Reading Jason Mattera’s book, “Hollywood Hypocrites,” made me feel like I was back in grad school, except I was sober this time.
The last week has been a graduate seminar in Hollywood Hypocrisy, and reading Mattera’s book while paying attention to the recent goings on earned me a masters degree with a minor in Media Irresponsibility.
Mattera’s tome takes a slightly differ tack than Ben Shapiro’s “Primetime Propaganda.” Where Shapiro, a Harvard-trained lawyer (though you’ll never hear that from him), builds a thorough brief indicting the industry on about 1,000 felony counts of Conspiracy to Impose a Left wing Narrative, Mattera comes at it from a slightly different angle.
A New Yorker, he kicks Hollywood in its sack and then proceeds to tear out its throat. Oh, and he supplies about 30 pages of footnotes for when the liberals squeal.
Think of Mattera and Shapiro as the Yin and Yang of conservative Tinseltown critics. Except Yin and Yang each take turns pinning the Industry’s puny arms behind its back while the other works the gut.
Mattera takes us on a guided tour through the fetid swamps of lefty Hollywood. Yeah, you’ll meet some of our all time favorites on your journey. There’s Alec Baldwin, who can’t even be trusted to move to Canada as he promised to do if Bush was reelected. He also can’t be trusted to babysit – father of the year this guy is not. His current gig is as part of Occupy Being the Spokesman for a Giant Multinational Bank.
Director Oliver Stone shows up too, figuratively pleasuring every commie potentate who’ll let him within slobbering distance. Mattera is cruel to Ollie, and delightfully direct when dropping little nukes like “it becomes clear why a communist like Oliver Stone would be rooting for a socialist like Obama.”
As for wizened Cameron Diaz, Mattera dismisses her as “another pot-head who should keep her drug-loving, eco-preaching yap shut.”
I need to party with Mattera.
One of my favorite parts is his discussion of hippie-bred Matt Damon, whose deep ‘n enduring love of peace doesn’t stop him from cashing multi-million dollar paychecks for appearing on the big screen in blood-drenched kill fests. Now, I love blood-drenched kill fests – because I’m a man – but I don’t go around like a prissy little weenie whining about them like Damon does. His motto seems to be “Do as I say, not as I do for money.”
Oh, and then there’s Spike Lee.
Mattera takes it to him too, but it’s so easy to mock that washed-up-yet-still-pompous buffoon that it’s kind of like watching someone torment Michael Moore by dangling a doughnut just out of his reach. I mean, Lee has had as many hit movies in the last decade as I have and has the potential for just as many in the next. He’d be lucky to get the second unit gig on “Step Up 4: Yeah, It’s Pretty Much More of the Same.”
Lee’s pathetic attempts at relevance issuing from his current figurative home in a van down by the river have, for years, been mildly amusing. Mattera relates a particularly hilarious instance when Lee -if that is his real name – was just brutally enbitchened by Clint Eastwood over some random nonsense the has-been hack spouted off regarding a guy who is just about America’s most respected actor/director.
But, of course, Lee stopped being amusing recently. One might have thought Lee disapproved of lynching, but he seemed to suddenly change his mind and find an upside to the phenomenon with regard to the man who shot Trayvon Martin. Lee, in a burst of Stephen Hawking-level genius, decided to tweet the shooter’s home address to the world. It seems unlikely that his intent was to facilitate interracial dialogue and understanding.
Complicating this controversial move was the fact that Lee the Genius managed to tweet the wrong address, resulting in an elderly couple who had nothing to do with the whole sorry mess having to flee their home as a result of the tsunami of death threats from the myriad thinkers inspired by Lee’s tweet.
The displaced geriatrics were not amused. Lee had no comment.
Then they hired a prominent Florida law firm. Suddenly, Lee cared a lot.
And he couldn’t roll over fast enough, issuing an apology and paying a confidential settlement that will likely have him knocking on doors in LA trying to get work directing something damn quick if he wants to avoid having to auction off his collection of stupid tennis shoes.
By the way, this has been bugging me – What kind of grown man calls himself “Spike?”
Regardless, Hollywood ought to be ashamed it ever returned this clown’s phone calls. But it did so largely because putting up with his antics offers guilty Hollywood libs the kind of absolution for the racial sins of people who have been dead for over a century that they long for. So, Lee is at least good for one thing.
Also, Rosanne Barr has come out from under the figurative bridge where she now dwells and, via Twitter, insinuated herself into the Trayvon Martin case as well. Except it is now 2012, and no one gives a shit.
Mattera has done a great service with “Hollywood Hypocrites,” leaping fist-first into the Octagon and taking on a keystone component of the liberal establishment in a cage match to the death. I’ll bet on him (and on Shapiro with his “Primetime Propaganda“) over the liberals any time.
The fact is, we need guys like Mattera – brutal, no holds barred – and guys like Shapiro – brutal, rigorously legalistic – to take down the slow, weak and morally exhausted liberal behemoth.
Mattera’s weapons are sarcasm and cutting insights, backed by documentation. Hollywood can stand up to a lot, but not to that.
So get the book and, as Lee might have put it over two decades ago at the height of his marginal relevance, Fight the Power!
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