Centerfield

Rick, I don't think the article supports your suggestion that Republicans have "gone native" (I'm not saying the suggestion is unsupportable, just that this article doesn't support it).

While Glickman is clearly trying hard to be seen as Republican-friendly, the article reveals nothing that he has received in return for his contributions and his Republican hiring spree. From the article: "In part because Mr. Glickman has spent so much time trying to persuade Republicans that he isn't the enemy, he can't point to many legislative accomplishments in his first year."

Now, if next year we see an article that Republicans have amended the major tax bill to now include the movie studios, then you can make your point that the Republicans have gone native. As it is, though, this just shows so-far unsuccessful efforts at buying influence with campaign contributions. You can't fault a politician for accepting campaign contributions from legitimate, honest industries; you can only fault them for allowing such contributions to influence their votes.

The funny thing to me is that Glickman lost his seat in Congress after nine terms when his constituents decided he'd "gone native." Trust me, Dan Glickman knows how to reach out to mainstreeters and business.

Pat,

You have a point, but I assume Glickman is intelligent enough not to be wasting the MPAA's money.

As I say, I'm not disputing the larger point, Rick. I won't be at all surprised to find that next year's tax bill will somehow miraculously manage to remember to include the movie industry for tax breaks (maybe... Glickman would have more success if his industry wasn't so overwhelmingly hostile toward any kind of conservative thought).

I've made the point myself that a few too many Republicans (Tom DeLay in particular) have gone native and become too accustomed to the ways and corridors of power. Nothing that the Democrats haven't and don't do, and indeed probably more limited in scope than the days of the House banking scandal, etc. But any going native will ultimately be deadly to a party which began its rise back to Congressional power with the 1994 Contract With America aimed at limiting the federal government and throwing out the rascal natives.

A good argument for term limits and an end to partisan redistricting. I have mentioned before that I think it might be healthy for the GOP to spend one Congress in the minority in one or the other chamber. Just as a bucket of cold water. And thereafter, routine turnover. Gingrich was right a decade ago.

Simon, I'm not sure it's an argument for any of those. It's hugely expensive to run for office now, even where most seats are relatively safe because of partisan redistricting and the power of incumbency. Imagine how expensive it will be without those. Every election as a knock-down, drag-out fistfight? Expensive, requiring even more massive campaign contributions.

Also, with newer, less experienced office-holders, you get people who may not know how to fight against the special interest groups, or at least recognize their tricks and biases when they see them.

Actually, it's a good argument for campaign finance reform, Pat. Granted, it may be only work for a few cycles before the usual suspects find the usual ways around it, but it's a start.

Hollywood is a hostile place for conservatives? Is that why Ahnold, Charleton Heston, Mel Gibson all live there? ;-)

The most promising news are the efforts in a number of states (California,Ohio,etc.)to take the redistricting process out of the hands of the politicians. We centrists should get solidly behind these efforts as it will increase the importance of non-extremists.

Campaign finance reform is a huge topic in and of itself. I'm in favor of the concept, but don't know that there's any practical way to limit money in politics consistent with the First Amendment. And the rules don't even last one cycle before loopholes abound. 527s were created by McCain-Feingold and exploited in the very next presidential election cycle in a major way by supporters of both parties.

McCain-Feingold has not succeeded at eliminating the money in politics. All it has done is to help politicians avoid responsibility for money which is spent on their behalf. Look at all the 527 groups on both sides of the aisle. The politicians can say, with either honesty or plausible deniability, that they have no control over these independent groups. Money which would otherwise have gone to the parties and the individual campaigns instead goes to organizations not controlled by the parties or the candidates. Thus, when they launch nasty negative ads (MoveOn.org on the left, Swift Boats on the right, not that the 2 are comparable), the politician takes few real PR hits for going negative, but gets the full benefit of the negative attacks against the opponent.

I prefer the George Will solution. Allow unlimited contributions, which must be immediately disclosed. Let the people decide whether the money is influencing that politician or not.

And for every Charlton Heston, there is one Michael Moore, one Barbara Streisand, one James Brolin, and one Martin Sheen. And for every Passion of the Christ there is one Dogma, one Saved, and one Secretary. ;-)

I have a close friend who creates and writes tv shows and she tells me that it is very common at parties in Hollywood for people to assume that everyone there is way liberal. At one party last year she couldn't take it anymore and vocalized "everyone here may not agree w/ you" to which the person replied "then I will have to assume you are uninformed". I live for the day someone says that to me.

Pat,

I do but jest, old boy. There are plenty of conservatives in Hollywood; the problem is, they're all critics. ;-)

Seriously, though, if one studied it, there are probably more conservatives than liberals in banking, more conservatives than liberals on Wall Street, more conservatives than liberals in farming, etc. The reason we don't see it is because farming, business, Wall Street, et al, aren't as high profile as Hollywood. And conservatives like to stick with the tried and true, which is great for a lot of professions, but rather limiting for the arts.

I once heard of one conservative actor who was told by the theater teacher; "Now, for this scene, you'll play a gay man..."

"Forget it!" he said. "I'd never play someone who's gay!"

"But you're just pretending--."

"I won't pretend to be gay! That's disgusting!"

Needless to say, he had a rather short career. ;-)

By the way, I forgot to mention Kirk Cameron, who did Left Behind recently, but not much else. Rumor has it that he refused to do any more kissing scenes onscreen, since he's steadfastly monogamous. Very admirable, of course, but unless they can cast his wife as his love interest in every movie he's in, he doesn't have much future as a leading man.

I agree with djok that non-partisan redistricting is the best way to go, but there's another way to go with campaign reform. You can have public financing for campaigns, just like they do for the Presidential elections. But of course, neither party would agree to that.

I think the best way to go is not to do public financing, but to provide candidates (who meet an interest threshold)with lots and lots of free public airtime as long as they agree to substantial spending limits. No agreement to spending cap, no free airtime. For the free airtime, candidates could use only a camera and a candidate. No music, no flag montages, no wholesome families, no showing the other guy.

For those ready to complain about giving away free airtime, don't forget, the airwaves are public property. And how hard would it be to have a cable channel exclusively devoted to displaying such material?

No conservatives in Hollywood? I'd laundry-list a few, but Bruce Willis might protest. Seriously though, being a conservative in Hollywood is something you keep your mouth shut about unless you're already top-tier. For those even a little bit lower down the ladder, being openly conservative can be the kiss of professional death.

And your evidence for that allegation is.....?

Blue Jean, c'mon, what's the hypothesis you're trying to tote here by being argumentative? Surely you wouldn't claim that Hollywood isn't predominantly liberal?

Are you suggesting that being politically conservative is unlikely to be something of an impediment to your career, just as being a known liberal might be an impediment to a wall street career?The evidence (in terms of actual documented instances)may be thin for both of these, but do you seriously doubt that it occurs? Are you suggesting that powerful people don't play politics?

I can certainly cite numerous actors, directors, and writers who all say being Libertarian or Republican or conservative has actively cost them jobs, Jean. Obviously there are actors who are Republicans. I wouldn't call it a blacklist, though. Writer-director Lionel Chetwynd ("Ike: Countdown to D-Day," "The Hanoi Hilton") said it well:

"When you talk about blacklisting, does it go on? Yes," he says. "Is it understood? No. They don't make the connection. I would make this distinction: With the blacklist, if you were a communist, you didn't work. It didn't matter how well you did, you were not going to work.

"What we have here is a whitelist. There is a list, and the difference (with) a whitelist is, you're not really acceptable in polite company. However, if you are necessary and useful to a project, you can be used, and that can be done without reflecting poorly on the employer."

Last summer liberal filmmaker and former Democratic speechwriter Jesse Moss did a pretty good documentary on Republicans in Hollywood that aired on AMC in September last year--which is where the Chetwynd quote comes from. Rated R: Republicans in Hollywood. Well worth a watch. Not coming out on DVD until October, though. Moss recounted in later interviews how surprised he was to find himself really liking the people he interviewed, despite the profound difference in their political leanings.

Well, Brian, I hate to get into a snarkfest here, but it seems like "Oh no! They hate conservatives in Hollywood!" sounds like a copout. Would you deny that Wall Street is primarily conservative? Does that mean that every person who doesn't get hired at a brokerage firm is blacklisted because he/she is a Democrat?

If a Democrat did allege that there was a Republican blacklist on Wall Street, then everyone to the right of Rockefeller would have a great time mocking the poor paranoid soul. But whenever a Republican says "Oh, the only reason I didn't become the biggest movie star since Cary Grant was because some evil Democrat heard me say I supported the Gulf War in 1989. That's why I never got to star in anything but a couple of toilet paper commercials." then of course, a liberal Democrat will rush in and film the brave lad's tragic story, and never ask any pesky questions about whether it was lack of talent, lack of skill, lack of drive, or just plain old bad luck that led to the would be Cary Grant's obscurity.

That's the annoying thing about liberal Democrats; they sympathize with people's plight, even if there's nothing but heresy to support it.

Republicans, on the other hand, take pride in taking personal responsibilty. Unless the evil Left Wing Hollywood cabel stops them, of course. ;-)

LOL. Wall Street's NOT conservative. Wall Street's greedy. They're not the same thing at all.

There's a little bit more than "heresy" to support the "Hollywood liberal employment bias" scenario, Jean. Any Democrat alleging a Republican blacklist on Wall Street would be laughed out of the financial industry, but trying to laugh it off for Hollywood doesn't wash. By the numbers....

On Wall Street, your politics is completely irrelevant to your commission-generating ability. "Show me the money," says Wall Street. The only other valued ability is picking the right horse to back--the winner. But the two cultures (Hollywood and Wall Street) are not analogous by greed motives as applies to politics, or even close.

Wall St. donation patterns follow the "nuetral" model nearly exactly by the only readily available measure--campaign donations. In the 2004 presidential elections, the securities and investment industry split their presidential donations 52%/48% Bush/Kerry. Damn near exactly the same as the final vote count. In fact, tracking back a bit, in close years that's replicated, on years where the winner is more obvious farther out the eventual winner tends to get the bulk of the donations. Clinton went about 60/40 over Dole on Wall St. in 1996. Now, what was that about "Wall Street Republicans" again? I'd say that Wall Street is pretty transparently diverse, at least in terms of political donations.

Now, let's look at an individual Hollywood production company, the biggest. Dreamworks. In the 2004 elections cycle Dreamworks employees and executives made 125 reported political donations. Of those, six were made to Republicans. Of those six, three were to Arlen Specter, a Republican moderate who was facing off a far-rightie, so calling them "conservative" donations would truly be stretching it. 6 out of 125 is almost a whole 5%! But I didn't do it by amount of money, instead of number of donations, so that's actually a bit overstated. Nope, no political biases there. No GOP suppression at that particular Hollywood monolith! Or at Pixar Studios, either, where of 48 donations exactly zero went to Republicans....

OK, I used two companies to illustrate the lack of political diversity among the successful in Hollywood. (I'm using that wonderful old standby measure for discrimination--disparate outcomes. By definition, the unsuccessful won't donate, so we can't get those figures.) And a corporate culture may not apply across the industry. So let's try something else, something industry-wide? How about donors listing their occupation as "actress?" Hmmm--174 reported donations, of which 13 went to Republicans. That's an improvement from under 5%, almost clear up 7.5%. Now there's some serious political diversity! Of course, over half of those GOP donations went to Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter, so I think we can say that Hollywood people do not as a rule embrace the conservative side.

Let's try it again with the more politically correct unisex term "actor." 248 results, of which 8 are donations to Republicans. 3.2%. Of those, three are from Ben Stein for GOP congress races, 4 are for Arlen Specter, and one is for John McCain.

Aggregate count--27 out of 595, or a hair over 4.5%. Such results can not possibly be due to any discrimination against Republicans...Hollywood is just naturally 95+% Dem, eh? Or maybe they're all closet Republicans, and they just donate like that to keep up their images.

Of course, if you could show similar figures in an employment discrimination case based on race or gender, many lawyers would get rich and the industry would be bankrupt. There's not too many really workable hypotheses here, and there can of course be some crossover. Either successful Hollywood people are for some unknown reason naturally 95+% Democrats, or there is a strong perception among Hollywood people that donating to the GOP is a Bad Thing, or people who are Republicans can't succeed in Hollywood. Or some combo of the above.

Barring some VERY substantial evidence of the first hypothesis, I'd say the available figures strongly support some combination ot the two latter hypotheses--that it's either not a career move to be openly GOP in Hollywood, or is overwhelmingly perceived that way whether or not there is active discrimination against Republicans, or both.

I have argued this till I'm blue in the face but I'll try once again, Money does not = Speech. What money does is purchase an audience. There is nothing in the constitution that guarantees a right to an audience for your speech and thus any restriction on campaign donations are not within the scope of the 1st amendment.

Also, rights are acknowledged as inherent to the individual, by saying money = speech, you effectively are making that right transferable in a way no other right is and this runs counter to the entire foundation of which the constitution was written. You simply cannot "proxy" an unalienable right. A right is as much a part of the individual as there soul.

And groups don’t have rights so you can pass any legislation you want regarding campaign donations and there is no 1st amendment issue.

Rick,

You overlook the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for redress of greivances. The right of assembly in particular is in fact a group right. I have the right to come together with others to bring about change. The campaign finance restrictions, in my opinion, abridge that right (among others).

And money can in fact equal speech. Take your argument to its logical conclusion. Suppose the government said, henceforth no candidate for federal office is allowed to spend any money in the election campagin, nor can any other person spend it on their behalf. But the government did not prohibit incumbent Congressmen from appearing on the news or sending out newsletter mailings about what they've done in Congress. Such a restriction would make it pretty hard to campaign against an incumbent, wouldn't it? Would make it impossible for the people to speak effectively in opposition to government policies.

"The power to tax is the power to destroy." If the government can regulate how much money I and my fellow like-minded citizens can spend to publicize our opinions to other citizens, then the government has the power to shut me and my fellows up, period. That is, in fact, prohibited by the First Amendment.