Help wanted: covert, political propagandist

From the New York Times...

An end to Hollywood’s long and bitter writers’ strike appeared close on Saturday, as union leaders representing 12,000 movie and television writers said they had reached a tentative three-year deal with production companies.

The strike, which began Nov. 5, remains in effect until the governing boards of the two writers’ guilds gauge the sense of their membership in mass meetings on both coasts this weekend and decide whether to end the walkout. The mood at the New York meeting on Saturday afternoon was one of supportive optimism, with a touch of wariness, and the Los Angeles gathering was set to take place late in the evening. The boards are expected to meet as early as Sunday, and the strike could be over by Monday morning.

Of course there's another, more pressing reason to end the strike. As the election get into swing, the DNC will be depending on the propaganda Hollywood always injects into movies and television shows during an election year.

Not that it's always successful.

Take the movie Dave for example. With a lot of effort to make Kevin Kline look as much like George Bush senior as possible, by the time the movie hit the theaters, the behavior of the president in the movie was almost identical to that of Bill Clinton, except that the president in the movie didn't arrange to have dozens of people systematically killed or intimidated to prevent them from testifying against him. And by the time the movie hit the theaters, the election was over. The intent was clear, though.

Then there's the movie An American President. Timed better so the DVD release would hit at the height of the 1996 election. Rush Limbaugh, at the time, commented on the propaganda effect of the movie as well as the subtle message regarding Hillary Clinton (The president in the movie was a widower, signifying, according to Rush, Hollywood's disdain for Hillary and their wish for her to be out of the way so Bill could pursue other romantic interest, not understanding that the Clinton's marriage never prevented Bill from pursuing other romantic interests.) The movie's main theme was how the President's opposition mercilessly harassed him regarding his "innocent" relationship with a female lobbyist (played by Annette Bening). This was of course followed by the real-life, "merciless harassing" of Bill Clinton for his "innocent relationships" with Paula Jones, Kathleen Wiley and Juanita Broderick, not to mention Monica Lewinski, Geniffer Flowers and Elizabeth Ward Gracen. (The last three were at least willing, as opposed to the first three).

Lately Hollywood has dropped much of its subtly in inserting propaganda in movies, but still tries to be somewhat coy about the DNC bias in television. But in all honesty, trying to pretend they don't inject political propaganda in television programs is like pretending most Black Americans don't vote based solely on race. It's part of the societal fiction in which we all know its true, but will politely pretend is not.

Notice the timing of the writer's strike. Any movie script to be used for the campaign would have been written long ago. But television scripts will need to be written now. Also, by postponing current shows, there's a very good chance the usual TV season will now be pushed into the summer, meaning new shows airing through the months leading up to the general election, not reruns, that few people watch. The USA network already broke ground on unusual TV seasons, the major networks can now follow suit, based on the success of the USA networks odd seasons, as well as the hidden reason of putting out fresh propaganda during a time they normally would have had only stale reruns, which happens to be the height of the election year.

Those writers knew they had Hollywood by the short hairs, didn't they.

Posted by Danny Carlton at February 11, 2008 7:41 AM