Hollywood: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda
2011-08-27 · Guest: Ben Shapiro (Author and political commentator) · 49:57
Ideological leanings and left-wing bias in Hollywood television
In this episode, Ben Shapiro joins Bob Zadek to discuss his book, Primetime Propaganda, which explores the ideological leanings of Hollywood and the television industry. They delve into how creative and executive shifts in the 1960s and 70s led to a predominantly left-wing media landscape, the psychological motivations of Hollywood creators, and the economic structures that sustain this bias. Shapiro also shares accounts of modern-day blacklisting of conservatives in the industry and discusses his efforts to create alternative entertainment through Declaration Entertainment.
Topics: Hollywood, television, propaganda, Ben Shapiro, political bias, media influence, cultural shifts, blacklisting, entertainment industry, libertarianism
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek: Host
- Ben Shapiro: Author and political commentator
- Caller (Chris): Listener from San Francisco
- Caller (Anne): Listener from Sausalito
The Influence of Television on Political Identity [00:19]
Bob Zadek: Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, Sundays at noon on 910 AM and live on the web, www.fox910.com. This is your host, Bob Zadek, bringing you into the hour with Ethel Merman, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” There’s no business like propaganda. That’s today’s topic.
I’m a libertarian, as you all know, and I like to think that I became a libertarian by reading Ayn Rand and by studying libertarian free-market economists, and I just made this complex, high-integrity intellectual journey and selected libertarianism as that which is consistent with my own moral fiber. That’s what I like to think. That’s what I would have explained.
Today’s guest got me thinking, and now I realize I’m a libertarian because of my steady diet in the 1950s and ’60s of watching Dragnet on television and watching James Arness and Gunsmoke and all this right-wing entertainment which was available in the ’50s, and it was television which influenced my behavior and my political views and not some fancy intellectual journey.
How does television affect you? Who has control of your cultural well-being? Who directs how your children will grow up? Is it the free market? Is it the left?
Ben Shapiro and “Primetime Propaganda” [01:19]
Bob Zadek: I’m delighted to welcome for the entire hour my guest, Ben Shapiro. Ben is a graduate of UCLA, which he entered at the age of 16, and Harvard Law School. At 17, he was the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. Ben is the author of a bunch of books already, including today’s discussion, his book Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.
When I saw Ben discussing his book, it got me thinking, caught my attention. I, of course, flashed back to growing up in the ’50s and in the ’60s. I can remember our first TV set, which was a 12-inch Capehart TV. It was as big as a refrigerator and weighed just that much. We sat in front of this flickering black-and-white TV and watched what I learned from Ben to be at least balanced, if not somewhat conservative television, and I grew up the way I grew up because of that. Ben, what is the premise—first, welcome to the show—and what is the premise, Ben, of Primetime Propaganda?
Ben Shapiro: Well, the basic notion of Primetime Propaganda—and first of all, thanks for having me—the basic notion of Primetime Propaganda is that steadily over the last 50 years, and really since the 1970s, television has become a complete left-wing outlet. It has been infiltrated by a group of people who are ideologically driven, not simply market-driven. And that ranges from the executives to the creators, all of whom are sort of in kind of soft cahoots with regard to putting out political material in their programming, and it affects you every time you turn on the TV basically.
Bob Zadek: So the medium of television—and by the way, Ben, is it restricted to television or does it spill over to motion pictures and other forms of Hollywood-produced entertainment?
Ben Shapiro: It spills over to other forms of Hollywood-produced entertainment also, but I think that TV provides for certain market inefficiencies that are simply not present with regard to movies. With a movie, you know, the audience either accepts it or it doesn’t, meaning that you go and you watch it and you actually plunk down your dollar. With TV, when you watch a TV show, you actually are not plunking down a dollar to watch that TV show, right? I mean, you pay the cable company, but you’re not paying the producers of the TV show or even paying the network. So there’s tremendous kind of wiggle room, and that wiggle room allows a steadier diet of leftist material. In movies, if you go too far off the track, as you made Green Zone with Matt Damon, then nobody’s going to go watch it. On TV, even if nobody watches it, you still may be able to monetize it.
Bob Zadek: So then the folks out there listening to our show today and their kids and their grandkids are, without their knowing it, they are being quite subtly, but I guess as you would suggest, somewhat profoundly influenced in their social mores, if not in their political beliefs. And those of you who want to have questions to Ben, I should mention this, 800-345-5639. Feel free to call with any questions you have on this real important topic, because once we talk about surreptitiously affecting the minds of kids, if not grown-ups, it gets to be mighty scary, sort of Twilight Zone kind of stuff.
The Shift in Television Leadership [05:40]
Bob Zadek: So Ben, has this always been the case? Because I remember growing up, Jack Webb didn’t seem like a hippie to me on Dragnet, and James Arness, he packed quite a big gun and he was not afraid to use it. And I dare say I had a dose of law and order TV. It doesn’t seem like exactly meathead television.
Ben Shapiro: No, I mean, originally TV was run by people who were more conservative in orientation. I mean, the heads of the networks typically were schmatta salesmen, meaning they were business people, and America is a conservative country, so they appealed to the American people. The creators were always more left-leaning, but the executives basically kept them in check. And so what you saw in the 1950s was essentially relatively balanced TV, maybe it leaned a little bit right with shows like the ones you’re mentioning, the Dragnets and the Gunsmokes. You know, those shows were obviously much more in line with kind of traditional American values.
By the time you hit the 1960s, a lot of the leadership roles had changed at the networks. And all of a sudden, the people who are running the networks are ad agency people. They’re not the people who created the business. They’re now people who are more kind of—ad agency people are interesting because they’re somewhere between creatives and executives. They’re not really either, but they tend to have the political sensibilities of artists. And so they start to kind of, you know, twist the TV industry in that direction as well. So now you have—whereas before there was a tension between creatives and executives—now they’re both pulling in the same direction. And so by the time you hit about 1970, there is literally zero conservative television available. And that has been essentially the case ever since.
Shaping Public Perception of Demographics [07:30]
Bob Zadek: So we, without knowing it, we have started to be fed—we being folks who grew up on television in the ’70s—without their realizing it, a subtle but as you suggest, quite powerful message promoting left-wing, I guess social more than political, but certainly not exclusively social, what you would call, what I would call, left-wing values. And it crept into most of network television?
Ben Shapiro: Yes. I mean, if you look at network TV today, for—I mean, here’s a good example. You know, whether you agree with gay marriage or not—you’re a libertarian, so you may—but whether you agree with it or not, the fact is that 40 years ago, nobody was discussing gay marriage. This was not even really a topic of massive conversation in the nation. This was not something that people were even considering. This was not something that people spent a lot of time on.
Now, of course, it’s a major consideration for a very simple reason. There’s a Gallup poll that was done about two months ago, and it showed that 34% of Americans thought at least one out of every four Americans was gay. That at least 25% of all Americans were gay. Overall, 78% of Americans thought at least 10% of the population of the United States was gay. Now, every statistic that is even mildly reliable shows that that number is somewhere between 2 and 5%.
So why is there this wild disparity? Why do so many Americans think that so many other Americans are gay? And the answer is because if you watch network television, that’s precisely how many people are gay. There’s always a major gay character on every show. Generally, they’re sweetness and light. They’re generally the kind of—they’re either the kind of fun sidekick or they’re the hero of the show in the case of shows like Glee. That has a tremendous impact in terms of, you know, how people perceive the homosexual kind of rights agenda. That is just a good case in point, but it’s not restricted to that, of course. I mean, if you’re talking about growth of government, if you’re talking about perception of business people as corrupt white folks who hate minorities, that’s the sort of stuff that TV pushes on a regular basis.
Bob Zadek: So I guess what you’re suggesting is that the world that Hollywood creative types and producers see is portrayed as the world of Omaha and North and South Dakota, when in reality it’s quite a stilted view of the world that is portrayed because it is so common on television. It’s portrayed as universally common. It’s something like when I grew up in the ’50s, I thought 10% of the population was named Beaver.
Ben Shapiro: Right. Exactly. I mean, exactly. And I think that really is—I think that really is the case. I mean, especially if you’re looking at network television over the last 30—really since 1970. I keep using that as kind of the break mark because that is the break mark in TV history. That’s when you have a major shift in terms of the content on television, which we can talk about in a minute.
But the fact is that, yes, I mean, the American people are shaped very much by what they see. The people in Hollywood—look, what TV really is, is it’s entirely—it’s designed to manipulate your emotions. That’s what TV is all about. Good TV does that. You’ll watch TV, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll like the characters, you’ll want to watch more of them. You’ll spend more time with characters on TV shows than you will with your own family. Well, the people who write those characters know that, and they know how to manipulate the plot lines and manipulate the characters to do things that normally you wouldn’t approve of, but to paint them in kind of a subtly nice light. Things that you would normally find abhorrent.
So, you know, a good case in point of a show that tried to paint Hollywood values as kind of the mainstream American values would be Roseanne, right? Roseanne is basically what liberals in Hollywood think about America, but it’s transplanted to a trailer. Now, I don’t know too many women like Roseanne. I don’t think there are very many out there at all like that. But there is this—but because there is this character named Roseanne who lives in a trailer and has a dirty mouth and is rude to her husband and rude to her children and is leftist on every conceivable issue, her politics are the same as Barbra Streisand. Now there’s all of a sudden this perception that there’s like a whole group of Roseanne Barrs out there who are just waiting to be tapped into, which is basically false.
Bob Zadek: We are learning about social behavior as product placement with Ben Shapiro, author of Primetime Propaganda. This is Bob Zadek, 800-345-5639. We’ll be back in 90 real short seconds.
Behind the Scenes: Interviews with Hollywood Insiders [12:59]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, on 910 AM Fox News Radio. Thanks so much for listening. You, of course, can listen live on the web at www.fox910.com. Thanks so much for tuning in. Thanks for joining me and my guest, Ben Shapiro, author of Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.
Now Ben, you did the research for this book, which is really a wonderful book and the first—I haven’t seen another book with this premise. You had a great time, I think, doing the research for the book. This is not stuff that you just made up by sitting around Southern California sulking. I think you went out there, much like Allen Funt, to go back to another program of the ’50s, with your recording equipment. How did you do the research for the book?
Ben Shapiro: Yeah, I mean, essentially what I did is I just called up a bunch of people in Hollywood, big names, and I asked them if I could interview them for the book. And they said yes. I mean, it really was that simple. They were very generous with their time, and you know, I appreciated that. Some of them later claimed that they were upset because I didn’t tell them, you know, my political orientation, which to me was irrelevant. You know, you either answer the question or you don’t. You know, my politics should not change how you answer a particular question.
But, yeah, I spoke with probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 75—somewhere between 75 and 100 people in Hollywood, most of them major names, and most of whom I quote in the book. And I released tapes of them talking. And, you know, they were very forthright and open about their politics and how they shoveled their politics into their entertainment. And look, I’m not—on this, I’m a libertarian too. They have every right to do that. My problem is when they lie about it. When they say, “Oh no, we’re not doing it. What we’re really doing is just catering to the market.” No, you’re really not. You’re using your entertainment—you’re very skillful at what you do—but you’re using your entertainment for propaganda value.
Bob Zadek: Now, is there—a question that occurred to me as I went through the book and as I watched some other interviews that you were gracious enough to give to others in the media—is the motivation of the writers and the producers, the creative types who create this sometimes profound left-wing message, is their motive to proselytize and to convert? Are they on this messianic mission, or are they just writing about the world as they see it and they don’t know any better? Is there something sinister going on, or is this just people who have no accurate worldview?
Ben Shapiro: I think there’s some of both. I mean, I think in some cases it’s absolutely unconscious. I think that there are cases where they really believe that there is no one outside of Los Angeles. They live inside this little bubble, and everybody they know lives inside the bubble, and everybody they know thinks the same way. And so they tend to resonate to that political message and they don’t even understand what they’re doing. That’s true for some of them.
I think the majority of them are smarter than that. I think that they have real disdain for kind of traditional American values, and they see it as a way of giving back. I think there’s a lot of kind of quasi-limousine liberal guilt out here. The fact is that most of the people who work in TV—you make a lot of money. If you’re working regularly in TV as a writer or a producer—let’s put it this way. If you write a network television show, every episode of that show that you write, you will make $30,000. That’s the union scale right now. So if you write a full season of comedy, which is 22 episodes, you will make $660,000, leaving aside residuals, which is going to bring you another several hundred thousand dollars. So for one season of television, you can easily make a million dollars.
So the money out here is astonishing. But most of these people are socialists. They don’t like the fact that they’re making a lot of money, or at least they enjoy it, but they kind of—they’re kind of uncomfortable with it. So they have to come up with some way to live with themselves. And the way that they generally do that is by saying to each other, “Okay, well, you know, sure I drive a big car and sure I live in a huge house, but you know, at least, at least I’m standing up for the downtrodden. At least I’m using my power to kind of tell the American people what’s what.” And I think that there is a fair amount of proselytization that goes into the thought process.
The Psychology of the Creative Left [18:00]
Bob Zadek: So they don’t go to Hollywood with the goal of altering behavior. They go to Hollywood with the goal of satisfying the ego, and that is nothing negative. We all do that, I guess, or most of us do. They go to Hollywood because that’s what their skill set dictates. And then they find themselves—some of the people—having been introduced to the power—and there is great power in being able to bury a message in a very—in this palpable form, so it tastes really good even though it’s medicine. And they use the power—some of them—to alter behavior. In others, it’s just writing about what they know.
Ben Shapiro: Yeah, and I think that’s pretty accurate. And I think that that’s pretty typical in a lot of industries, especially, you know, when they come here to make a lot of money and they come here because hell, it’s fun to write fiction and get paid for it. I mean, that’s a really great job if you can get it. But I think at a certain point, it starts to dawn on them that they really—they feel the need to say something. They’re artists, after all, and most of them, you know, have certain political viewpoints or social viewpoints that they feel are important to get out to the rest of the world.
I mean, a great example of this is—I don’t know if you saw the movie Good Will Hunting. Look, Matt Damon at that point was basically a nobody before Good Will Hunting comes out. So was Ben Affleck. They’re both nobodies. And they write Good Will Hunting. And if you watch Good Will Hunting, it’s an ode to Howard Zinn. I mean, the whole thing is centered around the theories of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. It’s very, very far-left material. Now, was that something they put in there because they thought it was commercial? That if they put in Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky it would be commercial? No. Were they openly trying to propagandize in the name of those people? Yeah, maybe a little bit. But for the most part, it was just they were trying to reflect the world that they lived in, and what they believed about the world comes out in their writing. And I think that there is a lot of natural kind of osmosis between people’s politics and their writing.
Bob Zadek: So this was—now the question is, you had mentioned earlier in the show that in how this all happened, you describe and you tell the story in a fascinating way in your book, of how these creative types—and that’s my label, it’s not necessarily yours—how these creative types when they move to positions of controlling content, when they move to Hollywood and they were separated from the business types who remained in New York where the studios were headquartered. How they—you mentioned almost as a throwaway comment, they were naturally left-leaning. What is there about—why do the two—why does that almost seem like a hyphenated phrase, creative and left-leaning? What is there about being creative that draws you towards a leftist point of view?
Ben Shapiro: Um, I think that—okay, so I think that there are a couple of different elements. One is that artists, no matter where they live, tend to be rebels against the status quo. They’re generally outcast types from their own families in many cases, certainly from their own communities. So if you look at Soviet Russia, right, their great artists are people like Solzhenitsyn, who’s right-wing. But if you come here, most of our great artists tend to be people who are very left-wing, like, you know, Arthur Miller. So the fact is that there is an element of rebellion to most creative types that in America is going to lend itself to leftism.
And I think another reason is that artists are generally not used to making a lot of money. And they’re not producing a product that is indispensable to the American public. Meaning, we all love our entertainment, we all spend a lot of time with our entertainment, but if you ask—if somebody’s going broke, the first place you’re probably going to cut is going to the movies every week. If you really, you know, if you’re responsible. If you’re not responsible, you want to live on welfare, you know, then you’ll continue going to the movies. But if you’re going to be a responsible human being, then the first place you cut is entertainment because it’s more of a frivolity as opposed to a necessity.
And so, you know, I think people in the artistic industry, they’re used to being the starving poets, the starving authors. And so they think, “Okay, but I would really love to be paid for that, right? I should be sponsored by the government or somebody should be paying my way.” And so if they make it, they feel like, “Yeah, what I do is quality, but I was a little bit lucky to make it.” And once you start basing the concept that your success is based on luck, that is pretty quickly going to drive you toward a socialistic point of view.
The “Less Fortunate” Label [20:10]
Ben Shapiro: I mean, this is why I hate the phrase—it’s very pernicious—I hate the phrase when people talk about the poor, they call them the “less fortunate.” I hate that phrase because, you know, that assumes that there is no skill or effort that goes into making someone successful. It’s all just about fortune, right? It’s luck of the draw. Well, the general tendency from that kind of logic is that we have to have a government rectify that luck of the draw. Everybody has to have an equal outcome because after all, you just bought a lottery ticket in life and you happened to win, you happened to lose, that’s not fair. So I think that that kind of attitude pervades Hollywood. People understand every waiter out here has a script. Everybody wants to be a movie star. Everybody wants to be in the industry. So if you make it and someone else didn’t, there’s a real tendency in Hollywood to think that it had something to do with luck and therefore you are now going to stump for a kind of socialistic redistribution of wealth or at least heavy regulation of those evil corporate types who made you rich in the first place.
Bob Zadek: You know, it’s interesting, last Sunday, Ben, you probably weren’t glued to the radio at noontime, but I went off on a mini-rant just complaining about that very phrase, “less fortunate.” And I got myself worked up because I said if I qualify as having the label of being successful, the last thing I would attribute it to is being fortunate. I worked my butt off, I happen to be smart, I happen to be ambitious, but there was no—there was no spin of the wheel. It was not an accident. It was just plain hard work for about 50 years. And I railed against that very phrase, “less fortunate.”
Ben Shapiro: And you’re exactly right. I mean, the fact—I wrote a column on it in the last couple of weeks, you know, because that phrase—and they use that all the time, the “privileged” versus the “underprivileged,” right? It’s not a matter of being privileged. I mean, the fact is that there are certain elements that are luck of the draw in the United States, right? Your IQ is luck of the draw. How—if you’re born smart, if you’re born stupid, that’s largely luck of the draw.
But what distinguishes the United States from other countries is the fact that there is class mobility. Smart people, no matter where they’re born—and studies show this—smart people, no matter where they’re born on the economic rungs of society, tend to rise, and stupid people, no matter where they’re born on the economic rungs of society, tend to fall. And so this phrase—I mean, the fact is that if you were just to look in a vacuum, take away the income thing for a second, take away poor versus rich, and just look at the benefits that are given to certain people, you would have to say that the people who are more fortunate in terms of actual luck are the people who get welfare benefits, who get special dispensations to get scholarships for college, who get all of these handouts because—and as opposed to the other people who pay higher tax rates and who are forced through regulation to discard their own wealth.
Those are the people who in a vacuum are less fortunate, you know, that—because the forces that are not under their control are not benefiting them. But the fact is that in our system, what it really should be and what it has been for a long time in the United States up until I think, you know, relatively recently, is a system where if you work hard, you can succeed. When we lose that, we lose the essence of the United States, and that’s the problem that I see with the “less fortunate” label.
Bob Zadek: You made me nervous a second ago when you mentioned that entertainment would be the first to go if you start to have financial problems. And my fear was that Hollywood, Streisand would be on the phone to the White House saying, “What we need is we need movie stamps,” sort of like the food stamps.
Ben Shapiro: I mean, I think there’s some truth to that. I mean, in Primetime Propaganda, I talk about how the government has had this—the Democratic Party in particular has had this very corrupt relationship with Hollywood, where Hollywood basically acts as the PR firm for the Democratic Party and the Democrats then turn around and hand cash back to Hollywood. I mean, the idea that Hollywood is a complete free market is just nonsense. I mean, the fact is that the cable industry, for example, is extraordinarily regulated. Local markets generally only have one or two cable companies, and those cable companies are forced to do certain things on behalf of local politicians in order to get essentially get accredited to broadcast in those particular markets. So there is that corrupt relationship. I mean, the idea of movie stamps, I don’t think that that’s really that far off, honestly. I mean, if the economy continues to go down and if people actually stop going to the movies, you’ll see that the government tries to give stimulus. I mean, you see states doing it already. They give all sorts of tax credits to businesses to Hollywood to kind of to try to attract them to go, you know, see the movies. So I think that it—I don’t think that that’s that far off in the future. If we’re already talking about how we’re going to give subsidies to newspapers that are going under, I really don’t see it being a long time before, you know, we start giving subsidies to studios that are going to go under because after all, this is a great American industry that’s too big to fail.
Bob Zadek: As we go to break, this is Bob Zadek talking with Ben Shapiro, Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. We’ll be back in 90 seconds. 800-345-5639 if you have any questions. Back real soon.
Case Studies in Political Messaging: Glee and All in the Family [25:48]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, Fox News Radio 910 AM on your dial, www.fox910.com on your computer. I’m joined today by Ben Shapiro, author of Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. Ben, thanks for staying with us. Ben, what would be an—if you wanted to prove your point about how the content is heavily left, is there one or a few poster children TV shows that you would select to really prove your point?
Ben Shapiro: Well, I mean, All in the Family is obviously kind of a groundbreaking show in terms of leftism. You know, Norman Lear said the whole point of the show was to make fun of Archie Bunker’s perspective and to make and to kind of uphold Meathead’s perspective with regard to the politics of it. Archie was always wrong, Meathead was always right. The only thing that made Archie tolerable was the fact that Meathead was so self-righteous that sometimes Archie would smack him down and the audience loved that. And what they did not expect was for Archie to become a popular character. That was something that they did not expect at all.
Another show that comes to mind in a more modern context is Glee. I mean, Glee to me is probably the most egregious show ever put on network television. The reason I say that is not because its content is so unique, but simply because Glee is specifically targeted at the high school musical crowd. It’s targeted at kids who are age 12 to 18. And basically the entire burden of the premise of the show is upholding the kind of gay agenda, right? I mean, the whole thing is about, you know, the bullying of Kurt and how Kurt’s, you know, how his rights are not being upheld and Kurt is an absolute saint. Kurt is of course the gay kid on the show, Chris Colfer. And that’s, you know, that’s the way that the show is drawn. And Ryan Murphy specifically said that. And not only that, I mean, he puts in his shock value gay stuff as well. I mean, he has the 15-year-old cheerleaders kissing each other on national television simply to make the point he can do it. So, you know, that kind of stuff is most egregious.
Skewing Reality in “Cops” and “Law & Order” [27:30]
Ben Shapiro: But I mean, you see it in everything from shows like Cops to shows like Law & Order, right? I mean, even things that are ostensibly conservative, there are elements of them that are specifically designed to appeal to kind of leftist sensibilities. Cops is a good example. I talked to John Langley, who’s the creator of Cops when I wrote Primetime Propaganda. And what John Langley said is he said, “Look, you know, the show is obviously about how cops are good guys and criminals are bad guys. But one thing that we made very careful of, we made sure that in all the footage, you know, most criminals in the United States are of minority descent. I mean, they tend to be African American or Hispanic. And the fact is that in Cops, he said, we skewed the statistics. We made sure that we had more white criminals than was statistically correct, simply because we didn’t want to quote-unquote perpetuate stereotypes.”
Now, there’s nothing stereotypical about showing the exact percentage that reflects what it is in real life. I mean, in fact, for Hollywood to even claim that, for Hollywood to even say that we are not going to show the exact percentage and what we’re going to show is in fact, you know, moving away from showing real life, that contradicts what they always say, which is, “Oh, we’re just reflecting what goes on in the country.” The fact is that they actively shape perceptions in the country. Right? I mean, that notion that we have to show extra white criminals just to kind of even out the black and Hispanic ones is really bizarre.
Even Law & Order is another good example. I mean, that show has totally run off the rails. I mean, that show started off as a pretty straightforward law and order show, right? And now it’s become every person on the show is an upper-class white business person. You’ll have episodes talking about whether Dick Cheney is a war criminal. Sam Waterston, who’s an ardent leftist, he’s spent his time kind of ripping on President Bush when President Bush was in office. And the creators of the show said that when Obama was elected, they would have had to have like a cast funeral basically if Obama had not been elected. So it’s very clear that most of the shows that you watch on your network television screen are going to be biased to the left in one way or another. There are a few exceptions, you know, Blue Bloods on CBS is an exception. Reality TV, I think, is an exception for the most part, but scripted drama, scripted comedies almost always lean to the left.
Caller Chris: Market Labels and Demographics [29:33]
Bob Zadek: Ben, we have a caller, Chris from San Francisco. Welcome to the show.
Caller (Chris): Hi, how are you?
Bob Zadek: Hi, Chris. How can we help you this afternoon?
Caller (Chris): Good, good. I was listening to you guys today and just kind of wondering why is everything shaped into this left-right discussion about television and media? And it’s always framed that way. And I think that—
Ben Shapiro: I don’t think it’s binary.
Caller (Chris): Pardon?
Ben Shapiro: Yeah, I’m not sure—Chris, I think that you’re right to a certain extent. I mean, I don’t think it’s binary. But I mean, if we’re going to talk about left-right, then there are certain group of policies obviously that people tend to think of as conservative and a certain group of policies people tend to think of as liberal. Hollywood tends to take a liberal line.
Caller (Chris): And I kind of think that’s where it’s wrong because that’s where groups keep blurring the lines between left and right and trying to force you into a camp when it isn’t—when there isn’t a left or right. You know, everybody’s center and you guys need to remember that. I think you guys make up this left and right stuff. And that’s what gives you an audience. You know, people who are hard on the right are going to listen to Fox, or I’m left, I’m going to listen to MSNBC, and all you do is kind of re-propagate the same things over and over again. But if you stand back and look at it, it’s, you know, we’re much more similar than any of this.
Bob Zadek: Well, I think if you’re talking about the public at large, you’re right. But Ben’s book doesn’t comment on—he’s not presenting a statistical abstract of the United States. Ben’s focus—and Ben, I didn’t mean to speak for you—but Ben’s focus is on his observation, supported by careful research and fully substantiated, is that in some instances we don’t have a cross-section of points of view. And Ben’s focus is on this very artificial subset of a couple of zip codes in the United States.
Caller (Chris): Well, you know, I actually am looking forward to reading the book. I’m a student myself of radio, TV, and film, so I appreciate what you’ve done with this. And I’ve noticed, you know, this left-right thing we keep doing where, you know, you mention the fact that they show a lot more African Americans or they may not show African American criminals or whatever it is. The bottom line is they’re just trying to generate as many people as they can to that screen. They don’t want to offend anyone in any way. So I think that’s where they can have a gay character on and a straight Joe Sixpack male can watch and go, “Oh, he’s gay and effeminate, so I can watch that and understand and not be bothered by it.” And I think that’s how people get hooked into these things.
The Economic Myth of the 18-49 Demographic [33:00]
Ben Shapiro: You know, I think, look, I think you’re obviously right, Chris. You’re obviously right when it comes to the idea that TV is trying to appeal to an audience, right? If it weren’t, then it would be NPR, right? It would not be successful. It would be PBS. But the fact is that they are not appealing to the broadest possible audience, and their politics does come into the discussion. So, you know, the cases that you just mentioned. You know, the fact is that when you’re talking about the character that are put on network television, they are not reflective of the vast majority of Americans. They are not, you know, people that the vast majority of Americans resonate to. You see a lot more shows like Glee than you do shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, which was a far more popular show actually, if you look statistically.
The people in Hollywood have never had to be answerable to the American public directly. What they—and this is a point that’s worth making and I kind of alluded to it earlier, and Chris, since you’re a student of film and TV, it’s one that’s worth looking into. The fact is that in TV, the way that the TV industry makes money is what they do is they take your eyeballs and then they monetize them. Meaning, you watch a TV show, the TV industry goes and they sell your eyeballs to an advertiser. Right? So if there’s a million viewers, they go to the advertiser and they say, “How much are you willing to pay me so that you can show your commercial to my viewers?”
Now, there’s only one problem with that. Normally that’s fine. There’s only one problem with that. The TV industry has gone further than that. They’ve made the case to the advertisers that the only viewers that are worthwhile at all are people who are aged 18 to 49. People who are aged 18 to 34. Young people are the only ones that matter in the slightest. Now, if you think about that for half a second, you realize that makes no sense at all. The people in this country who currently have disposable income are all 50 and above. We’re an aging country, we’re a baby boomer country, and the fact is the highest unemployment rate in the country right now is people aged 18 to 34, right? The younger you are, the more likely that you’re going to be unemployed. But those are the very people the TV industry has suckered the advertising industry into going after.
Caller (Chris): I think that group also spends more money. That’s the group as a whole that would spend more money on junk than somebody over 50.
Ben Shapiro: Well, that’s actually not true. I mean, the Nielsens came out themselves about two months ago and they said there’s zero correlation, none, between spending habits and age. There is none. I mean, sure, if you’re looking to market, you know, adult diapers, you’re not going to market it to 18-year-olds for the most part, unless, you know, it’s a drug crowd. But presuming it’s not a drug crowd, you’re going to market it—if you’re marketing Depends, you’re going to want to go to Nick at Nite, right? That makes sense. But if you’re a mainstream product buyer—
Caller (Chris): No, people at younger age do spend more money. People of younger age spend more of the money than older money. That’s just—
Ben Shapiro: There have been no—there have been no studies done, none, that show in a substantial way that that is true. And that the viewing habits of people who are 18 to 34 lock them in for life. That’s really the premise they say, not that younger people spend more money, because that doesn’t make sense.
Bob Zadek: Chris, you raise a good point that I’m going to ask—we have another caller, Chris, but I’m going to ask Ben to explain after we do our next caller, how the TV is able to be successful economically when they are not appealing to or depicting mainstream America but rather a subculture. Chris, thanks so much for your call. We appreciate you being a listener.
Caller (Chris): Thanks a lot, guys. Have a good day.
Caller Anne: The “Gay Agenda” and High School Realities [35:12]
Bob Zadek: We have another caller. I think you touched a nerve with Glee, Ben. Anne in Sausalito.
Caller (Anne): Hi, thanks for taking my call. Actually, what you just said is part of the point I wanted to make. You’re saying that our TV networks, writers are just trying to appeal to subcultures, but I think Glee is a great example of taking the milieu of high school and actually saying we’re all part of subcultures. I think Glee is doing a humorous way pointing out how ludicrous all of our high school experiences were. When you look at that show, you see oddballs in not just the students but also the teachers.
What struck a nerve with me was you set it up as though there is a so-called gay agenda and it is a left agenda, which I think is ludicrous. I think in mainstream America, certainly there are gay students probably in every high school. They may not be out because it may not be safe to be out. I don’t think they’re necessarily all left, unless as conservatives we say, “Oh, if you’re gay, you’re not part of the conservative movement.” But I think that’s ridiculous. I don’t think sexual orientation determines politics.
Ben Shapiro: Okay, let me respond to that real fast. Number one, this argument that we’ve heard twice now from two different callers, that labels are useless, to me is the most—that is a truly ludicrous argument. Labels are useful because they allow us to unpack certain terms and use them in shorthand. So if you want me to say that, yes, traditional conservative values have rejected gay marriage, have rejected the notion that lesbian cheerleaders should be having sex with each other on national television, then you’d have a hard time arguing that that does not reflect a conservative agenda. There’s no question it does not.
So if you, you know, the fact is that Glee, when it comes to the so-called gay agenda, it forwards it. And Ryan Murphy, who wrote the show, admits that. I mean, Ryan Murphy is a gay man and he said that one of the goals of the show is to heighten tolerance for gay and lesbian activity. And that’s his prerogative. He’s allowed to do that. I’m not calling for him to be quashed. All I’m saying is that if you are going to go out there and say that you are marketing to the vast majority of Americans, if you’re marketing to this broad swath of Americans, you’re alienating a hell of a lot of people.
And the fact is that Glee is a show—the first season when it got all sorts of publicity, right? Here’s an interesting statistic for you. The first season that Glee was on the air, Glee came in at number 33 in the primetime rankings. 33. Okay, this was not a top 10 show, it was not a monster hit. It did decently, right? 33 is a solid performance, it’s not an amazing performance. The Good Wife was a top 10 hit for CBS, right? More people watched The Good Wife than watched Glee. The fact is that for every thousand viewers, Glee was receiving $47 in advertising money. The Good Wife was receiving less than half of that in advertising money. So how does that make any sense? How is it possible that The Good Wife is actually making less money per thousand viewers when it has far more viewers than Glee?
And the answer is because the TV industry has bamboozled the advertising industry into thinking that the viewers of Glee are worth more than the people who view The Good Wife. And that’s a mistake. If you’re going to talk about the political agenda of Glee, however, there is no doubt whatsoever that Glee is a very left show. There’s no doubt whatsoever that every political position taken on that show, whether it’s with regard to religion or whether it’s with regard to politics where they take gratuitous swipes at people like Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, or whether it’s with regard to the gay agenda, which is very prominent on the show considering that it has multiple gay characters in a high school setting legitimizing every aspect of that behavior. Whether you agree with that or not, that is the agenda. Don’t argue that it’s not the agenda. Say that it’s an okay agenda, that’s okay, but don’t tell me that it’s not the agenda.
Caller (Anne): I’m confused how in a free market if advertisers are willing to pay more, they’re being bamboozled. What you pay—
Ben Shapiro: People get bamboozled in the free market all the time.
Bob Zadek: Excuse me gang, we’re going to have to go to break right now. We’ll be back in 90 seconds to continue this discussion. Bob Zadek, 800-345-5639, talking to Ben Shapiro, Primetime Propaganda. Back in 90 really short seconds.
The Modern Blacklist: Discrimination Against Conservatives [40:24]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, 800-345-5639 is our phone number, www.fox910.com is the way to catch us online. Thanks so much for staying tuned. I’m talking with Ben Shapiro, author of Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.
Ben, thanks for staying with us. Ben, in your book and in your columns and on TV, you have described something which I really found very disturbing since I can remember back to the ’50s and the Elia Kazan blacklisting ugliness of the communist witch hunt. You talk about how hard it is for people on the right to actually get work in Hollywood, how there is a very aggressive and very thorough blacklisting and sort of keeping people on the right from earning a living. Tell us a bit about that.
Ben Shapiro: The fact is that if you are openly right-wing when you come to Hollywood, you will not work. And when I say openly right-wing, specifically on social issues, that’s true. Right now, gay marriage is the dividing line. If you voted in favor of Prop 8, which upheld traditional marriage in the state of California, if you voted for Prop 8, then there is no question that you will not work in Hollywood. If they find that out, if you contributed, they will just blacklist you, period. It’s as simple as that.
On certain other issues with regard to the war, it depends on who’s in power. When Obama’s in power, you’re allowed to be pro-war. When Bush was in power, you were not allowed to be pro-war in Iraq or pro-war in Afghanistan. So it changes in certain areas, it tends to change based on political allegiances, you know, who’s in office at the time. But the fact is that if they find out that you are, for example, a Republican in Hollywood and you are early in your career, they will quash you.
Now, there are major Republicans working in Hollywood, people like Kelsey Grammer, Jerry Bruckheimer, Gary Sinise, those kind of folks. But the fact is none of them were Republicans when they started. None of them were openly conservative when they started their careers. It’s only after spending 20 years or so they decided to come out of the closet.
Bob Zadek: Like David Mamet.
Ben Shapiro: Yeah, exactly. David Mamet, right? I mean, David came out and he now—we’ll see. I think it’ll probably have a negative impact on his career. Something fascinating happened when I was writing Primetime Propaganda. A couple of interesting kind of things happened with regard to this particular issue. The first one was with regard to Patricia Heaton. Now, Patty Heaton is one of the most successful actresses in television, right? She is currently on the ABC show The Middle, and she was the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond. She’s been on a lot of major TV shows and done really well for herself. I interviewed Patty for the show, and Patty is right-wing. She’s at least right-wing with regard to abortion. She’s very anti-abortion, very pro-life. And so I asked her, “Have you feel like you’ve ever been discriminated against in Hollywood?” And she said no. And I said, “Okay, you know, that’s great. I’ll write that in the book. I want to make sure that I cover all perspectives on this issue.” She called me back about two days later. She said, “Ben, I started asking around. I got curious after we talked. I started asking around and I found out that I had lost six specific jobs due to my political affiliation. People didn’t want to work with me because they knew kind of where I was politically.” I said, “Well, okay, I’ll certainly write that.” Well, then she called back two days after that and she said, “Ben, I don’t even want to be in the book. I’m afraid if somebody sees me associated with your book, I’m not going to be able to work. People are going to try and discriminate against me in the industry.” Well, this is one of the top working actresses in Hollywood saying this to me. And I feel free to say it now because a few weeks before the book came out, she came out and said she’d been discriminated against in Hollywood. But the fact is that if it can happen to Patty Heaton, it can happen to anybody.
Personal Experience with Bias [44:00]
Ben Shapiro: Now, this is what’s really funny about this book. When I first started writing this book, when I first started writing Primetime Propaganda, you know, I’m a lawyer. I’ve never made a buck from Hollywood. I didn’t plan on making a buck from Hollywood. This was not my thing. But as I went along the process and interviewing people, I interviewed Leonard Goldberg, who’s the producer of Blue Bloods on CBS and Charlie’s Angels and all sorts of tremendously popular shows. And Leonard happens to be politically independent. So he and I got along really well, and he asked me to write a pilot for him based on my experiences at Harvard Law School. So I went ahead, I wrote a pilot for him, and we went into development on it. Everything’s hunky-dory. I go out and I go get an agent. To get an agent in Hollywood is very tough. It’s pretty difficult. So I go out and I get this agent and everything is going swimmingly. We have a meeting, everything’s terrific. I get a call about three weeks later and the agent said, “Ben, I’m not sure we can represent you.” And I said, “Okay, you know, why is that? Explain.” And he says, “Well, we’ve got your work around town and it got some response. People were really interested in it. One producer in particular was so interested that he Googled you and he came across your website and he found your political writings. And he said, ‘I will never work with anybody of that political persuasion.’” So he had liked my writing and specifically decided that he would not work with me based on my politics, even though he had no clue about my politics from reading my writing. So that’s unfortunately how it goes in Hollywood. I ended up continuing to work with the agent, and I told him, “Look, if this starts to become a major issue, then I’m just going to write under a pseudonym.” But I know a lot of working writers in Hollywood right now who are writing under pseudonyms because they don’t want people Googling their real names and finding out they donated money to the Bush campaign.
Bob Zadek: Ben, I have two questions. We’re going to run out of time unfortunately, but two questions that I want to cover. Is first of all, when you use the dichotomy, the left-right dichotomy, I guess you are using that predominantly on social issues. Would a libertarian, somebody who is somewhat, I’ll say, agnostic on social issues—I describe myself—but just a free-marketeer, small government type—you of course know libertarian tenets. Would they have the same resistance as somebody who is socially conservative?
Ben Shapiro: It depends on how open they are about the economic part of their platform. I mean, if a libertarian comes to Hollywood and emphasizes that they’re libertarian on social policy, which is to say relatively liberal on social policy, then people are going to be okay with them. If, however, they choose to come out in true Ayn Randian fashion and say we need to cut the scope of government because government destroys business and government is inhibiting to the free spirit of Americans, if libertarians come out and they—it depends what strain of libertarian you are, but if you’re pro-hawkish national defense because you feel that America needs to be protected in order to preserve that freedom, depending on which strain you choose to emphasize, there will be ramifications. But there’s no question that the most controversial elements of the conservative agenda in Hollywood are going to be the social ones because that goes right to the heart of what a lot of people in Hollywood live like. And so they don’t like being judged. And even if you’re not judging them, they have a feeling that if you are a religious person, for example, that you must in the back of your mind be judging them, that you must be just hell to work with. You’re going to be John Lithgow from Footloose basically on the set, which is ridiculous.
Competing with the Machine: Declaration Entertainment [47:52]
Bob Zadek: Ben, in only about two minutes we have left, I asked myself as I read through your book and watched your interviews, I said to myself—talking to myself—I’m a free-marketeer, and if Hollywood is excluding people, lots of people with talent just because of their political beliefs, the market ought to punish them. And why can’t some other studio, if that’s the right type of description, hire people who are excluded and they would find themselves with this plethora of talent? And then I discovered—and I want to give you a chance to explain to the audience in only two minutes—your project called Declaration Entertainment, and I thought that was speaking to the very issue of the free market.
Ben Shapiro: Oh yeah, I mean, I’m not calling for any boycotts on Hollywood in Primetime Propaganda. I don’t think that Hollywood should be shut down as it currently stands. I think they’ve created tremendous market inefficiencies, and I think that we can exploit those market inefficiencies. So I’m involved with an organization that’s currently moving toward 501(c)(3) status called Declaration Entertainment that is specifically dedicated to going out and using all the conservative talents that are out there and creating entertainment that is more in line with traditional American values. And I think that it’ll be very—look, you’ve seen that it’s successful in the religious realm. Hollywood completely ignores the religious folks. What’s the most successful movie in history maybe, especially for its budget level? The Passion, right? Which goes out and makes like a billion dollars. That’s something Hollywood would never, never, never have made. And Mel Gibson goes out there with a bunch of right-wingers and makes it and makes a fortune on it. The same thing can be done in the political sphere. I deeply believe that, it’s why I’m involved in this process, and that’s why I say I don’t believe in boycotts, I don’t believe in regulation. I took a pretty libertarian approach here, and I think that the best way to beat them is to compete with them.
Bob Zadek: So are you going to be sort of what I thought of in my head was Hollywood version of Fox News?
Ben Shapiro: No, what I want to do is make great entertainment that happens to be conservative, not conservative entertainment that may or may not be good. I think people tend to think we have two sides of our brain, the political side of our brain and the entertainment side of our brain. When the entertainment side is on, conservatives and libertarians will watch anything. We’ll go and watch Avatar even though it’s the most anti-American movie ever because it’s a good movie. When the political side of our brain is on, then we’ll go watch whatever crap anybody puts out as long as it’s on that side of the political aisle. We’re in the entertainment arena, I want to compete with Hollywood, and I feel that if we don’t offend the American public, I think that gives us an advantage right out of the gate. Our disadvantage is that they have tremendously higher budgets.
Bob Zadek: Ben, thanks so much for joining me for the whole hour. We’ve been speaking with Ben Shapiro. Go out and read Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. Bob Zadek saying so long for today.