Liberal Hollywood liberals from Hollywood. Why are they so liberal?

[Bucky]

One reason Hollywood millionaires are so liberal is that most of them had to earn their way up from being in the working class. They know what it means to share an apartment, ride a bus, lose a day's wages for a preventable cold, or struggle to pay daycare tuition for toddlers. Most of 'em, when they hit it big, remember that being a working stiff is hell and can still appreciate the value of humanizing our society with a modicum of social service programs.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, big exception (billionaire).

Still a solid liberal, as far as I've seen.

[cali]

2. there are actually lots of exceptions

not as big as Louis-Dreyfus, of coure.

[flamingdem]

3. They come up more and more from places like Yale

So I'd attribute some of it to intelligence bred by a good education as well. Also, they come up from within meaning their parents were in the business.

examples:
http://alumninet.yale.edu/sigs/hollywood/

That said I love the way the Hollywood liberal community encourages the successful to give back. We're still making up for Reagan!

[cali]

4. Ronald Reagan. Though he did start out more liberal.

[Recursion]

6. He was our only President to have been a union organizer

Odd, isn't it?

[Recursion]

5. There was an interesting thread here years ago about conservative comedians and how rare they are

There's something transgressive about comedy, I guess, that goes against conservatism in some ways. The only genuinely funny conservatives I can think of were pre-crazy Dennis Miller, Rodney Dangerfield, and Drew Carey.

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. And PJ O'Rourke... once upon a time. n/t

[tularetom]

29. You must have known ol' PJ in grade school

because he's never been funny since the first time I saw him.

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. National Lampoon had some seriously funny stuff.

[tularetom]

33. Yep, you're right I'd forgotten about that

I was thinking of his lame attempts at being a funny right wing pundit on TV.

But I forgot about O.C and Stiggs.

[RZM]

7. I don't know about that. If anything, I think the opposite is true

A lot of entertainment figures comes from entertainment families. Many of those producers, directors, and development people seem to come from fairly comfortable backgrounds.

Now the actors and the working stiffs behind the camera are a different story. But many actors, including up and comers, come from posh backgrounds too. Take the main cast of HBO's 'Girls,' which has gotten a lot of press lately.

Lena Dunham - Both parents are accomplished artists (I believe her dad teaches art at a NYC college)
Allison Williams - Went to Yale. Also Brian Williams' daughter
Jemima Kirke - Daughter of the drummer of Free and Bad Company. Met Dunham at St. Anne's School in NY, which costs 33K a year
Zosia Mamet - David Mamet's daughter
Adam Driver - Seems to have a pretty normal life story, though it looks like he came from a middle class background and not a working class one
Adam Karpovsky - Not sure on his background, but he did go school at Oxford.

And most of these people (except maybe Dunham) probably haven't even earned a million dollars yet. I'd bet you'd find a lot of similar background stories among the real Hollywood elite.

[Bucky]

8. I was thinking of the powerhouse actors: Affleck, Asner, Clooney, Judd, Sarandon, Damon...

Even if some didn't come from working class families, they spent their salad days in the trenches (sorry, mixed metaphor) hacking away at the salt mines (a quadruple mixed metaphor!) and surrounded by others struggling up the same mountain (a five-fer!). So they'll still understand what life is like for the unprivileged.

[Bjorn Against]

9. I think it has more to do with the fact that they are exposed to the arts community

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2013, 01:50 PM - Edit history (1)

While there are certainly some Hollywood stars who came out of nowhere, many more got where they are because they came from very privileged backgrounds and were well connected.

Many of them did not come from modest backgrounds, but they all are heavily exposed to the arts community, and who makes the best art? Liberals.

There are very few talented right-wing artists and I think the reason for this is that art discourages people from being closed minded. There are too many pieces of art that challenge people to think outside the box, the right-wing has put themselves in such a bubble that they want nothing to do with anything that makes them think outside the box so they avoid the arts.

Leftie politics also make for better movies than right-wing politics do. No one wants to watch a movie about how evil gay people are, no one wants to watch a movie about cutting off aid to poor people, no one wants to watch a movie about abstinence, right-wing politics are either too mean spirited or too fake to make compelling movies.

[treestar]

11. agree

And there was the matter of expanding the boundaries of what was acceptable - sex scenes, for example. Lucy and Ricky were married in real life but they still had twin beds. Hollywood moved on from that and each boundary crossed created controversy with Hollywood on the "shocking" side. That's going to tend to create liberalism in the people doing it.

In fact when right wingers go on about Hollywood being Liberal they mean things like that.

[alfredo]

24. More people will go see a movie where the little guy succeeds. What if

Mr Potter Succeeded in destroying George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life"?

What if Will Rogers told jokes at the expense of the working poor?

[Bjorn Against]

25. Very true, and that was at least part of the reason Atlas Shrugged bombed so badly

Who wants to see a billionaire "triumph" by driving down the wages of their workers? Right-wing ideology favors the powerful over the disadvantaged, but people would much rather watch a movie about an underdog who takes down powerful interests than watch powerful interests take down the poor.

[alfredo]

28. That's it.

[alfredo]

26. The first thing an actor or comedian has to do is sell himself/herself to the audience. People

aren't dumb, they know if you have a good heart. Andrew Dice Clay didn't last long because he attacked those weaker than him. Don Rickles lasted because we saw his core goodness under those perfectly timed insults.

Yes Don is a Democrat, but not so partisan that he wouldn't perform for Reagan and Ford.

[UTUSN]

10. Creativity is not economics or class. It is formlessness, barriers/boundaries-busting, open, .

if not comfortable with uncertainty, willing to encounter it, willing to put self in the shoes of others, questing to UNDERSTAND. Wingnuttiness is cramped, enclosed, setting up borders/barriers/CLOSED, needs CERTAINTY, is fearful, CONDEMNS.

[Romulox]

12. I notice that the form of "liberalism" pushed by Hollywood rarely seems to threaten the status quo.

Odd, that.

[Puzzledtraveller]

14. Precisely

[Puzzledtraveller]

13. Guilt and fear of envy.

That is to say fear that the rabble will come for their largesse. It's not just Hollywood, look at the fashion industry. Do you think Anna Wintour feels for the common folk for real? I don't.

[Kablooie]

16. They also have to play and create stories about ordinary people.

And focus on the problems that ordinary people deal with often against the rich powers that be.
Even Batman and Spider-Man are ordinary people at heart.

[antigop]

17. acting, at its core, requires EMPATHY. To be a good actor....

you have to get inside someone else's head and figure out what makes them tick. You have to get outside of YOUR SELF and get inside someone else.

[antigop]

18. I also think they realize how LUCK is a factor. Someone somewhere along the way

has to give you a break regardless of how talented you are and regardless of how hard you work.

[DebJ]

19. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to apply for NFL players.

I knew a waitress who worked in a restaurant in Carrol County, Md, near a training
camp (maybe the Ravens I guess...I don't follow football...this was in the early 2000s).

The wait staff dreaded the arrival of the NFL team. They would stay in the restaurant
for 3-4 hours, be very demanding, and leave not squat for a tip. Essentially, the person
stuck waiting on them earned ZILCH for her shift.

[OldEurope]

20. You cannot be a good actor if...

... you are not able to understand feelings. You have to be an empathetic and sensitive person to be a good actor. And an intelligent person, too. So actors tend to be liberals as do most intelligent people unless they are sociopaths.

[JaneyVee]

21. Also because usually actors start out in Drama club/Glee which is very LGBT friendly, move to LA

and work blue collar or service industry jobs i.e. waiter/waitress, and like the National Endowment for the Arts and other such programs that Repubs try to eviscerate. They are in touch with their humanity & emotions and also because they are in Unions and a very good one at that.

[on point]

22. They create fantasy worlds, they don't live in them?

[Cleita]

23. Not only that, all the ones who are in the mainstream belong

to unions and other collective bargaining organizations.

[pkdu]

27. It all boils down to your world view ... Me/ mine or the greater good.

People in the Arts generally believe altruistically in the greater good.

[HiPointDem]

30. "One reason Hollywood millionaires are so liberal is that most of them had to earn their way up"

who are you thinking of? i think it's more the opposite. when i look into the backgrounds of people from hollywood, a lot of them seem to have connections.

not all, but a lot.

[Festivito]

31. They're not. They're capitalist sponges rather than squeezers.

They absorb money from a liquid population. They want MANY to have excess money. When excess money is tied up with a few, they might make an astounding wage once or twice. It's not really this simplistic, they do want more than money, they want that approbation of audience or high sales figures. For the few of them that could make more just pleasing the ultra-rich, they would miss the applause of the MANY.

So, they are a little left of capitalist sponges.
Little left of status quo, but loving the applause for capitalizing on their skills.
Little left for the need of safety nets. They're one accident away from needing it.
B-grade actors like Reagan need a union.
(But, selling out to the rich is far more profitable if you're in a position to capitalize on your position.)

It's not a uniform left. Some are too far left for their own good, as some are too far right for their own good.

They sound like more than they represent, after all their profession gives them amplification of whatever they say. The hard-right then characterizes them as far left.

So, it ends up being themselves with a bull horn against a think-tank army of bull horns.

And, that's America.