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.

Several months later, in a weekly column I was then writing for the L.A. Times, I took exception to the constant trashing of TV.  For all its obvious faults, I pointed out that over the years TV, not Broadway, books or the movies, was the place to find the best comedy in America.  I went on to mention ten or twelve of the anonymous men most responsible for writing the funniest lines.  Naturally, Larry Gelbart was one of the names on my list.

The next day, I got a phone call.  It was Larry and he started out by apologizing.  He said that he and his wife, Pat, had dreaded going to the Fairfax High bash, but that I had been very funny and they had had a terrific time.  It seems he had meant to call me the very next day, but it had slipped his mind.  Now he was calling to thank me for mentioning him in my article.

Oddly enough, I was anxious to get off the phone.  Although I appreciate compliments as much as the next guy, I’m the guy who prefers them in writing.  Even when I receive them over the phone, I feel like I’m blushing and have lost the power of speech.  After being praised, just saying “Thank you” seems terribly lame, while trying to return the compliment seems awfully phony.  But just before I was able to mumble my thanks and hang up, I heard him say, “I understand you sometimes write for TV.  If you ever come up with an idea for a ‘MASH’ script, just shoot it over to me.  I’m here at 20th.”

It had long been my wish to write comedy for TV, but I had not been able to break through, only managing to accumulate credits on “Dragnet” and “McMillan & Wife.”  So, while I was greatly motivated, my problem was that I wasn’t a fan of “MASH.”  I hadn’t liked the movie and the one time I had watched an episode, it just seemed like all those other lousy service comedies, like “Don’t Go Near the Water” and “Operation Petticoat,” that I had already come to loathe.

But, at the time nobody else was inviting me to write a comedy or anything else, so I sat down with my steno pad and prayed for a miracle.  The miracle came in the form of an idea about an injured soldier showing up at the 4077th, claiming to be Jesus Christ.

“Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?” led to seven additional MASH scripts, a shot at several other sitcoms and ultimately swung open the doors to writing TV movies.

Because I owed Gelbart a debt that I could never hope to re-pay, I was grateful when he called one day and asked for a favor.  It seems the WGA was hosting a tribute to Larry that very evening and Mel Shavelson, who was scheduled to emcee the event, had taken ill.  Larry wondered if I would agree to fill in.

Inasmuch as my responsibilities would be pretty much limited to pointing to people in the audience during the Q&A session, and in some cases repeating their questions into a microphone, I felt I was up to it, if just barely.

Larry was his usual droll and hilarious self.  The most memorable moment, though, came during the intermission when Larry and I left the stage to sit with Pat in the front row.  A young fellow came down the aisle and kneeled next to Larry.  As expected, he began by saying what a great fan he was, and how, being a writer himself, he regarded Gelbart as a role model.  Larry, far more adept at handling compliments than I because no doubt he had had so much more experience, was smiling and nodding graciously.  The big surprise came when the young fan concluded his remarks by saying, “And that’s why I’m so excited to be re-writing ‘Rough Cut’.”

“Rough Cut,” you see, was a script Gelbart had been writing for Burt Reynolds and David Niven.  Until that moment, he didn’t know that he’d been replaced by the producer.

So, forget all the stuff he wrote for the movies (“Tootsie,” “Oh, God!” “The Wrong Box”); the stage (“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Mastergate,” “City of Angels”); and TV (“MASH,” “Your Show of Shows,” “Caesar’s Hour,” “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” “Barbarians at the Gate,”).  Forget that at the age of 16, while still attending Fairfax High, he would go, still wearing his ROTC uniform, to write for “Duffy’s Tavern” and, later, Bob Hope on the radio.  After all, anyone with the appropriate amount of God-given talent, wit and staying power, could do the very same thing for 65 years.

But the fact that he could listen to this pisher break the news to him that he had replaced him on a writing project and keep on smiling, shake his hand and wish him luck, tells you all you need to know about what sort of mensch Larry Gelbart was.

I must confess that I am not usually given to thinking of my writing in such grandiose terms, and it shocked me to find a man of the cloth doing so.  It took some thinking on my part, especially as the writing took place over 30 years ago.  At the time, my TV writing career was at a standstill.  Because my agents were a man and wife team who were well-meaning, but highly ineffective, it appeared that things weren’t likely to change for the better any time soon. 

Fortunately, I was still a print journalist, writing a weekly humor column for the L.A. Times.  Because I would occasionally mention having gone to Fairfax High School, I was invited to host an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the school’s founding.  As part of the event, someone representing each of the five decades would reminisce about their years of internment.  Larry Gelbart, writer-producer of “MASH,” spoke about the 1940s.  I did double duty, hosting and talking about life at Fairfax in the 50s. 

One day, some months later, I got a call from my female agent.  She wanted me to know that they’d taken in a third partner.  The new guy would specialize in sit com writers.  She suggested I come down and meet him.  I did, and regretted it almost immediately.  The guy was totally obnoxious.  It seemed he wanted to be a producer more than he wanted to be an agent.  He proposed that I should write up his ideas.  I pointed out he didn’t seem too crazy about the way I wrote up my own.  He said that was true, but this time he would be around to help.  I told him that I would think about it, but in the meantime I had a family to support. 

He asked me what shows appealed to me.  I mentioned “Bob Newhart,” “Mary Tyler Moore” and “MASH.” He looked at me as if I were insane.  “You’re only talking about the hottest shows on the air.”  I told him I was fully aware of that fact, but those were the ones I wanted to write for, and, besides, I was merely answering his question.  I told him that, inasmuch as I had to earn a living, I would gladly write for any shows that would have me.  He told me that at least now I was being realistic. 

When I got home, my wife told me I had a phone call from Larry Gelbart.  I called him back.  He started out by thanking me for having mentioned him in a column I had written that past Sunday in which I argued that for a quarter of a century the best comedy in America wasn’t in books or movies or on Broadway, but, rather, on TV.  I then mentioned ten of the anonymous talents who were most responsible for writing “Sgt. Bilko,” “The Sid Caesar Show,” “Mr. Peepers,” “The Honeymooners” and “MASH.”  Gelbart was one of the ten.

He went on to say that when he and his wife had attended the Fairfax event months earlier, they had assumed they’d be bored to tears, but that I had been very funny, and that he felt remiss for not having dropped me a note. 

I thanked him for the kind words and was ready to hang up when he said, “By the way, I hear on the grapevine that you sometimes write for TV.  If you ever get a notion for a ‘MASH’ episode, please send it along.” 

Some of you will wonder why I hadn’t broached the possibility of my writing a “MASH” script.  It’s not as if it didn’t occur to me, but I would have considered it impolite.  I mean, Gelbart was calling to pay me a compliment and to thank me for mentioning him in my column.  Taking advantage of his courtesy to ask him for a job simply struck me as rude. 

In any case, as soon as we hung up, I called my new agent and told him he was now my ex-agent — that “MASH” apparently wasn’t as locked up as he’d insisted it was half an hour earlier. 

For a few seconds, I felt just great.  Then it hit me that I was not only unemployed, but now I didn’t even have an agent.  Talk about your Pyrrhic victories!

In a panic, I sat down in a chair with a steno notebook and my pen and hoped (prayed?) that a terrific idea would magically appear on the page.  The idea that arrived within minutes was that a wounded soldier would show up at the MASH unit without dogtags, claiming to be Jesus Christ.  I took another twenty minutes or so to fill in the details pitting good Dr. Freedman and evil Col. Flagg in a battle for the man’s body and soul.  I even came up with a title, “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?” 

I typed it up and mailed it to Gelbart at 20^th Century-Fox.  A day or two later, he called to say that he and his producing partner, Gene Reynolds, loved the idea. 

The final script was nominated for a Humanitas Prize, and led to my writing seven more “MASH” episodes, and totally resuscitated my TV career. 

At the time and to this day, although I am a non-observant Jew, I felt the idea was divinely inspired.  How could I not?  After all, when I sat down with pad and paper, I had no reason to suspect that Jesus Christ was going to wind up in a sit com episode. 

Although there is no way to really explain how the creative process works, typically a notion buzzes around in a writer’s head until the opportunity to use it comes along.  But that was certainly not the case here. 

With “Captain Chandler,” there was no notion, no buzzing, just a timely Christmas miracle.