In recent years, Hollywood conservatives have been as deep in the closet as 1950s gays. But Barack Obama, the man of hope and change, has changed that. The times are so terrible that more and more entertainment industry conservatives are coming out and risking irritating their fuddy-duddy liberal peers, maybe even losing a job or two into the bargain.
The latter is not a problem for the latest Hollywood con to come out, Clint Eastwood, who just publicly endorsed Romney with the words “the country is in need of a boost.” (No kidding!) Clint has arguably been America’s finest director for the last decade or so. The likes of Sean Penn abandoned their bourgeois lefty politics in a heartbeat to work with him. So no job issues for Clint.
And everyone has known Eastwood was a man of the right for years now. He just hasn’t made a very big deal about it, unlike the mouthier libs. He has more class. Clint is a figure out of old Hollywood when stars shut their mouths and did their work.
So his coming out is not inconsequential. One wonders what his peers — the Redfords, Beattys, etc. – think. Some of them are such knee-jerk liberals that they probably just put it down to Clint imitating his make-my-day character and don’t give it another thought. But I suspect not all. The extremity of the economic situation is not lost on all these people. They just don’t have the guts to speak. Walking around Hollywood now is not like it was a year or two ago. You don’t hear anyone publicly defending Obama. What you get mostly is silence and a seeming desire to change the subject.
Whether Clint is the stalking horse for more major entertainment figures to start coming out for Romney remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: After three plus years of the Obama administration, it’s easier for Hollywood conservatives to declare themselves, not harder. What an irony.
Also read: The 5 Most Politically Incorrect Ideas Smuggled Into The Dark Knight Rises
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