Roger,
In just a few years, I was employed at some fifteen or so production companies/agencies in Los Angeles – bouncing around from job to job as most writers do while chasing a career. A couple observations to strengthen your overall thesis, from my not-yet-paid-for-it vantage point:
“You could almost graph it” – Yes, I believe you can, much as you can graph the 90% plus of journalists from major publications who vote Democrat. That political messages from Hollywood border on socialist, however, can also be attributed to a simple element of the job description besides the necessity of great ambition. The most successful executives I saw in Hollywood were not necessarily vicious, but were so uniformly strapped for time that not a moment could be dedicated to exploring one’s political leanings.
They sprung from universities as wide-eyed liberals, and then never had a moment to allow their beliefs to mature. The successful executive clocks in from 9 to 7, typically followed by a business dinner, and then by an evening reading script coverage and preparing for the following day. A social night out can not be simply refreshing, but must be a networking opportunity. The job simply has no downtime, and taking a moment to develop as a citizen is never on the agenda.
Read the underdeveloped posts by Ari Emanuel at Huffington Post. It is liberalism, yes, but it is the liberalism of a 20-year-old regurgitating a professor’s doctrine. It is simply immature politics, and I venture it is more due to Emanuel’s not having developed his views beyond his secondary education rather than sheer self-loathing. Similarly, the dreadful political films of this season seem the unnuanced, idealist work of a student eager to seize the political zeitgeist for his generation.
Second, as there may be twenty qualified people for each open job, and those seeming most powerful are hardly secure in their position, one’s personal political principles must be secondary to one’s career. I promise you that several conservatives worked diligently to help Redford pump out LfL, and that each was quite willing to do it. They justify it with the thought that one day they will have the opportunity to showcase a right-leaning voice, but that time almost never comes, even for the studio heads – and even if they have had a moment to mature their beliefs along the way.
