“Some of TV’s top executives from the past four decades may have gotten more than they bargained for,” Paul Bond writes in the Hollywood Reporter, “when they agreed to be interviewed for a politically charged book that was released Tuesday, because video of their controversial remarks will soon be hitting the Internet”:
The book makes the case that TV industry executives, writers and producers use their clout to advance a liberal political agenda. The author bases his thesis on, among other things, 39 taped interviews that he’ll roll out piecemeal during the next three weeks.
The Hollywood Reporter obtained several of the not-yet-released clips, embedded below. Each contains a snippet of an interview, usually some historical footage of the TV shows the interviewee was responsible for and, naturally, a plea to purchase the book, “Primetime Propaganda” by Ben Shapiro and published by Broad Side, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Shapiro, according to Bond, provides “anecdotes of bias against conservatives” including one involving Dwight Schultz, “best known for his roles as Murdock in The A-Team and Barclay in Star Trek: The Next Generation”:
The late Bruce Paltrow knew that Schultz was a fan of President Ronald Reagan. When Schultz showed up to audition for St. Elsewhere, a show Paltrow produced, to read for the part of Fiscus, Paltrow told him: “There’s not going to be a Reagan asshole on this show!” The part went to Howie Mandel.
“Most nepotism in Hollywood isn’t familial, it’s ideological,” Shapiro writes in the book. “Friends hire friends. And those friends just happen to share their politics.”
Interesting. I have heard anecdotes about people going to Democratic fundraisers, not so much to support the various candidates, but to make connections with some of the town’s movers and shakers. The clips which Bond has embedded confirm what many conservatives have long suspected, in this town, sometimes your politics are more important than your talent.
Not that I was ever a raging conservative, but people would why I lasted all of three months in that town. I don’t remember politics being the huge issue, but Clinton was President, so things were probably swell in their minds. What really bothered me was the superficiality of it all. I went to one cast party…. and with all the talk about the drugs they had taken, or the trips to Europe, I was bored out of my skull. Nobody seemed the least bit interested in anybody else, They were all on auto pilot.
conservatives need to find a way past hollyweird, anyway. hollyweird is dying and the only people who watch their shows or movies are their own kind.
i know very few people that watch tv or go to the movies, anymore. with video games, wi-fi, wii, ect. why bother being subjected to the trashy stuff on tv when you can have so much more fun playing these games. also, netflix is ok, at least you can choose what you watch without paying for all the junk channels that you don’t watch.
” sometimes your politics are more important than your talent.”
I say ALL the time, haven’t seen a lot of talent coming out of Hollywood these days.
”Sometimes your politics are more important than your talent.”
The only possible explanation for several Hollywood careers; Janeane Garofalo, Lewis Black, Bill Maher, George Lopez, Kathy Griffin …
OH. V the K: Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark….nicely done! 😉
No surprises here at all, although the addition of video is sweet! I hope folks flood YouTube with them. I’m so used to automatically filtering out the liberal bias in most TV shows and movies ever since I was a wee lad that I hardly notice it anymore. I mean take one of my favorite shows: Star Trek. The later success in syndication of the original series helped launch 4 more series, 11 films, numerous books and other merchandise. A very entertaining show. Yet Star Trek also gives us the ultimate in socialist utopias, i.e. the Federation, with all the liberal claptrap if you really stop to think about it. Even so, I’ve enjoyed every series and most of the movies.
Hollyweird is liberal. Big whup. We all know that! The real issue is, what are conservatives going to do about it? IMO, we’ve done very little about it over the years except bitch till we’re blue in the face, even as we flock to the movies and turn on “Desperate Housewives” right along with everybody else. When are we going to get creative and start using art and entertainment as a missionary tool the way the liberals have done for decades? Until we do that, all the bitching, whining, and complaining about liberal bias in Hollyweird will just sound like sour grapes from artistic wannabes with a Salieri complex.
The entertainment industry is overrated. All of this obsession about people’s lives is just ridiculous. All this recognition goes to actors and musicians. But for what? They didn’t cure cancer or risk their lives trying to protect the freedom of their country or put a murderer behind bars. Hollywood and its garbage can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.
I agree with Seane-Anna @ 7.
Conservatives are much better at complaining than they are at going on the offensive.
I’d argue that companies that make movies like ‘Soul Survivor’ and sites like “Big Hollywood” are starting to ‘fight back’ CLD