Take a gander, gander takers:

But hold on.

I just wonder… couldn’t this heckling be a precursor to violent extremism? And could this agitation toward our President, believed to be based on policy – actually be thinly veiled racism? I mean, the President actually said he agreed with this gay group. And yet they still heckled. Perhaps the members of Get Equal should look in the mirror, and ask themselves why they’re so uncomfortable with a black man in the Oval Office. Perhaps Chris Matthews could ask this question for them. While Olbermann holds the mirror.

Don’t hold your breath – the hecklers weren’t tea partiers!

Anyway – I would sympathize with these activists if they took an active interest in foreign policy, our military, the war on terror, and all the work done to fight evil around the globe. But come on: activists are only interested in military matters when it pertains to their cause. To me, the military is just another daddy for protesters to shout about.

Look, I have no idea how gays in the military might affect battle. But in the end, war is about winning. I want to win. If gays said, “We want a stronger, deadlier military and we want to be part of that,” then I would be behind them 100 percent.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe who’s not invited to my beach house this weekend.

Tonight, we’ve got Remi Spencer! Joe Devito! Brooke Goldstein! and Ambassador John Bolton!  You can now find our podcasts on Itunes!

I’ve long believed that conservatives ignore culture at their peril. Hollywood and faith shape culture and culture shapes voters far more powerfully than can mere politicians.  With this understanding firmly in mind, I have cultivated contacts in the entertainment industry and used Al Gore’s invention to its fullest extent, winning awards for our campaign’s innovative use of Twitter and for our groundbreaking iPhone app (Beat Boxer? There’s an app for that!). 

A key part of this effort to harness non-traditional modes of political speech began 13 months ago when, while campaigning in the Bakersfield area, I saw a fading Obama bumper sticker on a Prius.  Instantly, the line, “Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac, a little voice inside my head said: don’t look back, you can never look back,” from the Don Henley song “The Boys of Summer” popped into my head. 

Knowing that Henley imputed political meaning to this line (he said it was a critique of how the idealism of the 60s degenerated into the materialism of the 80s) I decided right then and there to write a parody using the leftist Henley’s composition against the newly elected president he so ardently supported.  Late that night, after driving over 420 miles (ironically, in my 2004 Cadillac CTS festooned with Chuck DeVore for U.S. Senate stickers) I penned the lyrics to “After the Hope of November is Gone.” Sung to the tune of “The Boys of Summer,” the parody pokes fun at President Obama’s supporters while anticipating the fading hopes of his presidency.  On April 1, two days later, we released the music video of the parody, sung to a karaoke track, on YouTube. 

Don Henley was not amused.  Less than a week later, he filed a motion under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to pull down our YouTube video.  With millions of dollars to his name from being the lead singer to the most popular band of the 70s, Henley likely figured that he could use the court system to cripple the campaign of a U.S. Senate candidate running against the most liberal senator in the nation, Barbara Boxer, someone he’s supported with at least $9,000 of donations. 

I refused to be intimidated by Henley’s actions.  I had a campaign to run and I intended to win it using methods not routinely employed by conservatives. If I was unable to use cultural references in a campaign in California, I knew my effort to beat Boxer would be crippled.  So, I filed a DMCA counter-notification and, on April 14, released another YouTube parody aimed at Boxer’s cap-and-trade bill.  ”All She Wants to do is Tax” was based Henley’s “All She Wants to do is Dance.”  It went viral, hitting the top 10 on YouTube’s News and Politics category while getting 10,000 views a day – until Henley filed to remove it. 

With lyrics such as, “They’re pickin’ up the taxpayers and putting ‘em in a jam, And all she wants to do is tax, tax. Liberals been liberals since I don’t know when, And all she wants to do is tax…  Barbara Boxer talkin’ round, Control in her sight, And all she wants to do is tax, tax. Wild-eyed global warmers, Who ain’t afraid to lie… Well, the government rigged the market in the carbon trading scam, And all she wants to do is tax, tax. To keep the boys a sellin’, All the credits they could ma’am. And all she wants to do is tax. But that don’t keep the boys, From makin’ a buck or two, And all she wants to do is tax, tax. They still can sell the public, On the good that they can do…” you can see why Henley could not let the parody stand.  As a committed liberal in the entertainment industry who’s given some $750,000 to Democrats and leftwing causes in the past 10 years, Henley understands the power of culture.  A conservative harnessing some of that power had to be stopped. 

So, after my DCMA counterclaim notifications restored the parody videos to YouTube, Henley sued me in federal court, offering to drop the suit if I pulled the parodies and removed my lyrics from all Internet sites.  My response was simple: pound sand. 

So, where are we today?  My campaign for U.S. Senate has raised about $1.8 million.  The last five independent polls since January have placed me within the margin of error of Barbara Boxer. And the Henley lawsuit drags on, consuming time and money and shutting down a vital avenue of free speech that I intended to use in the course of my campaign.  We expect a summary judgment on the case in May, just before the June 8 primary.  If we win, our parodies will be back and I will likely write others.  If we lose and go to trial, then lose in court, the implications will be far-reaching.  For example, Paul Shanklin’s parodies on the Rush Limbaugh Show will be shut down as infringing on the copyrights of the owners, rather than transformative works of free speech protected by the First Amendment as they are now considered. 

Had I known a year ago where we would be today would I have still written the parodies and drawn Henley’s lawsuit?  Absolutely.  Free speech using a culturally-savvy delivery is far too powerful to leave as the sole province of the Left.

I’ll be getting into that in detail in another series of articles, but we’re here to talk about Hollywood. Hollywood was once a conservative town run by immigrants who believed in the American way. Many of the stars fought in WWII and acted in patriotic movies. But there was a labor struggle in Hollywood starting with the unions, which began to get infiltrated by communists and socialists in the 1930s. They made more and more demands of the studios that they didn’t like. In 1947, the studio bosses decided to take advantage of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), with which Senator Joseph McCarthy had no direct involvement despite misinformation to the contrary. The Hollywood studio bosses wanted to bust up the unions and the method they used was the HUAC investigations and the blacklist.

Instead of solving their problem, it created a backlash which fills many members of Hollywood with bitterness to this day. It created a whole mythology and a flawed rationale for some to reject all things conservative, even though conservative politics was not really the issue at all. A sort of ideological purge began to take hold in Hollywood. Those with conservative leanings were made to feel so unwelcome that to this day many of them keep their politics to themselves. As Charlton Heston often said, “There are more conservatives in the closet in Hollywood than gays.”

Former MCA/Universal chief Lew Wasserman was famous for his politics. Like many in Hollywood, he picked the Democrats as the party to favor in the hopes that they would favor his company. Like lemmings, the industry followed his example.

Small wonder Wasserman felt a natural affinity for Lyndon Johnson. Facing a relentless Justice Department investigation in the early 1960s, Wasserman discovered the river of power that flowed from channeling Hollywood money to Democratic candidates. LBJ’s 1964 campaign marked his elevation into the top ranks of Democratic fund-raisers. In The Power and the Glitter, his 1990 book on Hollywood and politics, Ronald Brownstein writes, “Wasserman, Hollywood’s toughest operator, eased into this rugged environment as if he were born to it.”

But Wasserman, unlike the left-wing Malibu Democrats, was never an ideologue, as evidenced by his 1968 support for Hubert Humphrey. From Johnson to Clinton, his cause was making sure that the film industry had a pipeline to a Democratic White House. In his equation of politics with business, in his understanding that money buys access, Wasserman was no different than the conservative Texas oilmen who bankrolled the rise of LBJ.

Wasserman was known for punishing those in town didn’t support the Democrats. When studio heads set such examples, the minions often follow suit. So many Hollywood people started supporting Democrats, not just in Washington but the state of California. They funneled millions into the campaigns of people like Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, etc. The state became bluer over time. When Hollywood darling President Bill Clinton closed a lot of military bases in California, it helped to push the state more into the Democrat column. And lax immigration policies favored by Democrats, who see illegal aliens as their future voters, hurt Republicans in the state even more. Especially when the Republicans tried to fight back against the huge costs illegal aliens placed on the state budget.

Progressives believe in the nanny state. They’ve ushered in a quasi-Victorian age where more and more things become banned. Where your every action is dictated to by the state. California keeps creating laws to micro-manage its citizens’ every move. And all of that bureaucracy costs money. As a result, the government has become increasingly voracious when it comes to taxes and fines. They fine people for anything they can think of and tax them when they’re not fining them.

This makes the cost of living in California too much for the working class and the poor, not to mention the rich who are tired of being soaked. Business and talent are flocking away from the state. Hollywood productions are forced to relocate to more affordable climes. Which means the city of Los Angeles, which has largely depended on the Hollywood cash cow for most of the last 80 years, is starting to feel the pain. Hollywood is a vast industry that employs thousands of people. It helps fund many more ancillary businesses from the restaurants to the gardeners to the baristas at the coffee shops. When the money in Hollywood dries up so do a lot of the businesses that employ people, like out of work actors and writers. And when that happens, things gets ugly.

The end result is the state of California is on a collision course with bankruptcy. Hollywood helped bring about the end of its own glory. America was once looked on by the world as a savior. It rescued millions from the oppression of the Nazis and Communism. But Hollywood started cranking out movies starting in the late 60s that “deconstructed” the American myths. More and more films portrayed the government as evil, the military as butchers, America as oppressors. Not surprisingly, anti-Americanism started to spread around the world.

The irony of progressives is they attack the very government they created. The oppressive government which spies on our every movie in Hollywood films is less the product of the cold war conservatives and more the product of big government-loving statists. And that’s a progressive ideology. Not a conservative one.

The cost of running a government the progressive way is too expensive to take care of anyone well. It only exploits and robs revenues the citizens as much as inhumanly possible. The people are given inferior benefits as a bribe for their acceptance. They’re bribed with their own money or the money of those who could have given them a good job, if the state wasn’t bilking them first.

If Hollywood wants to return to its former success, it needs to stop deluding itself and start supporting those who would make the business climate good for them again.The leaders in California that the progressives support are not helping little guy. They are making them destitute. And if Hollywood doesn’t get smarter fast, they will meet them on the way down.

When you factor in that Barack Obama is my president, Joe Biden is my vice-president, Nancy Pelosi is next in line, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are my senators, Brad Sherman is my congressman, Antonio Villaraigosa is my mayor and Jerry Brown is lurking in the wings to be my governor, do you really think I’ll be turning my pen into a plowshare anytime soon?    

But at least now you might have a better handle on why I look back so fondly on what I have come to regard as the good old days when an American’s major complaint was that he had taxation without representation. 

On top of everything else, I live in Los Angeles and have spent most of my adult life laboring in Hollywood, a place that some people regard as less an actual location than a state of mind.  I agree it is a state of mind in the same sense that paranoia and schizophrenia are states of mind. 

After working in the field of entertainment for about 40 years, I swear to you that there are a fair number of normal, decent human beings who work in the industry.  But truth compels me to say that the lower you go in the pecking order, the likelier you are to find them.  That’s not to say that every producer, actor, director and writer, is an arrogant, leftwing, coke-snorting, bottom-feeding egomaniac, but that’s certainly the way to bet. 

Sometimes, when I’m daydreaming about what Hell must be like, I envision a place where every day you wake up and have to go work for someone like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, nasty sourpusses who think that their every whim should be immediately pandered to and who regard themselves as God, but with a bigger expense account, a larger staff and a better pension plan. 

In short, Pelosi, Frank and Reid and their congressional cronies, could find true happiness working at a TV network, a movie studio or a theatrical agency.  Perhaps you think I’m making this up, but I’m not.  Liberal politicians are doing their best to shove Obamacare down our throats, pretending it’s manna from Heaven, but you may have noticed that they haven’t the slightest intention of leaving their own medical care up to a lottery system.  And can you really blame them?  Do you think Pelosi wants a bunch of strangers deciding if she can get another dozen face lifts?  You think Robert Byrd wants to leave it up to a death panel to determine if it’s time to put the old Ku Kluxer on an ice floe? 

You could call them hypocrites, but I call them Hollywood hopefuls.  They’d fit right in.  This is the town, after all, where people are still whining over the fact that a handful of mediocre actors and hack writers were blacklisted 60 years ago because they were, for the most part, unrepentant Communists whose allegiance was to the evil Soviet Union.  But these same people think nothing of blacklisting writers and directors who have done nothing worse than made the fatal mistake of turning 50. 

Many years ago, radio wit Fred Allen observed that “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, stick it in the navel of a flea, and still have room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent’s heart.”  I say he was being too kind.  Although I regard myself as basically a loyal person, I’ve had about two dozen agents in my life.  What’s more, in what was a moderately successful TV writing career, by getting my own jobs, I made money for all of them, except the last one.  Which was just as well because she’s the one who went to the slammer for stealing her clients’ money.

 The reason, by the way, I kept leaving agents wasn’t simply because none of them ever earned his or her 10%, but because eventually they all lied to me about what they would do for me or, worse yet, what they had already done. 

In my experience, agents are people who like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them.  Those are the male agents, of course.  Female agents, on the other hand, like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them. 

In other words, if a genie somehow managed to switch everyone in Hollywood with everyone in Congress, you would barely notice it.  In fact, aside from the fact that the paparazzi would all have to pack up and move east and that “Henry Waxman: The Musical!” would finally be green-lighted at Universal, life would go on as usual.

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

(more…)

First off, I’d like to know why the 535 members of Congress have to congregate in Washington, D.C.  As Dick Morris and Eileen McGann made perfectly clear in “Fleeced,” they don’t do very much in the nation’s capitol that they couldn’t do just as well or just as badly if they stayed home in their bathrobes.  Half the time, the sessions are devoted to naming post offices and other equally earth-shattering events. 

So far as I can tell, the actual motives are to allow senators and representatives to have fiefdoms both in Washington and in their own state or district; to make things more convenient for lobbyists – one-stop shopping, as it were; and to keep our representatives as far away as possible from their constituents. 

I keep hearing commercials for teleconferencing systems and I think they’re worth a try.  With my plan, there is even an advantage for the politicians because they wouldn’t have to waste time and money flying back and forth.  What’s more, they wouldn’t have to spend all that extra dough sending their kids to private schools, thus ensuring that their offspring be spared having to attend public schools in Washington, D.C.  You know, those schools that politicians are always raving about when they’re out seeking campaign contributions from the Teacher’s Union, the ones where liberal candidates pose for photo ops during presidential campaigns. 

My second question is how it was that of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, only 24 were lawyers or jurists, but of the current 100 senators, 60 are lawyers?  While it’s true that there are slightly more than a million lawyers in America, that is less than one percent of the adult population.  So how is it that 60% of the U.S. Senate and slightly over 30% of the House members, in addition to their party affiliation, are entitled to put Esq. after their name? 

I believe the problem is two-fold.  One, it’s just too easy and too much fun being a politician; two, it’s just too hard and not enough fun being a lawyer.  If people enjoyed being lawyers more, they wouldn’t be so darn eager to run off to Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Atlanta or Washington, D.C.  Frankly, I don’t know how to make the practice of law a more exciting career.  So, instead, I think it behooves us to come up with ways to make politics a less attractive option.  The one notion that popped into my head was to take a leaf out of the Aztec playbook and initiate human sacrifices.  Would any of us really have strong objections to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, Henry Waxman, Charles Schumer, Olympia Snowe, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, being offered up to pacify the angry spirits of the Founding Fathers? 

My final question is, why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks?  Surely there is nothing wrong with being a mulatto.  There is no stigma attached, as once there was.  It merely refers to those who have one white parent and one black.  There are many notable individuals who are mulattoes, including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Lisa Bonet and Barack Obama.  Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is a true amalgamation, being one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter black, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch.  And, yet, with the possible exception of the New York Yankee shortstop, we insist on identifying all of them as black. 

It’s as if there is something shameful about their being half or even one-eighth white.  If there is, I’d sure like to know what it is.  If, on the other hand, there isn’t, why do we insist on acting as if there were?

For instance, I understand why liberals opposed invading Iraq.  It was because George W. Bush instigated it.  They voiced no objections when Bill Clinton took us into Somalia and Kosovo, and now that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, you don’t hear them whining that it’s a quagmire, that the Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11 or demanding that Obama spell out his exit strategy and specify the date of withdrawal.  But, given all that, I would have thought that at least the tree-huggers would have campaigned for regime change in Iraq, based not on Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds and his history of torture and rape, God forbid, but for having set fire to the oil fields of Kuwait in 1991, probably the worst man-made ecological disaster in history. 

It is beginning to look as if the various fascists, racists and astroturfers who have been showing up at town halls may have stopped Obama from taking his next step in  destroying America.  But Obama and his cronies are like those creatures in scary movies; just when you think they’re dead and buried, they reach a hand up from the grave and grab someone’s ankle. 

Somebody summed up ObamaCare very neatly.  In an e-mail that was forwarded to me, it said: “Let me get this straight.  We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.  What could possibly go wrong?” 

Of course we keep hearing the left-wing lunkheads tell us how glorious single payer health care is, pointing to Canada and England as sterling examples of medical Nirvana.  Yet the BBC reported that there is a five month wait to have surgery for a slipped disc or to have a hernia repaired, eight months for cataract surgery, 11 months for a hip replacement and an entire year if you need to have your knee worked on.  So I guess the best thing an Englishman can do is claim he needs to have surgery for a hernia and when, after five months, they wheel him into the operating room, break the news that it’s really his damn knee that’s been acting up. 

One thing that’s been made clear is that whether it’s last year’s amnesty bill or this Frankensteinian health care monstrosity, the people still retain some clout when they stand up and start acting like Americans and not like a herd of sheep waiting to be shorn by the likes of Henry Waxman, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi.  As someone once observed, in order to make politicians see the light, they first need to feel the heat.  Or as Ronald Reagan put it so eloquently:  “Government isn’t the solution.  Government is the problem.” 

If there’s one thing you have to say about liberal politicians, it’s that they regard consistency pretty much the way they regard their constituents; namely with arrogant contempt.  It’s liberals, after all, who are constantly telling us that women have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, so long as the topic under discussion happens to be abortions.  But when it comes to everything else, they are quite content to leave all medical decisions in the hands of the federal government, up to and including the rationing of health care to babies and the elderly.  Gee, and we all thought the Nazis were bad! 

Because I live in California, I occasionally am lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Barbara Boxer.  The other day, she let me know that she’s hard at work on a Bill of Rights for Passengers.  The rest of us are concerned about Iran and North Korea building a nuclear bomb and about Obama sovietizing the United States, but Boxer is worried about disgruntled airline passengers. 

I sent her ladyship the following message:  “President Obama is trying to morph America into a socialist tyranny, complete with commissars and armed thugs, and you’re worrying about airliners sitting on the tarmac?  Most Americans do not support the pork-stuffed stimulus bill, cap & trade, the pandering to the UAW and the CEIU, the financing of ACORN or the abomination known as ObamaCare, and you’re busy pushing legislation so that airline passengers won’t occasionally suffer some minor discomfort?  Just for the record, we’d all gladly just settle for a little more legroom.  Are you trying to give new meaning to “inconsequential,” ma’am?” 

Finally, lest someone gets the idea that I only pick on liberals, I have a bone to pick with Sean Hannity.  I recently heard him give absolution to Michael Vick.  He was ready to forgive Vick his trespasses because, after all, Vick had served 18 months in jail and he had apologized.  The problem is, one, Vick should have been sentenced to at least 10 years; two, inasmuch as Hannity wasn’t one of Vick’s victims, he’s not entitled to accept his apology; and, three, the time for remorse and possibly redemption, it seems to me, is before you’re arrested.  After that, it’s only defense strategy — whether what’s at stake is a more severe sentence or trying to salvage a multi-million dollar NFL career. 

This is a guy, after all, who beat, drowned, hanged and electrocuted dogs for no other reason than that they lost fights to other dogs, and because, sadist that he is, he could.  Imagine if quarterbacks who lost games were treated like that. 

All I can say is, defensive linemen of the NFL — have at him!

Now, I am not saying this crackpot was a plant – I’ll leave that to Barbara Boxer. But the provocation was. You could practically see Barney winding up for the pitch, and he even acknowledged the Obama flyer she was carrying. See, he knew where this was going – it was a chance for him to shine with a well-rehearsed line. So while the media paints this as brave Barney standing up to white, racist Obama-haters who’ve hijacked the health care debate – to me he’s Lebron James slam-dunking Steven Hawking.

Worse, but not surprising, the wooly bully used this sad creature as a pawn to undermine potential for actual dialogue. He focused on the crazy, as if to say, “only those who question Obama are nuts.”

How, funny, just weeks earlier, you’d be called racist.

I guess this is called progress.

Tonight we’ve got Kimberly Guilfoyle, Jim Norton, Andrew Breitbart, and Kurt Loder!

While its fun and all to smack Hollywood people around (as I did with Megan Fox), it is occasionally important to do the opposite. The plight of Katherine Heigl in the media has a lot to do with her background and what is expected of actresses in today’s Hollywood cesspool. In broader terms it speaks volumes as to what the left expects from women in our society.

Full disclosure. I have two personal connections to Ms. Heigl. My first feature film starred Dalton James who co-starred with her in the film “My Father the Hero.” Dalton always spoke highly of her and suggested her for numerous roles in our film. A few years later Katherine was one of the finalists for the lead role in my second feature film. Despite great auditions and numerous, friendly chats with my producer and me, we decided that she was a bit too young to play the part. As a side note this is exactly the kind of critical thinking on my part that has lead me to make movies with giant, rubber sharks. But I digress. In my dealings with her she was nothing but fun, friendly and talented.  I point this out not to impress or name drop, but to hopefully mitigate the trolls who will claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Flash forward to today. Heigl is a popular movie and television star and has launched her own production company. Bloggers, tabloids, and television shows have branded her “bitchy,” “difficult,” “obnoxious,” and worst of all apparently “ungrateful.” There was a brief dust up between her and the producers and stars of “Knocked Up” after she stated that the film was “sexist.” The people behind the film (Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow) took offense and said some unflattering remarks about the actress.

If you read bile like Perez Hilton’s site (he calls her a “bitch” in almost every article), you will see tons of negative posts about Ms. Heigl. She also took some heat for complaints she made on the David Letterman show about the producers of her show “Grey’s Anatomy.” Everywhere you look, Heigl is getting slammed by the press.

Internet Traffic Generating Trick #4: Sassy Photos.

In the Vanity Fair article that sparked the beef with the Apatow cult, is a little known fact, one already known to those of us who have directly interacted with her. Her family is Mormon and she possesses some very traditional values concerning sex and marriage.

Ah ha! That’s it. That’s why she’s persona non grata amongst the PR “intelligencia.” She’s a Mormon who refused to live with her boyfriend before she got married. She must be one of those evil, retarded, selfish Republicans. She must hate the gays and the blacks and want to convert all people to Christianity while embracing capitalist principles that oppress the poor.

But hold the phone. Heigl is a loyal, supportive member of SAG. She also marched with the writers during the recent writer’s strike. Gulp. And what’s this? During the whole “Grey’s Anatomy” hubbub, where one cast member made a derogatory comment about another, she publicly supported the gay guy. Gasp. And look, she smokes. She smokes more than Christopher Hitchens or Leigh Scott. Yikes. What are we to make of this?

Katherine Heigl isn’t a poster child for conservatism. Far from it. She maintains her own personal code and lives life marching to the beat of her own drummer. When asked about politics, she stated that it “wasn’t her forum” and declined to endorse a political candidate on camera.

Could it just be that Heigl pissed off the wrong people; the beloved Apatow team and their minions? Could the sycophants in the media simply be backing the man that they view to be the reincarnation of Frank Capra? Hardly. Katherine Heigl earns their scorn because she is a feminist; a vocal, powerful, successful feminist. And nothing ticks off the left more than a feminist who doesn’t fit their mold of what feminism should be.

Just ask Sarah Palin.

Feminists, by the leftist definition, are bitter, unattractive women who have been abused by the male dominated society. They are the types who cry foul at every opportunity. They are angry malcontents. I’ve linked two videos that are awesome displays of what leftist feminists should look and act like.

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Feminists shouldn’t be able to pose for Maxim. Feminists shouldn’t have happy, loving relationships with men who respect them. For the leftist, feminism is only useful as another divisive tool, a way to create another class of victim ready to be embraced by the gentle arms of Big Government. Only through the continued oppression of different groups of people can Marxism, Socialism, and Statism gain any traction.

When women achieve love, money, and power on their own, it destroys the construct that society makes it impossible for them to do so. Empowerment is a goal that must always be kept in the distance. The end zone is always moving. If you’re a Fox News anchor, Miss California, the Governor of Alaska, or an attractive actress/producer you must be slandered, silenced and stopped.

Sandra Bullock, America’s sweetheart, has also recently taken some heat from pundits and critics for her latest film. She is one of the most successful hyphenates in the industry. She is happily married to a man who is extremely popular with all of us in “flyover country.” She represents what can be done in our country through hard work and talent. She is the product of decades of struggle by great women to achieve equality and respect. She’s also about to get more bad press because she no longer fits the narrative of female victims.

There is another scary thing about people like Heigl. They demonstrate that we all don’t fit into tiny little ideological boxes. You can be religious and moral but still support gay friends, smoke, and march for labor unions. You can be a chain-smoking, scotch drinking, B-movie director who hasn’t been to church since he was 13, but passionately support the War on Terror and oppose all of the tomfoolery of the Obama administration. Long ago, the left seized on the alliance between the secular Libertarians and the Christian Right to reframe all arguments as scholarly theory vs. religious faith. In reality, it is a battle between faith in the state and faith in the individual. Once the masses figure that out, the left is screwed. They have to keep us divided into two simplistic opposing teams.

So there you have it. Katherine Heigl is a victim of her own success; personal and professional. She also represents a graying of political ideology that terrifies the demagogues. Think twice before you hate on her. If you knew her, and not the leftist projection of her, you might have a different opinion.

And Katherine, my bad, I should have cast you. If you ever want to battle aliens, dinosaurs, or giant insects you know where to find me.

Not a Townhall meeting… (Photo: MoreMarin.com)

After co-authoring her second book in spite of very little demand, it must be difficult to shoulder the meet and greets all by her lonesome.  Yet, today’s news tells me that the word has already gotten out, so, in the interest of free public debate, consider this a humble public service announcement.  Senator Boxer will be signing and reading from her new book this weekend – enjoy:

8/13/2009
Books Inc.
Books Inc. (Opera Plaza) in San Francisco book signing- 7pm
601 Van Ness 415-776-1111
http://www.booksinc.net/SFOpera

8/15/2009
Book signing at Barnes & Noble- San Jose 1pm
3600 Stevens Creek Blvd, San Jose, CA 95117
408-984-3495
http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/store/1944

8/14/2009
Rakestraw Books
Book signing at Rakestraw Books in Danville 7pm
522 Hartz Avenue Danville, CA 94526
(925) 837-7337
http://www.rakestrawbooks.com/

No Townhall meetings with her constituents are scheduled for our renaissance Senator during this national debate on health care, so this might be as close as you can get.  You read that right.  She’s very busy.   Last night she did take some general questions, so if you attend, be civil and please, leave any Nazi garbage out of it.  It may seem funny or rebellious since Pelosi launched it as a smear, but it only undermines important discussion.  Plus, you’ll get thrown out much more quickly.

Here are my two suggestions for peaceful protest.  First, someone (maybe Chuck Devore?) should organize a flashmob RickRoll during one of her readings.  That would make him a legend, at least in my corner of the world.  Boxer might even enjoy it.  She seems like a nice lady and I’m told that she really is…..oh, wait, I just read the article again…

The story pits short-statured Senator Ellen Fischer–who happens to be a Democrat (sound familiar?)–against a power hungry, civil rights trampling Vice President (sound familiar?) in a universe populated by characters like “Sam Slaughter,” a right-wing radio host without principles (sound familiar?).  As the Senator told the audience, “You write about what you know.”  Boxer, who has written one previous novel, A Time To Run, told the crowd she found writing fiction “therapeutic.”  At one point she made reference to a point in the book where the Vice President faces the possibility of impeachment–

“It was very cathartic writing a book like that,” she said to big laughs from the audience, just before beginning to read an excerpt from the book.

While she was reading, protesters outside the store, pressed their signs to the windows.   When one particularly offensive sign went up, the Book Passage people lowered the blinds much to the Senator’s–and the audience’s–relief. As she moved to the question and answer period, someone shouted “Vote for Peace!” before they were ushered away by security personnel.  Most of the Q and A time was reserved for questions specifically about her book, but Boxer did take a few general questions from the audience.  Not surprisingly, all of them–with the exception of a single rambling 9/11 conspiracy wing-nut–were about the health care debate.  The only prickly moment occurred when the Senator pointedly requested that one audience member not point at her while she asked her question.”

Ok, so with that in mind, I think most signs should include the word “Ma’am,” as in “Ma’am, George Sand would be proud, proud, that you are here today co-authoring a book of fiction under your own name!”  Now, about health care…

To read this and other blog posts by Jude, go to HughHewitt.com.