Substance Matters!
Patrick Ruffini on the left:
They controlled all the major institutions: the media, academia, Hollywood, the Democratic Party, large segments of the Republican Party, and consequently, the government…. They dominate Hollywood not by actively branding liberalism in their movies, but by coolly associating liberal policy ideas with sentiments everyone feels, like love (gay marriage) or fairness (the little guy vs. some evil corporate stiff). Though I think Andrew Breitbart is spot on in raising a red flag on the threat we face in Hollywood, I fear that the conservative movement of today would only produce a response as agitprop and sarcastic as the Joe the Plumber phenomenon. In other words, some amusing slapstick comedies but not sweeping cultural epics that will be remembered 50 years from now. When you assume liberals are dominant culturally, you tend toward sarcasm or one-off gimmicks to knock the majority of its game — but never an all encompassing argument for conservative cultural and political relevance — something we have lacked for a long time, since Buckley was in his prime.
This analysis is so insightful in parts, and yet so flawed! To address the particular example cited by Patrick Ruffini, let us consider a liberal Hollywood screenwriter penning a script about two gay men who are getting married. Does he render their relationship as one of love in order to strategically associate emotions everyone feels with liberal policy goals? Or does he actually believe that gay people who seek marriage are in love just like straight people who wed, and try his best as a writer to give a portrayal faithful to life?
Now let’s broaden the scope of our inquiry, focusing not just on Hollywood, but on the media and academia too. All are culturally influential left-leaning professions that give insufficient due to conservative insights. So why is it that the New York Times, Harvard University and the major studious don’t “actively brand liberalism” in their products? The answer implied by the excerpt above is that they are savvy strategists who understand that advancing liberal ideas is better accomplished indirectly, and that if only conservatives would confidently take that approach the whole cultural scene would shift in our favor.
What a dangerous error in analysis!
Those professions may be overwhelmingly liberal, but they are also populated mostly by folks whose primary goals aren’t political. Most Hollywood actors, directors and writers set out to do good work and make money, not to advance the cause of the Democrat Party or liberalism generally. The typical academic aspires to do exceptional scholarship, to gain tenure, and to advance their field, not to help team liberal. The average journalist wants to break stories, or to produce exceptional writing, or to anchor the evening telecast in a big market, not to cleverly slant public discourse to advantage liberals.
Put another way, these people buy whatever profession they’ve chosen as valuable in its own right, not just as a tool to wield political influence. And more often than not, their success is owed to the fact that they conduct themselves as professionals, not as professional political operatives. Yes, there are exceptions, and of course the fact that these professions are overwhelmingly liberal has a distorting effect, but the answer to this particular problem isn’t to find William F. Buckleys who can formulate “an all encompassing argument for conservative cultural and political relevance.” The answer is to understand why these professions are valuable, engage them as such, and push for necessary reforms from the inside.
Nowhere is it written that journalism, academia and cinema must be dominated by liberals, but the right’s disadvantage is certain to persist as long is conservative professionals are mostly concerned with advancing their political agenda, whereas others in the same field are focused mostly on doing good work. I’ll take a journalist who is conservative over a “conservative journalist” any day, and please don’t ever make me sit through a film or lecture by someone who mostly wants 61 Senate seats for their party.
Patrick Ruffini is right that the conservative movement of today would fail miserably to produce good cinema. But their failure wouldn’t be a function of assuming the cultural dominance of liberals! It would be the fact that instead of setting out to make a damn good movie, they’d set out to make a political point, which usually works out terribly for liberals too. (And while we’re talking about Hollywood, can we please engage film more like Ross Douthat and Peter Suderman, and less like Big Hollywood?)
Most Hollywood actors, directors and writers set out to do good work and make money
This why Peter’s “idea advocacy industry” and the whole idea of not for profit journalism made smoke come out of my ears. Right wing think tanks aren’t an industry; maybe once upon a time they might have been a counter balance to campus liberalism, but those days are long gone
But now they’re a pathetic admission that the ideas being advocated can’t hack it. That either the ideas themselves or the people agitating for them just aren’t good enough to compete on equal footing. It’s Detroit holding it’s hand out, while Toyota makes cars that people want to buy.
I’ve been through this already in the doco world, and am sorry to say some of the reactions I’ve heard here at TAS sound almost word for word the same as the reactions I’ve heard from frustrate lefty filmmakers who think the world needs what they have so badly that their efforts should be underwritten by the tax payers. In the name of “pubic interest” there’s a whole not for profit “industry” that produces and distributes documentaries. And guess what? Mostly they’re terrible movies that no one wants to watch and never make as much money as they cost to produce. Sound familiar?
Y’all need to find the courage of your convictions. You want to create a “culture of life” then you’re going to have to compete mano a mano with the Pink Police State Libralatarians who think its the government’s job to hand out ecstasy and RU 486, not by writing policy papers, but by writing books that people want to read, making music people want to dance to, making movies telling stories people want to hear.
You want people to understand that commerce is the most pro-social force in the world today? Then through away the 501c forms and start business. Especially now. Money is cheap. I’m about to refinance my house at 4.75 percent. Four point seven five percent!!! Has it ever been less risky to take a chance on your dreams? Your ideas? Your ideals?
There has never been a better time to be an outsider. It’s never been a better time to have the next big idea. The future is right there, waiting there for you, laying on the ground while everyone else walks by. Don’t be chump. Pick it up. Pick it up and run with it!
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 03:52 AM · #
Good post – you got it exactly right. The same holds for conservative dominated professions, like business or the military.
My one quibble is that the old myth about the “liberal media” gets repeated as if it were true. Think about it – there’s Fox and almost all of talk radio pushing hardline rightwing propaganda, with many million viewers and listeners – and what equivalent is there on the left? Michael Moore is all I can think of. Most of the rest of cable news (excepting Olbermann and Maddow) are also on the right, along with the WSJ editorial page. The NYT editorial page leans left, but the NYT news pages really bent over and greased up for Bush, along with most other new organizations.
Every cultural group has its foundational myths, and it’s fine with me if little conservative boys and girls learn about the liberal media when they’re young, but they really shouldn’t take it seriously past the age when they believe in the tooth fairy.
— peterg · Feb 27, 04:54 AM · #
Tony —
So what liberal think tanks make a profit? What liberal political magazines? What, exactly, is the right supposed to be competing with? You say the right’s ideas “can’t hack it.” Well what’s an example of a similar liberal organization that’s making a profit?
I should add that many organizations on the left take federal money, but none of the free-market advocacy groups I’ve worked for have ever touched a dime from a taxpayer funded grant. Do you seriously have a problem with organizations like Heritage and Cato and AEI and The Weekly Standard and National Review and The American Conservative and The New Atlantis and on and on and on — all of which only survive only because of donations from individuals and corporations. This is private charity we’re talking about, not taxpayer sponsored welfare, and I don’t see what the objection is to it.
— Peter Suderman · Feb 27, 05:52 AM · #
Peter,
Do you think the left’s best and the brightest are working at those not for profit liberal political magazine? Or do you think they’re working in entertainment, journalism, education, business, etc?
What would happen to Heritage et al if their contributions were not tax deductible? Other businesses have to raise funds in after-tax dollars. What would the “right wing idea advocacy industry’s” balance sheet look like if it didn’t receive this tax-payer subsidy. How many of these think-tanks would survive?
What do you think the effect is on the “economy of ideas” when the tax code subsidizes the “idea advocacy industry”?
“But the other guys, the other guys are doing it too!”
Read Conor’s post again. Those “other guys” aren’t the competition. They’re a side show and a distraction. The game’s being won on the field of commerce and conservatism doesn’t even have a team.
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 01:26 PM · #
What a smart and interesting post. I predict you’ll be driven out of the conservative movement in a couple of years. Well, OK, probably not, but the idea of conservatives actually engaging the culture rather than just whining about it will never happen. Brietbart will have none of it. Apparently there is big money in playing the victim (with the occasional Michael-Moore-is-fat joke thrown in). That’s what today’s conservative is all about.
— tgb1000 · Feb 27, 02:29 PM · #
_Apparently there is big money in playing the victim _
I might be worth re-reading David Brook’s “Blinded by the Right”. Not for the hand wringing, but for his insightful observation that the post-Reagan conservative movement modeled their tactics on the liberal counter-culture movement that came before them, including the whole ID politics and victimhood gambit.
The trouble with that angle is it’s like trying to borrow your way out of debt. Yes, there’s a short-term increase, but without finding a way use the sudden cash infusion produce real growth, you just end up borrowing more until no one will lend money to you any more. Lenders turn their backs, and saddled with crushing debt you lose everything.
That’s more or less what’s happened to the GOP. They’ve run against blacks, gays, liberals, immigrants, educated elites, cities and finally when they ran out of people to run against, they ran against themselves. But there’s never been any real expansion in reach and scope of their ideological appeal. Now there’s no one left to run against, no more political capital to borrow.
And by the way, Michael Moore, (who I find insufferable BTW. Haven’t given him a dime since “Roger and Me”) doesn’t have to beg to make his movies. You won’t find any “make a tax deductible donation” button on his website. How come the favorite bugbear of the right has figured out how to make money advancing advancing his agenda and ideology in the free market, but Cato et. al need a tax-payer subsidy?
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 03:02 PM · #
Excellent points, Tony. I find it analagous to the evolution vs. ID/creationism issue. Rather than do the hard work of learning the science and research methods and finding some scientific proof for ID/creationism, its proponents just whine about being excluded and get Ben Stein as a spokesman. No wonder the biology department is predominantly liberal.
— tgb1000 · Feb 27, 03:30 PM · #
Well said, Conor. There is a great deal of room to make good, conservative movies. The thing is, they shouldn’t be overtly conservative. I would argue that a book/film like The Lord of the Rings is inherently conservative in its critique of all-consuming power; in its embrace of the value of friendship, loyalty, and courage; in its hesitance and caution, and so on and so forth. And there are others like that. The thing is, I’m sure not a soul making the film version of LOTR ever even considered the conservatism of it. This is the sort of thing that conservatives need to be thinking about. How to infuse scripts with ideals rather than politics, with conservative values that are exemplified in the characters rather than preached by them.
Great post.
— E.D. Kain · Feb 27, 04:10 PM · #
“This is the sort of thing that conservatives need to be thinking about. How to infuse scripts with ideals rather than politics, with conservative values that are exemplified in the characters rather than preached by them.”
Did you read the post? The point is people who are also liberals are not trying to “infuse scripts with ideals rather than politics.” They are just making movies that the think will be good and will make money. They are not trying to change the culture, they are just being part of the culture.
I mean to call these movies “liberal” or “conservative” is even a mistake. They are just movies (or books) and as such reflect the culture. You can find plenty of conservative values in todays popular movies and plenty of liberal vaules. But to even look for that and wring your hands that the movies are not propogandistic enough of your particular point of veiw is to totally misunderstand the nature of art. It’s stalinist thinking. The subtext of all this conservative whining about “liberal hollywood” is that the movies DO reflect the culture and that scares conservatives becasue it shows that their “values” are not really that widely held. Which as it should be, right? Isn’t conservativism’s main concern trying to conserve dying values?
Occasionally a work of art can change culture, but generally it is a reflection of what is going on.
— cw · Feb 27, 05:00 PM · #
Yes, of course I read the post, cw. The point I’m making is that whenever conservatives try to make movies they push their message overtly. My point is that instead of doing this, they should take a more subtle tact. I use LOTR as an example because obviously nobody was even attempting to infuse conservative values but the story is inherently conservative.
— E.D. Kain · Feb 27, 06:15 PM · #
I guess if you define friendship and loyalty as inherently conservative, that is a winning, subtle strategy. (As a liberal, I hate my friends and would sell them into slavery for a cookie.)
Or maybe movie makers should focus on great storytelling and interesting characters. The folks at Big Hollywood will still complain about the ones they don’t like and attempt to coopt the ones they do.
— someguy · Feb 27, 06:47 PM · #
E.D. Kain, for you this time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 07:05 PM · #
Former Marine Lieutenant Nathan Fick said it best (of course, he was speaking to my fellow liberals): “If liberals want to reform the military, more liberals need to be in the military.” Or something similar. It’s in “Generation Kill.” Anyways, that’s how stuff gets done: from the inside.
It might be nice if both sides of the coin stopped trying to look for over-arching narratives and just got down to the nitty-gritty of making stuff work. I think that’s why I liked Mr. Freisdorf’s post: it argues for working for what you believe, not advocating it.
— James F. Elliott · Feb 27, 08:33 PM · #
BTW: I seems like “Fireproof” is doing pretty well. Ranked #7 in DVDs on Amazon right now. The best one of my films has ever ranked is about #777, so count me impressed!
http://www.amazon.com/Fireproof-Kirk-Cameron/dp/B001KEHAFI/ref=pd_sim_b_1
The audience is out there, waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TROhlThs9qY
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 08:34 PM · #
Tony,
OK, I think I see what you’re getting at here. In large part, I agree: the media-entertainment complex is far, far more influential in a broad cultural sense than the small world of conservative non-profits. Certainly, it has a far greater impact on the daily life of Americans than anything Heritage or Cato do.
And as far as your argument that conservatives and libertarians and classical liberals ought to compete in that space, on its for-profit terms, I couldn’t agree more. I just finished working on a proposal for a long project that would essentially argue that point.
One of the earliest pieces I read by Ross Douthat was this: http://www.nationalreview.com/issue/douthat200411300848.asp It makes a lot of the points you make, and I highly recommend it.
Two small points of pushback, however:
1) Hollywood is a far greater cultural influence, but the politically focused non-profits are far greater legislative influences. Perhaps you could argue that Hollywood sets the stage for lots of legislation/ That’s true to some extent, but the big policy organizations still have a lot of direct influence over governing in America.
2) As far as the tax status thing goes, I don’t think it’s a taxpayer cheat to work using tax-shielded dollars. That presumes that the government has some natural right to that money and that non-profit charities, from churches to think tanks to homeless shelters, are all effectively stealing from the government. Sure, it means that these organizations have a leg up against for-profits, but it’s not as if they’re wasting taxpayer money in the same way as all those subsidized NGOs.
— Peter Suderman · Feb 27, 10:11 PM · #
Sorry, can’t read the full article. Apparently The National Review is as keen on getting paid for their copyrighted material as the copyright holders for the songs Nina Pally used in her film.
As to your pushbacks
1: Please remember to make this point vigorously when your conservative fellows blather on about “liberal Hollywood” or “the liberal media.”
2) I never said anything about waste or stealing or natural rights. What I said is that non-profit status is a tax policy nudge, akin to the different treatment of capital gains (only in reverse,) that has anti-social consequences.
— Tony Comstock · Feb 27, 10:41 PM · #
Liberals don’t walk around saying “oh, that’s not liberal,” or “man I just love his liberal politics,” or “I can’t go there because it’s not liberal.” This is a peculiar and ultimately pointless activity of conservatives. Liberals care about the actual art, politics, ideas themselves. It’s only people here, and the people like them, who think there is any worth to deciding that a movie is or is not conservative, or who think there might be a scintilla of benefit in decrying that “conservative” movies can’t get made. It’s like some vast, idiotic, self-justifying echo chamber.
And while the actual conservatives with the good ideas that could benefit the entire world are here arguing whether something is or is not conservative, the very word itself has been co-opted by the authoritarian ignoramuses that make up something like 30% of the citizenry. The people who are PROUD of their ignorance. The people who literally want to be told what to do, what to think and have literally run this country into the ditch economically. And the people who want to run the budget so that we spend less than we make, and who want the government to mind its own business, those people now have to find some new word to describe themselves because as far as 75% of the country is concerned “conservative = Rush Limbaugh” who, no matter how entertaining you might find him, is an out and out disaster when it comes to politics, policy, and foreign relations.
Because while you’re here arguing movies like “Knocked Up” come out where the heroine doesn’t have an abortion, and stays with the baby-daddy who himself gives up his pot-head ways in order to become a father.
If anyone says “now that’s a conservative movie” I’m going to freak out.
-bakum
— bakum · Feb 27, 10:46 PM · #
Okay so I took what I could from the paragraphs of the Douchat article that NRO will actually let me read for free (bastards take my tax money but won’t let me read their damn article!) and used that to chase on over to the American Film Renaissance Institute. Here’s their mission statement:
“The American Film Renaissance celebrates timeless American values by producing, showcasing and distributing films that promote freedom (including free speech, free enterprise and freedom of worship), rugged individualism and the triumph of the human spirit; and through supporting, nurturing and training filmmakers who share AFR’s mission.”
Let’s see. Free Speech? I’ve had my films banned in five countries I know of. Had police show up to stop a screening in Australia. Free Enterprise? We are self funded, self distributed, and sustained by making profitable films. (we don’t steal music and then whine about it either.) Rugged individualism? See above. Triumph of the human spirit? Don’t get me started!
In short, I think the AFI is going to eat my films with a spoon and beg for more! I’m calling them first thing Monday morning. Thanks for the tip, Peter!
— Tony Comstock · Feb 28, 02:01 AM · #
James Elliot is close, but what Nathaniel Fick actually says (read HIS book, One Bullet Away) is that allowing ROTC on elite college campuses (he’s a Dartmouth grad) would be of benefit to both the schools and the military. I think he’s actually paraphrasing Tom Ricks, whose book inspired him to join the Marines.
— DB Cooper · Feb 28, 02:06 AM · #