Exploring the Hollywood Propaganda Machine

Townhall.com ^ | May 31, 2011 | Ben Shapiro

[Kaslin]

Hollywood matters.

It matters because we watch Hollywood product day in and day out. Your children spend six or seven hours at school, and couple of hours with their friends, and a couple of hours with you. They spend a full three hours with the television.

You get home from work, kick off your shoes, and plop down in front of the TV, hoping simply to chill out. Instead, you get unmitigated liberalism pouring out of your TV. But you continue to watch because it’s great. It’s fun, thrilling, dramatic, or hilarious. We think it has no impact on us.

But it does. Television made Barack Obama. Television it supported bigger and bigger government, from Welfare to health care; pushed abortion-on-demand and the radical gay agenda into the mainstream; it stumped against war and for meaningless buzzwords like diversity and dangerous buzzwords like multiculturalism. Television has done more to change the politics of our nation than simple politics has.

Television has manipulated us. And those who create television have done it purposefully, and elegantly. They have weeded out conservatives in the industry wholesale. They have worked hand-in-glove with liberals in government to forward the leftist agenda. They have turned pure entertainment into a vehicle for propaganda.

And for years, they’ve lied about it. Just as they did with the mainstream news media and the universities, television industry honchos told us that no bias exists; that if there is bias, it’s because the American public demands bias; that any attempt to peek behind the television screen is McCarthyism.

Now, I’ve peeked behind that screen. In my new book, Primetime Propaganda, I went into the heart of Hollywood. I spoke personally with scores of major Hollywood names, who admitted to me on tape that discrimination takes place in Hollywood, that they use their programming to manipulate Americans politically, that they scorn everyday conservatives, and that they twist the television market to achieve their own political goals.

I didn’t hide who I was in doing these interviews. I told them my name, my legal background, and what my book was about. They granted me interviews because they are proud of their propagandizing efforts. If they had known I was a conservative, would they have let me through the door? Some of them would have. But others probably assumed that because of my Jewish last name and my Harvard Law baseball cap, I was a liberal. More than that, they likely assumed that because I was in Hollywood in the first place, I was a liberal.

Now, we’ve got the goods. The biggest names in television over the past few decades – the people who made your favorite shows – told me that they propagandize, they do it purposefully but subtly, and they do it because they feel a moral need to do it.

Over the next days, we are going to roll out the tape. We’re going to do it from multiple directions, and we’re going to do it in their own house organs. They’re going to have to respond.

Conservatives take heed: the battle has now begun. The entertainment industry is more powerful by multiples than the liberal news media. That’s because even conservatives will watch liberal shows, where few conservatives would watch CNN. We’ll all go see a popcorn flick, even if it’s Avatar, and even if it’s telling us and our children that the American military is imperialistic and evil. That has an impact.

Now we can take our culture back. Culture is the hardware – politics is the software. If we want to take our country back, we need to start by reclaiming our cultural heritage. Primetime Propaganda starts that work.

Then, if you want to do more, visit Declaration Entertainment to get involved in the process of making conservative entertainment a reality. We’re conservatives – that means we compete in the marketplace rather than regulating it or boycotting it. They’ve created a market inefficiency we’re going to exploit.

But first, read up on the conflict by picking up a copy of Primetime Propaganda. Find out what you’re watching – from the inside – and find out and why it’s so insidious. The number one tool in the left’s arsenal is the television industry. Let’s take that weapon out of their hands.

[LS]

I met Ben last year at a dinner given by Andrew Breitbart. Smart guy.

Taking back the culture is specifically why I created "Rockin' the Wall Studios" and began making movies.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Sounds like a worthy undertaking. There’s been no tv here at 668 for a very long time. Hard to understand why anyone would pay $50 or more a month for such pollution.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

http://www.declarationentertainment.com/

[af_vet_rr]

pushed abortion-on-demand and the radical gay agenda into the mainstream;

That it does. Rupert Murdoch and his cronies are doing what they can to use Murdoch's media properties as a way to promote the homosexual agenda with shows like Glee and Bones and to bash the military with movies like Avatar. We don't watch Fox or Fox News in our house and try to avoid 20th Century Fox movies as well Murdoch's newspapers. It's a shame that it's come to this, but what can you do.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

What finally did it for me was an episode on one of the “Law and Order” shows (I think it was “SVU.”) It was a story about an honor killing. Guess who the perp was? If you said a Muslim, you would be wrong. It was a Christian Fundamentalist. The percentage of honor killings by Christians is lower than the number of white cornerbacks in the NFL. I never watched again, fearful that the next show would be about a crazed Presbyterian who went around beheading journalists.

[Melas]

As a fan of the show on Netflix, what homosexuality is Bones promoting? I haven’t seen anything yet in the first five seasons.

[chargers fan]

If you can’t see it obviously they’ve gotten to you too /sarc

[upchuck]

We think it [TV] has no impact on us.

Ahh, but it does.

Which is why the last TV I watched was Sarah Palin's VP acceptance speech in 2008. At first it was difficult, but now I don't miss it at all and feel sorry for folks who think they must absolutely get their daily "fix" from the TV.

I guess maybe I'm a poster child for Curmudgeons, Inc. as I have no cell phone and avoid social networks like the plague.

[TruthBeforeAll]

Given the influence television has in America, would it be a stretch to suggest that there might be some production companies being funded by certain government agencies? Or would this be beyond what we might accept as rational thought?

[af_vet_rr]

One of the main characters had a lesbian streak that they played up.

[lurk]

“...we watch Hollywood product day in and day out. Your children spend six or seven hours at school, and couple of hours with their friends, and a couple of hours with you. They spend a full three hours with the television.

You get home from work, kick off your shoes, and plop down in front of the TV, hoping simply to chill out. Instead, you get unmitigated liberalism pouring out of your TV. But you continue to watch because it’s great. It’s fun, thrilling, dramatic, or hilarious. We think it has no impact on us.”

Nine years without a TV now. The kids have grown up without it, except for the occasional motel stay. So thankful we don’t have it.

[artichokegrower]

The Federal Government and various state governments fund the film and television industry

http://blogs.ajc.com/radio-tv-talk/2011/03/25/tvmovie-production-tax-credits-spared-the-ax/

http://www.nmfilm.com/filming/incentives/tax-rebate.php

http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/incentives/tax_credit_overview.shtml

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/03/crit_incentives_for_film_indus.html

and on and on.

[Carry_Okie]

Television has manipulated us. And those who create television have done it purposefully, and elegantly. They have weeded out conservatives in the industry wholesale. [Snip] And for years, they’ve lied about it.

Time for a massive class-action lawsuit, if for nothing else because of the damage to children. For years, TV execs have denied that their programming has any impact on kids. Yet if it didn't work there wouldn't be an advertising industry paying them billions for air time.

IMO, TV networks are the tobacco companies of the 21st Century.

[lentulusgracchus]

....folks who think they must absolutely get their daily "fix" from the TV.

The WB has taken to calling their 9 pm (CDT) evening news show, Newsfix. And it isn't news -- it's infotitillation, w/ production values like TMZ and ET.

[lentulusgracchus]

As a fan of the show on Netflix, what homosexuality is Bones promoting?

I don't know about Bones since I've only seen about 90 seconds of it (mauling skeleta, how CSI of them); but I saw online where Glee won several awards from GLAAD, the gay movement's MiniTrue/ADL/KGB ("Sword and Shield"). They openly praised Glee for its homonormalization agenda and "outreach". I think their award should be called the Goebbels Award, since Hunter Madsen and Marshall Kirk openly admitted they were going to emulate Goebbels's Nietzschean-amoral techniques and standards.

The other show the GLAAD catamitarchs particularly praised was The Kids Are All Right. Numbers of actors, actresses, writers, producers, and directors are outed on the GLAAD website and other infotainment websites that quote and link to them. I found the awards story (from a couple of months ago) on one of those.

[FreedomPoster]

Seems like a good time to repost I’m the Slime lyrics. Frank Zappa had TV nailed almost 40 years ago.

I’m The Slime

I am gross and perverted
I’m obsessed ‘n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I’m the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can’t look away
I make you think I’m delicious
With the stuff that I say
I’m the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozin’ out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you
Don’t go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That’s right, folks . . .
Don’t touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I am the slime from your video
Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can’t stop the slime, people, lookit me go

[FreedomPoster]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jonzFUPBelc

[driftless2]

Not everyone is aware of all the lib bias on the tube. The wife and I were watching some cop show a year or so ago, and I began groaning about all the not so subtle lib memes. She asked me what I was talking about. I relayed them to her, and she told me she couldn’t see any. I was stunned that she couldn’t see it, but she hates it when start my conservative ranting and ruin her shows. Don’t get me wrong, she hates Obama as much as I do. But like many Americans, she is not aware of all the lib propaganda that plagues today’s tv.

[patriot08]

I don’t watch much television (except news, movies,etc) but when I saw Kathy Bates, whom I’ve always liked, had a new show, I turned in.
I’ve never seen such a piece of Liberal BS in my life.
The very first show was about a black young man who had a criminal record but was ‘on his way to getting his life straightend out’ and headed for college when he committed another criminal act. It was about how unfair the system is to blacks, ad naseum.
Never watched it again.