Ah, The Liberal Media

As Martin, my politically conservative brother-in-law, once said about the movie Shrek, "I used to like that movie until I found out who was in it: a bunch of liberals." My response to him was "Name another movie." It's no secret that if Hollywood were a state it would be about as blue as they come. Of course there are a few notable exceptions: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood and Tom Selleck to name a few. This is an Entertainment News web log, so without trying to turn it into a political forum, I will say this, my main problem with the left is the hypocrisy that seems to underlie the liberal agenda. To sum it up, if they're so tolerant, why aren't they more tolerant of conservatives? The answer is the agenda is the driving force. I could give plenty of examples, but I will focus on two events that I find inconsistent. We're all familiar with Mel Gibson's drunken tirade berating Jews and basically digging himself into a fairly deep hole career wise. He doesn't seem to have a friend in Hollywood, and I'm not saying he should. The contrasting example concerns Michael Richards, aka Kramer from Seinfeld. He is in the news this week for losing his temper during a stand up comic routine and letting go a barrage of disparaging remarks concerning African Americans. He even used "The N Word." He is now trying to pick up the pieces of his career and appeared on Letterman last night via satellite to apologize. He's hoping this will all blow over, and it probably will. What it boils down to is both Gibson and Richards said some things they wish they could take back. They are trying to convince people that their comments don't represent their true opinions. Yet while Gibson has been blacklisted, Richards already has friends coming to his rescue (Jerry Seinfeld for one). On the Huffington Post, a web log noted for its liberal stance, Earl Ofari Hutchinson shifts some blame from Richards by saying "The obsessive use of and the tortured defense of the word by so many blacks gave Richards the license to use the word without any thought that there'd be any blow back for doing it." In other words, he's been around it and heard it so often, why should we be shocked when he uses it? Interesting. Yet somehow TV stations complain to the FCC when they get fined for letting profanity slip past censors. "The F-word should be allowed as long as it's not used in a sexual connotation." So you're telling me that an adult like Michael Richards is influenced by the vocabulary around him, but a kid who's watching TV at 8:00 pm and hears profanity isn't? See what I mean about the hypocrisy? I'm not trying to defend Gibson and condemn Richards, but Hollywood is the last group I want telling me what is right and wrong.