Newsweek: Blame George Bush for Depressing Hollywood Movies

Newsbusters’ Brad Slager reads Newsweek so you don’t have to:

There is absolutely no shock in stating much of the Hollywood media tend to lean slightly more to the left than a fuel gauge pointing to empty. This week I read the upcoming Oscar season seems to focus on movies trending towards morose and dark subjects, and therefore it was with little surprise, and a great deal of mirth, that I learned from an entertainment writer that the reason behind this somber subject matter was not the film makers themselves but a rather well-aimed target for the Hollywood left.

These are the sage words from Newsweek writer, Ramin Setoodeh:  “You can blame Hollywood’s gloom and doom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies”.

To be fair, these things happen whenever a Republican president is in office. In the 1950s, Hollywood lashed out at Ike’s brutal regime by releasing such heavy-handed polemics as:

• Singing In The Rain
• To Catch A Thief
• Funny Face
• North By Northwest
• High Society

When Richard Nixon took office, Hollywood showed their displeasure via such deliberately bad movies as:

• Patton
• The Wild Bunch
  
• Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
  
• M*A*S*H
• The Godfather
• The Sting
  
• Chinatown

And then in the 1980s, Hollywood really doubled down under President Reagan:

• Top Gun
• Star Trek II
• Blade Runner
• E.T.
• The Color of Money
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• Hannah And Her Sisters

Of course, under Bill Clinton, Hollywood felt free enough to indulge themselves with such fare as Independence Day and Air Force One, the latter of which in particular depicted Hollywood’s ideal president as a tough on terrorists Vietnam-era vet who knew his way around the cockpit of a jet aircraft, and via George Clooney’s Three Kings, would finally do something about Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship.

Sure, like that sort of man might actually exist in real life.