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(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
The July issue featured an abridged version of a speech delivered by Pat Sajak, the host of the television show Wheel of Fortune, at Hillsdale’s All-College’s Spring Convocation, as well as the speech delivered by Mark Halprin, the novelist and contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, to the graduating class of Hillsdale Academy, Hillsdale College’s K-12 model school.
The Sajak speech was especially enlightening. He is part of the Hollywood community. He knows what makes its members tick. And you know what? We were right; they don’t like us in Hollywood. We weren’t paranoid, after all.
Sajak observed that being a Hollywood celebrity leads to “a distorted view of life and of your importance in it.” Being a star means that “people treat you very well. They send limos for you. They tiptoe around you. They pretend that the most outlandish or inane things that you might say are important and quotable.” As a result, Hollywood folks come to believe that their “views are not just your own private opinions; they become part of the public record. They quote you on Entertainment Tonight and in People magazine. You can endorse a candidate, fight for a cause, call people names – it’s pretty heady stuff. The world waits breathlessly for your next pronouncement.”
For example, says Sajak, “Rosie O’Donnell – a daytime talk host – goes public with her sexual preference and she is lauded as brave. What exactly is brave about that? First of all, who cares? And what’s brave about getting a chance to be interviewed by ABC and landing on magazine covers? I characterize it as bravery-as-a-career-move.”
Then there’s the actor Alex Baldwin, who “recently compared the election of George W. Bush to the terrorist attacks of last September. This is the same Baldwin brother who promised to leave the country if Bush were elected. Sadly, he reneged on his promise.” And Ted Turner, who “once mocked his employees who had ashes on their foreheads for Ash Wednesday as ‘Jesus Freaks.’”
Also Rob Reiner, who, says Sajak, “is reportedly upset by what he sees in many films these days.” What is he upset about? “Gratuitous violence? Casual sex? Disrespect toward Christianity? Bias against Big Business? Is that what he wants to eliminate? No, of course not. That would be censorship. He wants to get rid of smoking. There’s too much smoking in the movies.” Sajak quotes Reiner: “Movies are basically advertising cigarettes to kids.”
Sajack throws the spotlight on the irony of Reiner’s reaction. “No knock on Rob. In fact, I agree with him. But why is smoking open to censorship and not these other issues? And what happened to Hollywood’s argument that movies and TV shows don’t cause bad behavior, they just reflect it…It’s monumental hypocrisy. Kids can’t pick up bad habits from what they watch…oh, except for smoking.”
To what does Sajak attribute this leftward bias in Hollywood? “It is,” he says, “a bias based on the sameness of worldview caused by social, intellectual, educational and professional inbreeding. These are folks who travel in the same circles, go to the same parties, talk to the same people, compare their ideas to people with the same ideas, and develop a standard view on issues that makes any deviation from them seem somehow marginal or weird.” Sajak makes the point by quoting Pauline Kael, former film critic for The New Yorker, who responded to Richard Nixon’s election sweep — 49 out of 50 states — in 1972 by exclaiming: “I can’t believe it! I don’t know a single person who voted for him.”
Sajak found the same reaction to George W. Bush’s election: “At a dinner party in Los Angeles recently, our hostess was about to say some grudgingly kind words about President Bush and the way he was handling the War on Terror. She prefaced her remarks by saying, ‘Now I know everyone at this table voted for Al Gore, but…’ Well, she knew no such thing. She just presumed it. It’s what ‘right-thinking’ people did. This ‘false reality’ is a phenomenon that permeates media circles.”
We should be grateful for Sajak’s candor. No doubt, he is right. The Hollywood crowd is insular. Its members share a common background, largely urban and secular, with a high concentration of secular Jews. They reinforce each other’s beliefs, much the way corporate big wigs do at the golf club or military leaders at officers’ clubs across the country. This explains why the movies and television shows push the same secular, sexually “liberated” lifestyles; why they display a hostility toward organized religion, big business, the military and the traditional values of small-town-America. Sajak’s speech shows us how the process works.
But there is more to it. The Hollywood moguls were always insular. They were always from vectors of American society with values different from small town America’s. I doubt if the old directors – with the occasional exception of men such as John Ford – and honchos at MGM or 20th Century Fox were any more respectful toward Christianity than the studio heads of today. They went to the same cocktail parties. When they got a chance, they turned out movies with an ideological bent, especially during the Cold War years. And yet, the old studio heads also made movies such as Quo Vadis, The Robe, The Song of Bernadette, and films about the miracle of Fatima and St. Francis of Assisi. They made television programs such as Ozzie and Harriet, Hopalong Cassidy and I Remember Mama.
Which leads me to believe that the problem is much deeper than Sajak thinks. Maybe the problem is more with society as a whole than with the insularity of the Hollywood producers and directors who seek to make a buck by entertaining us. Look: I have no doubt that a good number of the Hollywood movers and shakers are unattractive characters, who hold us in contempt. But I am also convinced that they would still be making movies like The Greatest Story Ever Told if they did well at the box office. And they would not be making movies that mock Christianity if Christians reacted in the way they would have back in the 1940s and 1950s. Angrily.
Why the change? Maybe immigration has changed the audience for movies and television. But that is a cop-out. It is not just that there are more non-Christians in the America of today. It is that those who call themselves Christians now have a lukewarm faith that no longer reacts when it is insulted. Which is a disturbing thought. We would do well to recall Jesus’ words about those with a lukewarm faith. They are among the most powerful in Scripture. Remember? “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev: 3: 15-17).
