Hollywood's Bold Strategy: Punt

Everything related to Hollywood is worthy of a Jon Stewart joke... except its recent box-office numbers. Their catastrophic slide -- along with declining newspaper circulation rates and mainstream TV Nielsen ratings -- points to a serious disconnect between middle America and the Coastal Elite. And maybe it's not so much a disconnect as it is a yawning, gaping chasm. Perhaps it's related to Hollywood's activist stance on social issues long since settled while studiously ignoring everything that's occurred in the world since, oh, 1978.

...George Clooney’s triple Oscar nominations are said to be a significant moment in the life of the nation, and not just by George Clooney, though his effusions on his own “bravery” certainly set a high mark. “We jumped in on our own,” he said, discussing Good Night And Good Luck with Entertainment Weekly. “And there was no reason to think it was going to get any easier. But people in Hollywood do seem to be getting more comfortable with making these sorts of movies now. People are becoming braver.” Wow. He was brave enough to make a movie about Islam’s treatment of women? Oh, no, wait. That was the Dutch director Theo van Gogh: he had his throat cut and half-a-dozen bullets pumped into him by an enraged Muslim who left an explanatory note pinned to the dagger he stuck in his chest. At last year’s Oscars, the Hollywood crowd were too busy championing the “right to dissent” in the Bushitler tyranny to find room even to namecheck Mr van Gogh in the montage of the deceased. Bad karma. Good night and good luck...

Go ye therefore hence and read it all, for it is good.

Mark Steyn: Clooney Tunes