Click here for Part 1 on Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda, here for Part 2 on Roger L. Simon’s Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine and here for part 3 on David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge.

A new kind of film emerged in the late ‘80s and first half of the 1990s to as an alternative to the mind-numbing noise of the Boomer Blockbusters. Smaller studios like Miramax rose to champion independent films. Generation X auteurs shaped by obsessive home video viewing – Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Darren Aronofsky – passed on the Hollywood path and instead built careers through low budget, DIY productions. “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sydney,” “El Mariachi,” “Clerks,” and “Pi” launched careers that would lead to Academy Awards and some of the most exciting films of the 1990s and 2000s.

These filmmakers’ origins are true to the generational temperament of their peers.

Children born in the ‘60s and ‘70s did not grow up in the affluence and tranquility of the 1950s consensus. Instead they took a backseat as the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s raged. It was now when the younger Silent and Boomer Generations rose up to challenge the cultural institutions built and maintained by the GI Generation who fought World War II.

The children of this era were forced to become independent, entrepreneurial, and innovative early on. Unlike the Boomers growing up in the ‘50s and the Millennials in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Gen-Xers were not protected. The adults were too busy with the cultural chaos of the ‘60s and ‘70s to be the parents they should have been. Thus, Gen X knew that they had no one to rely on except for themselves. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in their histories of American generations, this is standard for “Reactive” generations – and equips them for crises come middle-age. George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman were all part of “Reactive” generations too. (more…)

A common refrain used by progressives against conservatives is a deconstructionist war against the concept that there even is such a thing as the Left: “There’s so much diversity and disagreement in ‘the Left’ that you can’t just call it ‘the Left.’”

This is just a defense mechanism the leftist employs to avoid having to actually examine their movement. Cult members need to have criticism of their cult obscured. It’s the equivalent of “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club…”

There’s a grain of truth here, though. All leftists share core ideas – particularly hatred of conservatives and an infinite faith in big government – but there is a range of thought, not unlike denominations within religions. There are variations in doctrine and tactics between Marxists, Alinskyites, Mother Jones populist progressives, Nation socialists, Daily Kos Democrats, Counterpunch communists, and Dissent social democrats. Grouping them all together under the label “the Left” is no more inaccurate than describing Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans as Christian.

Today, thanks to the extraordinary journalism and research of Ben Shapiro for his must-read book Primetime Propaganda, the focus is on one “church” in particular: the Hollywood Left. (more…)

If you tuned in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, you probably caught El Rushbo talking about Andrew’s new book.  Rush reminds us that Andrew, yes, Andrew Breitbart, “was a big lefty until he heard me.”  Me, meaning…Rush Limbaugh.

YouTube

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

John Hawkins of RightWing News recently interviewed Andrew Breitbart about his new book.  It’s a fun interview and a great read!

I always find it fascinating when people who used to be liberal say they turned to the right. That happened with you. Can you tell us about it?

Well, it’s a cliché from the left to the right. And it’s usually a story of opportunism in those few cases where the people move from the right to the left. It’s almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible. It was go-along to get-along social. It was living in Los Angeles, being young, and single, and flowing with the trendy liberal crowd.

When I started to work in Hollywood at a fairly low level delivering scripts around town, listening to AM talk radio, I at first listened to it as a novelty. But I started to have certain things in my life going on such as living in a rent controlled apartment, having listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, the OJ Simpson trial — I just started to see trends in my personal experiences that ran so contrary to what the media narratives were. At first I was flummoxed by it and then I just started to listen to certain people on the radio who were more clear thinking than the professors that I had in college.

I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose high lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense but I thought that was my problem. So when I started to listen to conservative thinkers and to read conservative thinkers, there was a clarity of thought. It wasn’t muddled. It wasn’t confusing. It started to make sense at an intellectual level and tie into the values that my parents gave me when I was a young kid that I diverted from when I was in high school.

So it was basically a reconnecting with everything that my parents attempted to instill in me in my youth. It has made me sleep a lot better at night, being centered and oriented with human nature as opposed to living in a world of self loathing nihilism, trying to undo human nature, and trying to create a path towards an unrealistic utopia.

Now, you were recently banned from the front page of The Huffington Post….

Oh, the tragedy of my life.

(Laughs) It is, it is. Apparently you made some sort of ad hominem attack on Van Jones and The Huffington Post has a policy against that. It must have been in place for at least two minutes or so before you were banned. Can you talk about that?

Read the entire review at RightWing News.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

There has been a monsoon in Timbale. Anna, leader of the Visitors, intercedes with her technology. Questioned off the record, the Secretary General of the U.N. accuses Anna of “playing politics with tragedy. She used the people of Timbale to gain public and political clout.”

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

The former is an excerpt from the ABC television show ”V.”  The latter, the cynical assessment of President Obama’s consigliore and Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel of the economic crisis occurring in the United States.

An opportunity to do what things you think you could not do before?  Health care reform? Cap and tax? Government takeover of car companies, banks, and executive pay?

I think the remake of “V” currently showing on ABC must surely have been conceived as a metaphor. The alien visitors whose ships hover over multiple U.S. cities, and who plot to woo humans to join them to achieve their own veiled purpose, are equivalent to the current administration in Washington. Radicals, schooled by Saul Alinsky, affecting cleverly cultivated pleasing faces and voices. (more…)

UPDATE: The bounty is now $100,000 for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled at Congressmen John Lewis and Andre Carson.

***

After 14 months of committing 100% to health care reform, the day after the signing of the Health Care bill was to mark the Democratic Party’s new primary concern: destroy the uprising, annihilate by all means necessary, the Tea Party movement.

The first sign that a plan was in place was the ham-fisted, high-camp posturing of the most controversial members of the Democratic caucus walking through the peaceful but animated “Tea Party” demonstrators on Capitol Hill. There is no reason for these elected officials to walk above ground through the media circus amid their ideological foes. The natural route is the tunnels between the House office buildings and the Capitol. By crafting a highly symbolic walk of the Congressional Black Caucus through the majority white crowd, the Democratic Party was looking to provoke a negative reaction. They didn’t get it. So they made it up.

The proof that the N-word wasn’t said once, let alone 15 times, as Rep. Andre Carson claimed, is that soon thereafter — even though the press dutifully reported it as truth — Nancy Pelosi followed the alleged hate fest, which allegedly included someone spitting, by walking through the crowd with a gavel in hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. Had the incidents reported by the Congressional Black Caucus actually occurred the Capitol Police would have been negligent to allow the least popular person to that crowd – the Speaker – to put herself in harm’s way.

That crowd was a sea of new-media equipment. Not only were tens of thousands people armed with handicams, BlackBerrys and iPods, so also was the mainstream media there, covering every inch of the event. Why did not one mainstream media outlet raise the specter that perhaps a video would exist to prove the events occurred? I am still dealing with the same press telling me we didn’t prove that ACORN was aiding and abetting criminal activity because we “did not provide enough audio and video evidence.” (Insert laugh track.) Is there not a blatant double standard at play here? Nancy Pelosi tipped her hand that race was a central part of her strategy. She invoked the Civil Rights Act and compared it with the universally reviled health care bill. Her caucus is doubling down on the civil-rights rhetoric. There are no coincidences.

(more…)

One of the things I think most about is national security. Oh sure, my posts here at Big Hollywood are usually snarky takes on the idiocy we witness daily from clueless Hollywoodites like James Cameron, but national security issues feature prominently in many of my writings elsewhere. I also belong to a group in New York City, whose members gather monthly to hear experts speak about the various threats we face, especially from Islamic jihad.

American Nick Berg, just before his beheading by jihadists in 2004

Yes, jihad. That’s what it is. Not “the war on terror,” not an “overseas contingency operation.” Jihad. Say it. It’s not that hard. I often wonder how the experts whose lectures I hear sleep at night, knowing what they know about an ideology whose adherents want to kill us all.

And I often wonder how serious President Barack Obama is about keeping Americans safe. Considering the results of his first year in office, I’m definitely not encouraged. (more…)

“The only way to upset the power structure in your communities is to goad them, confuse them, irritate them and, most of all, make them live by their own rules. If you make them live by their own rules, you destroy them. And never forget that ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. Comedy is our friend. Throw the kitchen sink at them!” – from Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radical Comedians.”

Alinsky

I never really had any insight into the pure comic genius of Saul Alinsky until I saw his new age Method followers display their considerable chops on the national stage. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, the Master’s ostentatious and envelope-pushing Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner-like proteges, whose hilarious ACORN skits also showed brilliant flashes of the late great Allen Funt. The Mysterious Mister X, the L.A. street comic who “Alinskyed” Faris Alkhateeb’s boredom-fueled Obama Joker art into an urban poster as devilishly humorous as Hannibal Lecter, also made as big a national splash as a 300-pound chub doing a cannonball into a crowded public kiddie pool. (more…)

“It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord. But, you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” – Bob Dylan

“Rule #7: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

For a presidential candidate to dispatch his agents of Change® to recruit artists & entertainers into his campaign is one thing. He understandably wished to avoid becoming old news. Heck, even radical activists get bored. So, to maintain their excitement and involvement, professional community organizers must constantly devise new tactics. And, as so many enjoy smugly reminding us all, “the ‘One’ won!”

Poli-end-zone-dances notwithstanding, for the President of the United States of America to use the power of his Office and the lure of his NEA’s favor, potential grant funds and the ideological “yes, we-can-change-the-world” Hope® & prestige for artists to create promotional propaganda for his Serve.gov & Corporation for National & Community Service partisan political agenda, produces an entirely different pattern and data set. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.

His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others – especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn’t do enough.

But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don’t do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage – the GWB43 virus – has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

(more…)

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, fifty six of our forefathers signed their names to the Declaration of Independence. They brought forth a new nation conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

They started a war. My ancestor, Francis Lightfoot Lee was one of those men. They started the revolution that birthed this nation. 

Now we are engaged at a crossroads of history, testing whether the leaders of this nation so conceived and dedicated, still hold those same truths and ideals to be self-evident. 

Iranian citizens have taken to the streets of their cities in the pursuit of freedom and liberty. They sought, and deserved, their own revolution. The Iranian government murdered and persecuted them for it. Our government voted present.  (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Democrats invest – with taxpayer money, mind you – in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the “education system” have done the rest, making “D” the default choice on Election Day.

Democrats brazenly take policy positions – think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants – not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it.

(more…)

In an age when a waiter is a server, an actress is a female actor, and a dubiously-competent socialist cult leader is an American president, it was only a matter of time before the “Global War on Terror” became an “Overseas Contingency Operation” (OCO).  Thus Spoke Zarathustra this week via a memo sent to the Pentagon and select speech writers, officially establishing Team Obama’s redesigned terminology.  The War is over, long live the Operation! This should show the road-side bombers, suicide bombers, bombers-in-burqas, snipers-for-Allah, and other assorted, blood-thirsty, Jihadist savages that the US really means business now.  Victory through euphemism!

The unveiling of OCO capped-off a terror euphemism trifecta for the administration.  Previously, the Justice Department scrapped the ghastly “enemy combatant” to describe war prisoners in favor of the much more uplifting, “detainee.”  Additionally, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano─who may be the only member of the administration more intellectually troubled than Tim Geitner─rebranded terrorism as “man-caused disaster.” (To review:  mail carrier; police officer; business person; but man-caused disaster… maybe the errant sexism has something to do with Ms. Napolitano’s romantic leanings.)   (more…)