Saturday, June 4, 2011

What Exactly does Ben Shapiro's Book on Hollywood State?

Having just published Hollywood in Blackface, a new book written by Ben Shapiro caught our eye. Titled Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, Shapiro's book seemed like it might mirror many of the arguments we made.

Picking it up from a local bookstore, we promptly returned it upon finishing Shapiro's screed against Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) in Hollywood and their immense power in shaping the public's perception.

Flipping to the appendix of the book, Shapiro lists the top conservative shows of all-time. No. 1 is 24, followed by The Cosby Show. What exactly makes 24 conservative?

Here is what Shapiro states qualifies 24 as conservative (p.354):
You knew this would be number one. It is, with one caveat: After season four, the show began to die. The first few seasons, the show was pure conservative adrenaline. Bad guys had to be stopped, and if Jack Bauer had to torture terrorists to do it, he would, no questions asked. "We're running out of time!" was the battle cry - and it was an accurate battle cry. The show embodied the ethic of the War on Terror - we were in a battle for survival, and we didn't always have time for the Marquis of Queensberry rules. "People in the [Bush] administration love the series," Surnow noted. "It's a patriotic show. They should love it."
That's it? It automatically becomes the top-rated conservative show just because "bad guys had to be stopped"? If you want to stop Islamic terrorism, the kind Jack Bauer only faced in one season, hell, just don't allow immigration from Muslim countries.

The War on Terror is over anyway; right? Osama is dead. Oh, but wait. An entire police state apparatus has been erected that recruits people via pizza box employment notices, hasn't it, one that employs Black people at a disproportionate percentage compared to the rate at which they can secure employment in the private sector and to their percentage of the population.

Sorry, Shapiro. We're not buying that logic. So what makes The Cosby Show "conservative?" (page. 354):
A show about a black middle-class family that doesn't rip the American government, doesn't fall into the self-victimization of the "racist society," doesn't portray whites as either idiots or bigots, and encourages black children to get an education, get married, and have a family. Revolutionary, even if its creators meant it to be a statement on racial tolerance.
Sanctimonious White Conservatives (SWC) in a nutshell. Black people "acting white" and transcending their Blackness automatically disqualifies from being a lowly Black person and into the rarefied air of conservatism. Family values, pursuing an education, getting married, these things, according to Shapiro, automatically qualify as "whites-only" activities that allow Black people to be welcomed into the club of 'whiteness.' How revoltingly arrogant a statement from Shapiro.

Believing that Black people only succeed because they embrace one way of thinking is... disingenuous. What did we write about Thomas Sowell vs. Norway again?

How... pathetic.

The one part of the book we enjoyed was the discussion on COPS (read Mangan's take here) on pages 204-205:
Because Cops is a law-enforcement support show, it has become the target of hard-left types like Michael Moore, who interviewed producer Richard Hurlin for his hit-piece documentary Bowling for Columbine. Hurlin tells Moore, "If you look liberal up in the dictionary, I think my picture will be in there somewhere." Moore then proceeds to grill Hurlin about the supposed racism of the show, saying that racism raises the ratings.

"Maybe because we in the television business tend to demonize black and Hispanic people, then those watching it a home are going, 'I don't want to help those people. I'm not going to do anything to help them because I hate them now because they may hurt me.' You know what I'm saying?" Moore asked/demanded. Hurlin, who clearly did not know what Moore was saying, answered, "I know what you're saying, I don't know that's what we're doing. I'm not sure we're demonizing black and Hispanic people particularly." 


Cops does have a lot of minority criminals, but that's because there are a lot of minority criminals. John Langley, the creator of the show, rejected Moore's argument head-on. "What irritates me sometimes is critics will watch Cops and say, 'They misrepresent people of color,'" Langley fumed. "That's not true. Au contraire, I show more white people than is statistically what the truth is in terms of street crime. If you look at the prisons, it's sixty-something percent people of color and thirty-something percent of white people. If you look at Cops, it's sixty percent white and forty percent people of color, it's just the reverse. And I do that intentionally, because I don't want to contribute to negative stereotypes."

What? How would that be a stereotype? Wouldn't showcasing people of color as criminals just be a reflection of reality? Is it that Hollywood must put white faces on crime lest the true statistics of black criminality become common knowledge?

The fact that every white person with the means to do so, whether they be Stuff White People Like (SWPL) white people or Untouchable whites, moves away from the Black Undertow should be evidence enough that everyone already believes the stereotype of the aggressive, criminally-prone people of color 'myth'.

So Shapiro's book is really dull. 24 wasn't that good of a show, but it should tell you all you need to know about Shapiro's brand of "conservatism" when he ranks it the best show for right-wingers. That The Cosby Show is runner-up tells you even more.

We recommend you pick up Hollywood in Blackface. Shapiro is right that those in control of Hollywood and television push a certain agenda; and our book details what that agenda actually represents. That agenda? Simply the creation of positive images of Black people. Hey, the guy who produces Cops admits they have to show more white people as criminal than they do black people. That's what we call Black-Run America in action.

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

Benjamin Shapiro? What kind of name is that I wonder?

Anonymous said...

TO be fair to Shapiro, he doesn't claim that The Cosby Show is "conservative." It seems that he has this naive view of the show as conservative-friendly: what that other idiot, O'Reilly, would call "tradionalist." He's not completely wrong, but it represents a painfully superficial assessment of the show and it's purpose: propaganda for promoting a false representation of blacks families.

Anonymous said...

Shapiro is conservative Jew, and seems like a decent fellow.

He has not yet evolved enough to be among Those Who Can See, but he's moving in the right direction, so don't be too harsh on him.

EYE OF HORUS said...

What would do you expect from a guy named Shapiro? The Truth? I don't think so!

Still it does show the Lies of Hollywood and the Californicators Up Close...
They're All Liars!!! It's congenital.

Stuff Black People Don't Like said...

I'll agree - Shapiro's book is a good start. I'm sending him a copy of "Hollywood in Blackface" on Monday.

Sheila said...

Speaking of books, Paul, I haven't yet received my copies of yours. Please?

Stuff Black People Don't Like said...

Send me a private e-mail with your address again, Shiela. I apologize a million times over. I had a spreadsheet created of all the names and thought I got them out.

Will get them out Monday!

Anonymous said...

thanks for link to sowell/norway-- i hadn't read that one yet and it was instructive. i like sowell, who is a critical thinker i identify with, but i absolutely take your point. we moved to australia almost 11 years ago. it is fairly homogeneous, with a small non-anglo minority (aboriginals and middle easterners disproportionately represented in crime/poverty stats as you'd expect but not big enough to seriously undermine the culture). We have stayed because Australia, despite a soft socialist bent, is much like Norway-- a nice, clean, orderly place to live because it guards itself and is surrounded by the Pacific. Immigration is controlled-- it isn't that easy to move here and the numbers are regulated and based on bringing marketable skills/capital with you. we've never regretted the move. i miss america, am deeply patriotic-- but see no way out. i hope people will wake up and pray for it fervently.

Anonymous said...

"Benjamin Shapiro? What kind of name is that I wonder? "


I glad to see the honest and open white nationalists are checking in

-Black guy

Huggums said...

"Sanctimonious White Conservatives (SWC) in a nutshell. Black people "acting white" and transcending their Blackness automatically disqualifies from being a lowly Black person and into the rarefied air of conservatism. Family values, pursuing an education, getting married automatically qualify as "whites-only" activities and allow Black people to be welcomed into the club of 'whiteness' - how arrogant and revolting a statement from Shapiro.

Believing that Black people only succeed because they embrace one way of thinking is... disingenuous. What did we write about Thomas Sowell vs. Norway again?

How... pathetic."

I don't quite follow what you mean here. Please explain. Are you saying that no or very few black people could embrace this way of living/thinking? I'm confused.

Percy Kittens Reloaded said...

"As a matter of fact, there is no written material in a black household. But there is television." -- Mike Dann, VP Children's Television Workshop

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/liberal-activists-defend-sesame-street-194416

Kind of surprised you're having a go at this book, Paul.

Mary said...

Here is the latest from 'our friend' Bill Cosby:


On May 17th, Bill Cosby did it again!

As the keynote speaker for the annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference, Cosby delivered another masterful soliloquy aimed at the destruction of the current state of African-Americans. Invited by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cosby blasted young African-Americans, whom he believes betrayed the legacy of the civil rights victories of the '50s and '60s.

One of the highlights of the onslaught included a rant from Cosby, in which he said: "There is a time, ladies and gentlemen, when we have to turn the mirror around. Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day. It's cursing on the way home, on the bus, train, in the candy store. They are cursing and grabbing each other and going nowhere. The book bag is very, very thin because there's nothing in it. Don't worry about the white man, he added. I could care less about what white people think about me ... let them talk. What are they saying that is so different from what their grandfathers said and did to us?
What is different is what we are doing to ourselves.”


Read more: http://globalgrind.com/news-politics/bill-cosby-your-dirty-laundry-gets-out-school-230-every-day#ixzz1OLUwmbVY

Stuff Black People Don't Like said...

Percy,

I might have been a little too harsh on Ben. But then I know how things could change overnight if a guy like Limbaugh just said what he feels and my contempt for these people grows.

It's the reason Jared Taylor will never go (be invited) on Fox News. People who watch that channel already think that the O'Reilly's and Hannity's think that way (to some extent).

Knowing that Cops producer deliberately changed the racial complexion of criminality on the show puts me in such a despondent mood that I sometimes believe everyone responsible for the state of this world deserves punishment.

That might sound harsh, but creating a false dichotomy of crime on "Cops" so that people don't think poorly of "People of Color" is disgusting.

I thank Ben for getting that in the open, but the work of a guy like Nicholas Stix in showing that Law and Order has changed the racial complexion of a real-life Black-on-white murder to fit the shows liberal agenda is also worth looking into.

Anonymous said...

Looks like Osama Bin Laden was not fooled by the Cosby show propaganda. This is from View From the Right:

"A reader in the Intelligence Community writes:

There I was, at my desk this afternoon minding my own business and doing my job, when my boss sends out an email (over the classified system) containing a translation of one of Osama bin Laden's messages to an Al Qaida associate. Of course, I cannot divulge the contents, but it seems OBL had some very unflattering things to say about Africa and Africans in general, based on his own struggle to run a business in Sudan and the experiences of his underlings throughout Africa. He used words such "treacherous," "deceitful," "corrupt," "anti-business," "unreliable," and he talks of one of his people being murdered there. Had the president and the attorney general known about these venomous, anti-black attitudes of OBL, I think they would have ordered him captured alive and brought to Guantanamo primarily to attend sensitivity training."

croc said...

I'm totally spent.

I really appreciate you sbpdl. You are giving it your all but is it too late? Our forebearers built this country so we would no longer have to live under monarchs. The money is all gone and the hungry mouths of the world continue to stream in.
It is so hard to understand how the DWL and DWC's could be so uncaring. Poor whites watch daily as our leaders guide us over a cliff.

I hope enough of the old timers survive the coming storm to teach the younger gen how to rebuild our culture and civilization.

If we lose, I hope the retreating army duplicates the Moscovites fleeing Napoleon. Burn it all down and leave nothing standing for those that drive you off.

thanks for allowing comments on this blog.
please pardon my grammar errors (I'm obviously an untouchable white who's an alien in his own land).

missbosslady said...

SBPDL.

I too think you're being too harsh on Shapiro. I haven't finished the book yet, but I believe that he's started and important conversation, wherein, you're book would be a natural tie-in.

Regards, Shapiro's selection of conservative shows I came from the perspective that he had a pretty limited field from which to select. Perhaps, he would have been better off not trying to make a list of that type in the first place.

Unfortunately, we are trying to turn back decades of subversion of the American way by the left, this will take a little time. No major shift in a culture comes about all at once, it's a process and you're on the right track.

Young Mr. Shapiro has his intentions in the right place and he surely chose a Golaith to attack. I say, good on him! We should have his back.

Anonymous said...

croc-- i like your thinking. but it won't even take a scorched earth strategy. when we leave the scene (and we know who "we" are), it won't take long for it to go back to nature. see: detroit, zimbabwe, etc...

the ironic part of the whole morality tale is that if BRA wins, it will be a pyrrhic victory indeed...

D J said...

Black guy wrote:

"Benjamin Shapiro? What kind of name is that I wonder? "

I glad to see the honest and open white nationalists are checking in

-Black guy"

Very true, BG, but unlike you, they don't even use a screen name; they post anonymously.

I find Ben Shapiro to be a sanctimonious little pr1ck in just about everything he writes. I have encountered him in other venues (the Breitbart "bigs" and others). Most of his writing is sophomoric claptrap, or he is offering opinions on subjects where his age alone prevents him from having enough experience to make any kind of observation.

No, I do not think he has to be in his 50s or above to do so, but he is in his early 20s at best and fresh out of ivy covered halls (likely filled with ivy-covered professors, with apologies to Tom Lehrer).

As for some of the comment-makers above: yes. He's Jewish. So? With some of you, a Jew could say the sun will rise in the east and you'd contest it.

Anonymous said...

You weren't too harsh on Shapiro. You were illogical. What is wrong with blacks getting married and working? Correct me if I am wrong, but it strikes me that you resent the Cosby show because it didn't reflect the realities of the black community as much as made up an agreeable fantasy to flatter whites. Is that so? Instead you made it sound as if the very idea of blacks behaving like middle-class whites was a horrible thing.

Look, Shapiro is a neocon. He thinks blacks are as capable as whites of restrained and sober behavior. Maybe he is wrong, but he did us all a favor by writing this book. So let's shut up and stop criticizing him for writing the book he wrote. Let's appreciate the truths he has uncovered.

Puff Mommy

Anonymous said...

If you check out primetime propaganda on youtube, make sure to watch the one with the former head of the childrens television workshop(the company the produced sesame street). He says thet sesame street was never intended for white children, but rather for black and hispanics because colored households never have books but all have tvs. I do love it when liberals tell the truth.

kurt said...

Here's a good article for sbpdl. Black people don't like Florida law mandating drug testing for welfare recipients goes into effect July 1st. No more welfare for druggies. Maybe a turn in the tides? Doubtful people are planning law suits already.

Stuff Black People Don't Like said...

Kurt,

I've seen the story. Hilarious. What's worse is that some Black "intellectual" at thegrio.com claims drug testing of those on welfare is wrong:

http://www.thegrio.com/politics/floridas-drug-test-law-condemns-welfare-recipients.php

As to my points on Ben Shapiro's book. I may have been too harsh. I read the book in about two hours. It was a light read targeted right into the heart of what Lew Rockwell mockingly calls "Red-State Fascist" America.

It does have its moments, as readers have pointed out.

On my take on the book being illogical.... eh, I should have been more concise. The Cosby Show (of which I'm slowly gathering materials to do a book devoted to television called "The Cosby Effect") was fiction!

It is a look at what a conservatives wet-dream really is; that all Black people have the innate capacity to live a white existence.

Recent history has taught us otherwise, and those Blacks that do are shunned by their community and immediately are recruited to represent whites who feel guilty of associating with only other whites.

Anonymous said...

Did Shapiro write anything about the Law & Order TV show?

Anonymous said...

Didn't Bill Cosby call Clarence Thomas "brother lite"?

"...their grandfathers said and did to us?"

My grandfather did exactly WHAT to YOU, Bill? Other than allow you to make millions?

I am beyond fed up with these pathetic negroes, and the even more pathetic whites that gobble up all of their perpetual victim nonsense.

Joe

Anonymous said...

A stopped clock is right at least twice a day.

--Mencken--

Ivan Urkinoff said...

"Very true, BG, but unlike you, they don't even use a screen name; they post anonymously."

Maybe because they enjoy seeing you whine about it like a little crybaby.

With black unemployment at record levels, black dropout rate at record levels, black illegitimacy over 70%, and black violent crime increasing...

You're concerned with anonymous posters???

Holy shit, that's funny!!

Ya gotta love negro priorities!!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

BTW, you sound a lot like our troll Diarrhea!

Anonymous said...

"What is wrong with blacks getting married and working?"

Please direct this question to the negro community.

Anonymous said...

Is it just me, or is this ad for black obesity playing constantly?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAw_8E_sJWk

Hirsch said...

Some of the alternative right community like "Occidental Observer" are up in arms about Shapiro right now, wondering what he is doing. Former Nixon speech-writer Ben Stein did a much better job in the same vein several decades ago. He correctly points out that in days past the elites were distinguished from the common man only insofar as they had more money; they generally approached life on the same terms, regarding their outlook on life. Louis B. Mayer, David Selznick, Samuel Goldwyn, etc. were all Jews and they made movies like "Gone with the Wind," probably the most sympathetic paeon to Southern whites you will ever encounter.

People read "The Culture of Critique" and start hailing Kevin MacDonald as the second coming of Martin Luther. He's correct on some counts, re: Boasian anthropology creating a kind of relativism that favors non-whites over whites, but MacDonald is not the be-all end all.

Stuff Black People Don't Like said...

A loyal reader sent this excellent study in:

https://mediasrv.oit.umass.edu/~sutj//Affirming.pdf

I might have been too harsh on Shapiro, but calling "24" and "The Cosby Show" two icons of conservatism seems strange.

Hell, Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs" is more conservative than both of those combined.

Anonymous said...

"A loyal reader sent this excellent study in"

What exactly did you find "excellent" about it?

Douglas said...

I think Ben did a pretty good job. You can't expect everyone to be as brave as you are. Heck, he may actually believe black people as a group are not different than whites.

Very few people see the world for what it really is. That is why is it so refreshing to see sites such as yours and Lawrence Auster's. You tell it like it is. Most people will not due to fear or simple lack of understanding. Myself, I can't speak out as long as I want to keep my job, but I was raised in Alabama, so I know the score well.

I still give Ben credit for working to tear down a major part of liberal society. The war on the liberal agenda must be waged for several directions.

I am looking forward to reading your new book. I sure have enjoyed the last one.

Anonymous said...

Locust says: I look at the whole subject a little different then most. We all know the economy cannot continue to support our nations, the west for the most part is headed towards economic collapse. This singular event will usher in a victory for our ideals, what better transmission of ideas and information then through those who have lost everything. Will it be painful, of course, many of us will not make it, and i'm prepared for its inevitably. By the time the left realizes what has happened it will be to late.

Know this friends, we will win, once we know ourselves, we will know each other. Know each other and unified we will become. Unified we are stronger, in unity we will win.

SimpleMindedSociety said...

Conservatives frequently get things wrong when it comes to the so-called Culture War. There was a book called "South Park Conservatives," or something like that, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone - who are libertarian - thought the whole thing was a "dumb notion." South Park is not conservative by any means but it is not left-wing. It is centrist or apolitical or just commonsensical in it's side-splitting satire.

The Cosby Show can easily be considered conservative by today's standards - so I can understand Shapiro's line of reasoning - but that's kind of a stereotype, as if people on the left don't also care about their children doing good in school and having a stable family.

Conservatives have hijacked this idea that only right-wingers can care about family values. No, that's wrong. I think the most basic want for an American is domestic stability. That is apolitical.

I always thought The Cosby Show was cheeseball but I think it's sweet, now, kind of like the Wonder Years.

Anonymous said...

IF YOU DO NOT DO DRUGS, YOU DO NOT GET A MANDATORY SENTENCE.