Mark Steyn: Phoney Baloney - (What George Clooney and the rest of the Oscar crowd have served up)

National Review ^ | Feebruary 27, 2005 | Mark Steyn

[Belasarius]

I nominate Mike Adams in the treasure category. Got all the bite of Coulter....

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/contributors/mikeadams/archive/2006/

[ClancyJ]

I would love to hear Clooney's comments about this article - that is, if he could understand it.

[Countyline]

"This is the Platonic reductio of political art. Say what you like about those Hollywood guys in the Thirties but they were serious about their leftism. Say what you like about those Hollywood guys in the Seventies but they were serious about their outrage at what was done to the lefties in the McCarthy era — though they might have been better directing their anger at the movie-industry muscle that enforced the blacklist. By comparison, Clooney’s is no more than a pose — he’s acting at activism, new Hollywood mimicking old Hollywood’s robust defense of even older Hollywood. He’s more taken by the idea of “speaking truth to power” than by the footling question of whether the truth he’s speaking to power is actually true."

Mark Steyn Salute.

[wildcatf4f3]

Grotowski and Havel risked their lives doing theatre behind the Iron curtain.

[Borges]

Oh I agree with your assertion. I was really taking objection to the idea that an Artist is a de facto coward.

[Borges]

It's Postmodern activism!

[Palladin]

I haven't watched the Academy Awards in years. Hollywood today is as irrelevant as George Clooney.

[roses of sharon]

Man, this article deserves some award, somewhere!

[roses of sharon]

He would have to read it at least 5 times, in between, hiring staff for is Italian Villa.

[I_be_tc]

4 later read

[finnigan2]

Lots of great lines, but my favorite thought provoking sentence is, "What talk radio did to network news and the Internet is doing to monopoly newspapers, someone will eventually do to the big studios, and one day we may wind up with a Hollywood in which, as Clooney might say, nothing is getting shot."

- We may be too close to events to see them clearly, but I believe that Hollywood is even now in a decline, sort of like the Drive In Movie industry of the 1950's. The 20th century might become viewed as the golden age of Hollywood, before it became infested with hubris and the George Clooney like mind set.
Even now, the three major revenue sources for Hollywood are remakes of old movie classics, feature length cartoons and extravagant productions drawn from "Brit Lit" sources.
An enterprising writer could probably start today and already have enough material to make a good case for a book on the rise and fall of Hollywood.

[Hildy]

Danish cartoonists are in hiding for their lives but George Clooney will be televised around the world picking up an award for his bravery.

There's no more to say.

[Borges]

Adaptations have been part of filmmaking from the beginning. And there has not been a Hollywood monopoly on American filmmaking for a long time. Anyone can get a movie made if they hustle. People finance films with their credit card these days.

[little jeremiah]

later read.

[Roscoe Karns]

dead, that is a great cartoon / parody!

I noticed your name in the corner. Did you draw it? If so you really did a great job nailing down Toles' style.

[jimfree]

Amazing. I get an English lesson with each MS piece, this time perhaps more than others. How does he write so many great words each week?

[deadrock]

One of Steyn's best!

[dead]

Thanks Roscoe.

I can't draw, but I can cut & paste. I started with Toles cartoon mocking our seriously wounded soldiers and cut and paste elements from other crappy Toles cartoons to build a new one.

That way, he got to draw a cartoon mocking himself, and he didn't even know it!

[eleni121]

His aunt Rosemary was ten times the man Georgie is.

[Roscoe Karns]

Well, it's a brilliant photoshop & captioning!