Posted by
Amanda Keller on Friday, November 07, 2008 9:58:49 PM
As I read conservative article after conservative blog after another, the level of finger-pointing and head-scratching going on regarding the Republican loss baffles me. The majority of the voices blame McCain, whining and kavetching that he was never a true Conservative, that our straying from the right was the reason for the Republican defeat, WRONG. Another crowd piles on Palin because isn’t that the “Washington elite” thing to do these days? Jump on the Alaskan hillbilly, if not for her, McCain would have prevailed…GET REAL! Believe me, Palin was the reason that campaign went a day past the convention.
First off, no Republican stood a snowballs chance in hell this go ‘round. If Hillary had been the Dem’s candidate we would have conceded the race three months ago. The Democrats however, saw the handwriting on the wall. It was now or never to run a true left-winger for President. With Bush’s popularity in the toilet, it was worth going for the dream and so they did. The Left has been waiting for this moment since 1902 when the Socialist Party of America was formed. They have been laying in wait and so the hour chimed. In any competition, the one that wants the win the most always gets it. But the causation of this defeat is more complex that just sheer desire.
Listen to me my conservative compatriots; there is no one person responsible for the Republican trouncing that has occurred in the last two election cycles. The key to the conservative defeat is found within the media. And I am not really even talking about the mainstream news media though they do have a place at the table. The news media are simply the excuse du jour for the Conservative movement. No, the downfall of the Republican, conservative message has been in the works covertly, stealthily, cleverly costumed for a full three decades. The conservative movement has been eroded by the relentless subconscious drumbeat of American entertainment be it, television, movies, books, magazines and now the internet.
As I watch the shows of my youth on Nick At Night I am floored by the subliminal seeds of liberalism sewn within the happy, hilarious, seemingly innocuous sitcoms and films I lapped up each and every day of my childhood. The first order of business of the left was to tear apart the family structure and so they did so subtly, so shrewdly. As a kid, there were no messages, just really funny jokes and absurd characters that I related to, or at least they told me I did.
When I think back to a few of my favorites, “Gidget” (re-runs, I’m not that old), “Andy Griffith” (re-runs, before my time), “My Three Sons” (same year as Andy), “Family Affair”(now we’re talking Mrs. Beasely), “Courtship of Eddie’s Father”, “Nanny and the Professor”, the hidden agenda begins to take shape, the structure of the family unit must be diminished. All of these innocent comedies were oddly devoid of a mother in the home. The message became that women in the home raising children was unnecessary, obsolete. See everybody, none of these families have moms and they are doing fine, better than fine. In fact, the ones that have all men in the home seem to run even smoother than the ones with stand-in female figures. Aunt Bea was constantly getting flustered, needing Andy to make it all right. Whereas Mr. French was more than capable as the gentleman’s gentleman, solving all of the problems Jody, Buffy and Cissy could drum up for Uncle Bill. The call to stay-at-home moms was clear: Women, leave the home and have a real career because if you don’t well, like in all of these shows, you’re as good as dead.
Then there were the string of shows where it was the working mom struggling alone, like “The Ghost And Mrs. Muir”, “Julia”, “Alice”” and One Day At A Time”. Hollywood much prefers a family unit that is void of at least one parent figure though “Facts Of Life” pushed the envelope. Usually for the men alone scenarios, their wives had died (from housework) but with the single moms, a divorce was a more attractive set-up, allowing for storylines featuring the ex-husband who was religiously portrayed as a male chauvinist. The helpful male characters in the “women on their own” shows were typically bumbling as with Snyder in “One Day At A Time” and Mel in “Alice”, the Charles Nelson Riley character in “Ghost And Mrs. Muir” (the ghost managed to fill the chauvinist roll even in death).
None of this was obvious to me until I ran up against Hollywood’s anti-family agenda first hand in film school. I’d turn in my scripts to my Hollywood professors who time and time and time again would call for me to rewrite my characters. My concepts, the plotline, the “writing” they loved but my characters consistently rubbed them the wrong way. The family relationships I created typically centered around a stay-at-home mom who would kick her kids’ asses when expectations were not met but on the flip side she would take a bullet for them without a thought given. My professors HATED this character. According to them, an audience would never relate to people who behaved this way because there was nothing real about them. Huh? Nothing real? These people were my family, warts and wonders, all. These were the real characters I grew up with. The problem was, these characters put each other first. That familial archetype was verboten in Hollywood. In Hollywood, families need to be a group of individuals with separate agendas always at odds, always with the concern of ego and self taking prominence.
The Hollywood professors wanted the father character chasing skirts, gambling or snorting coke while the stay-at-home mom character (if I had to have such a thing) was either passive and drug-dependent or else a modern career woman who had a line of men to put in their place through ruthless business deals and extramarital affairs, all much more dramatic than just raising a family. I kept asking myself when they would critique me, “Who hatched you?” But they were my professors and bottom line, I wanted to write in Hollywood, at least I thought so at first.
By year two I had had it. My thesis script was nothing like I had intended. The pressure to write to a formula script, sex scene by page 46, chase scene by page 82, another sex scene on page 115 and at least three people killed or maimed by Act III left me disgusted at the thought of seeking a career in screenwriting. I knew I was done when one professor exclaimed, if the villain triumphs, all the better. I’ll never forget that day. We were told a good writer could take the most despicable character and write him in such a way that the audience is rooting for him in the end. “THAT is the mark of great storytelling,” said my so-called writing mentor. Really? I thought that was the mark of great manipulation and grifting.
So what does all of this Hollywood shoptalk have to do with the Republican Party or the Conservative movement? I’ll tell you what. Liberals seized the entertainment industry long ago because they realized control over the message meant control over all. Others will do the work for you as long as you entertain them, make them laugh and most importantly, make them think what you want them to think. Conservatives paid little to no attention to such business. Conservatives were more interested in building the infrastructure of our country, laying out the markets of free enterprise, doing the sort of work that required back breaking days or long hours at the office or the running of the restaurant or walking the beat so that the streets were safe, the raising of children to have a sense of responsibility, a sense of honor, a sense of duty to do the right thing. The entertainment industry provided the innocent escape from the pressures of a hard day. A family could sit down, watch a show or go to a movie and laugh together. We all need that escape. Entertainment is a must to a hard working people. And so one group provided this as another group provided that. Seems like a good deal. Not exactly.
Conservatives think they control business while Liberals do control thought hence, it all. Liberals teach their rational of the world through the arts, academics and most importantly, the media, all media. The liberals have succeeded so thoroughly that they no longer have to be stealth in their campaign. Some paint images of the Virgin Mother and smear it with excrement while calling it art, some teach in the college classrooms that 9-11 was America’s fault due to our greedy capitalist society and evil foreign policy and these professors face no serious repercussions. Global warming is unquestionably 100% man-made with anyone offering an opposing theory finding themselves shunned by their colleagues, the threat of being taken away in a straight jacket in some cases. In this past election a major network shamelessly promoted the Liberal candidate over the Conservative. By the way, incase you hadn’t gotten the memo; objectivity in journalism is dead (just like stay-at-home moms). The television shows no longer hide their agenda of dissolving the family unit; they’ve promoted Will and Grace, Sex In The City and Desperate Housewives (those being the tame ones) with no care of a backlash. Entertainment has an agenda and it ain’t fair and balanced. Chevy Chase himself just admitted proudly this week to portraying Gerald Ford in the worst possible light in order to get Carter elected. Tina Fey, you continue the tradition well my dear. In fact, most conservatives can’t get enough of this garbage and I’m right there within those ranks. I’ve been brought up on all of this messaging and marketing and am just as guilty of absorbing it.
But as they say, the first step in recovery is self-recognition. I was and still am a Seinfeld devotee even though I know it promoted the “remain a single-metro-sexual lifestyle” agenda, advancing the idea that anyone can sleep with anyone and still be best friends, have crazy, funny, even mean-spirited things happen and laugh about it all of the time. But come on, the writing, the characters, they were/are SO funny and clever! That’s the beauty of the liberal strategy. Promotion of societal mores through humor, drama, storytelling as a whole has created the archetypes America now identifies with gladly because they are all so much fun to align with on a pop culture level. For example, self-professed Conservative Feminist, one Margaret Hoover, proclaimed proudly to Bill O’Reilly, how her generation (I guess mid-30’s) “get” the validity of homosexual marriage. Margaret, honey, I’ve had female roommates throughout college and grad school, along with a series of plutonic male housemates, apartment mates and a certain male husband for over 14 years. Let me tell you the reality, no matter what your sexual orientation, co-existing with someone of your own sex is light years easier, even if you don’t “like” the other same-sex person, than it is to cohabitate with a person of the opposite sex.
I easily got along better personally with my male roommates but when it came to communicating a grievance, serious issue, etc., talking to another woman, even one I was not fond of, was a walk in the park compared to the absurd handicap charades I would have to endure with each of my male roommates and that even includes my easy-going husband to this day. That said, I haven’t even broached the personal hygiene ramifications that crop up in mixed-sex living conditions. Honestly, I don’t have a problem with adults of the same sex living together and formalizing their relationship with a civil union but marriage is a whole other challenge that simply deserves a separate distinction. Of course, I’ve not even highlighted the REASON for the title of marriage in the first place which was to legitimize any child resulting from that partnership. What an arcane, backward concept! Margaret, I can tell you need to graduate from just taking care of Margaret and the “I’m so evolved” myth to being a grown-up. I was you not all that long ago so I have faith in you yet.
Back to my point, Liberals realized first we humans are wired to be seduced by a flat screen, be that a television, movie or a computer screen, the flickering of an illuminated image speaks to our psyche like no other with the exception of the voice of God, at which case, if heard and admitted to, you too will be hauled off in the same van with the skeptical scientist who questions Global Warming. Is there a pattern here, or what?
Leaving nothing to chance, ensuring their clamp on our social fabric, Liberals have simultaneously floated the notion that Conservatives are unimaginative, humorless, and even dumb. I’m beginning to wonder if the Liberals have a point? Even Al Qaeda, an Islamo-facist, anti-west, anti-modern movement aspiring to adhere to 6th century Sharia Law realized over a decade ago that media and the marketing of one’s message is the pathway to influence and ultimate power. Excuse me, where are the Conservatives in this m-field of revelation? Are they all glued to their couches watching “Oprah” and “The Office”, “Ellen” and “House” waiting and wondering why the Conservative message isn’t catching on?
Are you seeing the point of all this seemingly unconnected blather? Control of the message equals control of the power. In America there is only one school of thought that dominates and permeates our subconscious. Liberals own Hollywood, the Universities and of course the news media. Do Conservatives truly want to get in the game? Do they really want to be relevant? If the answer is “yes” then I personally invite you all to the 21st century. You portend to have a way of life you’d like to see catch hold? Then put your money where your mouth is! Produce movies, television shows; publish books, magazines, be a patron to art that speaks with the Conservative tongue promoting a new idea to the human psyche. And I am not talking over the top messages; I love Jesus, no sex before marriage, no talking with your mouth full, heavy-handed stuff. The Libs started out stealth and did it well, no, they did it brilliantly and have earned the right to be unabashedly brazen with their message at this point. Conservatives, you have to be creative. Sorry, it’s a fact.
Here’s the upside. If Conservatives are smart, and I know there are some of you out there, we will begin to write, produce and display the ideas and lifestyles we hold so dear in creative, clever, sharp, ways that promote the unstoppable moxey of each individual. Of course that calls for you not as clever Conservatives to BACK the creative juices of your more theatrical cohorts. We have to portray old hippie liberal professors as the one’s whose heads are up their asses (talk about playing to type) and young rebellious, attractive conservatives as the ones bucking the establishment because my friends, like it or not, Liberals ARE the establishment. Which ironically, works to our advantage. Conservative thought is the avante garde! We are the anti-establishment. Don’t you feel bad? And I’m meaning that in a good way! Time to get with it. We’ve done a p#*s- poor job of marketing these truths to our young. Get those texting thumbs in shape. We must connect with our future and show them they need not wallow in the gutter of human existence to be accepted and cool.
I have a plan that begins with ripping up the false truths of the Gloria Steinem brand of Feminism. As a mother of three daughters, self-worth, self-confidence, self-determination are at the top of my list for the success of my daughters. I would like there to be a message that clues girls into the importance of their sexuality. Not the screwed up Madonna, Ellen, Pamela Anderson exhibitionist vein of sexuality but rather the message that explains to a young girl that her sexuality is perhaps the most precious gift to be given with the utmost discriminating standards applied. For, shouldn’t a young woman’s sexuality rate at least as important as Grey Poupon Mustard?
Seriously, a woman’s mind can compete with a man’s and so it should for the good of all. On the field of ideas a woman shall share her gifts as freely as possible but sexuality should be elevated to a higher standard. I know, tons of men don’t want to hear this. Not to fear. 100% conversion to Conservatism? I am sure there will always be Liberal girls hanging around “The City”. And so, I digress, if the new, evolved woman chooses to share her most unique and private aspect of herself, it should be only with one whom is proven true, committed and worthy of the role of mate and father. I’m not crazy. I’m not asking for all women to be virginal until they are 40 but I am asking that women value themselves in order to be valued by others. To me, as a woman, this is quite a powerful concept. A concept capable of lifting our entire society to a more evolved level. Dogs in heat can roam around and have sex at random. There is nothing evolved about that.
So are you Conservatives serious about taking back the culture, the society, and the country? Are you ready to stop pointing fingers at the Republican nimrods in Washington? The revolution begins outside the beltway. The control of the country lies in control of the culture, which is steered by the masters of the media. No one has to vote you into office, you just have to get out there and inject the new storyline into pop culture promoting Conservatism as is the ultimate rebellious thought, the thought that says each person is capable of great things in spite of the boot of the Big Government Liberal Establishment standing on one’s neck. Who wants crumbs (strictly vegetarian crumbs) from Liberals when as a Conservative every individual can buy one’s own steak when one wants, cooked how one likes it? Conservatives own a real message. A message tailor made for sitcoms, movies, songs, art and yes, even the White House.