Reclaiming the Culture
I’m talking in generalities, of course. Plenty of great conservative artists exist. But the number needs to be extended considerably in order even to come close to parity and level the artistic playing field to some small degree. Cultural institutions (movie studios, theatres, philanthropies etc.) must be built as well because you can do terrific things but, without the means of distributing them, they are the proverbial trees growing unseen in the wilderness.
Paramount in all this too — particularly for storytelling artists in fiction, theatre, film, and television – is that art must come before ideology. If it’s not pleasing, it’s worthless. The goal should be to make the reader or audience forget their biases and live the experience of the characters and their story. This is the method to “reach across the aisle” and actually make an impact, to change the atmosphere.
Liberals often think of themselves as “liberals” because they like the image and the connotations of the word itself. But their actual thinking and certainly their behavior are more conservative. Those people can be reached through art because their guard is down, especially if the artist is engaging in his or her presentation.
But hiding behind a plot and characters presents challenges of its own because we are all heavily branded in this society. Everyone knows who we are or can easily find out. It’s hard to sneak by. It will be interesting to see how David Mamet’s new work is received, now that he has “come out” as conservative. Will the audience dismiss what he has to say merely because of that? Undoubtedly some will.
Sheryl Longin and I face a similar challenge with our new play, The Party Line. The culture has reached the point where many of us have the deck stacked against us because of the new party line. But we must persevere and ignore this soft censorship. Whining, as I have noted, is useless. And we have also reached the point in our history when we must try and succeed in reclaiming the culture. If we don’t, we are in danger of losing everything else, if we haven’t already.
Also read: It’s the Culture, Stupid: Facing the Long Road Ahead.
The healthiest and smartest thing any family can do is throw out their television. I know how difficult that can be and how radical it sounds but, bottom line, it works. Sure there is some quality programming however it is miniscule compared to the trash you expose your family to. And the trash is so well conceived, so deceptively penetrating, that its long lasting effects is remembered long after the symphony and visuals of the Rock Mountains is forgotten.
The benefits? Books, intelligent conversation , your imbuing your children with the values YOU cherish as opposed to abandoning them to ” popular culture ” and it’s true goal- Emptying your wallet, numbing your intellect and tarnishing your soul.
Exactly. We have a TV, but use it only for sports. A few days ago, my son wanted to take a boy home on foot in a snow storm in the evening. It was freezing and windy and they had to walk three miles. I said yes because it is a healthy experience being outside, fighting with the weather. The biggest problem was to pick him up by car later. I wasn’t much faster. When people hang around all the time in front of the TV munching junk food they get overweight and stupid. They stop being responsable voters as their minds are infiltrated with shallow stuff. Every now and then we use the TV for a brillant Hollywood movie. There happen to be some, but they are rare. I loved “The curious case of Benjamin Button” for instance. Aside from the story I love it even more today as all those race troubles that under Obama get a new weight weren’t present. There was the black lady next to the white protagonists, and they all had the same human significance. It wasn’t a movie about skin colour, but about humanity. It’s not the kind of film average people see and like. It’s too quiet and therefore like a book. It tells a wonderful quiet story. People are completely spoilt by action. Their brains stop functioning. While reading or watching slow quiet movies (also “The Horse Whisperer” or “the English Patient” belong to this group) the brain stays alive and continues thinking and feeling. I was very thankful to the old Hollywood for some things that made me more, not less lively, for films like “Casablanca” which was developed on the set or Hitchcock films like “North by Northwest” with this amazing lengthy scene when Roger Thornhill is supposed to be killed by an airplane in the open field. Just to say something nice about Hollywood too.
My wife and I were flipping the channels yesterday and stumbled upon: 1) a mildly romantic scene among two homosexual men; then changed the channel and found a 2) a scene involving a female doctor and a male resident in a utility closet making love and also committing adultery; then flipped the channel and saw 3) a show overtly poking fun at 1950′s and 1960′s America and its ethnic majority; then, last, we flipped one more time and landed on a show about a male conquistador and perpetual bachelor bragging about his conquests of women and seeming very happy in life. Needless to say, I retired for Schopenhauer; my wife for Dickens. I would have no television if were not for a handful of channels; I patiently wait for the day where we can buy only the channels we want – and for a small monthly fee.
Increasingly misanthropic,
Wes
Don’t be misanthropic, that doesn’t help. Don’t whine, that’s a specialty of the left. One of the best American novels I ever read is “Fahrenheit 451″. It shows us how a small bunch of people preserves books and culture under worse circumstances. I consider the late Ray Bradbury (RIP) a visionary as he has been able to foresee how people can be steered by mass media. He must have studied Hitler’s main man for this, Joseph Goebbels, an utterly evil man who managed to instill anti-Semitism by “pure” schoolbooks and indoctrinated school teachers into the young generation’s brain (and btw. it’s still there, hidden under layers of selective criticism of Israel). So Bradbury took from the past and projected into the future in America. And he was right. It’s not everybody, but over 50% is enough. Time to circulate the novel again? Edit his work again? Make a better film than Truffaut (too French)? Turn the attention to the danger of being steered from above and not really free? It’s a nightmare for most people to not be free. And they might realize that they are not by being confronted with Bradbury’s arguably best novel. And I think it’s better reading than Orwell or Huxley, because it’s less intellectual and closer to everybody’s fears = ‘the state in my life, my house, my bedroom, my thoughts.’
I read a lot of Bradbury (in fact most of the greats: Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, etc) in my youth and you’re right. It’s lowbrow enough to sink into the head of a noodle-headed youngster.
The only thing that bothered me about these writers back then was they didn’t hold much regard for the human race – and to an idealist, it was blasphemy to think we could advance so far and not advance even further.
Now in my 50s and I depressingly realize how right they were. Mankind is a bunch of freakin idiots and we deserve everything we reap because we sure have sown it!
And to Wes – don’t hate humanity – pity them. And cut the cable (or dish). I did and I’m now free of the smut! There dozens of ways to get at those few things you really want to keep up with!
Ray Bradbury was so astute, so brilliant. Below is a link to another well-written piece, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.,entitled “Harrison Bergeron.” This is a great commentary on those who would deny an individual’s exceptionalism, (actually handicapping them) in favor of “not hurting anyone’s feelings”…the myth of govt. mandated “equality in everything.” Please read it online here.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
Sometimes I watch financial news, pro football, and vintage shows and movies from the 50s/60s and before. Most of the more recent stuff, including the news, is garbage.
I do watch reruns of “Monk.” That show is actually pretty good.
Watch Canada’s Sun News TV on YouTube if you want some news. It’s mostly Canada-focused, but they also cover US stuff and world news. It’s what Fox News should have been, but isn’t. Sometimes I embed clips from Sun News on our blog.
Good idea, but pay attention to your children’s friends and their parents…and their teachers.
This is why so many children are tweaked…because parents allow the liberal culture, especially public school teachers, to influence their children. Risk if you want, but my kids will never be exposed to a liberal school teacher.
I’ve never owned a TV. And I’ve never once, in all these decades, said that to anyone where I didn’t get the reply, “I don’t watch much TV.” Not even one time has anyone replied differently leading one perhaps to ask, “So who’s doing all the watching?”
But I digress. There is so little of value on TV that any activity, taking a walk for example, is more worthy as far as investment of time. May I suggest that you record what you think is an educational TV presentation and then later listen to the narrative, without watching the screen; it will be obvious that nothing but pap is being presented, that reading virtually any book would be more rewarding.
On this site I read and agreed with Ed Discoll about the low level of movies but when I followed up on his citation of Alan Sepinwall’s book who said that “Breaking Bad” was good TV entertainment I snagged a few minutes on Youtube and I’m shocked an disheartened that that level of obscene violence would be welcome in any home. Presently I am reading “A World Lit Only By Fire” by William Manchester. A light weight but very entertaining look at Medieval Europe and it has me interested in following up in several other historical veins. Much violence to be sure but also leavened with much greatness.
Peter, let me be the first in your experience: I watch a LOT of TV. Then again, I used to PRODUCE video; I watch arts for the performance, stupdio productions for the production values, and current affairs to maintain a running snapshot on the state of majority opinion today.
Children CANNOT be shielded from mass media; IMHO, a better approach is to immerse them in it early WITH YOU BY THEIR SIDE teaching them always, ALWAYS (at the age-approproate level0 to ALWAYS question what they see and hear.
Lesson 1: EVERYTHING you see and hear via mass media is CREATED for you to see/hear in precisely THAT WAY. This includes “hard news”: SOMEBODY is out there deciding where to point the camera, how to voice-over it, and which bits get cut in post. (Even little tiny kids can get this via a few simple back-yard “play experiments” with a cheap camera: “How many ways can you think of to take this picture so it shows what looks like a completely different thing?”) From there it’s only a short hop to, “Okay, now think about WHO is creating this for you to see/hear, and what agendas might they be running?” Again, only IMHO, any reasonably bright kid should have at least a vague sense of this before s/he even hits kindergarten.
I just got the message “you are posting too fast, slow down.” What does that mean, I’ve never gotten a msg like that before? I posted and then went to the store it must be nearly two hours now… that’s too fast? What difference does it make how fast someone posts?
Ignore this error message. It’s a blunder by the PJMedia HTML code and what went wrong has nothing to do with how quickly you are posting. Just click “post” again.
Spikeygrrl, I am delighted to stand corrected. LOL And I am delighted to see that you put TV to good use.
I couldn’t agree more about not shielding children from the world. It’s foolhardy and doesn’t prepare them for a self determined life. May I say that your idea about children using cameras and ‘creating’ different sets of communications from the same scene is brilliant, simply brilliant! In my usual un-humble opinion education is too much giving and regurgitating and not enough self directed creating. Without the latter a child, a person, tends to feel that they are dependent upon what ‘experts’ think and miss the opportunity to create a fulfilling life, the only real wealth that exists. Ours (that I know of) is the only important political document that sees “…the pursuit of happiness,” as an important personal right.
And what of pornography? To think children don’t see it is foolish. However well one’s computer might be locked down little Mary or Johnny down the street will have cracked the code. LOL Of course a though and embracing of sexuality not just verbally but also as far as the atmosphere around the home is key but what about all the parents, and there’s more than a few, who don’t feel comfortable?
I don’t know but I’d be delighted to hear you take on the subject.
What she said.
You cannot escape the culture. Throw away your TV? Fine. Then your kids will be exposed to the culture by other means — Internet, radio, music, video games, school plays, their peers, etc.
Leftism never stops, you cannot get away from no matter how far you run. They will catch up with eventually. I wish conservatives would stop trying to run away (whether it be through secession, home schooling, “unplugging”, setting up an “alternative” this or an “alternative” that). Stand and fight. That’s not what the Left did; no, they did the opposite, they marched through the institutions. It’s time for a countermarch.
Expose your children to culture through other means. Take them to church.
Manchester was a bit biased as a historian but he was a great wordsmith. You might enjoy “The Glory and the Dream,” his history of the US from 1932 until the mid-’70s for a view of the period through the eyes of a true liberal Democrat, something not around much anymore. Also, his “The Last Lion,” a three volumn biography of Churchill is great, especially the first two actually written entirely by Manchester himself. As his health failed he engaged a friend to use his research and finish the third volume; Manchester didn’t live to see it finished. The literature isn’t as good as the first two volumns but it is good enough.
Art, thank you for the heads-up on the Manchester book. Yes, I have read “The Last Lion” and I think that the first two pages of the first volume are the finest history prose I’ve ever read.
Yes, quit watching TV. You can also connect with Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI and get their curriculum for 1 – 12th grade. It is heavy on presenting our Western Heritage, our founders and our Constitution (all in a positive light. It is a true liberal arts education, just like the one we used to get in school oh, too long ago.
Lord almighty you people really missed the point Roger was trying to make didn’t you? A bunch of snobs turning your back on TV and similar fare.
Sorry, but I don’t think I missed this point:
“So my point is quite simple. Quit bitching and start doing.
Sean Penn and Oliver Stone are going to do what they are going to do. Conservatives and libertarians have to do the same thing — but better.”
So, do. Finance your own movies or create a competitor to Hollywood in Texas, i.e. Hollywood can only dictate public op. as there is no real competition. I suggested a good novel to start with, I think. Read all Ben Shapiro’s new piece about Stevie Wonder being pressured into joining the anti-Israel-front, over at fpm. Those wine drinkers in Hollywood are disgusting. While living like monarchs they make money on misery. They discovered misery as a way to make profitable movies. And they go against the strong even when they are brothers. Shapiro writes also that Spielberg is curiously quiet. One should think that the founder of the Shoah-Foundation, the maker of Schindler’s list, understands anti-Semitism when he sees it. One should also assume that the creator of Indy can grasp when other religions are on their way of killing the mother religion, for the ssecond time in recent history, for the third time including the Spanish Inquisition, for the umptieth time including the Romans or the Babylonians, mostly out of envy and resentment. So what makes him quiet?
Besides, what makes Hollywood stars, directors and producers so uniforme and biased? They are not all equally stupid. Some could engage in a lively discussion and spread ideas and knowledge.
Good point. Get your kids into reading well-written books and they’ll be looking down their noses on Hollywood for the rest of their lives. Won’t work on every kid though. But on those, making fun of couch potatoes as you feed ‘em plenty of activities works pretty well.
99% of movies and 99.99% of TV doesn’t reach the bar set by books and personal accomplishment. Raise ‘em right and they’ll be rejecting Hollywood trash on their own for their whole lives.
To the skeptics I advise you to take your monthly cable bill and multiply it by 12. Or round off and multiply by 10. That money can buy a lot of power tools and recreation gear. And museum and park fees. And books too, but library cards are free. And don’t overlook religion – mega-culture there.
Some of us have an agenda different from Roger’s. Not lesser, just different. Everyone has to find their own way through this, so please don’t beat up those of us who might disagree with Roger.
Me, personally? I plan on whining, big time. It makes me feel slightly better.
Yes, whining does have its uses. So why not make your whining matter? That is, don’t just whine to your friends and family. Whine the way the Left always has — by making a big stink about it, but by becoming a nuisance to the media, the schools, entertainment, etc. Maybe you already are, and if so I admire you.
Snobs? How about concerned parents that want to protect the moral innocence of our children?
Menachem,
I could not agree with you more! We decided not to have a TV in our house as I did not have one in my house growing up either. It was a conscious decision on the part of my parents and then of mine. My sons, who are 24, 22, and 17, are grateful. What did they do instead of watching TV? They engaged in lively conversation, they learned a musical instrument (and learned it very well), they built things in the garage, they engaged in “family reading hour.”
It makes me sad to go in a home where the kids watch who knows what and the TV is constantly on. Childhood obesity? Don’t ban Big Gulps, ban TV!
While I agree 100% with what you state, you are missing the point of this article.
We *shouldn’t* have to throw the tv out. If Conservatives start to become involved in the arts and entertainment fields along with the education system, then there will be entertainment that we can all sit down and watch.
The funny thing about quality “conservative” movies, is that they do VERY well when released. This has been proven over and over. The Leftists have their agenda and they are willing to sacrifice profits in the name of social engineering.
My question is this
why are we losing out on the opportunity to spread out message, support our cause and make a profit at the same time?
“The healthiest and smartest thing any family can do is throw out their television. I know how difficult that can be and how radical it sounds but, bottom line, it works.”
It’s not radical at all. It’s boring and old fashioned and useless (and a bit pompous). Also, as Mr. Simon’s article shows, it cedes the culture to the other side and makes our country and the world worse. Your proposal is selfish and absurd.
” Boring, old fashioned, useless, pompous, selfish and absurd. ”
Thank you for proving my point.
The inability to confront an opinion other your own through intellectual discourse rather than invective is quickly lost by inundating oneself in television. It’s so much more comfortable to sit, eat potato chip and avoid thinking than it is to understand that your life is finite and that what you accomplish with it is in direct proportion to how much effort you make.
Wow. We’re boring, old-fashioned and useless and pompous because we have a real life instead of watching TV. I wonder which family activity we should have given up in order to watch more TV? Chess, drama club, girl scouts, cub scouts, basketball, crew, rugby, Best Buddies, soccer, the children’s schola*, soup kitchen, delivering day-old bread to homeless shelters?
The good shows we find out about, we pick up later on DVD (Avatar, Firefly etc). My husband watches sports and Walking Dead, is that enough?
*I will admit that I watched EWTN the night my sons’ choir’s performance was on there.
Wow. You all just don’t get it, do you? Throwing out the TV may save your family (may), but it won’t save the rest. And if the whole culture doesn’t shift, at least a little, the future is lost. And no matter how well-read and sheltered from TV your children are, they will still grow up in a world where the vast majority of others have been raised on Hollywood’s product. In that world, conservatives will lose every major election.
We MUST fight in the culture, or lose everything. It’s that simple, and that hard. The culture determines everything.
Look, it’s not impossible. Fox News is a great example. People thought that the news media were lost, and along came FNC to change the game.
There’s no reason that conservatives can’t create a Fox News of a movie studio or TV network (or both). No reason except for the lack of investment. If conservatives can donate $1 billion to one presidential campaign in six months, they can create a successful movie studio. But they must be patient and persistent, and not accept failure as the end.
This is a valid point: “Wow. You all just don’t get it, do you? Throwing out the TV may save your family (may), but it won’t save the rest.”
I can tell you what we did: We never threw the TV out thinking that our children would then watch TV somewhere else. We taught our children to pick the valuable stuff on TV and limited the time they were allowed to watch TV, and we watched TV with them when they were small. We saw all of Knight Rider (didn’t hurt) with the oldest one and had a lot of fun. Later we even bought the videos to have the same fun with the smaller ones. The point is that we didn’t leave them alonne, never used the TV-set as baby-sitter and after a sequel we turned the TV off. So, everybody learned a decisive lesson about media: Dosage. Besides watching a little we read lots of books to them when they were small. Everybody or nearly everybody on the conservative side does the same with his kids. Painting and making music belongs to this as well. So what to do about the growing rest who never learned that? In Germany they are called “Bildungsferne Schichten”, a typical German construct which translates like education-poor classes. Well first the good news: The state tries to do a few things about them. Second the bad news: It doesn’t really work.
We tried to help some by teaching them for free. It doesn’t really help. We ended up having to pay attention to our own kids not being drawn down. We couldn’t really help anybody to change his comfortable being between TV, computer, food and unwillingness of education. Comfort is very attractive it seems.
I must say what seems to add to it is the growing defamation of Jews and Israel. Jews are a wonderful bunch of people. Their humour and creativity make us more, not less, if we learn from them. Instead we often give in to medieval desires of another religion. So, what can we do, you do? It is very difficult, and – and that’s really bad – people were always more willing to work, study and make an effort after wars. Comfort is such a nice thing. I think the Romans suffocated in it. Maybe it would help to have to acquire voting rights. If people had to write a test about politics and history like having to take a test before they drive a car a responsable voting pool could be created. The left would scream about this as they feed on uneducated voters. But in the end voting is as responsable as driving a car and bad voting results can wreak havoc in a nation.
Tonight , here in Jerusalem, we have already lit the first candle of Chanukah. We lit the candle, the first of eight, after Shabbat has ended.
The timing of Rogers article couldn’t be more interesting. Chanukah commemorates a war fought between, and over, two distinct cultures and the victory of Eternal Truth over popular culture. The Greeks had ruled over Israel for some time and the Jews were willing to live under Greek rule. The Jews did not rise up in rebellion for political freedom or to avoid heavy taxes. We rebelled when the Greeks attempted to ban Torah, study, ban circumcision and ban Sabbath observance. The Greeks wanted to impose their culture upon the Jews. That we could not tolerate. We rose up and defeated the worlds super power. That is what we celebrate today.
Jews who practice Judaism have always sought to shield themselves from ” popular culture ” preferring a culture based upon Eternal Truth. Elements of ” popular culture “, when viewed from a distance and found worthy, were adopted and we have been able to immerse ourselves in aspects that are healthy and move humanity forward. Yet never at the cost of Eternal Truth.
I am a member of a culture more than four thousand years old. I speak the language of my ancestors, live in their capital city, study their Torah and can visit their graves and pay my respects in fifteen minutes by car. I guess you can call that a successful culture. The reasons for the success are many but one of them is the focus on family life. Building a culture is done one family at a time.
Thank you for your answer. I wish you a very wonderfulf week of Chanuka. As I am the proud owner of a Menorah I will light a candle for Israel tonight too. In what it is that made a 4000 year old culture so successful you forgot an important point: I think ist is a deep feeling of humanity. I know that the Palestinians are making the biggest mistake by not recognizing Israel. Israel could be their best friend.
I also thank you. I am not Jewish but I appreciate what the Jewish people have contributed to the world (especially my Western world). I do not own a menorah, but will correct that, and will light a candle as well. I hope that I am not treading on your tradition by doing this. My warmest regards.
I think it is wonderful that you both choose to to identify with Israel and the Jews in such a heartfelt manner. I am honored by your commitment and filled with gratitude for your spirit.
May the Blessings of Chanukah and the merit of you intention find their way to the Heavenly Court and may you and your families be Blessed by the Almighty for your kindness and faith.
While I agree in principle, Roger…there is no longer simply “soft censorship” in academia, mass media or pop culture.
(As many here also know, I make a HUGE distinction between “liberals” and leftists)
Only a raging, flaming a&&hole would claim to be “liberal” and then conspire to hurt people who hold a center-right viewpoint. But, that is precisely what happens and it now happens with impunity and without a single repercussion.
Leftists are bullies…which means they are deep down…sissies who need to engage in mob rule, because they lack courage, honor and morals at their core.
Not only is there a 40+ year head start for the traitors with no soul, there is an institutionalized and cemented Boss Tweed corruption at the base of it.
So, while I will continue to plow headfirst into this brick wall, I will NOT stop bitching about it. Fair is fair, right is right, wrong is wrong. Being the victim of daily slander, treason, oppression, lies, corruption, graft, …will not be cured by simply “being better”.
Moreover, our “team”…the Republican Party…is virtually useless in this battle to save the soul of this land of ours. They do not carry the message well, they are clumsy and buffoonish, and appear at times to be halting, hesitant and resistant to picking up the banner of decency and honor.
(there are exceptions, which gives off a glimmer of hope in the well of despair)
I’m happy to do my part. I will spend the hours writing, but there are days that I must admit are getting darker and darker because I see how unfair and despicable a leftist controlled country is destroying my country.
Leftists are bullies…which means they are deep down…sissies who need to engage in mob rule, because they lack courage, honor and morals at their core.
Are they ever. And monumental hypocrites, completely unabashed by unrelenting evidence of their own hypocrisy.
Moreover, our “team”…the Republican Party…is virtually useless in this battle to save the soul of this land of ours.
It seems so.
Since the 2016 re-election has already begun (we’re insane), I note emphasis on newer, younger republicans like Ryan and Rubio as our personal saviors. While I like those guys and other younger republicans like Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy, I hate the “find the savior” approach.
Let’s not forget RAND Paul
cfbleachers: As a resident in Norway(!) I sympathize with your American LOSS of morals, ethics … and courage…except, incidentally, when your soldiers go to war.. Nations in Scandinavia have been under the Heel of Welfare for eighty years, but Sweden – our biggest Welfare Nation – went conservative six years ago and Norway is set to follow next fall!! There IS hope, believe it or not..
If America went for Obama a second time November 6th you may be sure this was a charade made in Chicago and in the bowels of the Democratic National Committee – neither national nor democratic, by the way..
Please stay positive with the pages of National Review or the American Spectator, e.g. Quin Hillyer who last year alerted me to the great Rick Santorum – a mix of Nixonian foreign policy and domestic liberalism where it matters: Health issues, Education, Tax Reform and Respect for Life)pro/LIFE!
Santorum\s speeches collected in one volume by Monument Press is about as American as you can wish for as we transcend the hardship of the Obama Wreck Careening into 2016..
Q.Hillyer\s essay in the Am Spec of May 2, 2011 is entitled Santorum\s clarity of Vision
Second!
We got rid of ours and, after a month or so, you realize that you are happier without it. We now look at our friends as feeding an unhealthy addiction – they’re watching crap, and will admit its crap, but wont turn it off because they don’t want to be without it.
Fight the addiction, turn the TV off, and you’ll begin to see the world for what it really is.
Mr. Klavan, as for taking back the culture, I don’t see how that is possible. Conservative options in film and television requires massive investment that simply will not come to fruition. Right now, conservatives get droplets of conservatism in American culture when we need buckets. Supporting these droplets wont change anything. American entertainment is a business and as such, is designed to reach the widest audiences. As such, conservatives, as a niche market, are just not as profitable as we’d like it to be.
Besides, conservatives by nature despise ostentatiousness, a trait that keeps most of us out of the limelight. While some of us are fighters, most of us just ignore the left. It is for this reason that conservatives like ourselves make so little progress in this nation.
I can’t believe my eyes about how stupid are most reactions to this text.
Most of you are boasting about how happy you are now you no longer a TV. Live in happiness and see Democrats win election after election until Judgment Day. It is not about you, it is a bout your children and your neighbours who are being brainwashed into liberal and leftist views translating into future Presidents who will make Obama look ardaical conservative by comparison.
The author is telling you about the need of going back into the offensive and most of you only think in hiding their heads undeer sand. I would also like to complement what Mr Simon said: even if you can’t produce culture you can contribute to make liberal and leftist culture lot less lucrative: instead of selling your TV and reading Dickens, write to TV stations and to advetisers. Do you want to know why TVs and Hollywood have become so liberal? Because they have learned that offending a progressive is riskier than offending 100 conservatives.
Have you heard about the big purge of Communist actors and directors by the end of 40s. It started by an attempt of Communist takeover of Hollywood in order to mold American minds. However people’s reaction to these Communist movies was so negative that the movie compenies fearing for their bottom line massively fired Communist actors and scenarists. That is how you win culture wars, not by selling your TVs.
THIS. This, this, this.
I’m reminded of the Parable of the Talents. It is better to go out into the world and take risks than to hide in the sand.
It has occurred to me that those burying themselves may believe they don’t have much to contribute to the world, compared to those who are out investing. But in the parable, Jesus says even those with small things can still go out and make them better. This would hold true here as well.
The parable of the talents…using our gifts, and taking risks, to further God’s kingdom here on earth. This does not apply to man-made systems of government. If you are a follower of Christ, you shouldn’t concern yourself with politics.
Bingo.
Many of the comments here are in the passive voice. Victims, instead of citizens. Children, instead of adults.
Time to face the real world and the facts, instead of living within their own fantasies and within their own echo chambers.
So explain what the real world is according to you and what the facts are according to you? It sounds like you think you know, but you like holding your secrets back from all of the juveniles out here.
…and…you prove my point for me.
LOL
You’re telling people who turn off the TV to face the “real world” …by sitting at home watching fantasy TV.
What a nutjob.
Nothing wrong with complaining to stations or boycotting advertisers.
But that doesn’t mean we ourselves have to mindlessly sit and watch episode after episode of that demoralizing crap.
I concur JFM… I also think that the issue with conservatives fighting liberals is it just wears you the hell out and makes you look like you feel.. You are just worn out. (Hence the internal ugliness and nasty outward appearance of every liberal in public eye and all that I know.)
It is hard dealing with liars and people that are spewing the lies on a daily basis when you are used to people in your inner circle that would never dare to deceive you. With politics and politicians that should be a given. No matter the political party.
So here is my recommendation to the “head in the sand people”; seeking a good nutritional MD, working out 2 times a day, getting vitamin E shots and a good talk with God, and watch current t.v to see the stupid that you are going to be fighting against.. MAYBE you can then handle the daily deception and lies inflicted on doing nothing but gouging out the soul of humanity to be replaced with darkness. If you are not watching t.v., how are you going to know what you are fighting against and prepare for it?
“Whoever said it was going to be easy? And making it more difficult is that conservatives tend to be out of practice where cultural endeavors are concerned (except perhaps in country music, which is important). When you disdain or ignore something, the skills wither.”
Thank you JFM. Seriously clueless many of these commenters are, as Yoda might have put it. You don’t take back the popular culture by becoming cultural hermits.
Wow, what an insightful response. You begin by calling my comment “stupid” and then accuse me of burying my head in the sand.
You did not understand a word I said, but that’s okay, I’m used to it here.
I never once advocated becoming conservative hermits. Instead, I advocated getting rid of your television. We live in an age where more and more people are getting their news from their computers and renting or streaming any movies or shows they are interested in. In an age with so many options, what good is television hookup?
What a lot of people fail to understand is that money is a major issue here. Mr. Schwartz here says he has trouble finding conservative projects to invest in. Of course. That’s because conservative artists by and large don’t get very far. It’s not enough to have a couple conservative directors, you need conservative producers, writers, distributors, and a guarantee that your products will make a profit. Avatar made 2.8 Billion. By comparison, Act of Valor, 2016, and every film Sherwood Pictures has made, combined made half what Avatar made.
I worked in the music industry for ten years and have helped on a couple movies – I am not a culture hermit. What I am trying to say is that, if by American culture we mean music, television and film, conservatives will need to invest and participate at unprecedented levels. Hollywood is a business it is not a democracy. Letter writing and complaining doesn’t work. Conservatives are by nature individualists so the hive mentality required to change the nation’s culture just is not realistic. The Passion of the Christ turned off atheists and Atlas Shrugged turned off Christians – both are arguably conservative but as individualists, conservative reception varied.
I now work as a historian, giving lectures, presentations, tours, and articles to make my impact. The best way to change people is to teach them critical thinking, not regulating their garbage intake. You mentioned the Hollywood purge – think about this for a moment, how well did it go? How do we remember it today? All that really happened was they succeeded in becoming liberal martyrs, which did more to hurt conservatives in Hollywood than help them. By the end of the 1960s, the culture war was theirs. Remember, this is an industry that thrives on pushing the envelope, which attracts attention and makes money. Archie Bunker is enshrined in the Smithsonian, you wont find Andy Griffith or Beaver there.
If enough conservatives come out of the woodwork to finance major media projects, and enough conservatives come out to produce marketable material, I’ll be glad to see it. You certainly wont get it with whiny letters and phone calls. Film, television, and music industries produce material so as to reach the widest possible audience – i.e., they cater to the masses. We conservatives think for ourselves, which is a good thing. You want to affect change, vote with your wallet. You may think my family’s getting rid of the TV hookup was “stupid” but at least I only pay for things I want. I hope that you think about that the next time you pay your cable bill and Honey Boo-Boo is playing in your living room.
Exactly … and a thoughtful rebuttal to the snarky replies earlier. I have television and cable that I maintain for guests and the rare occasion I may want to watch it. For the past two years, however, the only time the tv has been on was when guests (who appear addicted, to me) wanted to “watch tv.” And each time I am shocked at the blatant stupidity of most of what’s on (other than the news, and even that’s questionable) and wonder when I’m going to just quit the idiot box completely. If my guests are bored, well, they can just go home.
For all of you who want to soak it up, that’s your business, but how about quitting the name calling of the rest of us. We’re not hermits, giving up on life. Most of us are actually more fully embracing life, rather than sitting in front of the television for hours a day. To all of you still slavishly watching it, you’d be amazed at the amount of real life you can fit into your measly 24 hours per day by just walking away from that box.
Actually I wanted to post a “first level” comment, ie not specifically an answer to you but I clicked in the wrong place. Notice I mentions Dickens and you don’t but someone else tells about the joys of turning TV and reading Schopenhauer and Dickens. Sorry if I offended you.
I don’t have cable. I have satellite dish and I get more free TV channels than I can watch. I didn’t accept to be bound to particular satellite so I have a rotative dish. It was a bit more expensive but freedom had more value.
For the martyrs of the Hollywood purge. I would say this purge put back the communist agenda for brainwashinng America by at least ten years, perhaps twenty. That is America would be 20 years further into the road to socialism. Or perhaps Reagan would have never been elected and America would have lost the cold war. Also, this purge was not complete: people knew Communist actors and they were never able to work again but people don’t read the creedits and directors and scenarists were able to come back
Finally Conservatives, like usual, slept and allowzed liberals and communists sympathisers to rewrite history. Now young people don’t know that the “MacCarthyst reign of terror” sentenced two people to death (for passing information about the bomb to Stalin), a grand total of seven served jail sentences, that less than 2 hundred federal employees lost their jobs and that those people were working for Stalin who was killing, killing as in gunned, starved or worked to exhaustion in the Gulag, over one thousand people a day. And these young people Conservatives have allowed being brainwashed now vote for Obama.
Herr Hussein, let’s face it, one way or the other, is out to destroy this nation as we know it. Please join me boycotting the big eared pathological liar totalitarian poor imitation of the real Hitler.
We can’t outspend him, but we can outlast him and his kind.
How to reclaim the culture?
By getting in their faces on a personal level and telling them no. Reid, Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Ricecake girl; liars one and all, corrupt cheaters to the core.
“Say, pukes, if you want to live in a communist state and not just in your warped communist states of mind, be our guest and fly away never to return.”
What do we do now?
Maybe pull an Obama; declare the election null and void, wrap it like Obama does in some legalgoop citizen’s order jargon and turn to the returning Marines, asking them to use their powers of enforcing sanctions on Obama. After all, Obama’s rules of engagement got so many killed. Organizing returning Marines and special forces is easier than you might think.
This is survival of the fittest. It’s always come down to that when you come across someone who’s trying to destroy your country. The time to make nice is over.
If ObamaThugs want to fight it out in the streets, fine. We’ve got the guns, the smarts, the money, the ammo. Don’t let it scare you.
Roger-Dodger, there are many ways to get your culture back. My thoughts are just my thoughts. There are scads of other ways. But be forewarned: John Boehner is a non person. Worthless. Chris Christie. A non person. Worthless. Mitt Romney was a good guy, but he had worthless people sabotaging his campaign. Their payoff is to get their kids into the best of schools. Check it out if you don’t believe me. The pukes used the same payoff on John Roberts.
At this point, the old Republican party animals have the balls of infants.
Hannity and O’Reilly are whining like old women.
Get an Alan West type to lead you to the promised land. Stop thinking of this nation as one of laws; obama’s shredded that concept. Think of our nation as being in a fight for its life. It’ll give us all a more realistic perspective. Look, we’re about to have our armed forces neutered. Once the U.S. can’t defend itself, it’s ballgame.
This isn’t a time for rule books. It’s a time for swift, decisive action. On Guadalcanal the Marines learned fast; you play by the rules you’re dead. We’re in for a fight. If you don’t have the stomach for a fight, get in your basement and lament for what might have been if Romney grew balls for his third debate.
War isn’t pretty. Roger, and the rest of your columnists and commenters; we’re at war with an enemy who stole enough votes to get moles elected twice. We can’t let them get away with it. If you have to, make believe it’s 1776, and a lot of lives are on the line; a lot of ideals and values are in the balance, not to mention the fact that freedom and liberty is teetering on your decision.
You think we’re not staring at the Rubicon? These Obama/Hitler similarities people are beginning to talk about are real; should in themselves be enough to make the little hairs on your back stand up. It’s time we all saw how clearly our way of life in the U.S. is being challenged by a bunch of punks who figured out a way to crawl into our system of government with the objective of using it against us. Don’t give an inch to the people who borrow 150 billion a day on credit from the Chinese. They’re traitors, and half the people who voted for them aren’t much better.
Let’s all start thinking of a plan to get our country back. Try to do it without fight. But don’t forget. It didn’t work in 1776. I’m afraid we’re dealing with snakes in the grass, every last one of them. Whose poison is infecting this nation.
take your medication.
I resonate with most of what you’ve written.
Street fight time.
While Americans sit around whining about Geneva Convention rules, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are laughing their asses off.
While Obama and his minions, also laughing their asses off, make hash of the rule of law and constitutional limits on their power, all the delicate academic protests make not a whit of difference.
Permit me to add here that apparently overlooked in this discussion is that huge solidifying morass, or just plan mass of inertia newly presented to our culture by the “lowest common denominator” who vastly outnumber the rest of who are truly concerned with saving ourselves, literally.
When it comes to street fighting, they, this new mass of the lowest common denominator, have the distinct advantage.
So we simply must learn to channel, to use, the violence, explosions, wild flying special effects which they pay to see on their electronic gadgets and larger screens to get across the subliminal message that their current attitudes “suck” [I hate that word we see everywhere, but there's no denying its effectiveness in some situations] and that we need a cultural 2×4 to wake up these aging adolescents.
There’s a recent news-clip of a Black woman in Detroit, apparently a politician, saying that “We voted for you, now bail us out.”
That’s the very “attitude” which “sucks”, and we’ve got our work cut out for us. How to “turn” that woman? Talk about “Culture”. It’s going to be a slow, low-yielding effort, but we must do it or go through the experience of the Soviets in the decades right after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Obama is our contemporary Lenin.
THIS is what it will come to – whether anyone likes it or not.
Uhhhh . . . . I think that Roger, from his perspective in the entertainment industry, is talking about embracing popular culture to change it from within. He isn’t talking about fulminating at individuals you encounter who disagree with you.
You could say he’s more into ambushes and end-arounds and other flanking movements and infiltration, not frontal assaults with fixed bayonets. Become a friendly part of the popular cultural scenery that people will warm to. It is how the “Left” won.
Much of the comment chatter here is people unburdening themselves of their grievances. I think it’s more constructive in this context to talk about changing the content of mass media to start reflecting different views than is the case now, and making those new narratives stick with a much larger audience than the usual “conservative” way of going about spreading the word.
Get rid of TV.
Don’t send your children to college. Make them distance learn their degrees.
Get on the committees that oversee text books in your area.
I almost had a stroke when I saw the CALIF history texts my girlfriend’s daughter was studying. She couldn’t believe it either, once I started to point stuff out.
Tell people to their faces, “that’s a lie.”
Just like they did to me when I objected to Obammabuler in 2008 the first time around. That stops them in their tracks for a couple of seconds and the people around you start listening.
Getting rid of television will not cure your children of left-wing indoctrination, for the left controls much of the elite press and all of public education. The answer is to talk to your children about what their teachers are forcing down their throats, and come up with more accurate readings. Improve your vocabulary and read books yourself and talk about them with your children. My adult daughters, one of whom is generally liberal, have discovered Ayn Rand’s novels and are hooked. Why Ayn Rand is important I discussed here: http://clarespark.com/2011/04/16/index-to-ayn-rand-blogs/.
We HAVEN’T thrown out our TV. But we HAVE cancelled Cable, and only watch the content WE want, that we already own on DVD. . . What’s amusing is what we DO watch: mostly old shows and movies from prior to 1990. . .
As for the Milquetoast Republicans, I’ve just about had my fill with them after the last year. . . if they can’t articulate a consistent, appealing vision, then they’re going to continue losing elections. I’ve been concentrating MY personal efforts on solid conservative candidates, generally, but not always, under the Tea Party banner. . .
Without taking back America’s cultural institutions it will be impossible to take back the nation.
In tandem, seizing the initiative from leftist academia will be the best step towards recovering traditional ethos. And the above can be done, but only if the goal is to bring a (figurative) gun to the fight, instead of a knife, while being bludgeoned by the left.
And playing nice is a recipe for disaster, as conservatives are wont to be. They prefer a gentleman’s game as opposed to a bar brawl. It ain’t gonna work.
So,turning the tables, via ‘Rules for Radicals’ is the main caveat to Conservative success. And it is not as if its underpinnings haven’t garnered Dems most of their victories.
The proof is in their deconstruction of American society – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/01/leftist-dogma-the-same-world-over-freedom-loving-people-beware-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki-32-2/…so take leftist dogma and turn it into Conservative triumph.
Whining is a loser’s game.
Only a handful of people are creative enough to participate in professional-level culture-making.
The vast majority should focus on other areas of the cultural battlefield:
- school boards and related “enrichment/indoctrination” programs
- libraries – which are often stacked with pro-liberal materials
- local policy on holidays and “cultural events”
Everyone can do this.
Participation on school boards is THE most important way to start changing the culture. There is a lot of indoctrination that parents are uncomfortable with – but most are too busy to follow up. It only takes a few focused people to change things.
I agree. It starts in schools, libraries, media directed at children, i.e., Sesame Street. You don’t have to be a parent to take an interest in what children are being taught, or how they’re being indoctrinated. These children will eventually be voters with your end-game in their hands.
This is a sensible avenue. And you are correct, most of us are not of the “creative class,” and would not be in any position to create mass media. But the primary thrust of Roger’s points have to do with popular culture because this is what he has been best at observing first hand.
It’s nice to see you saying this in this way, but I and many other young artists have been working at this for years. We need support, advice and access, especially from friendly elders in the artistic community.
Hollywood has been leftist for years, but not like it is now. The young generation doesn’t just disagree with conservatives, they hate them. It’s common knowledge that conservatives just aren’t good at art, aren’t creative people, and are stupid bigots. We’re the enemy. It’s not just being denied jobs or being directly discriminated in a meeting; you don’t even get the meeting. It’s difficult to even find internships and contests I qualify for because everything is targeted at “diversity” slots, and the same people writing up the diversity quotas make the decisions for the non-diversity jobs and try to diversify their writing staffs there too. They’re not trying to hurt white men, necessarily; they’re just trying to help everybody else. “Friends” don’t tell you about jobs, or talk you up to their other friends / colleagues, which is the only way to break in. It’s like the press, there’s not necessarily a conscious discrimination, it’s just an inherent bias in the way they think. Parties are a nightmare because you either lie, stay quiet, or ostracize yourself. Hollywood lives in the social scene and you’re hamstrung there even more than in professional environments. It’s also especially hard to make quality work when you have to hide your beliefs through extra layers of obfuscation so you can tell the stories you want to tell without anyone catching wise to your themes and ideas.
It’s not whining so much as a need to vent every once in a while, but you get no sympathy or support. Rather, you get contempt and condemnation if you ever say “hey, this system is broken! Something needs to change, and I need help!” Even when you have a good attitude you get no support from friends or family, because the libs hate you and the conservatives either assume you’re a liberal or think you’re wasting your life on frivolous crap. It’s entirely thankless and eventually seems like you are, in fact, wasting your life. Everybody has dark times (especially artists), and when there’s nobody cheering for you it seems the whole world is working against you, hated by the left and the right. It’s only recently that conservatives have even started talking about taking the culture seriously, and it might be too late. Many, perhaps most, have abandoned it entirely.
Then, on top of that, the industry is rougher than ever and the movies are terrible on the whole. Everybody is struggling and conservatives are at an even further disadvantage. Quality writing is a liability when movies make more money overseas. The most consistent words of wisdom I hear from established professionals at all levels in meetings both public and private are “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen, and I have no idea how to help you.”
Do you have any suggestions on what to do? What actual steps to take, and where to be working? How to even find work?
I keep trying but I need more than scolding.
Everything you say is true, annoyed. My best suggestion is to consider doing an end-around. In other words, don’t approach Hollywood in a traditional manner. Move to produce and/or direct your own scripts. (If you don’t know how to do this, learn.) That way you can approach untraditional sources who more likely would be willing to help you. The way for new institutions to be built is for you to help build them. Also, modern technology is your friend. Things that used to cost a fortune can be done for a pittance. Take a risk and do it. Don’t wait for someone to say yes.
…and make the work interesting. One of the hallmarks of “publicly” funded art and literature is that it is pedantic, preachy, obvious and dull, dull, dull. For example, “Piss Christ” is viscerally offensive and indescribably shallow intellectually. I work in theater. So much of what the funding agents want is painfully shallow – racialist, sexist, etc. In my view, none of it would exist without public funding because it is so lousy an audience would never want to see it. From the inside, by the way, very very few people how much of this stuff is funded $100, $500 and $1000 at a time. Hundreds and hundreds of these trivial works in cities across the country. Keep an open mind as to how to reach your audience directly. Technology has presented you with this golden opportunity.
“Put simply, give up on the culture and you lose forever. (It’s hard enough with the media and the educational system rigged the way they are.)”
This is the heart of it and you’re exactly right. We lost this past election for two reasons: The Culture AND because Democrats are not the party of “free” stuff. If you want it or need it, from student loans to food stamps, the Democrats have an open check book for you. Just look at what Obama is asking for during these obscene “fiscal cliff” negotiations. He wants not only much higher taxes, but he actually wants another “stimulus” program PLUS the right to increase the debt limit whenever he wants to. Now THAT takes stones. But he does it because nothing succeeds like greasing the skids of the Democratic faithful. And how do you do that? With lots of money, YOUR money.
Having said that, we still need to win the culture. But it’s hard to do that when Hollywood is so far left. You may have a great idea for a conservative show, but it’s not going to help you if nobody or no studio either puts it on or, more important, decides to fund it.
Believe it or not, one of the best conservative mass-culture programs on TV was, of all things, and animated show called “King of the Hill.” Its central character, Hank Hill, was a traditional conservative and although people made fun of him, in the end he was always right and always the hero of the program. He was from Texas and was totally unashamed of his conservative values, from gun owning to his hatred for anything that was politically correct. The show was on TV for years and was quite popular on, of all places, FOX TV, which mainly runs liberal far-left shows. So this proves that a conservative show promoting traditional values, even an animated one, can make it on a liberal TV network. You just have to do it in a way that’s palatable to the leftists that run Hollywood.
Perhaps we need more of this? Animated shows are much cheaper to make than shows with real people and they can deal with a wide range of topics, many of which can’t be dealt with on regular programming. Using “King of the Hill” as a role model, I think this could be used as a template for conservative programming. It’s at least worth a try.
Libertyship at 6, I liked “King of the Hill,” too, a lot. Always tried to watch it, but of course it’s now gone.
As for Roger’s idea, just consider the two following articles:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/ireland_beware_the_suicide_exemption.html \
Young women having late-term abortions for unutterably trivial reasons.
Then this, the debate of man photographed as he was about to be crushed to death by subway:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/new_york_posts_subway_death_photo_stirs_debate_over_journalistic_ethics.html
Our moral state is unbelievably wretched. Unbelievably wretched.
Outside of a massive religious conversion (re-conversion; a new Great Awakening?), I can’t imagine how we come out of this. But look at how insane, or even inane, most mainstream religious denominations have become.
Andrew Breitbart was a prophet.
An Préachán
“Savita Halappanavar, age 31, died from a pregnancy-related blood infection after doctors in Ireland refused to perform an abortion. According to her husband, as Halappanavar’s health deteriorated, she had begged doctors for medically necessary treatment. Even after her doctors acknowledged that there was no chance her fetus would survive, they refused to terminate the pregnancy as long as they could detect even the faintest fetal heartbeat. Halappanavar slipped in to a coma from which she never recovered.” So you consider this situation an “unutterably trivial reason” for terminating a pregnancy. You are a human piece of shit, An Preachan. Stop wondering why the vast majority of our population looks upon your kind with disgust.
I think you may be jumping to conclusions on this story:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-reporter-who-broke-savita-story-there-may-have-been-no-request-for
DUBLIN, December 3, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kitty Holland, the Irish Times reporter who broke the story about the death of Savita Halappanavar that launched a global crusade against Ireland’s pro-life laws, has admitted that the story of Mrs. Halappanavar asking for an abortion may have been a little bit “muddled” in the retelling, and there may have been no such request after all.
In an interview this weekend on Newstalk 106, Holland appeared flustered and defensive, deflecting blame for the uproar onto Mrs. Halappanavar’s husband, Praveen. When radio interviewer Marc Coleman of Newstalk 106, asked her, “You’re satisfied that he did request a termination?” Holland responded, “Oh, I’m not satisfied of anything.”
That story is now, of course, known to be false.
But lets do talk about the current state of abortion in the western world such as the flouting of murder laws by late term abortionists who dismember near term babies under flimsy “psycosocial” reasons and who exactly are the “disgusting pieces of shit” who rabidly support them while pretending abortion is all about “lumps of cells” and womens health.
Wow it’s nice to see that you have one (false) example of someone dying because they didn’t have an abortion. I’m sure that you can find 45 million more to partially compensate for all the babies you murdered. You and your ilk are the greatest mass murderers and most evil people to ever live on this planet and you call someone else a piece of shit? You dare? You, who are literally as evil as the Nazis and your ideology is repugnant and horrible and you will go down in history as a prime example of how selfish and cruel people can be. Enjoy your time in the sun Hitler because your time is coming and people will wake up just like they did to slavery and the Holocaust.
The reporter for the Irish Times, Kitty Holland, now states that she is not sure if the patient, Savita Halappanavar requested an abortion. Read it on Lifenews.com. You are being lied to, these people do not have your best interest at heart. Please go to confession and get all the guilt off your heart that is manifesting as rage, it is obviously eating you up. Take care.
Conservative vs. liberal? Stop whining?
Sorry, Roger L. Liberals have been whining for ……ever! They have taken whining and fear mongering from a small cottage industry in the 19th century and globalized it for pure profit.
Modern conservatism has now been advantageously presented as source of greed and self serving snobery. While modern liberalism has been promoted as enlightened altruism with a flash of hip.
Modern liberals view themselves as edgy revolutionaries standing against the power of the system. Well, this is farcical for sure. The modern liberal mindset controls nearly every source of power.
And now that they do, and they don’t have any real solutions to any problems. Let the real whining begin.
Image is nothing. Deeds and accomplishment are what motivate conservatives, and some liberals who actually move outside the giant herd.
Take it from a repentant leftist, boycotts are futile.
Why not support those of us are attempting to shift the culture via kdp?
KDP? Kindle Direct Publishing? Tell us more. Are you publishing via that route?
It is easy enough to publish with Amazon/Kindle; sign the contract and follow the instructions. There are people who sell the service but anyone remotely computer literate can do it themselves. I did pay for some cover art and ad copy for my book but I did everything else myself except the copyright through LegalZoom.
That said, publishing is easy, selling is hard and expensive. Internet advertising on sites that get a lot of views is NOT cheap and views don’t necessarily translate into clicks and certainly not to sales. I just wish one well-known conservative would say something good about my book or one well-known lefty would say something bad; save me a lot of advertising money.
Art,
When I went to your link and discovered it was only available in eBook format, I decided to get an eReader for Christmas. Time to embrace another aspect of the information age.
Once that happens, your book is my first purchase.
Living in a conservative district within the Peoples Republic of California, I think it will provide excellent insight.
Thank you! You can download a Kindle reader for your computer for free. The basic Kindle and Nook are cheap, under $100 IIRC, and to me they’re the right solution; I’ve never been a fan of laptops or pads except for travel so I don’t really want an eBook reader to do more than just be able to download books and let me read them. I have the large Kindle that is no longer available apparently. It has almost “real book” sized pages and works well even in direct sunlight, something my wife’s much sportier Kindle Fire doesn’t do well at all. Again, thank you for thinking of buying my book; CA is a real challenge. I knew Swartzenegger’s labor relations guy pretty well – we were the only Republican heads of a state’s labor relations function in the Country at the time – and whenever I thought my job was a trial, I contented myself by thinking of what his was like. The leader of the California Senate had hired the president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, in many ways a more powerful union than the Teachers, as a staffer, so when the LR guy had to go to the Legislature for his budget, he had to go deal with the head of his largest state union. We in Alaska are badly union infested but nothing like that.
Agree. There are some decent indie authors out there who are using KDP to bypass the gatekeepers at the book publishers and publish books that discuss controversial topics. 28 Pages by Allen Mitchum comes to mind (http://www.amazon.com/28-Pages-A-Thriller-ebook/dp/B005YEO0PI/ref=tmm_kin_title_0).
Roger Simon: “It will be interesting to see how David Mamet’s new work is received, now that he has ‘come out’ as conservative. Will the audience dismiss what he has to say merely because of that? Undoubtedly some will.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear yesterday morning, on a liberal radio station in Toronto, that David Mamet’s latest play had got rotten reviews and was closing after a very short run on Broadway:
Two doors down at the Golden Theater is Mr. Mamet’s latest box-office flop: The premiere of “The Anarchist,” his 70-minute meditation on crime and punishment, which opened on Sunday night to scathing reviews. Just two days later, facing anemic ticket sales, the lead producers — the same ones mounting “Glengarry” — announced an imminent closing date.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/theater/david-mamet-has-flop-and-hit-on-one-broadway-block.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Aside from the fact that Mamet exhorted his fellow-Jews to vote for Mitt Romney, he dares to bring God and a conversion into his latest play. No wonder “The Anarchist” has been excoriated.
Although I see where you’re coming from, Mr. Simon, I’m not sure just how C/conservatives can surmount the overwhelmingly l/Liberal-dominated distribution process and MSM.
Prayer time!
Well said.
However, this is also something that the wealthier people on the right need to do. Why is it that out of all the news channels on cable, there are several to the far left, while only one right leaning channel?
Bloomberg started his own news channel, Al Gore started his own news channel. Sure, their ratings might be terrible, but 24 hours a day, they churn out left leaning programs and documentaries.
All they have to do is get inside one of the cable or satellite packages. They get paid even if no one is watching them. This is why people should insists on ala carte choices.
Roger, you said it all when you said that the art must come first. The average movie goer or TV watcher wants entertainment. What conservatives, in Hollywood and out, have to do is is make compelling drama. It will make money. Lord of the Rings did quite well. Use that money to springboard more productions. Guerrilla capitalism anyone? But it has to be a coordinated deliberate effort and only those in the business can do it well.
Guerrilla capitalism is located here https://www.declarationentertainment.com/
Simon is absolutely right.
Even Libertarians are going to have to face up to the fact that, if you want to do away with the Nanny State and the Entitlement culture, you have to address social issues and the only way to do that is reverse the Gramscian march through the media, academia, and the churches.
I speak from 40 years of experience, having been excluded from not one but two realms of creative endeavor – theatre and the fine arts.
There’s one element that trumps political and religious philosophy among the liberal bourgeoisie who are the gatekeepers of the culture and that element is base envy, the life-blood of contemporary American progressivism.
In my case they used the label bigot/racist (charges which, once made, cannot be disputed) to competely destroy my reputation and, coincidentally, to turn me from a young knee-jerk liberal into a devout conservative. Being an intelligent woman, the silliness of feminism helped as well. These people had to do this because to reject my work, both as actress and painter, on aesthetic grounds was impossible. The liberal bourgeoisie must keep at bay artists who still believe that the truth of a work of art is the only way to achieve something universal and lasting because the ability to do this is not bestowed according to some PC formula or manufactured in an academic hothouse.
Artistic standards must be smashed, not just to correct nature’s mistakes in giving talent to the politicaly unacceptable and to those whose presense may open the cultural curtain to expose the emptiness and corruption within, but to keep the money pouring in. The more “artists” there are the richer and more powerful the liberal bourgeoisie become.
PLEASE tell me this post is satire…!
It is entirely possible to make your living in the creative professions as a political libertarian or conservative. All you have to do is stick to your guns! I did it for 30 years, the last ten of those as co-founder/co-owner of a corporate sci/tech multimedia design/production/staging firm, all the while shooting both live/concert and studio/”concept” music video on the side, just for fun (jazz, world music, Contemporary Christian).
If you define “success” in the creative professions as mass media fame and the adultation of imbeciles, well no, that strategy probably won’t work for you. But if your ambition is to be able to support yourself and your family at a middle-class-or-better standard of living by doing the work you love, there is NOTHING standing in your way except your own self-pity.
Right on. Return Power To The People? Handed to them by their Founding Fathers with the bulwark of Law/Constitution to protect their Rights to Power.
Americans took for granted the privileges and opportunites bequeathed with that power. Got lazy and marched to Nuremberg Rally style concerts of unscrupulous power-seeking political rock-stars. Oh yes we know they are really loving, generous, compassionate, well meaning,. wanting power only for the “good of the people”. Not their fault if those people require rhetorical and physical brownshirt tactics for their own good.
The same people/groups who promised paradise on earth and lately to make the oceans recede. If only Americans would put themselves – which many did willingly and fervently – into their hands and follow their Lead/Leaders.
Perhaps the 12 steps are relevant here. To face up to an addiction to “government largesse” that unless given up completely shall, must, end in sickness and destruction.
Pitting citizens against citizens along racial, sexual, age, class and recently religion lines for place at the trough. Concerned only to sell their bill of goods, that “free lunch” of benefits to satisfy their favoured clientele with the means for their addiction. AND their own maintenance and growth of their power over “The Lives of Others”.
Americans own the power of their nation over all government offices and officers in being SELF governing. Congress, Judiciary AND Executive personnel are merely representative of the citizens. ALL the citizens even those who choose to avoid their responsibility by sittng on the hands when decisions about representation are made. Remember We The People?
The present crash with its economic and civil rubble is the price exacted by the arrogant know-it-all salesmen who sold Americans their bill of goods as a Good adolescent rebellion against our Founders and benefits bestowed. Self governance ceded to self-appointed, self-propagating, incestuous persons/groups in propanda/entertainmnt media, education/information media and especially in their lackeys in government.
Americans have at the behest of the policy makers and influence peddlers in all civic institutions over the past half century Manchurianised themselves.
I have two novel manuscripts that do not fit the official criteria of New York agents for content. (They praise the writing, but claim there is no demand for the subject matter.) Where to go? I’ve published short stories.
Also, I’d love to see your play. Is it coming to Atlanta?
Go indy, of course – I went through the same dance five or six years ago with the manuscripts for my first two books; historical fiction set on the American frontier. A couple of agents read them both through, loved the story, said nice things about my writing and story-telling … but alas, they said – tough sell, no market, blah-blah-blah. So I brought them out myself through POD, and then later in a second edition through a tiny local publisher in the town where I live. (That first book, To Truckee’s Trail, remains my best-seller, in spite of the fact that I do hardly any marketing for it at all any more.)
See, I had begun to have this feeling – and it was a very strong feeling – that we did need to reclaim our history, to tell stories that grabbed readers and taught the history of our country that seems to be left out and slighted in schools and pop culture generally. We needed to know that our real and metaphorical ancestors were decent, well-intentioned and even heroic people, just doing the best that they could. We needed to be reminded of what a bold and optimistic experiment this American republic was and is … and so the best way is (as other commenters are saying) to route around the mainstream.
Take the initiative, and get our own books and plays and music out there, make them good, figure out where your readership is for them – and get them in front of that readership. Hire yourself a good freelance editor and graphic artist for your cover, go to Creatspace or smashwords.com and get your manuscrips out there. And meanwhile, support those writers, artists and musicians who also are routing around the progressive gatekeepers, as well as boycotting those who in their words and actions are abusive towards a libertarian/conservative audience. If it takes setting up a whole parallel culture … well, that’s what we have to do.
“If it takes setting up a whole parallel culture … well, that’s what we have to do.”
Bill Whittle makes that very case in this video. It’s a little long but well worth your time.
SGT Mom, I have been writing two books on Western Culture. One is the story of a cowboy (me) on a remote Canadian ranch and the second is an historical novel based on journals from the Oregon Trail. I have lived the life and have a greater understanding of livestock and survival in the back country than most writers, so I do have an edge in authenticity. If you have a few free minutes, please read the introduction to my Oregon Trail novel.
http://floppingaces.net/2011/09/07/three-island-crossing-a-lesson-in-racial-harmony/
You may leave a comment, I’d love to read your opinion.
Skook
If you believe that truth is an absolute and you are humble enough to understand that most of the time you don’t know what it is for certain — especially in matters of science, economics and politics — you are not going to able to do to them what they do to us.
CNBC had a documentary last night on Costco which from what I saw looked like one big infomercial. I could not have imagined something like that airing when I was a kid. The Costco founder is a huge Dem.
If we fight them on the cultural front we have to understand that the rules they set down are wrong and should be rejected. We have to make them play by our rules, which means relativism and utilitarianism and Orwellian word games and must be condemned consistently.
It is wrong to have double standards. If they put forth information claiming X is good when one of their own do it, we have to insist that X is also good when one of our own do it by their standards and we have to loud about it. Conversely, if X is bad when one of ours do it we have to loudly proclaim their hypocrisy when they fail to condemn one of their own for doing it.
The wrinkle is if X happens to be actually good and is done by one of theirs, we have to praise it and if X happens to be bad when done by one of ours we have to condemn it.
It really does come down to a battle of good vs. evil.
All right. I’m getting peeved at this sort of thing:
You, Mr. Simon, are a novelist, playwright, and commentator. I am a novelist and commentator. I dare say you and I are both “doing our parts.” (At least, I can’t think what else we might be doing to better effect.) But most Americans, including most conservatives and libertarians, don’t include either fiction writing or opinion-editorial essay writing in their skill sets. What would you like to suggest to them?
No more guff about “whining,” thank you. The average conservative can do little more than disapprove of behavior he finds distasteful — and even that comes with a cost. I submit that until you come up with a better suggestion, you should refrain from catechizing them.
Menachem is 100% right. We never got cable. As a stay-at-home mom, I worked hard at indoctrinating my boys against popular culture. We relied on videos and dvds all carefully selected. The results are proof: all are light years ahead of their iphone obsessed peers. Voracious readers who think for themselves. None of them “play the game” to fit in and do just fine. In fact, for standing firm on their libertarian principles, they are respected. This cultural struggle begins at home; then the neighborhood, country, state and so on.
Yes, conservatives have to actually live the life and show it works. No more “setting aside free market principles to save the free market” hypocritical games.
I am GOING to do something about it! I was gonna return to college next year,and after reading this article, I am going to go for a degree in the performing arts with a minor in computer animation. Next year, a big presence on YouTube,some years later,a film or play a year,showing at your local theater/on Netflix. As a lifelong conservative, I have developed a think skin from countless personal attacks (not all verbal),so getting picked apart by the major media and called names by Hollywood troglodytes wouldn’t bother me. High quality stuff all the way,butchering the sacred cows of the Left,one at a time (that’ll take YEARS),and demonstrating the worth of conservative and Judeo-Christian principles, our truth and facts and the lessons of history over their lies,buzzwords and willful ignorance.
look at blender.org – free open source 3d animation software with a lot of free downloadable courses (hundreds of video courses, and lots of pdfs too). – maya, 3dstudio max and sofimage have a bit more functionality but blender is perfectly adequate to make professional quality animations. There is a networking community/website to help you get or once you become proficient become help .
All the professional animation packages have similar tools and structure (names and interfaces differ) , so knowing one platform gets you a long way towards being able to use the others.
One challenge in taking back the culture: We are fighting against liberalism, but most professionals in the entertainment industry, media, academia and teaching find plain-old Democratic liberalism to be reactionary conservative. To them, Obama is a conservative sell-out who, in the name of civility and fair play, compromises too much with those evil Republicans. They think the problem with the Democratic Party is it’s too nice.
I’m not kidding.
Most people in these professions think they are already being restrained about their criticism of conservativism, which they consider hopelessly retrograde, atavistic, superstitious, illogical, emotional, and prejudiced in a host of ways. They think the Democratic Party is just another right-wing party, that doesn’t have the balls to do what it know needs to be done in the name of appeasing the knuckle-dragging conservatives.
Thus, a real conservative seeking to enter into these professions is going to face opprobrium for the most left-wing views they are capable of espousing without lying.
I had thought the Internet would break the back of these professions (and it will), but what replaced it was not just conservative commentary but a relentless assault from the Left as well as nuts across the entire political spectrum. Sane commentary is everywhere, but it tends to be drowned out by a chorus of insanity.
Meanwhile, in the midst of this, we are, IMHO, undergoing a technological and globalization revolution that will rival if not far surpass the invention of the printing press and the industrial revolution. This comes on top of a relentless pace of change that began with Edison’s inventions in the 1880s. Most of us are going to be too busy coping with that change. And technological changes drive cultural changes, too. (Can anyone doubt that the Pill and antibiotics kicked off the sexual revolution?)
The key for conservatives is to reframe the debate about coping with the technological and globalization changes in a way that makes the conservative case, without merely standing athwart history yelling stop. The future will belong to those who embrace it while proclaiming eternal truths about human nature.
In some ways, this is already happening without any intentional effort by conservatives. In pedagogy, e-tools that stress repetition and retrieval from memory are delivering far greater results than all the educational fads that damaged the education system for decades. Forty years, it would have been dismissed as drill-and-kill. Except now it’s framed in terms of memory and cognitive neuroscience, so the liberals will accept it. That’s what I mean.
Remember, human nature will remain the same. A better thinker than me needs to work out the details. As conservatives, we should be able to deduce how these trends will play out.
TL/DR: We are already in the midst of a giant cultural tsunami and take that into account.
In pedagogy, e-tools that stress repetition and retrieval from memory are delivering far greater results than all the educational fads that damaged the education system for decades. Forty years, it would have been dismissed as drill-and-kill. Except now it’s framed in terms of memory and cognitive neuroscience, so the liberals will accept it.
The left and right are clashing and nothing good comes from it. The left assumes everyone is equal when in truth in a real bell curve (IQ is such) half of us are below average. Their crap fails to educate the below average. The right wants drill and kill which educates the below average and bores the pants off of the other side of the curve. The right advocates vouchers, but these won’t make the left side of the bell curve any brighter.
Education will only be fixed when both left and right learn to deal with the facts. Partisan rock throwing gets you nowhere.
Yeah but …
The Left knows exactly what they are doing and their useful idiots ( many millions ) are incapable of logical informed thought. They cannot now be reprogrammed as their brains have passed through the formative stages and are locked on stupid. Simply looking at the illegitimacy rate and rampant crime everywhere tells any thinking 14 year old that we are far down the road to hell and oblivion. It does not matter.
Lost of comments here are…even more whining and excuses.
Set the example in your own lives.
Stop disengaging from interactions (boycotting events and people you don’t like). That’s how you lost the culture war, people.
You took your ball and went home…and complain and whine because you lost by default.
I’m afraid that I don’t know what “taking the culture back” even means. Is this advocacy for 24/7 programming of ‘little house on the prairie’ and such? Seems to me that outside a handful of obviously partisan silly shows like jon stewart’s gig on comedy central, most programming is fairly neutral and worthwhile. NCIS etc seems fairly straightforward with identifiable bad guys and much of reality tv is stuff like pawn stars where you actually learn useful things.
Then of course there’s the implied subtext here that studio execs aren’t looking for shows to draw viewers or make money but instead are conspiratorially making leftists out of your kids. What’s leftist about the science or military channel, history, NFL network, etc.?
Ever notice that none of the main characters, except for the director and he’s not really a main character, are married, have children or are even capable of a normal life?
Ever notice that none of the main characters [snip]
One takes it you refer to NCIS.
Yes these people are so intent on serving their country that they have given up family lives. You’re right, dedication to serving one’s country is certainly a left wing concept.
“…dedication to serving one’s country is certainly a left wing concept.”
I hope you’re just kidding, because that statement is a real joke.
bobbcat
yup. your sarcasm detector is operational. dedication to serving one’s country is typically a right wing virtue and I thought this was understood. perhaps next time I’ll be more careful to indicate sarcasm.
NFL? Did you hear Bob Costas the other night? Network sports guys are every bit as leftist as the news people.
Yeah one commentator out of a zillion programming hours uses his position to say what he thinks, and because you don’t agree with his viewpoint, the entire NFL network is crawling with marxists.
Check your meds.
Actually, that is a weakness common to a lot of shows. Television shows often don’t know how to portray the balance between family and professional life. To be honest, it makes for a less “dramatic” or “funny” story.
So I don’t think that NCIS’s characters serve and protect has anything to do with that.
On a serial drama mystery show like NCIS there’s enough stuff happening that problem solving is front and center. NCIS has a handful of main character archetypes, no different than the main characters in the 60′s star trek series. TV characters are busy doing what they do propelling the drama or comedy unless their family life is part of the story. See SciFi channels “Eureka.” Sheriff is a widower raising a daughter by himself and this informs who he is and his motivations.
There’s no leftist plotting here.
“Stop disengaging from interactions (boycotting events and people you don’t like). That’s how you lost the culture war, people.”
Saw an email last night that makes me want to shout this from the rooftops: It’s long so I won’t copy and paste, but it was from the head of IPS, the graduate school of psychology for a pervert-worshipping cult that’s been masquerading as a Catholic order for the past 70 years (LC). It was a story that fed on the fears of every traditional Catholic etc about the days ahead; as cults do (as psychological experts in cults do well!), they’re taking advantage of current worries to attempt to bind people into the cult through the “us vs the bad world” method. Yes, there’s an us and them, no doubt about it! But please be careful about who you allow to be in charge of your “us”; if it’s a cult, the “us” will get smaller and smaller, and the “them” will get bigger and bigger.
A near perfect description of what’s happening in both political parties.
The right is becoming more like this every day it would seem. If you don’t agree with every little jot and tittle of conservative dogma, you are viciously attacked. Sooner or later, the group will start getting smaller and smaller…as more and more people leave the abuse behind.
(Yes,the left is bad about this behavior, but we’re talking about the right.)
Drivel, as usual.
I don’t think so. A lot of Christians are starting to look at today’s culture and wondering if and when it’s time to go back “into the catacombs” because things are getting tough, but it’s not drivel for Warren to exhort us not to do so just yet.
Look at the attack you just leveled against someone who, in general, agrees with conservatives.
Look at similar attacks on my post in other parts of this thread.
You make my point for me
Most of you are mad as hell that you can’t have cuius regio eius religio in America. A state relgion is what the Founders were trying to avoid.
Not to mention that whole bit about ignoring your own god and saviour when it comes to dealing with other human beings.
iow, the West has tried all that before…and it didn’t work out so good. Lots of running, screaming and dying involved with that sort of thing.
Important also to remember that all that leftist cultural preparation was assisted yet again by Republican denial, ignorance and vanity. Every four years it gets worse.
Many Republicans will continue to whine their way to alienation, watching the clock every second. The pious right, above all, isn’t interested in earthly progress; sanctimony is often just a figleaf, finger wagging a substitute for action and achievement. (‘How much time do I need — hey, my pension is indexed-linked, right? Hallelujah! Praise the Lord and pass the platitudes.’)
At root we’re talking about suicidal feedback, a loop that must be broken — the sooner the better. Or it’s all over. Passive-reactive behavior never works.
Bob Costas has the blueprint and the medium.
You just have to be enlightened enough to comprehend.
“Paramount in all this too — particularly for storytelling artists in fiction, theatre, film, and television – is that art must come before ideology. If it’s not pleasing, it’s worthless.”
YES. I’ve been waiting years to hear a conservative voice say this. An audience can smell the petulance of propaganda from a mile away, and turn away. That’s why all the Bush-era anti-war films flopped. that’s why “An American Carol” flopped.
What made James Cameron’s Avatar the highest grossing film of all time wasn’t the enviro-nonsense, it was the sheer visual beauty, coupled with the simple pleasure of an adventure story.
Think about the heroic films of yesteryear– did James Bond or the Man With No Name ever go around preaching about the virtues of financial deregulation and austrian economics? Heck no!
Take Atlas Shrugged for example. Atlas Shrugged may be a strident defense of Capitalism, but it’s also the story of a woman struggling to keep her life together as the empire she inherited falls apart around her. It’s the story of a man who finally learns to fight back against the family that abuses and mistreats him. It’s a landscape painting of a nation, it’s the sun glinting off the steel of Taggart Terminal, it’s the sound of Rearden Steel’s crucibles and furnaces rumbling in the distance, it’s the smell of decay coming from the rotting buildings of Starnesville. It’s the story of noble, steadfast souls who hold out against a world in love with surrender. In other words, it’s a freaking EPIC STORY.
I’ve often heard it said the Progressivism/Leftism is like a replacement religion for the faithless. The problem here, I’m sad to say, is that Movement Conservatism has become a replacement culture for the philistine. For many of the people here, conservative policy positions are the only culture they know. The warning that “politics is downstream of culture” has no meaning to them, because for them there’s no difference between the two.
So here’s my prescription:
1) Go back to the Source. One of the reasons that today’s art is so stale is that it’s so self-referential. pop culture is cannibalizing itself, not looking for inspiration from outside sources. Movies reflect TV reflects movies relfect TV ad nauseam. we can outdo them if we get back to the foundation. Read the classics. Read the Romantics–they perfected the adventure story. learn to appreciate poetry. And look into Mythology– which is the root of all art.
2) Think small. Think Indie. We’re not trying to create the conservative “Law and Order” or the conservative “Avatar”, we’re trying to create the conservative “Dr.Horrible’s Sing Along Blog”
3) Be subversive. Don’t try to spread conservatism by having conservative ideals coming from the mouth of Mr.Perfect-Handsome-Hero. Have those ideals coming from the mouth of the morally ambiguous anti-hero. Less Buck Rogers, more Deadpool. Use the fact that you’re no longer the cultural establishment to your advantage, and don’t think as if you still were. Don’t indignantly call for a return to the old ways. the people you’re trying to reach think the old ways are “racism sexism homophobia blah blah blah you know the drill”
Enjoyed your take SH Jack. I fear the problem is deeper. Ayn Rand is an answer to Mr. Simon’s article but she is attacked by those on this site [Roger Kimball].
And for those who do watch TV they may see Mr. Simon’s Big Fix which was appalling in its lefty views. Has he made up for that movie? But now we have to to listen to him lecture us now or read his book to explain why he was so useless before.
Interesting take, Jack… Part of the problem is that a great deal of the American public has grown suspicious of art itself. And I don’t think that sentiment is confined to conservatives. If you walk into the average middle-class person’s house these days, how much art do you see? Practically none. How many of them have even attended any kind of theatrical performance? Very few, at least not since grade school. How many have ever seen a symphony or a ballet? Almost none. How many have ever been in an art gallery or museum? Not that many.
If you look at a lot of what has passed for “art” over the past half-century, it’s not hard to see why. These days, you walk into an art museum and typically you see a whole bunch of artworks that have little placards on the wall telling you what you are supposed to think about the works. Why is this? Because the works themselves communicate nothing. Some “artist” throws together a few random lumps of clay, fires it, and then puts a $5000 price tag on it. And people think, “if that’s art, you can have it.”
What we conservatives need to focus on is art that is actually, you know, art. That’s not to say that everything has to be traditional; I’m actually a fan of a lot of modernism myself. But it has to be art where the artist actually gave some thought to the artistic and asethetic qualities. Not all works of art are for everybody, but there are way too many works of art that are for nobody; they say nothing and serve no purpose other than to pull in grant money for the artist, and confirm the artists’ membership in the leftist tribe.
That’s where the opening is: a restoration of what used to be called “middlebrow” culture. Once upon a time Hollywood had writers like Faulkner and Steinbeck writing its source material and serving as script consultants, and people like Mahler and Stravinsky scoring its soundtracks. And we aren’t talking art-house movies; these were for mass consumption. There’s no inherent reason why, say, a painter can’t paint works that people would actually want to hang on their walls, and sell them at a reasonable price. We have a number of art photographs and small glassworks and things around our house, bought at art fairs at very reasonable prices, and we aren’t wealthy.
I really can’t argue with people who boycott Hollwood and other art producers whose works they don’t like. Why expose yourself to that aggrevation? But avoiding stuff you don’t like is not enough. You have to support the stuff you do like. And if you don’t know what you like, you need to go out and find it. That’s what conservatives can start doing to turn around the culture: do stuff you like, and support other people who do stuff you like.
danny elfman, carter burwell, john williams.
classically trained, classically quote. just b/c most of the audience misses it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
the sistine chapel wasn’t a slow tour when it was fresh- it was the tv on the wall. now we notice. same thing.
nobody noticed john williams’ compositions are amazing, until he was old. the bachs- they were just house musicians for some churches. they are still there- granted, one’s doing hair-metal and broadway- but still..we are richer than even we know or understand, with culture.
When I lived in Chicago I belonged to the Museum of Contemporary Art mostly for the purpose of being subversive. At openings I’d ask questions such as If I have to read five paragraphs of copy in the program to understand this painting isn’t it fair to say the artist has failed to communicate in her visual medium?
It is sad that a combination of factors helped turn so many of the fine arts into a private club for those with far more attitude than talent. Political agendas, grant money, connections and the self esteem movement has all helped feed the “I am an artist if I call myself an artist” culture -including a new medium for those utterly lacking in any talent other than that of self promotion- performance art. As I watched one talentless child of privilege scream her anger at the world as she made childish splashes on a canvas in a show that had been positively reviewed for its anti-war message it dawned on my how a lack of real empathy frequently accompanies this lack of talent. Goya didn’t have to scream he was anti war because those who saw his works such as The Shootings of May Third felt genuine horror. Today’s so called serious literature often suffers similar problems. When I last tried to read a modern award winning novel I was struck by how the main character was of a type that exists almost nowhere in the real world- the self aware loser. Of course there was an obvious political message. I thought about how Jane Austen didn’t endlessly cavil about the injustices to women from feudalistic inheritance laws. She had the talent to make readers laugh at the inanities that resulted from favoring a distant male cousin over five daughters and she did it with characters we can still recognize today.
Roger:
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we are not going to re-claim the culture until and if we can take back the education of our children.
Everything flows from that.
Go farther back; you have to HAVE children to educate, first.
The new “culture” designates same sex marriage as the preferred personal union; How does that work?
Hey, I’m encouraging the home team here, not the crosstown rivals. So. Marry someone of good morals, young enough to have kids while you still can, and have a bunch of ‘em.
Beat me to it, J.J. I would go even further and say the best thing I’ve done to fight back is raise two good kids, educated both and home and at school far from the stench of progressive input – cost mom and dad a small fortune but the best money we ever invested.
We’ve either got to take back education or create our own. Personally, I believe the latter is a more feasible alternative. Instead of these politically action committees like Karl Rove heads, I believe the monies would be far better spent creating our own entertainment and educational system. Home schooling is simply not an option for most. We’ve got to start making private education affordable for the masses.
My daughters weren’t sheltered but guided to make the right decisions. And they do. Some of it was taught and/or nurtured, but more of it was through example. You can’t be prudish as parent or the world will win. And we’ve got to get our own acts together first and clean up our own backyards.
Lastly, Leftist politics (I agree with cfbleachers about the term “liberal”) will eventually collapse of its own excesses. I believe that will happen quite soon. The answers we better be seeking about are how are we going to hold them at arm’s length when it does? Because I guarantee they are going to come looking for your stuff…
We do have cultural gems that we are not passing on to the young. How do we make sure that today’s teens see and understand movies like Casablanca or Chariots of Fire? Maybe we need some local film festivals for the young that are based on knowing our cultural heritage. The films could serve as themes for discussion groups in churches or youth organizations or in families. Maybe kids could be reached by having granddad talk about his take on a movie when he was the same age as the grandkids.
You have an interesting idea. With copyright laws being what they are, I’m not certain how difficult it would be to legally show good movies (I’d add “Tender Mercies” to your list) to groups of people. However, parents can get the DVDs and show them to their kids (and their friends) at home.
We are not going to change this culture. We are way past the tipping point. When a culture becomes this debased it rapidly progresses, using only modern examples, towards some version of extreme fascism. Given there will be no nation to bomb us into submission as WE once did to Nazi Germany it will be a long and ugly self destruction. The only possible chance for some portion of America to escape this inevitability is secession.
Sarah Palin recognizes this and has made a couple of widely watched forays into TV, with her shows on Alaska. Your point is well taken, Roger. It will be good to see more about how this can be done.
Couldn’t agree more. I seem to recall that back in the early 2000′s I heard on a major conservative talk radio program (Rush or Laura I think) that liberal Hollywood made a conscious and rather collective decision to stop individually speaking out about this or that as their main method and to begin to incorporate their positions and characterizations into their filmmaking. The middle east war movies that came out after that seems to validate this.
As for compelling watchability – agree here too – I love the conservative documentaries that are coming out – but I have to wonder if they hold any attraction for the casual movie goer. Can they not be made into fiction movies that get the ideas across ? Reinforcing conservative values and highlighting liberal tropes and the characters that embody them in an entertaining fashion should not be that hard for the professional conservative-leaning screenwriters and filmmakers, should it?
That is the tough thing — resisting the temptation to make agitprop, because the audience will smell that from a mile away. Documentaries are fine as far as they go, but they mostly preach to the choir. I would say that if you’re a conservative artist, and you take care with the aesthetic qualities of your art, your conservatism will find its expression without needing to be stated explicitly. And that will go over a lot better with the general audience.
“……we are in danger of losing everything else, if we haven’t already.”
Yes, we have already.
Galt’s Gulch is a sailboat. Go now.
A former college kid from the mid-sixties will tell you of the intimidation and aggressiveness of Leftist professors; not all of them were of the Nazi drill instructor mindset, but many of them were wrapped up in the revolution and the mission of turning out a continuous stream Socialist ideologues. It was easier for many of us conservatives to hold our political philosophies close to our chests, rather than doing battle on a daily basis with instructors who seemed capable of foaming at the mouth when challenged.
It is hard to estimate the number of timid conservatives who accepted the tide of Socialism, to avoid the confrontation, for that was the purpose of the meanness and intimidation. To stifle dissent and prescribe a politically correct view of the world was more important than teaching students to be critical thinkers. A critical thinker has the capacity to doubt the wisdom of non-creative thought processes, a clear and present danger to indoctrination of large groups of young fertile minds.
Consequently, the not so “Liberal” arts and fine arts are dominated by the product of this asphyxiation of the creative spirit. This spawn of totalitarian philosophy has taken on the mantle of recreating the same perversion that created their stunted creativity within the various mediums. Yes, they are mundane and boring; but they are the only show in town, if you watch, you will come under their influence. They have no conscience, their mission and its methods are justified by the tenets of the continuing struggle of the revolution.
We have a major deficit in numbers, but not necessarily in creative ability, for minds that are honed under such draconian influence do not necessarily reflect the presumed talent normally required to be in positions of power within the different mediums. They are in some cases the result of having the prescribed talking points and outlook of the stunted Liberal. Thus we are barraged with mediocrity and such fare is accepted as normal or even the avant garde of creativity.
It’s true we need to reverse the trend with concerted effort, but few of us will live long enough to see the results; perhaps, this is our punishment for not standing up to tyranny in academia so long ago.
…this is our punishment for not standing up to tyranny in academia so long ago.
We were frogs in a slowly boiling pot of water.
It took me 20 years to lift myself out of the pot.
Politics may be downstream from culture, but it’s still a stream, a continuum.
Culture and political outcomes were more distinct in the past, but now they seem inseparable, all muddled up, swirling endlessly around the same ugly rocks.
Pockets of high culture still exist, but the Left has conducted a decades’ long assault on “excellence”, including, but not limited to, de-emphasizing excellence and achievement it in our public schools and attempting to make all students equal to all other students.
When mediocrity is exalted, when both politics and culture have been reduced to one inseparable putrid mass, can “aesthetic excellence” have an impact? Has America become a tabloid culture, where marginal elements and behaviors that used to be anathema (or laughed at) are now the mainstream ?
How to redeem that ? Right now, it seems like every time Sisyphus gets his rock to the top of the hill, it rolls back down and he has to start the futile exercise all over again.
Yep. And these facts ought to make any aware person realize that Jesus of Nazareth was not an imbecile, a lunatic or a liar. Nor could any of his apostles or acolytes have invented a religion containing prophecies that are now coming true two thousand years later.
Strangely enough…. or perhaps not strange at all…. just before reading this essay I was reading one by John Ruskin in 1865 where he observes:
“All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great art ever yet rose on Earth, but among a nation of soldiers. There is no art among a shepherd people if it remains at peace. There is no art among an agricultural people if it remains at peace. Commerce is barely consistent with fine art, but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is unable to produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it exist. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle.”
I’m sorry, could someone explain to me what “the culture” is, I seem to have missed the definition somewhere.
I have a suggestion. More conservatives than liberals, I believe, are today homeschooling their youngsters. Back when I did it, I invited several neighborhood kids of the same ages as my three. It took no more time or effort. They were taught our true history, decent values for living, and of course, the 3 “R”s. I enjoyed it, and so did the kids. Maybe it would do a bit of good, and it would be a place to begin. Just to mention …….
The Carnegie Hall joke needs an update. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Well, FIRST you put something up on YouTube…” The means of (Media)) production are still in our hands. Think, make, share. We need a FLOOD of production to swamp the Left. Instead of getting 50 million views on YouTube, we need 50 million VIDEOS. Believe me… the Left’s biggest fear is having to explain their position rather than just ramming it down someone’s throat.
Martin, I think you may be making the youtube suggestion tongue in cheek but it is the best one I have yet heard.
What all the suggestions about art, movies, television, literature are really advocating is getting conservative ideas into discussion in the public square, a place from which they have been all but banished, except when held up to ridicule.
Millions of youtube videos cleverly done could reach millions of younger citizens more efficiently than anything else I can think of. While they wouldn’t convey a lot of in depth knowledge,they could plant seeds that might inspire some to gain deeper knowledge. Videos like these will no doubt be ridiculed by the left but the beauty is that they can ridicule the left back.
The biggest advantage that Obama had in this election was cool. He was cool. Voting for Obama was cool. Putting out information on youtube could help conservatives acquire some cool which is currently virtually non existent in conservatism.
Those over about thirty-five are so hardened that they are probably already lost. But there might be a chance with younger people.
The Democrats promises of something for nothing are sort of like the teacher who gives everybody an A for showing up and the Republicans are like the teacher who actually makes them turn in their homework.
Our job is to make them see that doing the homework is important.
Easier said than done. Six completed novels, two books of essays, three non-fiction. It is of course difficult to “break through” for everyone, but even more challenging when you are up against the strongly liberal mindset in publishing that is evidenced in the Times Book Review and New York Review of Books.
Then there’s the agent trap. If it isn’t bad enough trying to get the attention of an inattentive editor, we have to go through gatekeepers who are, as often as not, lawyers and wouldn’t know literature from, well, the crap they usually peddle.
Oh, that’s right. Stop whining!
As Mrs. Holt recommends, go independent. The legacy publishing houses are becoming obsolete. Hire competent assistance where needed for editing, layout, cover design. Publish your work via Amazon or other electronic means for nearly nothing. Contact bloggers like InstaPundit for reviews and publicity. Eliminate the middlemen and gatekeepers in the publishing industry, elimiate printing and distribution costs and keep what you earn from sales.
It is hard for me to believe that there was some homegrown cell or some NKVD/GRU operative smart enough to set in motion the Gramscian conquest of US academia and media, but whether it was just allowed to happen or happened as the result of a conscious plan, it has happened. That said, the takeover isn’t complete and it isn’t unassailable, at least not in the Red and Purple states. Almost all of education is publicly funded and subject to at least some democratic control. Most of the art world is either publicly funded or funded by philanthropic foundations and corporations.
We control the governorship in 30 of the 50 states and the legislature in a significant number (too lazy to look it up). One immutable law I learned in my time in government is that if you have a bureaucrat by the budget, his heart and mind will follow. If you don’t like the fact that the state U is turning out little communists, call the chancellor in and have him do the carpet dance in the governor or chairman of the finance committee’s office and he will become enlightened. Many states also have gubernatorially appointed boards of regents and state boards of education. In my experience, these appointments are merely afterthoughts to Republican governors and usually go to some friends wife who was once a teacher or to some older rich guy working on his legacy. We need to be as ideological about these appointments as we would be about a cabinet officer. Where these positions are elected, we need to pay them as much attention as we do legislative races.
At the local level, we need to politicize school board races and pay them as much attention as municipal assembly/city council or even state legislative races. In most SDs today, the NEA can elect Lenin’s corpse and often does. It costs a lot of money to run for school board successfully if the National Extortion Association opposes you but if you have money and organization, you can beat them or at least put enough of a non-NEA voice on the Board to stymie their worst excesses and keep the administration somewhat honest. The trouble is that nobody with a true interest in politics wants to be on a school board because it is political suicide; it is extraordinarily unlikely that you will ever be elected to a higher office. This is especially true in a union state.
Much of the “art world” is funded by the “1% for art” programs for “beautification” of publicly funded projects. Many states also have their own programs that dedicate a percentage of the cost of public facilities to art for “beautification” of those facilities. Most people’s mothers would beat them for painting most of that stuff on their walls. It just gives jobs to lefties to administer the program and an income to lefty “artists” that otherwise would be lucky to have a job flipping burgers. If you control the state government, you can cut off the program and you can be careful who you appoint and hire to administer the federal funds for such programs.
Likewise, most “community theater” is funded by a combination of government grants and philanthropy. Obviously, the governor and legislature can stop funding community theaters that insist on turning Joan of Arc into a foul-mouthed lesbian barmaid – as did the theater in my old hometown, Juneau – and can put a lot of pressure on “corporate citizens” that support the nonsense that poses as theater in America. If the rich foundations want to support it, its a free country but a lot of them flirt with losing their tax exemption with their support of political causes if anyone were willing to peek under their skirts. If we ever have another Republican President, having the IRS look at a LOT of non-profits would be a good exercise.
In any event, there are things that can be done at the state and local level in the places we still control. If we don’t do them, we won’t control them much longer because every time Pomp and Circumstances gets played our Country becomes dumber and more brainwashed.
I’m not sure “the culture” is controlled by anyone. It’s one of those monkey things: monkey see, monkey do. We can’t “take back” the culture because it never belonged to us. We – and the leftists – have always belonged to it.
Discuss…
You are exactly right.
This is why I thought vouchers for schools were so important. Mass public education creates mass culture because the ultimate interest is balancing the different student backgrounds into something manageable to the state. The individual student’s identity becomes somewhat bleached out and homogenized. Mass culture fills the void in creating identity (ie. I listen to hip-hop not rock. I watch X-Men, not Spiderman.) True people’s tastes change with age but the idea of looking to mass culture (and what is more geared to controlling the masses than the Left) to find answers generally stays. If it seems dominant and applauded by the popular kids it must be right. If schools were built around individual student and parent satisfaction there would be enough diversity that mass culture breaks down. Greater individualism and therefore more conservatives.
Put it this way: I’m not sure “the culture” can be controlled any more than “the market” can be controlled.
We’d all like a market in which everybody makes lots of money and there are no bubbles, recessions, depressions, or unemployment. There’s no such thing. You can fiddle with it a bit, but ultimately it does what it wants to do.
Same with the culture. We’d like our culture always to reflect our best values, to be all virtue and no vice, something that encourages citizens to be healthy and good people. Again, there’s no such thing.
We can’t reform the existing mainstream left/humanist culture because we don’t control it. However, we can create and nurture new cultures – subcultures and countercultures. Groups of people do it all the time. And while there’s no guarantee, it sometimes happens that sub- and countercultures become mainstream.
So, is it possible to have a conservative subculture that can survive long enough and be appealing enough to replace the current left/humanist mainstream?
I got what you are saying but I think there are 2 ways to look at it. Is not using mass media to move the populace towards a set of values not Leftist in of itself? You are presupposing the masses, a cadre of the informing and ultimately a vote for a set of political elites. Are you not asking for a cult of personality of some kind? Shouldn’t we as conservatives (and therefore individualists) be looking to break the power of mass media? Shouldn’t we be asking the question how do we make individuals and not how we make herds?
Makes sense. I was thinking of a counterculture that values individualism, etc. In fact, we already have one – it’s called Conservatism. Trouble is, Conservatism seems to be like the “narrow gate” described in Matthew 7:13. Mainstream is the “wide gate” that leads to destruction. The majority will always choose the latter.
What a waste of time and effort. You (conservatives) ARE part of the culture. If you want to have a more relevant or cool place in the culture you need to be more relevant and cool.
We don’t want to be “relevant and cool” as lefty idiots like you would define those terms.
If being relevant and cool equates to sending the entire species back to the dark ages, you can keep it! Just call me uncool and irrelvant, thankyouverymuch!
“If you want to have a more relevant or cool place in the culture you need to be more
relevantdecadent andcoolcorrupt.”There. FTFY.
Fonzie was supposed to be Cool & Relevent. But he lived above the garage of the Uncool father with a job that allowed him to have a house with a garage that the Cool & Relevent Fonzie could live in.
Just FYI, the Fonz was an auto mechanic who rented a room from the Cunninghams. He eventually got his high school diploma and ended up as an auto repair teaching. However, he did eventually jump the shark…
One thing my Dad – who grew up in the 50s – used to mention about that show was that “greasers” were seldom actually “cool” people. They were definitely rebels, but more like the low-lifes in John Waters’ “Cry Baby” than the relatively normal Fonzie. For some reason, Hollywood romanticized them as anti-establishment heroes.
There is a famous marble statue (a marble Roman copy of a bronze Greek original) called The Dying Gaul. It depicts, with great sympathy and naturalism, a dying Celt.
It was commissioned by Attalus of Pergamon to celebrate his victory over the Galatians in Anatolia.
It really is interesting how Establishment types like to celebrate Anti-Establishment types, after they have neutered them.
But in Joe Orton’s plays and in Occupy Wall Street we see what happens when the Establishment has not made certain the Anti-Establishment people have been neutered.
Remember, Kasich won it in Ohio too, for awhile. If you think WI was Hell on Earth, wait til you see MI. This is a truly existential battle. The auto industry was a very hard nut for organized labor to crack; listen to old Woody Guthrie “walkin’ blues” songs about the ’41 sit down at Ford. Most of the early challenges to the National Labor Relations Act were from GM, beleive it or not. Organized labor and the rest of the left will not go gently into this good night.
Since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Amendments in ’48 that established the “right-to-work” states, to the best of my recollection, NO union state has ever gone RTW. There’ve been a few waiverers, e.g., Montana, Colorado, Missouri, that have been back and forth, but no “union state” as that came to be defined in the late ’40s, early ’50s, has EVER gone back. The real victory here will be if the people who passed this legislation are still in power after the next general election. If the Republicans are serious, they will Nationalize this and not leave MI on its own as they did in CA when Swartznegger challenged the unions and found himself without a friend in the World.
Lord, I haven’t a clue how this reply to a post on the Michigan RTW law got here! Between “posting too fast” and the time it takes to load things, something is either bad wrong with my computer or with PJM’s site.
Were I in a position to decide whether or not to pay the full bill of keeping someone as “cool and relevent” as you with roof over head, food on table, and clothes on your back, and you came at me with that attitude, I would let you starve naked in the cold.
And yes, it is coming to that, for how else can you explain this growing urge to tax the rich. The people who work for themselves and not for the government are the only ones left with the money to pay your bills.
So adjust the attitude, jerk!
thanks, Eddie – you won me over! I’ll be sure to tell all my friends.
Who in their right mind would want to win a pile of puke like you and putrid turds like your friends over to anything?
If you want to take back the culture take back the education system from the Left. The Left dominates the education system and has been using it as an idocrtination tool for two generations now. It is no surprise that the under-30 group is pretty okay with Socialism. Of course, they have never experienced much of it.
How the States Got Their Shapes, Planet Earth, Blue Planet, The Universe, Modern Marvels, The Men Who Built Americ, Ancient Civilizations -programs that were/are worth watching and educational. On a ligher note, I like to occasionally watch some funny stuff like Ancient Aliens (I love the guy with the big hair.
There are little shows I like as well such as In Wine Country and – since I sort of get to shop without spending money – What Not to Wear.
Some acquaintances of mine created an entertainment web channel that is strictly G- rated with many of their self-produced short movies and series that is quite good. In case anyone is curious it’s Channelblu.com
There are still some good things on TV and on the internet.
I’m trying to do my part by writing the best novels I know how and publishing them as ebooks. I try to promote and preserve conservative values and a market-oriented outlook. My areas are science fiction and family/historical fiction. If you’re interested, see the titles at http://www.thomastthomas.com/SFBooks.htm and http://www.thomastthomas.com/Works.htm.
Not only must you stop revenue flows to Leftwing media.
We need to build a Media Conglomerate, acquire movie studios and network and cable properties…as well as create new cable channels and movie studios, online news sources, etc.
Bill Whittle’s suggestion of Parallel Structures/Institutions.
Even if you dont have the talent, you can fund likeminded individuals that do, like Roger Simon and Klavan and Evan Sayet, who do. Certainly this is possible in the age of the internet to bootstrap launch this project.
One group that is doing something about it, is a church down in Georgia whose production quality is getting better and better…..Facing the Giants, Faith Like Potatoes, Fireproof, Courageous…..Sherwood Pictures.
We need more of this. We need to cultivate talent, by doing. We need to give conservatives with artistic asperations a pathway to success, so that they may pursue where their talent takes them, without having to censor themselves in the current structures.
Likewise, we need Conservative scholarships, internships, with a focus on entering the institutions and taking them back, especially the education system. School Choice will allow and end around in that regard. The Republican Governors and State Legislatures should be going all out on School Choice and Privatization.
Yes, support the local artist that are doing what is right. My family is attending a local production this weekend of “The Christmas Story.” It is well run and was able to get the tickets sent to my smartphone. This stuff cost money, so turn off the TV and go out more and support these endevours.
You can see an example of what is happening in my neck of the woods at http://www.skittheatre.com. Here is their “who we are”:
“SKIT Mission
Our Start
S.K.I.T. Theatre grew out of Dayspring Community Theatre’s desire to be a part of its surrounding community. Dayspring has many attenders who love to express their faith through the arts. Many theatrical productions have graced its stage both as an expression of love for Jesus Christ and as an invitation for the community to participate.”
I’m hoping my oldest, who shows artistic leanings, will start taking their classes and someday will have a conservative impact on his generation.
I am reminded of a relative who, unhappy with the group of kids in his child’s class at public school, decided to home school so his child would only meet children like herself. There are plenty of good things on television, even on cable. To just eliminate it is ridiculous. Try looking at some of the other channels. You might be surprised at what you can see. Just because the program is on PBS doesn’t mean it is biased. I watched an excellent program about telescopes on NOVA last night. As far as resorting to reading…..plenty of trash is and always has been published. Be more selective about movies. Don’t just go.
One of the problems with “conservatives” is that they complain a lot and want everyone to be like themselves. What a dull world if this could happpen.
As a conservative artist ( wontondon@hotmail.com )I’m also the executive director of a music and art foundation. What I find most frustrating is I want to give money to conservative projects but it’s hard to find any.
Hook up with Bill Whittle and Declaration Entertainment
Sherwood Films
Well, the culture, overall, is changing. It’s likely, though, that it’s changing at the less-calcified distribution points.
On kids animation- Phineas and Ferb. They are unfailingly polite, as well as creative. Doofenschmirtz, the evil villain, is shown as self-centered and weak. The kids end up saying “thank you” and ” i love you” to their parents when they deal with them. It’s on purpose.
On cable TV, the USA channel is positive, loving and american, by design. Our family watches Psych together, each show, at least twice. The fathers in the show are competent, tough, and raise their sons well. The one show about a divorce is paired with a section about a serial killer, showing that they are like each other. It’s funny! It’s smart! it has guest stars! Ones that are amazing!
There are two women’s magazines in the funding/planning stages that are fluffier and serious and not-liberal: Verily, which Instapundit linked to, and Darling, which is in kickstarter funding. Verily is the far more polished offering, while Darling has the Bonnie Fuller relationship to the English language type ( English Language seeks restraining order against abusive, enthusiastic lover)
Art: check out your Yellow Pages: churches have galleries, and have artists in the membership. They aren’t afraid to do scary, modern, serious work. and junk, but still……emerging church congregations have more than others, it seems.
Rebecca Shelley in middle-school books.
Twilight, and every book Steph Meyer gets excited about. Shannon Hale, Jane Austen, even the Hunger Games, are blurbed by SM.
Ann Perry books are in serious re-issue, right now.
kindle independently published books, nook independently published books. They sound very, very, very different than formally published books.
obviously, prices and quality vary, but there are genres in e-books that don’t exist in print publications.
The covers look different, too. The more successful ones:: there is someone looking full-face at the audience. For some reason, on hardbounds- nobody is looking full-screen at the viewer- it’s body parts, darkness, contortions.
Also, blue eyes. Notice how you don’t see them on hardbound books or magazines anymore? You don’t notice, until you see e-books. Full-on blue eyes on covers. Its’ startling.
Sheesh! You think I’ve been sitt’n on my tush. People don’t want to listen, or get informed. I’ll keep doing what I can, when I can but, I think the sh__s just gonna have to hit the fan before people wake up. Maybe that’s just the way it has to be.
“Politics is downstream from culture.”
Thats equivelent to the chicken and egg theory debate. Social order and political debates of modern times all to often exclude the complexities of human nature and human freedoms. What we end up with as in current times, is a society of hypocrisy pointing fingers at and condemning each other. All seeking to use government to settle (control) all social deficiencies according to the dicates of individual or group beliefs and or desires. Thats an impossibile task to be sought in a constitutionally protected open and free society.
The arts including “Hollywood” are not responsible for any perceived social order deficiencies anymore than Jimmy Smith in Wilcox NE. To all is granted the freedom of expression within ‘minimal’ governmet controlled restraint(s).
I haven’t been inside a movie theater since “A Star Was Born” (?) way back in the 70s. I personally don’t care about what I call crap coming from Hollywood and its types so I don’t partake of their works. Pretty simple for some of us but rather difficult for those who reside in the world of hypocrisy.
One of my grandaughters did a 2 year research project on pornography a short few years ago. The marketers were completely open to her research and using only zip codes, it was found that virtually no zip codes in American was absent from their orders data. I suspect that with the internet it increases significantly right along with pornography hypocrisy. It is not a “niche” market people!
You either want to live in a nation founded upon the principles of an open and free society protected by a constitution – OR – in a closed society dictated by a government.
Here’s my part: I wrote a science fiction novel last Spring. A part of the short prelude as a description of a world gone wrong 350 years in the future goes to the ultimate destructiveness of race-based political correctness if left unchecked.
“Success had been rearranged to represent immorality, luck and exploitation. Failure took on a bright sheen of morality and nobility. To have riches was to have the Devil himself in you, to be a have-not connoted the angels. Appropriate and increasingly bizarre theories arranged around excuses and blame were distributed appropriately. The have-not’s didn’t therefore wait for the coming of a Messiah, but for themselves, and their imagined bright, but false, heterogeneity; their own arrival was itself a promised land. Reality, however, had its own notions – the promise never realized itself, no matter how hard it was wished for, no matter how much treasure was thrown at it, or how much notions of success were altered to include as many people as possible, no matter how many laws were written. Success is a real thing and not entirely an abstract concept when it comes to order and law and bright creativity – it is not a wish but an event.
The North forgot that water was wet, sand dry, and fire burns. These fundamentals of reality were marginalized or even ignored at will, and so reality became uncertain, civilizations tottered. Will itself came to be considered boorish and gauche, incorrect, and even arrogant, if from the wrong source. From the “right” source, will was imposed from without by way of mass migrations, and anointed as being a correct resolve, for correct reasons.
The West became effete and meekly succumbed, even invited its own destruction. The North became a a suicide pact – throats were bared. A sharp tingle and then – nothing.”
None of that is part of the story itself other than a technologically static world but it is a grim warning. It’s a different type of conquest than Cortes was part of, one in which the armies simply get on a plane and move – one by one, family by family.
I just want to salute Roger Simon on his new project, in the vein of doing something. I will support any production, even if Im not that interested in it (not saying Im not interested in Roger’s new screenplay), that promotes conservative values and principles.
Conversely, even if you dont drop totally out of the Leftwing MSM productions, their are a myriad of ways to reduce the revenue stream to the Leftwing MSM out of your pocket, even short of piracy, if you cant bring yourself to cross that bridge.
Thanks for the opportunity to promote what I’m working on. “Extraction” at http://www.historpictures.com. We can turn almost any movie-length script into a digitally animated movie for around $50,000. It’s a good way to test a story in front of a real audience. Looking for partners. Hint Hint.
Nice. Have you looked into Kickstarter for funding?
Now that was interesting. Nice work.
“. . art must come before ideology. If it’s not pleasing, it’s worthless.”
Spot on. Barry Humphries, aka Dame Edna, once summed it up beautifully:
‘Social relevance’ is a modish and peculiarly horrible little disease . . . invented by humourless puritans who are baffled by the magical uselessness of art.”
“The magical uselessness of art”. What a lovely phrase.
How about starting a bookshelf here at PJM, Roger, of books that would fall into this category of “culture changing”? Ebooks. Fiction. Nonfiction. Positive. American, traditional values. Support writers. You can even make an arrangement with Amazon and get a little cut of the action.
Simon is correct. Too many times, people complain about a societal problem, and then they don’t do anything to fix it.
I’ve been the leader of the AWANA program at my church for ten years (AWANA is a Christian club for kids). We have adults at our church constantly talking about how bad the culture is, or how the youth of today are lost. Then, when I ask those same adults to help out with AWANA, they find all sorts of excuses to opt out. Sitting back and complaining doesn’t get things done, folks. Our kids need positive, faith-based programs like AWANA as an alternative to the pollution in our culture. Programs like AWANA are not possible without adult leaders. An AWANA program in a nearby town shut down last year because there weren’t enough adults willing to help out. That is pitiful.
I have talked with AWANA leaders at other churches, and it’s always the same thing. Getting kids to show up is not the problem. Month after month, year after year, the biggest challenge is finding and keeping adult leaders who are willing to put their words into action.
This new right wing lifting up from the ashes of the defeat of Mitt Romney I hope will not act like their body taken over in invasion of body snatcher style where they have finger pointing at the other evil so it would be good news to look at this Jacques Derrida fella once again unless ye are virgins:” Deconstruction is parasitic in that rather than espousing yet another grand narrative, or theory about the nature of the world in which we partake, it restricts itself to distorting already existing narratives, and to revealing the dualistic hierarchies they conceal…”
In the meantime I go late tonight to prepare my log cabin I build with my own two hands to burn away the demons in my wood stove fire to burn the stink from right wing and left wing with my mind and heart on the stone, the living water the absolute and the eternal as I see my army of angels long suffering willing to endure human stink before the great mountain burning with flaming fire hits the earth
Actually, that is very right wing of you. Right wing really just means the preservation of human normalcy.
Progressives/Liberals….
In truth, they’re really Reactionaries, striving to protect the carve-outs they’ve amassed over the last century.
Catholic publisher Ignatius Press is now in the movie distribution business. While DVDs have long been in their catalog in recent months Ignatius Press has worked with Catholic groups and local theaters to show on the big screen Restless Heart, a movie version of a 2010 Italian TV dramatization of the life of St. Augustine. So far it has been shown or is due to be shown in 122 locations. Some of these showings have sold out. A packed theater on a usually slow week night sends a message that there is an audience fo something other than the inane product featured of late.
This is fine, and definitely an avenue.
But what about the broader culture’s mass media? St. Augustine doesn’t do well in prime time does he? Now, what if St. Augustine’s message showed up in small and subtle ways on popular TV shows without attribution? THAT is more powerful than insular religious sub-markets.
I know these films. A few are a bit tendentious, even for believers. A few are excellent. Try the St. Anthony and St. Rita films for starters. Of Gods and Men, Into Great Silence, For Greater Glory are all excellent. It is tough to overcome the general prejudice against all things religious these days, but it has to be done.
Yes Bozo, the subliminal messaging is the key. Emotional attachment to a moral position, whithout having to understand where it came from. Sentimentality reinforcing reasoned moral positions that you wish to promote. This is the key for the low information voter, your average American fool.
There is also the bait and switch, make it look like standard Leftwing reinforcement, and then pull the rug out from under them. This is often used by Leftwingers on Conservatives and their principles and values.
I’ll be honest; I skipped it because I made the 10 second assessment that since St Augustine completely lacked melanin, it would probably be as lame as most other modern Christian movies.
Parents, get the great books and read them, slowly, and aloud, to your kids. The Iliad, the Odyssey, at least the first 4 books of the Aeneid. Caesar’s Invasion of Gaul. Tale of Two Cities. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Excerpts from Modern TImes. Pascal’s Pensees. Don’t leave out the Bible (avoid semi-literate “modern” translations, stick to ESV, for example). Even if you are not particularly religious, the Bible is packed with great brain food. Paradise Lost. Moby Dick. Huckleberry Finn. Johnson’s Tale of Rasselas. St Exupery’s Little Prince, and for the older ones, Flight to Arras.Try games like acting out small scenes from Shakespeare after reading and discussing how to portray the characters. Do the same with some plays by Aeschylus or Euripides. Start a club and get the other kids to join. Heck, get the other adults to join. Your kids will learn a lot. So will you. And everyone’s language skills will skyrocket. You will all be able to join the culture war we need to start waging.
Roger, I don’t know if you know Bruce Boxleitner but he’s producing a new TV show called Lantern City. This is a steampunk world. Steampunk ethos includes a rejection of modern throwaway plastic culture and embraces the 1800′s wide eyed love of sciences and exploration. This is the new paradigm that is where it’s at and if you want to be relevant, this is your chance. I spoke to Bruce and a couple of his colloborators this weekend and they’re pretty serious. Another project to look for in the same genre is ABC who is creating Finn and Sawyer in 1880′s steampunk New Orleans. Classics with a twist, baby. I haven’t spoke to anyone who’s involved but you’re probably more on the inside than I am. The trick to what you’re talking about requires relevance and the resulting reach. Without it, all your efforts are for naught.
Well said, if obvious. How do we think the progressives got where they are today? That’s right by infiltrating the culture. It is time to take it back.
That said, may I recommend:
http://www.bigdawgmusicmafia.com/
And your own Mr. Whittle’s effort:
https://www.declarationentertainment.com/
Wheras, in politics, I deplore the idea of parties because of the “team spirit” they create, in this, I wholeheartedly say “Go Team Conservative!”
Storm clouds gathering The “social contract” is invalid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=710mBRfphI8
Id love to see Klavan and Driscoll with a PBS show, discussing cultural productions. Driscoll and Klavan?
How about Ron Radosh and David Horowitz with a weekly show discussing radical Leftist infiltration of the institutions?
Victor Davis Hanson, Spengler, and.or Theodore Dalrymple with a weekly show ala Bill Moyers?
For writing: go read Dean Wesley Smith’s blog & Kristine Katherine Rusch.
For films: do you have a script? Do you have market numbers? Can you go direct to video? Redbox makes bank at every place that has children and parents.
Univision film studios cost Mexican prices- cheap. cheap. cheap. Especially at night- keep your day job, drink coffee, shoot all night.
There’s a film studio in Austin, Texas. Cheap. The guy built on Spanish direct to video films, and films for families.
How cheap can you go? With a good script? Make friends with fabric store clerks- they’ve got creative, dirt-poor friends.
If you can’t film, can you find an illustrator? for a comic-book? Scrivener is $40. It formats for comic books, novels, screenplays.
It’s not one big pay-off, it’s a lot of little ones, until the one big pay-off. The script might need to be a book, a comic book,a cheap ebook, a website, before it flies.
Thank you for the warning, Mr. Simon. I envision a spot-light type of device where our attention is directed at all times. It directs our attention toward whatever it ‘feels’ is utmost in importance. I don’t know who’s pointing this thing, but I’m convinced they are trying their best to ‘reveal’ America.
In the Fall, it may point to the homeless while we prepare Thanksgiving. In December, it points toward malls where consumers busily prepare to put presents under a tree. (A tree and occasion that must be questioned as to their appropriateness, given our commitment to non-harmful images where all must be protected from the bigotry of a select few.)
Yes, a giant microscope that can focus on any facet of America that may need “attention” at a particular time, but is unable to back-out and look at anything larger- like a campaign built on lies and socialist idealism that flies in the face of American freedom, simply because some socialist/atheist somewhere might be ‘offended’. The most recent victim being Bob Costas, finding himself caught in the “beam-of-America” during a football game espousing anti-second amendment smurfisms that left half of his audience blue-in-the-face.
You must know that if I could get my hands on the Beam of America I could affect changes in our culture with no limit. Rather than ganstas, I could get young black males swarming to take classes in River Dance. Young women demanding a ring and marriage before sex. I could fix or tear down America with access to such a device. So could anybody. And so they are; mornings with Matt Lauer, evenings with Brian Williams.
I’m surprised at the hostility directed at TV and the people who’ve eliminated it from their lives. I would be lost without cable and my DVR. No one has mentioned TCM and the treasure trove of films to be found there, films that can teach us all – including children – the values that used to be mainstream in America. I subscribe to a movie package of channels that, if one takes some time to search, always rewards me with wonderful films to record and enjoy. True, most of them are foriegn or indie, but they lift my spirits and give me faith that all is not lost. The latest magnificent movie is a gem called Dean Spanley in which Peter O’Toole’s performance takes one’s breath away. I’ve stopped watching Foxnews and instead keep the TV on the ID true crime channel for background noise. I find murder and its consequences more interesting than the endless mock left/right battles on Fox.
Let’s just make certain that we understand that The Culture is diverse and decentralized.
TBS is running a show that I personally see as clone of CHEERS but has gotten renewed because TBS needs a much smaller audience than the network that ran CHEERS to cover the costs.
Tyler Perry makes films out of a suburb of Atlanta and cares more about a core audience that he has attracted than any critic.
Fred Rogers (yes, that Mr. Rogers) built a studio outside of Pittsburgh that still produces shows for PBS today.
Movies can be shot cheaper, and distributed in an almost viral fashion, to the point that the Big Studios pay more attention to Independent Film Makers for new ideas than they do to their in-house staff.
How many hard cover books do you see these days? How many of them were for Book of the Month Clubs (you know the kind: buy 1 at full price and get the rest cheaply)? How many of these hard cover books fall apart as quickly as the paperbacks? Publishing houses print cheaper books, so they can issue reprints more quickly as needed.
Talking about The Culture is like talking about The Hispanic Vote. The NEW YORK TIMES is now as much an authority as USA TODAY. It is like having a Bachelors degree, a heavily discounted Badge of Sophistication.
It is the central tragedy of the African American that there is still a Black Vote. It makes them Useful Idiots serving Cynical Masters. And yes, I did use terms that summon up the Racist Spirit of the Progressives.
Obama reached out to the visceral and vicious Meanness, Greed & Envy of people like Lonnie Wild and his Putrescent Friends … and Obama came up with fewer votes than he did in 2008. Hope & Change does sound better than Hate the Rich.
Romney did not know how to counter that Hate the Rich message. He is like a lot of genuinely good and patriotic people in the world … not able to, as Bill Whittle put it, even adequately explain why he loves the wife and children he so clearly loves.
Were The Culture as Monolithic as that term suggests, were the American people as lost to Greed & Envy has been suggested, Obama would have won by a landslide, not a squeaker.
It is up to the next Conservative (given what Boehner is up to these days, I don’t give a damn if that Conservative is a Republican, but suspect they will nonetheless be one) to effectively offer a strong and positive message that appeals to enough of the American people so that all this talk of The Culture can be put to the side as meaningless.
What a fascinating, if not tragic discussion by the best commentors anywhere on the Internet. The frustration is stark. I raised my family without TV and have always been very happy with that decision. My kids are all happy, healthy conservatives, with none of the toxic effects of the corrosiv, dumbing-down of post-modern Leftist culture. We did start boycotting movies, but haven’t quite cloistered ourselves from culture – we watch a movie every night. I’ll leave the how to your imagination.
But what is admirable but quixotic about Roger’s thoughts and many on this thread, is the lack of understanding about where fundamental cultural change has always originated from – it is spiritual, folks. I explained this last week to a young 20-something conservative refugee (from CA. of all places) here in Mexico as we waited in line for our resident visas. He wondered, like every thinking normal American after the unmitigated disaster of this last election, how to “attract’ younger people back to the Republican Party and conservatism, and I told him of what happened in the 70′s.
The 60′s and 70′s were very similar to our present path to darkness and self-annihilation. Yet we survived. We had the Reagan revolution. How? Does anybody remember the Jesus Movement? Read up on it. It was the subversive grass roots conversion of millions of young, post-modern, relativist, Leftwing-indoctrinated drones of pop culture into fervent, traditional-values, patriotic conservatives. It was a spiritual revival. There were millions of these conversions– I was one. Even Bob Dylan converted. Does anyone remember? Does anyone remember how communism was defeated, not just in the west, but in the east? It was the renewal movement in the churches. Read your history.
I am telling all of you, that a deep hunger for God and for Him to move and change us – a true spiritual revival – is our ONLY hope to turn us around from the death swamp we are in and getting deeper into. It has happened before. it will happen again.
BMoon, I remember the Jesus Movement! Had a profound impact on my life as a young teenage girl! I think with e-publishing and kickstarter the future is bright for the good and truthful messages to get out there, by artists with timeless and virtuous values to communicate! I recently introduced my 7 yr.old granddaughter to The Wizard of Oz movie. Our government, their regulations and taxes, along with a complicit media and academy, coupled with the recent presidential election, make it seem their power is all pervasive, like it’s this arduous journey to find our freedoms again. That’s what the leftists/liberals want us to think! That we need them to survive is a lie! I say let’s all be “Toto” within whatever sphere of influence we’ve been blessed with, and pull back the curtain to reveal the “Truth”! And if you want to put a smile on your face, go to youtube and view MercyMe and their covertune grabbag videos! While your there view Lacrae’s videos to see someone who is making a difference, along with http://www.Manup116.com to see what he is doing to reach the urban men off our cities. These artists are not waiting on someone to make it easy for them!
Mr. Simon’s column was about reclaiming the culture, but many of the responses are about people who simply reject it.
So we will end up with a sub-sub-culture of very nice, well-read people without televisions. And the mass culture that drives liberalism, which affects everyone, keeps chugging along. So stop congratulating yourselves on withdrawing from junk culture; like he says, it needs to be reclaimed, not rejected.
There has always been a rejectionist strain in fundamentalist, religious, southern culture. You can be snide about it, or you can be aware that the consumers of a culture imported from the North and West Coast simply did not want to eat the lotuses and briars shipped their way.
Second, that culture was not particularly literate or entrepeneurial. This, right now, is a group of people teaching each other how to do this sort of thing. It’s not easy to imagine a new world. It was an aristocratic world at the top end, and a rather wild scots-irish world at the bottom, co-mingling with african and indian neighbors. It’s the voice of the “villain” ( the villein had the same accent, in England- poor, illiterate, desperate, hard-headed, wild) It is incredibly, incredibly, incredibly hard to imagine this as a good place of heroes.
Rejection was, and can be, a creative choice. I was raised without a television, and honestly, mostly without books. I could read a King James, my grandmothers’ old women’s magazines, a curated selection of kids books, and a picture book about the prophets in the Bible. This is about what most 18th century writers had to work with. The guy who wrote Sounder had a Bible, only. He built a career out of hardwood prose.
The culture finally had some money, and some literacy, and some shoes, and some health—have you seen country music stars lately? Gorgeous, gorgeous women. Have you seen high-end Vacation Bible Schools? Songs, videos, music videos, dance routines- just for the kids. There’s money, right there, laying on the ground, for the person who can find a way to work that in to their work.
J Grisham had clever, well-educated southerners running circles around d*** yankees in his first book. He got rich, b/c nobody had seen that before. The books after that, not so much. The southerners got stupid and mean. They aren’t as popular. There’s a hunger for a hero with a twang.
The people here are trying to figure out, among other things, regionalism in film distribution. Lacrosse films show in the Northeast. There’s a whole circuit, at least 20 years ago, there was a whole circuit of black movie theatres showing cheap, black-produced-starred, scored films. I think it migrated to cable tv. But, outside of black-majority southern towns, you wouldn’t know about it. You might not even know if you lived there.
I want to say Asian chop-socky films have a near under-ground circuit, too. At least one director taught himself by being the program-guy for a theater showing these films.
Producers used to drive around with cannisters of films, and promo- posters, and canned radio lines, going from town to town, building buzz, showing the film here and there. Darius Rucker just did that to build a radio career. Taylor Swift. They’re in music, but it’s the same routine. We’ve done it. We could do it again. Creed did it, Smashing Pumpkins. They toured for 10-15 years to become an overnight sensation.
Nigerian films,- google the Economist- on how they built an African industry for Africans. VHS and DVD, carried around by smugglers in suitcases, sold at souks.
Blood Simple- they shot a movie promo, and then showed the promo to investors. Digital cameras are cheap. Movie editing software is cheap.
Public access cable studios are free. They need content, too.
A movie might actually be a video game, or a book, or a magazine story, or a reddit story, or a comic-book, or a youtube video at first.
The fastest way to get a star is to find a talented actor, and then work them like you’re a studio, and they’re the face. Six movies seems to be the break-out number. Ron Howard started in directing by working for R Corman- for cheap. Production values don’t have to be big-budget. They have to be adequate to the story. The story……..is……the….key.
My daughter’s favorite movie is some weird youtube littlest pet shop first day of school thing. It beats Cinderella, and Disney both, b/c it’s right where she wants to be. That’s how low production values can go.
If you have a great story in a budget production- you can be bought. Out-sourcing talent, to see if if proves itself out, is a very efficient way to sort for talent. Twilight- a documentary filmmaker did the first film. The scriptwriter was on vacation for the summer. They delivered box office, and then made money. The actors wore their own clothes.
What you miss, what this article misses, is human personal interaction. We didn’t “reject” culture, we just found better things to do than watch TV. So I took a dozen teenage girls whale watching, zip-lining down a mountain, skiing, to a soup kitchen to serve dinner, visiting the National Shrine, off to lead a camp with 100 girls from the wrong side of the tracks, shopping for 25 Thanksgiving baskets for barely-not-homeless families. Guess which one they all still talk about? (frozen turkeys are heavy!)
You’re all talking about how to have a vague influence on thousands of other people’s children but completely miss that it all starts at home. How many people did you raise with your own time to become good men and women, who go on to influence their peers? How much time did you spend on their friends, volunteering to be with them either formally or informally? It takes some humility to realize that no matter what cool stuff you did/do/will do, your primary job is to be a good parent to your kids. And if you didn’t bother to have any, or maybe just one or two because it wasn’t fun and they cramped your style, what right do you have to complain that kids these days aren’t what YOU’D like them to be? (I carefully wrote an if/then statement; if you aren’t addressed in the if/then statement, you aren’t being addressed in the if/then statement)
Forget about the “fiscal cliff”.
We’ve already been over the cultural cliff and now live in the brave new world of “progressives”.
Obama and his buddies have no idea what’s really wrong or where the money comes from. They think it’s all about them.
For more on this theme see “The Fatal Flaw” at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
I seriously doubt if there is anybody left alive who can remember a culture that was free and housed free thinkers. We the world are in bondage and we the world have been for many generations. What passes for culture today is designed to keep the masses quiet and unthinking and fits in nicely with all the drugs that are also used hand in hand with cultures outlets.
Doesn’t matter. The die is cast. Fiscal catastrophe is nigh upon us, and there is no longer time to “Change the Culture.”
Defending the World, Bankrupting Ourselves After decades of American protection, our friends can form their own alliances to confront any adversary. Steve Chapman | December 6, 2012
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/06/defending-the-world-bankrupting-ourselve
Duck Dynasty on A & E is worth a mention. It’s a show full of bearded, camouflaged rednecks. By the end of the first 30 minute episode I decided I like these people. Real culture, beneath a veneer you might tune into for an easy laugh at their expense. Makes you wish there were more men out there like them, honestly.
Someone higher up on these postings wrote this, “If it takes setting up a whole parallel culture … well, that’s what we have to do.” Well, it sounds like all of us have and are doing just that in one form or another.
I guess what I am trying to express is that dumping the TV is the first step, leaving the house is the second step, and getting involved in your community in any form is the third step.
I work in community theater and it might as well be 1958, even here in the Bay Area, and there are just as many conservatives as liberals. Even the kids are well behaved and decent.
Do something with people other than your family or your own circle. We change the culture at the local level by being examples. I have converted a few libs by being vocal and factual. They are notorious for being glib and are always seeking attention by trying to be witty and ironic. I look ‘em in the eye and say very clearly, “A witty comment never proved anything,” and then I get back to making my point. Shuts then down every time.
Acts 10:14
“”Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
Read the rest of the story what the angel say to Saint Peter and this angel had the long memory of Peter’s life and all his sins before become a SAINT in God’s eyes.
So you think not having tV in your home may you holy? This depends on why we reject the Tv. But Christian was called to die like Jesus die so he can be raised from the dead like Jesus was but before you give your flesh life to the sting of death God may need to burn your soul with a consuming fire then you be ready to offer up your flesh body for death in the risk to convert the pagan to Jesus Christ.
Therefore , why not consider the TV a tool to do this conversion not that God will call you to call fire down from heaven to destroy the evil human or bring big BIG BIG Hurricane Sandy to torment the evil or cause cause big BIG BIG drought to lick up all the water in your nation to convert the evil sinner to God. nO! Leave that mission for the great angels to do
What you can do is pray on how God so LOVED the world he sent…. and make the TV Holy as the eye that see everything and expose the secret sins in your heart so that every woman image you see on TV becomes your Mama your sister or your daughter then you as man and head of your family have prayers that are far more powerfully and you can translate the images on TV to flesh conversions when you yourself have seen the EYE of God and respond to the world as a Father who see his daughter and be glad your daughter is not your wife . What blessing God has saved you from marrying your ‘daughter in the spirit
All self righteousness needs to be exposed and nipped in the bud figure of speech before you can be used as a tool from God to save the world God loves but perhaps you do not want this mission from God and refuse to have TV in your house
You have this freedom to stay away from the eye of God but remember God and all the army of heaven know about your secret sins and your impure thoughts that makes you an unrepentant sinner just like your the trinty of your mama your sister amd your daughter in this world God loves
Couldn’t agree more. This has been percolating in my head for a while now, and the reality is that if conservalibertarians want to get balance back in the media and the academy it has to be from the inside. Bitching about bias isn’t enough. But it will take time and effort and we have to be in it for the long haul, just as the Left was when they started this in the 1960s. It will require mentors who are already successful — if sometimes ‘hidden’ — to bring in people with similar viewpoints and work them into positions of power. Protect them from those who would blackball them. Produce good work, not just work from a different perspective.
It’s not enough to have “our own” network (Fox) and a few colleges; the O’Reilly’s and Instapundits and and Roger L. Simons’ have to use their positions to effect change from within the liberal bastions themselves.
okay, so here’s a stupid question: if 50% of the population is conservative-ish, why are Hollywood film-makers afraid to advertise to them?
The guy who did Airplane did American Carol. I didn’t even hear about it until it was on DVD, one copy at the rental store, and I read an interview griping that he wasn’t going to make a sequel.I rented it that week, brought it home, and we watched it. My husband laughed himself sick (literally- it’s that funny) and my kids learned that appalling 1968 song. It was funny, irreverent, fresh! It could be watched by the whole family.
Why wasn’t it promoted? We didn’t know- and we ARE the target demographic.
We would happily rent the next low-budget sick conservative comedy. HAPPILY.
We watched Judd Apatow films after I read about what was going on in his mind- “why not stick with your baby-daddy?” and “Why not wait until marriage to the right girl?” People genuinely love these films- these ARE the stories of their lives- including those two little girls in nylon Disney Princess dresses being little immature bouncy kids. They don’t have serious lines b/c little kids aren’t wise- they are little kids.
Home Alone has never been out of print- have you seen people breathe a sigh of relief when the kid goes to church for Christmas Eve service? You have no idea what the sermon is- just that the kid is in church. He’s normal- he’s where most people are from.
I can tell a leftist production- it’s got a sermon in it. All of my kids’ friends go to church- one of them is a pk- and I literally have no idea what’s said in the pulpit- I figure we’re in the same book, so we’re close enough. So why not have that- getting a nice dress? or being flustered b/c you’re late for choir. The Hallmark/ Oprah heightened transcendance moment every little bit of every day doesn’t ring true.
The Kung-Fu Panda studio has this thing where they screen the movie for free to PTA groups. PTA’s show the film on a Friday, they send a flyer to every kid in the school. The school shows the movie for free, but charges for pizza and drinks and popcorn. The PTA keeps the money. The studio makes sure that the video is available at the grocery store, or online, or at a video store, for purchase. My kids want perfectly lame films, b/c they’ve seen them in this make-shift kids’ theatre with their friends.
Second, Regal Cinemas- Phil Anschutz needs family-friendly movies. He’s open for business. Somehow, Wilberforce got funded, despite the worst story-boards, EVER. I could have cried at how dull it was, and how many oppurtunities the film-makers missed to make even a decent film.
Third: Regal Cinemas has kids movies in the summer. Can you animate 5 cartoons or so, in rotation? Shorts. To introduce characters? Then, make tee-shirts, and stickers and whatever. And then make full-length films and cheap books? You’ve already introduced the new, friendly characters to an audience. Daycares bus their kids to these showings. That’s parents with disposable income, and likely some guilt. Apple-jacks Cereal advertises there, and gives out samples. We have Apple-jacks at the house, right now, five years later, b/c of that one promotion.
Amazon can sell videos. What’s your price to re-coup your money? Can you start low and then go up as your audience grows up?
Or do you start small- you aren’t paying union wages, are you? That’s part of a hardbound books price- teamster union truck delivery drivers. If you don’t have that pension to pay- you charge less.
Maybe you need to start really small, make a profit, and keep going? Hire your friends? Map a plan with pretty actors? KLutz, of Twilight- knew an actress. He was a chem E major. He was a pretty face in front of a brain. Five or six films later, a bunch of gracious interviews with fan mags, he’s got a terrifying enthusiastic fan base. Jackson Rathbone has people stalking his band. Again, pretty face, five or six films.
That’s one of the points Ben Stein makes- there are pretty faces all over the place. Only a few of them end up in films.
Colleges have student unions. Most have movie theatres. They need exotic product- Mongolian throat-singing, and Satyricon- and new, local films count as exotic product that are certain to be more entertaining than what I mentioned.
Alamo Drafthouse- make friends with their programmers.
Small theatres need what big theaters don’t have, to compete. Some still use regular film, rather than digital. Some have digital. Call and find out. You want to be on the first name basis with the owner/manager of the Duluth Dream Factory, right? Harry Weinstein is. At least he used to be, when he started out importing cheap foreign films and cheap local films. If he can do it, so can you, It’s all copy-able.
For that matter- radio deejays need content and guests. They aren’t all Howard Stern- but they’d like to be famous for being with cool people. Nearly anyone in entertainment is findable, which is different than any other industry on the planet. There isn’t an IMDB for manufacturers of widgets, for instance. well, there is- alibaba, which is asian. But not America. Here- IMDB has agents and studios and names.
If you do girl films- find a fabric designer for quilt blocks. And a scrapbook company or two- stamps, paper, shrinky-dink designs—-fans will make nicer stuff than you can sponsor in an Asian sweatshop market. This makes money for you, this makes cultural capital and fan groups, for your next set of endeavors. Google Twilight quilts….no, really…you don’t need Klingons eating French fries for the biggest burger-pusher. You can use small manufacturers in the USA.
Find fan websites. There’s a guy making his house payment just reviewing and selling surf-films. Another one selling investment videos. I bet there’s a guy making a living pushing horror films.
Apple Itunes and podcasts- you can make short stories of the sound. you can make comics from storyboards. you can make documentaries. there’s one about standing in line waiting for a star wars film. it was at target.
if you get headaches making screenplays- wrap one around copyright-free classics- a class production of shakespeare,( been done) a french class doing moliere, some greek frat with bits of greek comedy on the lawn- that buys five minutes of film-time, at least.
abundant, cheap, scatter-shot- that’s new york culture. it can be the rest of the country, too. digital, wal-mart, radio shack, make it possible. so much has been forgotten, or not even taught, that even a smattering of anything-you’ll sound like a genius.
okay, so here’s a stupid question: if 50% of the population is conservative-ish, why are Hollywood film-makers afraid to advertise to them?
Because your definition of “conservative” actually describes under 20% of the voters. In politics 60% of the voters aren’t ideologically motivated, 20% of the voters are hardcore left, and another 20% of them are hardcore right. This latter ideologically ossified group is what people like you think of as “conservative” and then — and this part is howlingly funny — you seem to think that anyone not voting full on left is just like you.
Ummm…. no. I don’t vote dem and I’m certainly nothing like you. As in, nobody ever breathes a sigh of relief when Kevin walks into a church; he’s gone there solely because it’s nearby, nothing else is open, he’s lonely, and there’s safety in numbers. It ain’t due to golly gee american pie flag mom conservative “values” crap.
(Did we watch the same movie? And that’s what you took from it? Astonishing.)
Bottom line? Hollywood advertsises to the customers who aren’t bible beating wingnuts, which is about 80% of the country. I hope this resolves your conundrum. Frankly, I’m not sure why this is difficult for you people to figure this out.
See? I didn’t see Home Alone right when it came out. But I did hear from the family down the street. The daughter said that’s how she knew he would be okay- he’d gone to church.
Most people I know go to church. They aren’t hard-left, hard-right, or anything like that. But-they do have normal lives.
It’s kind of like when tv shows had “soda” labelled cans in the fridge. You might not go to church, or synagogue, so you don’t notice that plastic- absence. Most people with kids do attend, even if it’s Easter or Christmas. The thing is- it’s never a good sermon on Christmas. I’ve heard one or two good sermons. Usually, it’s the pastor rolling out a classic he wrote a few years ago, or reading a kids’ book, or talking about the ski-vacation with the youth he just got back from. So, this heightened awesomeness- I know that’s someone who’s not in the mix.
Yeah, I saw the film. The kid invents all sorts of ways to foil the bad guys. But he lives in a recognizable life- a suburb, rude relatives, losing his bed to a relative, eating pizza, watching tv. Honestly, for a few years it was a game to see which character on tv watched television, or not. Shows that had characters watching tv- they sounded normal. The ones that didn’t- I don’t know who was writing, but they’d obviously grown up in a kennel far from regular humans.
The thing is: families with children are center-right. More than one kid is correlated with religious intention, or political conservatism. Marriage, too. Not all the time- two of my kids’ friends are over. The family is very churched up, but they vote Obama. They aren’t peeing on rich Republicans, though.
And stupidity: if we’re talking code: staying married and not cheating, somehow, is supposed to be dull and sexless. Therapeutic Adultery is big in publishing, and freaking boring at this point- I can pick up a random fiction book on the shelf at B&N, and that’s the plot. People rant about it. But if you ask them- do you know anyone who cheats? They might know one person. And they hate that person b/c there are other defects in their personality to grate on regular people. So, there’s not a correspondence between real life and fiction editors, right now.
Or, say, a belief in evolution and meaninglessness vs, say Intelligent Design or “God made it all for his own joy” and “dinosaurs are bath-toys for God. You like ‘em, why wouldn’t he?” So, a short survey of evolutionists- they’re jerks you’d hide from at a party. But God made its? Are grandmas. cookie-baking grandmas. So I’m not seeing sneering as a good place.
oy.
A convenience store is open late. It can be crowded. It’s certainly brightly lit. The message of the church is something you dismiss and disparage, but one that sang to a great deal of the audience. You might be single, ironic, clever, well-off, un-religious in any form- but most of America, and most of the audience at a movie, are none of those things.
But.and.however. most people don’t want to be force-fed virtue or sermonizing, on any side of any issue.
Have you ever wondered why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has never been out of print, while other teen movies go unlamented into darkness? It has good bones, good references, a brain. They don’t have to be footnoted like a plodding bore of a research paper. They’re just there.
If you look at the county by county election map, it looks like blue tongs pulling a lobster out of a pot. Mr Simon lives in one of the blue sections, in an industry that exports its products to the red sections of the country, as well as around the world. Magazine editors live in a blue section, too. Established book publishers, too.
Mr Simon is trying to talk aloud about opening a factory with a different take on tuna- “let’s try tuna in oil, this time!” and people who would work on the tuna production line are asking how to go fish, go make cans, source veggie oil-what sort, and so on.
I talk about the end-part b/c I’m on the consumer-side.
I’ve listened to producers trying to estimate their audience, before. I’ve listened while they shake the trees for production money, and talent, and hardware. It’s not rocket- science, but it is an industry run on temp workers, and scrambled money, and a lot of nerves and fear and panic and hope and joy and creativity. It’s hard to imagine breaking in. It’s hard on the soul, it’s hard on the body. Red carpet premieres are the icing on some salt-cakes, more than you’d think.
He’s blind and mocks us for this “vision myth” of ours. I don’t think he realizes the pity he wrings from us, from the pain and anger he broadcasts daily. It’s mostly aimed at Christians, but he’s ostensibly a Republican; I doubt it though because he blunders into further alienating Christians every time he posts. I don’t know what went wrong but clearly something did.
An article about reaching the mainstream culture, and no mention of Howard Stern, who, like it or not, is a behemoth for this generation. It says a lot, really. No mention of Howard Stern in this article or among the comments speaks to how hopelessly lost and square the crowd here is. sorry. you’ll never make it.
Howard Stern went to Sirius. He’s not mainstream at all, anymore.
Oprah is fading, too, on her own weak network. At least she still has a magazine.
The Rule of the High brow: Throw in economic destruction into the mix and the best image of this high brow are Sauron and his compromising wizard who see the low brow as thingies to fling fling fling at their enemies in war with Iraq , Iran ,Egypt , Syria , Lebanon . The leftest have dug deep into the psyche of the masses and see their great hidden desire for power thus they introduce self-expression to their lives to undermine the rightwing who they know are only interested to control them to hold on to their own pleasures in having power.
But Jesus going to the feast of the rich man was interested in the woman who had no tongue for self expression so she use her TEARS and then her own hair the last tool as symbol of great power to wash Jesus feet
For a year I have been visiting a girl who hide her baby in her womb for 9 months and I see all that she is looking for is love and acceptance and the anger and hate coming from her circle with only her Mama left to comfort her but her health is failing from the heavy burdens she carry daily without a voice people do not listen to her eyes her old hair but just see her past sins as Jesus say about the rightwing conservative: you travel a 1000 miles to make a convert and then you make him twice as much made for hell fire as he was before he met you
yikes!
(God has blessed me by way of this girl with the Mary story ,the shame she carry for 9 months as the self righteous who lust not for God but more power over everything that moves just like their father Sauron)
REGARDING OLIVER STONE’S KGB HISTORY OF THE USA AND HENRY WALLACE:
WALLACE SAW THE LIGHT AND ADMITTED HE’D BEEN A DUPE:
I GOT THIS AT WIKI:
In 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, Wallace broke with the Progressives and backed the U.S.-led war effort in the Korean War.[5] In 1952, Wallace published Where I Was Wrong, in which he explained that his seemingly-trusting stance toward the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin stemmed from inadequate information about Stalin’s crimes and that he, too, now considered himself an anti-Communist. He wrote various letters to “people who he thought had traduced (maligned) him” and advocated the re-election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.[5]
In 1961, President-elect John F. Kennedy invited him to his inauguration ceremony, though he had supported Kennedy’s opponent Richard Nixon.
Hollywood, since early 1920′s, has been host to everything absurd. Lovable Charlie Chaplin, a conscientious objector, Marxist sympathizer. And on, and on, and on. Today Garrafolos, Whoopi, Letterman, Tosh, Mahr to name a few…all, theater of the “absurd,” making most outrageous statements as fodder for Americas uneducated pool of serbs.
Then there’s the most absurd:If “abortion is o.k.? Isn’t it!” is a “gotcha question,” Hollywood just enjoys asking these absurdities!!! Wouldn’t any answer to this absurd line of thought, be ackowlegement of this absurdity, as well?
Instead, rephrasing this absurd thought as, “Abortion has been established as both infanticide and eugenics. As such, is patently a murderous action condoned by American society through funding and political and economic support of entities the likes of Planned Parenthood and Elementary School Sex Education Classes.” And the discussion should evolve from this different tact and approach. Moves it from “opinion and speculation” to a more concrete footing of “Rule of Law” and American’s code of Morality and Human Values.
Republican FACTS. A wake-up Call if ever there was one!
1.Republicans have now lost the popular vote for president in five of the past six presidential elections.
2.The last time the GOP won 300 electoral votes was in 1988; Democrats have won 300 or more in four of the past six contests.
3.Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have voted Democratic in each of the past six presidential elections for a total 242 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
4.In two consecutive elections, the closest Senate races have fallen domino-like toward Democrats.
5.In 2010, Democrats won five of the seven races rated as toss-ups by The Cook Political Report; this year, Democrats prevailed in eight out of 10.
6.While Republicans, in 2012, held onto their House majority, eight seats were lost, or about one third of their 25-seat margin.
7.Democrats actually won the national popular vote for the House.
8.Republicans were saved by new district boundaries drawn by re-districting committees. Something Rahm Emmanuel’s 2010 Census gerrymandered to avoid.
Conclusion:
The country’s long-term demographic trends look very bad for existing GOP/RNC, as presently configured, i.e., a party built around older white men totally out of step with an exploding Black, Hispanic and Asian multicultural future. A GOP/RNC dependent upon a doddering, vanishing White population. Need proof? Look at retiring Baby-boomer numbers!!! Overwhelming number are White!!!
GOP/RNC have to school all future candidates in how to confront “absurdity,” gotcha questions, and controlling all dialog. As things are now progressing, New Left “absurdity” is what has won, (and is winning), elections (learned and perfected while in college). New Left counts on an uneducated America for their political successes. Critical Thinking, just inexists!!!Pray. Amen.
Thank you for this. I taught music in the public schools for years and fought for the right to demand excellence the whole way. This, as well as produce an excellent product in the public square, is what we must do. Then, when we are asked to give an answer for the hope within us, we must be ready.
Let the quality of your work be your protest. Or for the truly ambitious, let the quality of your life be your protest. Selah.
Roger, Charity begins at home. As an ardent fan, take a look at the quality of the ideas on PJ Media and the aesthetic nightmare that is the website, the bad green screen and your funny hats. The left criticized Sarah Palin for spending too much on clothes, but she had the right idea… the right needs to LOOK GOOD.
Bill Whittle say that I made the best photograph ever taken of him and I can Make-Over PJ Media, but someone has to take my call, and I need a number to dial… So make it happen… Lunch?
Whittle http://flic.kr/s/aHsjCqbzpF
Zo http://flic.kr/s/aHsjCqdjwm
Peter Duke
peter@dukemedia.com
http://dukemedia.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/peterduke