Andrew Breitbart: ‘Something’s Desperately Wrong’ in Hollywood

July 16, 2008 | Filed Under Business, Democrats/Leftists, Entertainment, Media Bias, Military, News, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, War on Terror, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

Andrew Breitbart, CEO of Breitbart.com, had a great op ed in the Washington Times yesterday about how Hollywood oppresses Republicans and conservatives in La La Land. Detailing the travails of Republicans in Hollywood — including destruction by Hollywood’s liberals of personal property owned by identified Republicans — Breitbart laments the “bullying” the self-proclaimed tolerant lefties mete out to those who walk the Republican side of the street.

Breitbart says of this ideological inbreeding:

But Los Angeles is a one-company town. And because of bullying (or what Democrats would call blacklisting or “political discrimination” if the shoe were on the other foot), Hollywood has become a one-party town. History will show this dynamic hurt both the creative and the political processes. In the absence of checks and balances we end up with a system that creates a mainstream film about Ronald Reagan — written, produced and directed by narcissistic and myopic partisans who only viewed the Gipper through the lens of partisan AIDS activism. Like anyone would watch an epic movie about America’s victory in the Cold War.

Hollywood is so left-wing that it hurts its own bottom line by constantly producing films that no one wants to see. Especially their current crop of dreck about the war in Iraq. Breitbart mentions the many failures of these left-wing, anti-Iraq war films.

More than a dozen box office failures vilify the troops without a single counter-perspective seeing the light of day. Yet one impactful and heartfelt pro-war film, Brothers at War, dares to tell the story of a noble and patriotic American family yet can’t find a distributor.

But there is another way to see how little America cares for these anti-American bombs. It is instructive to take a quick look at the box office takes for these unmitigated disasters to see how Americans have reacted to these films.

Lions for Lambs $15 million
Stop-Loss $10 million
Rendition $9 million
In the Valley of Elah $6 million
No End in Sight $1 million
Gunner Palace $601,000
The War Tapes $255,000
Iraq in Fragments $205,000
Redacted $66,000
Home of the Brave $52,000
Grace Is Gone $51,000
Battle for Haditha $9,000

Now, in contrast, some of the current crop of films at the theater have earned so much more than these flops that it boggles the mind. Even those films considered flops, like Speed Racer, have so far out earned Hollywood’s dreary, anti-American Iraq war films that it seems impossible to believe.

Winners thus far this Summer are:

Iron Man $300 million
Indiana Jones 4 $300 million
Kung Fu Panda $200 million
WALL-E (After only two weeks) $163 million
Sex in the City $148 million
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $139 million

And here are some of what are being called box office bombs this Summer:

The Happening $63 million
Speed Racer $43 million
The Love Guru $31 million

Even the execrable Eddie Murphy debacle “Meet Dave” earned $5 million thus far and it just came out on July 11. Comparing these numbers to the paltry box office take of Hollywood’s horrible Iraq war movies is an eyeopening exercise.

Breitbart sums up his point thus:

The litany of negative consequences to the ideological rigidity of modern Hollywood is virtually limitless. The lack of tension between competing ideas has made the arts increasingly tedious and rendered the celebrities woefully uninteresting.

Well, if nothing else, the box office earnings I just recounted tend to support that, at least to reveal that Americans simply don’t agree with Hollywood’s point of view. Yet they persist in being as far off target from how the average American feels about this country as possible.

Breitbart is right. Hollywood does not reflect the ideology of most Americans. And its militant, hatred of the ideology of the largest number of America’s citizens, as well as its hypocritical comportment in reaction to that ideology, makes the lie to its claim of being the more “civilized,” “caring,” and “intelligent” spot in the country.

(Photo credit: zdnet.com)

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston