[Iconic American liberal Paul] Krassner thought it might be fun if he rang up his longtime cultural adversary and invited him to sit down and discuss their differences and similarities. Breitbart wanted to meet at Applebee’s, says Krassner, but the actual location remains a secret. The result, we think you’ll agree, is one hell of an interesting dialogue.

KRASSNER: I was surprised to learn you consider my work to be one of your inspirations. You also claim that the mainstream media had a double standard and didn’t criticize me the way they do you and the conservative movement that you represent. That’s not true, though. I’ve been excoriated in papers from the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune to The Washington Post. My favorite headline was give this man a saliva test. You’ve also praised Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as heavy influences. Both those men were close friends of mine and remain my touchstones, and yet you’re at the other end of the social and political spectrum. What I want to know is, how do they fit into the context of your personal mission?

BREITBART: Well, at the time you were doing what you were doing, trailblazing and causing mischief and mirth and effecting the type of political and social change you were attempting, there’s no doubt you were being challenged by others. What I’m talking about is the current order of the media in the 21st century and how history now looks on the Merry Pranksters, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and Hunter ­Thompson with great reverence. It’s as if they’ve been given their own wing of the journalism school. I don’t want to simplify history. I understand that, at the time, you went through hell, and the same could be said of Matt Drudge. From 1995 until about 2002 the same forces were trying to claim that Matt Drudge had no right to be doing what he was doing, which everybody now accepts as commonplace and accepted ­practice—AOL just purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million for replicating, on a left-of-center bent, what Matt Drudge does. So the trailblazers, while they’re trailblazing, can have slings and arrows hurled at them, and I’m not trying to diminish the peril you went through. I’m stating that right now, when I’m reporting truths on Wednesday and causing mirth on Thursday, the press has a problem with that. I’m saying no, you’re not going to define me; I’m going to define what I do, and you’re going to have to deal with it. I gained my inspiration from the knowledge that you guys went through the same process, and I’m using you as models.

KRASSNER: In your book you write, “Man, how I long for the days of Sam Kinison, Richard Pryor, Abbie Hoffman, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, and today the only people upholding their free-speech legacies are conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.” At first I thought you must be kidding. What about Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Marc Maron, Rick Overton, Harry Shearer, Kathy ­Griffin, Wanda Sykes, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, ­Stephen Colbert, Larry David, Rachel Maddow, Paul Provenza? The place is overflowing with liberals upholding their free-speech legacies.

BREITBART: I would say that they exist within a protected class for the most part. As long as they adhere to liberal orthodoxy, they’re protected and can say anything against anyone at any time. It’s the conservatives who are challenged by the reigning order of political correctness. There’s nothing transformative or dangerous about a liberal in Hollywood or a Sarah Silverman or a Chris Rock being offensive, because they know they’re granted a “get out of jail free” card, whereas Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter exist outside that comfortable order. So I’m rooting for those people over the ones like Jon Stewart, who are in a protected class.

KRASSNER: By the way, I was once on a TV panel with Ann Coulter, and during a commercial break I suggested to her that the labels “conservative” and “liberal” had become obsolete. I asked her what she thought might be appropriate substitute labels. “Americans and cowards,” she said.

BREITBART: I love Ann Coulter to the core of my being. Nobody humors me more. If there’s anyone I want to have a dinner with and who can have me on the floor laughing—and her laugh is infectious, and to anybody who knows her, she is just a star. Anyone on the left who would spend five minutes with her would be laughing, and in puddles of their own urine laughing, even when she’s making fun of them. Leftists have an inability to have a sense of humor about their sanctimony.

Read the full article here.

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NSFW … obviously.

Generation Y’s great filmmakers have not yet arrived. And don’t expect too many of them.

William Strauss and Neil Howe argue in their fourth book of generational theory, Millennials Rising, that the babies born from 1982 through 2003 are part of a “Civic” generation. This is the same as the GI Generation (the accurately named “Greatest Generation”) born from 1901-1924 who went through World War II as young adults.

The Greatest provided us with many cinematic giants but none made a deeper footprint on the 20^th century than Walt Disney. The Disney Effect came not just in the artistry of his films but his technological innovations and capitalist ventures. He constructed a billion-dollar corporation which has changed our lives. That’s what leaders of Civic generations do: build transformative institutions.

The Millennial Generation has already seen our Walt Disney emerge and release his equivalent of “Steamboat Willie.” It’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook is only the primitive beginning of what he’ll build in the coming decades. Today because of our saturation in cartoons we fail to appreciate how groundbreaking “Steamboat Willie” and “Snow White” were to a world that had never seen such creatures. And so it shall go with Facebook in a few decades’ time.

Narrative films and television programs were America’s unifying, transformative cultural experience of the 20^th century. Computers, the internet, and technology are their equivalent for the 21^st.

If there was one key disagreement that I had with my friend Ben Shapiro over Primetime Propaganda it was how little he considered the implications of exponential technological growth in the political war with the Hollywood Left. Shapiro acknowledges in the book that a merging of television with the internet will happen someday but still argues that the primary goal of Hollywood conservatives should be to develop careers within the existing entertainment infrastructure.

It’s a worthwhile thought in spirit but such advice fails to consider the success of the blogosphere and Andrew Breitbart’s victories. It’s akin to urging conservative journalists in 2011 to try and get jobs at newspapers and magazines instead of just starting their own online publications.

Hollywood conservatives should be more concerned with developing their own technological, media, and entertainment properties in the world of the internet. They should be thinking not about the technological world as it is now, but rather as it will be 5, 10, 15, and 20 years down the road. (This is where the Silent Generation Doubt comes in – we must doubt that the cultural institutions we have had our whole lives will never become obsolete.)

Consider Transcendent Man, the recent documentary about inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The film is based on his 2005 book The Singularity is Near and builds on his past 20 years of accurate predictions of technological growth. This is the reality we forget: technology is constantly getting twice as powerful, half as expensive, and much smaller. And the speed of this doubling is accelerating. (Kurzweil has pretty startling predictions about how powerful computers will be by 2020, 2029 and 2050.) By anticipating the future technology we can position ourselves to dominate its use once it’s widely adopted.

Through Kurzweil we can see that the merging of TV with the internet is likely to happen much sooner (certainly within the decade) than most realize.

Movies and television are not always going to have the place in our lives that they did during the last 60 years. Not only will it continue to become cheaper and easier for the whole population to produce their own TV shows and movies, but the mediums themselves will become passé, like theatre and painting today. Roger Simon acknowledges as much in one of the sadder passages of Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine:

The dramatic film is, more than we admit, a superficial form and, in an odd way, dependent on its superficiality for its success. It is at its essence a quick emotional hit, a feeling that we are all engulfed with as we identify with the life on the screen, throwing ourselves into it. At its best (Casablanca, The Seven Samurai, Nights of Cabiria) this can be an inspiring experience with overtones of Aristotle’s catharsis, but it is not necessarily deep or complex. Nor is it engaging to the audience, except in a passive way. The interactive computer arts of the future may reach the mind and the emotions on far more significant levels.

This means that the Hollywood Left as we understand it is losing its powerbase. Just as the Left’s comfy home in the mainstream media is crumbling, so too with entertainment.

This was the great failure of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School (see chapter 6 in Righteous Indignation.) They thought that by persuading leftists to invest decades of time in seizing the “means of cultural production” – the media, arts, and universities – that Marxism could actually destroy the country. But they failed to understand how cultural institutions are just reactions to the technology of the period.

As technology transforms the way we live our lives the old institutions crumble. This is the opportunity facing Hollywood conservatives today. The three components of the previous generations – Silent Doubt, Boomer Aggression, and Gen-X Independence – require one final ingredient to unify them together: Gen-Y Optimism.

That was the key for Civic Generation President Ronald Reagan, and here’s what it looks like on film for those so beaten down in the age of Barack Obama that they have forgotten:

***

There has been some speculation over the last 24 hours that Andrew Breitbart will be making an appearance as himself in Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming HBO project “More As This Story Develops,” and that is indeed the case.  “More,” which will star Jeff Daniels, is a dramatic pilot based on the world of cable news.  Originally, Breitbart was to be in a debate scene opposite MSNBC anchor Chris Matthew, but MSNBC has squelched Matthew’s participation.  New York Magazine reports (emphasis mine):

Vulture hears that plans for Matthews to shoot a roundtable debate scene in Develops alongside conservative muckracker/ Weiner-eater Andrew Breitbart have had to be scrapped because, according to a production insider, Matthews’s bosses at MSNBC nixed the idea.

It’s not like MSNBC has a blanket no-scripted-programming order for their anchors: Matthews played an MSNBC reporter two years ago in the Russell Crowe pic State of Play. And a guest spot on Sorkin’s show would likely be good for publicity; assuming it goes to series, Develops will likely boast an audience filled with the sort of left-leaning smarties targeted by the news-and-opinion network. So what was the problem? Our spy speculates that even though Sorkin’s ideology meshes with MSNBC’s, the network’s brass may have taken issue with the way More portrays the world of cable news and its corporate culture.[...]  (UPDATE: Our source has further elaborated to us that MSNBC also didn’t like the fact that parts of the show seemed to be skewering left-leaning media.)

NY Mag describes the lead character, an anchor to be played by Daniels, as “a passionate, liberal Keith Olbermann–esque character.”

Sorkin won an Academy Award for the Social Network last year.

More as this story develops….

A new kind of film emerged in the late ‘80s and first half of the 1990s to as an alternative to the mind-numbing noise of the Boomer Blockbusters. Smaller studios like Miramax rose to champion independent films. Generation X auteurs shaped by obsessive home video viewing – Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Darren Aronofsky – passed on the Hollywood path and instead built careers through low budget, DIY productions. “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sydney,” “El Mariachi,” “Clerks,” and “Pi” launched careers that would lead to Academy Awards and some of the most exciting films of the 1990s and 2000s.

These filmmakers’ origins are true to the generational temperament of their peers.

Children born in the ‘60s and ‘70s did not grow up in the affluence and tranquility of the 1950s consensus. Instead they took a backseat as the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s raged. It was now when the younger Silent and Boomer Generations rose up to challenge the cultural institutions built and maintained by the GI Generation who fought World War II.

The children of this era were forced to become independent, entrepreneurial, and innovative early on. Unlike the Boomers growing up in the ‘50s and the Millennials in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Gen-Xers were not protected. The adults were too busy with the cultural chaos of the ‘60s and ‘70s to be the parents they should have been. Thus, Gen X knew that they had no one to rely on except for themselves. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in their histories of American generations, this is standard for “Reactive” generations – and equips them for crises come middle-age. George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman were all part of “Reactive” generations too.

We can see how this mentality applied itself to Gen-X filmmakers. When these future auteurs wanted to make a film they maxed out their credit cards (Smith,) or volunteered for medical experiments (Rodriguez) and shot with the cheapest supplies available.

For Andrew Breitbart the path tread has been comparable. How can one reform a corrupt media complex that’s in the Democrats’ back pocket? Become the Media. Control of NBC is not necessary to launch stories that result in the defunding of ACORN or a congressman’s resignation.

Breitbart was born in 1969 – almost the middle of Generation X. The first 100 pages of Righteous Indignation, his hybrid memoir-manifesto, trace a trajectory not uncommon to others now in their mid ‘30s to late ‘40s. Breitbart’s college years were a time of high grade slack, irresponsible gambling, chemical self-destruction, and Marxist indoctrination. Emerging out of the haze with a worthless degree Breitbart set about rising from the bottom of the Hollywood pecking order.

His job as a script deliverer meant shuttling packages around town while listening to the radio. This drew Breitbart into politics and the media, with the first blow to his anti-intellectual Hollywood leftism dealt during the Clarence Thomas hearings. The coup de grace came in the subsequent search for alternative answers when Breitbart dared tune his radio dial to someone he thought was a “Nazi,” Rush Limbaugh.

Then began a media voyage through the late ‘90s and first half of the ‘00s including apprenticeship with Matt Drudge during the Clinton years and constructing The Huffington Post while George W. Bush was in office. Righteous Indignation then shifts into manifesto form with two chapters that should be released as stand-alone pamphlets. Chapter 6 is “Breakthrough,” an accessible summary of the Left from Rousseau through Marx to the Frankfurt School and Saul Alinsky. In chapter 5 Breitbart lays out his rules of political warfare in his “Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.”

The remaining chapters tell Breitbart’s narrative putting the Rules and the Breakthrough knowledge into practice to fight ACORN and defend the Tea Party.

What won’t you find in Righteous Indignation? Some manifesto of Breitbart’s political beliefs.

Breitbart is not driven by creating some “right-wing” utopia. He’s not obsessed with Liberalism vs. Conservatism as David Mamet is. He’s focused on disrupting and exposing the practical and concrete effects of the Left.

The takeaway from Righteous Indignation is that citizen journalists now have all the tools needed to bring down corrupt politicians, bad laws, and destructive organizations. Breitbart has bypassed the mainstream media gatekeepers just as his Gen-X cinema peers overcame the boomer blockbuster mentality.

The endowment of Generation X Hollywood Apostates is pragmatic independence: Ideology is not important. Dealing with the problems themselves in an effective way is what matters. Results matter. New institutions can and should be built.

In Part 5 of the Hollywood Revolt, we’ll conclude with a look at the future of both film and politics as a new generation rises and an old one is reincarnated.

This is just a defense mechanism the leftist employs to avoid having to actually examine their movement. Cult members need to have criticism of their cult obscured. It’s the equivalent of “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club…”

There’s a grain of truth here, though. All leftists share core ideas – particularly hatred of conservatives and an infinite faith in big government – but there is a range of thought, not unlike denominations within religions. There are variations in doctrine and tactics between Marxists, Alinskyites, Mother Jones populist progressives, Nation socialists, Daily Kos Democrats, Counterpunch communists, and Dissent social democrats. Grouping them all together under the label “the Left” is no more inaccurate than describing Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans as Christian.

Today, thanks to the extraordinary journalism and research of Ben Shapiro for his must-read book Primetime Propaganda, the focus is on one “church” in particular: the Hollywood Left.

Primetime Propaganda is not a content analysis of the last 60 years of TV. Instead, Shapiro wore his Harvard Law baseball cap and interviewed some of Hollywood’s most influential television creators. Assuming from his alma mater and last name that he was one of them, the Hollywood insiders were too honest for their own good. Time and again Shapiro found them confessing that A) Yes, the Left dominates Hollywood, B) Yes, conservatives are blacklisted, C) Yes, they did try and use television to push their politics, and D) No, they did not see anything wrong with any of this in the slightest.

(For the evidence on tape see Big Hollywood’s thorough archive of the many damning admissions from the creators of history’s most influential TV shows.)

The revelations Shapiro unearths are only the beginning. This is also a masterful history book that will transform readers’ understanding of television. Shapiro leaps back to the 1950s and in the first 220 pages of the book interweaves his blockbuster interviews with the story of how a small clique of executives, producers, and writers created most of the TV shows that have shaped four generations of Americans. The heart of the book is the second and third chapter, focusing on the history of TV comedies and dramas. Shapiro goes down the line from The Honeymooners to All in the Family to Cheers and Friends. He documents the subversion of the cop and legal dramas from the early days of righteous cops and prosecutors to the nihilism of Hill Street Blues and Picket Fences.

The picture that emerges from Shapiro is of Hollywood leftists distinct from Washington, DC Democratic Party leftists, ACORN community organizing leftists, and the academic Ivory Tower leftists. The defining characteristic of the Hollywood leftist is an embarrassing abundance of anti-intellectualism. Most of the producers and writers Shapiro profiles have barely thought through their politics. If that’s the case then what drives Hollywood to embed leftist ideas in their programs and exclude conservatives? Superficial notions about what feels right. The Hollywood Left fantasizes that they are the champions of the “have-nots,” the outsiders, the oppressed.

This anti-intellectualism is why in Hollywood the ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT politics are the social issues. (As evidence that Hollywood leftists care about these subjects above all others, observe how they will tolerate hawkish, fiscally conservative Republicans as long as they’re pro-gay and pro-choice. Shapiro’s example: “Desperate Housewives” creator Marc Cherry.)

Hollywood is not a town of deep thinkers. It’s a bubble filled with deep feelers. Next time a Hollywood leftist is on TV spouting their clichés note how often they “feel” instead of “think.” That’s a Freudian slip confessing a disagreement not with what conservatives think but in how conservatives think. The rejection is not just the Western tradition of individual liberty, but in the Enlightenment process of rational thought.

What are the unique implications for apostates of this church of the Left?

In parts two, three, and four of this series I’ll explore Roger L. Simon’s Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine, David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge, and Andrew Breitbart’s Righteous Indignation. Each author’s book is an important component in the revolt against the Hollywood Left’s mental gulag. They each bring the best of what their generation has to offer in the fight to retake our culture and our country. Read all three along with Shapiro’s book and a comprehensive picture of the Hollywood Left – and the means for defeating it – emerges.

Troopathon brings together famous celebrities from radio, television, the movie, musicians, journalists, and more to create a one-of-a-kind event with one purpose – to support our troops on the front lines in the war on terror and honor their service and sacrifice for our nation.  Guests include: Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Mark Levin, Kelsey Grammer, Former President George H.W. Bush, Gary Sinise, Dennis Miller, Former Ambassador John Bolton, Greg Gutfeld and many more!

Click here to send your care package or call 866-866-6372.

Troopathon 2011, as it is called, has the focused goal of sending as many care packages as it can get sponsored during an eight hour event. It its first year (2008) Troopathon brought in over $1.5 million for care packages for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A $25 donation buys and delivers one care package.

One of the scheduled speakers is war hero and marine Nick Popaditch. Nick (a frequent guest on FOX’s “Red Eye”) was the tank commander and platoon sergeant in Baghdad during the historic fall of the statue of Saddam.

Recently Nick and his wife April joined me to talk about Troopathon and the significance it has for our troops serving in the Middle East. The YouTube video of the interview is below:

Troopathon Facts:

What: Troopathon 2011, the largest care package drive in America in support of our troops.

When: Thursday June 23rd, 4pm-midnight EDT / 1pm-9pm PDT

How You Can Watch: Right here at the Bigs!

How To Donate: Donation page.

Hosts: Andrew Breitbart and Melanie Morgan

Who Will Be Participating?: Several famous celebrities including actors Jon Voight, Gary Sinise and Robert Davi, media personalities Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, SE Cupp, and many others including yours truly.

Nick Popaditch will be speaking at Troopathon.

Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart has been blasted by many since breaking the story of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s erect Twitter picture nearly two weeks ago, but wasn’t offended when Hollywood funnyman Alec Baldwin insulted him via Twitter on Thursday.

Baldwin, a long-time Huffington Post contributor, wrote a column on Thursday titled, “Anthony Weiner Is a Modern Human Being” and went on to slam his critics on Twitter, “A lot, a real lot, of sanctimonious d-bags on HuffPo.” The New York Democrat, who many speculate will run for office next year, knocked Breitbart in a follow-up tweet, “…Andrew Breitbart is the D-Bag-In-Chief.”

In a phone interview with The Daily Caller, Breitbart said he was not hurt by Baldwin’s put-down.

“He’s a comedic savant,” Breitbart told TheDC of the actor. “He is perfect in the realm of comedic acting yet he falls short in all other human endeavors.”

Read the full piece here.

The whistleblower vs. the evil corporation. the tough reporter vs the corrupt politician.

the half-naked talk show host vs. a team of rambunctious houseboys.

But for the narrative to be accepted, David must be a lib, and Goliath an evil Republican.

So when these roles are reversed, in real life, it confuses the crap out of the mainstream media.

Andrew Breitbart was accused of trying to destroy a Congressman, of fabricating a scandal, of hacking social networks.

These accusations were pushed by the left, and a carnal Congressman.

So when Breitbart took the stage at Anthony Weiner’s presser, it may have been one of the greatest, “speaking truth to power” moments ever: Breitbart vindicated himself, and Weiner imploded.

As I tweeted earlier, if Breitbart were a leftist, Sean Penn would die to play him. But since he’s not: I guess it’s Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Because this battle doesn’t fit one’s assumptions, just ignore it, or mock it.

And, as Jon Stewart says about Weiner, ‘We sometimes forget these people are human’.

Remember him saying that about Palin, Cheney and Bush?

No?

But we’re missing the big picture: Weiner was a hairless, sculpted cat.

He spent a lot of time, not on his constituents, but on himself.

As Politico points out, Weiner has “no major legislation to his name, and no… fondness for filling… potholes.”

When not waxing his scrotum, he waxed on facebook.

in sum: Weiner was a phallus attached to a politician: driven to pump iron, pluck hair, and pester women.

But, in my mind, if his perversions keep him from his progressive politics, maybe that’s not so bad.

And if you disagree with me, I was hacked.

Tonight:

Paul Mecurio

Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy

Writer Thaddeus Russell