Hollywood Billboards Mock Liberals, Hawk Scripts
February 11, 2005LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Forget advertising movies, underwear or perfume on billboards. That's so trite. What's hot on billboards today ranges from personals ads to requests for donated organs.
In Hollywood, two particular signs are gaining media attention. The first is a right-wing billboard funded by Citizens United that credits Hollywood's outspoken liberals for creating enough hoopla during the last presidential election to get George W. Bush re-elected.
The billboards feature Bush smiling at a podium and the faces of several Hollywood left-wingers: Barbra Streisand, Ben Affleck, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Whoopi Goldberg and Michael Moore, filmmaker of the controversial anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." The signs read "4 More Years. Thank You Hollywood!
The sign is strategically placed so they will be visible from the red carpet outside Hollywood's Kodak Theatre on Oscar night, Sunday, Feb. 27.
Thanking Tinseltown For Four More Yearsby Timothy Karry
published by MediaChannel.Org
Thanking Tinseltown For Four More Years
Right-wing activists at Citizens United have raised enough money to erect at least three billboards within walking distance of the Kodak Theatre, host to this month’s Academy Awards ceremony. The billboards thank liberal Hollywood for driving voters to Bush. This stunt plays well into the right's concerted campaign to paint Hollywood as elitist and anti-American, and Hollywood stars as bumbling actors, out of touch with the red-state reality of the American political landscape. (More photos at Cinemocracy).
The right-wing mastermind behind this effective campaign is none other than David Bossie. His Citizens United Foundation, a subsidiary of Citizens United, bills itself as "a non-partisan, non-profit research and education foundation. . . . dedicated to informing the American people about . . . traditional American values, including: the Constitution as the supreme limit on federal power, a strong national defense as the primary role of the federal government; free enterprise as the economic system that has enabled the American people to attain and maintain an historically high standard of living; belief in God and Judeo/Christian values as the fundamental attribute of our way of life; and the recognition of the family as the basic social unit of our society."
Bossie, is actually a Republican Party dirty-trickster who was fired from his job as an investigator working for Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in 1998. Bossie was canned -- as the Washington Post reported in a front-page article on May 7, 1998 -- for his role in doctoring then releasing transcripts of former Clinton administration official Webster Hubbell's prison conversations.
Bossie's MO during the Starr investigation was to lob often untrue and "scattershot allegations" toward an over-eager press corps that rarely bothered to fact-check his claims before running them via mainstream news outlets, according to Eric Boehlert.
Democratic strategist James Carville once said, "[Bossie] made collective fools out of about 80 percent of the national press corps." He has since commanded media attention for making other unsubstantiated claims, including the statement that former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was closer to the Democratic and not Republican Party and that he had the evidenc that prooved Bill Clinton was responsible for the September 11 attacks.
That a political prankster like Bossie has managed to maintain respectability in Washington, particularly among the press, is one of the sad truths of our enfeebled Fourth Estate.
Next on Bossie’s hit list is "Hollywood liberals." While the billboards seem to contradict Citizens United's allegedly "non-partisan" stance, they are a brilliant effort to get one central Republican talking point across to the public: that the elite entertainment establishment, on both the left and right coasts, is at odds with red-meat America.
The 2004 publication of Bossie's quickie rant -- "The Many Faces of John Kerry: Why This Massachusetts Liberal is Wrong for America" -- is another afront to Citizens United's "non partisan" billing. None of that unbiased language -- necessary to maintain their 501 (c) 3, tax exempt status -- seems to be taken seriously any way.
Now the right-wing has glommed onto the billboard story to further push their notion that Tinseltown plays mouthpiece to a liberal agenda: "Already, word of the billboards has Hollywood in a tizzy and the Citizens United campaign has been featured on CNN and Fox News,” writes right-wing news service NewsMax.
"Making the experience more painful for the disappointed Hollywood big wigs is the location of the three billboards -- their proximity to the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards."
Clearly, the right is hoping this story will get more traction in mainstream press, further amplifying their anti-Hollywood message. If past experience is any guide, Bossie will succeed in making this a mainstream news item. The Billboards went up on February 1 and will run through the month. The Academy Awards occur on the 27th. Let’s see how far this one goes.
LOL!!