Posted on 02/22/2007 2:07:17 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
Jesse Jackson: Hollywood Needs 'Diversity'
Newsmax.com
Feb. 22, 2007
As seemingly half of Hollywood converged on a fundraiser for Democratic presidential aspirant Sen. Barack Obama, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was huddled elsewhere with Universal Studios president Ron Meyer over his own campaign - to increase industry diversity.
"We must go to each of the companies and agencies and urge them to make the industry open up and expand the market and the opportunities," Jackson said Wednesday during an hour-plus interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"After all, we once did not know how big baseball could be until everyone could play. Right now, with the system (in) Hollywood, we don't know how big the entertainment market can be until everybody is able to participate."
Jackson's Tuesday meeting with Meyer and his planned sessions with various studio heads, talent agency executives and others are part of a continuing campaign by the civil rights leader's Rainbow Coalition to press for greater diversity in Hollywood's casting process and studio hiring. Citing data like a recent UCLA report showing low numbers of minority-oriented film roles, Jackson aims to convince industry elite that increased casting and hiring of minorities will broaden the creative scope of Hollywood entertainment and thus its revenue base.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Jesse...as a fellow alumnus of the University of Illinois..I suggest you get your loud mouth and butt down to Champaign and stand up for the rights of Indians to dance at athletic events. It won't pay well but will, for the first time in your life, put you squarely behind a noble cause. Go on ahead Jesse...get your a$$ on down to Champaign and cause a fuss for a good cause!! You will be a better man for the experience!
Blah, Blah, Blah...what does Jesse come out with this crap EVERY Sweeps week? (Is it Sweeps week?)
Uh, Jesse, Hollywood is currently experiencing one of the greatest flowering of black actors in history. Get with the program or at least go to a movie once in awhile.
African Americans ? Are you saying Africans moved to the States, got citizenship and struck gold in the movie industry?
Wow!
Looks like PC got a-hold of you too.
The participation of African Americans in the Film business is at an all time high
At the very least there are more good -- actually very good -- black actors than ever before.
>>>Jesse Jackson: Hollywood Needs 'Diversity'<<<
Yeah. There are not enough straight people, and not enough Protestants.
Or she is completely out of her mind on drugs. She is, I know it, because I drive a taxi in NYC and right now there is a huge drug epidemic in NYC clubs and she constantly goes to them. Just about every week I find baggies of cocaine, heroin or meth in the back seat. Last December I found 1/2 pound of pot if you can believe it, literally a sandwich bag stuffed to the busting point with pot and it always after I pick up someone from the same clubs Ms. Teen Idol goes to.
Wasn't thinking about the terminology at all. Exchange terms as is appropriate.
Maybe so, but I challenge you to name one black Key Grip in Hollywood!
I think its how many "OSCARS".
He's been wildly successful at shaking down businesses for money over the years and knows no other trade.
More guilty white liberals can be found in Hollywood than in any other industry. Thus, they are the perfect target for a shakedown.
Kiss of death. The Vulture is circling.
It doesn't have to be true. They just have to have White Guilt.
In Roger's defense (I'm probably one of his few fans on FR), I read that review and I don't think that he hated the movie because it had a message that he didn't agree with politically--I think he disliked the movie because it trashed both sides of the issue without coming up with a message of its own.
It's also worth considering that he gave a thumbs up to the documentary "Michael Moore Hates America."
Money attracts nookie.
Here's that movie review, by the way
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R) ZERO stars
ZERO???
One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system rotten.No, the movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution, although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still, when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400 more waiting their turn, you have to move right along.
Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the screen--maybe Spacey and Parker.
You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in Texas.
That is the politics of the film, not the way the story was told.
Actually, the excerpt you provided proves my point. The overall theme does not delve into the film's "politics" at all, it's a complaint of the film's setting. He criticizes the execution system in Texas, but then complains that the movie being set there is a morally bankrupt thing to do. I don't see anywhere in those paragraphs where he addresses the movie's politics...in fact, his statement on "The Life of David Gale" is that it HAS no politics, that it was a movie that didn't take the issue seriously and discredited both sides of the argument.
I would direct you to the first sentence of the last paragraph. He lists movies fairly on all sides of the issues, including a movie that makes its case and is PRO capital punishment ("The Executioner's Song").
As far as him being "politically ugly," I'll say again that he gave a fair review and a thumb's up to "Michael Moore Hates America." Although actually "nowadays" he's been in the hospital and physical therapy for more than half a year and I'm eagerly waiting his return.
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