What fun! I get to play gossip entertainment news columnist on the Internet! Heaven knows, since the media’s been great at blacking out real news, having more fun with the triple crown of sex scandals – Schwarzeneggar, Weinergate and John Edwards – instead, I can’t be too far out of the mainstream of what the public wants to read, right? I mean really… what possible value is there in covering the tanking US economy and growing dangers of the US foreign policy?
But hey, since we’re off in LaLa land for tabloid news, I might as well add my two cents worth. And in this case, it’s not much been a secret to anyone that Hollywood – and especially TV execs – are decidedly liberal. In fact, that may be the quintessential understatement of the century. But it does give one a grin when Hollywood finds themselves unwittingly on camera, spouting their various degrees of hatred for all things conservative. What’s more, they weren’t even tricked by underground, fledgling cyber journalists.
But as of today, the cat’s out of the bag, and Hollywood’s powerhouses have officially “outed themselves” as political tools to conservative columnist, Ben Shapiro, for his new book – “PrimeTime Propaganda”. What may be the most humorous of all is that they were unaware of Shapiro’s own conservative views while agreeing to be filmed.
Shapiro said the executives felt comfortable talking about politics with him because they assumed, incorrectly, that he is on the left.
“Most of them didn’t Google me. If they had, they would have realized where I am politically,” he said. “I played on their stereotypes. When I showed up for the interviews, I wore my Harvard Law baseball cap — my name is Ben Shapiro and I attended Harvard, so there’s a 98.7 percent chance I’m a liberal. Except I happen not to be.”
uh ahem… that’ll teach them to be educated only by reading lib/prog rags…. Do you think any of them are feeling the fool? Well, some apparently are as Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors members, Lionel Chetwynd and Norman Powell, have quit because of the embarrassing remarks.
At the Hollywood Reporter’s article linked above, Shapiro’s already provided seven YouTube’s of teaser soundbytes… a drop in the bucket of the arsenal he has in stock. It’s a plethora of who’s who names in the article, all with long running TV successes over decades. I’ll let you just click and read, as it’s magnificent to take it in all at once. Still, he’s holding back some for more prime impact… such as the rant about Hannity for when he appears on Hannity’s America. And those about Ann Coulter at the release of her next book. Still, there’s enough leaked out at the onset here to titillate advance book sales… a sort of yin to Bernie Goldman’s yang in his exposé book, “Arrogance”.
But wait… life gets more interesting as Huffpo diva Arianna Huffington’s megabucks merger between AOL and Huffington Post appears to be going down in flames. Lack of experience in managing such a large enterprise is only scratching the surface for the reasons. And to boot, she’s not only made the enemies list of many, but apparently is keeping names and taking notes on a few herself. Paranoia is running amok.
Large parts of the org recognize the strategy is bad for the business but everyone is afraid to speak out. Arianna is rumored to have created an enemies list across the company and has directed her loyalists to collect dossiers on other managers across the company and report back on conversations. Her list includes several key business, sales, technology, and marketing executives she wants to eliminate and replace with her people. Anyone who disagrees, even if backed by data and clear rationale’s – goes on the enemies list. Facts don’t matter.
The upshot of a failed merger is that it could be the demise of that lovely little lib/prog stomping grounds, Huffpo, as we know it. But reading thru some of the comments, it appears many have been leaving HuffPo already. Well, that’s okay… maybe the Air America group needs some company in the depths of obscurity. Still, it’s a pity we’ll only be left with iconic DailyKOs as mocking fodder. Could it be that while Arianna thought she’d be raking in the bucks on the backs of her non-paid contributing columnists, she is actually getting paid back in negative karma?
Oh the world can work in magical ways on occasion… and it could be that Hollywood has just provided us with a ton of entertainment they weren’t planning on programming.
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.
And this, combined with the liberal media, and the liberal education system, is how free men were to be shackled in their ignorance of their diet of poisoned thinking.
One of the esiest ways to see the bias is to look for jokes bashing Obama and his policies on places like youtube and even on the international scene. You just find the jokes done by amateurs. Even in Yahoo’s editorial cartoons, Obama is not bashed. Cartoonist Ted Rall has publically said that no paying source would take his cartoons if they made liberal look bad.
MATA THERE IS ANOTHER CAN OF WORMS IN HOLLYWOOD?
that is a good stunt done to those supposed smarter people who try too shape the minds of AMERICANS,
thank you
No worms, Beezy… just snakes. Always been snakes.
MATA, IT MEANS THAT YOU’RE UPGRADING FROM WORMS TO SNAKES?
Beezy… now don’t you be insulting worms….
Officially, movie and TV execs will claim that they’re just making what sells – maximizing profits by giving the public what it wants. And of course they do want to be successful in their business. But sometimes they do stuff that is pretty hard to explain business-wise… see for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge . Ostensibly, a big change in pursuit of a younger demographic – but it looks like a very deliberate move in the culture wars from where I’m sitting.
Funny stuff, it reminds me of a small town with only used car salesmen; no one can make a living because everyone is trying to sell used cars to each other.
Let the good times roll, I am planning to watch the Democrat party implode.
Great start, here in Old Pork City the HuffPo Woman is seen tooling around in her stretch doing the Midtown Manhattan 5-Star restaurant crawl. It’s the same ole same ole every noon lunch, their PA’s (personal assistants) call around and converge on the same place alerting press and potogs. Andriana has been a drag, all puns allowed, for a while endlessly on the scoop after other gals boyfriends. Every business deal has a paper trail so the seals on the AOL/HuffPost acquisition are open to a thorough due dilly so the back-up, back-up, back-up guarantor will be divulged. There is someone there, as in there-there, that has the options to pick up this mess for pennies on the dollar. HuffPost Lady created nothing new and the pros with the dough know like they know what they know that they know, they get pelt by skinning the cat and there’s no interest in her meow.
I am considering getting a bumper sticker that reads” You voted for Obama to show you were not racist, in 2012 vote for whoever runs against him to show you are not stupid” Do you think I will get my car keyed? Should I put it next to my NRA sticker?
Sooth, I need to read it slowly, but it’s funnier than Hell.
Frickin’ Hollywood actor Richard Gere being interviewed on Obama’s job performance after giving “expert” testimony on Capitol Hill:
WORDSMITH, HI, It’s so noticeble that RICHARD GEERE AND THOSE LIKE HIM,
NEVER LOOK AT THE PEOPLE WATCHING THEM ON THE CAMERA FOCUS,
It seem to me they are afraid of getting their lyes spread out by looking straight at the camera which they know represent the people OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY,
This is not illegal, nor should it ever be, but, what may have happened, was a table of very smart manipulators lead AH right through the process, with all attorneys nodding like bubble-head dolls, effectively pricing the junk value AOL shares in the swap for HP, then those shares were sold/shorted to bank managed pension funds which are easy for this kind of PR blasted merger deal. The stock gets a bump then hits the skids. The hypothesis of this kind of swing is pension money.
Sooth, too funny…. Arianna probably thinks she can make dunce caps fashionable. She certainly wears one well.
On the strategy… made sense that AOL would want to capitalize on HuffPo’s financial enterprise. I think the intent was genuine, but that Arianna won’t relinquish necessary control and is ill equipped to head and staff such a large venture efficiently. As for the background financier… if there is one… that would be very interesting to see. At this moment, it looks more like two skydivers in freefall because the lines of their chutes are all tangled up.
@MataHarley: Mataharley I love the way you write! You throw out enough hot coals to start a good fire! To me that is the art of journalism! making people question what they thought and to research what they did not know! However it is hard to impossible to educate Liberals because in their own self certification they have a special handle on things even when they never have had contact with them or experience in the matter… Thank you Mataharley…they need their laundry hung out for everyone to see who they are, and thank God that there are people like Ben Shapiro!
@J V Hoffman, I believe you should be thanking God for idiot TV moguls who refuse to read anything outside their own political mindset. How else could they have been so willing to not only set the bear trap, but were accommodating enough to step on in with no enticement. Virtually all sport for Shapiro, as the hunter, came down to collecting the preys’ meat.
Personally, I think their participation in Shapiro’s book should make the “greatest bloopers” reels…. LOL
I’m trying to remember who was being interviewed (and by whom) on the radio the other day.
The subject was Hollywood TV shows that had ”conservative” characters in them.
In almost every case the LIBERAL writers had intended to include the conservative character for comedic reasons.
But, also in almost every case, the conservative character stole the show!
The only one I remember (I was baking -a science, NOT an art, like cooking – so my attention was elsewhere) was the Michael J. Fox character on an old TV show.
But they made a good point.
The conservative characters are more compelling and logical.
Nan G, the character of “Alex” played by Michael J. Fox was specifically addressed in the main article I linked in the post above. They fully intended for him to be the target of disdain, however Fox was too “loveable”, and it didn’t work. So they grinned and bore it all the way to the bank and the show’s syndication.
@MataHarley: Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer! Intelligence is worthless without Counter-Intelligence! Otherwise we become our own authorities and fall in to the same trap as our liberal counterparts! As it is written ” One Idiot can throw a stone into a well that 5 wise men cannot understand to remove!” Anybody counting the stones being put in the well by the wise Kenyan! Insight is much better than hindsight, may we all assess and not assume….know what is behind your target before firing…because bullets and words cannot be retracted! You are right they are completely closed minded and blinded by their pseudo-wisdom!!! Keep up the good work Mataharley!
I recall the swing price was posted at 368 million which is a lot of smoke and mirrors, now we are talking poorly performing Time-Warner spin-off of AOL to swap with HP. HuffPost is basically an “Ad Bag”, you don’t go to Rite Aid to purchase a HuffPo so if HuffPo is worth 300 plus millions then Flying Aces or American Thinker should be worth at least half that much then throw in Drudge for a round billion. Time to determine if GroupOn is real or if it is a really real. What is known is that they are another Bunch of ObamaBots spinning their idea of the world’s greatest mousetrap deserves an IPO offering of several billions of OPM. Half priced pizza through a GroupOn coupon just doesn’t ring my bell, but pension monies are out there being used to scoop these worthless deals. This is rank-n-file union pension money being thrown into the furnace.
So Sooth, got time to do a readers post, expanding on this HuffPo/AOL boondoggle? And whether any of the pensions are guaranteed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)? This was a tongue in cheek laugh at all the tabloid news people are craving. But I’d be more interested if this was some scam to prop up pensions. While the PBGC isn’t funded by tax revenues, there is still the danger of the implied “guarantee” if the company goes belly up, and assets/premiums/investments not being sufficient to pay the pensions. Again, the problem when government decides to engage in the “insurance” business. The rumors of a tax bailout upcoming for the PBGC have been floating for a while now.
Hey… not as sexy as the rest of the tabloid news, or putting “Palin” or “Obama” in some headline. But I’d be interested.
Great article, Mata. I have long known of the liberal Hollywood bias, but it really puts an exclamation point on the end of the sentence to hear all these schmucks so blatantly admit it.
This series of interviews reminds me of that book, Black Like Me, where the author pretended to be black to find out how racists and bigots at the time treated black people. This amazing young man has really done a fine job in exposing the blatant liberal hypocrisy in Hollywood. This is the start to changing things.
@Wordsmith: What was Gere’s problem? I mean he spent more time pulling up his socks or whatever it was he was doing rather than paying attention to the interviewer.
Gere is a great actor, but an incredibly dumb person politically.
@Antirocks
(?) No, I’ve seen a lot of good actors. Gere is average.
@Ditto: I dunno, I mean this is subjective, after all. I think he did a lot of good things when he was younger, especially. But to each his own.
Sure it’s objective. I’m not saying he’s a “bad actor” or that his performance isn’t done well, simply that specifically as an actor he is average. When you watch a good actor in a film, you are able to suspend memory of their past performances, as they convince you for the duration of the presentation that the character you see before you is the real persona. I put Richard Gere in about the same level of actor as Tom Cruise. I’ve certainly liked their movies, but as actors they are average. Tom Cruise has a better emotional range on camera, but he is not as convincing in a role as Gere. (If you’ve seen Tom Cruise in Far and Away, you’ll know exactly what I mean.) Every part I’ve seen Richard Gere perform, you could easily replace him with a good number of leading men without much of a change in presentation.
I enjoy Robin Williams, but for the most part his quality as an actor is variable from very poor to good. The same pretty much goes for Jim Carey.
Tommy Lee Jones is a good actor, as is Dustin Hoffman. Kevin Spacey is a very good actor as is Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson. While I detest him in real life, I have to admit that Sean Penn is also a very good actor, (for example I am Sam. was probably the best acting I’ve ever seen from Penn). Ben Kingsley is an excellent actor as is Johnny Depp. The latter two are quite remarkable in their abilities to don very distinctive personas.
(NOTE: My apologies to all for deviating from the subject.)
@Ditto: We are in agreement on this, Ditto. I see what you were getting at.