Screen Writers Strike. Does it affect you?

[kn]

Not in the slightest. I hold the hollywood "elite" in about as high regard as I do pedophiles. Why? Most of the Hollywood entertainers -- even the elite -- either never went to college or dropped out. They spend their lives pretending to be someone else and somehow feel qualified to tell me how I should feel or behave in some political manner and then become indignant when I exercise my right to disagree. There are so many hollywood "elite" -- sean penn, susan sarandon, rosie odonnel, sally field, ben affleck, and so on -- that do not have the political experience (or job experience) to qualify for deciding what is right for america. When someone tries to offer a competing view with this gang, they get downright UGLY.

See the Dixie Chicks for the finest example. They hate Bush. Fine. They are free to say so. I love freedom of speech and fully support their right to say they don't like bush. HOWEVER, their primary audience are conservative southerners. And those conservative southerners didn't like it and revolted. Just as the Chicks were right to dislike bush, the "common folk" were well within their right to throw away CDs, stop playing their music or listening to it, call them traitors, cowards, etc. That's freedom of speech, baby. It works both ways. The problem I had was the big "Fuck You" they offered to all the backlash that ensued. Their righteous indignation that somehow others could and would vehemently disagree with their views is what really turned me off. That attitude prevails so much in hollywood in so many actors that I can't even watch films any more. I used to love Sean Penn's work until he went politico. Now I can't watch because all I see is his political vitriol when I see him on TV. That goes for Affleck, Sarandon, Moore, and so on.

Bottom line is I don't want my entertainment mixed with politics. They don't belong together. Dolly Pardon (I'm not a fan) is probably the finest example of what an entertainer should be doing. In just about every interview, when someone takes it down a political road, she steers right back and says that she isn't here to tell people how to think -- she is here to entertain. To this day, I don't think anyone really knows for sure if she is a democrat or republican. Her typical response: "I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I guess that'd make me a 'hipocrat.'

So, in summary, Hollywood can rot in hell as far as I'm concerned. I hope the strike goes on for a year and the industry goes bankrupt. Hey, a boy can dream, can't he?