HOLLYWOOD AND IT’S FAILURES

This is a transcript for this video.

Once again we are reminded that Hollywood still remains a fundamentally dysfunctional, and morally bankrupt industry. The current state of Hollywood sex abuse scandals shouldn’t come as shock to anyone, it’s always been this way, and, without public intervention, it will stay this way for a long time to come. To better understand the Hollywood of today, we should take a step back to examine it through the lens of history.

In the 1930s Hollywood experienced a similar moral backlash , after they consistently produced films that conflicted with the moral norms of middle America.

So this push and pull between Hollywood and middle America is nothing new. This moral revolt of the public led to Hollywood enacting the Hays Code, also known as the Motion Picture Production Code. 

This internally authored document gave guidelines to film makers on how to produce content that was considered too inflammatory or provocative for that day and age. Although abandoned in the 1950s due to competition from Television and merging foreign film markets, the Hays Code did lead to the M.P.A.A. film rating system we observe today.

Regardless of how we might feel about this as it relates to censorship and artistic expression, it does objectively illustrate that Hollywood realized it had a problem on its hands, and needed to respond to the public’s  displeasure.

Now at this point, detractors from the far left or the third wave of feminism, will likely assert that I’m being hyper hyperbolic or overblown. While I maintain that all individuals are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, I will assert, that these latest revelations are only the beginning of the Hollywood facade unraveling. I have no doubt that in the upcoming days, weeks and months, more and more victims will come forward and more  perpetrators will be named.

All this brings me to the next historically entrenched institution, that really sheds light on Hollywood, the proverbial casting couch. THAT is a term more than 100 years old-yes you heard that correctly, more than 100 years! The casting couch refers, of course, to couches in offices that could be used for sexual activity between casting directors or film producers and aspiring actors and especially actresses. 

Of course this sexual activity wasn’t consensual, but coerced, and the industry titans of Hollywood used the threat of black listing actors and aspiring starlets as the leverage to commit these sex crimes. Furthermore these same powerful individuals made it well known that anyone caught talking about these activities in public or to the press, would also suffer the professional consequences of black listing, and or a tidal wave of law suits and litigation.

Now fast forward to today and not only has Hollywood still turned a blind eye to these crimes against mostly women and children, they also adopted a strong sense of moral superiority to complement their already well nurtured contempt for middle America.

This Hollywood vs. America divide was clearly illustrated when confessed child molester Roman Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for the film The Pianist, and yet got a standing ovation in absentia from a vast majority of the actors academy at the Oscars. 

Of course Roman could not attend the Oscars personally because he was busy hiding under a rock in France in order to evade jail time for the crimes he pleaded to committing! Add to that moral turpitude  the mind blowing arrogance of Meryl Streep as she lecture middle America because they didn’t vote for the presidential candidate she wanted to win. Meryl’s  political horse  was a  person who, by definition, was arguably the most flawed and morally reprobate candidate to ever run for the presidency. But wait, it gets even worse. Who can forget to mention Meryl’s reference to Harvey Weinstein as God. Yep, can we believe this, America?  

However those facts, when recounted, will fall on Meryl Streep’s deaf ears because she’ll never even be able to listen to them thanks to the strident din of her own cognitive dissonance. After all, when was the last time someone said to Meryl, ”No”, “I don’t agree” or “You’re WRONG!”?

Have you noticed, I’ve yet to get to the staggering sexual misconduct allegations against Woody Allen, Bill Cosby , Harvey Weinstein and more likely than not, Kevin Spacey as well? But you get the point. These self proclaimed elite have looked down their noses at the very people that made them famous and financially successful in the first place. It’s high time that everyday Americans return the favor. 

America’s payback should not be merely for being the object of Hollywood’s utter disdain. No. Tinseltown is in no small crisis artistically. The entire industry has gotten so lazy in entertainment production, script writing, and overall originality, while creating an ever growing litany of weaker and weaker products  that are propped up with state of the art technology and jaw dropping special effects.

So I’d argue that Hollywood has failed to change itself for the better, and the industry’s incessant moral grandstanding and over inflated sense of self importance, has made Hollywood far worse than ever before. These Hollywood  failures impact our society because entertainment influences culture and culture influences politics and politics codifies all of it into law and powerful pressure to conform. Thus don’t be surprised that everything in our world seems so upside down and has the political establishment and the courts, that depend on that establishment, enshrine the worst of culture, depravity and bad behavior into being regarded as sacred right. Hormone blockers, anyone?

Fortunately, it seems,  middle America has had enough. However, our push back should not come from just registering our protest on social media or even YouTube videos, we need to start pulling the levers of the free market and vote with our dollars instead.

This is why competition in the alternative media and new entertainment offerings is so important. If we want to fight the ever growing moral grandstanding, from a hypocritical Hollywood elite, that lacks any sense of self reflection, we need to hit them were it hurts, right in their wallet.

If we want to change anything in our world, no matter what, we should be prepared to make a sacrifice of some kind. In this case the deprivation is minimal. Call it a first world sacrifice, after all, folks,  it’s just saying no to watching a movie. You just need to ask yourself , do you want your hard earned dollars to support an industry that is rampant with sex crimes carried out, mostly, against women and children? If your moral compass isn’t telling you that supporting an industry notorious for such activities isn’t completely wrong then it’s time to take out that compass to get it repaired, replaced or borrow someone elses!

So, in the end, Hollywood will not change on it’s own.  Nor will the media. Any doubt? Just watch the White House correspondence dinners of the past and it quickly becomes obvious that our politicians are not going to take a stand either. However, I suppose it may be better that way because I personally don’t like the idea of Washington trying to legislate morality for the sake of elevating our culture. Hollywood must change, and we must change it, change it using the power of the free market and take our money elsewhere and just stop the enabling , support alternative media and new entertainment that shows merit. 

If we fail more people will get abused, more lives will get destroyed and the destruction will only replicate itself and propagate as victims become victimizers with a massive and supine public of consumers  ever corrupted by the sordid details of their idolized stars serial sex abuse that the tabloids feverishly record, recount and replay. Hollywood A listers  no longer deserve their huge stage much less colossal audience. It all must stop and stop now.

Is the NFL ready for a Las Vegas style attack?

Former US Navy SEAL Officer Matt Bracken asks that question and provides suggestions to NFL teams and police. The Las Vegas Massacre has shown us that billion-dollar corporations like MGM, as well as the Las Vegas police, were woefully unprepared to deal with a sniper standing in the window of a hotel overlooking an open-air concert. Should we assume that the NFL is any better prepared to deal with a stadium sniper? Not a sniper who is inside the stadium, but one located up to a mile away. Perimeter security measures taken to prevent firearms from being smuggled into a stadium will do nothing to deter a distant sniper using the plunging area-fire tactic.

Bracken proposes the following:
"At a minimum, stadium events need a police helicopter with counter-snipers ready to launch on a moment's notice. Acoustic gunshot detection systems must be installed around these venues to immediately locate a distant sniper’s approximate location. Vectored to the area by the acoustic system, the helicopter’s onboard FLIR can rapidly find the sniper, and the airborne police counter-snipers can do the rest. Stopping an active sniper after just a few minutes is a far better outcome than allowing him ten or more minutes of uninterrupted carnage, as happened in Las Vegas. Bear in mind that Stephen Paddock ceased shooting for his own reasons. The police did not stop him."

"The necessary elements (SWAT counter-snipers and police choppers) are typically already located in close proximity to these outdoor events. These elements need to be staged together, ready to fly, and able to detect gunshot locations as well as the FLIR signatures of open or broken-out windows in line-of-sight buildings, muzzle flashes, and humans hiding in unoccupied structures.
 
"The deadly fiasco of Desert One in 1980 resulted from a lack of coordination and practice between the disparate elements of the ad-hoc Iranian hostage rescue mission. In the aftermath, the U.S. military created the Joint Special Operations Command. Similarly, American law enforcement needs to rethink and revamp its approach to providing security for large outdoor events before a predictable tragedy occurs. The personnel and equipment are already on hand, or in the case of the acoustic systems, they are readily available. What is required is a new mindset, with an airborne-capable quick reaction team ready to put an active sniper down as rapidly as possible."

Matt Bracken’s first novel, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, published in 2003, begins with a distant sniper firing into a packed football stadium, precipitating a stadium-wide panic stampede that results in over a thousand deaths. The first chapter of Enemies Foreign and Domestic can be read here.  A longer and more detailed version of this essay appeared under the title of “Is the NFL ready for a stadium attack on a Las Vegas scale?” 

Matt Bracken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957 and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in Russian Studies. He was commissioned in the US Navy through the NROTC program at the University of Virginia, and then graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training class 105 in Coronado California. He served on east coast UDT and SEAL teams, leading a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. In 1993 Mr. Bracken finished building a 48-foot steel sailing cutter of his own design, on which he has done extensive ocean cruising, including a 9,000-mile solo voyage from Panama to Guam and two Panama Canal transits. Bracken’s five best-selling novels have garnered nearly 3,000 Amazon reviews with an average 4.7 star rating. The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun is his masterpiece that required years to complete. His other titles include Enemies Foreign and Domestic, Domestic Enemies, Foreign Enemies And Traitors, and Castigo Cay, the first Dan Kilmer novel. His new counter-jihad thriller The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun has earned over 250 Amazon reviews in its first two months, with an astounding average review rating of 4.9 stars.. His website is . enemiesforeignanddomestic.com