Actor Christian Bale’s outburst against former Vice President Dick Cheney at the Golden Globe awards show Sunday followed a familiar pattern of celebrity attacks on Republicans at such events, when he said: “Thank you Satan for giving me inspiration to play this role” and stated that he was “cornering the market on charisma-free a—holes.”
“What do we think, Mitch McConnell next?” Bale added, lumping in the Senate Republican leader as another charisma-free expletive.
Bale threw out the insults after he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for playing Cheney in the movie “Vice.”
CLICK HERE TO READ: DICK CHENEY'S DAUGHTER BLASTS CHRISTIAN BALE FOR SATAN REMARKS AT GOLDEN GLOBES
Imagine the uproar if an actor who had portrayed President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden in a movie had said he was inspired by the devil or referred to Obama or Biden with Bale’s expletive. The reaction certainly would have been a lot harsher than the reaction Bale got for saying those things about Cheney and McConnell.
Clearly, Bale is much better at reading lines written by screenwriters than coming up with his own. But why should anyone care what political insults the British-born actor spouts?
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Well, it was hard to ignore Bale’s comments. This wasn’t just a Twitter tirade or address to a group of progressives. Bale spoke on NBC, which takes advantage of valuable public airwaves and reached an audience of 18.6 million viewers with the Golden Globes broadcast, thanks in part to a preceding football game. Still, the audience size was down 2 percent from the Golden Globes last year.
Might one reason for the falling ratings be that the millions of Americans who hold politically conservative views – and even some liberals – are getting tired of watching awards shows hijacked and turned into forums for anti-Republican political attacks?
Imagine the uproar if an actor who had portrayed President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden in a movie had said he was inspired by the devil or referred to Obama or Biden with Bale’s expletive.
One would think that a motivation of profit alone would lead the TV networks airing these shows to not go out of their way to offend conservative, centrist, or non-political Americans. Why don’t actors’ agents or the studios for whom they often work suggest that instantly alienating a big part of their fan base might be bad for business?
One reason is that the Hollywood mavens of progressivism, who preach political correctness and multiculturalism, are in fact insular and ignorant of those who live outside their far-left bubbles. They can’t understand what the marketplace is telling them because it is telling them to reach out to something totally foreign to them.
Conservatives need to do more than hope that market forces or some other factor will reverse progressive domination of our culture and its industries. Too many conservatives are willing to give money to traditional forms of art – like museums or the ballet – but not to ones that are more culturally relevant today.
As Roger Simon, the Academy Award-nominated liberal screenwriter who became conservative has lamented, conservatives give money for Beethoven, but Beethoven doesn’t need us. He’s doing fine.
There is a saying that “politics is downstream from culture.” The implication is that what we see in the political sphere in the present has its roots in cultural trends that have come before.
An example would be the intense political correctness and general trashing of America by woke snowflakes that has dominated our culture in recent years and is now manifesting itself in a freshman member of Congress – Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. – vowing to “impeach the mother------” in reference to the president of the United States.
Since our current president is a Republican, Tlaib gets away with the profanity. Media reaction would certainly be different if the same remarks were made about a Democratic president.
It seems pretty difficult to reform the ivory towers of our culture – the media, academic and entertainment big guys. So conservatives probably need to start competitors.
The competitors don’t even need to be conservative, just not part of the in-your-face and always-critical-of-America culture that we are currently force-fed. Maybe competitive organizations will inspire reform. Maybe they will be stunning commercial successes like Fox News.
Conservatives and other Americans opposed to the progressives’ politicization of everything should think twice before donating to far-left universities (but I repeat myself) or other organizations that don’t need your money. Seek out an alternative in the entertainment or education businesses. You’ll improve our culture and eventually our politics, and you might even make a buck.
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