"Big Hollywood": Big Disappointment

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:30:00 GMT

2009 has seen the dawn of a shining new star in the blogosphere: Andrew Breitbart's 'Big Hollywood' website, meant to be a one-stop shopping destination for right-wing conservatives who just can't get enough of complaining about those damned west coast liberals and the commie propaganda spewed in their so-called 'entertainment'. Most conservative blogs and websites focus on news and politics, and tend to give the entertainment industry a wide berth aside from occasional bitching. Why? Well, largely because every time they piss and moan about the terrible smut coming out of the dream factory, someone usually points out that people seem to like movies and TV, and since conservatives are such advocates of the marketplace of ideas, why don't they just make their own movies and let the public decide? This is a recipe for disaster, of course, because conservatives tend to be really, really bad at this sort of thing. (Examples: the Left Behind movie, An American Carol, the post-9/11 career of Dennis Miller.)

However, there's just no shutting these people up, so along comes Andrew Breitbart -- who, last year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, I heard make the frankly absurd claim that a well-known actor friend of his was afraid to admit that he supported our troops overseas because he was afraid such a sentiment would get him blackballed. (He didn't say what actor it was, but I strongly suspect it was Genius Club star/exxxtreme Christian Stephen "Stevie B." Baldwin.) Big Hollywood is meant to be a format for writers, filmmakers, artists, actors, and other people allegedly shut out of the Hollywood establishment by its left-wing pashas to sound off about the cruel disenfranchisement they've experienced. But, perfectly in keeping with the public expressions of a movement that simultaneously claims to be downtrodden and oppressed by liberal chicanery and naturally morally right, beloved by the ordinary Joe, and inevitably triumphant, Big Hollywood also frequently claims that conservative values are on the upswing in the entertainment business, that no one wants to see those crummy left-wing anti-war movies, and that the heartland is just dying for movies that will reflect their true values. This contradictory pose of the persecuted majority is nothing new, but Breitbart and his compatriots over at Big Hollywood are more shameless than most in assuming it.

The not-so-curious thing about Big Hollywood, though, is that contrary to its stated purpose, it hardly seems to have any new voices of conservative Hollywood posting there at all. Instead, we get the same old tired Scaife Foundation recipients that we've been hearing bitch about the evils of Hollyweird for the last decade, recycling the same old crap about how liberals are out of touch with American values, and how their favorite movies must be conservative, because they're conservative, and they like them. Among other abominations, the site has recently treated us to right-wing blogger Iowahawk engaging in flat, unfunny satire; pointless old geezer Burt Prelutsky on how the blacklists weren't so bad after all; Greg Gutfeld on how we should make propaganda films to terrifiy Muslims; Bill Willingham on how superheroes aren't pro-American enough; Ben Shapiro on how Lost is the most conservative show on TV; and, of course, endless condemnations of Che, global warming 'alarmists', homosexuals, and any movie star who expresses an opinion that isn't conservative.

It should be no surprise who have been watching the intellectual bankruptcy of new-movement conservativism these last 10-15 years that what purports to be an advance guard for a new cultural revolution is a totally fraudulent excuse for the usual suspect to collect another wingnut welfare check.

Hollywood Conservatives Face "New McCarthyism", Goblins, Unicorns

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

One of the favorite activities of the modern movement conservative is to claim that, since not every single aspect of the culture panders to him, he is being discriminated against. Having never actually experienced any actual discrimination -- unlike, say, black people -- the right-winger seems to believe that it is an oppression too heavy to be borne that he is sometimes made aware of things that he does not personally enjoy. Liberal arts classes in college taught by liberals? Discrimination against conservatives! Some people don't adhere to the tenents of the Southern Baptist Convention? Discrimination against conservatives! Young people listening to the rappity-hop music? Discrimination against conservatives!

This week has seen a big push in one of the favorite such complaints of the movement conservative: that, because of the preponderance of liberals in Hollywood, conservatives are being discriminated against in Hollywood. Jason Appuzzo, founder of the late, unlamented Libertas Film Festival, was one of the biggest purveyors of this ridiculous myth; Brent Bozell is another. But in the last ten days, we've seen an op-ed by Jon Voight in the right-wing Washington Times in which he blamed American liberals for the murder of millions by the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, and claimed that "if, God forbid, we live to see Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way". The editorial was widely scoffed at, and conservative gadflies, who mistake being made fun of for being blackballed and having your entire career destroyed, immediately came crawling up from the cellar to complain about "establishment entertainment journalists expertly wielding the tools of the New McCarthyism". So says Andrew Breitbart (who, earlier this year, I heard peddle the absurd notion that Hollywood celebrities are afraid to say they support our troops in Iraq, lest they face censure at the hands of the liberal bosses). While conservatives almost universally react to liberal opinions on the part of entertainers with some variant of "shut up and sing" (witness the widespread hostility the Dixie Chicks faced a few years ago), let one of their own get laughed at for mouthing of some ill-conceived right-wing talking point, and we're witnessing the vile fascism of "a town that doesn't embrace free speech anymore". Breitbart's commenters are even worse, claiming that "the old McCarthyism was harmless compared to the new". (Those who wish to compare and contrast may note that Mr. Voight currently has three films in production, and starred in one of the most successful films of 2007, as opposed to, say, Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in prison because of the blacklist, or Hanns Eisler, who was more or less forced to leave the country and ended up in the hands of the Soviet East Germans, or Alvah Bessie, who never worked in her chosen profession again, or Canada Lee, Bartley Crum and John Garfield, who all died because of the horrible after-effects of coming under McCarthyite scrutiny.)

Meanwhile, the Weekly Standard featured a cover story entitled "Hollywood Takes on the Left", in which David Zucker outlines his difficulties and frustrations in making An American Carol, his long-promised conservative comedy. Zucker, too, complains of a "new McCarthyism" in Hollywood, designed to keep Republicans out, and frets that "conservative films are almost illegal in Hollywood". Even if one ignores the fact that movie studios are owned and run by capitalist multimillionaires who are hardly hostile to the core principles of conservativism, this absurd sense of pseudo-oppression fails for one simple reason: audiences tend to like or dislike movies based on whether or not they're entertaining, not based on their ideological bias. (After all, as conservatives love to remind us, liberal anti-Iraq War films have been duds at the box office.) If Zucker's film fails, it won't be because of some mythical Hollywood liberal mafia; it will be because the movie is preachy instead of funny, and audiences don't like preachy.

Luckily, because of the freedom of speech people like them denied victims of the blacklist in the 1950s, Zucker, Breitbart, Voight, and their ilk are welcome to complain all they like about how terribly oppressed they are; that they actually do so is all the evidence you need of the moral bankruptcy of the modern conservative movement.

The Screengrab : andrew breitbart

"Big Hollywood": Big Disappointment

Hollywood Conservatives Face "New McCarthyism", Goblins, Unicorns