What a treasure trove of information this is. If you recall, in 2007 during the writer’s strike, Jon Stewart kept his show on the air under the absurd claim there was no writing going on — or something. If anyone in showbiz didn’t have to worry about his career losing steam through the strike, it was Stewart.

But Stewart chose scab over principled solidarity, MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” gave him a tweak over it, and…

Wow.

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Gilbert Gottfried isn’t the only celeb “joking” about Japan’s unthinkable tragedy.  Rapper 50 Cent:

“Wave will hit 8am them crazy white boys gonna try to go surfing,” the rapper wrote Friday morning, as the West Coast braced for a potential tsunami.

He followed it up with, “Look this is very serious people I had to evacuate all my hoess from LA, Hawaii and Japan. I had to do it. Lol.”

“Family Guy” writer/Producer Alec Sulkin (who later apologized):

“If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, google ‘Pearl Harbor death toll’,” he tweeted over the weekend.

From The Street we learn comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been fired by Aflac for his “jokes”:

Gilbert Gottfried was fired by Aflac on Monday after the comedian made a number of distasteful jokes about the devastation in Japan.

“Japan is really advanced,” Gottfried tweeted on Monday afternoon, “They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”

Aflac quickly cut ties with the comedian following a string of similar comments. 

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***UPDATE: Commenter Shinsnake says it so much better than I do:  “It’s a matter of democratizing the entertainment industry, not owning it and locking out liberals. Besides, anytime you can put a conservative up against a liberal viewpoint, the conservative is going to win out. It’s just nature. Staying away from these mediums is the very reason this problem even existed. Just entering into the the arena, conservatives have already won.”

Over at Radio Equalizer, Brian Maloney interviews Rush Limbaugh over the criticism surrounding his decision to appear on this Sunday’s episode of “Family Guy,” or as his critics describe it, “that disgusting program.” Below are a couple of snips from the interview, but you’ll want to read the whole thing:

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This is my third Family Guy but first as the star. Seth MacFarlane doesn’t hate me. Or Andrew Breitbart, who he met on Maher’s show and really liked. …

Seth was among the FIRST to reach out to me in Hawaii when I had that heart scare. I am not helping the Hollywood Left. His show is going to be on the air regardless what I do.

BUT, the better way to look at this is that they bent for me. I did not bend to them. It’s not as though I endorse or support libs on this show. The other way around. A huge lib character becomes a conservative.

When a little of this controversy erupted yesterday over why — Rush or no Rush — Big Hollywood was promoting a “Family Guy” episode, I jumped into the fray and wrote: (more…)

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“This coming Sunday night, the Family Guy episode starring me. The title of the Family Guy episode is Excellence In Broadcasting; the premise is, I am in town for a book signing. Of course I haven’t written a book in sixteen years. But I am in the town where this wacko family lives, doing a book signing, and the family dog comes down to start giving me some grief — Brian — and I rescue the dog from some precarious situation — dog becomes a big conservative, follows me around, actually becomes more conservative than I am and starts calling me a weenie. …

“I’ve been in a couple of Family Guy episodes already and I’ve gotten to know Seth MacFarlane pretty well. Yeah, he’s a Hollywood liberal, but we get along. Seth appreciates and has a great affection for professionals.”

Here’s the promo for Sunday night:

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And below the fold is the artwork Rush posted on his Facebook page. (more…)

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Hollywood’s favorite examples of how “evil” conservatives are, and how “wrong” the 1950s were, is the Blacklist and the McCarthy hearings, even though they were unrelated. It’s a popular theme in many films and TV shows that the Red Scare was a bad, bad thing. The act of making communists, who wanted to destroy and subvert our way of life, out to be villains, has been maligned and pilloried for years. Yet these events that America is supposed to be ashamed of only lasted a few years and was the work of a mere handful of people. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me turn your attention to a worse case of rampant bigotry, phobia and persecution. I am referring of course to the New Red Scare…  Hollywood’s rampant hate mongering of the Red States and Middle America.

You want cliched stereotypes? You want blacklists? You want cruel and vicious hate speech? You want people revealing their dark hearts for all to see? You want to see fanatics spewing bile like possessed, head spinning, profanity spouting Linda Blair imitators? Well, step night up! It’s almost a daily occurrence in Tinseltown. Check out the celebrity rags and blogs. In the allegedly “tolerant” and “inclusive” City of Angeles it’s perfectly PC to show your hatred for anyone who doesn’t toe the leftist line. Yes, even people who are apolitical or libertarian who happen to merely dissent from the progressive hive mind, they too are judged!

Forget the screeching TV evangelists calling people sinners; they have nothing on the judgement that flows like a river of sewer waste from Tinsel Town. Hollywood’s TV and films have been bashing on average Americans going back to Green Acres. Green Acres was the way Hollywood saw the flyover states. A bunch of ignorant, inbred hicks with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Something to be mocked to canned laughter. Times have changed, but only for the worse. (more…)

In the NSFW below video, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, whose new Indian name is He Who Lies About Arizona’s Immigration Law, goes out of his way to savage Sarah Palin in the crudest possible way as a Hollywood Reporter “journalist” butt-boys right along with him. Over a mere 72 seconds you get the perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with our incurious, unskeptical, PleaseGawdLikeMe! entertainment media.

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Things are so clubby and inbred between those who dominate our popular culture and those charged with covering them, that a cold, cruel fish like MacFarlane (who obviously shares David Letterman’s twisted sexual hate for Palin) can talk about “f*cking” a major national political figure and the only follow up from the interviewer is to play sycophant groupie.

But how nice of MacFarlane to set a new comedic standard for us all. It appears as though ridiculing the developmentally disabled on network television is okay if someone who’s developmentally disabled says so. Now that we know how it works, I’m sure we can expect the “courageous” MacFarlane to push the envelope beyond just ridiculing young Trig. (more…)

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane proves once again that while the denizens of Hollywood might be good at acting, or singing, or TV and movie making, they most certainly have no clue about history or contemporary politics. They are utterly illiterate about the world around them because of the insular bubble in which they live. In a recent interview reported by Reuters, the insufferable MacFarlane proves himself to be el stupido on the recent Arizona illegal immigrant law.

Now, one isn’t necessarily illiterate to oppose the new law essentially forced upon Arizona due to the utter failure of the federal government to properly deal with the illegal immigration problem, a problem that we’ve suffered under in this country since at least the 1980s. Certainly, there are substantive reasons to be both for and against the new law. Unfortunately for MacFarlane, “substance” isn’t in him.

The first quote that Reuters reports from MacFarlane is this bit of historical illiteracy…

It’s too much. It’s kind of a slap in the face, it’s not the way to handle it…Nobody but the Nazis ever asked anybody for their papers.

This statement is a complete lie. (more…)

While doing research for my upcoming book, tentatively titled Programming America (Harper Collins, due 2011), the inside story of the politically-motivated evolution of television from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Sex and the City and the very real bias of the industry against conservative content and creators, I interviewed Doug Herzog, President of MTV Networks Entertainment Group.  He oversees Comedy Central, and he was kind enough to grant me some time and consent to taping our conversation on June 22, 2009.

During the course of that conversation, I asked Mr. Herzog about the network’s decision to censor South Park in April 2006 – in particular, the network shut down a segment that featured a cartoon image of Mohammed.

Here’s the audio:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

SHAPIRO: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the controversy that surrounded the South Park/Mohammed controversy.  How did that come about and what was the real story there?

HERZOG: The real story was the story you know, which is that the guys wanted to depict Mohammed and the network wouldn’t let them.  And that was the whole story.  And while I think if we had to do it all over again we would do it differently, that was the decision we made at the time.  And I regret it somewhat but I’ve made worse decisions in my life. (more…)

Hello, I am Auntie Hollywood. Check out my bio.  I’ll be tweeting (@auntiehollywood) my brutally honest television, movie, and general pop culture jags right here on the BIG HOLLYWOOD web site. This town is a seething cauldron of contemptible half-wits, numb-nuts, and douche-nozzles, barfing out nothing but mediocre tripe. I’ll be taking on all of it. Let me know what you think.  My juicy little nuggets will be posted on my very own Twitter “widget” in the right-hand side bar of the site.

Here are some examples of what you’ll be seeing, already in the widget to the right.  Hope you likey: (more…)

Last year, President Obama attempted a self-deprecating joke on The Tonight Show, when he compared his notoriously bad bowling skills to the Special Olympics.  The disability community demanded an apology and the President delivered one to Tim Shriver, Chairman of the Special Olympics Committee.  A few weeks ago, Rahm Emanuel had to repeat the apology when he referred to a group of liberal activists as “f-ing retarded.” Sarah Palin called for Emanuel to be fired and again became a target for shows like The Colbert Report, and Bill Maher. 

Whether you believe Sarah Palin’s outrage is sincere or think she is capitalizing on a media opportunity, the fact remains our political leaders are speaking like playground bullies.  Why wouldn’t they when it’s perfectly acceptable on prime time television?  I find it incredibly disturbing for pop culture to launch what seems like an all out assault on the mentally challenged when what they really want to do is hurt Sarah Palin.  Recently, Family Guy aired an episode where a character with Down syndrome suggests she is the daughter of Sarah Palin.  Palin blasted the show’s creator Seth MacFarlane and received no apology.   (more…)

Things have gotten so bad in Hollywood that these days you need only show some humanity if you want to stand apart from the rest. And this isn’t about politics. This is about a pop culture institution so wildly and cruelly out of control that they are now publicly ridiculing a woman’s mentally disabled child for no other reason than to hurt her. 

Patrick Warburton criticizes this cruelty and gets a write up in The Washington Post. Why? Because in today’s Hollywood being critical of ridiculing the mentally disabled child of a conservative woman makes you … a newsworthy exception.

Thus far, Warburton is the only person out of the many involved with “Family Guy” to have the guts to say that what is so obviously wrong is wrong. Remarkable.

Today’s Washington Post: (more…)

The era of Reagan is over.

No, I don’t say that in the same way that RINO’s say it in an attempt to move towards the center and line their Brooks Brothers’ pockets. I say it in that the political landscape today has changed drastically and we need to do more than look to one transcendent figure as the leader of the conservative movement. Future generations will be won on the cultural front, and never through “politics.” Politicians are boring, plus they smell funny.

Say what you want about leftists; Sure they act a little crazy, wear pointy shoes and spit when they talk, but they are incredibly effective with planting cultural seeds. Avatar, plants a seed. Family Guy, plants a seed. SNL plants a seed. All of Comedy Central plants seeds. On the flip side, the sad fact of the matter is that conservatives have planted little to nothing in the cultural landscape. (more…)

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Over the weekend we noted our skepticism about Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove will be appearing in upcoming episodes of the the left-wing Fox cartoon “Family Guy.”  Mr. Limbaugh recorded his episode yesterday and discussed the episode and the “Family Guy Experience” on his show today.  Here are some highlights:

-A lot of you people been e-mailing me, “How dare you? Why would you capitulate, why would you go on a show that makes so much fun of conservatives? Why would you do this?” ‘Cause it’s a cartoon show and because they asked me and I had script approval, and some of the things in this script are — I had to do four or five takes on one line ’cause I kept cracking up in the middle of it… Brian, the dog, that becomes a Rush groupie, I’m doing my radio show, like now, I’m sitting at the microphone, and I’m talking about Pelosi, and I said, “What can we do to stop the Pelosi agenda?” And Brian says, “You’re going soft!” I said, “What are talking about going soft?” “I know what to do to stop Pelosi! You know, the problem is you just tell everybody she’s on crack.” And I said, “Brian, look, I know she’s on crack, but you can’t just say it that way, it’s not going to persuade anybody. And then he says, “I got a better idea to shut her up,” and that’s what I can’t tell you, you’ll just have to wait and hear it.

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Proving once again its claim to the hotly contested title of Stupidest Television Network, ABC has canceled “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia,” continuing their business strategy of desperately trying new things and failing to give them a chance to succeed.

No wonder the cab/sat USA Network actually beat ABC (and the CW network) in the national ratings last week. USA’s formula of original series with unusual but likable characters and sound values carries consistently impressive audience appeal.

Although the ABC cancellations were expected–given the fact that the network had brilliantly moved both series to Friday night, a network television Dead Zone, thus guaranteeing that the shows would not be able to generate an audience over time–they nonetheless prove that ABC hates anything with decent values and ideas and cannot appreciate good, solid entertainment with real sense (Castle being the rare exception). (more…)

From an ABCNews.com article:

ABC News’ Cullen Dirner reports: Two popular Republican figures, Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove, will make an appearance on next season’s “Family Guy.”

Arguably a liberal leaning show, “Family Guy” is reaching out to the other side of the aisle.  Karl Rove, the former Bush senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, confirmed Friday on Twitter that he will appear on the show.

“Yes, it’s true. Will be a guest on the Family Guy next season,” Rove tweeted.

Seth MacFarlane, the show’s creator, tells THR.com that it is time to give the other side some face time.

“The Family Guy tends to be very liberal, because it is written by liberals,” MacFarlane said.  He then added that the majority of the show’s lifespan has been during the Bush administration and they thought it was time to mix it up.

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“Family Guy’s” Stewie

Source:

“Family Guy” on Thursday became the first animated show in nearly 50 years to score an Emmy nomination for best comedy series.

The show’s creator, Seth MacFarlane, says his nomination marks the end of Emmy discrimination against animated TV[.] …

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: WHICH EPISODES DID YOU SUBMIT?

MacFarlane: We submitted three episodes. We submitted “Road to Germany,” we submitted “Family Gay,” we submitted “I Dream of Jesus.” We picked three of our edgier shows as a choice. Ya know, we figured if we are going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are.

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Critics harp on Seth MacFarlane’s use of comic cutaways on his popular animated show “Family Guy,” calling the technique lazy and uninspired. You know the technique – family patriarch Peter Griffin makes an aside, and suddenly it’s blown into a flashback of comic exaggeration.

Now, “Family Guy” fans can sample an entire hour of disconnected snippets with “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy,” out this month on DVD.

Not a smart move. (more…)