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Contributors
Doug Gamble- Contributor
Doug
Gamble is a former writer for President Ronald Reagan and
resides
in Carmel. [go to Gamble index]
 Hollywood
In Anguish
No
box office for Kerry..
[Doug Gamble] 11/24/04
It is instructive that in the three weeks following the presidential
election there has been nary a peep from usually vociferous Hollywood
liberals about the licking they took at the hands of President
George W. Bush.
True, singer Linda Ronstadt laments that voters have elected
a new gang of Hitlers and film propagandist Michael Moore published
on his web site 17 reasons why disheartened liberals should not
slit their wrists. But beyond that there has been a cacophony
of silence.
Why so? According
to Martha Williamson, executive producer of the long-running “Touched by an Angel” on CBS,
now in re-runs, the pro-John Kerry Hollywood community was devastated
by the election results after putting so much effort into trying
to destroy Bush. “There are a lot of broken hearts out
there,” she says. If Hollywood liberals are talking these
days, it might be mainly to their therapists.
To those who decry
Hollywood’s contribution to a coarsening
culture, it is sweet irony that leftist celebrities injected
themselves into the political process as never before, in the
very election where exit polls showed that moral values were
a major issue. Not only did they not help defeat Bush, they actually
sabotaged any chance Kerry had of winning.
Although I usually pay little attention to observations by
CNN anchor Aaron Brown, he was on to something when he said the
turning point in the election occurred away back last February
when Janet Jackson exposed her breast during the Super Bowl halftime
show.
The aftermath of the incident revealed the extent to which
the Kerry-supporting Hollywood crowd and their elitist allies
simply don’t get it. By insisting
the “wardrobe malfunction” was no big deal, they missed the broader
point that it was an outrage because it blindsided an unprepared and unsuspecting
middle America right in the midst of a sporting event long known for attracting
a family audience. Viewers can choose not to watch MTV, but they are justifiably
angered when MTV content is unexpectedly forced upon them.
But I believe another
indication that Kerry’s association
with Hollywood was the wrong alliance in the wrong place at the
wrong time showed up a year before the election, in November,
2003. That was when CBS was forced to cancel a mini-series on
Ronald and Nancy Reagan because of a public outcry against the
portrayal of the then-dying former president as a cartoon-like,
even foul-mouthed, buffoon.
It was as if millions,
long tired of Hollywood dumping on mainstream American values,
collectively shouted “Enough.” Tellingly,
even many grassroots Democrats were repelled by Hollywood’s
treatment of the Reagans. Apparently Kerry didn’t notice.
At a time when values
were front and center, Kerry probably sealed his fate when,
at the close of a crude, expletive-riddled,
celebrity-populated fundraiser, he declared Hollywood to be “the
heart and soul of America.” To paraphrase Winston Churchill,
never before have so few words done so much to turn off so many.
But Kerry, oblivious
to the fact that every celebrity’s
outburst against Bush was another nail in the Democrat’s
coffin, continued to campaign with them to the end. One couldn’t
be blamed for wondering if Kerry’s running mate was Bruce
Springsteen rather than John Edwards.
Has Hollywood
learned anything? Not if ABC-TV’s recent
inclusion of a steamy, nude locker room scene at the start of
Monday Night Football, aired at 6 p.m. on the west coast, is
any indication. If it keeps this up, Hollywood will discover
that a show called “Republicans Own the White House” will
be very hard to get cancelled. tRO
California-based Doug Gamble contributed speech material to
Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and writes a twice-monthly
column for the Orange County Register and CaliforniaRepublic.org.
Copyright
2004 Doug Gamble
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