Posted on 01/28/2009 2:50:23 PM PST by EveningStar
Several years ago, after I emerged from the fog of knee-jerk Liberalism that envelops most of the entertainment business, I began to wonder why it was that so many of my colleagues remained mired in the magical thinking that so often seems to characterize the Left. After all, many of my colleagues were reasonable, kind, and intelligent people. Among my friends, were musicians, actors, photographers, and writers - all of whom were highly creative and dedicated to their craft yet, as is typical of those on the Left, they couldn’t be swayed by facts if those facts contradicted the prevailing winds of Liberal dogma. So, the big question emerged: why is the entertainment industry so disproportionately skewed to the Left?
(Excerpt) Read more at bighollywood.breitbart.com ...
ping
The writer makes many excellent points. Thanks for posting.
Very good article!
“How Narcissism Has Taken Over the Entertainment Industry”
A bulletin if ever I saw one...
The HUAC era had a lot to do with it, too. Mostly though it’s the “incestuousness” as he put it. Hollywood is a bubble, the entertainment industry is a bubble. You are either in or out and if you don’t go along you don’t get along too long.
I am a musician hobbyist (I am in three bands and play several instruments). One of my musician friends asked me why I never go to concerts.
It is because anyone I really want to hear virtually never comes through town, I refuse to pay more than $50 to see any artist and I refuse to patronize Ticketmaster.
Also, I have rubbed shoulders with enough rich and/or famous people that “star factor” is completely irrelevant to me. I’ve always known, on an intellectual level, that everyone puts their pants on, one leg at a time, but I didn’t start “living” it until my early 40’s.
I would no more pay any money whatsoever to see a famous person than I would to see my brother. Now, if they offered to actually entertain me, that’s different. But so few modern entertainers really have a skill that is much better than a lot of people. Good guitar players, for example, really ARE a dime a dozen. Same with good singers.
The “entertainment” industry is a far cry from its former self. Talent-wise, creativity, maturity, patriotism.
It gets hardly any of my dollars today.
Great article.
My husband played the guitar at a party hosted by one of our choir members recently, and several of the guests said that - for free, with free food, wine, and comfortable chairs - was as good as many performances they'd paid to see. And although I didn't sing on this occasion, I'm as good as many, many vocalists, and vice-versa.
Laura Ingraham mentioned this fact as one reason that performers tend to support government handouts and believe in magic (or Global Warming). In that business, talent, effort, and good looks only take one so far. Lots of people can act, sing, or look pretty. The difference between a movie star and an aspiring actor waiting tables is often sheer randomness.
Good article especially pinpointing the age of “if it feels good do it” as being incarnated during the 60’s.
Hollywood Brainwash Marinade - It's whats for dinner!
I agree. I far prefer to be in a bar or restaurant that has a decent performer that comes with the order or a $5 cover.
The only guitarist I would pay $50 to see would probably be Charles Berry, Jr. and then it would depend on the venue. I have seen him play a few times as a back up with some unbelieveable solos. He plays guitar in his father Chuck’s band.
Because they live in a false paradise, one in which no one is expected to produce anything tangible. Their output is esoteric, amorphous, and entirely subjective. So they depend on feelings, not reality, to define their value. Liberalism is the same way. It cannot withstand objective scrutiny; Truth is to liberalism what sunlight is to a vampire. But feelings? Oh yeah! Feelings can't be governed or regulated or forced to be consistent. And while they add a valuable dimension to existence, they are a poor platform on which to build a polity.
I thought all this was settled in the Age of Reason, but apparently some lessons are easily forgotten.
Wow, great article. I would like to copy this from the comments section (especially the last 2 paragraphs) as I felt this person made some EXCELLENT points:
“Gerard Knorr - January 27th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I really would like to share my own personal experience here with narcissism because a lack of understanding of it seems to underpin so much of the problem for conservatives in addressing the attacks of the left.
At one time, like the polite, well-raised, conservative Midwestern boy that I was, I believed that people meant the best, that everyone had an impulse to protect the rights of others, et cetera. My parents encouraged this belief, and giving everyone the benefit of the doubt was an important value.
When my ex-wife’s father died, he left my wife and her sister as co-executors of his estate. The man had a very sick sense of humor, apparently, for I was to find out that her sister was a bit of a monster. Everything she said, everything she did seemed designed to dehumanize, degrade, and hurt everyone she had the capacity to hurt. I had never, and still have never, felt so poorly treated in my life. Every bit of power that that situation gave her over us, she used to it’s absolute utmost to hurt and degrade. As a civilized person raised by civilized people in a normal family, I had no context for this kind of thing.
Then, while we were going through this, I read a book about Michael Moore. In it, the authors posited the idea that Moore had Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). They ran through the criteria:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is “special” and unique
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Read that, and tell me which arrogant celebrity fails to meet the diagnostic criteria for the disorder.
The important thing here, and where I disagree in part with this article, is that they didn’t fall into this kind of thinking by being emotional. Emotional people don’t have to take morally inverted positions and then put them across in as cruel and uncaring a way as possible. Narcissists do that. And they don’t become those later in life, they are narcissists by their teen years.
I think a more hard-nosed, and probably more accurate, assessment of the situation (that I admit I am making from a distance) is that studio execs, who were functional adults with normal minds, contained the narcissists and made use of them without letting them set the tone, which they would not allow for many reasons but simple economics obviously is the only one you need and is a sufficient answer by itself (although most were patriotic immigrants). I think hollywood is the ultimate siren for narcissists from coast to coast and I think not only hollywood but the advertising industry are packed with them from top to bottom.
What I would like to say to any emotionally normal person who works in the industry is to really take a good look at what clinical narcissism is, and read up on what you can find on the Internet about it. I can give you the short version of what you’ll likely conclude: the only way to contain them is with consequences. Fear. Fear of ridicule is the only thing that you can probably use. Being made to look as empty and ridiculous as they really are has to be their ultimate fear.
Here’s where conservatives make the big mistake. If you were raised in a healthy family and are a normal person your tendency is always going to be to assume, when someone makes a nasty, mean-spirited conclusion about America (and of course by extension you and your values) but couches it in a bunch of sophistry that appeals to higher virtue, that they are simply making an honest error of judgement. This is a HUGE MISTAKE. Unfortunately your civility and good character are your greatest weakness and you can never win unless you stop letting them pretend their motivations are honorable. They aren’t. They’re just hateful.
Some men just want to see the world burn. Believe it. And FIGHT.”
(Plus I love the quote from The Dark Knight)
Oh, my, does he NAIL this!
Thanks for posting that. I would have missed it just reading the article. Yep, I’d say it’s time to take the gloves off to this nonsense.
great post
[Leftist positions appeal to the emotions because they are easy to understand and seem compassionate, even if they lead to larger problems in the long run. And, since they don’t necessitate a lot of facts to clutter the mind, they are easy to embrace and promulgate. I know from my own past that I accepted a lot of Leftist rhetoric simply because it was easier to allow myself to be swept along in the feel-good tide it engendered without being forced to think my positions through with any depth.]
This is a great point. This is a problem that is way to pervasive in our culture today. People want to distract themselves with celebrity culture and do not want to think about political issues. Unfortunately, they still show up at the voting booth and pull the lever for a creep like Obama (because Oprah told them to).
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