We’ve gone from Dirty Harry to Jason Bourne (or whatever his name ended up being; the camera was too shaky for me to ever tell what was going on). We’ve gone from Humphrey Bogart to George Clooney.  We’ve gone from John Wayne fighting Indians to Na’vi fighting Americans.

But, don’t fret. For there is an answer to our problems, fellow film buffs. I know you’re six feet from that ledge, but let me give you hope…they are called books. They are these contraptions with bindings and pages with words on the inside. Together this all creates a story one hundred times more fulfilling than today’s dim-witted liberal flavor-of-the-month films.

Hollywood has always been a liberal town. They give us anti-Iraq war movie after anti-Iraq war movie despite the fact that they all flop at the box office. But what of the literary world?  They must surely share Hollywood’s contempt for conservatives and enriching stories, right? Wrong. The publishing world seems to get it, for the most part. They like to publish what sells and what seems to sell today are right-leaning stories.

Stephen Hunter, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Tom Clancy, Frank Miller, James Ellroy, and Andrew Klavan. These are just a handful of names of today’s top fiction writers. All of them have something in common: they have, admittedly, right leaning politics and philosophies. This does not mean that their books are some kind of weird right-wing propaganda. What it means is that their stories usually make the bad guys who the bad guys really are and their heroes don’t shy away from masculinity or righteous indignation. These writers also have something else in common: they are all New York Times bestselling authors. Try out Stephen Hunter’s new novel Soft Target. It’s a hundred times better and more visually striking than any new action film to hit theaters in the last year. Or try Andrew Klavan’s last adult thriller, The Identity Man. It’s more thought-provoking and more well thought out than any half-baked political thriller cooked up by George Clooney. These writers lead the fiction front in literature today. They put out bestsellers that frequently win acclaim from critics.

As for non fiction…now we are really getting to the heart of the beast. Look at the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction and you are bound to see a plethora of conservative thought. While Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham are regularly blasted in the mainstream media, they regularly put out bestsellers. Others do too. In fact, most non-fiction political books that hit shelves are written by conservatives. Why this phenomenon and why now? Is it that conservatives have been turned away by Hollywood so they have retreated to the inner workings of books? Or is it because right-leaning artists and right-leaning thinkers need more than a 90-minute film to bring across a message and/or story?

Perhaps films are more representative of a liberal approach to storytelling, while writing is a more conservative approach. Films are a collected effort. They takes hundreds, if not, thousands of people to create, and usually have a vision that is compromised by too many cooks in the kitchen. Books, on the other hand, are a celebration of individualism. It takes one person to sit and put his vision down. Maybe this is the explanation, but maybe not.

But whatever it may be, this much is true: if you hit up your local bookstore or head over to Amazon, you’ll find a world of old school storytelling and right-leaning stories. John Wayne and his films ain’t dead, they just grew up. They exist in an entirely new world: the world of books.

Check out footage from the latest Tea Party rally and you’ll see people holding signs referencing classics like 1984 by George Orwell and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Check out footage of the latest Occupy Wall Street rally and you’ll see people wearing “V for Vendetta” masks. That says it all.

“Soft Target,” in bookstores Dec 6th, manages to be more than just not bad; it’s a modern Western on amphetamines; it’s Tom Clancy if Clancy were a better weaver of the old fashioned good vs. evil yarn; it’s… well, it’s Stephen Hunter all the way. Semper fi and all that.

Those who are familiar with the author will understand, and those who are not–well, what are you doing reading a book review by me when there is writing out there carved by a master?

“Soft Target” is the new Hunter thriller that takes place in a thriller writer’s fantasy land: America, the Mall. Appropriately, it combines the two things America loves the most: shopping and violence. Those two ingredients are enough to carry the novel through a harsh and very quick 254 pages. You will not want to put this one down.

Ray Cruz is Hunter’s new John Wayne. He’s retired USMC and just wants to leave the Mall of America with his beautiful fiancée, Molly Chan. Only problem is some jihadists have a very different idea and decide to take the mall and the thousands of innocent shoppers hostage on the busiest shopping day of the year: Black Friday.

Cruz, noble and honorable and flawed as he is, decides to take the mall back when there is little action being taken outside by Colonel Douglas Obobo. Hunter sets up the contrast between the two perfectly. Cruz is the conservative man of action, while Obobo is the liberal believer in mankind, the man who believes in words above all else. Other characters flourish as well in the novel, which, despite being short, fleshes out the action from every perspective imaginable. We follow Cruz, we follow the Imam leading the ordeal, we follow Colonel Obobo, newscaster Nikkie Swagger, FBI sniper McElroy, and many others. The novel fleshes out so many characters and tells the story in such a thorough way that Tarantino would be jealous.

As always, Hunter’s greatest gift is his style, his prose. He’s been called the “populist Faulkner” and for good reason. He’s no Vince Flynn and he’s no Tom Clancy. His characters inhabit a harsh world that is unforgiving and follows no set code of good wins over evil. His characters inhabit a place called reality where Hunter’s simple yet delicate and violent prose comes alive. His heroes are not perfect and his villains are never black and white.

In fact, Hunter is famous for going where no other writer will go. He enters the grey. He tells the densely complicated stories other thriller writers shy away from. He throws his noble yet heroic characters into the world of grey and forces them to deem what is black and white, good and evil, and we sit back and enjoy.

Hunter’s novels also appeal because of their visual style, and this one is no different. He manages to keep the pace fast and the narrative swift without sacrificing clarity, because he knows exactly what we want. He feeds us the exact images and verbs our inner beasts need to gobble up in order to be completely consumed by the story. Hunter has perfected the craft of the thriller by keeping his prose simple a la Hemingway and giving us the details other writers shy away from, all while providing these in the context of a visually striking world only a man who reviewed films for decades could give us.

“Soft Target” will pull you in fast and hard and will not let go until the very last utterance has been spoken. Ray Cruz is our new hero, our new John Wayne, and watching him navigate through a world of liberal spinners, evil jihadists, political guinea pigs and bureaucracy at its finest is more than entertaining. It’s thrilling, and that’s due to the epic prose of Hunter. There’s no other thriller writer like him today. Hell, there’s no other writer like him today. He passes the Clancys, the Flynns, the Thors like they were all standing still. And considering how far ahead his novels seems to be in all most every capacity, they must be.

—–

Leftist Hollywood hates that the American people now have so many methods with which to communicate, including the Fox News and Fox Business channels, the only television news outlets not completely in bed with the left.

The above clip, which I found at DHD (the comments are hilarious), is actually from last week, which makes one wonder. Could the fact that this information about “The Muppets” got out have something to do with the film failing to live up to box office expectations last weekend?

We’re living in a whole new world where a few corrupt elites no longer control every portal of information. Thanks to cable and the Internet, the dissemination of information is as democratic as it’s ever been.

What a beautiful time to be alive, at least if you’re not trying to propagandize children behind the backs of their parents.

UPDATE: Sharon Waxman asks:

If I didn’t know better I’d say that Disney slipped someone over at Fox Business Channel a bill to go on a rant against its hit movie, “The Muppets.”

That doesn’t even make sense, except from a tactical point of view.

One of the phoniest narratives that comes out of the entertainment media is that controversy is always good and always backfires against the complainers, most especially ”uptight” right-wingers. They say this, of course, in the form of reverse psychology because what they really want is for us to shut up. Why has every single anti-war film released over the last five years flopped? Why hasn’t Oliver Stone had a hit in nearly a decade? If controversy sold, those examples would be the biggest hits of decade.

Yes, controversy spreads information. But if people like the information they hear, the project does well (“The Passion of the Christ,” “Married With Children”), if they don’t, the project might do worse than it would have otherwise.  When you look at “The Muppets” softer than expected second week, I’d say Disney wishes no one said anything. 

And when has controversy ever helped something aimed at children?

Let’s start with this nonsense:

And yet [Clooney's] “Ides” seems bound for the same ephemeral status as so many other political allegories that have come and gone in recent years: “Man of the Year,” “Swing Vote,” “Bulworth,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Wag the Dog,” “Atlas Shrugged,” The Manchurian  Candidate.”  They’re movies that run the ideological gamut, yet most of them garnered middling reactions from both critics and the American public. And almost none of them have endured (with the possible, though only possible, exception of “Wag the Dog”).

There are plenty of challenges to dramatizing Washington these days. Among the much-digested issues: Real-life drama can seem so outlandish that no scripted entertainment can match it, while winds shift too quickly for comments on the process to be relevant by the time a film comes out. There may or may not have been something novel in “Ides’” message about the toll the system takes on idealism years ago, before Barack Obama’s presidency; there’s not much fresh nearly three years into his term.

So the theory here is that by the time these films come out, the subject matter they cover is no longer hot and therefore audiences have lost interest. How exactly does that theory apply to “The Manchurian Candidate” remake, “Bulworth,” and “Man of the Year?” Whatever your politics, those films aren’t ripped from the headlines or out to capture some political zeitgeist. There’s no stale date when it comes to “evil” weapons manufacturers, a politician who discovers the joy of telling (his version of) the truth, or the age-old tale of an everyman with a shot at the presidency. But the single most wrong-headed example here is “Lions for Lambs,” which actually was released in the heat of the political moment it wanted so desperately to capture: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, it starred three A-listers and still managed to flop.

There are two more rhetorical tricks at work in the paragraphs above that need to be pointed out. The first is that the writer only has one right-of-center example, “Atlas Shrugged,” and thinks that’s enough to proclaim a pox on both houses. The second is that “Lions for Lambs” is the only anti-war film mentioned.

After a half-decade of ceaseless anti-war flops, why mention only one?

Well, mentioning the dozen or so anti-war flops kind of blows that stupid “wind-shifting” theory completely out of the water. Those films were all released while the wars and the heated debates surrounding them were in full effect. You can’t capture a bigger zeitgeist than that, and still, nobody went to see them — not even  leftists. Never forget that in order to create a hit movie, Hollywood doesn’t need even a single Bitter Clinger to buy a ticket. There are enough dirty, filthy hippies populating America to make any film a box office smash.

But that was just the L.A. Times warming up for this howler:

Compounding the problem, of course, is that most Hollywood studios don’t want to take a stand that will alienate any part of the moviegoing audience. So a movie of any respectable budget — even one from an avowed Democrat like Clooney — will resort to making general, relatively toothless points about ‘the system,’ instead of specific points about one ideology or another. That’s a kiss of death in a time when partisan politics run so high, and a little boring to boot.

And of course when scores of blogs and cable-news programs come at us all the time, we’re  wary of welcoming a new voice to the din, whether or not it has something interesting to say.

Again, only by avoiding the list of highly partisan anti-war films that flopped at a 100% rate is the L.A. Times able to make the absurd claim that liberal Hollywood’s liberal Hollywood movies aren’t succeeding because they’re not liberal enough.

So why is the L.A. Times doing this?

For starters, it’s a liberal newspaper and obviously no one there wants to face the sad fact that their ideology is being rejected — even by their fellow Lefties. They’re also afraid — especially with 2012 coming up — that Hollywood might stop making this propaganda and so their response is, not so surprisingly, DOUBLE DOWN!

“Double down” has always been the cry of the disillusioned Leftist after something they believe in has been proven a failure. More stimulus! More money for education! More gun control! And now, more divisive left-wing politics in political movies!

The L.A. Times also shares the same lack of understanding about the fundamental art of storytelling that our current crop of hackish liberal filmmakers do. The primary job of a storyteller is to cast a spell and hold it. When that spell’s broken, both the story and the storyteller have failed. Nothing, and I mean nothing, breaks that spell more abruptly than partisan politics, and it doesn’t matter what your personal  ideology is. The moment the story stops for the preachy, pious, holier-than thou, sanctimonious sucker punch, you’ve lost your audience whether they agree with you or not.

In droves, liberals avoided these awful, highly partisan anti-war movies because they sucked. No one wants to be lectured to, and the filmmakers behind them lack the talent of, say, a young Oliver Stone or the legendary liberal filmmakers of the Golden Era to make their points through compelling stories as opposed to lazy, boorish hectoring and speechifying.

To further this point, let me refer you… here.

Each of those 25 liberal films has two things in common. They are openly and proudly liberal, and they push their ideology through the use of theme as opposed to the divisive, partisan approach the L.A. Times is advocating.

I love nuclear power, but I also love “Silkwood” because it is about a woman who comes into her own in search of the truth.

I love our military, but I love “M*A*S*H*” because it’s about refusing to conform.

I believe abandoning our South Vietnam allies is one of the most shameful acts in our country’s history, but I love “Platoon” because it is about a terrified young man who must choose between doing the right thing and dying and doing the wrong thing and surviving.

In a desperate bid to convince Hollywood to keep making liberal propaganda, the L.A. Times is demanding more of the disease that poisons the box office: divisive partisan politics.

But maybe I shouldn’t have written this piece. After all, few things make my happy dance happier than watching these films bounce like a dead cat.

While I definitely respect all these points of view, I have to question why many of us are questioning Hollywood instead of questioning ourselves. And what we should be asking ourselves is why many of us complain so much about Hollywood’s output but at the same time fail to support the burgeoning artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers in our own community?

For full disclosure:  yes, I am a conservative, and yes, I am a filmmaker trying to get my art out to the greater world. For the life of me, I have never understood why we monetarily and spiritually support artists, studios and media companies while simultaneously berating them for what they offer us. If someone delivers crummy pizza that smells weird, tastes worse and gets me sick, would I still call the same pizza place every time? No. So, why do we do the same when making entertainment or artistic purchase choices?

In film, you don’t get to shoot on 35 mm with big-name actors, commissioned scripts, or the best D.P.s using someone else’s money unless you have a track record and have proven you can make money. To become a great artist, you need time to develop and hone your craft.  You need to be able to make a living in your particular medium to justify working in the arts and to gain that 24/7 time needed to create and edit better and better material.  Having a paying audience is the only way to make that happen.  Not all “conservative” films or shows will be great and not all will be good, but all should be supported by the people most predisposed to enjoy the material, fellow conservatives.  Still, it seems to me that the right’s expectations are too high when art comes from one of their own.

It’s like being the guy or gal who struggles to make it as a local artist.  The hometown crowd is much tougher on you, and their expectations of success are so high that the bar they set just to earn a “You know, it’s alright” is almost impossible to surmount. Are “conservative” audiences really saying that until you start winning Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, and Grammys, you haven’t achieved that much? It seems that way for both new artists as well as some of the more established ones.

I paid money to see An American Carol in a theater.  Atlas Shrugged, too.  They weren’t films that met the unbelievably high expectations of their audiences.  So what? They were not bad films.  Hello? They were trying to do a helluva lot with limited budgets and the expectations that came with being the first “conservative” films in their genres.  Almost no film could have met the expectations those two had to deal with. No new artistic movement occurs overnight, and these films were steps in the right direction that deserved our money.

How do you expect to see more artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc., who think like you do if you aren’t willing to support the ones you already have among you?  Can you really expect those who are successful and established to risk everything by deciding to “come out of the closet” politically?  God bless Gary Sinise, Patricia Heaton, Jon Voight, Angie Harmon and the other stars who have come out, gotten involved and led from the front.  They are an inspiration, but fortunately for them, they had established resumés to help them weather the natural blacklisting faced by entertainment-industry conservatives.

If you don’t support conservative artists’ material, especially when they are putting their livelihoods, careers and more on the line, then don’t pine for “better” content, and don’t condemn them for not outnumbering the artists you can’t stand.  At the end of the day, you, the audience, are a vital part of Hollywood too. Your time and money determines what future projects are financed, so keep in mind that we can only make what we want if you signify to our investors that those projects will be profitable.

In a six-month period, while reading novels for my book club, I encountered three instances of an author making some cozy reference to Karl Marx – Marx at the graveyard, Marx on the bookshelf, and fond memories of reading Marx on a carefree summer day.

If one of the characters had been a rabid history professor on a rant, or perhaps a teenage ideologue on a mission to destroy capitalism, then references to Karl Marx would have fleshed out the character and enhanced the story. But no such characters appeared in the three vastly different novels. The Marx references were superfluous. Those brief allusions, dangling mid-paragraph like a turkey’s wattle, seemed more like words meant to appease someone, perhaps to reassure the publisher that the author embraced the correct thoughts.

The prevalence of (what I think is misleadingly called) a progressive ideology within the publishing industry is no secret, but I was not fully aware of the scope and the depth of it until I slipped past a checkpoint and entered the exclusive community.

When a small publisher picked up my mystery novel in 2008, political harmony seemed irrelevant. Shortly after signing the contract, I attended a writers conference in New York and there my naive assumptions met their demise. At a cocktail party, an author made a scathing remark about a conservative politician and everyone clapped and cheered. I didn’t clap, and as I looked around I realized that I was the only one.

Needless to say, I yearned to return to my rugged-Wild-West, once-libertarian-leaning state of Colorado. I joined a female author’s group and presumed we would discuss books. Much to my surprise everyone arrived wearing Obama t-shirts and buttons, and the first words spoken were, “How about them crazy Republicans?”

In the groupthink discussion that followed no one debated, hoping to convert the unfaithful. They just carried on with the arrogant assumption that there was no possibility anyone present might disagree. Stunned into silence, I made no effort to dispel their misconceptions. In all honesty, I was a coward.

That day was a turning point in my writing career. Right then I knew that I would atone for my cowardice by writing about individualism and the American Dream. I would drive a stake through the heart of socialism and, via some unforeseen miracle, my words would make their way into print. If I had experienced a moment of sanity, I would have recognized the futility of the exercise. Deep down I knew that including a line about government thugs “executing people Che Guevara style” pretty much guaranteed a rejection letter, but for some reason that knowledge did not deter endless rounds of editing and late nights pouring over history books.

And then the miracle arrived.

Over a year ago, self-publishing was the mark of shame. As ebooks and POD technology made the journey to self-publishing easier, the stigma became more pronounced; its opponents declaring that only desperate, untalented authors would chose to wear the scarlet SP. But as authors discovered the power of self-publishing, the idea gained credibility on an exponential scale – from pathetic and unprofessional to savvy and practical in a matter of months. Thus self-publishing joins the ranks of the once-dreaded ebook, a force to be reckoned with. Try as it may, the traditional publishing industry cannot hold back the tide of progress. Ironic.

I approached the possibility of self-publishing with much hesitation, imagining I would find an enclave of amateurs determined to flood the world with weak novels and sloppy manuscripts. What I found instead was a community of individuals committed to creating quality writing and professionally formatted books. The peer pressure within the community tames the occasional impatient author, reducing the number of books destined for the trash heap.

Self-publishing is no cakewalk. In addition to mastering the craft of writing and editing, a self-published author must learn ebook formatting and the art of producing a print-ready PDF. Many hire professional editors and cover designers. Nothing happens overnight.

During one of my particularly frustrating evenings ironing out an HTML document, I thought about Gutenberg. Then I imagined Martin Luther and his opponents exchanging saucy polemics, printed in bulk and eagerly devoured by the public. The printing press was the first champion of freedom of information. It is a shame that over the years it has been confiscated and locked away, guarded by those who are obsessed with controlling what people are allowed to read.

Nevertheless, potential authors, be reassured. If you wish to write a critical review of current policies, keep writing. Novelists, if your main character is locked in the Hohenschönhausen, have no fear. You can free him. The Berlin Wall that once existed between the world of publishing and the author is crumbling. Its gatekeepers are confused and wandering aimlessly.

With a huge commitment and a little courage, you can topple that Wall.

—–

Listen, I’m not one of those folks who yells “free speech” every time I don’t get my way. Jon Stewart’s program is a private entity and they can do whatever they damn well please. Just know this from here on out; if you have a different point of view than Jon Stewart… you don’t get to work with Jon Stewart.

—–

Think about a spoiled teen.  His parents have given him everything he could possibly want, demanding nothing in return.  His toys are piled high, his room filled with all of the latest gadgets and gizmos, his parents heaping praise on him night and day.  Is this child happy?  No, he’s miserable.  And he’s angry.  His only joy coming in wallowing in his teenage angst and his victimhood and from his ginned up sense of superiority to the rest of the world which is evil and stupid and just doesn’t get him.  Keep this image in your head, now, and you have the perfect description of the Hollywood star.

Not all Hollywood stars, of course.  There’s a word for Hollywood stars who aren’t immature and spoiled babies.  They’re called conservatives.  And there aren’t more of them for a number of reasons.

First, the industry tends to attract narcissists.  Narcissism is the normal state of the young child.  Since the Hollywood star tends to never mature morally or intellectually (is there anything he believes that is a) based on fact and b) different than what he believed when he was five years old?) he tends to be stuck forever in the narcissistic state and, since he never matures, he tends to remain forever an adherent of the ideology about which Winston Churchill said, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart.  If you’re still a liberal when you’re older, you have no brain.”  The child is all heart and no brain.  So, too, are the vast majority of those in the business of show.  It’s not surprising, then, that the permanent narcissist would seek an industry where, like a child calling out to mommy to “look, look!!!” all eyes are on him.

Show business tends to attract the infantile because, well, it is an infantile profession.  So obvious is this that we ourselves in show biz don’t even call what we do grown-up “work,” but admit that it’s akin to child’s play.  Ask Bruce Springsteen how he accumulated his hundred million dollar booty and he’ll tell you honestly, it was from playing the guitar.  Ask Susan Sarandon about her eighty million dollar stash, she’ll tell you honestly, it came from playing roles.  Wonder where Bill Maher was this weekend?  Chances are good he was in Las Vegas, playing at Caesar’s Palace while it’s a good bet that Alec Baldwin might right now be in New York, playing in a play that’s playing in a playhouse.  To expect a Sean Penn to have any great insight into the issues of war and peace because he played soldier for a while is as wise as turning over your household finances to your six-year-old daughter because she just finished counting to ten.

These are the things that attract the child – the Liberal – to show business.  What tends to keep him Liberal is the fact that he doesn’t have to know anything.  In fact, in one of the most oft-quoted books about the inner workings of Hollywood, screenwriter William Goldman writes “If there is a Roman Numeral One to this book (and I’m not sure there’s a Roman Numeral two) it’s this: (In Hollywood) Nobody knows anything.  But not only do the people in Hollywood tend to not know anything, they also don’t do anything.  The job of the actor is to pretend to be doing the things that the people who do things do.  But the actor – like the child – is all talk, but he’s no action.  And the thing is, when you don’t do anything, you don’t need to know what you’re talking about because, when you don’t do anything, what could possibly go wrong?

The fireman, for example, needs to know what he’s talking about because, if he’s wrong – if he misjudges his own abilities, mistakes those of his colleagues, reaches for the wrong equipment – he can get hurt.  In fact, he can get killed.  But, when Bruce Springsteen sings a song about what he thinks it might feel like if he were to ever do something like being a fireman, he doesn’t have to have a clue what he’s talking about (and doesn’t) because if he’s wrong, it’s no big deal for two minutes and twelve seconds later he’s pretending that he’s a highway patrolman.  If the soldier is wrong, he can get hurt.  He can get killed.  If Sean Penn, playing at being a soldier, is wrong about the soldier’s life, it’s not a problem because four weeks later he’s pretending to be something else about which he knows nothing.

The child can afford to be stupid because he’s never put in a place where what he believes comes with any cost or consequence.  The Hollywood star can remain forever stupid because his beliefs are never tested in the real world nor does he pay the price for his stupidity.  A unique aspect of Hollywood stardom is not only the virtually unparalleled riches enjoyed by even the moderately successful in show biz (a quarter of a century ago – so, adjust upwards for inflation – Goldman wrote that “A million dollars is what you pay the actor you don’t want”) but that these riches are garnered at an age unknown in any other field and unprecedented in human history.  Yes, there might be a CEO here or a COO there whose income approaches what a Springsteen pulls out of his mailbox every day in residuals, the difference is that that the most successful of businessmen spent twenty, thirty or forty years making his way to the top and was likely in his forties or fifties before he became the boss.  Springsteen was “The Boss” while he was still fighting his teenage acne, while George Clooney was pocketing millions, being waited on hand and foot and called by those many decades his elder, “Mr. Clooney” (as in “You’re right, Mr. Clooney, oh, you’re so smart and wonderful, Mr. Clooney”) from before the boy reached puberty.

The fabulous riches enjoyed by the wunderkinds and the prepubescent isolate the Hollywood star even further from the costs and consequences of clinging to his infantile beliefs.  When one lives in a world where there are no costs or consequences – the child’s parents’ home or their mansion in Little Holmby Hills – there is no reason to think through what one believes because, in this utopia, the only right answer is the utopian answer.  If there are no costs or consequences, sure, why not let illegal aliens flood our shores.  Why shouldn’t they be allowed to live anywhere they want?  If there are no costs or consequences, what the hey, why not give everybody lots of paid vacation days and year after year after year of free paychecks now dubbed “unemployment” and “welfare” checks.

In fact, when there are no costs or consequences to what you believe, then not only is the utopian policy the only right policy, anyone who raises even the slightest objection to it is not merely wrong in his policy, he’s downright evil.  After all, if there are no costs or negative consequences to illegal aliens swarming our shores, then the only possible reason anyone could oppose the utopian open borders and blanket amnesty of the Liberal is either that they’re racists or filled with an insane fear (some “phobia” or another.)

Isolated by their riches – and with those riches, isolated geographically from all those they literally see as beneath them (as in looking down from the hills of Beverly or the slopes at Aspen, etc) – there are no consequences to them.  If illegal aliens destroy the public schools it’s not a problem for those with this kind of wealth, for their children (if they even have children) go to private academies.  If Obama’s utopian healthcare scheme (you know state-of-the-art medical care for life for everyone!!!) destroys what is now the best healthcare system in the world, it affects the Hollywood star not at all.  He’ll still have a private floor set aside for him with the best of the best of the best care humanly possible at Cedar Sinai and NYU.  Crime in the streets?  Not his streets for his are behind a gate, privately patrolled, with their own walled-in mansions protected by the state-of-the-art security system they found in a bag under their seat all for attending one of the four thousand parties and award shows with their gift baskets valued at more money than the average American makes in half-a-decade.

Now, allow me to be clear.  I am not saying that Bruce Springsteen stands on the veranda of one of his many (many, many) mansions (“I’ve got a mansion, forget the price. Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice,” sang Joe Walsh about the life of a rock star) looking down at the losers below, hands on hips, bellowing “Bwa-hahahah!!!  I shall use my money and power to destroy the public schools because my children go to private academies, bwa-hahahaha!!!”  Instead, this wunderkind director who was rich beyond belief before he’d spent a second being poor, simply doesn’t know what the real world is like.  How would he?  How could he?

Instead what happens is, one day Springsteen walks into a room where (gasp) someone is watching Fox News.  Before he can run yelling and screaming about what Nazis and fascists and Hitlers everyone at Fox is (Liberals think that anyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi for the same reason the small child thinks that a parent who tells them it’s bedtime is “the worst father in the history of the world.”  It’s not because it’s true, it’s because the child and the Liberal has no concept of what the rest of the world is like) – he catches a glimpse of a story about gang violence in the schools.  The image bothers him – could the Goebbels at Newscorp really have fabricated the whole thing?

He tries mightily to forget about that awful image – he plays with one multimillion dollar toy and then another – but he can’t shake that rare contact with the outside world.  And so, when his daughter comes home he asks her, “Honey, did you see any gang violence at your school today?”  And she replies, “What the f—?  At Harvard-Westlake???  Come on, dad, you know the only gang violence we’ve ever had was back in 1972 when the polo team pantsed the rowing club.  Of course, that was before they stopped playing polo cause someone could get hurt and defunded the rowing team because not everyone could win.”

For some, that would be enough.  But not for Bruuuuuce, because Bruce cares.  He really, really cares.  So he goes down to his climate controlled garage, picks one of his 18 vintage classic cars and he drives.  He drives and he drives and he drives and he drives until he reaches his next door neighbor’s house.  He knocks on the door and when the man answers he says, “Jackson.  Jackson Browne, did your kids see any gang violence in their school today?”  And Jackson takes another long toke on his spliff, coughs out with a leer, “kids?  I’m sure I have some, just never met ‘em, if you know what I mean…rock star!!!”

But Bruce cares.  He really, really, really cares.  So he gets back in the Maserati, blasts his Bose speakers, and he drives.  And he drives and he drives and he drives and he drives till he gets to the next house.  He knocks, the owner answers, he says: “Alec!  Alec Baldwin.  I know you have a daughter, did she see any gang violence in her school today today?”  And Baldwin instantly becomes morose.  He starts to cry, “That is the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard.  You know the courts don’t allow me to see my daughter anymore.”

And Bruce drives.  You know why?  It’s because he cares.  And he drives and he drives and he drives and he drives until he gets to the next house.  He knows.  “Charlie!  Charlies Sheen…”

For the most part the Hollywood Liberal isn’t evil, he just doesn’t have a clue.  He’s never spent a moment in the real world.  He doesn’t know anyone who has spent a moment in the real world.  He goes from the gated-in studio into the backseat of his private car to his gated community where he parties behind his or his neighbor’s giant walls.  His beliefs are never tested by consequences because his money and his stature protect him from them – and has, if he was a child actor, for his entire life; if he’s a rock star, he has been protected since long before the stage of life known as “adulthood” hits.  He’s all talk but no action, meaning he doesn’t need to know what he’s talking about – in fact, according to the experts, none of them know anything – and he doesn’t need to know how to do anything.  His entire life is play.  Hollywood is dominated by Liberals because there simply is no better profession for people who don’t know anything and don’t know how to do anything.  It’s all play, it’s all pretend, it’s all without consequences.  It’s “high school with money.”  It’s a place where you can reach the top having learned everything you’ll ever need to know in kindergarten.

As Shapiro points out, TV has grown increasingly liberal over the past 50 years.  Although he is only 27 years old, he has been diligent in his historical research.  Moreover, because he is young, Jewish and wore his Harvard Law baseball cap when he interviewed the writers, producers and network executives, who have created the product and scheduled the programming over the years, they all assumed he was, like them, a devout leftist.

I suspect that even without the baseball cap, these limousine liberals would have probably assumed that, like everyone else who enters their well-insulated bubble, Shapiro idolized Barack Obama.  Why else would they not have bothered checking out his credentials?  After all, in spite of being a practicing attorney, Shapiro has written three previous books, all espousing his conservative values, and is a contributor to several right-wing blogs.

Even I, who personally know several of the makers and shakers in the industry, was shocked to read some of the things they had to say about conservatives.  You would have thought they were discussing jihadists, except they are generally far more respectful when referring to the people who wish to behead us.  It’s only when it comes to writers and actors with whom they have political differences, that they’re united in their desire to see them blacklisted or, better yet, dead.

The irony of course is that these are the same self-righteous characters who have carried on incessantly about the inequity of the industry’s having blacklisted Communists 60 years ago.  Hypocrisy aside, there is a world of difference that is apparent to most normal, fair-minded people, between a conservative opposing ObamaCare and a Communist tithing 10% of his MGM salary to the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin was starving millions of Russians to death and assassinating his political rivals.  Even the fact that Stalin had his boot on the neck of hundreds of millions of people who had the misfortune of living in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, was of no concern to the Hollywood lefties.  It should be noted that these were the same folks who made Siberia, the hellish place to which Stalin exiled Jews and other nuisances, the tagline to a thousand benign jokes in a way they’d have never dared with Auschwitz or Buchenwald. 

I was indeed fortunate that, thanks to having been born into a Russian-Jewish home, I was raised to believe the sun rose and set on FDR.  Once something is virtually ingrained in your DNA, it’s hard to break free.  In my case, it was the combination and contrast of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan that ultimately did the trick.  But in terms of my career, it’s lucky that I didn’t come to my senses any sooner than I did.

Even though the TV movies I wrote weren’t political, it probably wouldn’t have saved me from being ostracized.  After reading “Primetime Propaganda” and discovering how very much Gene Reynolds, Allan Burns, Leonard Stern, Grant Tinker, Gary David Goldberg, James Brooks and Larry Gelbart, despised conservatives, I have to assume that I would never have had the opportunity to write episodes of  “McMillan & Wife,” “MASH,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Family Ties,” “Rhoda,” “The Governor & J.J.” or “Bob Newhart.”

Oddly enough, I broke in during the late 60s, writing a bunch of “Dragnet” scripts for Jack Webb.  The fact is I didn’t have to conceal my true feelings in order to write for the show that Shapiro ranks as the fifth most conservative series of all time.  Even back then, I was pro-cops and pro-military.  Somehow, in spite of my upbringing, I managed to be a registered Democrat without being a complete bonehead. 

I now recall that a few minutes after my first “Dragnet” episode aired, an acquaintance, writer Harlan Ellison, phoned me.  In lieu of “Hello,” he snarled, “I never knew you were a fascist!”  Then, in typical left-wing fashion, he hung up.  It’s very possible that was when my politics began evolving.  It is, after all, a prime example of the sort of fair and open-minded discourse I’ve come to expect from liberals.

Although Shapiro quotes me a few times (pages 69, 77 and 244, for those discerning readers too cheap to spring for the book), he left out — perhaps because I forgot to mention it — the one time I encountered political blowback during my TV writing career.

In 1990, I foolishly turned 50.  I say “foolishly” because if there’s one thing TV hates more than conservative writers, it’s aging ones.  Liberals oppose bigotry and discrimination unless, of course, they’re the ones doing the discriminating.

My mood over the next several years ranged from bleak to suicidal as unemployment led inevitably to the sale of our condo, the cashing in of my life insurance and, finally, to bankruptcy.  In 1999, though, through dumb luck and a series of quirky circumstances, I landed a spot on the writing staff of the Dick Van Dyke series, “Diagnosis Murder.”

The rest of the writing staff consisted of three male, left-wing, middle-aged yuppies.  The producer had hired them back in June.  By December, they decided they were working too hard and insisted that another writer be brought on board.  What they didn’t know was that they were inviting a viper into their midst.

When they discovered that I was not only a Republican, but that I despised Bill Clinton and had every intention of doing whatever I could to keep Al Gore from succeeding him, they made me feel about as welcome as heat rash.

To be fairer to them than they were to me, their attacks consisted mainly of witless jibes and juvenile ridicule, mainly questioning the intelligence of anyone who would even consider voting for a conservative.  For a while, it saddens me to admit, I took it because I really needed the paycheck.

Then one day, as if a huge light had been switched on, it occurred to me that they needed me.  I worked harder and longer hours and, what’s more, wrote better than they did.  That morning, taking the bit in my teeth, I interrupted their sophomoric prattle long enough to announce that the good times were over, and that they would have to either find a new target or grow up.

I explained as patiently as I could that I wasn’t opposed to bi-lingual education because I was a bigot, but because it holds Latino kids back academically and makes them hate school so much that they can’t wait to drop out.  Which, as we all know, they do in record numbers.

I told the three brats that if I was in favor of capital punishment, it wasn’t because I was bloodthirsty — or at least not just because I was bloodthirsty — but because, as a conservative, I naturally empathize with the victim, not the murderer.

Furthermore, I went on, throwing down the gauntlet, if any or all of them wished to debate any issue under the sun, I’d be more than happy to oblige.  Nobody accepted the challenge, but from that day on, the not-so-good-natured ribbing came to an end.

By the time the 2000 presidential election rolled around, we were all getting along just fine.  They even gave me a pass when Bush defeated Gore.  After all, by then they knew I was a lost cause.  Instead, like sharks smelling blood in the water, two of them turned on the third.  It seems the lunkhead made the fatal mistake of confessing that he’d voted for Ralph Nader.

I recall wondering at the time how he could have been so dumb as to admit he’d deserted Gore in his time of need.  But no sooner was I trying to solve that mystery than a little voice in my head that sounded a lot like Jackie Mason was screaming: “How could he have been so dumb?  Schmuck, he’s a liberal!”