You have to wonder if Steve Banen has children and, if so, how he might feel sitting in a theater that promoted the National Rifle Association, exposed the lie that is Global Warming, or mocked Barack Obama as the failure he is. Because, you know, Banen doesn’t see anything wrong with sucker punching parents with political messaging in films advertised as innocent children’s fare.

This, however, says it all:

For the record, I’ve never seen or read any of the entertainment these conservatives don’t like, so I’m not really in a position to defend the content. But when far-right Fox personalities perceive secret political messages from the Muppets, it’s a reminder that conservatives sometimes have too much time on their hands.

On principle, I guess, you can oppose conservatives warning parents about the content in movies. But it’s an indefensible principle.

Leftists hate that parents now have the information they need to go around Hollywood’s left-wing propaganda machine. That same hate drives their opposition to home schooling. It’s just a fact that the left wants our kids for those 180 days a year to brainwash them into the next generation’s Occupy Wall Street.

If you’ve been watching, the whole of the entertainment media is currently in full mockery mode over the controversy surrounding the new Muppet movie, but that’s just a symptom of their frustration and a desire to pretend they’re not frustrated. You see, the left feels entitled to the culture and, any loss of power or control freaks them out in the same way a single right-of-center cable news channel in a sea of liberalism freaks them out.

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Need a break from all the bad news saturating our airwaves, printed news, and cyberspace about the sad state of affairs we face as a Nation?  Tired of all the political correctness and leftist group-think disguised as “art” being foisted upon us by the left?  Fed up with the elitist Hollywood liberals’ unabashed hatred for all-things-conservative as so brilliantly exposed in Ben Shapiro’s explosive new best-seller “Primetime Propaganda”?

You’re not alone.

With the advent of do-it-yourself internet radio shows and webcasts, the number of grassroots, conservative talk show hosts augmenting the daily news stories covered by conservative kingpins like El Rushbo and The Great One is growing exponentially.  These citizen activists are effectively using new media venues to circumvent the barrage of liberal propaganda spewed by today’s so-called ‘journOlists’ and Hollywood celebs.

What is noticeably missing, however, are radio shows and webcasts that focus primarily on conservative pop culture.   Most, if not all, of the internet shows provide the hosts’ commentary on current news and politics because, like it or not, it’s what’s on most everyone’s minds these days.  But what do we conservatives have right now that is just for entertainment that is NOT laced with the ill-informed, anti-American ideology of the left?  Not much, if anything…

Until now.

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—–

Via Wikipedia:

Captain Planet and the Planeteers is an American animated environmentalist television program, based on an idea by Ted Turner and Robert Larkin III.^[2][3] The show was produced by Andy Heyward, Robby London, Barbara Pyle and Nicholas Boxer. The series was developed and co-produced by Turner Program Services along with the partnership of DiC Entertainment and ran new episodes from September 15, 1990 until December 5, 1992. A sequel series, The New Adventures of Captain Planet, ran for three seasons and was produced by Turner Broadcasting and then-corporate sibling Hanna-Barbera Productions. Both programs continue today in syndication.^[4]

The program is a form of edutainment and advocates environmentalism.

On Andy Heyward:

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 Because I’ve just finished reading my friend, Ben Shapiro’s excellent new expose, “Primetime Propaganda,” I’m reminded how fortunate I am that during most of the time I was writing for television, I was a Democrat.  Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have had a TV career at all.

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. 

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You watch a few of these new “Lean Forward” ads and the approach becomes obvious, director Spike Lee and MSNBC are hoping to fool people into thinking  they’re all about ”The People,” “The  Kids,” and “The America.” An extreme left-wing message stewed in Hollywood magic for that home-grown, down-home, God-Bless-America flavor.

But if you look closely, what we’re being told is that it’s patriotic to take away people’s liberties with ObamaCare, truly American to spend our children and grandchildren into oblivion, and wholesome to punish prosperity.

In a nutshell: Government-enforced equality over individual liberty is baseball, hot dogs, mom, and apple pie!

This is all about 2012, folks. All about couching Obama’s extremist message and failed policies into something the independents he lost in 2010 can tolerate.  Everyone together now: Thanks Hollywood!

But this isn’t 2008 and we are on to you this time.

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Perhaps one of the most established venues for the medium of documentary filmmaking is the renowned Sundance Film Festival.  For decades, Robert Redford had already been calling Americans apathetic to political propaganda and to issues such as global warming.  Once George W. Bush got into office, Redford ratcheted up his rhetoric, and, like Soros, he even starting taking foreign relations into his own hands in some cases.

And so it was no surprise when in 2002, Soros turned over stewardship of his documentary fund to Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute.

As Dr. David Yeagley, an American Indian author and political commentator wrote,

“On September 16, 2002, Robert Redford proudly announced at a press conference that he was launching a Sundance International Documentary Fund with $4.6 million in seed money from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). The new fund would underwrite films aimed at “promoting social justice and social change.” (more…)

[Ed. Note: Please visit Big Journalism for the full "Cry Wolf" series.]

Patrick Courrielche’s kickoff article exposing major university faculty and graduate students’ Cry Wolf Project is alarming. Each installment in the series has only made it more so.

CWP’s solicitation for policy briefs designed to construct politically driven narratives is a confession of academic malpractice. As Kurt Schlichter has pointed out, its participants’ intentions are unethical, insubordinate, and potentially illegal.

The CWP email shows its players to be intolerant of varying viewpoints in the pursuit of their ideological ends. The fact that they are offering colleagues and grad students money to predetermine outcomes proves their intent: to tell partisan political stories:

Drier-Email –

What are they afraid of? (more…)

So I saw Avatar. I dug the CGI and thought the 3D was cool. As always, James Cameron delivers with the action sequences. Sam Worthington is really likable. Sigourney Weaver is good as always. Michelle Rodriguez kicks ass, which is pretty much what she does.

As I left the theater however, I found myself quite disappointed. Not because my conservative “propaganda sensor” was going into overdrive. No, I pretty much knew what to expect based on Cameron’s resume and the synopsis of the film I read eight or ten years ago. I was disappointed because the film, with it’s cheesy, hippie message left me feeling empty and unaffected. I thought about all the films I’ve seen, films that cost a fraction of Avatar’s budget, that were so much more effective emotionally. Even if I didn’t agree with the political message.

A big problem with the film is the simplistic and superficial way that it tries to convey its themes. I think a lot of the conservative critics of the film have made a mistake by analyzing it in a similarly simplistic way.

I made the point in an earlier post that when filmmakers add subtext to their screenplays they often inadvertently add conservative messages and themes. These themes and messages are universal, they cut to the very core of humanity and appeal to our basic instincts and emotions. Leftist thought is predominantly contradictory. It is overly emotional on the surface, but attempts to deal with issues from a theoretical and intellectual perspective. “We need to save the polar bears, so let’s establish a complex and unfair wealth redistribution system.” Enough said. (more…)

Many of you know the story of Jerry Maguire, the agent with a conscience. Ya, I know. It’s only a movie. But sometimes movies can be great moral guideposts. Ironic that I should use one of Hollywood’s finest morality plays to illustrate how Tinseltown should operate at its most basic level.

In Jerry Maguire, the key conflict was Jerry’s realization that he was putting a pretty facade on the moral deterioration within his profession, and was in fact complicit in it. It took an injured hockey player’s young son telling him to fuck off and a bad dream for Maguire to realize the true ugliness of who and what he had become, especially when measured against the high standards of his idol and mentor, agent Dicky Fox. Those troubling events created in Maguire a perfect storm of revulsion, introspection and a commitment to reaffirm the basic principles of his profession, which he laid out in his memo “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” In truth, he had me at hello. Tom’s a hottie! (more…)

Images have power. Propaganda and marketing are based on the power of the image and the thoughts and feelings that the image conveys. A photo op pulled off well can make a politician’s career. A photo op done badly will torpedo it.

Michael Dukakis riding around in a tank destroyed his presidential run. So is the power of imagery.

When I was a teenager a street artist named Robbie Conal put up grotesque pictures around Los Angeles of Ronald Reagan and his cabinet members like James Watt and Ed Meese.

These images had power over the long term and many street posters by Conal, other artists, a left-wing media and academia all worked in aggregate to change West LA which was Reagan’s home district to the left-wing bastion of “people’s republics” communities it is today. I am not asserting that Conal alone had this affect, but in interviews from the mid-eighties, Conal clearly stated that it was his goal to change public perception and public opinion with his art. (more…)

An extraordinary film just came out on DVD which couldn’t be more timely.  It’s about a fiercely outspoken, beautiful woman trapped in a country rapidly descending into socialism, with the government steadily ratcheting up control over all aspects of life.

No, it’s not The Ann Coulter Story.

The movie is We The Living, based on the Ayn Rand novel of the same title.  Rand said that We The Living “is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write.”

Conservatives and libertarians have long lamented the scarcity of movies that depict the evils of communism.  Let’s see, there’s Doctor Zhivago, The Killing Fields, The Lives of Others, and… and, well, now there’s We The Living — a long-lost classic filmed in 1942, and now available on DVD for the first time ever.

WTL takes place soon after the Bolshevik takeover of Russia (which Rand experienced as a young woman).  The stunning Alida Valli plays Kira, a fiery college student who detests the communists ruining her country.  (Valli is perhaps best known to American audiences for her indelible performances in The Third Man and The Paradine Case.) (more…)

How much access can a possible agent of influence for state sponsors of terrorism buy from President Barack Obama? For Jodie Evans, a progressive Hollywood activist, the going rate appears to be $30,400 for dinner and a conversation.

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

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Obama supporters are outraged that the president is called a socialist or a fascist by many of his detractors. But the reason for this just doesn’t just flow from his policies, which often follow the template of a statist dictator’s power grabs.

What’s disconcerting about these NEA revelations is they clearly show the administration trying to use NEA artists for propaganda means. Not
artistic propaganda. Propaganda isn’t art. It’s an advertisement for an agenda.

PROPAGANDA (according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary)
1. the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
2 ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect (more…)

It was so much fun watching the ACORN people try and spin their way out of oblivion for the last couple of weeks.  After the first video was posted on Big Government.com they, of course, claimed it was an isolated incident and that the filmmakers were kicked out of numerous other ACORN offices.  When that proved to be false, they tried in vain to claim that the videos were faked and that their employees were the victims of CGI or something and not of their own stupidity and corruption.  When that didn’t work they claimed that the filmmakers, Andrew Breitbart and the entire Fox News network were racist.  Yawn.

NEA’s Yosi Sergant

Monday, we have the NEA under the microscope.  The Obama Administration was caught red-handed (is that “racist”?) funneling tax payer dollars into an official propaganda department.  I can’t wait to see what the excuse will be this time.

These people have mastered the art of defending the indefensible.

Let’s set aside the stupidity of this move.  Anyone familiar with the NEA knows that it pretty much exists to fund leftist propaganda disguised as art.  Officially coordinating it is a bit redundant. (more…)

My old Communist girlfriend was an exotically beautiful actress whose parents had emigrated from Russia and settled in New York City. Nola went to Party meetings and kept up with the correct way to think and behave by reading The Daily Worker. This was back in the fifties. In those days, the bulldog edition of the next morning’s Times, Tribune, News, Mirror and even the Worker would appear at the news stand on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Forty Second Street shortly before midnight. Actors, anxious to read tomorrows review of the latest Broadway play would be waiting there, along with entertainers curious to see if they’d made it into Walter Winchell in the Mirror or Ed Sullivan in the News.

Beautiful Nola was anxious to read the review of the new Off-Broadway show she’d just opened in. The Times and Trib would be covering it but Nola wanted to see what The Daily Worker had to say. Her face fell when she read it. The play was a socially relevant drama, of course, about the struggles of the Negro. She had chosen a dazzling white suit for her wardrobe. The critic said that this was unconscious racism on her part. She had, in fact, picked the suit because it made her boobs look good.  (more…)

From the riots and chaos of the 1960s to the anti-war rallies of the Bush years, the American Left’s revolution has been widely televised. In fact, the Big Three and Dead Tree Press played a major part in that revolution. From negative field reporting during the Vietnam War to negative reporting on McCain/Palin and the beatification and election of Barack Obama, the MSM has been marching in lockstep and waving the banner for the American Left all the way. RatherGate, anyone? Doesn’t get much more lockstep than a reporter trying to subvert a presidential election to the Left’s advantage.

But there’s another revolution underway in America today, and you sure as hell won’t see it televised or reported on by our new fourth branch of government. It’s not in their interest to do so. Nothing new there. For a long time now, political corruption has been rampant in the Leftist ‘mainstream’ media. In 1998, Matt Drudge made his big mark breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which Newsweek had buried to protect President Clinton. Think Obama’s Tiger Beat would have done that for Bush? (more…)

According to a new study from Accuracy in Media, the Obama administration spends $100,000 per week on message control.  It seems in ObamaWorld, a picture is worth a thousand paychecks — $5 million a year distributed in salaries alone.  Everyone from ethnocentric Message Coordinators to Town Hall Organizers to Speechwriters will divvy it all up.

One of the little secrets in ObamaWorld is that, while the President made good on his promise not to raise salaries, he quietly added more high paid staff. Lots more. Hence, an army of image makers are paid by taxpayers to ensure the president’s message saturates the daytime airwaves, grocery aisle rags, demographically desirable blogs and that twitters are at full tilt.  Or, is that twit? (more…)

Warning: This post divulges the entire “Angels & Demons” plot. If you haven’t seen the movie and intend to, go no further for there be spoilers…

People whose opinions I respect have defended A&D as not being anti-Catholic. This is probably due to the end of the film which delivers a trumped up moment of warmth and reconciliation between Tom Hanks’ Robert Langdon character and the Church in the form of a new Pope.  From my perch, this moment is a subtle but devious cherry on top of a blisteringly unfair and wholly dishonest attack on the Church.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serial adulterer Martin Luther King, Jr.

One way to dishonestly destroy someone or something is to repeat only the negative about that someone or something. DreamWorks has just announced a new film about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and were it to focus solely on King’s extra-marital affairs no one would argue that the movie was anything other than a propaganda tool produced with the goal in mind of assassinating his character. (more…)

“The picture got great reviews but let’s take a chance anyway.” That’s what I usually say to my wife when we’re planning a night out at the movies. Critics and I are not usually on the same page. But the Disney release called “Earth,” a compendium of brilliant nature footage cribbed from a BBC series, seemed irresistible, even though it got raves. True, there’d been quibbling about the corn-ball narration and the selection of stentorian-voiced James Earl Jones to deliver it, but the summation of the reviews was: don’t miss it.

Disney had taken miles of extraordinary footage from the long-running English nature series and condensed and shaped it into a story of sorts: mama polar bear and her cubs emerge out of hibernation in the arctic snow, with the adorable babies blinking at their first sight of the summer sun. She begins the task of teaching them to survive. Papa bear, meanwhile, or “dad” as he’s known in the narration, is off on the ice floe, trying to catch a seal for his dinner. But “global warming” is making this difficult to do as the ice is breaking up earlier than usual. Dad falls into the frigid water and begins swimming for his life. He swims and swims till he gets to Antarctica where there is an abundance of seals. But dad is too weak from all that swimming, can’t nab a seal, and lies down and dies. End of family. (more…)

I remember when the term investigative journalism used to mean something. My first introduction to it was through Peter Maas’ seminal classic The Valachi Papers at the tender age of eleven. Hooked me right away. A year later, at the age of twelve,  I devoured William L. Shirer’s monumental and award-winning ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany.’ A very heady 1250 pages of fine print in paperback, and I do mean fine print. Worth its weight in gold.

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

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