guys.

We’re America, damn it!

Fortunately, they had a provision around all that, the Taft-Hartley act.  If you could talk some producer into hiring you, even though you weren’t yet SAG, you could work.  The producer paid some sort of stipend fine (something like $100) and you sign a thing saying you’re joining SAG and you got your card – and everyone was happy.   Back then the one-time payment to join was $365 – for me at the time, a small fortune.  (I understand the entry fee is in the thousands now.) 

I remember when I got my SAG card in the mail, after I’d gone through the above-mentioned calisthenics.  I was ecstatic.  This, then, was corroborating proof that I was indeed a professional Actor, capital-A.  I had arrived and the world was about to be turned on its ear.  Look out, here’s Gary Graham coming to Hollywood to rip it up!

Well, I’ll leave it to the historians to determine the degree to which I’ve ‘ripped it up’, but that began my long association with the venerable Screen Actors Guild.  And initially – I loved it.  I voted in the elections.  I read the high-quality full-color-glossy monthly newsletter.  I followed union politics, strike votes, no-strike votes… and of the attendant in-fighting.   I was an actor’s union wonk.

So…why, 20 years later, would I quit SAG?

Well, I’ll tell you.  Maybe it was the political candidates SAG openly endorsed whom I felt to be out-and-out socialists.  Maybe it was the preponderance of expensively produced SAG magazines detailing piles and piles of useless information about regional branch offices and affiliate members coalitions for community action strike committees and affiliate co-sponsor sub-chapter coordination steering committees blah, blah, and man, who cares. 

Or maybe it was the latest bundle of residual checks that arrived today (four of ‘em) that, combined, totaled $0.98.  Ninety-eight cents, American.  Total.  Four separate checks!

Now, I’m not a rocket scientist (though I play one on TV)…but it seems to me that an organization that mails out four separate checks in four separate envelopes containing residual checks in the amounts of $0.08, $0.13, $0.62 and $0.06… something is definitely wrong with this picture.  Does anyone in this world really need to be sending out checks for six cents?  (It gets worse; I recently received a residual check for a penny.  A penny.  Woo-hoo – time to pah-tay!

Not wanting to tell the guild how to run its business, but — would it not cost more than ninety-eight cents to send out four separate checks?  This vaunted industry organization can’t find a way of holding these sums in a sort of mini-escrow until such time as the mailing thereof at least equals the administrative costs attendant?  Would that be too far a stretch of expectation of this former member in good standing?   Just a thought.

Which brings me to competition.  Our great nation grew and prospered as a result of competition in the free marketplace.  The best idea won out, the niftiest invention, the most ingenious labor-saving device, produced for the lowest price took the prize in the cauldron of enterprise.  When people are free to choose, they vote with their dollar and the smartest, most industrious win. 

But SAG didn’t want competition.   SAG says we’re the only game in town.  SAG says you join us and play by our rules or you don’t play.  That was, until the 1988 Supreme Court landmark decision,  Communication Workers v. Beck, which freed up union members’ options, and after which Charlton Heston contested SAG and Equity’s monopoly on the acting pool;  resulting in the little-heard of, and much less talked about ruling known as Financial Core. 

Fi-Core for short. 

I am often amazed at how few actors have heard about this right-to-work provision. 

In a nutshell — filing Fi-Core allows you as an actor to work union or non-union productions.   But you still pay dues.  Or at least, you still pay 97% of your previous dues.  SAG has determined, by some apparently random criteria that SAG earmarks only 3% to activities other than collective bargaining. (I hope no one was drinking anything while reading that; the spit-take could ruin your keyboard.) Once a SAG actor turns Fi-Core, henceforth you are referred to as a “dues-paying non-member.” (I am not making this up.)  You maintain your pension status, your health care benefits, and except for a couple of minor changes, your acting career remains unchanged.  The minor changes are these:  You must fill out and sign a form stating you are resigning from SAG – the import of which means you can no longer vote in SAG elections and you no longer receive the high-quality, full-color-glossy monthly newsletter.   I stopped to pause at that — deciding whether the six thousand dollars I was about to make acting in a certain G-rated non-union film for four days work would offset that terrible sacrifice.

A full second-and-a-half later, I resigned from SAG and filed Fi-Core.  (Call me a whore.)

Now.   Am I risking a lot telling you this?   Probably.   Hollywood is a union town.  Union, union, union!   To dissent from the lock-step is to paint the Scarlet ‘A’ on your non-union chest.  The Leftist cabal that is primarily mainstream Hollywood will assuredly hate me, revile me, detest me, scorn me and want to wrap me in a booger burrito and take turns punting me over the Craft Service table for writing this.  But I am about to reveal one of the tightest bits of insider info, one of the most closely guarded, oft-squelched facts in Hollywood:  

Financial Core rocks!  

SAG does not want you to know that Fi-Core even exists.  Facts and information are terrible things to the Left status quo.  What would that do for union-unified unity!?   If people realized that they had more options, more choices, more rights to work…well it would be disastrous!  It would lessen their ability to bargain as a tightly-knit union, it would lessen their impact on contract negotiations, it would…it would… it would reduce their power.

And in this or any other game…it’s all about power.

Once you file, here’s what happens:  They try to talk you out of it.  They tell you once you quit SAG, that’s it, you’re out.  And if you persist, they sigh disparagingly and send you the forms, which you fill out and send back to them.  Sometimes they call you back and try again to talk you out of it.  But after you politely decline their offer, you actually sign a statement saying you are withdrawing from Screen Actors Guild.   (Did I just hear a loud timpani roll?)

Now, maybe because it took so much for me to get into SAG in the first place… that one gave me quite a pause.  But then I thought of my family and how much we needed the money, how much I wanted to do this particular role…and it was a no brainer.  Boom, done.  Fi-Core.  That was maybe eight, nine years ago…and I’ve still managed to work steadily since.  Union, non-union…whatever.  Features, TV movies, non-union flicks, shorts, pilots, industry promos, web-series…some roles paying quite well, others not so well, some doodly-squat.  But each time, I’d take the job for the love of acting, for the diversity and challenge of the role, and for getting to work with people I love.  

No regrets…it’s all good.

Where’s my loyalty, you ask?  Where’s my sense of honor for the greater good of the Union Brotherhood?   Please.  My loyalty is to my family.  SAG did well in its early years, and I am grateful for various protections under its auspices…but as with all institutions that steadily gain power – power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The thing has gotten top-heavy in administration, become overtly political and obsessively insisted on merging with other unions to consolidate power (they call it ‘collective bargaining leverage’).   And all that has lead to inefficiency, diminished responsiveness,  lack of any real representation, demanding too much for too many…and in general  generated a malaise of self-importance and short-sighted, special-interest. 

And residual checks for a penny.

The unspoken agreement between Fi-Core and SAG is this:  Don’t ask, don’t tell.  You don’t make trouble for us…and we won’t make trouble for you.  You don’t go blabbin’ around town that Fi-Core even exists…and we won’t publicize your name in Hollywood as being anti-union, anti-SAG, anti-American!   (Hey, I’ve got nothing against SAG.  Just…it’s not for me anymore.  Is it like the mafia where you can’t just walk away?  Am I not free to choose?  Is this not still America?) 

It’s funny.  All this time I’ve been Fi-Core and completely willing to keep it to myself, not publicize it, live and let live….and the one thing that tips the scales…is getting mailed a residual check for a penny.  I’m sorry, but I hate inefficiency, waste and ineptitude.   Call me old-fashioned like that. 

I believe there is a time for collective bargaining.  But I believe in freedom of choice.  Union, non-union…your choice.  And if you should make the ‘wrong’ choice — no amount of coercion, intimidation or threats can make it ‘right’.   Democracy trumps ‘thugocracy.’

 A couple years ago I was producing a non-union web-series pilot out at Warner’s which I’d also written.  I now got to deal with the unions from the other side.  I started in negotiations to hire my actors — all SAG actors.  Seems there was a special provision for hiring SAG talent for non-union productions under what they called ‘Low-Budget Experimental.’  I was required to provide health benefits and unemployment set-asides and $100/day salary.  They were really trying to stick it to me over the benefits and insurance package, etc — until I told them that I was going to pay them fifteen times what their own contract required me to pay.  Yeah.  Screw that $100/day frabba-jabba – I was paying my actors $1500/day.  And they can pay for their own health insurance!   The SAG rep paused a long, long moment … and said, rather breathlessly… well that would be fine.  And we had a deal. 

I love actors — and I’d be damned if my actors would draw minimum wage.

I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert on the workings of SAG or the minutia of their day-to-day operations.  I only know what I perceived to be right for me and my family at the time and my personal choice was to get the hell outta Dodge.  A couple of threatening letters have already gone out to Fi-Core SAG ‘non-members’, myself included.  Dire warnings of how the Fi-Core status can hurt our chances of attaining future union work (veiled warnings?).  And how for a mere fifteen hundred dollars and paying back-dues, we may be welcomed once again back into the fold.  A rousing, snorting chuckle did that letter elicit.  Wow golly-gee yippee-yo!  Shazam, sign me up! 

Ha! – go fish.

I don’t conform to Group-Think.  You can have your union.  I don’t believe we’re all in one apple cart and can only move as fast as the slowest among us.  I will rise or fall according to the brightness of my ingenuity and the steel of my resolve.   I’m an individualist. 

And if SAG doesn’t like it… they can keep their penny residual check.

—–

Watching it again, lo these many years later, I was struck by several new observations.  First – what a patriot George M. Cohan was!  (And, as is common knowledge, so was Cagney.)   Though Cohan maintained, “I was a good Democrat even [as a child]”… he didn’t feel the modern leftist compulsion to extend the sympathetic lilt of empathy towards one’s avowed enemies.  He knew which side he was on – and said so, in no unequivocal terms. 

Cohan wasn’t politically correct — he and his family put on Minstrel shows!  Innocent, good-natured entertainment back then, offending no one, delighting all; black, white or variegated paisley.  It wasn’t until the class-envy of Marxist political correctness that we insisted on being horrified by such a thing. 

When young George misbehaved, his father – oh shock – turned him over his knee and whooped his butt.   Men treated women with genteel deference and women modestly comported themselves with style, sweetness and class.  Youth respected the wisdom of age…or…they got their butts whooped.

Life-long business deals (Cohan and partner Sam H. Harris) were sealed with a handshake.  My word is my bond.  And if you failed, you didn’t turn to government for a bailout…you just squared your jaw and tried again.

Being patriotic was hip.  The flag was revered.  People sang stirring songs about love of country and teared up – unapologetically.

George M. Cohan…James Cagney…man, that’s what America is about.

One grows weary of having to repeat the same defense of our immigration laws, (indeed, the defense of our entire American way of life). But, for those who either have short memories, or, rather than pay attention in high school, preferred to gaze idly out the window during U.S. History class — or are just woefully and irretrievably short of clue…let’s review. 

We are a nation of LAWS.  The so-called ‘undocumented immigrants’ are, in fact, ILLEGAL ALIENS…and every one of them is breaking Federal Law being in this country without having gone through existing proper, legal channels to acquire documentation in order to come into and remain inside our country.  

Our desire to be able to buy low-cost produce is among the weakest of arguments for open borders and/or amnesty. These concerns are trumped by our societal attempt to shun anarchy and remain a republic, maintain our designation as ‘a nation of laws’, as well by a growing concern for national security … but I digress.  Back to undocumented field workers.  

Everyone has a price.  There is a wage for which virtually anyone will work — and at virtually any sort of job.  As weird as it sounds, if the hourly wage were high enough, college grads and white collar workers would put on their jeans, don wide-brimmed hats and get out in the fields.  A lot of the older guys, unaccustomed to the demands of such arduous, monotonous work would probably quickly say FTS! and quit – leaving a shortage of labor to bring in the crop; so the younger guys would more than likely get a pay increase just to keep them around.  And those who just had to have their leafy green (and chose to afford it)…would end up paying maybe $20 for a head of lettuce.  

For a brief time. 

The FREE MARKET has a way of working these things out.  But, for sake of argument, let’s suppose that all illegal labor was suddenly stopped.  Farmers could no longer employ illegal immigrant labor.  The demand for lettuce is still there…but there is a limit to which most people will pay per head, and a large majority will simply go without…or find some other alternative. 

Lettuce sales would fall off.  Only the rich would pop for it.  But the demand would remain high, even get higher — which would prompt some enterprising dude to come up with a new method, probably a machine to harvest lettuce.  And until the price climbed that high, this dude had no MOTIVATION to go to risk the expense and invest the sweat-equity to develop this new machine.  But now, with his new machine…geez, he’s raking in the profits to satisfy market demand…and his new business is booming.  So, what does an enterprising new innovator do?  He EXPANDS his business to keep up with the demand.  And he rents or buys a larger building and HIRES more workers to make this new machine.  Soon, his machines can harvest enough lettuce so that the farmers can sell each head to the stores for 50 cents a head.  The price is once again low enough for everybody to be able to afford a head of lettuce.  Lettuce-growing is booming, every farmer wants one of his machines …and he opens up manufacturing outlets all over the country, and eventually all over the world.  

End of story?  No!  The world economy is dynamic.  Other industrious innovators see this guy’s success and they work hard and develop a newer, even more efficient machine to harvest lettuce.  And they open up new outlets and compete for that big lettuce market.  And now there are several companies vying for that business, each one trying to grab a share of the huge world-wide market.  

At this point, perhaps the original innovator  simply sells his patent to a large firm and walks away rich to retire on an island somewhere.   Or, more likely, he rolls up his sleeves, takes the competition on, and fine tunes his original machine to produce even better, more cost-effective results.  His was the first, so his name carries much gravitas in lettuce-harvesting machine manufacturing (he’s well-branded by now), and he decides to take part of his company and devote it to PRODUCT DIVERSIFICATION.  He gets his guys to develop other labor-saving machines.  Strawberry pickers…tomato harvesters…bean pluckers.  Pretty soon his name rivals John Deere in the farm machinery market.  And he wouldn’t have gone the extra mile to develop and branch off into these other enterprises without the COMPETITION of other companies trying to take away his market share.  

As a result, his industry builds, he expands his corporation further and he opens up new manufacturing facilities in this country and world-wide.  Providing JOBS for hundreds of thousands.   And not getting-heat-stroke-kneeling-in-the-fields jobs…but working inside an air-conditioned, high-tech assembly plant.   Which approach do you think is the most ‘compassionate’? 

This is how the free market works…and works quite well…when left alone.   At no point was a government ‘correction’ or some other intrusive regulation needed to help the ‘working families’.   At no point was it useful to have some union thug approach this enterprising innovator and use pressure tactics and/or EXTORTION to force him to pay his workers more than both he and they had, by FREE CHOICE, agreed to. 

In fact, at no point is COERCION necessary at all – regardless of the whining, sanctimonious complaints of the myriad of hand-wringing, freedom-squelching, meddlesome community activist groups hell-bent on bullying and blackmailing out some hoped-for Politically Correct utopian outcome… so they can look good in the hood and run for public office. 

 Nope.  FTS.  All of the above actions were done VOLUNTARILY in an unfettered spirit of INNOVATION and FREEDOM. 

Welcome to CAPITALISM. 

This is  America.  It’s not that we just ‘got lucky’ in the roulette Big Spin of history.  It’s not that we were simply brutal and larcenous to have ‘grabbed all the goodies’ on this continent and given everyone else the boot.  And it’s not that we are a particularly better people than peoples anywhere else on the earth; after all, America is made up of all the peoples of the earth, a ‘melting pot’, united in one monolithic quest – the desire to be free. 

No, it’s nothing very complicated that explains why America is so very exceptional:  It’s because we have the best system of self-governance  and free-enterprise that has ever been devised in the history of mankind.  Thank you Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, et al.  

I’d call you guys ‘genius’, but my style is just to say — you ROCK. 

In my wayward, college-addled youth, I had the ol’ Easy Rider beer-goggles on.  And I, like so many of my generation, saw nothing but fault… nothing but deficiency… nothing but malfunction… when I looked out at America.  But when I grew up I put away childish things, and a new clarity descended upon me.  Maybe God had a hand in that – I like to think He did.  

I began to see America with a new, clearly focused vision.  And though there was no ignoring her faults, and there have been many…I began to appreciate her attributes and advantages.  And I began to see not only her exceptionalism…but her greatness.  

We are the good guys.   We are America.  And we do have a truly great system of self-government and free-enterprise.  I don’t know about you, but I won’t sit back and let that system be ‘fundamentally transformed’.   Not by inattention, apathy or default.   Not by distraction.  And not by Executive Order.  And I will be G-Damned if I will stand by and watch some bowing, Marxist, dictator-loving, redistributionist empty-suit community organizer  fundamentally transform my nation into yet another collectivist Eurotrash oligarchy of a bankrupt hellhole.  Not in my movie, bucko – not while this Citizen Soldier stands guard.   

I will live to see America restored to American values, or die trying. 

God bless the United States of America.

The agent across the desk laughed.  “Black-listed??  Ha ha …what… ‘Are you now or have you ever been a communist?’  Come on.  I mean …I know you probably shoot your mouth off about politics a little too much, but, still…”

But the Actor stared back.  His once-commanding gaze could use some sleep — or at least, some peaceful sleep.  Being an actor in Hollywood, he’d gotten used to going long dry spells between jobs; but never this long.  ‘Oh, the business is in a slump, it’s the economic downturn’, they all say.  (And when have ‘they’ ever been wrong?)  But the Actor had been around a long time and he’d heard the ‘business-in-a-slump, economic-downturn’ diagnosis repeated far too many times to really let it get him down; or let it keep him down, anyway.

But now…it seemed like something else.  This was different.

Lately, these past few years, the Actor, after having seen his once ‘up-and-comer’ status flare briefly as the new ‘It’ guy and having starred in a string of B+ action movies and a few short-lived TV series, had seen his career languish on ‘Thousand-Meeting Island’ only to glide past ‘Audition Mambo’ and settle eventually and almost imperceptibly into the maudlin malaise of the ‘also-rans’.  The river of scripts that once flowed to his door had become a creek, then a small stream, and finally a mere trickle.   New lines now appeared on his face with such alarming frequency it was now well late into the afternoon that he even ventured a side-glance at a mirror.  

To an actor, middle-age can seem a lot like middle-death.

Then suddenly — raging against that good night like a half-drowned swimmer clawing to reach the distant shore, fighting to gain purchase with each desperate stroke, he had ended up in this office.  He hadn’t been able to articulate to the receptionist why he was there, unannounced; but he knew it was time to have a serious sit-down with his one last bastion of hope in this town of busted dreams:  his talent agent.  The Actor leaned forward.

 “Am I?  Am I being black-listed?”

“There is no black-list.”

“There is.  I’ve heard too many stories.  Seen too many careers stopped dead.  It’s real, you know it’s real.” 

The Agent’s gaze lowered.  The sigh tipped it – and the silence sold it.

“Am I on it?”

“I don’t know,” the Agent replied evenly. “I wouldn’t even know who to call.  And if I did know…I doubt they’d even tell me the truth.”

The Actor steadied his breath as he digested this.  Like he’d just been told that the tumor had metastasized.

“What do I do?”

The agent just shook his head…

—–

“Am I being black-listed?”  This question, that sent waves of terror throughout the Hollywood community a generation ago, does so again…but for entirely different reasons.   The notion of a Hollywood blacklist that once represented a scourge of ‘outing’ actors, writers, directors and producers who had had involvement with the Communist party, now vilifies, sequesters and persecutes a different caste of working American:  the Hollywood Conservative.

The above scene, while fictitious, has in all likelihood been played out in more offices, in more coffee shops, and over more phone calls than anyone in my purview would dare to imagine.  But of course — it’s only reasoned and rumored conjecture; no one talks about it and no one admits it exists.  And yet…it is currently one of the most powerful means of intimidation and control ever used in this or any other business. 

What it amounts to is this:  Thought Police. 

It’s Orwellian.  It’s the left’s way of saying – Think like we do…or you don’t work.  And you don’t work, you don’t eat.  So…think like we do – and live.

There are very dire consequences to being in this town, working in this industry – and speaking out against the sort of leftist agenda that is now racing though our government at every level – from city to state to federal.  It pisses them off.   And unfortunately for those who speak out, they control the gates to the kingdom. 

There has been a long-suspected bias in this town against conservatives by what most agree is run primarily by liberals.  Progressives, if you will.  Those who welcome a move towards socialism that our President is ushering into the nation’s daily playlist of What’s Happening Now?  These progressive producers, directors, writers, actors and studio heads all agree on one thing, it seems – This is a brave new world, an Obama world…and those damn Conservatives are just trying to mess things up.  In fact, it was Those Conservatives and George Bush who got us into this mess in the first place!

Uhh.. yeah.  Nevermind the fact that Bush was never a conservative,  liberals like Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy, Barack, Harry, Chuck, and Fanny & Freddy got the ball rolling on the Road to Perdition… nevermind all that.

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Liberals…and in particular, for our purposes here, Liberals in Hollywood are convinced that Conservatives (in Hollywood or anywhere else) are to blame for everything evil, mean or nasty in this country specifically, and the world in general.  In fact, they are certain of it.

Which brings me….to me.  Just another actor who’s looking to land his next gig.

Books by the score have been written about the Acting Trade.  How to get into it, how to succeed, how to act in front of cameras, how to boost your career, how to get the job.  I know, I wrote one of them – ACTING & Other Flying Lessons.  But one book that has yet to be written…and, what is becoming more and more apparent, needs to be written…is How To Get Acting Work If You Have Let The World Know You’re a Conservative.

Apparently, you see, Conservatives are demons.

Dudes.  Dial it back in.  We’re just like you.  We just want to hit our marks, speak our lines and play the scene.  That’s it.  We’re actors, not because we want to climb onto a soundstage and start spewing Rush Limbaugh…   we’re there because we love to act.  And that’s all we’re going to do.  If we start to launch into rants about the trilateral commission and how the CFR and the Bilderbergers are setting up the New World Order give us a smack upside the head and call, “First team!”

Hey, I defy anyone that I’ve ever worked with to come forth with a story of how I disrupted a set, held up production, or in any way caused a disturbance that slowed down the process.  Leave it in the comment section.  The sedition I fomented, the salacious and vile attacks on the President I railed on about, disrupting the film process.  In fact, I defy anyone to come forward and write in their comments if I was anything other than completely professional, polite, respectful, hard-working, and an utter delight to be around.  Maybe I’m blowing my own horn a little too hard here, but – really – what exactly does a liberal producer think that a conservative actor is going to do on his set that will be trouble??  Relax, we’re house-broken, most of us.  And I always bring my own drool-cup so I shouldn’t be a bother.   

Conservative actors are people too.  We just want to work.  Buddy, can you spare a cool guest-starring role?  I’m joking – and personally I don’t know if I’m on any sort of black-list or not.  I tend to equate any sort of success or the lack thereof to my own efforts and past performances, not whether I make my conservative voice heard.  But that’s just me.

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Which brings me to an article I read recently by Mark Harris, a former Executive Editor of one of the largest entertainment magazines in the country, Entertainment Weekly.  Mr. Harris first excoriates those of us who are a bit squeamish at the notion of a political message crammed into every orifice of every Hollywood offering to hit pop culture.  The Hurt Locker is about how George W. Bush tormented young soldier’s souls.  The Office is about how George W. Bush didn’t want Pam to have universal health care to safely deliver her baby.  The Middle is about how George W. Bush ruined the economy for the middle class.  And how Parks & Recreation is…well, is just absurdly funny.  (We agree on that one – and for the same reasons.  We political- wonk types love to make fun of ourselves – just don’t you make fun of me.)

But more telling is how Harris was surprised that he liked The Middle…because of Patricia Heaton’s politics.  And that he was surprised that the show’s producers and Heaton could have found ‘common ground.’ 

Uhh…what??  What do her ‘politics’ have to do with anything?  And therein lies the rub – Hollywood lefties think that if an actor — or any craftsman in Hollywood, for that matter – is a Conservative…then they must be ‘difficult.’  They must be ‘not right in the head.’ 

And here is the former editor of one of the biggest entertainment publications spreading around the false notion that conservatives are somehow hard to work with — planting the seed that this is some kind of rarity when we can get along in leftie Hollywood. “What a shock!” As though it’s outside the norm.  And what’s the message it perpetrates? It tells producers that if you hire a conservative that maybe there’s gonna be trouble, and with the logistics of tight schedules and budgets…it just isn’t worth it.

Wow.  There it is in all its deliciously diabolical nakedness:  the awful truth.  The true bigotry of Hollywood exposed at last.  The Left is bunch of bigots.  Think the way we do, vote the way we tell you to vote; only express ideas sanctioned by big-government statists, and do it in a very politically ‘correct’ manner…or we won’t let you work in our town.  We will revoke your means of sustaining your life and the lives of your family.  We’ll drive you out of your chosen vocation.  We’ll put up a roadblock everywhere you turn, because we don’t like you.  We don’t like your ideas of individual liberty and personal responsibility.  We don’t like the notion of American exceptionalism.   We don’t like how you cling to that outdated Constitution thingie.  The world has changed; it’s evolved into a higher order.  We are a global community now, and don’t think any one nation should stand out, or someone will get their feelings hurt and then bring down our skyscrapers with jets and then we’ve no one to blame but ourselves. 

Isn’t that what the mere presence of a ‘black-list’ in Hollywood is really saying?

Yes – we may disagree on many things.  We have very different notions about what the limits and expectations of our government should be.  But a film or TV set is not the venue for sorting all of this out.  So can we stop the Hatfield/McCoy thing in Hollywood and just agree to disagree.  Blacklists are evil, whether done by the left or the right.  It’s intimidation, coercion, and extortion.

Let’s be better than that.