Allow me to explain.
There’s an article from the Hollywood Reporter making its way around the blogosphere, “Republicans in biz feel stifled, bullied.” (Their headlines are so creative.)
Now, I don’t generally talk about politics, because that’s not what this blog is about. (Unlike John Rogers, who, in the last two months, has posted maybe one article about writing.) But this is about how politics can affect your job, so I’m making an exception this time.
First off, I don’t want to claim there’s some sort of vast, left-wing conspiracy going on.
There isn’t a blacklist. (As I stated in my comments on Rogers’s blog, I think Klavan’s statement that he didn’t want to be “the Dalton Trumbo of the right” is mere hyperbole.)
But I’m offended at the notion that this is all in our right-wing heads. We are almost always the lone conservative in the room. It’s not just that liberals are the majority, but they are such a majority that they don’t even consider the possibility that a conservative might be around. And when I leave the room, they’re right!
People feel perfectly free to claim that Republicans are hateful, biggoted, war-mongering, stupid, and more. Is there any other group you could so openly disdain, without any fear of repurcussion? Oh, yeah, Catholics.
The thing I found most offensive, though, is Rogers’s claim that we conservatives are merely feeling “occasional discomfort during cocktail party conversations.”
I’m a PA. I make six hundred a week, live in the Valley, drive a Corolla, and have never been to a cocktail party in my life. If I were a producer, and the only person I had to answer to was my liberal showrunner, Rogers might have a point.
But there are five levels between me and the showrunner, and they’re all varying degrees of liberal, from a Joe Lieberman-type to someone who could be a Rush Limbaugh parody.
I do not feel free to discuss my views with almost any of them, except in the most veiled, indirect ways, and I defy anyone in my position to say otherwise.
16 Responses
Ya got me!
Here’s a picture of me with my friends.
Good times. I’ll consider this case closed.
Given your attempts to throw off you real identity, however, I can only assume now that you are a left-wing elitist.
I have voted Republican for a myriad of reasons. Neither party is perfect. I don’t assume you accept the worst of the left, necessarily.
I am no stranger to error, but I do try to take responsibility and correct the mistakes. Someone once told me that’s how accountability works. 🙂
‘Guilt by association…’ You did vote republican, didn’t you? Now is the time to take responsibility, then. That’s how accountability works. I can only imagine the urge to deflect it, though.
You’re right. It was meant to read ‘objectively,’ but you’re no stranger to error either ( “http://anonymousassistant.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/theyre-their-dont-cry/” )
Guilt by association. Very nice.
I think you meant to write “objectively,” as in, you are an impartial observer. Also, you’re not.
To be honest, anyone who freely calls themselves a republican should feel uncomfortable wherever they go.
They, by proxy, represent all the slime that their party produces. Suggesting the Democratic nominee for president is a terrorist, calling for a witch hunt of un-American politicians… these actions aren’t only slimy, they’re unacceptable. If you don’t want to be fodder for (rightly) upset citizens, you should disassociate with such a disgusting party. As a registered independent, I can say all this subjectively.
My advice: refrain from calling yourself a republican. “Conservative” may help save face a bit, though neither choice is very appealing.
brother, i feel for you. i’m black… “the good kind” and you’d be shocked at the amazingly racist things people will say thinking it’s cool because you’re not “the angry black guy.” a good friend’s wife had an obama shirt on at a weekend work conference and a woman she never met before proceeded to tell her how he’s going to let the borders open which will threaten “their” lifestyle to which she calmly told her, her husband was venezuelan. the woman commented surely he was born here and she told her, “no, he came here eight years ago.”
i have a friend who was a campaign manager for jeb bush and every time i see sarah palin question my patriotism because i don’t live in a city, michelle bachmann calling for an investigation to see who in congress is pro-america and every time anybody says “hussein” when commenting on obama knowing it preys on a lie, i wonder how she sleeps at night. as a black guy when black people do stupid stuff on the news, i’m embarassed.
we’ve come to pride ourselves in ignorance hiding behind morality and religion as an excuse. those who’ve read a book or two are suddenly elitist. there is a difference between elitism and arrogance and even in this country where we’ve started to believe the american dream isn’t a dream but a right and trophies are given to kids who lose sports, some of us are more qualified than others.
call me crazy but i’d still rather sit in a busfull of the furthest left illegal immigrant, pacifist, pro-choice, vegan, tree-hugging, homosexual darwinist than one hate-spewing ann coulter. if the craziest lefty is someone throwing paint on fur or even a dude who blows shit up trying to protest vietnam and the craziest right dude is a klansman yelling “n*gger go home” or a man masquerading as “God’s Servant” outside the funerals of soldiers yelling “God Hates Fags” then i’ll still stay on my side.
that doesn’t mean i don’t respect you or like you. you seem like a cool guy. you’re not my enemy. you’re a fellow american, my brother and i’ll assume, loves his country even with it’s flaws. we need to understand it isn’t “us vs them” but “us and them.”
You’re right about the lefts dominance in Movieland. Here in NY, too. And I’d suppose I’m part of that even if I see myself as basically centrist.
I won’t get into who started it. It doesn’t matter. But it sucks on both sides. I can point out the part that pisses me off: Michelle Bachman calling on journalists to find out which U.S. Representatives are UnAmerican? Yeah, that pissed me off.
On my side? I never had a problem with Obama going to Rev. Wright’s church, but a decidedly conservative friend pointed out that he was taking his kids there to listen to the same poison without context and that bugs the shit out of me. I won’t change my vote, but the halo is definitely tarnished.
I really wish we were all capable of seeing nuance.
I have to admit that I feel momentarily surprised when I find out that a blogger who works in the entertainment field is a conservative (e.g. Rob Long). Your political leanings don’t matter but I can see how many would make assumptions as to what they are.
Nevertheless, politics should be left out of the workplace and no one should be made to feel like an outcast or that their career could be jeopardized if their politics were made public.
PS:
Maybe you could wear some sort of identifying marker like an armband or tattoo so we could keep tabs on you.
; )
You’re right that this is a response to Limbaugh. Of course, his breed were spawned out of nearly pure democratic control from the New Deal through the Great Society. Even when Nixon and Reagan were in office, they couldn’t gain control of the congress. Bush was the first Republican president in a long time to have a like-minded legislature.
There may be hope, though, as people my age were adolescents when talk radio started to take hold. It seems like it’s been going on our whole lives and, quite frankly, we’re sick of it.
I too am a liberal, but find good reasons to avoid talking politics at work, one of which you’ve pointed out. The idea is to be considerate of others, and to treat them as you too would like to be treated — and that means avoiding the temptation to smear other people’s points of view with a broadbrush of hot tar.
Unfortunately, we now live in a “Lord of the Flies” world — and it got that way in large part due to talk radio foghorns like Limbaugh, Savage, Beck, and others on the extreme right. Toss in religious nutcases like Falwell and Robertson, and you’ve got a nice boiling pot of Hate Stew — and all of that hatred has been directed at very high volume against liberals. Leading by example, these media stars of the right made it okay to treat liberals as naive, unpatriotic, hedonistic fools who — intentionally or not — have been systematically subverting the American Way. Some on the far right have been motivated to go beyond words — bombing abortion clinics, killing doctors, and in the latest spasm of anti-liberal violence, invading a Unitarian Church in Tennesse to kill several innocent people.
Those who indulge in this kind of violence are mentally unbalanced individuals, not at all representative of mainstream American Conservatism – but when the crazies in our midst start fires in the dry woods, it’s no real surprise when those fires begin to burn out of control.
I truly belive that the atmosphere of intolerance among liberals towards conservatives these days is a direct response to the last twenty five years of fire and brimstone coming from the right. Action begets reaction, for better or worse — and this time it’s definitely for the worse.
I’d hate to be a conservative in the Industry, and it pains me that you/they must endure such rude, boorish behavior. Unfortunately, we seem to be turning into a nation of boors, and this coarsening of the dialog on both sides of the political divide is Exhibit A. The current state of political polarization is a scary thing. When all we want to do is huddle in the echo chamber of our like-minded fellows rather than actually listen to each other and perhaps find common ground, we’re heading down a truly nasty road. I’m not sure where it ends — and my fear is, we’ve only seen the beginning.
I’m so liberal I’m practically some kind of wacky European socialist, and I agree with you. I’m amazed by how free people in this business feel to assume that everyone in the room holds the exact same far-left politics and enjoys railing on [conservative figurehead].
It’s obvious to me that there are real-world repercussions to outing yourself as not on the team, and it perplexes me that anyone would claim otherwise. I would certainly not speak up if I were a closet conservative. I don’t even speak up now (I mean, it wouldn’t be to argue, just to say “SHUT UP SHUT UP OH MY GOD CAN WE JUST PLEASE DO SOME FUCKING WORK?!?”) and these are allegedly my people.
Cannot wait for the election to be over.