Everybody already knew about Drew Carey, Dennis Miller, Adam Sandler, Patricia Heaton and Kelsey Grammer. And don’t forget Tom Selleck, Robert Duvall, Jon Voight, Stephen Baldwin, Clint Eastwood, Scott Baio, Gary Sinise, Gene Simmons, Jerry Bruckheimer, and a few dozen more. But they’re all old, right? So how about Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey? Sarah Michelle Gellar?
Anyway, here’s where it gets interesting to me. In recent months, Kim Kardashian has come out as a Republican. So has Stacy Dash and Lindsey Lohan. At the same time, the ones who have come out are being much more vocal in going to the convention, campaigning for Romney, and generally expressing their views everywhere.
In 2008, for any of these people to declare that they are a Republican would have been career suicide. After 8 years of Bush, the Republican brand had become toxic. And these people depend on getting the nation’s youth, i.e. the brainless slacker demographic, to buy their films, shows or songs. The slacker demographic is notoriously groupthink in their outlook and simply cannot stomach liking the wrong things. Thus, declaring yourself a Republican in 2008 would likely have led to these celebrities losing the very audiences they rely upon. Not to mention that they work in an industry where the power-that-be are all doctrinaire liberals, and not just doctrinaire liberals, but obnoxiously anti-conservative liberals. . . the kinds of people who blacklist those with whom they disagree.
But now they are coming out and waving the flag. This is significant.
What this tells me is that the Republican brand is no longer toxic. But even more than that, it tells me that the Democratic brand has lost its luster and is no longer preferred in the culture. Otherwise, these people would still pretend to be Democrats or would remain silent. Indeed, if Kim “the Butt” Kardashian believed that her fans, who are core slackers, were Democrats, then she would never have declared herself a Republican because she knows her audience would have abandoned her. Ditto on Jessica Simpson, Stacy Dash, Nick Lachey, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Lindsay Lohan. And if the rest thought the public still saw Republicanism as some sort of disease, they certainly wouldn’t be openly campaigning. Don’t forget, in 2008, most conservatives in Hollywood were calling themselves “libertarians” or “independents,” and even well-known-conservative Kelsey Grammer was saying that his political views were not something he wanted to talk about. Now he’s trumpeting them.
How this plays out exactly remains to be seen, but I think it tells us that the cultural pendulum is swinging back. These celebrities are a weathervane for the culture, and they clearly think that average Americans are abandoning the Democrats and embracing the Republicans. Making this belief even stronger is the fact that many of these new “outies” are young women, the one demographic on which the Democrats hold an iron grip. Don’t underestimate the significance of this, this has the potential to change places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Thoughts?
50 comments:
I concur, and excellent observation, Andrew!
I noticed even some democrats have been speaking out against Obama (or for Romney) for one reason or another (sometimes for more than one reason) and a few of them have mentioned they will not be voting for Obama again.
Obama has poisoned the well for the democrat brand in four years (it took Bush twice as long to make the GOP toxic, and even at that, not nearly as much as Obama has to his party).
Thing is, the toxicity Bush caused to the GOP helped as much, if not more in the birth of the TEA party than anything Obama did (not that Obama didn't help as well, but many republicans were already fed up before Obama was elected and fully expected the democrats to run further left than ever before).
Obama, Pelosi and Reid's ham-handed efforts and Icarus fated flight to leftist utopia (i.e. economic hell) may have sped things up, but I'm convinced the TEA party would've formed, regardless, IMO.
Now, has Obama poisoned the democrats irreversably? Probably not, but it will take longer for them to recover, at least in it's present form where the hard left holds the reigns of power on the left.
That, combined with the alternative media's huge (and largely effective) efforts to keep the MSM and politicians accountable has gone a long way in causing a culture shift.
Thank you Andrew Breitbart (and so many others) who have helped to make this happen!
And hopefully we won't lose sight of Andrew's vision in that regard.
It is so much more than a political struggle. It's a struggle in the culture and education as well.
I beieve we'll se more celebrities and entertainment workers voicing their opinions in the future.
As Clint Eastwood said, there are a lot of conservatives in Hollywood but they usually keep it close to the vest.
But like the TEA party, more and more are getting fed up with the far left celebrities who have poisoned the well of civility and who have tried to shutdown any differing opinions other than their own.
I reckon you could call this the cultural version of the TEA party (although I'm sure most would never label themselves as such).
The iron fist of the hard left has been loosened in hollywood and more and more celebrities are finding they no longer hafta pretend to get along with these jackasses.
That's great news!
I think everything will be okay as long as some folks realize the Republican party can be a big tent and someone like Todd Akin for example can have something in common with a whore who got famous from a sex tape, or a drugged out actress whose career has been on a downward spiral for years. :-)
(That came off as much more cynical than I had intended.)
And I imagine many - but certainly not all - celebrity Republicans are more moderate when it comes to the big social issues. But, like anything else, you take what you can get.
As far as the social stigma, I 100% agree that it's nice to see it possibly disappearing one day, perhaps sooner rather than later. But like I've always said, actors aren't enough. Agents, studio heads, script readers... that's where the action is. :-)
It is nice to see! One of the reasons I was so interested when Breitbart started Big Hollywood was my anger at just this. I long suspected it was more than just celebs trying to appear "hip." One post early on was by Gary Graham, another by Robert Davi, but another that made my blood boil was a post by Dwight (?) Schultz who played in the original t.v. series The "A" Team. He pointed out that the controllers in Hollywood were viciously anti-conservative. In other words, an unspoken black list was in place from the same group who always whined about McCarthyism. In particular, he talked about the viciousness of Bruce Paltrow.
I don't think we are out of the woods yet, but the rise of Breitbart and other new media outlets has helped give a little bit of cover for these folks. The liberals don't want to be caught being quite so blatantly hypocritical. We have a long way to go, of course. "Main stream" critics will still "re-visit" the careers of folks like David Mamet and proclaim "maybe he was never quite that good." They will still savage "Act of Valor" and "Atlas Shrugged" without even seeing it. Actors who vocally criticize Republicans will still be favored with roles they don't deserve. But this is a start :)
My frustrations aside, by the way, I am also thrilled that they number of openly conservative Republicans has become too many to count. I think it's huge that any list of conservatives in Hollywood is now so long that people wouldn't even read the list anymore -- compared to when it was 3-4 big names and nobody else.
I don't feel that Kim K or Jessica Simpson put much thought into this, I cynically believe that they see some kind of advantage to this...which I suppose IS a good sign.
I'll tell you who is a fire breathing concervative, Nick Searcy (who appears on FX's Justified). Follow him on Twitter, he's also pretty funny.
Outlaw - you are probably right about Kim K. Jessica, who long dated conservative Tony Romo actually strikes me as a traditional values girl; the kind liberals love to mock.
I also love the fact top thriller writers such as Tom Clancy, Brad Thor, and Vince Flynn all have good conservative "creeds."
It doesn't take a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing. It doesn't matter to me whether these celebs are announcing GOP affiliation for cynical reasons or not. All that matters is that the "cool" veneer has been scrapped of the Democrat party and the celebs want to ride that wave.
As I've previously noted, Obama and the current crop of Democrats have destroyed their party's counter-cultural cred. Young people don't generally understand the difference b/w conservative or liberal, they just want to be rebellious outsiders. The Dems had successfully branded themselves as the "outsider" party for decades until they squandered it in the last four years.
Much credit also goes to the Tea Party. Regardless of other characterizations, it's pretty generally recognized as an outsider movement. It is undoubtedly a Republican phenomenon. And it is enduring. Contrast that with the Occupy Movement, which quickly descended into foolishness. Rebellious youngsters rebel because they want to be taken seriously. The Occupy Movement could not provide that.
So the notion may not exactly be that the GOP is the counter-cultural party. Rather, it appears that the Republican Party is the party most likely to be changed by a counter-cultural movement. Between the GOP and the Tea Party, there exists a dynamic where people's voices are being heard. Someone might not agree with either side of that dynamic, but they still see an exchange taking place that they don't see happening with the Democrat Party. They say to themselves, "Hey, if I want to be heard, I'd better talk to the guys who are listening." That's the attraction over the current Democrat Party, which spent the last four years shutting out any voices not in harmony with its agenda.
Ben, You make some interesting observations. I agree and I disagree. I think Bush and Obama combined created the Tea Party, but Obama was the key. If Obama had proved to be a moderate, then I think the public at large would have become center-left, the Republicans would have remained the me-too party, and the energy it took to bring the Tea Party to life never would have happened. They just would have turned away from politics.
To me though, however you look at it, Obama does deserve the credit for saving conservatism by scaring hell out of people about liberalism.
Scott, This is the sort of thing which will change the image of the party away from the Akins -- who are a tiny percent 3-5% -- and will make the party much more tolerable to normal people.
Jed, I agree entirely. We are nowhere near out of the woods, but this tells me that the winds have shifted and the right is rising while the left is falling. These people are weathervane for things you just can't see otherwise, like in polling. These people tell us that the youth who drive the culture are having a change of heart and that is significant.
I also went to Breitbart for the same reason. I thought that the culture is where we needed to begin to remake the country and I think AndrewB started us on the course and now we are beginning to see the fruits of that. Although, I say again that this is all only possible because Obama proved to be such a colossal failure. If he hadn't overreached and hadn't misled his followers, then none of this would be happening.
DUQ, That's a good point. I've seen lists of Hollywood conservatives and they are now pages long. I remember in the 1980s and 1990s, you had a handful and that was it.
Outlaw, I doubt they sat down and planned this out, but the point is that they are comfortable enough to come out and admit this. That's the big difference between now and four years ago or even ten years ago. That's why I think this signifies a change in the culture.
Jed, The entire thriller genre is full of conservatives. In fact, there are a lot of conservative authors suddenly, and I think the ability to go around the publishing industry will mean there will be even more because it takes away the power of the liberal agents who act as gatekeepers.
tryanmax, Once again, excellent analysis! And I agree completely.
When Obama came to power, I think the Democrats were seen as being totally hip. Obama was the rebirth of JFK right down to the skinny ties. But he proved to be a much harder sell than JFK. He disappointed his followers everywhere and repeatedly. He proved to be a crony and incompetent. And then he overreached so much that people began openly speaking their conservative minds -- something I haven't seen since the early 1980s. That wiped out the Democratic credibility, wiped out the image of them as hip, and it created an opening for a new counter-culture.
And that counter-culture appeared in the shape of the neo-libertarian Tea Party. They are conservatism without all the things for which the conservative movement had been lampooned. But they also aren't crazy like the libertarians.
So I think you are right that the Republican Party is now seen as the party most likely to end up being hip, which is why the culture is considering them.
But I also think this is also just a factor of the pro-Democratic gloss being incinerated by Obama's failures, which allowed people in Hollywood who were already Republicans to come out of the closet because they know they won't be burned anymore for revealing their beliefs. It will be interesting to see if the Republicans start picking up converts, that's when we know that they have become the official counter-culture party.
Andrew, This is excellent stuff. I hadn't considered that these people might be reflecting a cultural change, but you are right!
tryanmax, Well done! :)
AndrewPrice said...
Ben, You make some interesting observations. I agree and I disagree. I think Bush and Obama combined created the Tea Party, but Obama was the key. If Obama had proved to be a moderate, then I think the public at large would have become center-left, the Republicans would have remained the me-too party, and the energy it took to bring the Tea Party to life never would have happened. They just would have turned away from politics.
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I respectfully but strongly disagree. I think the days of any party establishing decades of dominance are over (though if Romney does well, Republican ascendancy will last longer than two years).
Modern politics strikes me as a see saw. The public gives one side a shot, and when it screws up and has no one to credibly blame (by dint of controlling the executive and legislative branches) then the public gives the other guys a shot.
It doesn't help that party activists tend to have nutty ideas the public doesn't care about or finds repulsive, and when they have the freedom to do so, parties can't help but enact those ideas the same way lemmings can't help throwing themselves off of cliffs.
Some fret about not winning a majority of the Senate, but that would probably be the best thing for Romney, both because it offers a convenient scapegoat and because there is nothing like an external threat to reduce infighting (and the suicidal urge).
Anthony, I respectfully disagree right back. For my entire life, about 60% of the public has been fundamentally conservative, but the percentage who are willing to admit that has risen and fallen right around the 40% mark. I think that's the result of a hard-sell by the left through their domination of the MSM and Hollywood that being conservative is somehow evil or ugly or uncool and being liberal is good.
If this change in Hollywood is what I think it is, it follows the breaking of the MSM monopoly in the news. If that happens, that hard-sell dies off. Suddenly, there will be no reason to fear being labeled as a conservatives -- to the contrary, it will be seen as a positive as more and more famous people lead the way.
If Romney follows this up by (1) fixing the economy, (2) courting Hispanics and women as he has done, and (3) avoiding social issues entirely, then I can see a huge chunk of that missing 20% joining the Republican Party permanently, particularly as the Democratic Party is offering only anger in response.
Thanks Ellen. I think the thing to remember is that celebrities are never leaders, they are followers who know they need to rush to the front of where everyone else is going so they seem like they are leaders. I think they sense a cultural change and are rushing to the right to exploit it.
I think theree is other considerations too - Hollywood elites have miscalculated. what actors do in their private time DOES effect the number of butts in the seats. For every Hollywood type who has spoken out about liberal cases and actively campaigned for Obama in particular, the butts in the seats and Nielson ratings drop. Regular people do not respond kindly to belittled and condescended to.
I agree that Breitbart brought the conservative Hollywood underground to the surface and gave it a forum.
Bev, I think that's very true. I keep meaning to do some actual research, but I haven't -- just skimmed the numbers. It strikes me that taking liberal positions kills Hollywood careers. I've mentioned this before, that people like Matt Damon and George Clooney and Sean Penn all saw their careers crash after they got political. Some have even done apology tours where they kept claiming they weren't really political.
I think that the public reacts negatively to their entertainers being openly political, in either direction. Thus, it can only hurt you.
What that tells me though, is that the signal these conservatives are getting may be even stronger than I first imagined if they think they will be safe speaking their minds now.
It also suggests, as you say, that there is a backlash in Hollywood right now because people are voting with their wallets.
Sarah Michelle Gellar's endorsed Romney?? Hmmm. My sister's not going to like that. :-)
T-Rav, She's a registered Republican and I believe has appeared at Republican events. I don't know if she has specifically endorsed Romney or not. I didn't look that up.
Interesting. My sister, who is a hard-core liberal, is also a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so if she mouths off again on Facebook I may retaliate with this.
The number of Republican celebrities is certainly encouraging. But frankly, the other side can have Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian back.
T-Rav, I'll keep anyone we can get, unless they're like child molesters. The more the merrier. And reality TV stars are particularly good in this case because they are the most directly affected by public perception. So seeing someone like Kardashian on our side is a good sign.
"I think that the public reacts negatively to their entertainers being openly political, in either direction. Thus, it can only hurt you."
I disagree, Andrew. Being openly political never hurt John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope or liberals like Gregory Peck or Henry Fonda.
That's because they were respectful about it and didn't insult their audience for having different views.
Todays liberal stars (many of them, anyway) are in your face, insulting and vile to anyone with different views and that's why they lose most of their fans.
That and they sound...well...nuts when they go off on their screeds (I'm talking about the far left morons that embrace communism, or write crazy stuff like Roseann Barr, Rosy O'Donnel, Sean Penn, Christian Slater, etc.).
Plus, they are anti-American and Americans don't like that.
Not to mention hypocritical. It's really rich when rich stars attack rich business folks and play the class warfare card.
The republican stars don't do that and they are pretty much low key about it and still have a large fan base (Bruce Willis, Stallone, Norris, Voight, Eastwood of course, etc.).
And the conservative or libertarian stars don't write or say crazy stuff or embrace anti-American ideas or insult people for having different ideas in a vile way.
Ben, That could well be. It could be that the public just doesn't like the in-your-face nasty politic stuff. I know it does take people a while to sour on stars, so many it is a matter of overstepping rather just being-known-to-be?
It will be interesting to see if being a recognized conservative will help, hurt or neither these people in the coming decade?
Andrew, it will be interesting to see. It can all be boiled down to civility. If a celebrity is civil about their beliefs most of their fan base will not be insulted.
It also makes good business sense to not alienate a large chunk of their fan base.
Ben, That's very possible, although liberals are much more likely to blacklist someone they don't like. There was even a study done about that on Facebook. So we'll have to see how this turns out.
USS Ben, I think you nailed it when it comes to civility. Most of the well-known leftist celebrities come off as jerks. (I have reason to believe it is b/c they are jerks.) Nobody likes a jerk and even if one isn't political, it turns fans off. Look at Russel Crowe.
"I have reason to believe it is b/c they are jerks." -- LOL! Yep. I can't disagree with that!
Andrew, I wasn't going to name-drop, but since you quoted me... I had occasion to meet Sean Penn when he was filming The Assassination of Richard Nixon in Omaha. His celebrity persona is no persona at all. He is a world-class jerk and a snob.
I am not at all surprised. In my experience, it's rare that someone is actually a nice person when their public persona is so constantly nasty. I've seen it in the politicians I've met -- they are the assholes they appear to be. The few exceptions are the ones who appear nice, but really aren't. I hear similar stories about certain "wholesome" Hollywood celebrities as well.
Very true about the liberal vs. conservative thing. I've never defriended anyone on Facebook, for example, nor have I been defriended by anyone, but I would say that I've come closer to getting defriended by liberals I know than I have to defriending any of them myself. I think in general, conservatives are a bit more tolerant of dissenting beliefs than liberals--although considering they have to be exposed to those beliefs more often than liberals do, what that means is open to question.
Andrew said:
If Romney follows this up by (1) fixing the economy, (2) courting Hispanics and women as he has done, and (3) avoiding social issues entirely, then I can see a huge chunk of that missing 20% joining the Republican Party permanently, particularly as the Democratic Party is offering only anger in response.
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1) Romney fixing the economy will be great and will give him a bump, but I don't think voters are so long on gratitude it will be a factor four years after it happens (people will eventually take prosperity for granted).
2) Courting minorities and women is a strategy which should work.
3) I have a hard time imagining the Republicans (or for that matter, the Democrats) avoiding social issues. There are wings of both parties animated by little else.
Andrew, I remember my mother being really upset some years back because of an interview she saw of Mary Tyler Moore (Mom grew up watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and all that), who had seemed very nice on-screen and all, but was a real jerk in the interview. Sadly, I heard something similar of the late Andy Griffith as well, rest his soul.
T-Rav, As a conservative, you need to be more tolerant because you are surrounded by it in the culture, in the news, and from every idiot around you because liberals won't shut up. Liberals, on the other hand, can very easily live in bubbles.
Plus, conservatism is intellectual and isn't prone to emotion. Liberalism is premised on emotion and is thus prone to emotional reactions.
Anthony, Don't underestimate the power of fixing the economy. Americans are highly practical and when they see that something works, they come to believe in it. Reagan sold whole generations on the ideas of deregulation and lower taxes. That idea only began to fade after W. Bush perverted it into cronyism and liberalism. Obama had the chance to win the public over to center-leftism like Europe, but he blew it. Romney can now revive Reaganism... or kill it again by acting like Bush.
If Romney handles this the right way and the economy improves, I think he can cement another couple generations of center-right thinking.
On minorities, Romney is the first Republican in living memory that I believe is doing the outreach the right way. That's why I think he has the chance to reach those people and bring in sizable numbers of minorities.
On social issues, the Republicans won't avoid social issues, but I think Romney will, and if he latches onto the rising Tea Party movement for support, then it would be possible to at least distance the party from those issues. Basically, they become the crazy uncle in the backseat rather than the maniac driving the car.
All he needs to do in that regard is to stop talking about it, just like Reagan and Bush I did. That should be enough to make it less toxic.
T-Rav, I've seen that in other contexts as well. One of the things that I think has hurt the original Star Trek is how all of the cast turned out to be such total a-holes and how they've spent the past 30 years sniping at each other. It makes it hard to see the characters as such a tight family as they seemed before the actors started disgracing themselves.
I'll enumerate my thoughts. :-)
1. While I agree with the article, it'd be unwise to hitch your wagon to any one person's star. Besides, while certain websites love to jump on the latest conservative celeb, what happens when that celeb later says something counter to conservativsm? After all, people are people - they're complex, they have multitudes.
I've always said that if Adam Baldwin admits that he's pro-gay marriage or something like that, BH will have a conniption fit.
2. I've said it a hundred times but, with a few exceptions, an actor's politics has nothing to do with the movies they're in. Most actors don't get to be so choosy and while it's obvious what Matt Damon is up to when he stars in a film like The Green Zone, most actors aren't that lucky.
I've read versions of this way too often: "How can so and so be in this movie? Isn't he a conservative?" Guess what - it's not that relevant. (The inverse can be true, too.)
3. Re: civility - I agree. And I'm glad that folks here are smart enough to realize that this is a matter of degrees. Not every liberal celeb is Rosie O'Donnell. There are perfectly nice liberal celebs and even perfectly nice apolitical ones. (And apolitical assholes, too.) :-)
In other words, it's the difference between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Politically equal but one comes across as just a little more pleasant.
4. As far as conservative websites go, I don't want to see them shooting themselves in the foot over this. It's gotten to the point now where perfectly decent celebs are getting shit just for supporting Obama. There's a different between being a proponent and being an opponent.
Scott, Scott, Scott... tsk tsk. You know me better than that!
1. I fully recognize that people are complex and there is no required set of views every Republican must have -- there is a wide range of acceptable. That said, what I'm talking about here is the willingness to adopt the label. That's the change that I see as significant because it means a real change in the culture.
2. Your second point isn't really relevant to my argument except that I am saying that people's political views can hurt their career opportunities. And there seems to be a record of people who are being overly political losing audiences. And liberals are much more prone to blacklisting people whose views they don't like. So all of that makes it even more interesting that these people are coming out of the closet.
3. Civility always matters.
4. CommentaramaFilms hasn't really gotten into any of that. I try not to take politics personally and I leave that for the gossip sites.
I wasn't talking about you or this website specifically, ya know!
When I say certain websites, it's usually just BH... I simply try to steer the conversation elsewhere. :-)
As far as civility goes, this doesn't just apply to celebs but I hope we're not completely through the looking glass yet. Even if every celeb decides to behave, you'll still have critics and bloggers and all the baggage that comes with them.
Good manners just don't seen to be a priority for some people anymore.
Scott, Civility is definitely out of favor. But I think it still matters. You can ruin your image/reputation with people very quickly with one bad moment.
I figured you weren't talking about us. CommentaramaFilms generally stays above those kinds of things. I prefer the be informative rather than bombastic.
Hey, bombast is underrated!
As far as public image, it's not true that any publicity is good publicity. A lot of people (Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan) have ruined their image by acting like spoiled brats. Unfortunately, they don't seem able to easily absorb that lesson.
T-Rav, You know, everyone says that -- there is no such thing as bad publicity. But like you, I really don't believe that. There are definitely things you can do that will ruin you with the public and kill a promising career.
Unfortunately, there is a fine line between that kind of publicity and the kind that just makes people famous even if for the wrong reasons.
Andrew
The democratic party are now the people that tell us how much soda pop we can buy at once time. Kinda hard to brand yourself as anti-establishment when you do that isn't it?
interesting developments...
Indi, True. It's hard to be the counter-culture party when you do your best to run the culture.
rlaWTX, Very much!
Gellar has not endorsed Romney. . . or Obama. That I know of.
The only evidence for her being Republican is that she is apparently a Registered Republican but she rarely (never, actually) talks politics.
But its been rumored heavily she and her husband, Cuban-American Freddie Prinze, Jr., both lean right.
http://www.zimbio.com/Famous+Republicans/articles/_rCokO_ny_T/Freddie+Prinze+Jr
But still. . . Buffy the Liberal Slayer! :)
Also, Vince Vaughn has come out as a libertarian, at least. He endorsed Ron Paul in the primaries* and praised Jonah Goldberg's book TYRANNY OF CLICHES with a blurb on the back cover: "Everyone says 'think for yourself' but very few people do. In The Tyranny of Clichés, Jonah Goldberg reveals how we've become trapped by ideas we think we understand but don't. A must read."
*As many problems as I have with Ron Paul, I'll take endorsing Ron Paul as a step in the right direction. Of course, he may have simply viewed that as a "safe endorsement".
we can all breathe a sigh of relief over Lohan's support: she flip-flopped...
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/10/24/Lindsay-Lohan-Decides-She-Actually-Likes-Obama
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