IRS Sets Sights on Secret Hollywood Conservative Group

Newsmax IRS Sets Sights on Secret Hollywood Conservative Group Thursday, January 23, 2014 09:28 AM

A conservative group in Hollywood, shrouded in secrecy for fear of a backlash from powerful movie industry liberals, is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service after applying for tax-exempt status.

Friends of Abe has attempted to stay under the radar and is fiercely determined to protect the identity of its 1,500 members, The New York Times reports.

But now the group has come under the scrutiny of the IRS after the federal agency requested information about its meetings with politicians including 2012 vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, former Michigan Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, and 2012 presidential hopeful Hermain Cain, according to anonymous sources who have inside knowledge of the probe.

The report says the IRS has been investigating Friends of Abe — named after Abraham Lincoln — for two years and has had access to its security-protected website containing all the members' names.

No less a personage than mega-producer and Hollywood wonder-boy Irving Thalberg co-authored the Production Code, the set of moral guidelines that all film studios agreed to follow.

WIKI The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of most United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood’s chief censor of the time, Will H. Hays. The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which later became the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), adopted the code in 1930, began enforcing it in 1934, and abandoned it in 1968, in favor of the subsequent MPAA film rating system. The Production Code spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. The office enforcing it was popularly called the Hays Office in reference to Hays, inaccurately so after 1934 when Joseph Breen took over from Hays, creating the Breen Office, which was far more rigid in censoring films than Hays had been.

The Code enumerated a number of key points known as the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls”:[16]

Resolved, That those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated:
1.Pointed profanity – by either title or lip – this includes the words “God,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Christ” (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), “hell,” “damn,” “Gawd,” and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;
2.Any licentious or suggestive nudity-in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;
3.The illegal traffic in drugs;
4.Any inference of sex perversion;
5.White slavery;
6.Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);
7.Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
8.Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact or in silhouette;
9.Children’s sex organs;
10.Ridicule of the clergy;
11.Willful offense to any nation, race or creed;

And be it further resolved, That special care be exercised in the manner in which the following subjects are treated, to the end that vulgarity and suggestiveness may be eliminated and that good taste may be emphasized:
1.The use of the flag;
2.International relations (avoiding picturizing in an unfavorable light another country’s religion, history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry);
3.Arson;
4.The use of firearms;
5.Theft, robbery, safe-cracking, and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc. (having in mind the effect which a too-detailed description of these may have upon the moron);
6.Brutality and possible gruesomeness;
7.Technique of committing murder by whatever method;
8.Methods of smuggling;
9.Third-degree methods;
10.Actual hangings or electrocutions as legal punishment for crime;
11.Sympathy for criminals;
12.Attitude toward public characters and institutions;
13.Sedition;
14.Apparent cruelty to children and animals;
15.Branding of people or animals;
16.The sale of women, or of a woman selling her virtue;
17.Rape or attempted rape;
18.First-night scenes;
19.Man and woman in bed together;
20.Deliberate seduction of girls;
21.The institution of marriage;
22.Surgical operations;
23.The use of drugs;
24.Titles or scenes having to do with law enforcement or law-enforcing officers;
25.Excessive or lustful kissing, particularly when one character or the other is a “heavy”.

Hollywood went nuts when the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities” was investigating them. Now they’re all for destroying anyone who disagrees with them.

On a happier note, last year Speilberg and Lucas said the movie industry is imploding. Steven Soderberg is retiring. Most people think it’s because movies simply cost too much to make and there are less and less investors.

A friend who used to be in the industry told me the other day that people he knows who are still in it are telling him they’re not getting paid. This is from lowly production assistants to craft services to big stars. We both admitted it warms our hearts.

Even H/wood stars and moguls are getting sick of conniving pols coming to Hollywood to extort money and to make themselves look good. Ben Affleck recently said something like he felt the fund-raising was out of hand---could be the stars are feeling "used" by money-crazed pols.

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WIKI BLURB---Hollywood multi-billionaire openly-gay David Geffen was an early supporter of Barack Obama for president and raised $1.3 million for Obama in a star-studded Beverly Hills fundraiser. On February 21, 2007, in an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Geffen described Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton in unflattering terms: "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling." He said that Hillary Clinton was "incredibly polarizing" and described Bill Clinton as "reckless" and cast doubt on those who say he has become a different person since leaving office.

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Mrs O was roundly criticized for her scary appearance at the Oscars last year---the buzz is that stars in the seats heaved a collective groan when she appeared by satellite. Post-Oscar stories left her out of the red carpet apparel reports---one star's dress was designed by Mrs O's dress designer. But reports ommitted any mention of her or her glitzy dress.

LOYAL DEMOCRAT DONNY DEUTSCH WEIGHED IN ON MRS O'S OSCAR BOMB : "As far as I'm concerned, she was an uninvited guest. Now what I mean by that is (as an advert guru), you have to give the consumer, the viewer, the ultimate respect. They tuned in to watch movie stars, to watch movies. And all of a sudden, politics is thrown at them."

"If I want to watch her on Jimmy Fallon, that's okay. But, (the Awards)---that was an intrusion, and I have a feeling that three out of four Americans -- Democrat or Republican -- don't want to see the First ady (there). I think you have to respect your audience enough to not impose her, that's not a moment we're looking for there---the President or the First Lady," Deutsch said on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."

DONNY CONTINUED: "....the tone of it, it was almost a monarch quality.....an elitist flavor....(Mrs O was flanked by uniformed military guards). I was watching and going, 'huh?' and I'm a Democrat," Deutsch told host Piers Morgan. "I just thought it was very very tone deaf and I was really surprised they did it," Deutsch concluded.

Ben Affleck said what he said because the money is drying up. All of those starts, no matter how much money they have socked away, are very insecure and worried they’ll never work again. And of course some of them spend it as fast as they get it, after having given all the agents and publishers and lawyers and entourage their cuts and spending hand over foot to keep up their image. (That big airplane Ben has costs a lot of money even when it’s not in the air.)

Now the rumor is people simply aren’t getting paid. And the big stars that are getting paid, aren’t getting what they were promised. Being so afraid of not getting anymore work they sure as hell won’t sue.

So, the stars, just like a lot of us, have finally realized they’re not getting their money’s worth.

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