RUTHFULLY YOURS

Network television’s new offerings this year offer more evidence to the effect that Hollywood is the PR machine for the Democratic left.  No matter that our leftist president is wildly unpopular; never mind that Americans are resonating to Constitutional messages as they haven’t for over a century.  In Hollywood, it is always a day of liberal hope and change.

Take, for example, Whitney (NBC).  Comedy Central quasi-star Whitney Cummings finally has her own show.  What’s wrong with Cummings?  Aside from the fact that she once said that Quentin Tarantino had “produced more retarded things than Sarah Palin’s vagina,” Cummings’ new show has her playing a woman who lives with her boyfriend in traditional Hollywood non-marital bliss.  “Getting married would pop the balloon,” says the showrunner, Betsy Thomas.  “This relationship is a modern relationship … it’s balanced … that’s the relationship that reflects the way we live our lives.”  This is merely the next step in the Friends-Modern Family trail that leads away from traditional family and toward “alternative arrangements.”  Just what the doctor ordered when so many children are born into broken homes.

Then there’s the continued propaganda machine that is Glee (FOX).  This year, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) is running for Congress as a covert Tea Party candidate.  Meanwhile, the saintly Kurt, the gay character who provides the Lady Gaga-esque moral compass for the show, is running for class president, aided by the bisexual cheerleader Britney.

Even shows that should be safe for the family aren’t.  Dancing with the Stars (ABC) has already featured a he/she in Chaz/Chastity Bono, shown Carlton Kressley (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) bashing the Tea Party (he takes off a gorilla mask and then announces, “It still smells like a Tea Party”), and featured Nancy Grace’s nipple.

You can’t escape the propaganda even in escapist shows – on Terra Nova (FOX), President Obama’s face appears on a $1,000 bill of the future, although to be fair, the future is terrible, which is why everyone wants to go back to the time of the dinosaurs.

None of this is to say that these shows are awful in quality (though some of them are).  It’s just to point out that Hollywood is happy to act as a tool for leftist thought, even if it loses ratings.  Glee’s opener was down over 30% from last year’s premiere.  The most controversial new show, The Playboy Club (NBC), based on Hugh Hefner’s beloved all-American establishment, was dead on arrival – its second episode earned a pathetic 1.3/3 rating, which pencils out to less than 4 million viewers.  Dancing with the Stars had bad premiere numbers, and then dropped in week two.  But television’s honchos don’t seem to get the point.

Actually, it’s more than that.  When it comes to material that offends the left, Hollywood’s top execs will willingly lose money to shut it down.  Five years ago this month, screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Path to 9/11 premiered on ABC.  Based on the 9/11 Commission Report, among other sources, the docudrama focused in on the years leading up to 9/11, dramatizing the hunt for Bin Laden and al Qaeda and the failures of both the Clinton and Bush Administrations.  ABC was supremely proud of the miniseries, as they should have been – it’s a terrific piece of work.

When the left found out that Nowrasteh, a quiet conservative, had written the project, however, they descended en masse on ABC.  Sleazebag  journalist Max Blumenthal wrote a hit piece decrying Nowrasteh and implying that David Horowitz somehow stood behind the nefarious project.  Senators called for restrictions on it.  And members of the Clinton Administration insisted that certain lines be cut.

Finally, The Path to 9/11 was shown – and, as predicted, it did very well, drawing 25 million viewers over two nights.  But then it disappeared.  ABC refused to release it on DVD, despite spending $40 million producing it.  Despite offers from outside media groups to buy the rights, Disney turned it down.  Bob Iger simply shelved it.  The reason?  According to high-ranking Disney executives, Hillary Clinton was going to run for president, and they didn’t want The Path to 9/11 to hurt her.  Today, the docudrama still sits in a dusty room somewhere.

Hollywood often pretends that it’s run simply by the almighty buck.  To a large extent it is.  But Hollywood would also risk the buck for political correctness.  That’s why we can see television characters bashing Bush, Reagan, the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and everything else even mildly conservative on a regular basis, but not see The Path to 9/11 on dvd.