Two weeks and a bit more after election day, and the meltdown, panic, and dismay among the progs, the establishment media, and the entertainment world continues. I’m taking an unworthy pleasure in reading reports of panic and back-biting among partisans of the Harris/Walz camp and the noisy laments of their cis-gender or bi significant others. I’m also taking a savage pleasure in reading about or viewing evidence of the dismayed realization among the managerial class in certain industries dependent economically on the choices of the general public – that conservatives and Trump voters buy shoes, too. Also movie tickets, newspaper and magazine subscriptions and other consumer goods.
You’d think that anyone paying attention might have realized this some months, or even years ago, but apparently our managerial class of the liberal persuasion need to be smacked with the obvious – along the lines of a mushroom cloud over a Japanese city, a dinosaur-killing asteroid, an earthquake along the New Madrid seismic zone (which made the Mississippi River briefly flow backwards), or the Trump landslide. If, as Andrew Breitbart observed once, politics is downstream from culture – are we seeing that current reversed, and is culture flowing downstream from MAGA?
More than two weeks have gone by, and Trump’s success is still all too much for some of them to take. A good few are reacting in an embarrassingly theatrical manner. Abandoning Twitter/X and flouncing off to the echo chamber of Bluesky. Rob Reiner is signing himself into some kind of rehab center, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are flouncing off and going to Britain to live … well, at least one celebrity couple are making good to leave the US on account of Trump’s election. My only question is – can’t they take Oprah Winfrey with them? I’ve never paid any heed to celeb endorsements, by the way – and the gruesome crew who came out for Harris-Walz is enough to put one off going to their movies ever again. (Good thing that Harrison Ford is pretty much aged out of anything but character parts. He’s now in my ‘not unless dragged by wild horses’ category, right alongside Jane Fonda and every single one of those participants in that horrifyingly embarrassing ‘zoom call-avengers assemble!’ video promotion.)
The more sensible corporations and companies – or those who have been paying attention to the bottom line, and who desire their companies to continue making a handsome (or even a moderately attractive) profit seem to have made a rational decision. Indeed, the owner of the L.A. Times (which once used to be a substantial and respected newspaper) and the international book publisher Hachette apparently do want to rein in the hysterical progressives among their respective employees and appeal to that niche market of the majority of American consumers. Even if their employees are having screaming meltdowns. Yes, there’s a large audience out there – probably more for books, than for newspaper subscriptions. How many other companies have decided, in the wake of Trump’s election that they had rather make a fat bottom line, and never mind the howling from their in-house woke element? Discuss as you wish.
There are a few reasons it took a seismic shift to make companies take notice:
One is that they really, truly believed that ‘the masses’ were sheep, that they could skinsuit pop culture properties, populate them with the ‘correct’ messages, and the sheeple would just mimic the modern messaging. Star Wars is just laser swords, space ships, and muppets, right?
Add in the bubbles they created; everybody either agreed with them or shut the hell up, because to do otherwise was to never get hired again. Nobody would actually say why, but people aren’t stupid. Keep this up and eventually you forget (or, for the really slow, never notice) that people who disagree (and even find your ideas anathema) exist in real life; they’re just a story the news tells you to get your attention, or they’re paid shills that don’t really believe what they’re saying.
Then, of course, there was the ESG money. The infamous McKinsey study that gave progressive money men the cover they needed to claim that ‘diversity’ made companies more profitable. Get the ESG money men to fund your project, and you got paid whether or not you turned a profit. Combine that with the work of investment firms like Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street, who voted for progressive policies with the shares they owned as fund managers; managers of index funds don’t have much to do beyond vote the funds’ shares.
So: a belief that they can create the ‘modern audience,’ a carefully crafted hugbox, and other people’s money. As a start.
Often omitted in the discussion: Celebs who leave the U.S. to live elsewhere still owe income taxes on all income. The U.S. is rare in that it taxes the global income of U.S. citizens regardless where they live. Tina Turner renounced her US citizenship, moved to Switzerland, and paid a hefty exit tax on assets.
I will admit, it has been entertaining for the last few weeks. Actually more entertaining than the “entertainment” normally provided by the biz.
Aside from the mentioned Ms Degenerate, who no one will miss, Eva Longoria has left for her Spanish estate. (Now can we get rid of her TV commercials? [Loreal]) Richard Gere has also left for Iberia, where he can join Prince Harry (but Meghan is still partying in LA. Oh well.)
Once they finish their tantrums and storming off, is there some way we can keep them from coming back? The European entertainment establishment “needs” (deserves) these people.
Having dealt with a number of Spanish labor guys over the years, I can tell you that entitled types don’t do well among them. (Don’t tip in Spain. They feel it’s insulting. And will tell you.)
I breathlessly don’t await further developments.
Trump voters also buy razors and beer. That’s certainly been evident in the commercials for Bud Light and Gillette recently. As my gay friends might say, they’ve suddenly become a lot more “butch” than they used to be. To paraphrase Seinfeld, “What advertising genius thought up the brilliant plan of demonizing men and waving the rainbow flag?”
It’s just so much a surprise to me that it took the election to wake up the consumer goods and entertainment corporations. Not so much the news media – they’ve been waxing fat on openly being the progressive public relations arm since – the Bush-Kerry contest? I hope to see all those media personalities like Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid have to learn to code, or retreat to their mansions to snivel about how they are being unemployable and ignored.
There are enterprises that I do feel saddened about their self-inflicted downward spiral, though. Disney, f’rinstance. So many creative, and much-loved animated features over freaking decades, and even popular, non-controversial family entertainment … and all they can seem to produce now …is live-action versions of their animated features. Or unwanted sequels. Volumes and volumes of folklore of all lands … and all they can do is … a live-action version of Moana, and Sleeping Beauty. Any really creative and innovative souls left working for the Kingdom of Mouse must be dying inside.
It’s been suggested that there’s an opportunity for someone to start a business to enable independent film producers: production and editing tools, connections to soundtrack music creators, legal services, hosting of resulting video. Would be complex and expensive, but I think there may be something there.
Maddow is supposed to be facing a $5mil pay cut. She’s probably a good ways from the poor house or learning to code.
David, there’s already a whole ecosystem of just that supporting a lot of YouTube channels and I would assume Tik Tok as well. Somewhere around 100K subscribers and you start to see paid camera operators and things like editing and compositing farmed out or hired in. Of course, smart cameras and software make everything orders of magnitude less expensive than it was. The big limit seems to be the time it takes to edit cuts into the time to create, so that is usually the first hire. With the internet, it’s really easy to hire an editor from anywhere. There are sources for copyright free music as well as paid and even written to order music and of course YouTube hosts and monetizes.
Beyond YouTube, there are several other paid subscriber platforms that host different sorts of content. One that comes to mind is called Brilliant for educational type content as well as others specializing in history and probably many I haven’t heard of.
Then there’s the whole podcast thing, so there’s no real limit on alternative platforms, all you need to do is figure out how to build an audience.
In terms of fiction, there’s a lot of that as well. On YouTube search “Dust” for some independent SF. It looks to be put together by professionals but I have no idea of all the back story.
MCS…yes, but there is value in putting a lot of resources in one place so people won’t have to search around for them. Especially people who have an idea & some potential talent but no experience or contacts in the industry.