As Hollywood dies

 

Daniel Greenfield (a/k/a Sultan Knish) is a regular contributor to FrontPageMag.  His recent piece on “What the Death of Hollywood Means for America” explores the cultural decline in America and across the globe.  In short,

The fall of the studio system overturned the industry’s innate conservatism and while it ended many abuses and unleashed the talent, the end result was that movies became increasingly at odds with the values and morals of the American public. The decline of the networks likewise unleashed cable and then streaming programming that was oriented culturally leftward..

. . .

As Hollywood dies, America and the world will be poorer for it, not for the billion-dollar woke digital cartoon factory that it has become, but for a time when a centralized entertainment industry did not have to be a mass propaganda machine feigning popular support for a regime. 

That is exactly what it is now.

Mr. Greenfield’s full article is here.  Sad. 

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Trump sign in California

Overnight someone erected a massive Trump sign on the hills along the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pas.  According to local media “the sign supporting President Trump faced northbound lanes near Getty Center Drive. The white lettering appears to be around 10 feet tall and mimics the style of the landmark Hollywood sign.”

Here's 27 seconds of fun via Conservative Treehouse:

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Propaganda vs expanded sources of news

image credit: vectorstock.com

Cherie Zaslawsky’s article, “Trump Derangement Syndrome: A Misdiagnosis” starts off:

Listen to Fox News, and you'll hear phrases such as “Trump derangement syndrome” and “liberal heads are exploding” on a daily basis. 

Conservative newscasts are peppered with comments like these: “They're delusional!”  “The Democrats just can't seem to accept that they lost the 2016 election.”  “They've gone crazy!”

Crazy like a fox.

. . .

From the beginning of its “long march through the institutions,” the Left has been playing the long game.  That hasn't changed.  Leftists are playing it today.

Why did they take over the media?  The universities?  Hollywood?  To get their hands on the key levers of propaganda.  Add to this the leftward tilt of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and we're looking at a virtual lockdown on the primary sources of information and public influence.

. . .

What can be done?

I suggest that, rather than only responding to each of the Left's baseless attacks on our president, those on our side change the debate by exposing the radical leftists' use of propaganda — by shining a light into the dark recesses of their strategy.  This may wake up some of their followers and maybe even begin to free America from the dark power of the Left.

I have had limited success pointing the media’s corruption to people I know who still rely on The New York Times or NPR or CNN for their news. One suggestion that has worked a few times is to propose that a person expand their sources of news. Tuning in to conservative talk radio can be traumatic, but browsing through aggregators and at least comparing headlines has made a difference with some friends and relatives. These days my go-to sites are Politipage, Instapundit, Lucianne, and a few others (but not Drudge any more). Full American Thinker article is here.

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Leonardo DiCaprio and climate hypocrisy

Here’s part of the report on Breitbart Hollywood a couple of days ago:

Leonardo DiCaprio has been awarded the "Messenger of Peace" title, and on Tuesday morning, at the UN Climate Summit in New York, he demanded that the 193 world leaders in attendance take urgent action against climate change.

The environmental activist was recently nominated as the "new voice for climate advocacy" by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. 

"I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way," the Hollywood actor confessed. "As if pretending that climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away. But I think we all know better than that now." 

DiCaprio participated in the People's Climate March on Sunday in New York, where hundreds of thousands of people marched around the city to bring attention to the alleged "climate crisis."

"I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis," he said.

And here is the report of his visit to Brazil to attend the World Cup from The Daily Caller :

It’s been a crazy, busy, gas-guzzling summer for Leonardo DiCaprio, the famous actor and environmental activist. 

On Sunday, as the summer wound down, the mega-rich DiCaprio (estimated net worth: $220 million) was in New York City to join a mile-long swath of protesters for the People’s Climate March, reports the Daily Mail. 

At the very beginning of this summer, in mid-June, DiCaprio jetted into Brazil on a private plane to take in the opening match of the 2014 World Cup. 

While in Brazil, the 39-year-old plump playboy stayed on a 470-foot yacht owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, according to Arab News. The glitzy yacht, called the Topaz, is the fifth-biggest yacht on earth. The fancypants vessel boasts a gym, a movie theater, two helipads and three swimming pools.

Here’s the yacht:

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Here’s the report by Doug Powers on DiCaprio’s gas-guzzling trip to South Africa for the World Cup in 2012: 

Leonardo DiCaprio says he drives a hybrid car, and that makes for some good, clean transportation when he’s heading to the airport to get on his private jet — in this case to travel to South Africa, where he contributed to an air traffic jam induced by jet-set eco-hypocrites, causing many others miss the game

And via Dr. Eowyn's blogsite, here is just one of DiCaprio's 5 luxury homes, this one  

a $5.2 million 6-bedroom mansion in Palm Springs, California, purchased in February 2014. The 1.34 acre property has 7 bathrooms, a detached state-of-the art gymnasium, a pool house and a tennis court with a glass pavilion surround.

Is Leonardo DiCaprio’s carbon footprint now in competition with Al Gore’s? The hypocrisy is breathtaking.