On Introducing the Hollyweirdos to Reality

OK. This will be short as it's a bit out of my normal area of concern.

I just heard about Meryl Streep's silly pronouncements at the Golden Globe Awards show. I must confess that it's been years since I have watched any of those awards shows. I gave up on the Oscars maybe ten-fifteen years ago, and the Golden Globes, well, I never really watched those. I found them all deadly dull exercises in scripted rich lefties giving each other prizes and praise, and proclaiming to the skies "Aren't we clever?"

Most of the films up for consideration in recent years were not ones I bothered to watch, and many of them, even with the advent of ROKU and other on-line streaming gadgets and services I still have not seen. I, for example, have never seen a James Bond, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Jason Bourne film all the way through. I say this with sadness since as a kid I loved movies and television. I grew up in an immigrant household, and always felt a bit disconnected from my surroundings. Books, TV, and movies served as my means of connecting to America, and seeing what a "real" American household looked and sounded like. I never had any inkling of what politics Clark Gable, Jimmy Steward, Gregory Peck, etc. espoused, and don't think I really cared. The movies nominated for Oscars were all films we had seen or dearly wanted to see. The Awards ceremonies were corny and awkward and way too long, but they were about entertainment. They were part of the illusion of Hollywood glamour. The big studios, as a rule, kept their herd of actors, directors, and producers pretty well under control and away from controversy.

OK. As we all know, that is not true any more.The Hollywood types now insist on inflicting their politics on us, and on lecturing us lowly unglamorous types about our lack of virtue. They, of course, have redefined virtue into something totally unrecognizable to an audience of, say, the 1950s. We have to listen and watch them as they emote and cry about McCarthyism (of course, McCarthy had nothing to do with films, but never mind) and the evilness of big corporations and the racism and the greed and our lack of concern for the environment and children and women and working people and, so on and on and on. We must not see the contradictions between what they preach and how they live their own lives. While they proclaim their moral superiority to us all, and their undying love for children, workers, and Gaia, we must not focus on the scores of parentless children they leave around, often getting involved in drug use and other anti-social behavior. We must ignore their jetting about on private planes and limos, as they lecture us on climate change. And, OK, let me get to the real point of this rant: we must ignore how they, in fact, hate the average worker, they hate their customers. While we get lectured on social responsibility and our greed, they demand and often get huge salaries from the multinational corporations who own the studios nowadays. They scour the planet for cheap shooting locales and massive tax breaks and public subsidies for their productions and don't give a whit, for example, about the unemployed blue collar workers of the American movie industry.

Well, in the spirit of President-elect Trump and his successful cajoling of Carrier, Ford, Toyota, Fiat-Chryser, etc., into keeping jobs here, I make a modest proposal re Hollywood. I think states and cities should stop subsidizing film production with taxpayer money. Any movie production that gets tax breaks and subsidies from abroad for filming abroad, should be taxed an equivalent amount by the US government. Trump has threatened car makers with a 35% tariff, why not a similar fee on run-away movie production? Let's see how those big salaries get reduced and the benefits shared with the blue collar types who build sets, drive trucks, etc.

Bernie Sanders, are you with me?

See you at the movies!