I continue to be fascinated by this issue because I love movies, and cannot understand Hollywood monolithic thought. This is a great theory on why they are the way they are.
You might expect that among people so wealthy, there would be a higher percentage who embrace the tax-cutting wing of the Republican Party. You might think that people whose entire lives are built on freedom of expression would be hesitant to get all soft and cuddly over dictatorships such as in Cuba and Iraq.
But you'd be wrong, because in Hollywood, lines are read for dramatic effect rather than actual content. Occasionally, a politically minded actor can talk thoughtfully about the issues -- liberal Richard Dreyfuss is one example, conservative James Woods is another. But most showbiz people have little or no understanding of the concepts they routinely invoke -- for instance, freedom of speech.
Acting couple Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon yammer on that subject all the time. But last week when Roberts met Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove, who'd reported -- accurately so -- that Sarandon's mother is a conservative Republican who admires Bush, Roberts threatened him: "If you ever write about my family again, I will (expletive) find you and I will (expletive) hurt you."
That was no oddball exception to the rule. Freedom of speech is a one-way affair in Hollywood. When Hollywood calls on people not to buy products advertised on MSNBC's right-wing talk show Savage Nation, that's a "consumer boycott." When a petition appeared on the Internet a few weeks ago urging moviegoers not to go to movies starring actors who don't support the war in Iraq, that was a "McCarthyite blacklist."
Who can deny it?
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