Logic Times

Hooray for Hollywood?

Commentary by Aslan, 3/3/06, 9:46pm. Comments (3)

"It is almost beyond comp- rehension how we could have been brought into this war based on lies and continue to lose so many lives, both American and Iraqi. It makes my skin crawl ... my heart break." Jane Fonda

"How far have we come from understanding what it is to kill one man, one woman, or one child, much less the 'collateral damage' of many hundreds of thousands. Your use of the words, 'this is a new kind of war' is often accompanied by an odd smile." Sean Penn

"We were clearly deceived by this administration and now we find ourselves fighting a war under false pretenses . . . Let us remember that UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to search Iraq for WMDs . . . Why would you invade a country if there was still a chance for peace?" Barbra Streisand

Conservatives – practical people and rational thinkers – generally do not like Hollywood, a place where people are lauded for escaping reality. Like an asylum where robed patients shuffle around manicured grounds talking to imaginary friends, Hollywood liberals are sealed within a fantasy world where they believe their opinions matter and that people are listening. They fail to realize that most rational people see them as mediocre entertainment on the silver screen and uproarious entertainment when they are trying to be serious.

Yet, while conservatives are amused at the stumbling attempts of Sean Penn and Barbra Streisand to comprehend matters well beyond their grasp, they understand that these political amateurs are consummate media professionals, capable of disseminating cleverly packaged witlessness to every nook and cranny of the country. This makes them dangerous. Why, conservatives moan, must we suffer these fools?

Not so quick. Conservatives have no one to blame but themselves.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15."

This is the wisdom of Ronald Reagan, the spiritual leader of the modern conservative movement, and an actor. That conservatives have drawn from Hollywood their greatest modern President has opened the door for other, ideologically diverse performers to try their hand at political opinion. The presence of such strong conservatives as Eastwood, Heston and Schwarzenegger has further interfered with Hollywood liberals being justly ridiculed and laughed off the political stage. It appears that hailing from Hollywood –at first glance, an egregious stain on any intellectual resume – does not after all disqualify an actor from perhaps having a valid, intelligent, point of view.

In the end, Hollywood takes on the form of society at large – some are bright and some are dim. One might argue that some are bright and most are dim, given the abysmal educational achievements of Hollywood’s leading men and women (Streisand, Fonda and Penn quoted above are unremarkable high school grads). However, whatever the intellectual credentials of Hollywood celebrities, they cannot be dismissed because they come from Hollywood. Fortunately, the can be dismissed because of what they say:

"I like America to some extent."

Michael Moore

Comments

1: Mordsith44

March 4, 2006 11:20am EST

Frankly, after much thought about the War and how we got to where we are today, I find that I surprisingly agree with Barbara Streisand’s comment as quoted by you on this editorial, however odious I find her politics and her thinking in general. Don’t get me wrong, I heartily agree with you and our conservative brothers; I find liberal Hollywood’s posturing ridiculous and at the same time dangerous because of the width of their influence. Also, I fully support our President and our military now that we are there and we are in the thick of things. I can’t help, however, asking myself if the timing was wrong… Didn’t we jump the gun, really, in our haste to get this war started? Entre-nous, isn’t it possible that there was just a bit of subconscious desire on President Bush’s part to go after Saddam and set right what President Bush Sr. left unfinished?

Notwithstanding my concerns about Iraq, and although I support every American’s First Amendment right, I heartily condemn the inflammatory and ill-informed rhetoric of people who are in the limelight only because our culture has deemed what they do for a living influential and important to their lives in every sphere. I shudder when I think that a word from Madonna, Britney Spears, or Oprah can lead thousands who have opted out of thinking for themselves to commit heinous acts of ignorance by rushing to support an untenable position.

{Aslan: Anyone who is carefully follows developments in Iraq must harbor doubts from time to time. If war and death does not make you cry out for something else, then you are subhuman. That said, I utterly reject that President Bush has committed our troops – and condemned some of them – to war on even a scintilla of a personal motive. Such a man would be heinous on par with any evil leader of the past. If the Iraq decision turns out to be wrong, it will be because a policy decision was incorrectly made.}

2: Kruelhunter

March 4-6, 2006

So what? If, as you assert, "most people don't care" what these fools have to say then their rhetoric is of no consequence except to those too stupid to recognize their foolishness. That being the case it seems to me that your concern smacks of some desire to prevent them from airing the views, which might be understandable since those views invariably get coverage from the MSM.

Is it that fact that concerns you? If so you might want to note that fewer people are spending on the offerings of either the MSM or Hollywood. Which means in turn that their influence is waning rather than growing as it was in the seventies and eighties. The leftist media horse is dying, stop beating it and let die quietly. In a few decades the conservative media will find itself in a similar position as more Michael Savage types take up their banner and the left-media will arise again while pundits praise it and denounce the right-media and the cycle continues.

{Aslan: I would never suggest suppressing anyone's views. This piece doesn't really make a profound point; it was an admonition to myself, actually, that I cannot disregard these morons because of where they come from. And I got to make fun of them, too - always good entertainment.

As for the trends, I agree there is some movement, but the MSM has, despite its pathetically transparent agenda and declining popularity, almost destroyed the Bush presidency. It is not that morons listen, but like Chinese water torture, there is a slow erosion, a passing belief among those not avidly informed, that where there is smoke, there's fire. The MSM keeps making smoke where there is no fire, but unless people stay on top of it, they may miss that altogether.}

I would like to point out in addition to the previous that the evidence commonly cited to show the President's weakness comes entirely from the actions of the political left.

That is, they make an accusation, say that Bush is soft on National Security because he backs the sale of some port management rights to an Arab company. They determine which, if any, evidence to present supporting their charge, enlist the aid of their propaganda arm, the MSM, to create the impression that theirs is the factual account of the situation. The MSM and the left, as well as ever ready recruits from the RINO Brigade, then use these polling results to say essentially, "See? You see? It's all true!", followed by calls for yet another "independent" investigation that will accomplish nothing more than distract their constituents from the fact that they're not doing what they were elected to do. We, actually they may be able to undo the good that has been accomplished with Arab states sympathetic to the GWOT.

{Aslan: I could not agree more. I know conservatives who are gradually beginning to make negative judgments about Bush based upon the relentless tone of criticism. They reject that the media can be so biased, that there must be something to the drumbeat. And the drumbeat is having an effect on them.}

On the other hand one must recognize the shortcomings of Dubya's performance as President. Ha has, after all, presided over the most expansive phase thus far in the transformation of a State regulated federal government into a self-regulated national government. Our current President is, in my opinion at least, barely a conservative much less a fitting successor to Ronald Reagan. His strategy of leaving congress free to spend the country into ever increasing debt in order to encourage their cooperation could be said to have worked in so far as national security, some appointments and tax policy, but I would submit rather that what cooperation there has been has been both too expensive and too grudgingly given, by both parties, to be worth its cost to the taxpayer. The President's new effort toward a line item veto is a step in the right direction but I am not sanguine about either its passage sans som sort of sunset provision or at all. I wish him luck in his next line of endeavor and us in our next government.

{Aslan: See, I think you are the victim of the phenomenon you so clearly describe in your first reply. Yes, Bush is a mediocre conservative. But, besides Reagan, name one conservative worth a damn in modern times. His spending which conservatives love to shout about is exactly the same percentage of GDP that has always been spent. Reagan’s "strategy of leaving congress free to spend the country into ever increasing debt in order to encourage their cooperation" doubled the Federal Budget in 8 years. Bush is…a politician, and a helluva lot better one that Gore or Kerry or Clinton. I am saddened that he didn’t break new ground as a conservative, but, like Churchill, he has the right stuff in the WOT where it matters (except for the damn borders – that one sticks in the ‘ol craw) and some silly liberal tendencies otherwise. I’ll take it and, like you, hope for better in ’08. But in the meantime, conservatives eating their own is making ’08 look like a return to Clintonism or worse.}

3: Peter Bland

March 19, 2006 8:43pm ES

You are right to point out that not everyone in Hollywood is a Trotskyite monkey merely because they live there. There are meth addicts, prostitutes, pimps, adult film stars, ElRonners, transvestites, homeless people and movie agents that live there too...

Like the song says: "It's hard out here for a pimp"

Anyway, while there is truth in making sure that we do not automatically dismiss everything some empty-headed marionette says because they get their mail in 90210. To be sure, there is a tiny minority of conservative voices in Hollywood. Some of them are even unafraid of making their conservative voices heard. Ronald Regan was from Hollywood. Ahnuld is from Hollywood. There is one key factor that you have overlooked is the basis for their politics.

Ahnuld and Regan are both consummate politicians who rallied a traditionally liberal state to vote for outspoken conservatives on the basis of their politics, not the movies they starred in. Which are godawful, for the most part. "It's not a Tuhmah!" While their A-list movie star status got them critical name recognition, the people of California do not elect movies, they elect politicians.

This way, they have a legitimate soapbox to stand on-they were elected by a plurality to speak for the people of California, and of America in Regan's case. The animatronic idiots in Hollyweird are not elected by anyone to spew their ignorance. They often do not sufficiently understand the issues to make an informed decision anyway.

*paging Mr. Penn, there is a call for you on the white CluePhone*

The reason for my seething hate for these pompous jerks is because they presume to lecture the rest of America on the basis of pretending to be a president, soldier, statesman and diplomat. They assume that their experience as an actor automatically qualifies them to speak on things they barely understand. They do not know any real soldiers, but are

experts on war and Iraq. They are experts because they shot a gun once before starring in "Ten Fingers of Pain" or played a cabinet-level advisor in "Female in Chief" on TV.

They do not understand the real hardships our troops have to put up with, but cannot do for more than a day without their expensive lifestyles. They have never seen the Third World, except perhaps for a brief foray into some Potemkin Village (I could make another Sean Pen Joke, but that would be too easy). Despite this, they are confident in

their ability to encapsulate the experience of being a dirt farmer in Rwanda. They like to bleat about collateral damage, but most do not even know that we routinely fill our bombs with cement instead of octol to limit this as much as possible. They claim to support the troops, so long as it does not mean actually doing a USO tour or sending care

packages.

While it is bad to be prejudiced, I will admit to a bit of prejudgment if some ill-informed moron from Hollyweird starts to spew verbal diarrhea on CNN. I admit to prejudging someone from the mass media who is "just there for the story". I will admit to prejudging someone from the government who is "just there to help." Call me crazy.

{Aslan: Call you entertaining. Hey, I like some of Chuck Heston’s movies.}