Townhall Magazine EXCLUSIVE: Can Andrew Breitbart Save Hollywood?

Recommended

That Civil War Movie Is a Symptom of Hollywood’s Problems Kurt Schlichter

Advertisement

Yes, the rumors are true. After decades of cowering in the deep-blue (as in Blue State) shadows, Hollywood conservatives are beginning to openly express their political beliefs despite the price they’ve paid—both socially and professionally—for doing so in the past. Some are calling this newfound courage the Breitbart Effect, named for the affable New Media titan who exposed the amoral Superfund toxic waste site of Tinsel Town by subjecting it to the standards of traditional, conservative (read: normal) American values.

Through his pioneering work on news aggregation Web sites such as the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post, Breitbart led the charge away from the take-it-or-leave-it company store of monolithic network news and toward the consumer-driven free market of the New Media. How important was it to break up this monopoly? Before there was a New Media, Dan Rather’s “CBS Evening News” “expos?” about George W. Bush’s National Guard service (complete with forged documents) would have gone unchallenged—and Dan Rather would still have a career. Because of New Media and outlets such as Drudge, Rather’s inept hoax was discovered—and shared with the world—within a matter of hours. …

Call it what you like—the Breitbart Effect, the Having-Just-Grown-A-Pair Effect, the Other Great Enlightenment—a little candor on the part of show business conservatives would be a refreshing change from the days when being “outed” in Hollywood had more to do with what one did in the privacy of the voting booth than in the bedroom (or, this being Hollywood, in the hot tub).

So who is this man who, by some accounts, may have helped jump-start this right-wing Renaissance?

Both Russia and the United States insist one Cold War was enough. But considering the frosty rhetorical winds blowing back and forth between the two former, bitter rivals the last few years, one has to wonder.

Even with the Obama White House’s efforts to push a gimmicky “reset button” with the Kremlin in hopes that it will make everything better, it appears that a persistent cold front has descended on U.S.-Russia ties.

Today’s Moscow is increasingly heavy-handed at home, domineering abroad and hell bent on reasserting Russia once again as a great—if not the preeminent—power on the world stage.

Without question, the Bear is back.

While it is not a bear of Cold War Soviet-vintage, it’s no Teddy bear, either. Russia is a big, growly grizzly willing to throw its weight around in support of the Kremlin’s interests across the globe.

Unfortunately, this has rarely been good news for Uncle Sam recently.

In a famous speech in 1961, Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates,” commanded Guevara. “Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.” “Youth,” wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass.”

“Those who choose their own path” (as in growing long hair and listening to “Yankee-Imperialist” Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless “roqueros,” “lumpen” and “delinquents.” In his famous speech, Che Guevara even vowed “to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!”

Tens of thousands of Cuban youths learned that Che Guevara’s admonitions were more than idle bombast. In Guevara, the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 1960s found an extremely eager acolyte. By the mid ’60s, the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle (blue jeans, long hair, fondness for the Beatles and Stones) or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked out of Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” emblazoned in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were quite similar.

Today, the world’s largest image of the man that so many hipsters sport on their shirts adorns Cuba’s headquarters and torture chambers for its KGB-trained secret police. Nothing could be more fitting.

Ignorance, of course, accounts for much Che idolatry. But so does mendacity and wishful thinking, all of it boosted by reflexive anti-Americanism. The most popular version of the Che T-shirt, for instance, sports the slogan “fight oppression” under his famous countenance. This is the face of the second in command, chief executioner and chief KGB liaison for a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s and executed more people in its first three years in power than Hitler’s executed in its first six.

Whereas Lincoln inherited the defi ning crisis of civil war, Obama’s inherited defining crisis appears to be an economy deep into the “Global Great Recession.” …

Deficit spending is Obama’s economic magic wand to restore the economy to prosperity, but he won’t pull a recovery rabbit out of his hat with his approach. As stimulus, Obama’s fiscal largesse was doomed at the outset, and with it, any hope of a quick, strong, sustained recovery.

It didn’t have to be this way. The alternative, based on sound economic principles and the enduring strengths of America’s economy, was to cut tax rates on productive activities. This would accelerate the recovery in business investment and economic confidence generally, which are the real drivers of an overall recovery. Unfortunately, such effective fiscal policies are not in vogue today.

It’s clear that the tea party energy is threatening to the Left. Ongoing harassment—both denying the huge turnout and deriding the efforts as anti-American—persisted long past the nationwide events. In the Chicago Tribune, Clarence Page derided fringe protestors who held signs he claimed were racist and said they represented the movement as a whole. CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen said the protests were “anti-government,” and Democratic advisor Robert Schrum said they were “insubstantial.” Obama himself was reportedly unaware that any of the events were even happening. But the effort put forth by those who attended was difficult to reconcile with “a dying brand.”

*Good riddance to Benedict Arlen

*Obama plots a Supreme Court takeover

*Attorney General Holder talks gun control

*Mary Katharine Ham exposes what the president would like to have said to the tea party activists

*Why “sin” taxes hurt sinners and saints alike

*Faster growth means more freedom, but the White House’s plans threaten to slow things way, way down

*Leftists blast traditional families

*Rebecca Hagelin knows there’s still time to save your family and rescue our culture

*Can the government and UAW really be trusted to run GM and Chrysler?

*S.E. Cupp wants real substance from conservatives, not cheap imitations of the Left

. . . And much more.