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.

Note the progressive buzzwords:  “reverse racism,” which I never mentioned and is a silly concept (racism is racism, no matter from whom), and “scary Black people,” which I never mentioned either, yet seems to be the default spin thrown at Andrew Breitbart for pointing out racism in the NAACP.  The point of the article was that comments and actions which would have drawn the ire of the NAACP if made by white entertainers (can you imagine the response if Lady Gaga made a video where she wore a pointed hood and rallied a mob with torches and lead pipes?) were ignored when they were made by black entertainers—entertainers lauded at the Image awards. 

As some in the comments suggested, however, these entertainers cannot be racist, because racism is not about race but about power; only whites can be racist because only whites have the power to oppress.  Ridiculous as that is, let’s just assume that it’s correct for the sake of argument.  So if it’s not wrong for Ice Cube to refer to white people as his “enemy” and to rap about shooting white people– since as a black man, he cannot oppress a white man—is it wrong for Ice Cube (an Image award recipient) to rap, “Fuck and get up is how I do them stank hoes”?  Regardless of race, the Left cannot deny that men are still in a position to oppress women (just ask about Clarence Thomas), and the NAACP has been woefully silent on the open advocacy of misogyny and sexual violence amongst its Image award nominees and winners.

Discussing sexism in rap is nothing new; I won’t linger.  But do check out this analysis by Edward G. Armstrong.  It’s old, but it’s thorough.  And there are a few egregious examples to focus on:  if you can stomach it, read the lyrics to “Giving up the Nappy Dugout” by Ice Cube, and keep in mind that all of this Polanski-esque perversion is a fantasy involving a 17-year old (he states, “I know she’s a minor and it is illegal, but the bitch is worse than Vanessa del Rio”).  Also note that, with many of the examples I gave of Image awards being given to entertainers with racist lyrics, their nominations were for other works of art.  However, in 2002, Ja Rule won an Image award for his song “Living It Up,” which states, “Half the hoes hate them, half of them love me / The ones that hate me only hate me ‘cause they ain’t fucked me.”  And finally, consider the case of Nelly’s 2008 song “Tip Drill,” whose music video features the artist sliding a credit card through a woman’s buttocks.

The NAACP has said nothing to criticize the debasement of women in these songs.  However, have no fear.  They really hit it out of the park with that Hallmark card that warns black holes that a recent graduate is going to be successful in life.  They’ve got this violence against women thing down pat.

But criticizing rap is old hat, you may say.  That’s just part and parcel of a subculture that has nothing to do with the NAACP (despite their Image awards given to woman-objectifying rappers).  Touche, progressives.  I submit to your superior logic.  But what about Image award recipients and hosts whose sexism has been ignored by the NAACP?

D.L. Hughley, the 2008 host of the Image Awards, said to Maryline Blackburn, who beat out Sarah Palin for Miss Alaska, discussed Palin’s performance in the 2008 Vice Presidential debate on his CNN show.  When Blackburn said Palin became a good public speaker through beauty pageants, Hughley suggested, “If you had a thong and couldn’t talk, you would still get my vote.”  Black commentator tells a black woman her underwear is more important than her thoughts:  no comment from the NAACP.

Spike Lee was honored with the Hall of Fame award at the 2003 Images.  Lee’s depiction of women has long been considered misogynistic, from his exploitative nude scene with Rosie Perez in Do the Right Thing (her words, not mine) and his 2004 film She Hate Me which depicted a throng of lesbian couples paying the film’s protagonist 10 grand to impregnate them (and not through clinical sperm donation).

And, you’ll love this:  in 2001, Bill Clinton– the textbook case of a politician using sexual harassment to control women—was given the President’s Award.

Silence on racism, awards given to racists.  Silence on sexism, awards given to sexists.  Accusing non-racists and non-sexists of racism and sexism with no evidence whatsoever.  This is the modern NAACP.  How does this fulfill their titular goal of advancing people of color?

Fact is, he’s hooked on something far worse than coke or speed. It’s lawyers who defend terrorists.

This addiction – rooted in his bedrock belief that America is to blame for everything, including his mustache – would be fairly harmless if it were held by a nobody – like say, a Daily Kos blogger. I mean, that’s just a harmless sap stuck in the attic taking turns trying on grandma’s underwear. Nope, this junkie is in the White House, and by the looks of it, someone better call Dr. Drew because Holder’s using on the job.

You wanna know how bad it’s gotten? The New York Times, of all places, reported that Rahm Emanuel even proposed “hiring a minder” for Holder – much in the way a band manager might do for a heroin-addicted lead singer. Minders generally keep you from missing a gig; in this case the minder was meant to keep Holder out.

But still, the addiction is in full force. If you look at his department, it’s full of lawyers who defend our enemies.

As the New York Post reports, last November, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley demanded to know how many Justice Department lawyers previously defended terrorist-detainees. Finally, Holder confessed. Among the nine (!), there was Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who defended Osama bin Laden’s driver, and Jennifer Daskal, the “detainee point-person for Human Rights Watch.” If you don’t know what HRW is, it’s no wonder. They only care about the rights of creeps who want to take your rights away.

Anyway, Holder won’t ID the other seven. Which is natural for an addict. You gotta hide your stash to the very end. Even if it ultimately leads to your own ruin.

And if you disagree with me, you’re worse than a racist Nazi who wears fur to a cockfight.

Tonight we’ve got the great Andrew W.K., the delightful S.E. Cupp, Ron Geraci, and a special massive interview with Ozzy Osbourne! (no need to write intro’s for Ozzy, the interview was taped last night!).

Stone’s scripts for Midnight Express and Scarface blew our collective minds with staggering violence and raw language.  Then he directed Platoon – an awesome film if you dig sophomore-level meditations on the duality of good and evil leavened with gunfire.  JFK came along and demonstrated that Kennedy was murdered not by the commie misfit who actually did it, but a conspiracy made up of big business, the government, the military, the Trilateral Commission, the Knights Templar, Prince Olaf of South Ruritania, and everyone else on Earth except Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK himself – or was he in on it too?  After that, Stone was ready to completely abandon the constraints imposed by concepts like “story,” “characters” and “coherence.”  Natural Born Killers was the result, the perfect Oliver Stone film – all controversy, great visuals, and nothing that made anything remotely like sense.

For Stone, it’s still about shock, but he hasn’t inspired any awe in years.  So, to even approach this series, called Secret History, as a serious effort to convey anything like a coherent idea is to miss the point.  This show and his nakedly calculated attempt to incite a backlash are nothing but a waning artist’s sad attempt to seize the limelight one last time.  And he has a back-up plan – his next movie is a cash-the-check sequel to the venerable Wall Street.  I guess greed really is good – at least when Stone’s the one being greedy.

Does Stone really believe that Hitler somehow lacks “context,” or that “American corporations were involved [with the Nazis], from GM through IBM”?  Sure, to the extent he believes in anything besides gobbling pharmaceuticals and ginning up publicity, but make no mistake:  His Secret History will be neither.  It will not be “history” in the sense of relating what actually transpired in the past.  Nor is its tired leftist wisdom on how America was somehow to blame for the rise of the Nazis – as it is to blame for all evil throughout the ages – a “secret.”  If you can’t wait to get a dose of it, just check out the Daily Kos comments or join the other half-dozen lonely lefty shut-ins who actually saw Howard Zinn’s recent celebrity-filled trash America fest.

The real Secret History that Stone won’t disclose involves the identity of the Americans who actually thought the Nazis had quite a lot to offer with their collectivist, anti-capitalist vision, their refusal to let things like democracy stop their agenda, and their fondness for eugenics.  Here’s a hint:  It starts with a “P” and ends with a “rogressives.”

So I would not be at all surprised if the Secret History ends up showing that Third Reich silver lining we short-sighted conservatives always seem to overlook.  I expect the show will remind me of being stationed in Stuttgart in the late-Eighties/early-nineties and hitting the volksfestswith my Army buddies.  There’d be a bunch of Germans at the long tables eating pretzels and pounding away on the Schaweben Brau and after the seventh or eighth stein-full they’d lean in to me, bleary-eyed, fingers wagging, and in slurred English say, “You know, you Americans don’t understand Hitler.  He vas not all bad…”  It was then that I understood why my ancestors left Deutschland.

But it’s not constructive to simply criticize, so for Mr. Stone’s benefit here is some help with the proper context for the poor, misunderstood Adolph Hitler: 

Auschwitz. 

Treblinka. 

Dachau. 

There’s your context, Ollie.  You’re welcome.

People, this is OUR Fortress Hollywood! This is OUR sanctuary! Since when the hell do we care about what demagogues like Keith Olbermann think or say? Or any other mental tinfoil hat Lefties like Garofalo for that matter? It’s like Churchill worrying about Hitler calling him a fat cigar-chomping drunk! Who won that fight, and why? And who was in the right, despite all the insipid name-calling?

Time to grow a pair, people. It’s also time to raise the stakes. Now, I’ve heard from some contributors here at BH that it is really bad in Hollywood in places. That people might even lose their jobs if they spoke up like I do here. If true, that’s McCarthyism at its worst. Fortunately, that’s not my experience. I still have great relationships with people in the biz who could care less about politics. All they care about is finding great scripts or literary works to adapt, and telling great stories on film.

And that is where the battle really needs to be fought: on their playing ground. An insurgency of ideas, if you will. Example. Just under the Big Hollywood sign today, I saw the banner “TNT’s ‘The Closer’ Thrives on Strong Moral Foundation.” That PJM-linked article describes how The Closer, a show that portrays the border, the illegals situation, and even the cops themselves in very gritty and realistic fashion, is the top-rated scripted show on ad-supported cable since its inception.

The Pajamas Media reviewer, Jim Kearney, finished off his glowing review with this statement:

Perhaps if we spent more time following positive stories about law enforcement professionals, it would elevate consciousness and support for crime fighters in our culture.

Bingo! Give that man a Kewpie doll! Because he just threw down the same gauntlet I’m about to throw down to all of you conservative creative types, and it extends far beyond just cop stories. Screw what Lefties think! No changing minds there. But we conservatives believe what we believe for good reasons. In fact, only 21% of Americans identify themselves as liberal, the majority conservative. That’s a lot of box office just waiting to be tapped.

We conservatives need to address our talents not only to making better films than Hollywood Lefties do, but better films than anyone. The foundations are already there. How we can succeed in Hollywood, and reel ‘em in at the box office, is by telling great compelling stories with universal themes that in and of themselves advance our values systems, like the aformentioned The Closer. In the end, Hollywood is a business. If You Write It, They Will Come. Box office talks and BS walks.

The story should always come first. It is great compelling stories that should drive a film’s politics, not the other way around. That is the big mistake Hollywood Lefties make, and why they bomb so badly with politically-motivated films. The best way we can succeed is with desperately compelling stories that demand to be told. Success is the best revenge. And with the best stories, the morality and politics are already embedded. Just like Geraldo Rivera in Iraq, remember?

Examples. Even today Ben Hur, which still ranks #13 all-time in adjusted dollars, retains wide and astonishing popularity fifty years on. The other Biblical Charlton Heston classic, the Demille-directed Ten Commandments, is holding steady at #5 all-time adjusted. It also remains a very popular film. The over-the-top success of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, a film project every major studio in Hollywood turned its collective noses up at, is confirmation that there is still a huge religious market just waiting to spend their money on great moral Biblically-themed films.

If they’re done right. They must first and foremost be great compelling stories with universal themes.

The irony here is, I am not a religious person. But my Dad was a Baptist deacon, and I know vast swaths of the Bible inside out. And I LOVE Ben Hur! Who doesn’t? From purely business and film perspectives, I see great stories there just waiting to be told. But they have to be told in the right way. Ben Hur, despite its Biblical underpinnings, is perhaps the greatest epic revenge tale of all time. Who didn’t pump their fists when Massalah fell under his chariot and got trampled underfoot?

Ultimately, films should reveal their morality without being preachy. Ben Hur does not advocate conversion to Christianity. Nor does Passion of the Christ. But what both of those extraordinarily successful films share is great storytelling in a moral Biblical context. Story is all. In the framework of great marketable stories, we can advance our ideals of, say, true lifelong romance as opposed to freestyle sex. Huge market. Harlequin didn’t become the mega-empire it is today by promoting the zipless fuck. They did it by tapping into every woman’s deep inner yearning for True Romance.

In short, the best films don’t preach. They don’t even tell. They throw moral monkey wrenches at us during moments of extreme conflict. They make we, the audience, judge and jury. To me, the best dramatic films are morally ambiguous in the extreme. A Clockwork Orange, for example. Kubrick just threw it all in our faces and left us to ponder all the dark moral conundrums. The moral dividing line in film, as I see it, isn’t right and left. It’s right and wrong. Even between very wrong and evilly wrong.

Examples. What would you do differently as Denzel Washington’s John Creasey character in Man On Fire? Or Dirty Harry? Or Liam Neeson in Taken? Or Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle character in The French Connection, with New York about to be flooded with potentially fatal high-grade heroin? Would you push the envelope of the law as Popeye did? Perhaps most relevant to today, and which fellow BH contributor Matt Patterson so eloquently examined in his post The Dark Knight: Year One, what would you NOT do to stop Heath Ledger’s Satanic megalomaniac Joker?

Isn’t even American Gangster an epic American tale of good and evil? Super Cop vs. Superfly? Even Pulp Fiction, as decadent as all the characters in that brilliant film are, contains a gritty street morality we can all understand, as does The Shield. And what gritty gin-soaked smoke-clouded morality could possibly be higher than that of Casablanca? Yet I also believe that most of those films, not by design but by default, actually advocate the conservative position of imperfect people making tough, often distasteful decisions, and taking violent action with resolute determination when necessary.

All of those films and TV shows I’ve listed are populated with dark, troubled anti-heroes who make very unsavory choices, and aren’t necessarily people we’d want marrying our daughters. Yet in each case, varying degrees of evil are put side by side, and we are left to decide which is the lesser. If you are repulsed by, but deep-down agree with, the brutal actions of such outside-the-law characters as Vic Mackey, Dirty Harry and John Creasey, and what they do to enact vengeance and street justice on the slimiest of perps to either save or avenge their victims, you just might be a conservative.

By contrast, do you really think many Lefties, especially the ACLU, would have given Bruce Wayne the same slack on omniscient cellphone monitoring, no matter what the threat, as Lucius Fox gave Batman to take down the Joker, however personally unpleasant that choice was to Mr. Fox? Or given The Shield’s Vic Mackey the green light to pummel a sick child molester to find out where Dr. Perv had a young girl locked away and possibly dying?

Or given Man On Fire’s John Creasey carte blanche to jam a C-4 Easter egg up a corrupt Mexican cop’s ass in order to extract information on the kidnapping and presumed murder of Dakota Fanning’s Pita Ramos? Ya, as if! Yet in all those cases, those characters get right in our faces and demand of us, “what would YOU do in this situation?”

Sometimes the questions themselves are way more important than any answers. In fact, sometimes the questions ARE the point. The greatest, most compelling stories have moralities and politics all their own and tell us what they are, not by preaching or shoving the answers in our faces, but by raising troubling questions that force us to ask, “what would we do?”

Even in comedy, there is a deep morality in Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin pounding the crap out of the Ayatollah Khomeini and wiping the birthmark off Gorbachev’s forehead in Naked Gun, or Stewie giving Osama bin Laden a Naked Gun-like beatdown in Family Guy. But that morality is just a side benefit of writing great comedy that everybody gets deep-down, like Team America: World Police. It’s the ultimate in vicarious fun. What Americans, besides Lefties, wouldn’t want to do all that?

The larger point here being, we should always strive to make the best movies and documentaries possible that expound on and examine closely our ideas and values as conservative Americans, without actually expounding on or examining them. Just present the story, the facts and the evidence, and all else follows. It’s the Art of Fighting Without Fighting, as Bruce Lee so eloquently put it.

A lot of great compelling stories for documentaries, too. The Iraqi national soccer team, once tortured, now heroes. Played their first home game in Iraq last week since the Saddam era. Was a smash hit. A great human interest story, with political overtones that go way beyond soccer. If they lose now, they’re still heroes. As opposed to Uday Hussein making them kick concrete soccer balls.

For much darker subjects, there is the ethnic cleansing of black Americans from LA neighborhoods by illegal racist Mexican gangs. Of how Los Zetas and the drug cartels now control and use our southern border like the Taliban and Al Qaeda use Pakistan’s. Or how Phoenix is now the second-ranking kidnapping capitol of the world, behind only Mexico City. Again, all you have to do is present the ugly stories on the ground and let the viewers decide. The human stories drive the politics, see?

Another great doc subject would be Iran’s Green Revolution and the regime’s iron-fisted response. I would include in such a documentary the fate of the dead and imprisoned protesters, the role of modern technology in fostering a democratic uprising in a fascist state, and how it all symbolizes the eternal struggle between those who seek freedom, and those who seek to crush it to remain in power. But it is the personal accounts and tragedies that should reveal its morality, not a narrator.

As to purely feature films, I am very much looking forward to the upcoming Lone Survivor hitting theaters. Peter Berg, who is slated to direct the project for Universal, seems a most capable director, and the producers can’t fail if they stick to what made Lone Survivor a huge bestseller. In other words, if they just tell the story and leave politics out of it. That said, I sure would have liked to have seen what Spielberg and Michael Bay could have done with that story on film.

Inglourious Basterds is also high on my must-see list this summer. Makes a nice bloody contrast to all that liberal Lefty nailbiting about CIA hit teams lately. What’s the big problem there, anyway? I LOVED the Dirty Dozen! Looked like a plan. Why shouldn’t we unleash all our condemned Maggotts on Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in exchange for a shot at freedom? Liberals are such pussies!

Lastly, being conservative doesn’t mean being a stuffed-shirt Polly Prim. I’m as rude and raunchy a bastard as they come, just like Mozart. Six years Navy, okay? My writing reflects that. For those of you out in BigHollywoodLand who took such offense at my taking the name of the Lord in vain, you’re in the wrong place. Now, I don’t curse just to offend. But like my idol Gen. George S. Patton Jr., when I want it to stick, I give it to ‘em loud and dirty. Just like my Baptist deacon Dad did behind the wheel.

But just as you can tell a very high moral tale by creating a landscape of pure evil and forcing characters to make desperate and irrevocable choices, you can also tell a story with a romantic or moral heart with the crudest humor and language imaginable. Wedding Crashers, anyone? By the way, Rotten Tomatoes favorably reviews Wedding Crashers as “both raunchy and sweet.”

I rest my case.

I am fully on the same page with one scribe who said, “I write extreme right-wing material with extremely raunchy language.” I could have been looking in a mirror when I read that. But in the end, it’s all about great films and great stories. Yet all the greats have contained within them important moral and political themes and parables, be it A Bugs’s Life or Taken.

By writing or adapting great stories that contain within them the core values we as conservatives believe, as do most Americans, we can take control of the fight. If we’re lucky, control of the box office, too. Far more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal. We have a distinct advantage. We can wage our insurgency of ideas within the system. And we can do it with great stories in so subtle a way even Hollywood Lefties wouldn’t know they’re making a conservative-themed film. Best of all, they won’t even care if the story’s a total can’t-miss winner.

A lot of it starts with conservative writers like me, or like-minded producers and other Hollywood professionals choosing great stories to adapt from existing literary works or screenplays, and pushing hard until they’re made. The Stoning of Soraya M. is one good example. The Passion of the Christ is perhaps the gold standard. No major studio in Hollywood would touch it, but who was right? The studios or Mel Gibson? Whose minds were closed there?

Most important, who laughed all the way to the bank? Box office talks and BS walks, and I believe there is a ton of box office yet to be reaped from some great stories that are just dying to be made. So if I don’t show up here at Big Hollywood for awhile, y’all know what I’m doin’. Break a leg, All!

P.S. As an entertaining aside I’ve just discovered, it seems the founder of Air America is on the same page as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine.

Hope Springs Eternal

I know this to be true. Being a news junkie myself, I have found time after time as I was reading about a supposedly breaking subject, like ABC’s recent coverage of the targeted LGBT murders in Iraq, that it had already been on display for all to see in Big Hollywood posts for months.

Not to toot my own horn, but…well, okay, I’m tooting my own horn. And those of Andy Breitbart and John Nolte, who have given I, and so many other wonderful and insightful Hollywood right-wing fringe types, a magnificent bullhorn we otherwise would not have. We appear to be doing the dirty jobs our media just refuses to do. It’s a labor Hercules would completely sympathize with.

Here are some prime examples.

THE OBAMAMEDIA: The British press, the UK Telegraph in particular, are VERY unhappy with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today. Seems Mr. Gibbs offended them beyond belief with this statement, in response to the British tabloids hammering the Obama Administration over the suppression of torture photos, a la the reviled BusHitler:

“Let’s just say if I wanted to look up, if I wanted to read a write-up of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champions League Cup, I’d might open up a British newspaper,” (Gibbs) continued. “If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I’m not entirely sure it’d be the first pack of clips I’d pick up.”

The UK Telegraph found the irony of that statement delicious:

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington.

Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

Mates, you’re not telling Big Hollywood anything new. We reported that our Fourth Estate was now a Fourth Branch of Government a month ago. Of course, these UK complaints of Obamamedia malfeasance would hardly have been necessary were President Obama a Republican, which we here at BH also hypothesized in Alice In Wonderland fashion. Fact is, if Obama were a Michael Steele-like Republican POTUS, the US press would be all over him like white on rice. Can I say that?

Who’d a-thunk we and the British tabloids would ever be banding together and staging a revolt against the American government and its PRAVDA-like propaganda wing, the VSM? Strange days, indeed. I also find it incredibly ironic that, as President Obama goes out of his way to appease the Hilterite Islamist extremist regime in Iran, his administration lackeys, through pure idiocy, are marching us down the path to yet another war with the British. Not only that, just how bad is it when the British revolt against OUR tax policies? Sorry, but I’m with the Redcoats this time around.

OBAMA AND THE LEFT: On May 26th, US News and World Report opined on the dissatisfaction of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party with Obama’s Bush Lite policies. On May 24th, Gary LaMarche tried to quell the Leftie uprising against Obama with this HuffPo piece. However, if you read the comments, many Lefties aren’t biting. Sorry, Gary, the Kumbaya routine doesn’t work with tinfoils. Same at KOS, which is telling their readers to quit with the ‘Obama is a War Criminal’ crap.

Again, Big Hollywood beat all to the punch on May 23rd. We knew how much of a disappointment Obama was to the Left. It is, in fact, a complete train wreck of liberal politics, naive idealism and harsh realities. And we’re lovin’ it! Again, Big Hollywood is ahead of the curve.

OBAMA AND GAY RIGHTS: On May 23rd, the New York Times published Frank Rich’s OpEd ‘La Cage au Democrats’ in which he commiserated with gay rights advocates of how little support LGBTs were getting from the Obama White House. He closed it out with this stinging rebuke:

The gay civil rights movement has fewer obstacles in its path than did Dr. King’s Herculean mission to overthrow the singular legacy of slavery. That makes it all the more shameful that it has fewer courageous allies in Washington than King did. If “American Idol” can sing out for change on Fox in prime time, it ill becomes Obama, of all presidents, to remain mute in the White House.

Ouch! Dead Bullseye, Frank! Sorry to tell you, Mr. Rich, but you’re only splitting Big Hollywood’s arrow. BH contributor Charlie Winecoff covered this issue in-depth at Big Hollywood way back on March 19th in his ‘Love, War and Gay Marriage’ OpEd. He saw what was coming based on Obama’s own statements, positions and even associations with gay-haters like Farrakhan. On May 8th, we illustrated how even Ronald Reagan was a better friend to gays than Obama probably ever will be.

Double Ouch! Sorry, Frank. You guys at the Times have to keep pace better than that, or you just might find yourselves relegated to dinosaur status. Wait a minute…Oh, never mind.

LGBT MURDERS IN IRAQ: Yet another issue that is beginning to inflame American gay advocates, who are fast becoming infuriated at the brutal and systematic extermination of LGBTs in Iraq on our dime, sanctioned by both Supreme Leader Ali al-Sistani in his fatwa of death against Iraqi LGBTs and by the Iraqi government itself. Not only are LGBTs being slated for execution by al-Maliki’s government, the Interior Ministry police are raiding gay parties, hunting gays online, and either arresting them or killing them on the spot. Shiite gay death squads are now common in Baghdad.

News outlets such as ABC are finally beginning to cover this issue in-depth. Gay rights advocate Michael Petrelis of the Petrelis Files blog has long been on point on this issue, holding demonstrations and raising money for Iraqi gays. Though encouraged by the media attention this horrific plight of gays in Iraq is finally getting, he could not be more outraged by the willful ignorance of this issue by the White House, the State Department and his Congressional representative, none other than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Though Mr. Petrelis was not entirely enamored of my Reagan/Obama piece on gay rights here at Big Hollywood (he called me a right wing blowhard on his blog), he does credit BH for addressing the issue as he wished so many others in the gay community and politics would, and praises our calling it for what it is: a gay holocaust. What else do you call a targeted extermination program?

That said, the Reagan piece was not the first BH OpEd to address the burgeoning problem of targeted gay murders in Iraq. That was highlighted in my very first piece for Big Hollywood, entitled ‘One Critic’s Review of Mr. Ganis Goes to Tehran’ way back on March 9th. It was, in fact, Team Oscar’s trip to gay-butchering Iran at that time, not five days after the gay-infomercial Oscars, that sent me into fireball mode and led me directly to BH in the first place.

Not only did that piece describe the longstanding gay holocaust in Iran, a de facto genocide of Iranian LGBTs, it exposed for all the world to see what a human rights sham AMPAS and so-called Hollywood gay rights champs like Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black really are. Team Oscar member Annette Bening went so far as to praise women’s rights in Iran (an oxymoron if ever there was one), even as fellow American Roxana Saberi was being held hostage as a political pawn right across town in Evin prison. Need more be said?

Again, Big Hollywood was way ahead of the curve.

Speaking of which, the targeted killings of Iraqi LGBTs poses a very curious question. If Prop 8 opponents are so infuriated and outraged at the perceived abysmal gay rights situation in California, as these Tweeting celebrities at afterellen.com seem to be, and in which model/actress Adrianne Curry sarcastically retorted, “treating gays like they aren’t human is wonderful!” then where is the outrage over the hunting, torturing and extermination of gays in Iran and Iraq?

Where is the fury over gay men in Iraq having their anuses glued shut, and being forced to drink diarrhea cocktails that induce horrible suffering before death? Sounds like way less than human treatment to me, Adrianne. Where, oh where, is the outrage?

Just goes to show. Hollywood celebrities may not be gays rights advocates, but they play them on TV. And where else, but for a few lone gay blogs like the Petrelis Files, will you find this pressing issue covered in as much depth as here at Big Hollywood? Hmm. Curious.

TEAM OSCAR IN IRAN: Who else was covering Team Oscar in Iran like Big Hollywood? No one in the entertainment industry I could find. A few outraged conservatives, that’s about it. And it looked like AMPAS shut down all PR coverage of Team Oscar after the punking episode (a story lead I broke to Drudge and Nikki Finke, hee hee!), I had to get all my scoops from the Tehran Times and the Middle East press! This, for the most historic mission in Academy history! How sad is that?

Do any of you remember their grand Red Carpet heroes’ welcome at LAX? Me neither. Hell, they were so quiet about the trip, I though the Iranians were holding them hostage! I thought maybe they had taken me up on my offer to trade the Nine Stooges for Roxana Saberi. No such luck.

And show me anyone else in the media or entertainment rags who was pointing out that Iran’s film industry, which Academy prez Sid Ganis is still praising, spits out the worst anti-Semitic propaganda since Goebbels’ Reichministry. They’re marketing and exporting child martrdom cartoons like Hollywood does SpongeBob! Doing a bang-up business too, if you’ll pardon the pun.

THAT’S A WRAP! As a contributor I will do my best, as many other fine folks here at BH are doing, to keep you all up to date on the goings-on in Hollywood and elsewhere,  that you just won’t see covered in all too many other so-called media outlets. Considering how many pressing subjects the Obamamedia is dodging to keep Dear Leader spotlessly clean, that won’t be hard to do. The real problem will be deciding on which subjects the media isn’t covering to choose from.

As a BH fan and reader, I look very much forward to reading more of the great Greg G. spilling his guts, Charlie Winecoff’s unique perspectives on the issues of our day, John Nolte’s insightful and unbiased reviews of Hollywood films and TV shows past, present and future (as well as his calling the biased reviewers out for their politically-motivated hit pieces), interviews with outstanding Hollywood filmmakers you just won’t see in HR and Variety, and many other great contributors like Robert Davi, Bert Prelutsky, Andy Breitbart too numerous to mention here.

You want the real Hollywood scoop? You know where to come! Peace, all. I hope

From that point on, I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough of Peter Maas, Robin Moore, Woodward and Bernstein, Nick Pileggi, Ovid Demaris, James Bamford, James Michener, Cornelius Ryan, anything from the Ballantine Espionage/Intelligence Library, and too many others to list here.

I only recently read Michener’s The Bridge at Andau, an account of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising based on hundreds of eyewitness accounts, written in novelized form to protect identities at the time. It takes you right into the chaotic and revolutionary Bupapest of the day as though you were there.

Mr. Michener, who was living in Austria at the time, went to the nearby Hungarian border to conduct interviews among the hundreds of thousands fleeing the brutal Soviet backlash, which claimed the lives of 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops. The Bridge at Andau is a must-read that clearly illustrates the contrast and conflict between an oppressive Communist regime and its freedom-seeking people.

Many of the above authors’ works were serialized in the press, and stand as testaments to pure investigative journalism that always followed hot on the trail, no matter where that trail led. Stalwarts such as Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow risked life and limb to give Americans the real skinny on World War II, be it reporting from rooftops during the London Blitz, or from the beaches of the Pacific.

If you wanted to go all the way, you might even call Albert Speer’s Inside The Third Reich, or Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Prize-winning Gulag Archipelago masterpieces of eyewitness investigative journalism, though they are far more than that. These profound words from Mr. Solzhenitsyn, from his address to Harvard’s graduating Class of 1978, really jump out at me:

Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.

Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

Those words could not sum up more my attitude to and perceptions of today’s Fourth Estate in America, and even the entire democratic Western press. It is like I married young and totally in love, only to watch as the years passed as my betrothed became bitter, polarized, angry and even a mortal enemy. I still remember the reasons I fell in love, but am now filing for divorce out of my own bitterness and remorse at how far a once-great love has descended into madness.

And it has been a long downward slide. I certainly know how John Nash’s wife felt now.

Pyle’s and Murrow’s war reporting was intelligent, gritty, unfiltered and unadulterated with propaganda. Unlike, say, Geraldo Rivera giving away our troops’ positions to the Iraqi army. Or TNR knowingly fabricating Nazi-like tales of American soldiers in the Iraq War.

Or anything on the Iraq War from Pinchy’s New York Times. This Times article is eerily reminiscent of DHS’ implication of veterans as prone to violence, though the numbers in fact prove the homicide rate is far lower for returning veterans than the general population. And they always throw in alcoholism on vet stories. It’s like there’s a left wing playbook somewhere. Hmm. Curious.

Even worse, I had to kick all their asses to start reporting on Roxana Saberi when everyone, and I mean everyone, the White House, State, Congress, the press, EVERYONE, pulled a major disappearing act on Roxana in early March. It’s like they were all trying to sweep the Obama bad press on Roxana under the rug.

By the way, my best piece on that subject is approaching 4000 hits. You tell ME who’s doing the reporting as a public service here! In fact, the only subject the MSM is even more silent on is Iran’s egregious human rights abuses. Bunch of hopeless dupes is what they are on Iran, just like Team Oscar and Sean Penn. I ask you. What good are they?

In short, ‘excellence in journalism’ today is less reflective of Murrow and Pyle than Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Frederick Foer. And why? Because like Fox Mulder in the X Files, all their editors Wanted To Believe, because those frauds and plagiarists wrote all the News To Print That Fits. When editors like the NYT’s Howell Raines get stories that line up neatly with their own left-wing tinfoil worldviews, who needs editorial oversight? Doesn’t exactly give me a tingle up my leg.

One could go back as far as the Vietnam War and the Big Three’s incessant campaign to ensure America’s loss in that war, turning even major battlefield victories into ignoble defeats. The Big Three are still at it even today, only now turning their cameras into swords to hack their fellow citizens, who peacefully protest against government policies with which the Big Three’s PRAVDA-like bureaucracies happen to vehemently agree. By the way, pravda in Russian means truth.

I don’t believe it necessary to rehash every propaganda lie spewing forth from today’s ‘Main Stream Media’. We are awash in them. Perhaps the seminal moment in American media today, in which the Fourth Estate shed all vestiges of objectivity and aligned itself ideologically to the Democratic Party lock, stock and barrel, occurred in 1998. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff was denied the scoop of a lifetime, because Newsweek’s propaganda chiefs buried his expose on President Clinton’s sordid affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Even today, Newsweek is still burying Isikoff’s scoops, as they did with this piece outlining senior Obama advisor David Axelrod’s extensive lobbyist connections, even as candidate Obama vowed that “lobbyists won’t work in my White House!” They also had no issue with David Axelrod, still an Obama kingpin, suggesting Tea Party protests could ‘mutate into something that’s unhealthy’ and are ‘peaceful so far,’ implying an underlying proclivity toward violence that has no basis in fact.

Even worse, Mr. Axelrod’s own left wing extremist viewpoint is now official government policy based on equating all conservatives, and even veterans returning from war, with Timothy McVeigh, much in the same manner Lefties condemn furiously when all Muslims are equated with Osama bin Laden. It is in fact blatant propaganda aimed at alienating and intimidating the minority party of dissent. Nothing less. And our so-called Mainstream Media is right there with him one hundred percent.

But what else would you expect from a de facto fourth branch of government? Or ‘news giants’ that even hold meetings to pressure their networks to lay off the President? Or fails to condemn Janeane Garofalo’s slandering of Tea Partiers as ‘racist teabagging rednecks’ based on journalistic standards? How sick and twisted a policy is THAT?

The really sad part is, that ideological rigidity is only the publicly visible tip of a very large iceberg into which MSM Titanic is sailing with reckless abandon. Actually, perhaps the Bismarck is a better analogy. That terror of the seas was once all powerful as well. It, too, was also sunk by its own crews on captain’s orders. And I couldn’t be happier to see all the MSM lifeboats being hoisted today, just as the Allies took a great deal of pleasure in watching the Bismarck fanatics take a dunk.

Since I was very young, I have been both fan and student of the methods and processes of intelligence gathering, propaganda, psy-ops and counter-intelligence, i.e. the Spy Game. Blame Ian Fleming. Even scored a 3.8 on the very tough officer-level Fundamentals of Naval Intelligence course, which the Navy graciously allowed me to take as an enlisted man.

I also spent a few years of my naval service during the Cold War listening to Radio Moscow, which often interrupted VOA broadcasts through jamming, which the USSR spent more money on at the time than we did on the entire VOA program. Even caught Radio Moscow’s coverage, if it can be called such, of the KAL 007 passenger airliner shootdown in 1983, which consisted of jamming VOA broadcasts for three days straight with silence, then spewing a series of heated accusations that KAL 007 was actually on a spy mission. They even pointed to the KAL flight number, 007, as proof.

The main point of my listing all my bona fides here is that I know propaganda when I see it. And boy, do I see it today. Too much of it! I believe today’s MSM would not look so much at that Soviet ‘reporting’, or even Orwell’s ‘1984′, less as examples of the worst form of propaganda and more as instruction guides. And they have learned well from their Soviet-era progenitors. Too well.

In fact, I really can’t tell which is the bigger lie from the infamous Olbermann-Garofalo hatefest: Garofalo’s rant that Tea Partiers are all ‘racist teabagging rednecks’, or Olbermann’s opening claim that Garofalo is ‘an actor and an activist’. Where is the evidence for any of those claims?

The big difference here, of course, it that Radio Moscow and PRAVDA were organs and extensions of the Soviet-era government masquerading itself as a free press. Actually, I take that back. No difference. But that is what happens when our so-called Fourth Estate abrogates its duty as an impartial, objective and investigative free press and becomes a fourth branch of government, slandering opposition candidates, even turning on its own citizens with unbridled contempt and sinister intent, in order to demonize huge swaths of the American electorate for political purposes.

We even have names now for these types of political manipulations by the press, so common are they. RatherGate, a blatant and clumsy attempt to influence an American presidential election with fake documents. Fauxtography, primarily used by the worldwide press to demonize Israel during their war with Hezbollah in 2006. When the press starts piling up colloquialisms for their blatantly fraudulent attempts to manipulate the news, you know we’re in trouble.

And now the four branches of government, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seek total and absolute media dominance with the Fairness Doctrine. Which of course, only would mean less Fairness and more Doctrine, and could even regulate web content. Just like Iran and China do.

What else can you call it but a Goebbels-like left wing power grab, when Rush and conservative talk radio is specifically targeted, yet NPR and Far Left TV news ‘reporting’ is considered so honest and grand it doesn’t require any intervention? Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question.

But all is not lost. It was the ‘pajamas media’ that ran Howell Raines out the Times’ door on a rail. Otherwise, he and Blair would probably still be there. And even though Newsweek buried the Isikoff scoop on Lewinsky, Matt Drudge picked up on it and set the bar for online journalism.

I remember reading somewhere, I believe either in Matt Drudge’s Drudge Manifesto or Ann Coulter’s High Crimes and Misdemeanors, that White House operatives were refreshing the Drudge Report screen 3500 times an hour during the Lewinsky scandal. If our press functioned today as it should, the White House would have full-time crews doing the same for dozens of media outlets. Not really necessary when those same media outlets ARE your full-time crews.

Yet Americans are not as stupid as those in the MSM, America’s left-wing extremist Reichministry, would have you believe. In fact, it is the MSM’s own stupidity and unabashed bias which is now leading these media behemoths straight into the tarpits of history, not unlike those in La Brea which devoured the mammoths of old. And like those towering monstrosities, today’s versions stagger likewise into those tarpits, totally oblivious and self-blinded to the dangers their own clumsy and misdirected footsteps bring.

The Dead Tree Press is in fact today’s Petrified Forest. Though many claim the explosion in online journalism and fall in ad revenues is to blame, even the New York Times’ online version is as biased and partisan as the fishwrap edition, which explains their demise. Yet the New York Post and Daily News have actually seen increases in circulation, and USA Today is holding relatively steady.

The same is true for television. Though FOX News is roundly condemned as right wing by those who proselytize a left wing agenda, FOX is at least willing to brook opposing opinions. The puerile jolly teabag frat house jokesters of the MSM brook none. And that is why FOX is blowing them all out of the water. Who wants to watch a ‘news’ program when you already know what their ‘news’ is going to be, or whose ‘reporters’ insult the very viewers they seek to attract?

Predictably, members of Congress, spearheaded by Senator John Kerry, are even now looking at ways to bail out left wing propaganda organs like the Boston Globe, aka the New York Times Jr, and which may close its doors soon if a contract with union workers falls through. Celebs like Alec Baldwin are pleading to save the New York Times, which may bring added weight in Congress to that facetious argument.

Yet in reality, the only real political difference between a privately or publicly financed Globe or Times would be their source of income. In fact, government paychecks to the press would actually be more honestly reflective of their current ‘journalism’ status.

I say let them die. Pull the plug, even. They are dying for a reason. Put them, and all of us, out of our misery. And I’ll be damned if my tax dollars go to Pinchy so he can remain President Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s PRAVDA on my dime! On that note, here’s Congress. Let your representatives know how you feel about the government subsidizing their own private Reichministries with our tax dollars. And let then hear it on the Unfairness Doctrine, too.

I hope someday we see a real press that not only doesn’t serve as a fourth branch of government, but engages in the same old-school investigative journalism that should keep our government officials sitting on pins and needles. THAT is the function of a truly free, objective and impartial press, regardless of the ideological positions of the government in power.

Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath on that one. But I am withholding my dollars and viewership on the most egregious offenders. And I hope you do, too. Let the free market decide these modern-day dodo birds’ fates, and not our government and tax dollars. All bad things should come to an end.

Good Night and Good Luck.

AFTERWORD: One very pleasant surprise in modern-day reporting, and I never thought the day would come I would say this, is today’s Huffington Post. Granted, many of their pundits are as brain-dead as KOS, but their Iran coverage is phenomenal, perhaps the best out there. As a bonus, even many of their naively idealistic pundits are starting to realize Iran isn’t the Garden of Paradise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, AMPAS and Sean Penn would have us believe.

And I seriously doubt in HuffPo’s early days that you would have seen Op-eds like this one by Daniel Sinker: “When The Left Went Teabagging: As You Chuckle At The Right’s Newfound Activism, Don’t Forget That The Left Sucked Balls For Years.” Some are even criticizing President Obama!

Hope Springs Eternal.

Let me take the second question first. Yes, enhanced interrogation techniques work. If you don’t think so then come by my house, sign the release form and I guarantee I will have your computer password, your ATM PIN and your wife’s safe word in the bedroom in an hour. The memos which Obama released last week in order to placate his far-left base say so. It’s hard to accept one part of the memo and say the rest is a lie. Yet, for some strange reason he refuses to show the memos which the dreaded Cheney say further support the claim that enhanced interrogation worked and saved American lives. Even the guy from the right lefties love to point to as an expert on torture, John McCain says that everyone breaks. Just for the record, Mr. McCain believes all of the enhanced interrogation techniques, except for water boarding are acceptable.

So what is torture? There is no definition of torture anywhere that I can find. Is playing loud music torture? Then the kid next door to me needs to get a visit from the Attorney General so I can get some sleep. Bugs where you sleep? I always knew camping was torture! Cold and naked, that was my four years in college. Someone puts underpants on your head? Ever been to a kegger? Annoying voices saying things you find offensive, then Obama and Pelosi torture me every day.

How would the left extract information from terrorists? Sit them down in a well lit room with some nice Lazy-e-Boys and a cold soda, lean in close and say, “Do you have something to tell me?” Then lean back and wait until they are ready to open up? Maybe we could put them in therapy and in six or seven years they would have a breakthrough!

All this “torture” crap is really just the Daily Kos and MoveOn trying to get back at Bush and Cheney for starting a war they don’t like. They presented a petition with 250,000 names on it to Obama demanding he go after the previous administration. 250,000 people supporting something, where have I heard that number lately? Tea, anyone? Obama, they say, has promised to get us back to being a nation of laws. Does that include our immigration laws? Doubt it!

Mr. Obama must realize that this witch hunting is a dangerous game. Someday, and let us hope it is three and a half years from now, he will leave office and someone from the right will sit behind the big desk. Maybe they won’t be crazy about something he had done in good faith, under the legal advice of his team. Does he really want his legacy to be ongoing investigations of the last guy?

I heard some moron left-wing talking head say that the decision to investigate this matter is not under the President’s authority and that it is up to the Attorney General. That may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard on a political talk show and keep in mind I have seen both Keith Olbermann and Jeanane Garafolo. Trust me, if Mr. Obama called the Justice Department and said, “Drop this.” Move On, Code Pink and The Daily Crock could send over 20,000,000 Astroturf petitions and it would still be dropped.

Newsflash to the left, once you are the President nothing is below your pay grade.

In a fiscal conservative’s utopian dreamworld, there would be no federal funding for the arts (or so many other government agencies or programs for that matter).  This has been our position since the inception of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the early 1970’s.  We’ve been saying that if elected, we would abolish these misguided programs and departments and bring our government back to the bare-bones constitutionally described role that it has and leave everything else to the states.

We’ve held the influential bully pulpit of the presidency for twenty of the past twenty-eight years, and what has happened to the NEA?  It has grown.  While we have stood on principle,  we have also stood on the sidelines.  The founding fathers would be outraged that the federal government is funding art with taxpayer money, but because we are on the sidelines standing on our principles, all of that money is going to the people creating art with messages that undermine our very existence.

But, I will also say that as long as the NEA exists, and as long as art is to receive funding by the government, we conservatives are on the wrong side of the argument.  There is no way to combat the perception that we are “anti-art” or in favor of closing down the local museum by taking away its funding.  I know, there ARE logical arguments to combat that perception, but again I ask:  How have those arguments been working out for us?

The “Fairness Doctrine” for arts funding.

At the risk of enraging my fellow conservatives and all of you libertarians, I propose that we re-think our position on the NEA given the realities of the past 35 years.  The NEA is here and it’s not going anywhere in the near future.  And instead of ceding the cultural ground in our country to the leftist voices and artists who have won the lion’s share of all of that funding over the past three decades, it is time for conservatives to get our asses into the game.  It’s time for a “fairness doctrine” of sorts when it comes to arts funding.

It’s the stated policy of the NEA to not discriminate due to the content of the art, so I say we make them put OUR money where their mouth is: Start doling out grants to playwrights and organizations who speak to so many Americans who are disenfranchised at the theatre.

The ESTABLISHMENT is the vast network of institutional theatres who have been living high on the hog in their publicly owned “Performing Arts Centers” or “Civic Theatre Complex” and managing their multi-million-dollar budgets under the guise of the altruistic and benign mission statement of “Bringing theatre to the community.”  The Lincoln Center Theatre and The Public Theatre and the Center Theatre Group and the Seattle Rep and The Arena Stage and the Goodman theatre… those guys are “The Man” and I’m tired of “The Man” keeping my people down!

A few decades ago, there was a perceived crisis in the American Theatre for the lack of “voices” from black playwrights, Asian playwrights, female playwrights, Latino playwrights and gay playwrights. Almost every single college and major non-profit theatre dutifully set up specific, targeted programs to nurture these playwrights from these target groups, in the name of diversity.

Well my friends… what voices are missing in non-profit, regional theatres today?  OURS!  We need to demand a full-throated, passionate and intelligent depiction of the conservative “experience” in America.  Also, don’t tell me that a revival of “Carousel” counts as a production reflecting “traditional American values.”  The crises the theatre community in America faces today is not that there are not enough revivals.

The Audience is staying home.

Go back and look at the comments from my first post on this subject.  You will hear from many people who say they are no longer going to the theatre.  And, unlike the conventional wisdom we’ve been hearing at non-profit regional theatres for the past thirty years, it is NOT because of a lack of arts education in the schools.  It is NOT because theatre is too inaccessible.  The people are choosing not to go to the theatre because of WHAT is being produced.  Because, believe it or not, my liberal friends, an adult person does not like to spend over $50 to sit in the dark and get yelled at or called names for two hours.

Unlike any other business, the theatre people who inhabit your local non-profit regional theatre do not look at their PRODUCT and wonder why people are not buying it.  They first wonder what is wrong with YOU.  I wonder how many folks in that regional theatre in your downtown actually reflect on the content of the plays they are producing and wonder if perhaps the answer to their “audience development” needs lies in the simple fact that about half of the people who live in their area are not interested in hearing the preaching contained within the stories they are telling, no matter how talented the people are in telling them.

For those of you who still find yourselves patronizing the regional non-profit in the major metropolis near your home, I bet you experience something like this:  You get to your seat and open your program and three or four pieces of paper fly out.  One is an envelope suitable for a donation.  One is a letter from the development department or artistic director decrying the current state of funding for the arts.  Maybe it mentions that audiences are declining because of the lack of arts in the schools.  Another sheet is a survey they want you to fill out (they never give you a pen or pencil).  The survey asks questions about your race and age and income and TV or film habits.  You look around…. all of these pieces of paper are littered about the floor under the seats around you.  Clearly part of the theatre’s green initiative.

Then the house lights dim to half and the excitement builds, it’s curtain time… get ready for the magic of theatre…  I love the excitement of that moment, here comes the…. pre-show curtain speech?  Oh no!  The artistic director or a board member or someone from the theatre staff bounds onto the stage and starts the spiel.  First, they describe all of the items that just dropped out of your program and they beg you to read them, fill them out and stick a check in them.  These days they throw in a line like: “Thankfully, we now have a president dedicated to supporting the arts and theatre, but we still need …. blah blah blah” – It never occurs to these folks that half of the people in the seats didn’t vote for President Obama.  And they often say in their speech some patronizing line like, “We are your theatre, we are a part of this community, we want to hear from you, please give us your feedback, theatre is a living breathing art form and your participation is vital to our growth…”

But, I have a secret to reveal to you:  They don’t really think that.  Oh, they want you to participate, by subscribing and donating, but it ends there.  If you want to meet with someone and express your distaste with the artistic choices, good luck.  If you want to complain that too often they bring left-wing politics onto the stage, you’re given lip service.  Send a letter asking for an uplifting play that reflects the good in America or perhaps the heroic deeds of our military or perhaps a play reflecting on the negative consequences of the misogyny and patriarchy in the hip-hop culture, and the letter will be treated as a joke from a right-wing wacko bigot.  Sometimes the letter is shown around the office and laughed at.  They don’t really want to hear from you unless you are calling to make a donation or to tell them how great they are.

If it ever crosses the minds of the artistic decision makers at the major non-profit regional theatres that there may be something about the content of their plays that is negatively affecting their subscriptions or their single-ticket sales, they never consider that it might have to do with the overall message or themes of their plays.  They think it’s because they are choosing plays that are risky or edgy and the older, conservative folks out there are just not ready or sophisticated enough to appreciate it.  And then they dig in and take an artistic stand.  But the problem with the plays has more to do with the themes and the political message they are trying to communicate, not with the edgy characters or nudity or cursing.

Example:  A theatre produces “Angels in America” and receives complaint letters about the content.  The powers that be at the theatre write it off to homophobia or gay-bashing or just some intolerance from the religious right and they are emboldened with the knowledge that they have made a bold artistic choice and brought this fresh and daring message to their community.  But the objection to “Angels in America” that I have and that I’ve heard from others is not that it is fresh or daring, it’s that it’s the same old “Reagan did nothing about AIDS” and “Ray Cohn was an evil closet-case hypocrite” and “Mormons are repressed homophobes” kind of story that we’ve been hearing for years.

But, what if a theatre commissioned a play about the life of the heroic writer Randy Shilts?  Shilts was an openly gay journalist who wrote “And The Band Played On” which chronicled the early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco.  He rightly campaigned for the closing of gay bath houses as a logical way to help stop the spread of HIV and he was very vocal in his opposition of the trend to “out” prominent but closeted gay and lesbian actors and politicians.  For his efforts he was spat upon on Castro Street.  Bob Ross, editor and publisher of the Bay Area Reporter, described Shilts as a traitor to his own kind.  This would be a play that deals with the same subject matter as “Angels” but it would take a different political perspective.  Most of those conservatives complaining about “Angels” would not complain about this play, I guarantee you that the vast number of complaints would come from the LGBT community and GLAAD and all of those other acronym agencies paid to say the same thing.

Trouble is, this play does not exist.  Nor does a play exist about the fall of the Berlin Wall, the single most significant international event in the past fifty years.  Nor does a play exist about the heroism of our military fighting in Iraq, or about the negative repercussions of abortion in America over the past thirty years.  Nor is there a play written in the past twenty years in America showing a member of the Catholic clergy in an unambiguously positive light (unless a drunk priest is there for comic effect).  These plays don’t exist because the environment in the artistic corridors are not interested in telling these stories.

******

I promised a solution to this problem in my last post, and I have a few humble suggestions.  I’m looking forward to the next round of comments, e-mails, and Facebook messages with your ideas:

A Modest Proposal

I maintain that at the root of this problem is a problem of equal employment.

I remember attending a symposium where a bunch of theatre professionals were getting together to talk about how to get a new audience or keep their existing audience and it was all about educational programs and free tix for children and adding more writing programs for African-American playwrights and I wanted to get up on the stage and say:  “Please stand up if you voted Democrat in the last presidential election”…  I had no doubt most of the room would stand up… Then I would say… “Look around you… the last presidential election (it was Bush/Gore) was almost exactly 50/50.  Now, one of two things is happening here… either your organizations are not ideologically inclusive  and that is reflected in your programming and how you represent yourself to your community of ticket-buyers, or some of you are afraid to sit down right now and reveal yourselves as Republicans… either way, we have a BIG problem!”

How can we truthfully say that we are a part of a community and we reflect the sensibilities and tell stories that emotionally move the members of that community when our organizations are staffed with people whose views only reflect half of the community?  We can’t, and we don’t.  And the results are affecting the bottom line.

Theatres should consider creating a special position, an “ombudsman,” who speaks for that 50% who might have a problem with the message the theatre is putting out.  They can also respectfully and sensitively respond to the complaints that might come in and then actually communicate those complaints effectively to the powers that be at the organization.  They could also set up after-show dialogues with the writers and encourage people to voice their annoyance at the preaching they are receiving from the stage.  I guarantee you that after about a year after the silently suffering patrons are empowered, programming changes will begin to take effect.

Another crucial role for the “ombudsman” would be to solicit plays from a conservative point of view, identify a handful of them that are worthy of development and work with those playwrights to have, at the very least, a main-stage staged reading open to the public so that the artistic decision makers could actually see these plays up on their feet and in front of an audience.  Put them in the position where they must justify why they are not producing these plays so we no longer hear quotes like this:

André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater for 16 years, said he reads about five plays a week, and from thousands over the years he could not think of a single one that would fall on the right end of the spectrum. “I’m trying to think if I ever read a play that I would call conservative,” he said, pausing a few moments. “I don’t think I’ve come across one.”

Mr. Bishop, if you agree that this is a problem, hire someone to actively find and nurture these plays.  If you had gone two decades without ever seeing a gay play or a black play or a Latino play or a feminist play it would not have been acceptable.  So, now what are you going to do about us conservatives?

The Artistic Director and the Board President should introduce this conservative watchdog with their arms around him saying “this is our guy and a valuable member of this team.”  The Jackie Robinson of conservative theatre could emerge hence.

The above concept is modest because it really amounts to token change, but, it’s more than we have now and it’s pretty easy to achieve.  The ideal situation would be to achieve a little more than just an evening of staged readings with the hope of getting a full production.  Ideally, the plays in question would be developed and mounted in full production from the get go.

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So, beyond my “Modest Proposal” I also have a “Not-So-Modest Proposal” and I have “A Guargantuan Proposal.”  Looks like there’s gonna be a Part 3!

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