oh it’s hard out here for a ‘roo
with the server and the hosting payment due
but you never can know why and who
awol’s administration’s gonna screw
– three 6 koala
this piece is cross-posted at various other community blogs, as well as our own.
on the day after the evening during which hollywood celebrates itself even more so than the other 364 indulgent egotistical diva-navel gazing nights of its self-involved year, we (being marginally in show business ourselves) feel the need to defend our star-studded industry against the most recent hardly-ever-right wing meme currently making the media rounds.
that meme, of course, is how out of touch with america hollywood is. because after all, say the pundits who know everything, the movies up for awards this year have made so little money. and that proves that the people who toil in this town of lalaland are either stupid or have their own agendas. or both. or are godless. or both.
we discuss this after the jump:
other bloggers – including taylor, digby, pam at pandagon, atrios, and especially tbogg (be sure to note the part about foreign receipts), – have dissected the rightists’ arguments much more adroitly than we ever could (meaning they took the time to research the box office numbers, and we didn’t). but we continue unabaited, and unabashed.
the first thing that pops into our minds is, if $$ = connecting to america, what about the adult film industry?
as one of adult entertainment’s largest film studios, vivid already generates an estimated $100 million a year in revenue, cranking out 60 films per year and selling them in video stores, hotel rooms, on cable systems and on the internet. the company sells vivid-branded merchandise, such as condoms, snowboards, apparel and sexually explicit comic books.
that’s one mighty big studio! (that’s what she said!)
but this is actually not the point we want to make, tho it’s always nice to trip up the opposition just by stating the obvious. no, what we want to say is, as usual, the hardly-ever-right wing is once again using two of the very familiar weapons in their media arsenal; that is, changing the subject, and simply accusing the left of the very actions they themselves are guilty of.
and this time, those very actions are “being out of touch with america.” let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that poll numbers are the currency of political favor the way that, well, currency is the currency of hollywood. in that case, let’s look at the political box office:
66% of america wants out of iraq;
66% of americans think awol is doing badly;
only one out of two americans think bin laden will be caught or killed;
less than one out of two americans think awol is handling the war on terrorism well.
woah! if awol were a studio exec, he’d be fired by now! or at least kicked downstairs to a specialty division that only made independent, intimate “tiffany” wars.
basically, things are going down the drain for the administration. so, what does the chattering class do? change the subject: “oh no, films about boys kissing! hollywood is completely out of touch with america!”
and by accusing the left, as represented by the movie industry, of having a huge disconnect with the country, the right hopes that nobody notices that they themselves not only have a bigger disconnect, but are actually creating real life problems because of it.
like the so-called “war on christmas,” this imaginary gap between the film industry and america is a made-up problem, created by the rightist punditry in the hopes that nobody will actually talk about what’s really wrong with this country.
once again, the right changes the subject, and point fingers away from themselves by blaming someone else of doing exactly what they are guilty of.
gee, where have we heard that before?
