From where I sit, this ruling was a travesty, not only because it discarded the wishes of 7 million Californians who voted for it, but because much of the money to overturn it came from Hollywood elites who are completely out of touch with the heart and soul of America.

Honestly, watching the decision come down from the 9th Circuit was like watching Brad Pitt and Elton John stomp all ever everything that flyover country holds near and dear to its heart. I cite Pitt and John because Pitt gave at least $100,000 to “fight the proposition,” and in Jan. 2011, John played a benefit concert in Beverly Hills that raised $3,000,000 for the same cause.

Of course, these two were not alone. Steven Bing, long time Democrat Party donor and Hillary Clinton supporter, donated $500,000 to the cause, and according to Advocate magazine, Mary J. Blige and Melissa Etheridge were right there in the mix as well. Oh, and we can’t overlook old “Meathead,” Rob Reiner, who opposed Prop 8 when it was on the ballot in 2008 and who’s been “one of the biggest fundraisers behind the legal effort” to overturn it since.

Other prominent Hollywood leftists who are against Prop 8 (and who attended Elton John’s concert as well) were David Geffen, who gave at least $200,000 to defeat Prop 8, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Norman Lear, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Adam Lambert, Marisa Tomei, Jason Mraz, J.J. Abrams, and “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

Moreover, through a website founded by Will Ferrell, another group of Hollywood personalities did their part to oppose Prop 8 via a video mocking Christians, who are staunch defenders of marriage, and Christ Himself. The Hollywood personalities in the video included Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph and Margaret Cho.

And of course, what Hollywood v. the Heartland battle would be complete without Keith Olbermann inserting himself into the drama? Back when he still had a job at MSNBC, Olbermann did a PSA to tell everyone in flyover country that gays in California—whom he thoughtfully described as “these people”—just “want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option.”

The bottom line: Hollywood trumped the will of salt-of-the-earth Americans once more, and in so doing, reminded everyone of the great divide that exists between celebrities on the far left coast and those whom they count on to watch their movies, listen to their music, etc. Through their efforts, the will of a clear majority of California voters was overturned and marriage redefined in what, sadly, is not a Hollywood production but real life.

Excellent piece at Celebrity Net Worth:

#1 Yoko Ono Net Worth - $500 million.

Ono stated “I love ‘Occupy Wall Street’! John is sending his smile to ‘Occupy Wall Street’. I am sending my love to ‘Occupy Wall Street’. We are all working together. ”

#2 Russell Simmons Net Worth - $325 million

Keep in mind that on top of being a hip-hop mogul Simmons is the founder of a high fee credit card company called UniRush Financial Services.

#3 Roseanne Barr Net Worth - $80 million

Roseanne thinks anyone with over $100 million should be beheaded. Interesting that her net worth is $80 million. I guess she doesnt make “the cut”.

#4 Deepak Chopra Net Worth - $80 million

Chopra said #OWS is turning anger into awareness. The fortune he has made off his fluff filled books has just turned me to anger.

#5 Kanye West Net Worth - $70 million

#6 Alec Baldwin Net Worth - $65 million

#7 Susan Sarandon Net Worth - $50 million

#8 Michael Moore Net Worth - $50 million

#9 Tim Robbins Net Worth - $50 million

#10 Nancy Pelosi Net Worth - $35.5 million

Much more here.

A couple of the usual entertainment suspects made some gross-out videos to get us to go along with the program. See, according to them if you switch off your lights for an hour, you are voting for the planet. But what you’re really doing is raising your hand when they say: “Which suckers believe in this crap?”

They want you to get used to the idea of turning off your lights when they tell you because, believe me, they will be telling you to in the future. And it won’t be a suggestion. The excuse will be climate change, of course.

Yet, increasingly, fewer people are accepting the climate change mantra. One reason is the weather has not warmed appreciably. In fact, if anything we had a much colder winter this year. NASA climate pimp James Hansen had to backtrack on some of his claims on more than one occasion.

Most of the global warming arguments are based on logical fallacies. The scientist proponents based most of it on climate computer models which simply can’t work because they don’t have all the data they need. Climate is an area we are still very much in the dark about. And the simple fact is, the study of the earth’s climate requires the study of epochs — 5,000 years at the very minimum. Most global warming scientists are basing it largely on a few hundred years of data, which amounts to the blink of an eye in earth history.

This is because the farther back you go, the more embarrassing it gets for them. We had something called the Medieval Warm Period which was warmer than today, and was actually a period where Europe flourished. And all without that nasty man-made CO2 problem.

The greenhouse gases claim is easily disproved by Al Gore’s movie. He shows a chart where temperatures go up alongside CO2 increases. Except the CO2 goes up after the temperatures increase. Something he misleads the audience about, but you can see that it does when you look at his chart. After all, most CO2 is created by life. From microscopic algae to large mammals. When temps get warmer, animals and plants thrive. They come out and breed and so on.

The bottom line with global warming is that it’s become a huge business. Bureaucrats see it as another excuse to tax people. So-called greens see it as a market for selling their products, technologies and government schemes. Scientists see it as an ATM card for government grants. The reason so many scientists “believe” in global warming is that they made it their livelihood.

Here’s the problem. The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) fanatics want everyone to cut back on energy. They want to force people to use their cars less. They want us to ration our use of electricity. Right now they’re suggesting we do this. Just like they suggested once upon a time that you don’t smoke indoors. But we saw where that went.

It always starts off with some cute stunt. Earth Hour is based on the egotistical belief that human beings are changing the climate by “being too greedy.” This is based on no evidence, just a lot of assurances from the same people who also think they know how to fix the economy. The same people who think higher taxes means more jobs. The same people who like to call others greedy while they fly around in corporate jets, commuting between mansions.

We’re supposed to believe them because they are the “smart ones.” This is how they see themselves, they like to claim they are pro-science. Except they refuse to believe the sun causes climate change and that CO2 is a “dangerous pollutant.”

What the AGW proponents are demanding will make this economy look like the gilded age. They want our economy to make significant cuts in energy use. 50% in some cases. Imagine that. They want us to use 50% less energy? Do you have any idea what that would do to us? And how do you think they’ll manage that?

Guess.

Meanwhile they want, and are getting, thanks to President Obama, billions of dollars in investment in their pet projects and technologies. Many of which are vastly inferior to oil, coal and nuclear. Many of which won’t work or are just scams.

And just to show how insincere the President is about cutting our carbon use, he’s essentially killed the nuclear power industry by shutting down Yucca Mountain. Nuclear energy is the cleanest source we have. No carbon is emitted by nuclear plants and they can provide our energy needs. But the Democrats hate nuclear power and have tried to kill it since Jimmy Carter.

The government has actually turned down a lot of MPG improving technologies since the 1970s because the states and the feds make major revenues on gasoline taxes. Increasing gas mileage would cut down on gas use. Do you really think they couldn’t come up with better MPG by now? They’ve had cars in Europe getting 50 MPG for decades.

And the real kicker is, greens keep blocking wind and solar farms for the same reasons they try to block every other kind of power plant. They seem to be against progress and industry. They don’t want our economy to keep growing. Some of these people want us all to go back to living in caves (except for themselves, of course).

Right now it’s all a big guilt trip. But don’t worry, soon they’ll stop asking and make you go a day without power. They already do that in a lot of poor countries. Even Russia. Of course, it’s largely because their economy and infrastructure are bad. But at the rate our geniuses are going, we’ll catch up to them.

With this year’s Academy Award season over and the next one already into act II, both winners and losers, or rather, award recipients and award non-recipients, have already begun taking stands on undiscovered political issues and digging their heels in deeper on those already known and talked about. 

Does anyone benefit from this? Is there a payoff? Does the world become a better place? Or is it all about career, being in the limelight, and publicity? 

Some say that actors, directors, musicians, really any entertainer at all who makes a political speech insults and loses half their audience the moment they speak about politics. I disagree with that statement. I think it’s worse than that. Here’s why. 

Whatever your politics, it’s hard, really hard to detach the image of the political speech from the entertainer. 

Let me repeat the important part: Whatever your politics.

I’ll bet you thought I was going to repeat detach, didn’t you? I was going to, but then common sense stepped in and I realized this problem involves more than even a fairly robust action verb can adequately handle. It involves everyone. That point often gets overlooked, hidden in the piano for safe-keeping and forgotten until someone wants to play some music. 

Entertainers, once they voice personal opinions, and not just the opinion itself, but the way they voice it, often with anger and negativity, lose.  No, I don’t mean they lose half their audience. They lose something bigger, much bigger than that. They lose the illusion.

Entertainers, particularly actors, thrive on the ability to deceive us, to transcend identity and become something else, a hero, a villain, a pirate, a tycoon, a stow-away, etc… When they voluntarily put themselves in the spotlight of contemporary politics they shatter that illusion, one they’ve worked so very hard to cultivate. Once it’s shattered, like Humpty Dumpty, 80s MTV and network news, you can’t put it back together again to the way it was, no matter how much you desire to. 

Like I said, this is true of all entertainers, but of actors it’s especially profound. The big problem is not what politics they espouse, but that they do so publicly.

There used to be a time long ago and far away when who you voted for was secret. People were discreet about it. Others respected it. No one pushed the issue. I’m not sure where that philosophy and practice went. Probably to the same place good taste ended up and common sense is headed for. Whatever happened to it, it’s no longer the norm, that’s for sure.

These days everyone seems determined to not only state their politics on their sleeves, but to rub those sleeves in others’ noses. Its makes for some very emotional and fruitless exchanges, not to mention a lot of dirty sleeves. Why is there wisdom in the old adage, “Never talk politics or religion at a cocktail party?” Because It’s not that folks don’t have opinions, but rather that they do!  — and discussions about those two topics can only lead to frustration over the fact that the other person just doesn’t get it, to borrow an awful cliche.  It’s a no-win situation with a built-in guarantee.

And for big names, so-called A-list actors to do it on the world stage, is an even bigger ‘no-win.’ They lose half their audience, we lose the entire illusion. It’s like watching a ‘making-of’ documentary about your favorite movie. To this day, I regret viewing the ‘behind the scenes’ bonus feature on a Casablanca DVD. Though thoroughly engaging and fascinating, it shattered for me, an illusion of that last scene at the airport, forever after.

I can no longer watch that movie or that ending the same way, the way that I used to. I loved Casablanca. I still do, but that doesn’t change the fact – and it is a fact – that the illusion is gone.

So it is true with many of these actors whom we’ve come to know and love, not from their own, real lives, but from the work they’ve done in great performances. Regardless of your political stance, and theirs, once their ‘behind the scenes’ is shown to the public, once we see that, it’s a painful reality that we can no longer look at them the same way.

The ‘beautiful friendship’ we had with them is gone. And as we walk along the wet tarmac and into the fog, this time alone, we can’t help but feel regret and sorrow at what once was.

Witness Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s cavalcade of shiny, happy situational patriots appearing in a derivative public servitude announcement: A “Presidential Pledge” to President Barack Obama.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Forgive and forget? Right.

President Bush was not holding back Moore from “free[ing] one million people from slavery in the next five years.” Nor was he holding back the Obama-biquitous Will.I.Am from “chang[ing] how [he] live[s].” Ditto: Aaron Ekhart (“To be a better person,”) Marisa Tomei (“To integrate into my heart what I already know in my head which is that we are all in this together,”) Kutcher (“To the abolition to 21st century slavery,”) Anthony Kiedis (“To be of service to Barack Obama,”) P. Diddy (” pledge to turn the lights off, cause I used to leave the lights on but we want to conserve energy so I’ma turn the lights off, you turn the lights off,) and all-in-unison (“Because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek.”)

Missing are pledges not to kiss the ring of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and other pledged enemies of America. Nor are there pledges not to make movies that glorify these tyrants. Nor are there pledges to take seriously that we are at war, will continue to be at war under President Obama and that our precious and under-appreciated military is fighting an avowed and evil enemy — so that, among other things, Hollywood can continue to make decadent crap that actually motivates our enemy to fight us harder!

Unfortunately, what happens in Hollywood does not stay in Hollywood.

For more mind-numbing background read Kutcher’s companion piece at the… you got it… the Huffington Post .

The conservatives, Republicans and sundry non-lefties I know in show business have had nothing to say but positive and helpful things about the coming Obama presidency.

“We wish him well.” “He is our president now and he needs our help.”

These are the types of things I keep hearing.

And this is exactly the right attitude and exactly the right message.

God bless, President Obama. Even though I didn’t vote for him, and disagree with much of his agenda, he has my best wishes and all of my best efforts.

But that doesn’t mean I will forgive and forget an era of narcissism, petty complaining and conspiracy theory peddling from the majority celebrity class that began well before Iraq. [See "Hollywood, Interrupted " -- my book co-written with Mark Ebner -- which was written before and during the build-up to the Iraq war and before the WMDs weren't found. The public behavior from Hollywood even then was almost uniformly deplorable.]

Conspiracy theories of America’s complicity in 9/11 dominated cocktail party discussions for eight tedious years. They couldn’t simply disagree with Bush. They had to ascribe evil to his motivations and make sure the whole world agreed on that flawed premise.

Yet, hating the president doesn’t mean one can’t still help out the country in a great time of need. But many went to foreign countries and demeaned it instead. Called those that disagreed with them rubes and hicks. The elitism of the celebrities against flyover country America could not have been more pronounced. They made a boat-load of movies that affirmed this narrow and patronizing world view.

And now they want us back.

We’re all Americans — NOW.

It’s a convenient lie the celebrity left peddles that they were with us during the initial Afghanistan phase of the war, and even after 9/11.

No syrupy revisionism will change this fact.

[As I was writing this piece, I received the following unsolicited email from a Big Hollywood reader: "Reminder to liberal celebrities: It's time to set your Fluctuating Patriotism Clock from "Hate America" to "Love America" on Jan. 20th. Remember, it's "Springsteen Ahead - Falwell Behind." Funny.]

Featured in Moore’s goofy, derivative and pretty-in-a-grotesque-way video is none other than Cameron Diaz who had this to say before the 2004 election:

We have a voice now, and we’re not using it, and women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies…if you think that rape should be legal , then don’t vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, and you have a right to say what happens to you and fight off that danger of losing that, then you should vote…

Such mental insanity posing as erudition usually earns ostracism. But Diaz and her self-serious cohorts have no moral compass, no sense of proportion, no decency and, certainly, no shame.

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around.

The celebrity decadence during the “oppressive” Bush years was world class. The clubs raged. The boutique hotels rocked. The private jet industry at Van Nuys airport flourished. The party never stopped. And only a precious few (Thank you, dearly!!!) stepped up to support the American troops who have been valiantly fighting for Hollywood’s right to do lines off of each others’ buttocks at $10 million Hollywood Hills mansions.

They never spoke up against the movies that demonized our military.

They never made movies to counter the libel.

They took the easy route. And blamed Bush for everything.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.

Twenty years ago AIDS was the number one cause for the Hollywood left. Remember the trendy red ribbons at all the self-aggrandizing awards shows? Hollywood has moved on (dot org) to better blame-your-fellow-American causes. But President Bush didn’t. And aside from Bob Geldof and Bono , they ignore this president’s demonstrable goodness .

Amazing that Geldof and Bono could valiantly fight their battles and serve humanity without being paralyzed by the Leader of the Free World 2000-2008’s all-encompassing awfulness.

Remember this video: It is a instructive relic of the era of celebrity decadence and boutique anti-Republican activism under President Bush. It is a sickening display that they want fast and easy absolution for having comported themselves like ill-behaved children for eight difficult and war-torn years.

Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.