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Hollywood's Power in Shaping Attitudes
January 11, 2008
Joel Stein's column in the Los Angeles Times illustrates the power of the media in shaping attitudes. Notice that Hollywood's Black presidents are "way cooler" than white presidents and that the actors are often greeted by Whites who they wish the actor was the real president. As Stein says, "If there is a choice between winning a culture war or a political war, take the cultural one."
Stein's piece fits will with the comment that follows it on Hollywood's double standards: Hollywood leads the charge to create a multicultural America while failing to mount any effort to alter the stranglehold of reactionary Jews on the Israel lobby and its support for an apartheid, racialist state in Israel.
Joel Stein
Los Angeles Times
January 11, 2008
Excerpt: America is ready for a black president because we've seen them before. Black presidents, in fact, have been our awesomest presidents ever: Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact" and Dennis Haysbert in "24." And their approval ratings -- box office grosses and Nielsen ratings, the only approval that matters in the U.S. -- have been huge. The Freeman and Haysbert administrations, which endured Carter-level challenges such as a comet headed toward Earth and working with Kiefer Sutherland, have specifically prepared us for Obama. Like him, they confront without being confrontational. They're calm, earnest, utterly decent and way, way cooler than white presidents -- which is what I'm sure Joe Biden was trying to say when he called Obama "articulate" and "clean." If only I had translated for him sooner.
If there is a choice between winning a culture war or a
political war, take the cultural one. Sure, the blunt force of the law can make
something happen quickly -- unless the law equivocates to make only three-fifths
of something happen, or to just not ask and not tell -- but culture affects how
people think, which is how real change occurs. You can only send the 101st
Airborne Division to Little Rock, Ark., so many times, but Norman Lear can make
people see the absurdity of racism every week. "Will & Grace" did as much for
gay rights as Stonewall, although less amusingly.
The creators of "24" were totally misguided in their reasoning for casting a
black presidential candidate. They thought the threat of his assassination would
up the stakes because it might spark a race war. But viewers didn't care about
his race. Haysbert knew by Season 2 that America was ready to elect a black
president because white people would stop him on the street to say they wished
he were the real president. [more]