Will the Conservative Money Men Please Stand Up
by Michael McGrutherOn the eve of the 2004 election, I had a business lunch in Manhattan with the author of a book I had optioned for the big screen. Up until then, I had no idea how liberal he was. As a matter of fact, this was when I was just starting to understand the differences between myself and many of the people in my life. I’d just flown in from L.A., so despite the highly politicized climate left behind in Hollywood, in good old New York the election was a non-topic … until his cell phone rang.
This is what I overheard him say: “He’s going to back us? Yes! That’s F@$%^ great! We’re going show these Republicans how we play. They’re not even going to know what hit them. We will do some serious damage because this is war now — we’re playing for keeps!”
OK, those weren’t his exact words, but you can believe it was something like that and I cannot stress enough the tone of real hatred in his voice. I was taken aback, as I often was by the odd display of being completely unreasonable when it came to politics which seemed everywhere then.
When his conversation ended I asked him, “I guess you don’t like Republicans very much do you?” His eyes looked down on me with disgust as he realized I was not on his side — this after years of putting money in his pocket and developing his book into a film. Because he was so irked that I didn’t share his world view, we decided to agree to disagree, until a dinner a couple of months later when the “Blame Bush” mantra had taken full effect on everyone without a mind of their own.
When I asked why he was suddenly relocating to Washington D.C., his girlfriend accidentally spilled the beans by referencing some political parties he’d attended in the Hamptons. He snapped at her, “No one is supposed to know about that.” Then I, who by now had a fully awakened political mind, chimed in, “What, did you go to George Soros’ house?” I was only fishing, half-guessing based on news about Mr. Soros’ political activities. He nodded “yes” and then changed the subject back to our movie. But after more red wine and a little prodding he told me what the endeavor was. Mr. Soros had agreed to fund a liberal propaganda spin machine called Media Matters for America.
Apparently, at his Hampton parties, Mr. Soros gathered young disenfranchised liberals and used their displeasure with the Bush administration (intensified by the MSM, 24/7) to further his own socialist desires for America. The whole mantra of Media Matters is “correcting conservative misinformation in the media.” In other words, spinning the spin so that it’s spun back to their spin. Yeah, you read correctly — a meaningless site with no value other than to create more confusion as to what is real news and who’s telling “the truth.”
Reading news “analysis” on the site is like trying to keep your eye on the nut in a shell game. How a bunch of Harvard educated men and woman can be reduced to confusing a spin site with high brow commentary is a marvel of the left’s power to use the self-righteous to confound the rest of us.
Media Matters has been very effective, too. One of their most infamous successes was breaking the Don Imus show by focusing all their spin-spun magic on an Imus quote referencing a girls’ basketball team. The domino effect was particularly frightening when you consider that then candidate Barack Obama called for Mr. Imus to be fired for saying something disrespectful but not out of the context of liberal pop culture (unless you happen to be white and conservative).
Media Matters is only one example of how the liberal grass roots movement has been well watered and cared for by rich caretakers who use their money, power and influence to invest in a future they desire, not one that’s best for all people. The media and entertainment world quietly vets and weeds out young conservatives so that we can’t disrupt the slow browbeating of the pop-culture addicted public with entertainment of substance that may awaken their better senses.
Truth is, we conservatives have no real backing other than core beliefs we know to be universally true. Where’s our David Geffen?
I’m calling on wealthy conservatives everywhere to please step forward and donate to the grass roots of the Republican Party. Fund our version of websites like Media Matters and MoveOn.org. Let’s get a conservative movie fund going and actually produce some indie films like “Fireproof” and then self-release so we can tout their financial success as front page news. We need to set up shop outside of Hollywood and bring back the studio system in some way. We need to create our own movie stars and pop culture heroes. In short, we need to create our own free Hollywood. Sound impossible? It’s not. If we build it…
If we act now, the liberal dream machine can be brought down. When conservatives storm the pop culture battlefield, unified and financed for the fight, it will be a shock and awe to the Left that will take them generations to recover from.
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57 Comments
Bush is in no way a “conservative.” Until you realize this, you will still be groping in the dark.
The battle lines are (and always have been) statism vs. individualism. Now it is also nationalism vs. globalism.
Ron Paul was the only “conservative” (individual rights, nationalist) candidate running. All the others (save maybe Gravel and Kuscinich) were more alike than different.
What is the difference between Clinton, Giuliani, McCain, Obama, etc….? ALL are for gun control. ALL are for creating the North American Union and more nefarious “trade agreements” that sacrifice our sovereignty. ALL care more about Israel than the US. None will protect our border. None will protect our culture. All are sell-outs. All are globalists.
I’m all for this, I would pay the money to see some conservative entertainment. I refuse to pay to see a mouthy lib actor or movie.
Good job! Thanks! The steam is building in the boilers; core beliefs will trump superficial idealogies every time.
I hate idealogies!
I agree with all the points you make and have been saying similar things for years now but, in my experience, few on our side who have that kind of money will spread it around willy-nilly. In fact, most of them are busy being productive, rather than making themselves rich by attempting to wreck the currency of certain island nations.
I’m not a Paulian, but I agree with Alex on one thing. Conservatism is presently confused and so the message has become unfocused. When a significant portion of your party is “just like the other guys, only less” then it’s going to be tough to exploit differences in the mind of your financial supporters.
I’m sorry, but what Imus said wasn’t a “pop culture” joke. He made a pointedly racial comment directed at women who weren’t exactly public figures or even part of the pop culture lexicon. By the way, he was let go because his show began to bleed sponsors in the justifiable uproar, so it was a free-market decision that he lost his job.
John Galt – February 6th, 2009 at 9:33 am
“Perhaps the new “Atlas Shrugged” movie will serve as an opening salvo in this struggle. I am so hoping that it does not get seriously botched up.”
The first I heard about that was a pre-production credit under Angelina Jolie’s page at IMDB and I audibly groaned..
Here’s the other problem…look at the Alinksy-esque tactics used on anybody who donated more than a buck fifty to the Prop 8 campaign. The left knows how to isolate and intimidate people and the MSM helps them. After all it was a newspaper that published the names, occupations, etc. of Prop 8 donors. Most of us conservatives just want to be left alone. We don’t want harassment, threats, or to have our careers/wealth jeopardized.
A guy like Soros is untouchable. Few people know who he is and don’t really understand how he uses his wealth to buy influence. It also helps he’s a pretty shameless guy: an ethnic Jew who had no problem helping out the Nazis. A real piece of work.
Leftist benefactors like Soros and the Pritzkers stay in the shadows, while any conservative or even simply pro-America benefactors risk everything they have because the bad guys will come after them. Such is the state of things.
Isn’t this a bit like the chicken and the egg problem? That is, conservatives can’t do big budget films (to name one example) without financial backing, but people who could finance them will only do so if they see that those conservatives are actually good at what they do, which they can only show if they have the financial backing to compete in the market, which they cannot get until they show they are good enough, etc. etc. etc. I’m sure there are some wealthy conservatives who would finance conservative artistic endeavors if they didn’t believe it was just throwing their money away, and there are very talented conservative artists who are unable to present their conservatives views because all the financers of Hollywood despise those views.
I think this site is a good first step toward bringing conservative backers and conservative artists together, at least. But I also think that conservatives should be trying to do everything BETTER than everyone else: to go for exceptionalism. To make the best movies, the best songs, the best novels. They should do the best with what they’ve got so that they have a portfolio they can present, an argument if you will for why they should receive money.
Of course, I speak from the side of an artist rather than one with money, so I see more of what *I* need to do than what people with the dough should do.
Screw the money men. We need to do this ourselves. Looking for a savior absolves us from our responsibility to stop our political enemies.
“I hate idealogies!”
Me too, in each every one of our 57 states.
I have to agree with IBLIS. 48 million people DIDN’T vote for BHO. Where’s Ronald Reagan when you really need him? By the way..can anyone name a conservative (in the true sense of the word) who even comes close to RR???
John Galt: “Perhaps the new “Atlas Shrugged” movie will serve as an opening salvo in this struggle. I am so hoping that it does not get seriously botched up.”
I don’t have high hopes.
McCain is what closed the wallets of Conservative Money Men. In addition, areas like the South are not really Conservative. Conservatives are smart. A rash of so-called Conservative Democrats have been elected in the South. A real Conservative would never vote for a “Conservative Democrat” because they know they would be voting to destroy everything they believe in. The so-called Conservative Democrats vote for people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed to lead the party, thus neutering themselves. They would be aware of these things if they actually had any brains.
Calling Philip Anschutz! We need ya.
GiveMeLiberty – February 6th, 2009 at 9:54 am
“By the way..can anyone name a conservative (in the true sense of the word) who even comes close to RR???”
Actually, Ron Paul surpassed Reagan in everything except the ability to communicate….BS. But that is what an honest person is going to be like. You people are getting caught up in superficiality. Reagan wasn’t that conservative. “Rather than abolish the departments of Energy and Education, as he had promised to do if elected president, Reagan added a new cabinet-level department–one of the largest federal agencies–the Department of Veterans Affairs. “
MMFA tips:
1. Don’t give them good links (as this page did).
2. Start a website to discuss the errors in MMFA’s articles, calling out the authors by name. They use their initials, but see their about page for their names.
Anyone ever notice that George Soros looks like the love child of the late actor Vincent Gardenia and a demented owl?
Hollywood spends on movies like Government spends our money. They don’t care where the money comes from, they just want a lot and spend like there’s no tomorrow. You can make a Titanic movie and spend a lot less then Hollywood. Conservatives need to play Hollywood at their own game. Don’t make movies for Conservatives, make movies for the general population, but inflict conservative view points in the stories. Same game they play. Let’s stop talking and get making films. Mine films in August.
I’ve long wondered why Conservatives don’t just recreate their own Hollywood and fight back. Mostly it’s because you continue to stubbornly look in the wrong places; New York and California. Go South my friend.
The irony of that suggestion is that IIRC, in the early days of filmmaking, the original nexus was in the Carolinas. It later moved to California for tax reasons. (I can’t find a cite right now, sorry!)
I agree with Alex on one thing. Conservatism is presently confused and so the message has become unfocused.
Oh yes. The reason for this confusion is the wrong idea that individual rights are a conservative principle.
Individuals rights are a key liberal principle — here using “liberal” in its proper (though pretty much archaic now, alas) Enlightenment meaning. Individual rights were effectively orphaned as a political principle by the Left’s co-opting of American liberalism; conservatives saw the opportunity and picked them up. But this arrangement, born of political expediency, is unstable because of conservatism’s anti-Enlightenment origins (cf Russell Kirk and others); this contradiction is the source of that confusion.
Alex:
RON PAUL??? You’ve got to be kidding me? Isn’t he the one who blamed the U.S. for the attacks on 9/11 during one of the debates? AND if Ronald Reagan wasn’t a conservative, then I’m a looney lib!! Maybe you should troll on over to moveon.org. Seems more to your liking. The sole purpose of the Dept of Veterans affairs is to assist US Military families in financial, educational and medical purposes.
God forbid we should have an Department to help veterans!!
Seerak – February 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am
“Individuals rights are a key liberal principle — here using “liberal” in its proper (though pretty much archaic now, alas) Enlightenment meaning. Individual rights were effectively orphaned as a political principle by the Left’s co-opting of American liberalism; conservatives saw the opportunity and picked them up. But this arrangement, born of political expediency, is unstable because of conservatism’s anti-Enlightenment origins (cf Russell Kirk and others); this contradiction is the source of that confusion.”
Interesting.
That is why I said the terms are no longer relevant. The Founding Fathers were classical liberals and so am I.
GiveMeLiberty – February 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
“RON PAUL??? You’ve got to be kidding me? Isn’t he the one who blamed the U.S. for the attacks on 9/11 during one of the debates?”
No. But Giuliani made the accusation and nearly got booed off the stage. LOL!
“AND if Ronald Reagan wasn’t a conservative, then I’m a looney lib!!”
No, you are just probably misinformed.
“Maybe you should troll on over to moveon.org. Seems more to your liking. The sole purpose of the Dept of Veterans affairs is to assist US Military families in financial, educational and medical purposes.”
Just as the purpose of welfare is to help poor families.
Brandon from TN – I think that’s a great idea. The Reason Oh-Bama won is advertising. He lied about the public funding for his campaign. It was the “Hope as Soap” campaign. The Hollywood studio systems is creaking from the overhead, poor marketing and myopic liberal mentality. And at least for God’s sake you’re trying to think out of the box and take some action. Please get in touch with me and let’s talk about it. Hopefully this link This Link will be permitted.
Well, we can’t count on conservative billionaires to help. They’re too busy and too smart to do anything but concentrate on how to make more money from the Obama nightmare. Case in point: T. Boone Pickens and his wind farm boondoggle.
Time to start self-financing from small donors. The Obama way.
But, Russ, what Pickens is doing with his wind farms is EXACTLY the free-market innovation and entrepenurial initiative that the loudest of the anti-government crowd touts as being the ideal use of money.
Besides, if Pickens turns out to be right about wind power, then he will have gotten the drop on his competitors in the alternate-energy industry. Not to mention, we’ll have a new industry that presumably will hire people. What’s the problem again?
Screw the money men. We need to do this ourselves. Looking for a savior absolves us from our responsibility to stop our political enemies.
Hear, hear.
Simple, smart and efficient countercampaigns would be much more effective, publicizing how lib propaganda sites are backed with big money by Soros, then detailing what a hypocrite he is, e.g. having enriched himself by causing the Asian currency crisis of the late ’90s, destroying millions of livelihoods in the process.
So, George, what relevance to a 20 year old Spike Lee movie did the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team have? Was he blessed with some special knowledge about the players in order to declare that they were “nappy-headed ho’s”? Man, it takes a big person to bash some women who never actually committed any real offense towards you. The funny thing is that this very site yesterday had a long thread where people were condemning Bill Hicks’ rants against Christianity and passionately debating the role of mocking and ranting in comedy. I guess it’s suddenly acceptable when it’s not YOUR ox being gored, huh.
I’m not sure that I would have fired him if I were his boss, but if you lose that many national sponsors, that option has to stay on the table.
Paul_D – February 6th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
“So the combined resources of The Heritage Foundation, The Council for National Policy, American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute, Koch Family Foundations, Olin Foundation, Coors Foundation as well as press / media outlets owned by Murdoch, Sun Myung Moon and AM radio dominated by Limbaugh and Hannity are not enough to bring down the Godless One Man Soros Empire and more handouts are needed. OK got it.”
Not one of those are conservative because not one of those places American interests over those of Israel and you need to be a patriot to be conservative, don’t you?
I love this, conservatives asking for handouts.
“Not one of those are conservative because not one of those places American interests over those of Israel and you need to be a patriot to be conservative, don’t you?”
Wow, Alex – thought I would see anti-Semitic Nazi sentiments on Daily Kos, not on this blog – go figure! Uh, Israel (little history lesson here) has thousands of Americans living there so it’s like another U.S. state really. There, history lesson over! Hope you learned something.
Pete, do the math on “alternative” sources of power. The costs associated with producing a wind-kilowatt are astonomical and only occur because of government mandates and government subsidies. Pickens is smart, indeed, for taking free money, but if this was really an efficient and effective method of making power, then it would already have been done.
Note: see drag coefficient.
[...] is the original post: Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Will the Conservative Money Men … conservative, Entertainment, george-soros, media, media-matters, movie, News, obama, politics, [...]
I have offered wondered why conservatives have such a hard time cutting checks for conservative cause and investing in other conservatives. Perhaps because they had to work for their money???
Unfortunately, I am interested in making horror films as a foot in the door. I don’t particularly like horror, but this route has been taken numerous times, look at Sam Raimi going from EVIL DEAD 1, 2, 3, leading to SPIDERMAN 1, 2, 3) and Peter Jackson going from BAD TASTE, BRAIN DEAD, MEET THE FEEBLES (a horribly offensive) leading up to KING KONG and the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. In other words, get foot in the door and then make the films you really want like THE PASSION. Not every movie can be FIREPROOF, everything has to start somewhere.
Add to that this point. I had tried to contact Christian author Frank Peretti (THIS PRESENT DARKNESS) for a good year, by various means including contacting his sister (who is a professor) and also the man that schedules speeches for Peretti. Mind you, I am not joe average fan, but a working professional in the movie biz. I was unable to make contact with Peretti. However, I was able to contact Stephen King in less than a week. Go figure.
Let’s talk about FIREPROOF… I contacted the director of it, a Christian assistant pastor) thinking he might be interested in talking to a working professional with 25 years in the film industry. Instead, I essentially got a form letter reply.
So Conservatives need to help other conservatives in ways other than just financial. You can’t just hide in a hole avoiding people who share your views and sending out form letters as a simple way to not talk to people who share your point of view. Time to realize where we are as a nation and to start supporting people of like mind.
Screw the money men. We need to do this ourselves. Looking for a savior absolves us from our responsibility to stop our political enemies.
This is a good idea, except that you need the proven successful money men [or women] in this fight. Art needs its benefactors, and if you want to make money in the art business, you need people who are willing to take risks. There is a type of person in this business that thrives on that risk taking behavior, and those people typically are not Conservative. Although many of us on BH may be considered exceptions to the “not Conservative” rule, I, for one, would not be considered successful in any business sense.
There’s an old adage that says out of every ten movies, seven will be failures, two will break even, and one will make money. And the one that makes a ton of money is like the proverbial leprechaun’s pot of gold. So you see the reason that there are so many sh*##y movies out there. With more and more people trying to grab that pot o’ gold, you get more and more, and more movies that are trying to work the numbers.
Now, let’s not debate the “art” of movies here. That’s for another thread. But to create movies with whatever sensibilities you want to project, you do need the business people. Everybody plays their part in life. I do believe the Conservative money is out there, and I encourage those people to step up, and for us to support them. We had a discussion about the Firewall movie by Sherwood Pictures in Atlanta. There’s no reason more movies in that vein can’t be made, but part of that thread was that it wasn’t a mainstream movie. And that is the problem with the Conservative meme in films.
I want to inject the idea here that there is an element of this already happening in the industry. It’s small, it’s not what it appears to be at times, and it’s not as prevalent as we would like. But there are good people in decision making positions who would love to see more of this type of business practice rise to prominence.
There will be a learning curve for this type of enterprise. Hollyweird has been on that curve for 100 years, give or take. For us to establish bonefide credibility in the business-of-film-production realm, you have to consider that we will need a good ten to fifteen years to develop the story telling abilities and forge the acceptance in the public at large of that “different” type of story.
Have I said that it’s impossible? That would be an emphatic NO! But everyone who wants it to happen has to support the trial and error of the transition in a culture that will be resistant to the effort. There are the astute Conservative business people out there. There are the risk takers. There is a place in this country for us to take root. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be outside Hollywood.
In fact, I would argue that for this effort to really be effective, we should stay in town and continue to try to change the local culture from the inside out. “Salt in the world” kind of thing. Otherwise, we end up with the us versus them argument, the old red/blue fight, over yet another issue. That would only breed more contempt, and that’s the last thing we need for this to become a reality.
PHOENIX48
I agree with you about dynamic personalities… and that is what I am talking about. Many conservative dynamic personalities it seems don’t want to get involved, don’t want to put their money where there mouth is, don’t want to help anyone outside of there direct circle if even that. These guys are hiding in holes or else simply adopt Hollywood principals / techniques such as popping off denial form letters to even qualified people.
Meanwhile, if conservatives can stomach movies other than documentaries and FIREPROOF, invest in the person, not just the project… I and other conservatives may be able to become “dynamic individuals” in our own right. You get a lot more traction, a lot more tolerance, if your projects are bankable. Well, Hollywood can sniff out conservatives (often by your name alone… ahem) so fat chance you will get any bank to make yourself bankable from them. So where is it to come from???
>I love this, conservatives asking for handouts.
Conservatives do invite investment and ask for donations.
Liberals demand “entitlements.”
Dear lazypadawan,
While I agree that posting voters identities concerning Prop 8 was stupid, you then pointed out a grand contradiction.
“Most of us conservatives just want to be left alone.”
So do all the gay people who were married. They just want to live their lives. Conservatives have a problem with gay marriage, they vote to take away rights and happiness from gays. Then they become upset when they’re publicly outed by idiot liberals.
If you’re interested in shaping the cultural landscape of America by preventing personal freedoms/protecting old values, how can you really justify the need to be left alone. Enter the discussion, voice your opinion, explain why. Otherwise, it just makes you look foolish.
Also, are we really arguing that Liberalism is more grassroots than Conservatism? Please. I look forward to the days when the third party candidates actually create interesting dialogue in this country. The patterns too easy: Conservative in office, liberals complain, and vice versa.
And dear god, stop calling this socialism. Do yourself a favor and look up the history and theory of Socialism before throwing that word around; just because someone on TV or radio rants about it doesn’t make it true.
Have a good day and enjoy your stimulus checks. Can’t wait to pay off 1/100th of my credit card debt.
There are no conservative money men. We pay our taxes.
re: Atlas Shrugged- I am sure it will be completely re-written to make the corporations look terrible; Galt, Taggart and Reardon will be the villians (I’m only half-serious). It’s made by Hollywood and starring Ms. Morality Soapbox herself, Angelina Jolie. Look at how they screwed up two wonderful films- The Manchurian Candidate and The Day the Earth Stood Still. I’m sure if they tried to redo Capra’s Lost Horizon they’d find a way to make America and/or corporations look evil.
Republicans, regrettably, don’t always have the spine they should. Our leaders don’t want to be called names, painted as cruel or selfish, so when the libs bring out the tar brush, most cringe and capitulate. I read last year that there is a somewhat secret group of Hollywood conservatives who get together and network, which I hope is true. When I think back the the movies produced during Hollywood’s golden age (and the actors in them), it’s hard to ignore the striking differences then and today. When did Jimmy Stewart, a fabulous actor and patriot, launch into a 3 minute curse laden screed when someone walked into his field of view twice during scenes? We’ve tolerated mediocrity and ego maniacs in Hollywood for so long that it has become institutionalised there, and the liberal network in place is now difficult to breach.
Hollywood is just another aspect of the multi-pronged plan liberals have adopted to co-opt major forms of media and entertainment in order to control and shape the message. The one forum they can’t touch, much to their chagrin, is talk-radio, which is why they are planning to pursue regulations that control the content of radio stations.
I would argue that if conservatives in entertainment got together and didn’t just do moves that were overtly conservative but simply had good messages and were well acted, the pendulum in Hollywood could swing more towards the conservative side. In other words, we need to beat them at their own game; studios want to make money and its hard to argue with a box office winner.
You want to get financing for a web site (maybe 3) or a film project (or studio), don’t expect some modern day Thurston Howell III to step up and say “Lovey! Fetch me my check book!”. Write a business plan for heavens sake. Make it professional, make it serious, make it real. Wealthy investors don’t just throw their money at any cause that comes along. They are astute businessmen. That’s how they got wealthy. Then hit the bricks with the plan and get in to see people like Richard Mellon Scaife. Think of Bud Fox’s pursuit of Gordon Gecko.
You are so right. I hope everyone hears you!
You think rich conservatives haven’t funded conservative spin?
What about the Standard?
What about the Wall Street Journal editorial page and op-ed page? The web site? THIS web site?
What about Fox News Channel?
To name just a few.
Most of the vocal conservatives in Hollywood seem to be whiners (except for “Desperate Housewives” creator Marc Cherry), judging from what I see and hear, and if they can come up with something people will either watch regularly free over the air or pay to see in theaters, it will succeed. Nobody likes whiners and nobody likes preachers whether they are liberal or conservatives. Get over yourselves.
@cary Uh, You need to learn your history. I do not live in CA but i apparently know the history better then you. CA law explicitly prohibited same sex marriage since 1977. And even before 1977 the law was interpreted to mean a man and a woman, but they wanted to make sure that there would be no misunderstanding. In 2000 another vote was held simplfying the wording and reinforcing the fact marriage would remain as only between one man and one woman, it passed with over 60% voting for it pass. In May of 2008 the Supreme Court of California went against the voters wishes from 1977 and 2000 and over turned prop 22 from 2000. This forced the citizen of California to once again get the issue on the ballot and once again make the will of the people plain, that marriage is limited to involving one man and one woman. Conservatives DO want to be left alone, they want the Court system to stop legislating from the bench. They people have spoken their peace multiple times, but the minority, those who want gay marriage, keep finding ways to overturn the will of the people as it has stood for more then 30 years in California. Call the No on Prop 8 crowd what they are, sore losers.
@Alex, et al of the anti-semites: I want you to look at about 3000 years of history with me.
Ancient Egypt: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST ENSLAVE THEM!
Babylonians: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST CONQUER THEM!
Persians: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST CONVERT THEM!
Romans: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST CRUSH THEIR SPIRIT!
Muslims: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST KILL THEM ALL!
Inquisition: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST MAKE THEM CONVERT!
Nazis: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST KILL THEM ALL!
Modern Anti-Semites: THE JEWS ARE BAD! WE MUST ABANDON THEM!
What is it that makes people so damn afraid of the Jews? There are only about 13,000,000 of them in the 6+ Bil. on the planet. thats only .00217% of the world’s population, why are they so dangerous that you and those like you hate them? And what do you have against America defending its allies? Would you object if we were to let, say, Britain be attacked by enemies and do nothing simply because they’re not American? Or how about the South Koreans? Should be abandon them? I’m sure they have their own agenda. Or maybe we should not worry about what happens to Poland. I mean, those horrible Poles, i’m sure they’re plotting world domination and using us as puppets. Try that when ever you’re about to make some asinine comment about Isreal. Replace “Jews” with “Poles” or “French” or “Latvians” or any other nation, and if it sounds rediculous, then your statement about Isreal was going to be rediculous. Antisemitism is old, and its just plain stupid.
You’re missing a piece of the puzzle: the bottom-up nature of mediocrity, the Lilliputians using thread to tie down Gulliver.
Step one was education–taught by mediocre minds with an agenda. It took generations of chipping away at the culture’s foundations, un-noticed by those who were busy elsewhere.
The degenerate pop culture and media grew from this seedbed; then it’s a trivial matter for demagogues to exploit the resulting ignorance and venality.
Since it didn’t happen overnight, it won’t get straight overnight, and it might take an apocalypse to do it.
Sorry to say it will never happen, just look at the squabbling here! the dems are at least organized.
speaking of a beginning, where in LA might some people interested in this issue even meet?
speaking of a beginning, where in LA might some people interested in this issue even meet? Bankers will bank anything with sales collateral, its a matter of putting together the projects.
Calling Philip Anschutz! We need ya.
We’ve been calling him for a long time now. He’s made it pretty clear he’s not answering. (And when he does veer anywhere politics, we still get a liberal message film like ‘Hoot.’)
Mel Gibson drives me almost as nuts. The Christian Right makes him fat with ‘Passion’ cash, and he saunters off to Costa Rica to party. I realize he’s criticized Bush and thereby been labeled a liberal in these parts, but to me he’s clearly of the Paleocon brand of conservatism. Which I can respect. What I can’t respect is the way he’s abandoned the subversively ballsy direction we all saw he was taking that worldview with stuff like ‘Braveheart’ and ‘We Were Soldiers.’
At the very least, a guy like Mel could easily start the ball rolling on something depicting the troops for the studs they are, even if he disagrees with the mission.
I do thank him for the ‘Carrier’ series on PBS, but come on… The man’s already a pariah. Why not get some mileage out of it and really take it to the next level? We’d be with him in a heartbeat.
Agent Orange is dead-on, too. We on the Right are functionally retarded when it comes to networking. It’s bad enough we’re lepers to the industry, but most of the time we dare not even stumble into one another in our leper cave.
“Let’s put on a show!” Whenever I hear folks talking like we are here, now, I think of Mickey Rooney, the can-do-anything entertainer who, along with Judy Garland could solve any problem by ‘putting on a show’.
That may not be a bad idea.
It has been said here that it took decades of erosion of quality in our education system and less and less morals in our entertainment industries to produce the market and population we now have.
I agree with this.
However, I am constantly amazed at how these same young people, people who do pay to see movies, people who can make and break box office and television successes, love old classics on YouTube.
Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone for example. Everyone knows this series. What underlying foundation did it have in almost every episode? No matter how bizarre the story, there was a lesson. It generally punished greed and rewarded charity.
Shows like Happy Days, Kojak, Six Million Dollar Man, pretty much anything in 60s and 70s are beloved by people of my generation, who watched them new, and now, it seems, the present youth as well, that comments on places like YouTube.
Countless times, and I mean countless times, I have heard from young people who complain about TV and movies today, after they see clips of originals they missed out on.
Why do these young people love watching clips of old TV shows? Many of them in poor quality? What is appealing about them? They’re not smutty, nor very violent at all. Remember, these were produced before television morality eroded to the point at which it is today, where most of what is on TV on any given prime time slot would garner an R or worse rating for cinematic release back in the 70s. Look at Midnight Cowboy. That was rated X in ‘68, believe it or not. Wouldn’t barely garner a PG 13 today. The culture was spinning out of control, but there were still some controls on the pop culture and what was being produced. Those are gone now. Retired and dead along with those who worked in the industry then in top decision making positions, who helped us to keep some semblance of right and wrong in drama.
I’m not one for following a trend or marketing ideas or art. I think you should make what you want to see, and others, many others, will most likely be thinking the same thing and want to see it.
Keeping that in mind, and realizing that this massive response to older stuff on youtube is an untapped resource, there seems to be a lesson here.
Good is good. I believe that. No matter what generation, good is good. Sure, some things are timely and can only work once, and some things are pulled down because of reliance on a particular effect or style of the time, which dates it too much to be appreciated by large segments of a younger, newer population. Think silent films, for example. Just too dated to be fully appreciated on a large scale anymore.
But if you look at any clip from these television shows in the 60s, 70s, so many and of so much variety and so much cleverness and originality, you’ll be shocked, but shouldn’t be, at how many young people in their teens, early twenties love this stuff and prefer it over anything or most anything today.
Why?
When I was a kid watching those shows, I didn’t look at shows or movies of decades earlier and want to see them instead. I was very happy with what I could watch new. Today it’s not like that.
Why not?
Because good is good. It’s not a generation thing. “It was good, then. It was right.” – to quote James Whitmore from an episode of Twilight Zone.
I’m not saying remakes, either. Not at all. I hate them, in fact. I haven’t seen most of the films that have remade any of my favorite and even not so favorite TV shows in the past. Remakes don’t interest me.
What I am saying is make good shows and movies with good stories. Sounds simple, right? I believe, it’s not as hard as it seems. It’s not as hard as we may think. It’s not rocket science, but we’re acting like it is. We act as if liberal hollywood types are the only ones who can make stuff now. Wrong! Big time, Wrong. They, the current liberal Hollywood liberal elite establishment inherited a fantastic industry with built-in advertisement, infrastructure and customers. It couldnt’ fail. No wonder they all got rich and successful. It’s only now, finally, that folks are waking up and realizing Hollywood is making crap, 99% of the time.
In the past, before liberals took over Hollywood and Television studios and put agenda in everything, that wonderful industry really cranked out those movies and TV shows in the past. Tons and tons of great product with little ‘this is a masterpiece, work of art’ kind of thinking going on. Much, much less of that. It was more like a factory. But it was a factory which didn’t make cheap imitations, or knock offs, it made rock solid stuff. Tonka trucks.
They did it then. Why can’t we do it now? Those folks didn’t rely on sex and violence to sell them either. In fact, they refrained from it, because it would hold up release or worse, get denied, pulled, shelved.
So, they used ideas, cleverness, a gimmick – a franchise to the story, to make the story work. The story. Not stars. Character actors. Proficient character actors. Not stars. Name one TV show, one successful show that had a ’star’ in the 60s, 70s. Sure, they BECAME stars from the show, but most were unknowns, or their face was known from dozens of other characters they played on other shows.
Forget stars. People want stories. Effects are fine. But they want stories. They want a gimmick with their story, something clever, and good writing.
The success of clips on YouTube proves this to me.
We can do it! Create a new Hollywood. The old is dying because of lack of films that most Americans want to see. What we need is to come together and be unafraid to crate hat the American people want to see!!
Hi OH NAVEL, NAVEL
who said:
Wasn’t it Will Rogers who said “I don’t belong to any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”?
Will might have said it then, that tumble weeds been blowin’ a long time and has organized into a full on Cloward-Piven Alinsky inspired smack down!
gotta take a note from those who say `we won’, now its time to come together and get organized, like this site and more. McGruther is right, we need a Soros (Breitbart!?) and a media matters, move on type activism. Because (as we know full well) media does matter, and we do learn from the movies.
BTW check out a site called: badasoftheweek.com I think that guy is on the right track…
Hi OH NAVEL, NAVEL
He might have said that way back when, but today that tumbleweed as organized into a full on assault. That party is organized better than Cloward-Piven or Alinsky ever imagined!
McGruther is right, but we need more than feature films, we need media sites like media matters and move on, because as we full know media does matter, and people learn from `entertainment’
More sites like this!
BTW check out the site badassoftheweek, I think that guy is on the right path!
> “I’m all for this, I would pay the money to see some conservative entertainment. I refuse to pay to see a mouthy lib actor or movie.”
All you really HAVE to do to shut Matt Damon up is not rent his Bourne videos or go to the theater to see him. Same with the other potty-mouthed ingrates who take the royalties their “work” generates and spend them to destroy the country that made them.
Until you can kick the habit of watching the latest “pirate” show, you will just have to put up with s#!thead Johnny Depp trashing your country from France, where he lives.
It’s as simple as that. These morons will have the microphones as long as we pay to listen to them.
[...] ***************************************** Some excellent links on Soros. Good reading, food for thought, mostly about the divine O’s puppetmaster compared to Rush Limbaugh and walking checkbook. [...]
[...] Michael McGruther: Spare change? Help a brother out. Spare change? Yo! Spare change? [...]
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