So, where are the thrills, the chases and the heart-stopping revelations that usually accompany this doomsday scenario? And why can’t Soderbergh, an Oscar winner himself for the 2000 film “Traffic,” find the screen time to showcase all the Oscar nominees – and winners – in his cast?

The sound of a person coughing opens the film, and one of the first objects seen is a small bowl of bar nuts. Already, we’re dreading the kind of viral calamity about to strike courtesy of these small, deft strokes.

A married woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) arrives home from a business trip with a nasty cold, and before long she’s sprawled out on her kitchen floor, unconscious. Her husband (Matt Damon) rushes her to the hospital, but she never regains consciousness.

Did Soderbergh just kill off Chris Martin’s better half? (no spoiler here – we learn this in the film’s trailer).

From there, we get glimpses of how the virus which struck her down spreads. We see foreign cities with their population numbers emblazoned on the screen to highlight the stakes. We meet dedicated researchers (Kate Winslet, Elliott Gould), a compassionate Centers for Disease Control rep (Laurence Fishburne) and an aggressive blogger (Jude Law) who sees conspiracies all around him.

Every element a ripped from the headlines yarn demands is lined up for our approval, and for a while “Contagion” infects us to the core. But it’s s a thriller with few thrills, an impeccably acted disaster movie without the heart to go for broke. The movie hints at broad conspiracies, and then backs away from such accusations. For every villain there’s a hero following closely behind. It doesn’t condemn any quadrant of society but merely hints at the flaws in each. It’s dispassionate when it should be showing the fire in its storytelling belly.

It’s as if radio’s Fairness Doctrine were alive, well and applicable to feature films.

Winslet makes the most of her character’s muted story arc, while Fishburne summons every ounce of gravitas to play a man caught between personal and professional duties. Law is the live wire here, a muckraker out to spread the news that Big Pharma is up to its old tricks.

Marion Cotillard appears briefly in a subplot that adds nothing but confusion to the narrative.

It’s fascinating to see Soderbergh’s vision of societal chaos, and casting big stars to enliven small roles does make the subsequent epiphanies more profound. The filmmakers reveal just scientific jargon to keep the story’s structure sound, although a few whoppers rattle that foundation.

A-list directors rarely tackle material as pulpy as “Contagion.” And, after seeing Soderbergh’s approach to an epidemic epic, maybe we know why. Sometimes, a disaster movie should skip the nuance and just tell a darn good story.

The Blu-ray extras will do nothing to make you sleep any easier after considering the real-life implications of the film.”The ‘Contagion’ Detectives” talks to some of the experts who helped make the film as realistic as possible.

“They’re trained not to panic,” notes Cotillard of the men and women trying to keep our population safe behind the scenes.

“The Reality of ‘Contagion’” is a standard, albeit dense look at the film’s creation.

“It’s a matter of when, not if,” says Law regarding what the contagion experts told the crew about the possibility of a global pandemic like the one shown in the film.

Perahps the most innovative extra is “Contagion: How a Virus Changes the World,” an animated look at how something spreads so rapidly through our modern society. It’s goofy and fast paced, a darkly comic riff on a worst-case scenario that even mentions Bieber Fever to lighten the mood. The segment wraps with some proactive steps we can take to prevent a real-life “Contagion,” starting with the simple act of washig our hands regularly.

Besides being the wife of a rock star and mother to an Apple and an actual Moses, the woman is a multifaceted entertainer (at least both she and mother Blythe Danner think so). Gwyneth dances, plays guitar, and can both croon country and belt out pop.

After being featured singing on two episodes of Glee, Gwyneth will soon perish in Contagion. Upon request, Paltrow will demonstrate speaking in perfect King’s English, a talent she displayed at the tender age of 20 when she portrayed Viola de Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love.  Right out of the ingénue gate, young Gwynie and her fake British accent won an Academy Award and was promptly crowned the muse of Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein.

As if that wasn’t enough, nouveau Londoner Mrs. Martin chopped and sautéed her way across Italy with famous pony-tailed clog-wearing chef Mario Batali.  The late Bruce Paltrow’s little girl then wrote a Daddy-and-Me cookbook entitled My Father’s Daughter, and did so while hosting a website called Goop.com, where she subjects fans to her thoughts on everything from la fromagerie to post partum depression to how lucky her daughter Apple’s classmate is to have two mommies.

The woman is a virtual plethora of firsthand information, talent, experience, and insight. Had she only been born a couple of decades earlier, without a doubt Gwyneth Paltrow would have been the first to spin plates on The Ed Sullivan Show.

If it’s hot, Paltrow can be found it the thick of it, which must be why self-enamored Gwyneth decided that rather than opine on post-holiday detox menus, it was high time to enlighten the world by subjecting everyone to a full dose of her own brand of open-minded militant liberalism.

Beware! When liberal moral relativist Gwyneth Paltrow pontificates, she makes the über-opinionated Hanoi Jane “Sorry I didn’t sleep with Che Guevara” Fonda seem like an apolitical wallflower.

For instance, when it comes to sexuality, it’s not surprising that she’s a big fan of relaxed Biblical interpretations, thus Gwyneth Paltrow has a very “relaxed view on adultery.” Although married to a man she describes as “very nice,” Mrs. Martin effervesces when she says she “respects, admires and looks up to” role models who cheat, lie, sneak, and deceive.  Recently, Gwyneth shared her blasé philosophy on deceitfulness with less condemnation than she does when lecturing on the negative effects of sugar consumption.

Fancying herself a “great romantic,” Gwyneth Kate, the star of Two Lovers, said “I also think you can be a romantic and a realist.”  Maybe Gwyneth can add a section to Goop called “Romance,” where she can insert a subcategory wherein she outlines the dreamy aspects that accompany the realities associated with broken families, heartbreak, infidelity, rejection, and betrayal.

At least when it comes to homosexuality, Goop girl Gwyneth shies away from “judgment and separation,” and manages to also justify acceptance of adultery by saying, “Life is complicated and long and I know people that I respect and admire and look up to who have had extra-marital affairs.”

So, in response to life’s difficulties, people complicate matters even more by adding the noble qualities of disloyalty, anguish, brokenness, and crushing despair.  Moreover, life is long, and along life’s journey the chance to make matters worse arises every time an actress is in a movie like Sylvia and, for the sake of artistic expression, decides to get naked and roll around with a handsome actor like Daniel Craig.

Shocking? Before getting all apoplectic, let’s put Gwyneth Paltrow’s view on life in context by remembering that Mr. and Mrs. Martin, mother and father to little Apple, flew by helicopter into the Big Apple and voluntarily paid a couple’s fee of $71,600 to attend a Barack Obama fundraiser.

Barack Obama supporter Gwyneth believes: “It’s like we’re flawed. We’re human beings and sometimes you make choices that other people are going to judge,” and she was willing to pay almost $100,000 for a dinner at Harvey Weinstein’s place to prove it.

Judging a flawed, human, poor choice-making Obama is one thing.  However, not saying adultery is wrong appears to give non-judgmental Gwyneth a reason to judge those who frown upon extra-marital affairs.  Gwyneth believes that judging between right and wrong is wrong, and if a person does it, “That’s their problem.”  Gwyneth says, “I really think that the more I live my life the more I learn not to judge people for what they do.”

Gwyneth is correct; life is long and full of regrettable mistakes, and as a rule it is best to refrain from judging other people.  However, the fruits of adultery are certainly judge-worthy. And while forgiveness is admirable, if Gwyneth wants to be an authority on everything from Korean bibimbap to morals, she should at least make an effort to condemn hurtful choices that destroy lives.

On second thought, rather than imposing her liberal worldview, Mrs. Gwyneth Martin, nee Paltrow, should stop trying to fill Jane Fonda’s orthopedic shoes by playing part time philosopher and simply stick to what she does best, which is to ‘act’ like she knows how much cilantro goes into a Baja Style Shrimp Taco.

Near the beginning of the story, a mother named Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from a trip to Hong Kong and becomes sick in Minneapolis. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) isn’t concerned at first but when her condition begins to rapidly deteriorate, he brings her to the hospital. Soon afterwards, Mitch find out that Beth has died and learns that his son is infected as well. While Mitch seems to be immune to the virus, he watches firsthand as his family falls victim to it.

“Contagion” soon introduces a large group of characters who will be affected, either directly or indirectly, by the virus. Laurence Fishburne plays Dr. Ellis Cheever, the Deputy Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is hired to create a cure for the virus.  The doctor sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to Minneapolis to investigate the roots of the rapidly-spreading sickness. In the meantime, conspiracy theorist Alan Krumlede (Jude Law) becomes obsessed with the virus after watching an online video of a man infected with it. Krumlede starts spreading rumors online about pharmaceutical companies working with the government in a grand scheme to help the companies earn a massive profit. The film’s cast is huge and also includes Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Elliott Gould, and John Hawkes.

Unfortunately, few of these characters are well-developed. With such a large cast, it feels like the script was more focused on the virus than the characters who are affected by it. When some of these characters eventually become infected, it’s difficult to care about them. With a smaller cast, this story could have worked a lot better because the filmmakers would have been able to better develop the characters early on. Instead, we’re introduced to characters who die off before we even care about them.

Halfway through, the story also takes a dramatic turn when it starts focusing more on Alan’s theories. The first half of the film is strong as it shows the virus spreading and the work being done to stop it.  In the second half, though, Alan seems to become a main focus of the story. His ideas feel like the rantings of a conspiracy theorist and slow down the pace of this otherwise interesting story.

“Contagion” starts with a simple idea: a deadly virus is spreading uncontrollably.   But then overwhelms it with too many characters and a bizarre side plot about government conspiracies. If it had focused on the medical community’s reaction to the virus and the spread of the disease itself, the story could have worked a lot better.

Director Steven Soderbergh knows how to make movies with a wide range of characters and he showed off that ability in films like “Ocean’s 11” and “Traffic.” However, the screenplay written by Scott Z. Burns does Soderbergh no favors. If the characters aren’t well-crafted in a story like this, the film doesn’t work as it should and that is the ailment that infects “Contagion.”

That tradition comes back strong this Friday with “Contagion,” a film that boasts a cast featuring such Oscar nominees and winners as Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet and Jude Law in addition to longtime TV and movie favorite Laurence Fishburne and three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston. Hell, Cranston took a part in this epidemic epic even though he does two brief scenes buried amid all the mayhem.

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Now, I know that for most BH readers, seeing the name “Matt Damon” at the bare minimum has them cracking their fingers as they ready a diatribe about how proud they are for never seeing one of his movies, despite the fact that he’s now among Clint Eastwood’s most frequent collaborators. I catch a lot of flak for liking these films like “Invictus” and “Hereafter,” but then again, I’m reviewing how well a movie is made rather than casting eternal judgment upon Matt’s soul.

I’ll point out when he puts a sucker punch – or at least I try. I’m not quite as hawkeyed as some of our dear readers. But this movie has a few ideological surprises in store, and I’ll spell them out right off the bat so that everyone can either cool down and read the rest of the review or perhaps on the other hand, to fuel the fire even more as people say “OK, those ARE good points, but it’s STILL Matt Damon! And he can never redeem himself!”

So, first off, Matt doesn’t come up with a  government conspiracy behind the epidemic, which is caused by a nasty intermingling of bat and pig that I’ll keep a secret since it makes for an awesome ending to the movie. In fact, the rare characters who imply that there’s a government epidemic causing the problem are all shot down.

The one character who espouses a conspiracy theory about the government and big pharmacies trying to kill us all for profit is himself proven to be the only scumbag exploiting the situation for money, and he’s a lone wolf who’s not tied to Corporate America or Big Pharmaceutical Companies. The problem in “Contagion” is unequivocally dealt with as a purely scientific mystery.

Second of all – and here’s the part where minds will perhaps literally blow open – when Damon finds that a neighbor has been shot and robbed at gunpoint by looters, he races out and finds a shotgun in that house and proceeds to wield it for several more scenes. It is absolutely clear that he sees a gun as key to his and his daughter’s safety and survival.

And third, there are a couple of subtle Christian touches in the film, as when a nun is shown comforting a patient, and another moment where a shelter in an Asian county has been constructed with an enormous cross on the roof when the characters involved are not even missionaries. Touches like that, even when small, are intentional in a Hollywood film and surprising when coming from this gang of actors and director Steven Soderbergh. Could they be a sign of hope that even liberal mainstream filmmakers are acknowledging Christianity does play a positive force in everyday life?

Now, on to the film itself:

Imagine your wife takes a business trip to Hong Kong, and when she comes home she seems to have a truly nasty case of the flu: sweats, shakes, splotchy skin and unending coughing and sniffles. Within two days, she passes out on the kitchen floor, foaming at the mouth and dies at the hospital – and within another 24 hours your six-year-old stepson is also dead from the same symptoms.

Now all you’ve got left is your teenage daughter and a horrible dose of survivor’s guilt, with not a single clue about how your wife got sick or the fact that world health officials consider her to be the Patient Zero, or first carrier, of a deadly global epidemic. The battle by that father to keep his daughter safe and maintain his sanity as the world collapses around them is just one of the six powerfully drawn, well-acted storylines in the new thriller “Contagion,” which marks an intelligently pulse-pounding return to form for Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director of “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic.”

“Contagion” plays like a smarter, more methodical take on the 1995 thriller “Outbreak,” in which Dustin Hoffman leads the fight to save the world from an outbreak of a deadly monkey virus. But where that film deteriorated into hokey fun and ludicrous action shenanigans from its diminutive star, “Contagion” has a more realistic and thoughtful approach that is all the more squirm-inducing because it seems far more realistic.

The film zips around the globe from Hong Kong to Minneapolis, from the heart of China to Chicago, and from London to Tokyo with each city’s population totals spelled out on screen to goose the fear of how many people could be wiped out in each locale. Soderbergh knows that dropping us into impersonal megacities like Tokyo, with 36 million people, while following individual contagion carriers effectively taps into our own daily fears of catching something from the person next to us on a bus, train or movie theater seat.

At the same time, he deploys an incredible cast with precision that makes the intertwining stories compelling to follow. Fishburne plays the head of the Centers for Disease Control, Winslet is an ace epidemic specialist, and Law nearly steals the show as a blogger who’s touting a cure for the epidemic and is alleging that a government conspiracy is behind the panic while hiding secrets of his own.

Add in Damon as the newly widowed father at the heart of it all and Paltrow as his quickly-deceased wife whose Hong Kong trip is retraced through security-camera footage, and viewers will find plenty of rewards in the acting alone. But writer Scott Z. Burns digs deeper than one expects, moving beyond thrills to realistically show how within a matter of weeks quarantines and diminishing food supplies could easily lead even our civilized society into mass panic and chaos.

And just when you think that a happy ending is on its way, Burns and Soderbergh play the ace up their sleeves by revealing how Paltrow got infected in the first place. That sequence of events is both completely plausible and utterly chilling – and  showing us that our worst nightmares are a step away from our everyday realities is the scariest thing of all.

However, President Barack Obama’s latest fundraising report cites an “A-list of Hollywood stars, with donations from some of the top celebrities in the entertainment industry.” Apparently, left-coast liberals want to see to it that the best script reader since Martin Sheen has another shot at practicing lines on set while acting the part of President.

It’s not surprising that Hollywood is smitten with the “Yes We Can” man’s refusal to admit he can’t.  Those in the acting profession are impressed by amateurs like Barry Soetoro (stage name Barack Obama), who has proven to have a professional-level ability to make believe he’s something he is not. Heck, for a season, even Paul Giamatti was convinced he was John Adams.

What could be better for Hollywood than a President who swims around in a policy cesspool similar to the one they refuse to empty in Tinsel Town, overflowing with the squalid water of loose morals, abortion rights, angry feminists, racial indignation, class warfare, and overall elitist hypocrisy?

By and large, actors, comedians and entertainers pride themselves on being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-free Mumia, pro-promiscuity, and pro-anything non-traditional. Hollywood is full of left-wingers whose “Hope [is to] Change” America into a nation where the likes of Bill Maher and Jane Fonda are symbols of empathy and truth.

The fact that big name stars contribute to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection bid proves once again that ideological liberals lack intelligence and common sense.  Little do they know that if Obama gets another four years, it’s certain he’ll drive a stake through the heart of the nation that has bestowed fame and fortune on ignorant people who like to play pretend.

It doesn’t take Will Hunting to figure out that people who can’t afford gas and groceries aren’t likely to drop $10 on a movie ticket to watch Julia Roberts fake-giggling while riding on the back of a moped driven by a middle-aged Tom Hanks in a leather jacket.

Yet, despite the inevitable looming catastrophe if Obama is reelected, according to the latest Federal Election Commission report the list of Who’s Who of Obama aficionados includes usual suspects such as Darfur defender George Clooney, Mr. and Mrs. Forrest Gump, and cancer survivor Michael Douglas – a man who would have already succumbed to throat cancer had Obamacare already kicked in.

Campaign contributors also include Schindler’s List director Steven Spielberg and wife Kate Capshaw. The Spielbergs, despite their supposed brilliance, fail to realize they’re supporting a president whose feelings for Israel are at best questionable and whose lack of action could result in the need for another list if an unrestrained Iran eventually has its way.

Another contradictory campaign contributor is newly discovered country singer and proud part-time Londoner, the multifaceted Mrs. Chris “Coldplay” Martin, Gwyneth Paltrow.  Gwyneth likes living in England better than the US, which may be why she decided to punish the colonies by contributing to Obama’s “We Bent the Air Hose in 2008 – Let’s Pull the Plug in 2012” campaign.

Also in the mix is political scene newcomer Jennifer Garner, wife to one of JLo’s many former fiancés, Ben Affleck. When not speaking before Congress on behalf of Save the Children, Garner supports the reelection of a radically pro-choice threat to the lives of millions of unborn children who, thanks to Barack Obama, truly need saving.

Other Obama star contributors include: Monk star Tony Shalhoub, Glee’s Jane Lynch, 24’s president Dennis Haysbert (a man who knows firsthand how to pretend to be a president), and sci-fi star Scott Bakula.  The eclectic group joins cantankerous political wannabe (who should also be in the sci-fi category), 30 Rock actor/über-liberal aspiring NYC mayor Alec Baldwin, who prides himself on being diversified in every area except liberalism.

The July quarterly report for the President’s reelection campaign touts $47 million in donations, while the Democratic National Committee raised $38 million through Obama’s joint committee. According to Barack Obama’s campaign, about 40% of the President’s record-breaking take came from “big-money bundlers” and top Hollywood heavy hitters like Rahm’s sibling Ari Emanuel and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Obama continues to practice governing the nation with the finesse of a jackhammer operator doing a kidney transplant. Yet, never once have Fruit of the Loom grape man Wayne Wilderson or Brenda Strong of “Desperate Housewives,” colleague of esteemed “brainstorming” border security adviser Eva Longoria, questioned the craven cynicism of demonizing the rich while stuffing Hollywood capital into his campaign coffers.

Seems that even after chastising Americans for failing to “share the wealth,” a selectively philanthropic Barack Obama is more than willing to accept the “additional income” of well-to-do Hollywood supporters, if doing so finances his glitzy billion-dollar bid for reelection that should be coined: Take two.

So once again, America is witnessing the unbridled ignorance of affluent individuals who choose to support a President who decries prosperity but has little trouble siphoning off the wealth of a community too clueless to understand who they’re really supporting and too committed to liberal ideology to really care.

An average kid with moderate talent, since her late teens, between acting, mothering, cooking, and singing, Gwyneth Paltrow has subjected America to incessant rounds of painful “No wait…let me start again,” off-tempo renditions of Für Elise followed by impromptu tap-dancing exhibitions by a grown woman who might as well be dressed in a tight pink tutu.

Gwynie (I like to call her Gwynie) is an attractive woman with a superior gift of imitating British accents.  Ms. Paltrow started her career in Hollywood when her mother, actress Blythe Danner, and her father, the late director Bruce Paltrow, together with family friend Steven Spielberg brokered a deal and got her a starring gig in the movies at 19 years of age.

An unabashed recipient of Hollywood nepotism, after winning an Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love Gwyneth was crowned the “Muse” of Miramax studios by film producer Harvey Weinstein.  Since that day, Gwyneth has been nothing short of unbearable.

Raised in Massachusetts, Gwynie moved back to Los Angeles where her career and love life with Brad Pitt took off. Paltrow traveled the world, and now speaks British-style English, French, Spanish, and a little Italian. Gwen even married a temperamental British rock star – Chris Martin of Coldplay – who she’d never have met without the benefit of a VIP backstage pass.

After adopting London as her new home, Ms. Gwyneth, in classic Madonna I’m Evita-I’m British-I’m a single mom to a couple of African kids- mode, dissed America, set up house in Berkshire Gardens, and practiced her fake English accent while taking children Apple and Moses to buy groceries in trendy food shops.

Over the years the only thing more irritating than Paltrow feigning a British accent in the movie Sliding Doors was seeing her accepted as a gourmet cook. Gwyneth Paltrow even traveled with Mario Batali through Spain and lunched with Ina Garten, the “I’m cooking a fabulous dinner for my good friend Gwyneth” Barefoot Contessa.

After soaking fava beans became too much of a chore, Ms. Paltrow re-focused and said “I could do that. I bet I could do that,” and decided to resuscitate her former career as a Duet singer, but not just a singer, a country singer, which right there was weird enough for a woman who spent so much of her life practicing speaking with a British accent. Nevertheless, two weeks into her revitalized singing career golden child Gwyneth was starring in the movie Country Strong.

Soon after, Paltrow showed up on the 2011 Grammy Awards singing “Forget You” with the Muppets and Cee Lo Green and vamping around in a precociously overconfident number on Glee.  Mrs. Coldplay’s routine was rivaled only by Katie Holmes embarrassing herself while torturing the nation on So You Think You can Dance.

The desire to share her varied gifts must have motivated Paltrow to go beyond her expertise in thespianism, Epicureanism, and crooning, because in addition to mastering all three, Paltrow created Goop.com, a place where a Renaissance woman could branch out, blog, and author an informative newsletter.

At Goop.com, the artiste/chef/chanteuse tells readers: “Make, Go, Get, Do, Be and See.”  The only way to describe the venture is that Goop is authored by an overindulged, self-impressed, spoiled rich kid sharing navel-gazing insights into experiences, locations, products, and ideas few people will ever encounter, let alone be able to afford.  Can anyone say “Clueless?”

Paltrow’s Oprah-style New Age views are a cacophony of beliefs similar to the Cheese Board area of Goop’s “Make” section. While Gwyneth’s channeling of Tammy Wynette, making Duck Ragu, recommending skin products from a French pharmacy, and explaining the Year of the Tiger is irritating, it is still all relatively harmless. However, her views on religion, philosophy and sexuality step out of the Christian Louboutin realm and into the downright unappreciated.

Case in point: Gwyneth recently introduced her seven year-old daughter Apple, whose name was chosen because it was “Biblical,” to the idea of lesbianism. Mom assured the tyke that her classmate, who had two Mommies, was “lucky,” after which she implied on Goop that she didn’t know the answer to the question: “What does it actually say in the Bible that will cause some people to be upset by my line of thinking?”  You mean besides confusing a first grader?

I don’t buy the feigned perplexed confusion, because based on Gwyneth Paltrow’s history the query was more of a challenge than a question.  It’s likely that Paltrow has already resolved the issue and feels totally confident that, even if the Bible and God Himself doesn’t support her “line of thinking,” hers is still the right answer, because in Gwyneth Paltrow’s superior world her answer is correct simply because it’s hers.

The half-hearted denials of some in the industry are belied by their own actions and their own words – and, surprisingly, by the refreshingly candid admissions of some liberals in television who not only admit its intolerance and stridency but even claim to regret it.  Case closed.

Full disclosure – Ben’s a friend and my frequent “Hour of Hate” partner on Larry O’Conner’s legendary Stage Right Show.  He’s also the rarest of things – a proud Harvard Law School graduate who is fiercely conservative and who loves television (By the way, Ben’s much-mocked predilection for wearing Harvard Law hats and other apparel makes a hilarious appearance in the book).  But Ben’s no snob – he not only freely admits how much he likes television but insists that much of it is well-acted, well-directed and well-produced, its insidious pinko undercurrents notwithstanding.  Moreover, Ben is a creature of Hollywood – he has family in the industry, friends in the industry, and he even flirted with entering into it himself, until he ran smack into the seemingly impenetrable wall that is the conservative blacklist.

As Ben documents in exquisite detail, the conservative blacklist operates both directly and indirectly.  In some cases, television industry bigwigs simply refuse to hire conservatives because they hate conservatives – the late Bruce Paltrow comes off here as a particularly obnoxious jerk, which goes a long way toward explaining his half-wit daughter Gwyneth.  But much of the reason is simply affinity.  As Ben documents, the industry has always been a very small community of like-minded individuals who dwell not only within the physical confines of the same LA/NYC world but, equally importantly, share the same world view.  If you are not one of them inside the bubble, they will never see you to hire you.  Naturally, this leads to the kind of nepotism that explains the rise of overrated no-talents like Gwyneth Paltrow – many of the people who hired her had known her since she was a weird-looking little kid and besides, it couldn’t hurt to do a favor for a guy with the pull of her father Bruce.

Ben shows how this direct and indirect phenomenon also applies to the content of the shows themselves.  Some industry players make no bones about it – they seek to directly influence the audience with outright propaganda.  What’s interesting is that this is rarely successful – audiences hate being hit over the head with unadulterated lefty agit-prop and quickly turn away when it gets too heavy-handed.  A good example is Ellen, an innocuous little comedy series that did okay until the star and her on-screen doppelganger came out and made the show all lesbian, all the time – and not hot lipstick lesbian but whiny, crunchy, let’s-do-macramé-and-other-crafts lesbian.  No one wants that.

But the indirect approach is the most effective, and Ben presents an airtight case that much of the liberal normalization promoted by television is the result not of a conscious desire to change the world but simply by a desire to reflect “reality.”  Of course, the “reality” of liberal Hollywood types is not the reality of some nuclear family with 2.5 kids and a minivan in a suburb of Kansas City.  Hollywood’s “reality” reflects its own freaky, dysfunctional lifestyle; this bizarre anomaly is the image broadcast to America as “normal.”  Sadly, too many Americans accept that image and internalize it – a quick examination of statistics on any social pathology is going to show a correlation with the liberal long-march through the television industry that Ben so thoroughly documents.

And document it he does.  How did he get these interviews?  Don’t these people have minions to Google the guys who want to talk to them?  Ben speaks to dozens of Hollywood players, from out conservatives like Big Hollywood contributor Adam Baldwin to hugely successful (and therefore largely liberal) TV executives, writers and producers like Brandon Stoddard, Fred Silverman, Leonard Goldberg, Abby Singer, Larry Gelbart , David Shore, Marcy Carsey, Tom Fontana and Marc Cherry (the Desperate Housewives creator who is a rare Hollywood Republican).

Ben’s not one to just shrug his shoulders and sit there – every time we meet for lunch at a kosher restaurant (Ben takes his faith as well as his politics seriously; he also tolerates my unsuccessful efforts to score a cheeseburger) he is working on about a dozen ideas.  Primetime Propaganda not only makes the case but offers solutions.  The answer is neither confrontation nor retreat, but engagement.  In fact, it’s almost a Gramscian “long march” infiltration strategy.

One more thing – Primetime Propaganda is not only an essential and irrefutable argument about the state of Hollywood and a battle plan for addressing the problem but a great read.  Sadly, I had to wait to peruse my advance copy because my Hot Wife kept taking it for herself.  Fans of The Stage Right Show are already familiar with how Ben’s mind works faster than his mouth – he has so many ideas he literally cannot talk fast enough to get them all out, though he tries mightily.  On paper, Ben’s insights have a chance to come out slowly and in detail, but the same lacerating wit still shines through.  There are zingers galore.  You get the best of Ben – smart and smartass.

But a thousand-word review cannot capture either the full depth of Ben’s argument or the wealth of interesting facts behind many of our favorite shows, like how The Dick Van Dyke Show broke through racial barriers.  He goes through dozens of shows in detail – it’s fascinating and alarming all at once.  Best of all, while this is an important book for conservatives who want to know why TV is what it is, reading it is not a painful duty – it’s a pleasure.

Primetime Propaganda presents an open and shut case – the charge is that television is a liberal enterprise that acts directly and indirectly to impose its worldview on its dwindling audience while simultaneously acting to exclude conservative voices and views.  And there can be only one verdict after reading this damning indictment:  Guilty as charged.

I will admit, when it was first announced, I looked forward to the show, because it was promoted as an offbeat comedy featuring Jane Lynch, who’s normally hilarious, but it’s nothing of the sort.  This is a soap opera of the worst kind– it’s the ultimate wet dream for the kind of people who actually believe that gays should be more outraged at high school bullies than Shariah-ordered executions.  It’s nothing but blatant wish fulfillment for TV executives who are at the top of the world but can’t get over some hangup from high school. Your glee club wasn’t that great and didn’t get any funding in school?  Aww, poor baby, let’s make a show where everyone in the glee club would be a final contestant on American Idol! You got picked on in high school?  That’s okay, you can write a show where the homophobic bully is secretly gay!  Don’t like Christians opposing gay marriage? No worries; we’ll just create a stupid, belligerent, superstitious, overweight, violent black character to mock them:

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And, even worse, it’s a musical.  Not a musical in the sense that characters express themselves through songs– it’s a musical where the characters extraneously break into glammed-up, severely auto-tuned covers of hit pop songs.  It’s all about leeching off the success of those who create in the music world…

… and some in that world have begun to publicly denounce it.

When the band Kings of Leon quietly rejected a request to license their music to the show, Murphy shot back by telling the band “F— you,” calling them “self-centered a–holes,” then accusing them of the unforgivable sin of neglecting him “arts education.”  Slash of Guns ‘n’ Roses rightly dissed the show as an insult to musicals, and Murphy tactfully declared, “people who make those comments, their careers are over; they’re uneducated and quite stupid.”  That’s odd, because the rather popular and prolific Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz didn’t have nice things to say about Glee, either.  Nor does Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters:  ”f— that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee.”

I’m glad that a Glee backlash is building in the music community; Murphy is little more than a bully with simultaneous messiah and victim complexes.  A normal, well-adjusted adult would recognize that not 100% of the music community is going to want to hear its work turned into pitch-corrected teenybopper jams and accept the fact that not 100% of his licensing requests will be accepted.  However, Murphy interprets these as insults, not only against him but against his mission, as if a vapid primetime soap opera is crucial to “arts education” in America (“Allow me to butcher your songs… it’s for the children!”).

And his need to publicly embarrass anyone that gets in his way is disturbing.  Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill responded to Murphy’s outburst, “This was never meant as a slap in the face to ‘Glee’ or to music education or to fans of the show. We’re not sure where the anger is coming from.”  Drummer Nathan Followill was a bit less generous, but the point stands that Murphy publicly singled out and insulted the band just for denying his requests.

It’s a trend we’ve seen on the show, as well.  Since the start of the second season, the show has included plenty of sucker punches against conservatives:  a pregnant cheerleader’s one-dimensionally evil dad is a Glenn Beck fan; Sarah Palin is mocked as stupid; Ann Coulter is listed as a negative influence on young women akin to Lindsay Lohan; now the crazy Tea Partying birther homeschooler.  And Murphy’s insistence on mocking the groups he’s set up as his existential enemies has also manifested itself as a vile, cruel racial caricature.

I will admit that I watched Season 2, Episode 7 because of the buzz Gwyneth Paltrow’s guest spot was generating.  There were plenty of eyeroll and facepalm moments, but around three-quarters of the way through, I was just simply stunned at what I saw.  In a hackneyed flashback to explain some current character flaw (I’ll take Screenwriting Cliches for 2000, Alex), Paltrow’s character details how she was attacked by a black teenage girl (described by the narrator as “like an attractive Biggie Smalls”) who is so offended by the concept of learning algorithms (because “I’m a Christian,” she says) that she punches Paltrow (see video above).

Murphy and the writer of this episode, Ian Brennan, have no leg to stand on if they ever claim that they or Glee are about promoting tolerance or diversity.  They are all about politically correct, one-dimensional stereotypes; groups they like are pure good, groups they dislike are pure evil.  And they have some explaining to do.  I see why they’d want to mock Christians:  Prop 8, those who purport to be believers like the Westboro Baptists– yeah, yeah.  But why inject race into it?  And why would such rich white men do it with such a hateful stereotype against black women?

It’s because they’re thin-skinned, bigoted bullies.  They demand everyone submit to whatever they want; if they don’t, there is retaliation– public shaming through stereotypes, insults, and vitriol unbecoming of anyone, much less a media figure claiming to promote education and inclusion.

Country Strong is very good, it’s sincere, it’s sad, it’s funny and the music is toe-tapping, hum-in-your-head-for-days good. It’s also a reminder of what being a movie star is all about. Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance as alcoholic country music star Kelly Canter is believable and heartbreaking and she can belt out a country song like she was born to it. Garrett Hedlund, however, steals the spotlight playing an aspiring singer-song-writer working in a rehab facility who befriends Paltrow. He is the real deal, he can do anything, even make you believe he is a professional singer, which he is not, and boy can he sing and act, brilliant. 

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Country Strong is a morality tale, bad behavior brings serious consequences and the good find hope and happiness, all that morality doesn’t go down well in a Hollywood where the rape of a teenager can be dismissed as not really “rape, rape” and the rapist defended. 

I’ve seen so many appalling films lately, it was truly refreshing to see something with so much heart and soul. It probably didn’t deserve to be seen twice in one week but I felt so low after seeing “How Do You Know” with all it’s dialed in performances. 

I saw Country Strong in Hollywood and when a particularly powerful song was being performed and two American flags were unfurled, some audience members laughed. The NYT reviewer scoffs at another poignant moment when Paltrow kisses a cross she is wearing, they hate Christians almost as much as they hate America. How very smart and clever of them. Unfortunately, the NYT can crush a film. 

I am very curious to see how the film does at the box office and I wish the producers well. The reviews in all the urbane sophisticated outlets are panning it. I can’t recommend it enough, silly me.

While we at Big Hollywood are quick to point out that celebrities can use their soapbox to do some good, but each time they open their mouth to tell us how to behave, they run the risk of losing the magic of their screen persona.  So to help remind you who spoke up on behalf of “all people” this year, here is a rundown of the 10 most asshat celebrity comments of 2010:

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10.  When Whoopi Goldberg went on O’Reilly to discuss her reason for walking off The View (i.e. plug her new book Is It Just Me?: Or is it nuts out there?”) rather than defend her position about the world having a “Muslim problem,” the two also touched on the issue of whether a Jewish kid or a Muslim kid is more likely to be bullied in the US because of his religion.  O’Reilly had the facts but like most good, Hollywood liberals, Whoopi just said, “I don’t believe it.”

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9. Mel Gibson finds himself on the list for having a long history of racist rants, drunk or not. He gets an extra asshat mention for not checking for a wire when being honest in the face of a Russian.

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8. When Hollywood leftists cannibalize one another as if they were a bunch of Troglodytes forced into an out of control Kubrick film, it sends a spool-of-drool to my mouth like a Pavlovian dog. In April, Sigourney Weaver served up this little dish about her showbiz sister Kathryn Bigelow while in Brazil promoting Pocahontas… I mean Avatar.  “Jim didn’t have breasts, and I think that was the reason,” she told told Folha Online, a Brazilian news site. “He should have taken home that Oscar.”

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7. After apologizing profusely throughout 2010 for grabbing Taylor Swift’s spotlight at the 2009 Grammys, Kanye West did an about face and complained that, after he dissed her onstage, he was disappointed that Taylor Swift “didn’t have my back.” Why would she have his back? He’s the one who humiliated her!

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6. After doing what all celebrity women who can’t maintain a healthy relationship do–buy a child–Sheryl Crow got back up on perch to tell Katie Couric about it for Glamour magazine last June. After Crow complained in the interview that Americans have become too blasé about politics and that nobody has taken to the streets to cause “a riot or a revolution,” Couric correctly pointed to the Tea Party as an example of modern day activism.

“What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Because that is the specific sort of group of people who would say we’re out there, we’re getting involved in the process…” asked Katie Couric.

“I appreciate the fact that those people are out there and that they are fired up,” responded Crow, before adding that Tea Partiers “haven’t educated themselves…they’re just pissed off.”

“My main concern is that [the Tea Party is] really fear-based,” said Crow, a cancer survivor and environmental activist. “What’s coming out of the Tea Party most often, especially if you go onto YouTube, and you see some of the interviews with these people who really don’t even know what the issues are, they’re just swept up in the fear of it and the anger of it.”

“They’re not sure what they’re angry at,” Crow continued. “[T]hey don’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street.”

This from a woman who every year tours the country in custom buses so people can hear music inspired by Eric Clapton, Don Henley, Owen Wilson, and Lance Armstrong.

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5. Gwyneth Paltrow said that losing her baby weight after the birth of her second child, son Moses, in 2006, was “by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” the Huffington Post reported on July 11. “It was really hanging on. It was not easy…but I really was seeing results so it motivated me to just work through it,” Paltrow said. She added that her celebrity trainer, Tracy Anderson, helped her lose the weight by having her work out for two hours a day. Two hours a day!  I don’t know any mother with small children that have time or energy to work out for two hours a day.  Oh, but it gets worse.  Paltrow explains: “Every woman can make time–every woman–and you can do it with your baby in the room. There have been countless times where I’ve worked out with my kids crawling around all over the place. You just make it work, and if it’s important to you, it’ll be important to them.

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4. As reported by Hollywoodland, Ben Affleck on NPR said, “The banks shouldn’t — people shouldn’t make such a giant profit off just moving money back and forth. And CEOs’ pay shouldn’t be 200 times the average worker. It used to be nine times.”

NPR didn’t ask whether that sentiment about overpayment counts for movie stars that make $250,000 for simply showing up at a casino grand opening.

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3. When not backing homophobic and misogynistic rappers on their latest “art” and winning awards from the Gay and Lesbian Community, Pink is thinking about beating her unborn child.  “It’s a great idea to spank your children!” And she’s not just talking about a light tap on the butt, either: “I think parents need to beat the crap out of their kids,” the 31-year-old pop star said to Access Hollywood. “Yes, I think the whole spanking and how it’s all gotten P.C. is just for the birds,” says Pink. Apparently Pink herself got paddled on the butt a time or two as a child by her dad. “Oh, he put me through a wall,” says Pink. “It’s the only reason I’m still here. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.” Thanks Dad.

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2. In her self-made YouTube PSA, Kathy Griffin reaches out to young gay teens the way tobacco companies hope today’s youth will bum a “fag,” light up, and pay their future bills. In it, Kathy sympathizes with gay kids stuck in a Bible-belt closet because of evil Republicans practicing trickle-down homophobia. Because Hollywood knows what’s best for everyone, Kathy also reminds us of how wrong Prop. 8 was and how the courts must overturn it. Laws only apply when they favor Hollywood’s agenda; when the law doesn’t and sides with the majority, Hollywood bullies everyone with a differing view. Days later, hosting VH1 Divas Salute the Troops, Griffin decided to bully Bristol Palin about here weight on “Dancing with the Stars,” shedding a light of shame on all young women who struggle with weight issues and don’t have access to personal trainers.

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1. Watching The Joy Behar Show on Headline News is akin to watching dead tuna dry in the sun–and the only thing that squashes this tuna melt more is when her guest is the man who inspired the term “jumping the shark.” I’m not sure what tank Henry Winkler’s been swimming in since he starred in that hit movie Heroes in 1977, but I wish he’d stayed there. Winkler, on the show to promote his children’s book that deals with dyslexia, felt the need to debase an American family that’s done nothing to him other than be different. In the clip, Winkler says this about Sarah Palin and her family: “I do know that she is the most articulate person in her family.” He and Joy then go to criticize Palin for living the good life they have enjoyed for many years.

Who are your Hollywood Asshats of 2010?