But Kingsley is dead on when he describes how Hollywood has lost its way.

The actor, out on the promotional circuit to talk up his latest film, “Hugo,” told an interviewer at The Huffington Post what he really fears about the changing face of Hollywood – and the movies the industry cranks out.

I think the frustration or the anxiety is being reflected by the industry itself. This year, we have “My Week With Marilyn,” we have “The Artist,” and “Hugo.” They’re all exploring the narrative tradition of film, and once that narrative tradition has faded or broken or snapped, we’re going to be hard-pressed to repair it. So our anxiety in the business is, how do we ensure that we carry on making character-driven, narrative films? That’s our job as storytellers, and if we deviate from them and go to a film that is basically a string of sensationalist effects, the thread will snap and we’ll find that people will stop going to the cinema, because people always look for the story. However disguised or sugared-over it is, they look for the story, and once the story is not there anymore, I think we’ve had it.

Even some jaded film critics, like yours truly, can be part of the problem. I gave a conditional rave to “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” because its action sequences maxed out the pleasure center in my noggin. But the story itself was far from clear-eyed, and none of the characters were so compelling I wanted to spend another two hours with them.

But in today’s cinema marketplace, “Ghost Protocol” stood out as quality entertainment. Would I have felt the same 20 years ago? What about the film’s audience?

Ticket buyers are getting used to these high-concept, high-adrenaline features, the kind where the story is often relegated to the backdrop, assuming it’s given top priority at any stage in the developmental process.

Kingsley may be a tad too eager to work these days given a few of his less than insightful project choices. But he’s absolutely right about how movies are too often letting audiences down, and how this slippery slope could lead to a serious disconnect between audience and movie product.

Except the piece currently up at The Huffington Post is a lie. No one at Fox News called the Muppets communists – at least according to material quoted in the HuffPo story or via the link provided by the noxious Media Matters. Last time we checked, our dear friends on the left insist “liberal” does not equal “communist.” Did we miss a memo?

Yes, Fox News aired a segment in which the host and a guest called out “The Muppets,” the new film starring those felt and fur characters, for using an evil oil man as its go-to villain. Chris Cooper plays Tex Richman, an oil baron who wants to raze the old Muppet Theater to dig for oil.

In Hollywood, daring to cast a Muslim character can be considered a hate crime, but repeatedly casting businessmen, Christians and Southerners as villains is enlightened.

“The Muppets’” choice of villains is fair fodder for debate, especially since it’s hardly the first children’s film which eagerly inserted liberal messages into its story. Try watching “Monsters vs. Aliens” or either “Happy Feet” film for exhibits A, B, and C.

By dropping the ideological “C” word – communism – HuffPo only muddies the argument with an untruth.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias. It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

***

Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.

It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list…

…Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.

“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

Ackerman went on:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

***

Read the full article at the Daily Caller.

Today’s entertainment-industry conservatives can only wish they lived under the same type of blacklist practiced in the 1950s. As terribly misguided as that was, there was at least an honesty to it. There was an actual list and when you were on it you were told you were on it and understood why your phone had stopped ringing. This gave its victims something to fight against and better yet, no one tried to stereotype them as untalented, paranoid whiners for daring to mention its existence.  

Today’s Progressive Hollywood Blacklist is a much more insidious thing. By design it functions in a way that still punishes those who stray from the ideological plantation but like the elephant behind Jimmy Durante, remains hidden well enough in plain sight so that when you try to point it out, the progressive blacklisters can say, “What elephant?” even as they laugh in your face.

As we witnessed with Jonathan Kahn’s coming out in the Wall Street Journal last week, the Progressive Hollywood Blacklist is a system upheld with no small amount of help from the entertainment media. They are Leftist Hollywood’s professional character assassins specialized in the dark art of keeping the industry ideologically pure through the stereotyping of conservatives.

As you’ll see from the examples below, the new blacklist works in small ways and large, against big stars and those on the rise. Regardless, the entertainment media’s role is always a huge win-win for the intolerant Hollywood left. First, this dishonest stereotyping (usually through ridicule) of conservatives as no-talent malcontents makes them much less attractive to work with in any capacity — thus creating another excuse to keep conservatives away from the powerful and influential levers of our popular culture. Second, media’s cruel game of Conservative Whack-A-Mole is deliberately designed to send an intimidating message to anyone else thinking of declaring themselves as right-of-center. The more isolated industry conservatives are – the more alone they feel, the less likely they are to attempt to form the kind of alliance that wields any kind of influence. 

Patrick Goldstein

Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times:

Patrick Goldstein has been a senior film writer at the L.A. Times for decades. He’s also one of Hollywood’s chief ideological enforcers, constantly using his high-profile perch at the Incredible Shrinking Newspaper to run interference for any conservative criticism that comes Tinseltown’s way. As we demonstrated last week, when it comes to investigating a story that might derail the leftist narrative, whatever journalistic gene Goldstein might possess is completely smothered by the butt-boy one that keeps him in good stead with those he’s charged with covering.

But Goldstein is worse than just a denier/excuse-maker, he is a bonafide progressive blacklister doing his part to make conservatives unemployable in Hollywood.

Last week, in his savagely dishonest attack on Kahn, Goldstein used provable lies to smear the man. So effective was this hit job that any industry-insider who read Goldstein’s column would be perfectly in their rights to write Kahn off as something he is not – an untalented, has-been whiner.

In his article titled, ‘Tea party’ troubadour says: ‘In Hollywood, being a conservative is the kiss of death’, this is how Goldstein, one of the entertainment industry’s highest profile writers, described Kahn to industry insiders everywhere. Please read closely:

However, like so many other conservatives who have made “kiss of death” claims, Kahn can’t back it up. In the entire Journal story, he didn’t come up with even one tiny specific example of liberal bias against his work. Born into a wealthy Pacific Palisades family, the 42-year-old writer earned good reviews for an early 30-minute short, 1993’s “Chili Con Carne,” but in the ensuing years, according to IMDB, he’s only managed to direct one film, the 1998 teen drama, “Girl,” about groupies and rock stars in the Seattle music scene, which earned lukewarm reviews and barely got a release. 

Based on that very limited output, it’s seems like quite a stretch to say that Kahn’s politics have held him back. But that’s what all too many conservatives do. They put the blame for their stalled careers on liberal Hollywood, when lack of marketable talent might be a far more likely source for the problem.

1. Goldstein lumps all conservatives into the unattractive caricature he dishonestly paints of Kahn. This is how the blacklist works.

2. Goldstein scrounges the Web and focuses only on what he calls “limited output” to paint Kahn’s career as a has-been relic of the early nineties. This is how the blacklist works.

3. To make Kahn look like a complainer, Goldstein writes, “it seems like quite a stretch to say Kahn’s politics have held him back.” Huh? Where did that come from? Certainly not from Kahn.  The point of the article is that Kahn, who seems perfectly happy with his career, has been undercover all this time. This is how the blacklist works.

4. Though Goldstein was obviously eager and willing to Google-Google-Google to find the cherries necessary to pick Kahn apart, he willfully ignores — LIES through the sin of omission – the information that blows his caricature to pieces. From the WSJ:

One person stunned to hear of Mr. Kahn’s double life as a tea-party troubadour is top Hollywood record producer and Grammy Award-winner Walter Afanasieff. The two have worked on projects for years and are now midway through writing and producing an album for a young singer.

Goldstein Googles his way to a foregone conclusion, but the most relevant information about Kahn’s career  – found in the exact same WSJ article that inspired Goldstein’s hit-job in the first place – is intentionally ignored.

This is how the blacklist works.

Progressive Kryptonite

The fact that Jonathan Kahn has had a years-long working relationship with a top Grammy Award-winning record producer (who was kind enough to go on the record) wasn’t lost on Goldstein. He didn’t miss that. It just didn’t fit the unspoken mission statement to use his high-profile blog to dishonestly twist conservatives — and Kahn in particular — into someone no one would hire.

This is how the blacklist works.

How do you think Goldstein felt when he read this:

After digesting the news [Kahn is a conservative], [Afanasieff] adds, “It’s very wise he’s going incognito.”

On the record, that’s a top Grammy Award-winning producer saying entertainment industry conservatives would be wise to stay in the closet. Well, if you re-read Goldstein’s blacklisting smear-job you’ll know exactly how he felt when he read it — like he better cover it up.

Goldstein uses his entire piece to mock Kahn’s suggestion that being a conservative in Hollywood is “the kiss of death”, even as he proves Kahn 100% correct.

Kyle Buchanan at Movieline:

Movieline is a fairly new filmsite but don’t underestimate their influence. Their corral of superior snarksters enjoy all kinds of access to big name stars and directors. In other words, the industry reads them.

Kyle Buchanan chose to headline his piece about Kahn’s coming out this way:

Director of Obscure Dominique Swain Movie Refashions Himself as Tea Party Martyr

Like his fellow traveller Goldstein, Buchanan proves that he has plenty of time to Google up snark-worthy material, but quite intentionally he also refuses to mention Kahn’s years-long working relationship with a Grammy winning producer — or that producer’s statement about how it might be a good idea for industry conservatives to keep their mouths shut. 

This is how the blacklist works.

Then, even as Buchanan effectively blacklists Kahn through full-throated ridicule and lies of omission, he tosses out another maneuver straight from the Progressive Blacklisters Playbook: He trots out the openly-conservative Kelsey Grammer, Jon Cryer and Patricia Heaton as proof that there’s no blacklist (Goldstein’s pulled this ploy, as well).

This is obviously the bringing of oranges to an apple party. Comparing those who came out after they had already become famous to those like Kahn who who aren’t famous, is absurd on its face. And both Buchanan and Goldstein know this. But this is what dishonest leftists (did I just repeat myself?) do; they try to wear you down with nonsensical soundbite arguments.

Speaking of Patricia Heaton….

Mark Harris

Mark Harris at Entertainment Weekly:

In Gary Graham’s thoughtful piece on the blacklist he mentioned an article about Patricia Heaton written by Mark Harris, no less than the former Executive Editor of Entertainment Weekly. In an otherwise glowing review of Heaton’s latest sitcom “The Middle,” Harris dropped this warning about the two-time Emmy winner:

The Middle, ABC’s beautifully written and acted, underheralded family sitcom — and a show that, to admit my own bias, I expected to hate, since many of the political views of its star Patricia Heaton are about 8,000 light-years to my right. I’m not sure exactly how Heaton and the show’s creators — veterans of the lefty-populist ’90s classic Roseanne — found common ground.

The fact that the former top guy at one of the most influential entertainment publications on the planet expects to hate anything outside of his liberal worldview is for another post. Look again closely at what Harris is doing here:

I’m not sure exactly how Heaton and the show’s creators — veterans of the lefty-populist ’90s classic Roseanne — found common ground.

The insinuation is obvious. Since it’s impossible for Harris to dismiss Heaton’s talent, all he has left is to express bewilderment over the idea that liberals can somehow work constructively with dreaded, difficult conservatives.

What a surprise! How unexpected! How uncommon!

Message: Bringing a conservative on board normally means tension, chaos and failure. 

This is how the blacklist works.

By the way, Roseanne is as hard left as they come, and by all reports was a unholy terror to work with.  My guess is that Heaton’s desire to see taxes lowered and terrorists killed would be a welcome psychological vacation for anyone who once found themselves in the orbit of She Who Dresses Like Hitler – which I guess is okay if you didn’t cheat on Sandra Bullock.

But Roseanne’s not as hard left as Tony Kushner, the playwright and screenwriter who wrote Steven Spielberg’s anti-Schindler’s List, the dreadful AIDS opus Angels in America, and who is probably most famous for trashing Israel at any given opportunity.

According to Wikipedia, Harris and Kushner are long-term partners.   

Amazing the kind of people Harris can get along with, no?

Jackson Williams at The Huffington Post:

Matthew Marsden, an up and coming actor who’s costarred in Blackhawk Down and both Transformers films made the mistake of quietly attending a conservative gathering of Christians interested in the future of our country and the culture.

Williams outted Marsden on the front page of the Huffington Post with an article whose title must have made the young actor’s blood run cold: 

Actor Matthew Marsden Hides Right-Wing Political Views,

And this is how Williams mischaracterized those “right-wing views”: 

Last month, the handsome co-star of movies like Black Hawk Down, Rambo (2008 edition) and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, appeared at a secret, far-right conclave in liberal Austin, Texas. How secret? It wasn’t even listed on the hotel’s public calendar.

The sponsor was an outfit called the “Council for National Policy.” According to a 2007 story in the New York Times, the conservative group was “founded 25 years ago by the Rev. Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians to strategize about turning the country to the right.” LaHaye was then-head of Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority,” and is co-author of the popular “Left Behind” series that predicts and then depicts the biblical Apocalypse from the specious Book of Revelation.

I don’t know Marsden’s politics. Maybe like some of those 1950s actors who found themselves hauled before committees to explain that they went to “a meeting” to impress a girl, Marsden was just curious about how the other side thinks. Or maybe he wanted to impress a girl.

No matter, HuffPo bagged and tagged the up and comer; and in doing so intentionally sent a chilling message to anyone else in Hollywood thinking about sticking their toe into an illiberal pool.

Even privately.

This is how the blacklist works.

This blacklisting also happens in small ways that are meant to accumulate over time. Because I can’t find the link I won’t name the site, but just before Big Hollywood launched, a pretty big film-site did a “Where Are They Now?” piece on “The Goonies.”

Everyone involved in that iconic film had their resume updated based on their show business accomplishments. But not Robert Davi. All the update mentioned was his political identity as a conservative Republican. No mention of his run on “Profiler” or the “The Dukes,” his feature writing-directing debut that was winning festival awards at the time. Nope, just a Big Red Bush-Lover Flag, as though his politics represented his entire identity. 

Whether you’re a big star like Patricia Heaton and Robert Davi, a behind-the-scenes veteran like Jon Kahn, or a star-on-the-rise like Matthew Marsden — if you step out of ideological line the message is clear: You will pay a price. 

And those in the entertainment media wielding the knives are nothing less than Blacklisters — partisan idealogues willing to do anything to retain Hollywood’s ideological purity.

In Hollywood, being a conservative is the kiss of death. — Jonathan Kahn

Is he mad at a president and a Democratic Congress that have bungled the greatest political opportunity for liberals in nearly a century? Oh, no. Weber directs his hate towards anyone who doesn’t imbibe the (heavily spiked) pink Kool-Aid as often as he does. More specifically, he’s shaking his tiny fist at the kind of people who contribute to and read this blog. 

Weber latest screed is titled: “What to Do (This Time, Sober).” We’ll have to take Weber’s word for his parenthetical clarification, because if this is a sober post, I’d hate to read Weber’s thoughts on conservatives when he’s on the sauce. 

One can hardly get past the first sentence without a hearty guffaw. Weber writes: “It’s time to tear the mask from their smug, stupid faces.” Let’s just say Weber, in the role of his dreams, is pulling apart the buttons from his shirt and dashing down the street to reveal a giant blue “S” on his chest for “Smug Man.” Or is it “Stupid Man.” You can decide, as you read on:

Liberals — or anyone who has sense and cares about their country — need to gird themselves against an enemy that looks American and squawks American but is as destructive to American principles as any brown shirt-wearing, fascist sociopath. 

Forget that nonsense about how only liberals have “sense and care about their country.” But remember that “brown shirt” reference. We’ll get to that later. 

Be not afraid of the birthers, baggers, deathers, those who decry “the killing of Christmas” or whatever lunatic froth that issues from their sad, desperate brains. They haven’t the guts to back their fiery words up with action. And they are, in many cases, way too fat to move very fast.  

“Deathers”? That’s a new one. And Weber’s one to talk about “lunatic froth” when he throws out enough digital spittle — in just his first five paragraphs — to get a camel from Casablanca to Cairo. And back. Oh, and I’d be careful about those fat jokes, Steven. Remember those hot Hollywood clubs you used to get into when people recognized you? Did you ever see a skinny bouncer? There’s a reason for that. 

Sitting back and letting elected officials do the citizens’ work will result in only more static, more confusion and breathe further breath into the lungs of those quasi-conservative zombots who know nothing of history or need to reinterpret it, in fact, to fit their low brow schemes, therefore allowing more division, thinly-veiled xenophobia, and outright idiocy to reign widespread as it does now.

Yes. That was one sentence. All 63 words of it. But there, in the mess Weber made of that passage, he raises the liberal skirt too far above the ankle. Note that “letting elected officials do the citizens’ work,” in his mind, is a very bad thing. Damn democracy! Damn the ability of we “zombots” to express in person, online, and at the ballot box our dissatisfaction with the agenda of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid! Such “division” cannot be tolerated. 

Let me try to clear up some confusion for Weber. America’s Founding Fathers purposely established a political and constitutional order in which sobriety, and not Weber’s brand of passion and all sorts of “low-brown schemes,” rules when establishing our society. It was an attempt to preserve liberty and improve upon the European model of government, which did not cherish individual liberty. And the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution was ratified by 200 years of misery in Europe after America’s founding. 

From the French Revolution, to the Napoleonic Wars, to a pair of World Wars, to Soviet domination of half the continent, Europe could have used a bit of unleavened wisdom from our Founders. They didn’t take it. And within the lifetime of Weber’s father, an Austrian man was lifted to power in Germany on the passions of his countrymen — and he was the one who brought the term “brown shirts” into the modern lexicon. It’s a term Weber now throws around quite recklessly at his fellow Americans. 

I was struck by Weber’s ending passages, directed at people who think like him. 

Be resourceful. Be diligent. Be independent. Revere the elderly. Be tender to the helpless. Be fearless in the face of obstructionists. Be humble. Be smart.

But, apparently, don’t be “tender” to those poor elderly people who might not be on the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Express. Give them Hell! Because they are “enemies” whose “instincts often crawl in the dirt and prevent [my] dreams from ever becoming reality.” Because, Weber says: “That is what the right wingers are, after all: killers of dreams.” 

Killer of your dreams, Steven? Gladly.

And all the while TCM played in the background, like an old friend.

I’ve since reflected on how Turner Classic Movies has grown over the years into one of the most universally admired cultural forums in America. It’s a familiar presence in households of all political persuasions. If you like old movies, you like TCM, period.

That’s why the mini-uproar here at Big Hollywood last week was so disheartening. For those of you who missed it: during an on-air introduction to the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz gave legions of conservative viewers a collective poke in the eye, by way of a not-so-veiled sneer at talk-show host Glenn Beck. You can see the sad spectacle for yourself by clicking over to the TCM website, but here are the money quotes:

My top pick this January, A Face in the Crowd, is admittedly a little cheap. . . But, in an era where the political commentators who shout the loudest — or (dramatic pause and sly smile) cry the most — generate the biggest ratings, the prophetic nature of this 1957 classic enhances its remarkable timeliness today. . . Fifty years later, there’s a new generation of men armed with the phony authenticity of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes.

Beck, of course, has long been mocked on liberal websites for shedding tears in the midst of emotional monologues. And comparing him to Crowd character “Lonesome” Rhodes is a favorite gag of MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann.

This is hardly the first time that Mankiewicz has overstepped the bounds of good taste to take a swipe at conservatives. Big Hollywood readers have called him onto the carpet before for inserting needless political commentary into his TCM introductions for films like The Fighting Seabees (1944) and Capricorn One (1977).

As a former co-host of the liberal radio talk show The Young Turks, he frequently unloaded on ideological enemies with stunning vitriol. In one episode, he scoffed at a video of conservative journalist Michelle Malkin pointing out that most terrorists are “young Muslim males” with a rejoinder about “dumb Asian bitches.” (his radio partner, Cenk Uygur, promptly dipped even further into rank misogyny, dismissing Malkin as a “racist whore.”) In another public appearance, the same duo graced their audience with the following banter:

Cenk Uygur: “This is non-partisan, so when I say that Republicans suck c***, I just mean that literally.”

Ben Mankiewicz (laughing): “Name a Republican who’s not gay. Can that be done?”

All of this is par for the course among Lexus liberals, who ever luxuriate in their reputation for tolerance in between rants filled with the worst sorts of racism, sexism, and class warfare. I still remember laughing out loud earlier this year when, in a Los Angeles Times article bemoaning the hardships of well-heeled, fashion-conscious women, Mankiewicz’s wife spoke of feeling

guilty about flashing her finds in front of the housekeeper who cleans the Westside town house she shares with her husband. “I have racks for shoes and boxes. I will turn around the boxes that are particularly expensive when she comes,” she said, explaining that she turns the side marked with the price toward the wall of the closet so it doesn’t show. “I know she’s having a tough time — she told me. You can’t have an $800 box of shoes showing.”

That is what passes for good manners, charitable action, and noble sacrifice in today’s Hollywood.

Mankiewicz was recently fired from a disastrous year-long stint co-helming the former Siskel & Ebert show At the Movies, and has since taken up blogging at The Huffington Post in addition to his TCM duties. “Growing up in Washington, D.C.,” he says, “politics and sports were always a lot more important than movies. They still are, for that matter.” When pressed to name a film that has changed his life, he answers, “Hey, I love movies, but let’s not get carried away! I don’t think one has changed my life.” These comments alone should have disqualified him from ever being hired as a featured host at TCM.

With every snide put-down and sneaky swipe against movie-loving conservatives, a universally admired television treasure becomes a little less so. Ben Mankiewicz seems destined to continue to alienate a full half of the channel’s audience, one needless insult at a time, until they quit the whole business in disgust and retreat to their Netflix queues. The TCM brass, presumably a bit more concerned with gauche ratings than the hired help, would be wise to heed the warning of the literary critic Francis Jeffrey, who wrote almost two centuries ago that, “Goodwill, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one.”

This raises a couple of questions.  The first is, “Who is Mathew Marsden?”  Well, he was an up-and-coming young English singer and actor with athletic roles in Rambo and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.  Which leads to the second question – why would writer Jackson Williams be so giddy about the revelation that Marsden apparently does not hew obediently to the Hollywood left’s party line?

Well, it sure isn’t because he’s interested in giving Marsden’s career a boost.  Like the grinning little snot in every elementary school class who gets off on the high of narc-ing out the other kids to the schoolmarm, Jackson’s purpose was to tattle to every producer, agent, actor and other Hollywoodoid that Marsden had been a bad, bad boy.  He exercised his right to think for himself. Maybe Jackson should wear a sash:  “Political Hall Monitor.”  But it’s clear that his article is simply a nomination of Marsden for a spot on the New Hollywood Blacklist.

And what is Marsden’s alleged thoughtcrime?  Well, since Jackson’s “reporting” appears to be based solely on his reading of some newspaper articles, and because Jackson never bothered to ask Marsden anything, it’s difficult to tell.  It appears the actor was a guest of a “sneaky” “conservative” “outfit” called the Council for National Policy that was “smoked out” when it held a “secret, far-right conclave” in an Austin hotel.  We know it’s “sneaky” because its website fails to provide all of the information Jackson thinks it should, though having a public website would seem to be the opposite of “sneaky.”  For that matter, having its event in a public hotel seems to be the opposite of “secret.” 

In any case, you really don’t need to know any more than the fact that it appears that some evangelicals are involved.  Case closed.   To the keepers of the New Blacklist, evangelical Christians are clearly agents of the antichrist, mostly because they believe in Christ.  Or something like that.

Jackson’s particular bugaboo seems to be the kind of “lunatic” who spews “right-wing screeds,” and for this he cites Pat Boone and Chuck Norris.  If you’re wondering what kind of screeds these are, well, some seem to be “anti-gay.”  I guess Jackson is referring to those who support traditional marriage – you know, like the majority of the American people and our President.   Or perhaps he is referring to those with belief in a Creator, a belief he labels “creationism” – you know, like the belief shared by the majority of the American people and our famously Christian President. 

Marsden’s purported embrace of the same values and beliefs of most Americans and our President apparently somehow has the effect of placing him far outside the mainstream.   Of course, to the New Blacklisters, the mainstream consists solely of a few thousand Hollywoodoids dwelling in the 310 area code.  Well, maybe some folks in the 212 qualify too – you know, for diversity.

Nothing in Jackson’s article – which, after all, is just a summary of someone else’s reporting – offers any explanation of why Marsden might be less than thrilled to have his political beliefs publicized.   Maybe he doesn’t feel like he wants to impose his views on his fans.  Maybe he feels he should learn more before speaking out.  Or, I dunno, maybe he doesn’t want a bunch of left-wing bigots indulging their prejudices and blacklisting him from future work because he dares think for himself.

Jackson’s big objection seems to be that Marsden doesn’t make a big public spectacle of his beliefs, which he seems to think makes Marsden liable for lefty animus.  Strangely, Jackson seems to argue that conservative animus toward Hollywoodiods who are not only public about their views but beat paying customers over their heads with them is misplaced.  So, the guy who quietly works for his beliefs – evil.  Loudmouth no-talents who stop their concerts to trash their country to paying customers or who prance about in North Vietnamese AA-gun emplacements –– well, they’re America’s greatest heroes. 

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In my experience, there are three types of people in Hollywood.  There are a few smart ones.  Most of them had to work for success and have life experience in the real world that gives them a certain level of wisdom.  Then there are the ones who are dumb but think they are smart – mostly because they’ve been told they are awesome by sycophants and suck-ups like Jackson (Ms. Streisand and Ms. Sarandon, you are so “honest” and brave in your liberalism – can I come to the party now?).   And then there are the ones who are dumb and know it but don’t care because they are really good looking and rich to boot.

I can deal with the first and the third kind, and they are also the two types that do not go in for the New Blacklist nonsense.  They couldn’t care less about your political views as long as you do your job. 

It’s the dumb ones who impose lefty political litmus tests.  The dumb ones come in two types – people who just aren’t that bright to begin with and people who went to expensive, prestigious universities and therefore became dumb by buying into commie academic nonsense. 

The first kind tends to end up on camera pledging to be a servant to a politician.  The second tend not to know anyone to the right of Dennis Kucinich and therefore buy into every negative stereotype about normal Americans that they come across on the HuffPost.   Alienating huge numbers of potential paying customers by attacking those few in Hollywood who share their beliefs is just bad business.  Jackson sneers at the “Left Behind” books in his article.  Hey, they aren’t my cup of tea either, but if a major studio made a movie out of one it would do Twilight-level box office.  Hollywood, there are a lot more evangelical Christians out there with nothing to spend money on at the multiplex than lonely teenagers pining away for emo bloodsucker sagas.

The New Blacklist barring those with dissenting views is particularly dumb in an age of technology that makes the old Hollywood-centric model of a single, monolithic entertainment complex increasingly untenable.  Pretty soon technology is going to make major motion picture studios obsolete.  Anyone will be able to make a professional movie.  Just look at Panic Attack, a robot invasion short some dude in Paraguay made for about 100 pesos, lira, shiny rocks or whatever they use for currency in Montevideo.   And the distribution system based on film stock will go the way of phrenology, buggy whips and popular faith in global warming as the next generation of movies is transmitted to theaters digitally.  In the past, the Hollywoodoids could maintain a blacklist because only they could make and distribute movies; tomorrow, the blacklisted will just go around them.

Now, not everyone in Hollywood with a political opinion is a fool.  The man who was arguably the greatest American of the last half-century was an actor – an actor who spent years in the political arena, developed and honed his views, and convinced his countrymen to elect him their president.  On the left, actors like Mike Farrell and Martin Sheen expose the silliest leftism, but there can’t be any doubt that they both have learned and developed expertise regarding their issues – they just got the issues completely wrong.  But their usual acting work is generally non-political, making it easy for fans to appreciate their craft while ignoring their views.  Hell, I’m even a huge fanof HuffPost columnist Alec Baldwin’s acting – in fact, he’s one of my top four favorite Baldwin brothers.

Here’s an idea.  It may not be so popular anymore but it seems due for a comeback.  It’s called freedom.  It’s the idea that people are free to say, do and think what they want without petty fascists trying to punish them for presuming to think differently.  Liberals used to believe in that – until they got the power to do the punishing. 

Hopefully, and despite Jackson’s best efforts, the revelation that Marsden dares to have opinions that many in Hollywood do not share will not harm his career.  There’s probably another Transformers movie on the horizon, and while I have no clue as to Michael Bay and his team’s politics, I do know they are HUGE supporters of our troops and therefore deserve the benefit of the doubt. 

By the way, Marsden himself is a big soldier supporter too, and he actually did a parachute jump with the U.S. Army’s Golden Knights (Airborne – all the way, Matt!).  Uh oh, I probably just moved him up the New Blacklist about twenty spots by revealing that he doesn’t hold our fighting men and women in sufficient contempt.  I can see his panicked agent now, nervously tugging on his Armani tie, telling his client, “Hey, Matt, you gotta get in front of this thing!  You gotta turn it around!  You gotta hug a Latin thug, burn a flag or maybe spit on a wounded Marine!   You do that and, well, I think I smell an Oscar!”

There’s no way this is real. It can’t be. The Huffington Post needs to start an immediate  investigation to find the right-winger who falsely submitted this Ode to Child Rapist under Levy’s name in order to discredit French philosophers everywhere: 

I am mostly thinking about him: Roman Polanski whom I don’t know but whose fate has moved me so much. Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthysm [sic] era all over again.

There’s no doubt Leftist intellectuals everywhere think this way, but how many are stupid and arrogant enough to say so out loud … much less in writing?

Oh, wait.

At my Bible study group this week I was sitting between Mavis and her Chihuahua named Pedro, and Sonia, an Iranian who lived five years in Russia, where she waited to receive her legal U.S. citizenship.  I asked Pastor Joel “Why does the Bible say Jesus was from the lineage of King David, if he had no blood from his father in him, since he was born of a virgin?  Pastor Joel excitedly replied, “Oh, well turn to Matthew 1 and Luke 3!  Mary and Joseph were both descendants of David as you can see by these genealogies.  So, the Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled that said the Messiah would be from the priestly (through Nathan) and kingly (through Solomon) lineage of David.  The blood of Mary which was from David ran through Jesus.  Oh. I always wondered about that.  

As we were leaving, Sonia and I started talking about the 48 pages of “Hate Speech” I received on The Huffington Post after my last Big Hollywood article.  Sonia said, “When people can’t defend their position on an issue, they attack you personally.”  

“Yeah,” I said.  “I would love someone to talk me into being a liberal.  But they can’t give me one good reason.  Take socialized medicine for instance, the ‘Health Care Reform’ that the President is trying to shove through the Senate as quickly as possible. They can’t give me one good reason I should want it.   I mean, they say it will be cheaper, but that’s not true, because our taxes will go up to pay for it.”  

Sonia told me that when she lived in Communist Russia, her friend had appendicitis and was sent to the hospital.  She told Sonia that cockroaches crawled over her chest at night.  Sonia then went on to explain that with socialized medicine, desperate patients resort to an “underground” system.  Deals are made “under the table.”  Deals involving your life!  She compared it to the police force there.  She said that when you are pulled over for speeding, the police expect you to slip them a folded up bill under your driver’s license.  Sonia said, “Did you hear the story about the professor and the classroom?  It explains communism so well.  The professor told the class that after every test,  all the students’ grades would be averaged and all would receive the same grade.  So, after the first test, the A students who studied all night and the F students who partied all night, all received a C.  As the semester went on, the A students quit studying, and all received an F.” 

With no competition, humans reach the lowest common denominator.  If capitalism dies, and there is no competition for patients let’s say, doctors will all study and work as little and as poorly as possible…as will hospital maintenance workers. Thus, the cockroaches. 

I walked to my car in the parking lot humming the theme from Camelot.  At least I got to live at the tail end of a magical place called America.  I’m an eyewitness who can tell my grandchildren about a faraway land of freedom where the people who worked the hardest were rewarded.  And everyone tried to out perform each other and so, everything was top quality.  Houses and cars and pools and food.  They were all the biggest and best in the world.  And people respected God and humbly thanked Him for their blessings.  But gradually, the people started taking their blessings for granted.  They started to expect rewards without working for them. They felt entitled.  Even the strangers who moved into the land felt entitled. No one thanked God.  They even started to mock Him.  Bible studies started to be referred to as “Hate Speech” gatherings…Leviticus 26 was a crumpled, yellowed page blowing in the wind… 

I put my dog-eared Bible in the back seat of my car and stared at it.  Someday soon we both might be “underground.” 

My friend Liz called me today, “I think there needs to be a call-to-action rather than just resolving that this is our fate.  Obama, who shouldn’t be President in the first place, is systematically destroying this country.  It used to be called TREASON.  He’s NOT upholding the constitution — that’s treasonous!  And we’re just watching as though it’s all right!”  

“Okay,” I sighed, ”I’ll stay in the fight.”