Focus on Hollywood

Andrew Breitbart: a man with a mission

I wrote a little post on Andrew Breitbart and his father-in-law Orson Bean at the beginning of the year, soon after Breitbart started his newest website, Big Hollywood. Breitbart has sharpened and limited his focus to exposing media bias and to combating the "totalitarian" culture in today's Hollywood. A David and Goliath sort of mission, it seems to me.

Peter Robinson interviews Andrew Breitbart about his new project in a 5-part video here. It's an interesting little series on an influential person you've not heard much about. Peter Robinson's interviewing style is a bit too animated for my taste, but he asks some very interesting questions. If you decide to watch any of the segments below, press the "start" button in the middle of the video frame, then click on the "full screen" button at the lower right for best sound and video quality. Press "Esc." to exit the full screen mode.

Breitbart characterizes those who now control Hollywood in very negative terms in Part 1 of these interviews. He gives a specific example of how the Left uses projection - accusing those they intend to target of the behavior they themselves intend to engage in. During the Bush years, the refrain "Dissent is patriotic" was constant from the left. Yet when questioned, they couldn't name anyone who was limiting their dissent. After Obama came into the presidency, the same people who had earlier proclaimed that "dissent is patriotic" engaged in vigorous efforts to vilify and silence dissent. focusing in particular on people like Rush Limbaugh.

In Part 2, Breitbart talks about how the Hollywood Left silences other points of view in Hollywood. He also believes that the views of a small, culturally insulated, parochial group of people in Hollywood, numbering in the low thousands, have a profound impact on American foreign policy. In Part 3, he talks about the beginnings of his disillusionment with the Left, and about how he, when already a conservative, came to be the developer of the liberal website, Huffington Post.

Part 4: Why talk radio is dominated by the Right and the blogosphere is dominated by the Left. Projection again: Hollywood and the media accuse the Right of doing what they intend to do to others. In Part 5, Peter Robinson can't get Andrew Breitbart to talk about national politics. Breitbart again makes it clear that his focus is on media bias and Hollywood political culture. He discusses how he became a fiscal conservative (in his evolution from liberal to libertarian to conservative) - after reading authors he had not been exposed to in college - Hayek, Burke, etc.

Dennis Prager mentions from time to time how surprised he was that his fellow students in college and grad school seldom did any serious reading which was not required by their professors. Conservatives are much more likely to be exposed to serious liberal thought than the other way around. Liberal academics often don't seem to see much need to expose their students to opposing views, (though they do expose students to variations on liberal themes) because they are confident that their own views are superior. And intellectual curiosity among college graduates is rare. A far greater number of serious political journals existed before the 1970s than exist now. And venerable news magazines - Time, Newsweek, etc., have dumbed down their content with the rising number of college graduates.

Rare is the American on the Left who can speak intelligently about serious conservative political thought, without resorting to distortions and stereotypes. Sad.