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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (122440)	5/4/2010 9:51:17 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Why are we using the dumb drone instead of the smart bomb?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (122440)	5/5/2010 10:25:25 AM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Respond to of 132070

"The Sky is Blue; The List is Black by Andrew Klavan in Culture Over the last forty years, leftism has failed in every particular but one: it has succeeded in demonizing the opposition. Leftists will blacklist you—then if you complain, they'll attack you for whining. They will call you racist and compare your leaders to Hitler—then if you return the insult, they'll scream about the decline of civility. They will do everything in their power to cut you off from media and artistic outlets—then when you create outlets of your own they will savage them for their bias. Like the mobster in a Raymond Chandler novel, they will beat your teeth out, then kick you in the stomach for mumbling. As a result of their success in marginalizing dissenting opinions, nothing now creates a greater commotion in modern American discourse than speaking the obvious truth. Last week during a stop in Washington DC, I gave a five minute interview to an extremely nice reporter named Peggy Star from CNSNews. I pointed out that, while leftists speak their political minds openly and aggressively in Hollywood, conservatives are forced to meet in secret and speak in whispers to avoid insult and tacit blacklisting. As if I had said something shocking or hitherto unknown, the video of this interview went viral. On the left, Nikke Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily attacked me, and Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times called for proof. On the right, my friend John Nolte at Big Hollywood leapt to my defense and even Sean Hannity asked me about it when I appeared on his panel. But is anyone, left or right, really surprised or doubtful about what I said? Can I prove conservatives are excluded from work in the movie business? Of course not—not without revealing the identities of the frightened people who tell me their horror stories. Even I, who will speak openly in general, won't name the names of blacklisters because it would violate the trust of business interactions and close specific markets irretrievably. But consider the circumstantial evidence. More than a dozen movies attacking the war on terror without shading or nuance but not one film that said simply "We're heroically right and they are villainously wrong." Not one film exposing the lies and excesses of environmentalism. Not one in which, say, a brave radio talker battles the mainstream media on behalf of white boys wrongly accused of raping a black girl. There are narratives—evil corporations, American military abuse, desperate housewives, victimized minorities—that are acceptable and others—the glories of capitalism, America's defense of liberty, fulfilled homemakers, race-baiting con men—that are not, despite their truth and the fact that the majority of the audience approves them. That's proof aplenty. As always, I'm not petitioning the left for redress here. I find their worldview deluded, but that's their business. Nor do I want their films silenced. Talent and truth will out. This is the responsibility of the right: the right whose TV shows interview Karl Rove (God bless him) a million times but David Mamet almost never, whose magazines review every volume published by every political think tank anywhere but a novel only once in a blue moon, who give no artistic awards and precious few grants and who think, in short, they can beat culture with politics, which is like bringing a club to a nuclear war. I'm not asking the left to stop excluding us, I'm asking the right to break down their walls. But it would be nice, for purposes of discussion, if we could all begin by acknowledging the obvious." andrewklavan.com